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Catholic leader blames clergy inaction for attacks

Published on 13 February, 2013
Catholic leader blames clergy inaction for attacks

Mumbai, February 05, 2013: A retired high court judge says Christian leaders’ inaction should take some of the blame for the increasing number of attacks on their people.

“The Christian community has become a soft target because our cardinals, bishops and clergy are not willing to protest strongly to the government,” said Michael Saldanha, a Catholic and retired judge of the Bombay and Karnataka high courts.

He added that if senior clerics were to stand firm and “maintain zero tolerance” against attacks on Christians, “the rising violence against Christian communities could be curbed drastically,” he told UCA News on Monday.

Saldanha also supported the demand to ban Hindu radical groups Sanathan Sanstha (Eternal Forum) and Abhinav Bharat (New India), claiming they are behind a series of attacks on Christians in Maharashtra.

Catholic lay leaders on Sunday urged federal home minister Sushilkumar Shinde to ban the groups in view of the rising attacks against the Christian community in the country.

Both organizations are affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS- National Volunteer Corps,) the umbrella body of right-wing Hindu organizations that works to make India a Hindu nation.

Saldanha said hierarchs “want to remain in good books of the government and want us to put our neck out and do the dirty work.”

“Last Sunday, I told RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at the Mangalore airport that they will not be able to win the next general elections due next year, if they continued to attack Christians,” Saldanha said.

He said Bhagwat and he were on the same flight from Mumbai to Mangalore and both met at the airport briefly, when the Hindu leader asked him to join a “national rally” in Mangalore that day, which Saldanha refused.

Saldanha said he has been supporting the Muslims, in their struggle to contain Hindu violence against them in the Mangalore-Karwar coastal belt in Karnataka and succeeded to curb it by filing police cases.

Recently after he threatened to file a criminal case against a national daily for publishing a picture of Jesus smoking with a glass of beer in Bangalore, the management called him, apologized and said it had sacked the editor.

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