DELHI, India — India’s government should tell all foreign churches and missionaries to pack up and leave, according to a message that was delivered to a meeting of Hindu nationalists last month.
According to an article in the Guardian, K.S. Sudarshan told members of his Hindu nationalist group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that the Indian government should expel foreign churches and set up a state church similar to the government-controlled church of China.
Sudarshan’s comments were prompted by the recent conviction of Chencu Hansda, a 13-year-old boy who was found guilty of participating in the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. Staines and his sons Phillip and Timothy were killed when a mob set fire to their vehicle outside Manorharpur in January 1999.
Hansda’s lawyer has pledged to appeal the conviction while the boy remains in a juvenile prison.
Sudarshan continued his verbal attack, saying existing churches in India should disassociate themselves with alien churches, and suggested that Catholic churches should sever ties with the Vatican. The Hindu leader accused Christians of “wreaking havoc with the unity and integrity” of India and of “hatching a political conspiracy to destabilize the country.”
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