Q: Why on 11th September night a group of RSS followers came and threatened Fr. Siljo Kidangan the priest in charge and the inmates of a hostel run for tribal boys under your diocese?

A: We have some people coming to our church and RSS is trying to prevent anybody to come to our church. They are going to houses and threaten the people. The issue of land dispute is only a small thing and we have right over this land since twenty years. They are purposely creating tension in the locality in connection with the festival of Muharram. That is the technique of RSS. They want to create hatred and division but when we ask them they say they do not know. RSS have got so many splinter groups and all come under the same Hindutva umbrella. They don’t want any tribal to become Christian. We have actually only three families in this area. We have a priest there for last twenty years and we have sisters from different congregations. We don’t have any institution like schools or hospitals. We have only boarding schools for the tribal children and without our boarding these children have no hope of getting education. We are sending these children to government schools. RSS is afraid whether our influence will grow there. They want to chase us and tribals. They have a secret agenda to eliminate Christians. We have the help from influential people and the Collector and SP have promised every protection. It is people from outside who came and made all prob-lems. In the following day police came and sealed our hostel and we called the parents of the children to take them home. So now our hostel is closed temporarily but I met Collector who made investigation in the village about the accusation of conversion. Later it was proved no individual was converted and all news papers wrote in favour of us.

Bp Anthony Chirayath
Sagar