Andhra Pradesh - Tirupati   

Rally in protest against attacks on missionaries

Special Correspondent

Pastors submit memorandum to the Revenue Divisional Officer

CAUSE FOR CONCERN: Pastors taking out a procession in Tirupati on Thursday protesting against the attacks on Christian missionary workers, nurses and employees.

TIRUPATI: The proselytisation issue in Tirupati-Tirumala is getting curious day by day with the same assuming political dimensions. The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders are already hurling charges at each other and are mobilising support of other parties and like-minded organisations. The Communist Party of India (CPI) has in the meantime expressed its concern over the danger of Tirupati turning into another Babri, given the manner in which communal passions are being whipped up by vested interests.

It was against this backdrop that the pastors drawn from different parts of Chittoor district on Thursday took out a procession through the streets of Tirupati to mark their protest against the increasing assaults on the Christian missionary workers, nurses and others allegedly by the `Sangh Parivar' organisations in the name of curbing evangelism on and off the Tirumala hills.

The demonstrators carrying placards and banners set out from the Nehru Municipal High School here and converged at the office of the RDO where they submitted a memorandum to the officer after a brief dharna.

`Doing no wrong'

Leaders of the Pastors Association while addressing the rally insisted that if they were preaching or propagating Christianity they were doing no wrong but were only exercising the right guaranteed by the Indian Constitution to any citizen of India under the `Right to religion'.

The procession assumed significance in the context of a convention being planned by the RSS and Swadeshi Jagaran Manch at Tirupati on August 20. Though the meet is being organised to celebrate the birth anniversary of the founder of RSS, `Guruji', but coming as it does in the midst of the row over evangelism, it is expected to provide a platform for the organisations to discuss the issue threadbare and chart out their future course of action.

Effigy burnt

In a related development, the local Congress activists burnt the effigy of BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu for his alleged poser to the Congress cadres here on Wednesday to stop if they could the RSS from holding its convention as scheduled at Tirupati.

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