NEW DELHI — Hindu extremists torched nearly a dozen churches and the home of a Christian leader Thursday, defying a curfew imposed to quell three days of religious violence in eastern India. Christians retaliated by setting fire to several homes belonging to Hindus.
Local police have been unsuccessful in halting the attacks and the federal government announced it was sending in a paramilitary force.
About 19 churches, most of them small mud-and-thatch buildings, have been razed since violence broke out Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.
Hindu groups have long charged Christian missionaries with trying to lure the poor and those who occupy the lowest rungs of Hinduism’s complex caste system away with promises of money and jobs.
On Thursday, a mob of Hindus burned down the house of Radhakant Nayak, a member of India’s upper house of parliament and a Christian leader in the area, Nayak told the CNN-IBN news channel.
Also, 11 churches were ransacked and burned in Kandhamal district of Orissa state, the Press Trust of India quoted unnamed police officials as saying.
Superintendent of Police Narsingh Bhol said several prayer houses were ransacked and some were set on fire, but he did not have the exact number.
Meanwhile, in the village of Brahmangaon, a group of Christians burned down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for the attack on churches. Angry Hindus then burned down the village police station, complaining of a lack of protection, a local police official said.
One person has been killed and at least 25 people, belonging to both Hindu and Christian communities, have been arrested for suspected involvement in the violence, Bhol said.
But the arrests and curfew have not stopped the attacks and the federal government said it was sending in a 300-strong paramilitary force.
“We have to get the violence under control,” the junior federal home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal said.
India is overwhelmingly Hindu but officially secular. Religious minorities, such as Christians, who account for 2.5 percent of the country’s 1.1 billion people, and Muslims, who make up 14 percent, often coexist peacefully.
But throughout India’s history, the issue of conversions has provoked violence by hard-line Hindus.
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