KATHMANDU, Nepal, December 30 (CDN) — Disillusioned with Hindu nationalists, the leader of a militant Hindu extremist group told Compass that contact with Christians in prison had led him to repent of bombing a Catholic church here in May 2008.
Ram Prasad Mainali, the 37-year-old chief of the Nepal Defense Army (NDA), was arrested on Sept. 5 for exploding a bomb in the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, in the Lalitpur area of Kathmandu on May 23. The explosion killed a teenager and a newly-married woman from India’s Bihar state and injured more than a dozen others.
In Kathmandu’s jail in the Nakkhu area, Mainali told Compass he regretted bombing the church.
“I bombed the church so that I could help re-establish Nepal as a Hindu nation,” he said. “There are Catholic nations, there are Protestant nations and there are also Islamic nations, but there is no Hindu nation. But I was wrong. Creating a religious war cannot solve anything, it will only harm people.”
Mainali, who is married and has two small daughters, added that he wanted members of all religions to be friendly with one other.
Asked how the change in him came about, he said he had been attending a prison fellowship since he was transferred to Nakkhu Jail from Central Jail four months ago.
“I have been reading the Bible also, to know what it says,” he said.
Of the 450 prisoners in the Nakkhu Jail, around 150 attend the Nakkhu Gospel Church inside the prison premises.
Mainali said he began reading the Bible after experiencing the graciousness of prison Christians.
“Although I bombed the church, Christians come to meet me everyday,” he said. “No rightwing Hindu has come to meet me even once.”
There is much more at the Compass Direct website.
I bolded that sentence about how experiencing the graciousness of Christians was the key. I have been thinking I post too much negative material on this blog and the negative focus is not spiritually wholesome for me or a good Christian witness. Posting the negative material has been helpful for me in identifying what I am concerned about. But, starting now and for this coming year, I am going to try to shift the focus of this blog a little.
Hat Tip: Voice of the Martyrs
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2 comments:
I tried being positive in hopes it would affect positive change, a sort of Wayne Dyer approach, back in 2007. It lasted a few weeks. I could not call a negative a positive any longer, and I did not want to be an enabler to all those negatives.
Hi Pewster,
Good point. I do not want to be an enabler by glossing over the real problems I see.
And I know that if I just keep silent about those problems, I become quietly depressed.
But I do want to have more posts like this one on my blog.
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