Objecting to a church being constructed in Haryana allegedly to convert Hindus, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) asked whether Christians would allow a temple to come up in the Vatican City.
"Can one build a Hanuman mandir in Vatican?" asked Vishwa Hindu Parishad general secretary Surendra Jain on Monday in New Delhi, even as he denied VHP's involvement in the vandalism of the under-construction church in Haryana's Hisar district.
Jain attributed the attack on the church to "spontenous reaction" by the villagers.
"This is a spontaneous reaction of the local people. There are no Christians living in the village or around it where the church has been attacked. So why was a church being built there? Will the Christians allow us to make a Hanuman temple in the Vatican? Let them allow that, and we will ask them to choose any place in India for a church. We will fund it," he said, as quoted in The Times of India.
He added: "The church was for the purpose of conversion. Local people had warned against it. But when it went unheeded, they took whatever action they deemed fit."
He also spoke of waging a war similar to the 1857 uprising, if Christians continued with conversions.
"This is a country where the 1857 war was fought for the cause of religion. People will react to aggressive conversion, just as they reacted to the killing of Swami Laxmananda in Odisha in 2008."
Jain also defended a controversial statement by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in Guwahati recently, where Swamy spoke of how different religious communities perceived places of worship, saying "God does not live in mosques but in temples."
"This is a truth that even Muslims agree to. Ask any Muslim if Allah lives in mosque and he will reply in the negative. Saudi Arabia has demolished so many mosques for developmental work, no body has objected," Jain said.
