_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Christian victims, too
Hindus react to a Muslim assault
Two Divine Word missionaries were injured in a stone-throwing melee following an attack by a Hindu mob on their residence in India’s troubled Gujarat state early in March. The missionaries fled from their house, which was then looted and razed. A nearby Protestant mission suffered the same fate.

The attacks on Christian targets in Gujarat came in a wave of communal violence by Hindu zealots, who were responding to the torching of a train carrying Hindu worshippers, apparently by Muslim extremists. In a week of retaliation, at least 600 people died in Gujarat, most of them Muslims.

Several Christian leaders—including John Dayal, general secretary of the All India Catholic Union—joined with secular activists to call upon India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, demanding the removal of the Gujarat state government (which is led by the pro-Hindu BJP party) on account of its failure to curb attacks on minority groups.

Sex-selection abortion clampdown
Government responds to gender imbalance
In a bid to clamp down on sex-selection abortion in India, the federal government has decided to curb the country’s liberal abortion laws.

The federal cabinet approved several amendments to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act (MTP), which will now be brought before the Indian parliament. The amendments envisage punishments ranging from two to seven years for owners of clinics who carry out abortions without government licenses and for unqualified medical practitioners who perform abortions.

The widespread preference for male children in India—sanctioned by Hindu scriptures and exacerbated by exorbitant dowry demands for the marriage of women—has led to the proliferation of thousands of unlicensed abortion clinics. And the liberal provisions of the MTP allow abortion within conditions.

Statistics have shown that of every 1,000 unborn children aborted in India in recent years, as many as 995 have been female. The national census last year showed a steep decline in the ratio of women to men among the country’s children, with 927 girls for every 1,000 boys under the age of six, and even more pronounced differences in some regions.