Church Bomber in Nepal Repents, Admits India Link

Disillusioned with Hindu nationalists, the leader of a militant Hindu
extremist group says contact with Christians in prison led him
to repent of bombing a Catholic church in Kathmandu, Nepal, 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 Direct News that 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.”

Jeevan Rai
Majhi, leader of the inmates of Nakkhu Jail and also a leader of the church,
confirmed that Mainali had been attending the church, praying and reading the
Bible regularly. Union of Catholic Asian News reported on Nov. 30 that Mainali
had sent a handwritten letter to a monthly Christian newsmagazine in Nepal,
Hamro Ashish (Our Blessing), saying he had repented of his deeds in the
prison.

Asked if Nepal
should be a Hindu nation, Mainali said he just wanted the country to become a
monarchy again, “but not with Gyanendra as the king.” In 2006 a
pro-democracy movement in Nepal led to the ouster of the army-backed regime of
Hindu King Gyanendra, and Parliament proclaimed the Himalayan kingdom a secular,
federal state.

Mainali said the
NDA still exists but is not active. It was formed in New Delhi in 2007 at a
meeting attended by a large number of Hindu nationalists from India, he said.
Since bombing the church in Kathmandu, the group has
threatened to drive all Christians from the country.

“The NDA was
started in February or March 2007 at the Birla Mandir [a Hindu temple in central
Delhi] at a meeting which was attended by many leaders from the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad [World Hindu Council], the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh and the Shiv Sena party,” he said. Mainali declined
to name the leaders of these Hindu extremist groups present at the
meeting.

The NDA is also
believed to be responsible for the killing of a Catholic priest, Father John
Prakash Moyalan, principal of the Don Bosco educational institution in Dharan
city in eastern Nepal, in June 2008.

Nepal
was a Hindu
monarchy until 1990,
after which the
king was forced to introduce political reforms mainly by Maoists (extreme
Marxists). In 2006, Nepal
adopted an interim constitution making it a secular nation, which infuriated
Hindu nationalists in Nepal and India. In 2008 Nepal became a federal democratic
republic.

Mainali said the
NDA was receiving about 500,000 Nepalese rupees (US$6,590) every
month from the organizations. He declined to divulge how the Hindu extremist
groups in India funded the NDA. Mainali also said that the NDA bought arms from
an Indian separatist militia in the northeastern state of Assam, the United
Liberation Front of Asom or ULFA. Although most of the ULFA members are
nominally Christian, he said, “they sold arms to us as a purely business
deal.”

The ULFA is a
banned organization in India and classified as a terrorist outfit since 1990.
The U.S. Department of State has listed it under the “Other Groups of Concern”
category.

Of the roughly
30 million people in Nepal, a meagre .5 percent are Christian, and more than 80
percent are Hindu, according to the 2001 census.