Dear Tammy,
This is just to enlighten you as to what is happening here in India as you had asked me to share more about it.
The hate crimes against Christians and other minorities such as Muslims and Dalits have been increasing over the last few years, specifically since 2015.
Since 2017 onward to December 2019 Persecution Relief, a Christian organization which was birthed in 2015 has received more than 3000 desperate calls for help.
Recollecting 2019, it was indeed a difficult and challenging year for the persecuted Church in India. Christian girls were raped, churches were burned, hundreds of house churches closed down, pastors including women and children being beaten up during the Sunday Worship Services, false cases were filed against priests, nuns, pastors, believers etc., and churches were vandalized.
A lot of the hatred and violence is also unleashed on ground propagated by “activists” on social media. On ground, what is happening is fanatics are storming into prayer meetings and churches and attacking the pastors and people, vandalizing and breaking church property, even threw bombs at a recent church inauguration, said to be done by people with BJP/RSS links, and Christians are being beaten up, sometimes until bones break, and falsely implicated for “converting” and imprisoned for long periods of time.
The organization, Persecution Relief has handled more than 1200 cases over the last 2 years. A majority of the reported incidents of violence against Christians has been perpetuated by members of affiliate Hindutva Groups, based on the confessions of the persecuted people, media reports and by the admission of the fundamentalists themselves, who proudly raise slogans of their organizations during the attack.
Hindutva is commonly identified as the guiding ideology of the Hindu Nationalists. Most nationalists are organized into political, cultural and social organizations; using the concept of Hindutva as a political tool.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a Hindu youth militant group founded by Yogi Adityanath the present Chief Minister, is behind most of the attacks.
In Tamil Nadu, most of the persecutors of the Church attacks are by Hindu Munnani (a religious and cultural organization) cadres and their affiliated organizations and leaders.
In States like Madhya Pradesh, &Chattisgarh, the Bajrang Dal, a militant organization, is very active. It is a member of the RSS family of organizations. They have formed local teams in every village to ensure that no Christian is allowed to worship.
In Rajasthan, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, (VHP) have been behind many of the attacks.
In Jharkhand, most of the attacks have been by uneducated youth, who claim to be members of Bajrang Dal cadre.
A multitude of new religious organizations with similar ideology, have mushroomed across the landscape, with the sole intent, of arresting all activities of Christians and minorities. There have been several instances where local political leaders and policemen, have been derelict in their duties and in collusion with these religious groups, who persecute Christians.
The standard rhetoric is the allegation that Christians are indulging in conversion activities by luring people through money, jobs or other material benefits. More than 11,000 non-governmental organizations have lost their licenses to accept foreign funds, on suspicion of engaging in religious conversion, leaving other Christian ministries vulnerable.
Another flawed argument that the religious fanatics propagate, is that Christian missionaries have destroyed their culture with the Gospel message of a “Western God”.
Several fact-finding missions and national human rights organizations have attributed the increase in violence to the growing presence and activities of self-proclaimed Hindutva groups. Even the police personnel and the administrators, have discreetly admitted that communal flare-ups have become frequent in recent months with the spurt of activities of the VHP and Bajrang Dal. Many times, the police are in league with the attackers.
The CIA annually publishes a World Fact book which feeds intelligence or factual reference material on a country or issue to the US government. Recently, The CIA’s (Central Intelligence Agency, USA), World Factbook called the “RSS a ‘nationalist’ body; Sangh affiliates Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal have been classified as militant religious outfits.
Besides the above organizations, several serving politicians, spiritual gurus, government officials have made provocative hate speeches and religious intolerance statements, injecting venom into the society and polarizing communities based on caste.
Since January 2016 to December 2019 there are recorded an astonishing number of cases, approximately 1774, of hate crimes against Christians in India. In 2019, the maximum number of 527 cases compared to last year’s figure of 447 cases.
During the last 3 years, Uttar Pradesh is the most hostile state in India against Christians. In 2019, Persecution Relief recorded 109 cases of hate crimes against Christians.
The Anti-Conversion law was introduced in BJP ruled states of Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh and now a total 8 states have Anti Conversion Laws enforced. The anti-conversion laws were introduced in Himachal Pradesh 9th state to implement the same.
The Freedom of Religion Acts and “anti-conversion” rule, mainly practiced in India, is a state-level legislation introduced to govern spiritual converts and ultimately put an end to them. The laws currently exist to eight of our twenty-eight states: Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh. There are undoubtedly many differences between the laws of the states, but in their substance and form they are very similar. All these anti-conversion laws are aimed at preventing any person from converting or trying to convert another person, either directly or otherwise, by means of “forcible” or “fraudulent” means, or by means of “allurement” or “inducement.” However, the anti-conversion laws in Rajasthan and Arunachal Pradesh have certain inherent differences. They seem to exclude, from their prohibitions, the conversion to “native” or “original” faiths, which can be described as very small. There are several harsh penalties for violating the rules, varying from monetary fines to even imprisonment; the sentences levied can vary from one to three years in prison and from 5,000 to 50,000 INR (which corresponds to about US$74 to $735) fines. Some of the laws that fall within the same scope provide for more stringent penalties when certain sections such as: women, children, or members of scheduled castes or schedule tribes (SC / ST) are converted into faiths different from their own.
The enactment of a National Anti-Conversion Law will open doors for greater violence against Christians as agitators will spin a false narrative of Christians converting others by force, which is already happening. Therefore, we did request a roll back of this national law to enable the Preamble of the Constitution to empower its citizens with their freedom to choose the religion of their choice allowing the dignity of an individual to express themselves freely, without fear.
For the last 5 years, the sad reality is that ‘minorities in this country had been made to live in “fear”. Incidents of injustice, violations of human rights and discrimination against minorities across India, in the name of religion, language and caste, which have made the landscape distressing.
There is a nucleus of hate from powerful people influencing and organizing events enabling violence that is taken out on poor pastors in villages in their house gatherings. These pastors were not “converting” anyone, just having a prayer meeting at home, or gathering for church, but beaten until bones are broken and also taken to prison, happening more regularly every Sunday. It reminds us how ISIS used to barge into Christian churches and attack them. We are leading to another 2008 again very soon if courts and cops, and government are silent about this.
Today, in India when Christians gather on Sunday mornings to worship God, their church doors are rammed open, pastors and even congregation in the church are beaten, sometimes so badly that they break their legs, break the churches and the Hindu fundamentalists make reports to the police that these Christians are converting the people to Christ. People gather in a house for a prayer meeting and the Hindu extremist barge in to stop them, declaring they cannot do that, as this is a Hindu country. (India is declared as a secular democratic republic by our constitution. Is not the law protecting Christians anymore?) Today, hundreds of churches have been stopped and shut down. This is become more and more frequent. People are in their homes holding a prayer meeting and the Hindutva workers ram in to beat them up. Recently, a pastor was holding a Sunday morning service in Karnataka where he pays a small sum of Rs. 3000 for the rent of the church. The Hindutva group barged in, demanded who is funding him and who the people in his church were, did he convert them? Without waiting for an answer, they dragged him out beating him and kicked his wife in her stomach on her C-section incision where she is just recovering from surgery.
Incidentally, the Keralites converted to Christianity at the time the Apostle Thomas came to India over 2000 years back. Keralites too are accused of being rice bag Christians! Ironical, because the British were here from the 1800s when the rice bag theory arose, so most of the people accusing Christians of being rice bag Christians don’t know their facts or history.
The Sangh Bhakts are glad that Hinduism is the fastest growing religion in Western countries. Russia, Germany, France, Sweden, USA and UK etc., have given Hindus the freedom to worship and even propagate Hinduism and no one hurts them. These nations have been large enough to give them that freedom. However, in India, if a Hindu becomes a Christian, they are immediately persecuted. Right now, even simply attending church has brought persecution to Christians!
In the words of Ashok Swain (Associate Professor and Director of the Programme of International Studies, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, from Sweden) said, “Indian American Hindutva groups, largely upper caste Indians, are advocates of minority rights in the U.S., but simultaneously and contradictorily supportive or uncritical of cultural supremacism and majoritarianism in India.”
The happiest countries on world index are those who are spiritually kind and tolerant to their minorities also. Finland, Denmark are the top countries with over 74% Christians, but are kind to minorities such as Hindus, Muslims etc. It is sad that India comes right at the bottom at rank 140 and this is due to intolerance and hatred.
We actively represent the Christian community, and all minorities proactively campaigning to keep the voice of democracy, the voice of reason, the voice of justice and the voice of legitimacy loud and clear, defending the rights of the persecuted Christians and other minorities as India is a democratic country and we are within our rights, though slowly being denied our basic rights of freedom of religion and worship.
As the United Nations says, “Genocide is a process, the Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers. It started with hate speech.” Unless we unite to stop this hate movement, it is processing to on to generate genocide.
Rita.
I am sharing the link of the website of Persecution Relief who will give the legally documented facts with police records of the persecution. http://persecutionrelief.org/
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