'They want to remove us': Report highlights India's persecution of minorities

An article published in one of the most renowned media outlets of the world has once again unmasked the true face of the so-called world's largest democracy under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to The New York Times report on India’s persecution of minorities particularly of Christians, Hindu extremists, shouting supremacist slogans, attacked a Church in the city of Indore in the recent past. The attackers punched the pastors in the head, threw women to the ground as the terrified children scuttling under their chairs

“They kept beating us, pulling out hair,” said Manish David, one of the pastors who was assaulted. “They yelled: ‘What are you doing here? What songs are you singing? What are you trying to do?’”

The attack, the report said, unfolded on the morning of January 26 at the Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra Christian centre in Indore. It said that the police soon arrived, but the officers did not touch the aggressors.

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Instead, according to the report, the police arrested and jailed the pastors and other church elders, who were still dizzy from getting punched in the head.

"The Christians were charged with breaking a newly enforced law that targets religious conversions, one that mirrors at least a dozen other measures across the country that have prompted a surge in mob violence against Indian Christians."

Pastor David said that he was not converting anyone but the organised assault against the church was propelled by a growing anti-Christian hysteria that is spreading across the nation.

It said that many Christians in India have become so frightened that they try to pass as Hindu to protect themselves. "To many Hindu extremists, the attacks are justified — a means of preventing religious conversions. To them, the possibility that some Indians, even a relatively small number, would reject Hinduism for Christianity is a threat to their dream of turning India into a pure Hindu nation."

“I just don’t get it,” said Abhishek Ninama, a Christian farmer, who stared dejectedly at a rural church stomped apart this year. “What is it that we do that makes them hate us so much?”

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The report stated that the pressure is greatest in central and northern India, where the governing party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is firmly in control.

It said that in the past few years, Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have tugged India far to the right, away from what many Indians see as the multicultural foundation Nehru built. "The rising attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 per cent of the population, are part of a broader shift in India, in which minorities feel less safe," it added.

It highlighted that the Modi regime was facing international pressure to rein in his supporters and stop the persecution of Muslims and Christians.

It said that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government body, recommended that India be put on its red list for “severe violations of religious freedom”.

But across India, the anti-Christian forces are growing stronger by the day, and they have many faces, including a white-collar army of lawyers and clerks who file legal complaints against Christian organizations. They also devise devastating social boycotts against isolated Christians in remote villages. According to extensive interviews, Hindu nationalists have blocked Christians from community wells, barred them from visiting Hindu homes and ostracised villagers for believing in Jesus. Last year, in one town, they stopped people from gathering on Christmas.

“Christians are being suppressed, discriminated against and persecuted at rising levels like never before in India,” said Matias Perttula, the advocacy director at International Christian Concern, a leading anti-persecution group. “And the attackers run free, every time.”

The report said that the Christians in states such as Kerala and Goa, which have large historic Christian communities, face much less persecution. However, it added, in tradition-bound rural areas where Christians are a tiny minority and community means everything, the pressure is intense.

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"Village elders in Bilawar Kalan, a cluster of small houses and squiggly roads in Madhya Pradesh, recently instituted the equivalent of a $130 fine for any family that allows Christians in their home. At the same time, they are trying to force the few Christian families to convert to Hinduism, warning that otherwise no one will marry their children, attend their funerals or sell them anything at the market."

“They want to remove us from society,” said Sukh Lal Kumre, a threadbare farmer and a Christian, who sat on a dry log in a field just outside the village.

The report said that after India’s independence from Britain, Christian leaders helped persuade the framers of India’s Constitution to include protections for religious freedom, even as Hindu nationalists kept trying to pass anti-conversion laws. When the debate landed in Parliament in 1955, Nehru, India’s prime minister, argued against such anti-conversion laws, presciently predicting that they “might very well be the cause of great harassment.”

In the decades that followed, Hindu nationalists tried to restrict conversions. Secularists within Nehru’s Congress Party tried to check them. A few states, including Madhya Pradesh, where Hindu nationalists have long enjoyed broad support, passed their own anti-conversion laws, but enforcement was limited and desultory.

"In 2014, all that changed. Modi swept into power. Part of his appeal were his promises of economic reform and a more powerful India on the global stage. But many Indians were also attracted to Modi’s deep roots in Hindu nationalist groups such as the RSS," the report said.

'First victims of the Modi era were Muslims'

It said that the first victims of the Modi era were Muslims. "Dozens were publicly lynched by Hindu extremists claiming to protect cows, which many Hindus consider sacred."

The report said that at least a dozen Indian states, with a combined population of more than 700 million people — half of the country’s population — have either passed laws, handed down court orders or are entertaining measures that restrict religious conversions.

It said that the measures are also being used to persecute Muslims as several dozen Muslim men have been jailed on charges that they forced their wives to convert to Islam.

The new laws do not mention Christianity or Islam explicitly, but they have clearly been written to target people converting to a religion other than Hinduism while exempting people who “reconvert” to Hinduism.

The report further stated that the measures outlaw conversions done with force, fraud or inducements. Some states mandate that anyone seeking to convert must apply for government permission 60 days in advance. And the laws are often so vaguely written that almost any church activity could be considered illegal.

“You could get thrown in jail for giving someone ice cream,” grumbled one Christian, who did not want to be identified for safety reasons.