At least 127 incidents of violence against Christians in India were registered in the first 103 days of 2022, according to a report released by an ecumenical group in New Delhi.
On April 15, the United Christian Forum (UCF), an Ecumenical watchdog that monitors violence against Christians, said the incidents were recorded by its toll-free helpline number. As many as 18 incidents of violence were recorded as of April 13.
In 365 days of 2021, Christians witnessed 502 incidents of violence in India.
“Today [April 15], over two thousand years ago Jesus was persecuted or believed to be crucified on this day. Followers of Jesus are even today being persecuted in certain parts of the world including in India wherein vested groups of people are spreading hatred against minorities for their political gains,” read a press note from A C Michael, national coordinator of UCF.
“The persecution of Christians in India is intensifying which is leading to a systemic and carefully orchestrated violence against Christians, including the use of social media to spread disinformation and stir up hatred,” said Michael, a Catholic lay leader, and human rights activist.
The strong infiltration of hatred against Christians has witnessed 127 incidents of violence in 2014 which increased to five hundredfold in 2021 as 502 incidents of violence were reported.
Most church leaders are men, and being a pastor is understood to be one of the riskiest vocations in India. Pastors and their families are targeted to instill fear among them.
In the first 103 days of 2022, we have already witnessed 127 incidents of violence against Christians. January saw 40 incidents, and 35 incidents in February, 34 incidents in March, in which 89 Pastors were beaten up and threatened from conducting prayers for which they became pastors.
As many as 68 Churches were attacked with which 367 women and 366 children received injuries. Out of 127 incidents, 82 incidents were mob violence.
As many as 42 cases are pending in various courts challenging the constitutional validity of the so-called “Freedom of Religion Act” which has been framed with a malafide intention to harass the Christian community who are falsely accused of forceful conversion, explained Michael, a former member of the Delhi Minority Commission.
Till today, not a single Christian has been convicted for forcing anyone to convert.
Moreover, census after census has shown that the Christian population remained the same. The 2011 census data show that 79.8% of India’s 1.38 billion population is Hindu, 14.2% Muslim, and 2.3% Christian.
India has the second-largest Catholic population in Asia after the Philippines.
About 20 million Catholics in the country belong to Latin Rite Catholics and are members of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.
Many false cases were filed against Christians, which the courts have found untrue and pulled up the police and the authorities for misusing the poser.
One example is in May 2017, 72 Christian children going to a Christian camp from Madhya Pradesh state in Northern India to Nagpur city in south India accompanied by six elders were detained on charges of being “kidnapped to be converted.”
The Madhya Pradesh High Court granting bail to children and elders directed the police to come back with evidence to prove their claim that children are not Christians and that they were being kidnapped to be converted. Till today, the police have not come back to Court, explained Michael.
In another judgment, beginning of 2019, the Delhi High Court while restoring the status of Overseas Citizen of India said that the government could not show any proof whatsoever of having forcefully or fraudulently converted even a single person.
Under similar charges, there were over 40 Churches in the Jaunpur District of Uttar Pradesh State that were shut down in 2018.
Even though pastors and other Christian leaders are out on bail, the police are yet to file the charge sheets against any of them as they do not have any evidence to prove fraud or forceful conversions. There are hundreds of such cases, if not thousands, that are lying in front of various courts across India due to the absence of proof of fraud or forceful conversions.
The various courts in India in the last 15 months–January 2021 to March 2022 have acquitted Christians of false allegations of conversions in 59 cases (41 in 2021 and 18 till March 2022), said the ecumenical group released the data.
The latest incident was on April 14, 2022. About 100 people praying in a Protestant church at Fatehpur of Uttar Pradesh State were locked inside the church by Hindu right-wing groups, said Minakshi Singh, a social worker, and a Christian leader.
“Christians have been locked down for almost three hours but the police administration has not yet been able to open the lock, said Singh, a member of the All India Council of Human Rights Liberties and Social Justice.
When the police came, the Christians and pastors were taken to the police station and locked up, and filed false cases at the request of rioters.
She described the incident as “work against the oppression on the common Christian society in India.”
“To whom to ask for justice, I do not understand,” Singh said.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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