Posted on 07/19/2015 3:36:29 PM PDT by markomalley
At the level of sweeping stereotypes, most Westerners tend to think of India and its dominant religion, Hinduism, as bastions of tolerance. Ever since the Beatles traveled to an ashram to study meditation, there’s been a chic about Indian spirituality as the ultimate in “all paths lead to the same place.”
One might profitably ask Christians in today’s India, however, whether those stereotypes have anything to do with their reality. The answer you’re likely to get is, “Are you kidding?”
In truth, India’s small Christian minority has felt under the gun for a long time, and they say things have become considerably worse since a political party called the BJP, backed by fundamentalist Hindu movements, swept to power in May 2014.
(Calling the Christian presence “small,” by the way, is relative. Christians comprise around 2.5 percent of the national population, though some put it as high as 4 to 6 percent if house churches and independent movements are counted. India is so huge, however, that even the low-end estimate works out to almost 25 million people.)
Recently an Indian website was created to collect reports of anti-Christian persecution, called Speak Out Against Hate, and it claims that so far in 2015 there’s an average of at least one violent episode every week.
Here are some typical examples:
In response to such incidents, a cross-section of Christian leaders in January launched a new movement called the United Christian Forum for Human Rights. Lay activist John Dayal presented the initiative at a Delhi news conference.
“2014 was a particularly traumatic year,” Dayal said. “It was conceived in sin, in a campaign based on hate.”
Yet Dayal stressed that the problems facing Christians hardly began with the BJP’s resounding victory in last year’s national elections.
“Since 1997, we have been recording between 150 and 350 cases of violence a year,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who runs the government … the non-state actors and the problems with the criminal justice system remain the same.”
For many Christians in the country, a cataclysm that unfolded in the eastern Indian state of Orissa (Odisha) in August 2008 still colors the way they see their situation.
Early that month, a revered Hindu spiritual leader named Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was assassinated, most likely by Maoist guerillas. Radical Hindus, however, blamed his death on Christians and unleashed their rage on the local Christian population.
In an orgy of violence that quickly spread to 600 villages, half of the 100,000 Christians in the area found themselves homeless, forced to seek refuge in a nearby forest. Some 120 Christians are believed to have been killed, some of them hacked to death by machete-wielding radicals. Three hundred churches were burned along with 6,000 private homes.
During the rampage at least three women were gang-raped, including a Catholic nun. The tragedy was compounded during the exile in the forest, as more Christians died of either starvation or snakebite while waiting to go home.
Dayal said Christians are still waiting for justice to be done for the victims of Orissa.
“Out of 120 killed, there have been only two convictions,” he said. “One was a life sentence for murder, and one just seven years for abduction … as if nobody killed the rest of them.”
While anti-Christian persecution is a global problem, the form it takes in India is especially noteworthy for three reasons.
Religious prejudice is often bound up with ethnicity and poverty. India’s Christians are disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the Dalits, meaning the “untouchables” under the old caste system, and are therefore likely to be poor. By some estimates, 60 to 75 percent of the country’s Christians are Dalits, making them easy targets.
Anti-Christian persecution isn’t all about Islam. The truth is that Muslim radicalism in places such as Iraq and Syria could disappear tomorrow, and that wouldn’t mean that Christians elsewhere are safe.
It’s not just rogue states such as North Korea where Christians are at risk. India is a vibrant democracy and among the emerging superpowers of the early 21st century, with a constitution that guarantees religious freedom, though that’s hardly the reality on the ground.
Dayal says that despite the threats, India’s Christians do not intend to passively accept their plight.
“We claim our rights as children of God and as citizens of the state,” he said, “with the Bible in one hand and the constitution in the other.”
For all kinds of reasons, including India’s capacity to use its growing power wisely, everyone – not just Christians – has a stake in hoping that Dayal and his fellow believers prevail in that effort.
*gasp* You mean all the things the Hippies said and popularized about Eastern spirituality was cherry-picked to suit their libertine needs?
I’m SHOCKED! /s
bookmarked
Well as bad as some of these Hindu maniacs in Indian are concerning the treatment of Christians in their own country..... they don’t seem to be targeting Christians OUTSIDE of India.... Well yet anyways....
Unlike the other minority group that lives in India....
Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu radical.
Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu radical.
The “Tamil Tigers” are a Predominately Hindu Radical Group as well...
Amen.
The Tigers radicalism isn’t based on their Hinduism. It’s a tribal thing. Hindus vs. Buddhists in Sri Lanka is much like Prods vs. Catholics in Ireland.
John Allen is brilliant. St. Thomas, the Apostle, traveled to India and sparked up a Catholic community still present today. The Sihks were created in order to stop the bloodshed between Muslims and Hindus. The Tamil Tigers want Sri Lanka and failed to take it even after killing 200,000 in the 1990’s.
We have a common enemy in the netherworld (Lucifer) and we have one Prince of Peace (the Lord). We should serve the Prince and His Church or risk the unexpected alliance with the common enemy. What is the single obstacle to serving the Prince and His Church? Stubbornness: the joy of pretending to be smarter than the Prince of Peace.
In the 1960s and 70s, India, as a self-proclaimed leader of the ‘Third World’, was all too frequently found castigating the United States for its Civil Rights sins and problems. Yet, if anyone would, in that context, point out the hypocrisy of India and the treatment of its Dajits and the unfairness of it heredity caste system, the response would be foreign meddling in internal affairs and religion must be sacrosanct!
The official position of the Indian government is to not provide favoritism to ANY religion, as there is a large and very active Muslim population within their country, one that causes no end of grief and disruption, and has been the source of much civil unrest there. But in a perhaps wrong-headed effort to tamp down the unrest, the Indian government is perhaps as rough-shod in dealing with Christians, as they are in dealing with the Muslims.
When India was partitioned into separate entities of Pakistan apart from the Hindu part of India, there ended up TWO Islamic states, East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and West Pakistan, now simply called Pakistan. All the Muslims were supposed to be relocated there, but this plan has met a lot of resistance from the Muslims. The Hindus, for their part, were perfectly happy to leave the Muslim districts, but the intransigence of the rather stubborn imams and mullahs has kept the circumstances churning for years.
The Hindu religion is still the majority, and they tend to set the tone for treatment of the minority religions. There is a strong prohibition against proselytization, which works not at all in favor of the Christians, but the Muslims are much more persuasive in their “conversions”.
Odd, I didn’t notice any kind of intolerance when I spent 4 years in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha. There are numerous Christian churches in the city, and not one of them was attacked or damaged in any way for the entire time I was there. On top of that, there are many many Catholic schools in the Bhubaneswar area and across the state, and not only were none of them assaulted, they are considered desirable schools, with long waiting lists.
Also, as a Christian, I was always welcomed everywhere, even in Hindu temples (at least those open to non-natives), and was never insulted, harassed, or assaulted. Hindus in general are very ecumenical, and many profess faith in Jesus alongside their own gods. This article focuses on a tiny splinter group, rather than the prevailing attitude towards Christians.
Worth noting in light of other comments that Gandhi’s assassins did so in large part because Gandhi was entirely too willing to compromise with Muslims.
It’s not just the Christians, either. Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Assamese, Bodos, Dalits, Tamils, and others have been subjected to violent persecution.
Please tell us more. By the way are you still paid lobby of the Khalistan movement?
Over 200,000 Christians killed in Nagaland alone. Nuns raped and dragged through the streets. Churches burned. Christian schools attacked. Visit http://www.persecutedchurch.com for plenty of information.
John Dayal, one of hte leaders of the Christians in India, has thanked the Sikhs for their support. Another Christian leader is Joseph D’Souza. they have been harassed and mistreated in numerous ways.
According to figures from the Punjab State Magistracy, at least 250,000 Sikhs have been killed in India since 1984. According to former Member of Parliament Simranjit Singh Mann, the number is closer to a million since 1982.
More than 50,000 were tortured, killed, and secretly cremated at the Tarn Taran cremation ground alone. Their bodies were never returned to their families.
Some Sikhs have even been arrested for marching, chanting slogans, and raising the Sikh flag. Indian democracy in action!
The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Saingh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist gang that includes the Bharatiya Janata Party under its wing, as well as Shiv Sena and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) — the latter two inclinded to violent acts against non-Hindu minorities of all kinds, continues to rampage and exert influence on the Indian regime.
Tens of thousands of Assamese, Bodos, Dalits, Manipuris, Tamils, and other minorities have been killed. Many more have been raped, tortured, and mistreated. All in the name of secularism, of course.
I could go on for quite a bit longer, but that’s enough for one post.
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