Around 2,000 Christians in India have gathered within the nation’s capital to protest the increasingly hostile environment they face from discriminatory laws and neighbours.
The treatment of Christians within the country has turn out to be of accelerating concern. This yr alone has seen Hindu mobs try and prevent the burial of a Christian man in his home town, missionaries attacked and Christian shops boycotted, and folks driven out of their villages and refused access to basic services.
The situation is such that democratic India is currently ranked by Open Doors because the eleventh worst persecutor of Christians on the planet, worse than Islamic autocracy Saudi Arabia (twelfth) and Communist China (fifteenth).
On 29 November the National Christian Convention took place, bringing together 2,000 believers from over 200 denominations.
Speakers told of the plight of Christians in vulnerable areas of the country and in addition said the situation had deteriorated significantly. Between 2014 and 2024 attacks on Christians increased by 500%.
Attacks ranged from vandalism of churches to physical assaults on church leaders. Yet lower than 20 per cent of the cases were investigated by the police.
One key point of conflict is the difficulty of conversion. Many states have anti-conversion laws. In theory such laws are designed to stop coercive conversion from one religion to a different.
In practice they are sometimes used to stop people from converting away from Hinduism, whether forcefully or of their very own free will.
Hindu mobs often take aggressive motion against Christians for even the rumour of a “forced” conversion. Such attacks often go unpunished.
Speakers on the rally also raised the difficulty of non-Hindu Dalits being denied the advantages afforded to other Dalits. This, the speakers argued, trapped hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims into generational poverty. It also provides a direct financial incentive for Dalits to convert back to Hinduism.
The meeting put together a manifesto for the protection of Christians and all of those facing persecution. Equality for Dalits was also on the agenda. The finalised manifesto might be submitted to the Indian Prime Minister and other key politicians.
Mervyn Thomas, the Founder President of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said, “CSW stands in solidarity with India’s Christian community and joins them of their call on the federal government of India to uphold constitutional protections for freedom of faith or belief, to make sure accountability for perpetrators of targeted violence, and to remove discriminatory provisions that impact vulnerable communities.”
 Around 2,000 Christians in India have gathered within the nation’s capital to protest the increasingly hostile environment they face from discriminatory laws and...){kind=link}