More than 15 years after Nepal officially became a secular democracy, the previous Hindu monarchy can have a non secular extremism problem, incited and aggravated by its closest neighbor.
In an “alarming” development, Indian Hindutva ideology and politics have begun to spread throughout the country, as local experts and journalists report. This proliferation has resulted in a recent spate of attacks and restrictions on Christians reported inside the country of 30 million.
According to local sources, at the very least five separate incidents targeting Christians have been reported in March and April of this yr.
“The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) in Nepal is rapidly growing. Aiming to guard Hinduism, they degrade Christianity and badmouth us through social media and other sources,” said Kiran Thapa, who was arrested last month for praying for people in Kathmandu.
In March, Thapa and several other foreigners, all Christians, were visiting the Pashupatinath Temple, a non secular World Heritage Site deeply venerated by local Hindus. When they entered the temple, they got here across an elderly couple who were suffering with pain of their knees and back. The group offered to hope for them with the couple’s consent, and so they subsequently reported that they were healed. More people then requested prayers from the group and reported being healed.
“I needed to request them to come back one after the other,” said Thapa.
After two monks asked for prayer after which reported that they too had been healed of their physical afflictions, a policeman ordered the Christians to depart the Hindu temple for praying in Jesus’ name. As they were leaving, a person with an immobile hand followed the group out. When the Christians prayed for him on the street, having informed him that they might not pray for him within the temple, he also said he had been healed. Despite the miracle occurring outside the temple grounds, the incident angered the identical policeman, who then got a senior police official to take care of the matter. According to Thapa, the officer began screaming at Thapa and arrested him.
“They threatened to kill me and bury me as an anonymous corpse near the ghat (riverbed). ‘If the law had not certain my hands, I might have killed you and buried you here,’ the officer told me,” said Thapa.
Thapa spent the subsequent 24 hours in extremely poor jail conditions with no proper place to take a seat or sleep. The senior inmates made him sit near the bathroom while lavatory waste gushed out into the cell, said Thapa.
Authorities released him after the temple management, which had filed a grievance against Thapa that falsely stated he was distributing Bibles, withdrew their grievance on the request of Thapa’s wife.
Several weeks earlier, evangelist Sajan Shrestha mentioned, a video was uploaded on Facebook showing members from HSS, an extremist organization whose name literally translates to “Hindu emperor army,” aggressively bullying Christians. The mob taunted the gang, calling on them to tear the Bibles. All resisted but one, who tore the Bible after which was forced to trample the torn book under his feet. The extremists then heaped all of the Bibles and set them on fire. They surrounded the fireplace and shouted slogans like “Jai Shri Ram” (Hail, Lord Rama).
“We are so sorry for our brothers who went through all this,” said Shrestha, who himself was harassed, detained, and interrogated by a pro-Hindu journalist and two plainclothes policemen on February 12. Earlier that month, the journalist had found Shrestha’s name after threatening two young Christian women who were distributing tracts in Lalitpur, the country’s fourth most-populous city. After local Christians protested, authorities released him from police custody.
Historically, Hindus in Nepal have been far less aggressive toward non-Hindus than their counterparts in India, Shrestha said. However, he has observed a concerning evolution of attitudes in Terai, a region in southern Nepal near where the country borders India.
According to Shrestha, within the weeks leading as much as India’s national elections, which begin at the top of April, Indian Hindu extremist ideologies appear to be gaining ground. He believes that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is financially supporting these Nepali Hindu groups to deliberately fuel religious tensions, possibly for political leverage.
In March, seven Australians and 4 Nepalese were visiting a village in Terai when a Hindu group from one other village confronted them aggressively, stating they couldn’t be there and accusing them of attempting to convert the locals to Christianity. The villagers subsequently called the police, who arrested the whole team.
Further, inside hours of their arrest, a mob of around 40 people surrounded the police station, demanding the Christians be charged for preaching within the Hindu-majority area.
After being detained in Kathmandu for 3 days, the Australians were asked to depart Nepal. However, the federal government kept the 4 Nepalese, Adesh Gurung, Bijendra Mukhiya, Phurba Lama, and Siwan Rai, in jail for greater than three weeks.
The 4 men were charged under Nepal’s Penal Code adopted in 2015, which prohibits proselytization. More stringent anti-conversion laws were passed in 2017, under which an individual will be sentenced to a jail term of as much as five years and a high-quality of as much as 50,000 Nepali rupees ($375 USD) as punishment.
“Even though the law states that the high-quality may very well be as much as 50,000 Nepali rupees, the 4 Christians were released on a bail bond of 150,000 Nepali rupees each,” said one among the Australians to CT.
However, leading as much as their trial, the 4 can have to return every three months to present themselves within the court while they’re out on bail. Once the trial begins, they’ll must be present for each court date (which may very well be a couple of times a month) until the decision.
The vehemence of the mob’s response surprised the Australian missionary, who told CT he had previously visited the Christian homes within the village without issue and intimated that Indian Hindu radicals have been crossing the border and inciting violence.
“This whole region has turn into more anti-Christian and zealous in attempting to eliminate Christians within the last six months. The Hindu extremists are organizing people to report Christians,” he said. “In our case, the host didn’t report us, but someone reported our presence within the village, and it was surprising to see so many individuals gathered swiftly, which demonstrates their planning. Their minds are being polarized. The attitude of surrounding us, gathering quickly, and calling the police is coming over from the Indian border—hatred and extreme pondering.”
The HSS—the body promoting Hindutva in Nepal—was founded within the country around 1992 by several Nepali students who had been exposed to the ideology of the Indian Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) while studying in India.
Though the HSS has distanced itself from the RSS, the RSS nevertheless considers the HSS its international wing. With 750 branches in 45 countries, the HSS has chapters in English-speaking nations just like the UK, the United States, and Canada, in addition to European countries like Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and others.
“The HSS is expanding quickly and promotes Hindu nationalism. Sadly, they often depict Christians in a negative light, portraying themselves as the higher option. This has resulted in lots of incidents where Christians are targeted unfairly,” said Thapa.
The HSS just isn’t the one group working to construct a Hindu nationalist narrative in Nepal. The Kathmandu Post reported that at the very least 100 Hindu organizations are currently lively in Nepal. The article and others also mention foreign influences, mainly from India, backing the Hindutva movement, adding complexity to Nepal’s political landscape.
There has been a large rise within the pro-Hindu movement across Nepal within the last two to 3 years, said an official who spoke to The Kathmandu Post on condition of anonymity alleged that some organizations promoting the Hindu movement in Nepal are volunteer groups while others have received funds from different sources inside and outdoors the country.
While indigenous ethnic Nepalis aren’t traditionally Hindu, many Hindus have been successful in convincing them that their faith alone protects tribal identity. In contrast, Christians are forged as outsiders attempting to erase and undermine local culture.
India and Nepal share strong cultural, social, and economic ties. They signed agreements in 1950 and 1960 to strengthen economic cooperation and promote trade. The open border allows free movement of individuals and goods, making Nepal one among India’s top export destinations. India provides significant foreign investment and development aid to Nepal in areas like education, infrastructure, energy, and rural development. The two countries recently signed a deal allowing the Indian government to directly fund projects in Nepal price as much as 200 million Nepali rupees ($15 million USD), a rise from the previous 50-million-rupee limit per project.
Shrestha said that the Nepali Christian leadership is planning to bring this sudden rise in incidents against the Christian community before the authorities.
“We are planning to go to the prime minister [Pushpa Kamal Dahal] and human rights organizations and alert them about these incidents,” said Shrestha.
Despite the rise of radical Hinduism, Nepal’s census shows a major 68 percent increase within the Christian population up to now decade. The numbers further reveal a small decline in Hinduism and Buddhism followers, in comparison with the modest growth of the Muslim, Christian, and Kirat communities (indigenous ethnic groups of the Himalayas) in comparison with the 2011 census.
While Hinduism remains to be over 80 percent, its share has decreased from 81.3 to 81.19 percent, and Buddhism from 9 to eight.2 percent. Meanwhile, Islam rose from 4.4 to five.9 percent, Christianity surged from 0.1 to 1.76 percent, and the Kirat community increased from 2.81 to three.17 percent. (Nepal also has minor religions like Bahai, Bon, Jain, Prakriti, and Sikh.)
