Suspected Hindu nationalists reportedly
disrupted a prayer meeting last month and
are said to have beat up a pastor as
persecution against Christians and other
religious minorities continues to increase in
India.
Pastor Raju Prassad, who leads a small
fellowship in the Kanshiram Colony in the
northern state of Uttar Pradesh, told the
persecution watchdog charity International
Christian Concern about an attack on his
fellowship that occurred on July 28.
Prassad claimed that Hindu nationalists
belonging to Bajrang Dal, a youth militant
group affiliated with the Vishva Hindu
Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh, harassed and identified a group of
women and two men who were on their
way to the prayer meeting.
The perpetrators are said to have
physically and verbally abused the women
and two men before they arrived at the
prayer meeting.
When the group of Christians arrived at the
house where the meeting was taking place,
the nationalists allegedly continued their
attack.
Pastor Prassad said that he was dragged
out of the house and beaten by the
perpetrators.
When the police came, Prassad said he
and members of his fellowship were
arrested and brought to the police station
on charges of forcible conversion.
In some states in India, including Uttar
Pradesh, it is illegal to coerce or allure
someone into religious conversion. Anti-
conversion laws are often used by Hindu
activists to press false cases against
Christian leaders.
At the police station in Chakeri, Prassad
said that Hindu nationalists continued to
beat him.
According to the pastor, he and his fellow
members spent a total of five hours at the
police station before police cleared them of
forcible conversion charges.
Although the police investigated the
forcible conversion charges, no action was
taken to hold the perpetrators accountable
for their physical brutality against the
pastor and his fellowship, according to ICC.
India ranks as 10th worst country in the
world when it comes to Christian
persecution, according to Open Doors
USA’s 2019 World Watch List .
Open Doors USA, which monitors
persecution and aids persecuted
communities in dozens of countries across
the world, warned in a factsheet that
attacks carried out by Hindu radicals have
increased since the nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party came to power in 2014.
Since then, Hindu radicals have been able
to carry out attacks against Christians and
other religious minorities with relative
impunity in a number of cases.
“As a result, Christians have been targeted
by Hindu nationalist extremists more and
more each year,” Open Doors states. “The
view of the nationalists is that to be Indian
is to be Hindu, so any other faith —
including Christianity — is considered non-
Indian.”
In June, Christian Solidarity Worldwide
reported that at least seven Christian
families were forced to flee from their
homes in the Jharkhand state because of
threats and harassment by a Hindu mob
after they refused to renounce Christ.
The U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom ranks India as a “Tier 2”
country of concern when it comes to
religious liberty violations as the country’s
history of religious freedom “has come
under attack in recent years with the
growth of exclusionary extremist
narratives.”
USCIRF, a congressionally-mandated entity
which publishes an annual international
religious freedom report, wrote in its 2019
report that the “campaign of violence,
intimidation and harassment against non-
Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities”
has occurred with the “government’s
allowance.”
“Both public and private actors have
engaged in this campaign,” the USCIRF
report states.
In 2018, according to USCIRF, about one-
third of Indian state governments
increasingly enforced “anti-conversion and/
or anti-cow slaughter laws” that are
“discriminatorily against non-Hindus and
Dalits alike.”
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