Local believers and Open Doors partners believe a ‘revengeful drive’ following the BJP’s lost majority in the recent election is behind an increase in hostility against religious minorities in India, including a spate of Christian arrests in Uttar Pradesh in June. At least 14 Christians in Uttar Pradesh, India, were arrested last month for alleged forced conversions in what is believed to be a response to the BJP party losing its majority in the recent election. The arrests took place between 7 and 23 June, with most happening during prayer meetings. Two pastors were among those detained. Police acted in response to complaints from local villagers. “A revengeful drive” Uttar Pradesh is one of India’s 11 states with an anti-conversion law, prohibiting any attempt to force someone to convert to another religion (than Hinduism) through misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by fraudulent means. These are the accusations often levelled at Christians, when all they are doing is freely expressing or sharing their faith, such as gathering for prayer or telling a friend about Jesus. Whilst provisions in the law stipulate that only a person who has been forced to convert, or a blood relative of theirs, can register a FIR (First Information Report)

Seven families who left their tribal religion to become Christians were evicted from a forested village in south Odisha last month. Forced out by the tribal village council, the families are now without proper food or shelter and are facing the brunt of the heavy monsoon season in India. Although the incident occurred in June, the news only recently became public, as the village is deep in the forest areas of the district of Malkangiri in Odisha. Christian workers and pastors are providing some relief materials to the seven families. A member of one of the families recorded a small video on their phone and shared it on social media. In the video, a man shares how his family became Christians five years ago and how the non-Christian village members used to harass them to return to their tribal faith. He added that his family and the other families are in danger because of their professed faith in Christ, and he asked for prayer. In June this year, villagers beat up members of the Christian families and threw their belongings out in the rain, which destroyed them. The villagers also threatened to kill the Christians if they returned to the village. Speaking to International Christian Concern

India, the world’s largest democracy, has been hailed as a beacon of democracy in the developing world. However, in recent years, India’s democracy has come under threat, with a number of worrying trends emerging. There has been serious concern worldwide about an ominous trend of India’s backsliding democracy in the last few years. India’s Human Freedom Index has already plummeted 17 spots to 111th rank out of 162 countries, and the country was ranked 142 in the Press Freedom Index. The country has also witnessed a fall of 26 spots in the Global Economic Freedom Index along with low scores on academic freedom and internet freedom indices. All these factors hint at a steady decline of political democracy in India. Erosion of Democratic Institutions The erosion of democratic institutions has been phenomenal. One of the key indicators of a healthy democracy is the strength of its institutions. In India, however, these institutions have been under threat in recent years. The judiciary, for example, has been subject to political interference, with the appointment of judges becoming increasingly politicized. In 2018, four senior judges of the Supreme Court held a press conference to express their concerns about the functioning of the court, including the allocation

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumes his third term, the IPI global network calls on his administration to honour commitments to ruling with “true faith and allegiance to the constitution” by prioritizing freedom of the press and the safety of journalists. Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian constitution guarantees the right “to freedom of speech and expression”, which can only be restricted to a “reasonable” extent on narrow grounds. Freedom of the press is an especially vital category of protected speech; independent and pluralistic news is essential to the function of democracy. A free and independent press enables citizens to be informed and to hold the powerful to account. Today, IPI reiterates its call on the Modi government to take concrete steps to protect these rights, noting that press freedom has deteriorated dramatically under the prime minister’s previous terms. A year ago, IPI outlined steps that needed to be taken to protect press freedom in India. In the past year, little progress has been made in these key areas. We therefore once again draw attention to the following issues that are undermining press freedom and threatening journalists’ ability to carry out their work freely and safely. “Lawfare” against the press: Indian authorities have weaponized

The United Christian Forum (UCF), an ecumenical group, has expressed anguish over what it calls “saffron-tinged” ruling of the Allahabad High Court. Justice Rohit Ranjan Aggarwal, while rejecting the bail application of a person accused under Uttar Pradesh state’s anti-conversion law, stated that if unlawful conversion at religious gatherings continued the country’s majority population would become minority one day. Such religious congregations, it asserted, “should be immediately stopped where the conversion is taking place and changing religion of citizen of India.” Reacting to the July 1 court ruling, the Christian forum asks, “Are courtrooms being ‘Converted’ into majoritarian theaters?” The New Delhi-based forum, in its July 4 statement, urged the court to expunge “the sweeping allegations made against the entire Christian community” in its order. The forum asserts that Christians are “as much citizens of India as anyone else and deserve equal protection under the law.” The court, the forum says, should limit its focus to the case’s criminal law aspect rather than making “sweeping statements” swayed by “majoritarian religious considerations.” Such observations, the forum warns, could expose Christians to further persecution. The bail application was filed by a person named Kailash who was accused of taking people from Uttar Pradesh’s Hamirpur to Delhi for “conversion” to Christianity.

Church leaders have condemned an Indian court order to jail for five months a well-known social activist at the center of a 23-year-old libel suit. Medha Patkar, a renowned human rights activist, was sentenced by a metropolitan court in the national capital New Delhi on July 1 in a case filed by the current Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena in 2001. The court directed Patkar to pay 1 million Indian rupees (some US$12,000) in compensation to Saxena, a leader of the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose administration is known for targeting social activists, writers, students, lawyers, and journalists.“Convicting Medha Patkar is a travesty of justice,” activist priest Father Cedric Prakash told UCA News on July 2. After all, it is a 23-year-old case, Prakash noted. In 2000, Saxena, who headed an NGO in the western Indian state of Gujarat, published an advertisement against Patkar's Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA ), a movement that opposed the construction of dams over the Narmada River in western India. After the advertisement, Patkar issued a statement alleging that Saxena was “mortgaging the people of Gujarat and their resources before Bill Gates.” Subsequently, Saxena filed a libel suit against her in a Gujarat court in 2001.

The Allahabad High Court today adjourned hearing in a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) plea seeking to rename HC as the "High Court of Uttar Pradesh" in the official documents after it noted that a PIL plea, filed by the petitioner's advocate himself seeking identical reliefs, had been dismissed in 2020. A bench of Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Om Prakash Shukla categorically asked the petitioner's advocate, Ashok Pandey, as to why he didn't disclose the fact regarding the dismissal of a PIL plea filed in his name seeking similar relief (re-naming the High Court as Prayagraj High Court or Uttar Pradesh High Court). Responding to the division bench's query, Advocate Pandey said that he had forgotten about the dismissal of the PIL plea (filed in his name) and that he should have been careful to specify this fact while moving the instant PIL plea seeking identical relief. However, before the bench adjourned the hearing in the matter, Advocate Pandey contended before the Court that 19 of the Country's high courts had been named after the states where they were situated; however, the same was not the case with the other 6 High Courts. It was his primary contention before the Court that since all