India’s Christian community is bracing for the consequences of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) probable return to power for a third successive term. Following the BJP win in the national elections, announced on 4 June after six weeks of voting, concerns are mounting over increased persecution and discrimination – though with some glimmers of hope. Though the BJP now have 62 fewer seats than before, they were still the victorious party, winning 240 out of 543 seats. Since they no longer have a parliamentary majority, they will rely on their National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies to form the government. “India’s Christians could take encouragement that their prayers have been answered in part by the BJP not reaching an absolute majority,” says Priya Sharma*, a local Open Doors partner, but she also cautions that the party and its alliance are likely to continue its agenda, heavily influenced by Hindu nationalist ideology, or ‘Hindutva’. A decade of increasing hostility Since the BJP first came to power in 2014, religious intolerance towards Christians, Muslims and other religious minorities has escalated significantly. Priya Sharma notes that the pattern of persecution is far from random: "The attacks against Christians have been very systematic and have

The world’s largest democracy underwent a significant political shift in its 2024 general election, as Indian voters upended the previously unshakable dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) remains the largest coalition and will form the next federal government, likely making Modi the first Indian head of state to serve three terms since Jawaharlal Nehru led the subcontinent’s initial post-independence government. But as the official vote counting stretched past midnight on June 4, results indicated that voters rejected Modi’s aspirations for an overwhelming majority that many feared would have empowered him to reshape India’s secular and democratic foundations. Christians and other religious minorities in India rallied for the cause of pluralism. “The people have spoken clearly for a return to the founding ideals of India,” said Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) which represents more than 65,000 Protestant churches. “They prefer harmony over narrow sectarianism and divisive politics.” Running a populist campaign of Hindu nationalism, in 2014 Modi led the BJP to a landslide victory, securing 282 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament—the first outright majority for a single party in 30

John Cappucci aims to provide enlightenment about the underreported and complex reality of Christian persecution in India during a presentation at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church Hall in Windsor, Ont., on June 10. In February, Cappucci, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Assumption University and the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in Religion and Conflict for the Roman Catholic institute federated with the University of Windsor, received approval from the UWindsor Research Ethics Board to launch a research project called “A Forgotten Minority: the Christians of India and Religious Persecution.” The postsecondary educator sought Christian Indians (born in India or of Indian descent) aged 18 and older to participate in the study by agreeing to a 25- to 45-minute interview. He has already received over 25 responses. To attain saturation, he hopes to receive around 40 responses. In qualitative research, saturation alludes to the point in data collection where no additional insights or issues surface; thus, any more interviews would only generate redundancies. Cappucci shared some of the disquieting trends he has uncovered with The Catholic Register. “I’ve heard issues related to pressures to convert to another religion, churches being vandalized and community preachers, pastors and priests are often getting insulted,” said Cappucci. These stories have surfaced

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for the first time since coming into power in 2014, failed to win a majority of seats in parliamentary elections that saw more than 600 million Indians cast their votes. When the Election Commission of India on June 5 released the results of the elections, held from April 19 to June 1, to choose the 543-member Parliament, the hopes of the ruling BJP for a larger majority for Modi’s third term were dashed. The BJP decreased its representation to 240 seats, down from 303 in 2019. The BJP will now have to form a new government with other partners in its coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Modi was elected the NDA alliance leader on June 5. The big surprise of the election has been the emergence of the opposition alliance named I.N.D.I.A. (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) led by the Congress party, which has ruled India for decades, winning 234 seats in the Parliament. Despite polls that forecast a massive BJP victory, the opposition coalition decimated the BJP in India’s two biggest BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. In other states, it increased its majority, claiming that their victories were attributed

Catholics in India expressed optimism following the Supreme Court’s recent comments that a draconian anti-conversion law may be found to violate the Indian Constitution. During a May 16 hearing concerning the anti-conversion law in northern Uttar Pradesh state, the Supreme Court noted that “some parts [of the law] may seem to be violative of the fundamental right to religion guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution.” Supreme Court’s comments offer hope “This Supreme Court observation gives us great hope,” Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore in southern Karnataka state told CNA. “The court observation highlights the primacy of the fundamental right of freedom of conscience,” he said. “We do not support or indulge in fraudulent conversions. But the law should not be used to persecute us and deny our fundamental right.” Twelve of India’s 28 states have criminalized religious conversions, including religious conversions that are voluntary and not forcibly coerced. The laws have led to the arrest of clergy and instigated acts of violence against Christians. “The Supreme Court remark is a pleasant surprise and gives hope to us,” A.C. Michael, a Catholic and coordinator of the ecumenical United Christian Forum (UCF), told CNA. Appeals against the laws are pending in as many as nine states,

India (MNN) — Election officials across India are counting a historic 642 million votes today. General elections occurred over the last six weeks, with Saturday being the final voting day. Most exit polls forecast Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third term and a majority win for his Bharatiya Janata Party. Mission Cry’s Jason Woolford says another Modi win will keep the pressure high on Christian ministries. “We’ve been able to send multiple containers a year filled with free Bibles and Christian books. That all changed under the current leader in India,” Woolford says. “The radical regime made sending containers difficult to the point where we’ve only sent one this year.” Mission Cry collects donated Bibles and Christian books in the U.S. and ships these resources to partnering believers worldwide. More about that here. A few months ago, one Mission Cry shipment left U.S. shores, heading to a seminary in eastern India. “That (container) is in customs right now, and we need people to pray that this gets cleared,” Woolford says. “We’ve been very strategic with the paperwork because there are Bibles in that container.” If the container isn’t allowed past customs, the results could be far-reaching. “If they (officials) stop allowing those to come in and the people aren’t

As India’s monumental elections finally come to an end this week, all eyes are on the extent of the mandate that will be handed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party. Especially among the subcontinent’s estimated 28 million Christians, for whom the result will test whether religious freedom and secularism will be preserved in the world’s largest democracy. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power since 2014. During this time, monitoring groups have documented an alarming increase in incidents of violence, discrimination, and harassment targeting religious minorities–especially Christians and Muslims. Hindu extremist groups, emboldened by the BJP’s ideology of Hindu supremacy or “Hindutva,” have systematically perpetrated abuses ranging from physical assaults to false accusations of forced religious conversions, used as a pretext for persecution. A massive survey by the Pew Research Center reported that in 2019, about 49 percent of Hindu voters in India backed the BJP, which secured the party a majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, and granted Modi a second term as head of state. Not who wins, but by how much The 2024 Indian general election, which started polling votes on April 19, will conclude on June 1 after being

My father died in April of last year. He was seventy-three years old, almost the same age as the Indian Republic, and his death came after a harrowing struggle with cancer. Before the abrupt decline that took away his speech and movement, when he still possessed the strength to walk and read the papers and console his relations and friends, he would occasionally say to me, “We will pull through.” He was not speaking about his illness—he had, I felt, reconciled himself to its unfair yet ineluctable outcome—but about India. I disagreed with him. Under Narendra Modi, the country had been transformed. Hindu beliefs were now granted an almost sacred status, and examples made of Muslims who offended them. Some Muslims had been lynched by mobs on the suspicion of eating beef; others had been mauled for dating Hindu women. A handful were savaged for no apparent reason. Much of this had been abetted, if not outright encouraged, by the state. During Modi’s first term in office, from 2014 to 2019, the proliferation of these Hindu lynch mobs was accompanied by the meticulous subversion of institutions. The armed forces, which had previously been insulated from politics, were exploited by Modi and

Dressed in a crisp white kurta and pyjama, Manoj often sat in the library with several books scattered open around him: books on the RSS vision, appeasement of Muslims, and Christian threats to India’s unity. He introduced me to an older scholar who wrote a book about the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, in which Hindu mobs targeted, murdered, and displaced thousands of Muslims in Gujarat. ‘He has a lawsuit filed against him’, Manoj tells me, because he ‘proved that the attacks began with Muslims targeting the Hindus. They don’t like to hear the truth’. He tells me doing a PhD is important, that being a professional researcher is ‘a real career now’. He continues, ‘A good career – but it requires a goal, a “missionary zeal”. In the same breath, he asserts that while physical strength, arms, ammunition, and resources used to be the path of dominance in ‘the time of hunters and gatherers’, it is now about ‘strength through ideas’. ‘Not everyone’, he says, ‘is destined for everything – every police officer doesn’t become exceptional’. No, he says. We must accept our strengths and stand with pride. He theorises his and the think tank’s mission as requiring a ‘missionary zeal’,

Top Christian organizations have expressed surprise and shock after Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina accused Christians of plotting to carve out a "Christian state" of their own by taking parts of Bangladesh and Myanmar. “We, the Christians of Bangladesh, and their leaders — the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Bangladesh (CBCB) and the United Forum of Churches (UFCB) are surprised and worried,” said a joint statement issued on May 26. In today's globalized and secularized world, the idea of a ‘Christian state’ is absurd, said the statement signed by Archbishop Bejoy N. D’Cruze of Dhaka, the president of CBCB and UFCB. The reaction came after Hasina, made the remarks while presiding over a meeting of 14-Party Grand Alliance on May 23. "Like East Timor