According to the Times of India, Uttar Pradesh arrested 1,682 under its strict anti-conversion law and has registered 835 cases – mainly against Christians. And Uttar Pradesh is moving to tighten that law. A new bill increases the maximum penalty for fraudulent or forced conversion to 20 years with provision for life imprisonment. Some 12 states in India have now passed anti conversion laws, reflecting the rise in Hindu religious nationalism and accompanying intolerance in the country. Intolerance rising Intolerance against Christians has been growing since the election of the nationalist BJP government in 2014. The party’s re-election in June has strengthened the hand of Hindu militants, and it is BJP-governed states that are leading the anti-conversion charge. The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI) recorded a record 601 cases of persecution against Christians in India last year – a rise of 45 per cent. They say 440 pastors were arrested in 2023. And in the first six months of 2024 there were 361 attacks against Christians, according to India’s United Christian Forum (UCF). The growing Hindutva nationalist movement aims to keep India a Hindu nation and to prevent Hindus from converting to Islam or Christianity. These spreading anti-conversion laws are a one-way street.

The problem with “fascism” as a description of any modern political tendency is that the term is a weapon of mass destruction that flattens the landscapes that it wants to describe. Fascism is so freighted with historically specific meaning that using it for other times and places can seem sloppy and excessive. And yet, juxtaposing the politics of contemporary south Asia with fascism, in its Nazi variant, serves a double purpose: it connects modern Indian majoritarianism with one of its ideological ancestors and it helps us name and identify the ideological kernel of fascism that survived to fight another day. India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is the political arm of a Hindu militia, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded in 1925, around the time Adolf Hitler began to find his political bearings in a routed, angry Germany. The RSS is a nationalist militia that defines India as a Hindu nation; only Hindus can be members. While there are many similarities between the RSS and the fascist paramilitary organisations of the prewar decades, from uniformed drills and distinctive salutes to a persistent anxiety about masculinity, at the core of both is a feral ethnic nationalism that aims to mobilise

Bengaluru: The first public consultation in Karnataka by the Justice K G Balakrishnan Commission received an overwhelming opinion on Tuesday that Scheduled Caste (SC) benefits should not be given to Dalits who convert to religions other than Indian-origin faiths of Buddhism and Sikhism. About 100 members took part in the public hearing, of which nearly 95 per cent raised their hands against reservation. Members of various Dalit associations, Banjara pontiffs, Basavamurthy Madara Chennaiah Swami of Madara Guru Peetha, Chitradurga and BJP leaders appeared before the Commission to express their views. Arguing in favour of reservation, writer and Dalit activist Cynthia Stephen said Dalit Christians must get reservation as they were seen as untouchables despite conversion. The Dalit Christian Federation, in its petition, argued that when religion was not the criteria to provide reservation, Dalit Christians should not be denied the benefit. Making his submission, Banjara Guru Peetha seer Sardar Sevalal Swami said that the Commission should not recommend in favour of those who converted to religions born outside India as these religions had no roots in Indian ethos or culture. BJP SC Morcha president and Sakleshpur MLA Cement Manjunath claimed that Christians had lured SC people to convert and they were still being ill-treated there. “This is

Indian government declared war on the Adivasi (Indigenous) people of Central and East India in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and the bordering regions for the past two decades first with the launching of Salwa Judum in 2005 followed by Operation Green Hunt (the most comprehensive offensive yet) in 2009 and its subsequent intensification with the operations Prahar and Samadhan and then Operation Kagar (‘Last War’) launched in 2024. Thousands of Maoist revolutionaries (most of them being Adivasis), unarmed civilian Adivasi youth, women and children have been killed, brutally tortured, women raped and thousands more imprisoned in these two decades. Hundreds of thousands of military, para-military and police personnel, and quasi-vigilante groups have been deployed in these areas to displace, dispossess the Adivasis and either drive them out of the forest or subjugate them. They have launched even air strikes with drones. The Indian government and the state governments are resorting to such brutal oppression to serve the interests of big comprador capitalists and the imperialist MNCs. These Adivasi areas are huge reservoirs of various kinds of minerals, coal etc. During this process, the governments are violating the Indian Constitution and the very laws that the Indian parliament has

A mob of far-right Hindu groups assaulted Christian community members and disrupted their prayer meeting in Nawada city of Bihar on Sunday, September 1 accusing attendees of engaging in religious conversions. According to reports, the incident took place when a group of Christians had gathered for a Sunday prayer at the residence. The agitated mob, donning saffron scarves and shirts, barged into the house and interrupted the prayer. During the disruption, the assailants confronted the Christian members and accused them of attempting to manipulate Hindus and convert them.In a viral video that has surfaced on social media, the mob is heard raising the slogan “Dharm Parivartan karna band karo ( stop religious conversion)”. This incident comes amid a series of allegations of religious conversion in the state with Hindu right-wing organisations claiming that thousands of Hindus have been lured and converted to Christianity through allurements and false promises. Such accusations have often been used to justify violence against minorities in India. The Hindu groups argue that the conversions are part of a larger conspiracy involving foreign funding and organisations.Earlier on July 5, a mob of Hindutva outfits, led by a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader, attacked Christians in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur during a prayer meeting

Ashutosh Tiwari, Jagdalpur. The issue of religious conversion has once again come to the fore in Bastar. In Bakel village of Bastar block, a situation of dispute arose regarding the burial of a person who died in a converted family. Police and administrative staff have reached the spot and are trying to resolve the dispute. It is being told that the deceased person was a preacher of a particular religion. The villagers were adamant on burying the deceased family only after they returned to their original religion. After a lot of controversy, the converted family agreed to return to their original religion. The converted family submitted a written statement of return to their original religion before the police and the villagers. After this, the priest, Naik, Paik and the villagers got them back as per the rituals of the original religion. After return to their original religion, the Gram Sabha gave permission for the last rites in the village. This article is originally published on https://lalluram.com/case-of-conversion-in-bastar-controversy-over-shroud-burial-villagers-gave-permission-for-last-rites-after-returning-to-original-religion/

India (International Christian Concern) — Many Christians in the Kandhamal district of Central India’s State of Odisha have fled their homes to neighboring provinces, while those who remain are living in fear and uncertainty. The reason? Hindu nationalist organizations announced a massive rally to commemorate the death anniversary of a Hindu ascetic this weekend. Promoters of the rally, set to take place from this Saturday through Monday, Aug. 26, have made public announcements designed to whip up Hindu nationalistic fervor, asking people to gather in large numbers and bring weapons with them to rally, which will observe the 16th anniversary of Swamy Lakhmananand Saraswati. The weapons are the main cause of alarm and the reason for the temporary exodus of Christians, including pastors from the district, who fear being targeted. This rally is expected to bring about half a million Hindus to Saraswati’s 8-acre retreat center, located in the dense forest area of the tribal-dominated Kandhamal district of Odisha. Unknown assassins murdered Saraswati on Aug. 24, 2008. Right-wing Hindus have maintained that it was the work of Christians, an accusation that Christians have vehemently denied. Saraswati’s murder led to massive violent riots and reprisals against Christians in the Kandhamal district in 2008. More than 50,000

As an Indian you do not have the right to choose your religion. This is the bizarre rationale behind the draconian anti-conversional laws currently terrorizing evangelists, pastors, priests, nuns, and faithful lay Christians of all denominations in India. You can choose a different gender as an Indian, but you and your posterity are condemned to be forever fossilized in the religion of your ancestors. Since India’s Hindu supremacist government has decided that the ancestral religion of all Indians is Hinduism, you can choose to “come home” from Christianity (or Islam) to Hinduism, but a reverse journey is strictly forbidden. It’s worse if you are called to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19-20) because anti-conversion legislation in 12 of India’s 28 states compels you to obey unjust laws that violate both the Great Commission of Jesus and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Sting Operations Most egregious is the blatant weaponization of the anti-conversion laws by militant Hindu organizations in collusion with the Hindu supremacist authorities — now embedded at the highest levels of the executive and judicial branches of the government as a