India: Christian arrests and attacks rising

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. They do not prevent Hindus attempting to convert people from other faiths, or from persuading – sometimes vigorously ­– former Hindus to reconvert.

Although the anti-conversion laws also target Muslims, most of those arrested in Uttar Pradesh have been Christians, including pastors, according to the Times of India.

Morning Star News

Christians accused of fraudulent conversion are likely to face not one but two ordeals: the first at the hands of their extremist accusers, the second under the police and judiciary.

Pastor Josemon Pathrose from Uttar Pradesh was meeting with a family in a village, when members of two Hindu extremist groups turned up. They alleged the pastor, who is 55, was attempting to fraudulently convert Hindus.

Police arrested Pastor Pathrose and seized his vehicle, Bibles and literature. The pastor told Morning Star News: ‘They slapped us as they questioned us. They called me the leader of the “conversion racket” and beat me.’ The police also demanded to know who else was in his gang.

His arrest followed a complaint by a Hindu claiming the pastor had tried to bribe him with 200,000 rupees (£1,825) to convert to Christianity, which Pastor Pathrose denies. He said he had never seen, known or met the complainant before.

The pastor was charged with ‘outraging religious feelings, promoting disharmony, and promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will’.

Over the next two days, he was pilloried in the local media and newspapers and his ordeal continued at the hands of the authorities.

He says he was assaulted and interrogated, and put in jail where he faced ‘bullying, extortion and mental torture’. After that it was an uphill struggle to gather bail for his release and to free his truck which had been seized. When he was finally able to do so, his truck had been vandalised.

This article was originally published on https://releaseinternational.org/india-christians-arrests-and-attacks-rising/