Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at the public rally at Brigade ground on April 3, 2019, in Kolkata, India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi belongs to Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. | Atul Loke/ Getty Images The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is speaking out against a bill passed in India’s lower legislative house and is accusing the Modi government of trying to create “a religious test for Indian citizenship” in the majority Hindu nation. Protests have erupted in India’s northeast with demonstrators burning effigies of India’s president following the passage of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in India’s Lok Sabah.  The congressionally mandated bipartisan commission recommended Monday that the U.S. State Department consider issuing sanctions against Home Minister Amit Shah and other government leaders should his CAB bill pass in India’s upper legislative house (Rajya Sabha). Shah also serves as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist party aligned with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Since BJP came to power in 2014 under President Narendra Modi, Hindu persecution against religious minorities including Muslims and Christians has dramatically increased.  Shah’s bill would change India’s 1995 citizenship law to allow citizenship to be given to persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who came to India before 2015. Persecuted minorities recognized

Launching a scathing attack on govt, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded to know why the entire North East was burning at the moment if people were happy about the Bill The Opposition in Rajya Sabha tore into the government on Wednesday over the Citizenship Amendment Bill, terming the proposed legislation as "unconstitutional", "divisive" and an assault on the democratic and secular fabric of the nation. The Upper House witnessed strong opposition to the Bill from the Congress, NCP, DMK, BSP, RJD, JDS, AAP, MDMK, TRS, IUML and SDP during the six-hour-long debate on the controversial legislation. The opposition parties wanted the Bill to be sent to the Select Committee of the House but the motion was defeated with 124 votes against it and 99 in favour. Launching a scathing attack on the government, Leader of Opposition in the House Ghulam Nabi Azad demanded to know why the entire North East including Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland was burning at the moment if people were happy about the proposed legislation. The senior Congress leader said: "Honourable home ministerji, you brought demonetisation, GST, (legislation on) triple talaq, NRC, Article 370 (related law) and Citizenship Bill in the same pattern. You bring such bills

December 12, 2019. Washington DC. The radical Hindu government headed by Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Amit Shah has forced a flawed Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) yesterday through the Upper House of Indian Parliament. It is described by many as a step forward to making India a radical Hindu version of Pakistan. The bill was passed in the lower House of Parliament on December 10th. Leaders and intelligentsia have decried the move saying it is a Black Day in the history of Independent India. The Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations (FIACONA) sees it as an assault on the basic tenants of a democracy and the idea of a Union which brought over 450 kingdoms and principalities together to form a Republic between 1947 and 1953. An inclusive Republic as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi guaranteed equality to all her citizens where religion, gender, caste, race or one's language would not make any difference. The attempt by the Modi government now to offer preferential treatment for people from neighboring countries on the basis of religion smacks that very idea on its face. It ignores a very solemn promise made by the founders of the Republic to her people. The Bill discriminates also against the spectrum

In the past seven days, eight Christians in Madhya Pradesh have been attacked and taken into police custody for engaging in forced religious conversions. Radicals Hindus use forced conversions as a common reason to attack Christians, abuse them and beat them and land them in jail. In Jhabua district, pastor Rahul Para and his family were attacked at midnight and forced to vacate their home. The pastor was arrested on false accusation of forced conversions and his family was left with nowhere to go. In another similar incident in Jhabua, radicals Hindus attacked pastor Pascal Vadakhiya and three other Christians for carrying Bibles with them on December 7. Radicals beat them, accuse them of engaging in forced conversions and took them to local police station, where the four Christians were detained for two days. The radicals warned pastor Vadakhiya to not to enter into the village. Pastor Vadakhiya leads a congregation of 200 Christians with weekly worship service. But now, he is concerned about the current situation of Christians in that area. In Alirajpur district, three other Christians were arrested on the same charges. They were handed over to the police, and the authorities confiscated their Bibles and other Christian literature.

Police fired shots in the air and volleys of tear gas to push back thousands of demonstrators in the Indian capital New Delhi on Tuesday as protests raged against a new citizenship law that has angered the country's Muslims. The situation spiraled out of control after demonstrators threw stones at policemen who were holding them at a barricade, police officer Rajendra Prasad Meena said. In another demonstration in West Bengal state, protesters opposing the new laws hurled a homemade bomb at policemen, injuring three of them. The new Citizenship Amendment Act makes it easier for non-Muslims from the neighboring countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to gain Indian citizenship. Critics say it weakens India's secular foundations since it does not apply to Muslims, and fear it is part of a Hindu nationalist plan to marginalize the country's own Muslims. Despite days of violent demonstrations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government dug in its heels on Tuesday. "Both my government and I are firm like a rock that we will not budge or go back on the citizenship protests," Home Minister Amit Shah told the Times Network. In the clashes in Delhi's Seelampur area, police fired shots in the air and lobbed more than 60 rounds of tear gas

A protest in Delhi’s Seelampur turned violent when police stopped them from moving ahead. Agitated crowd pelted stones at police, damaged vehicles including a school bus and vandalised police booths The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) continued in several areas of the national capital on Tuesday, primarily in Muslim-dominated localities of Old Delhi, Jamia Nagar and Seelampur where a protest march turned violent as some people pelted stones at the police and vandalised several vehicles. The protest in North East Delhi’s Seelampur-Jafrabad area turned violent when police stopped them from moving ahead. The agitated crowd clashed with police, pelted stones at police personnel and damaged vehicles, including a school bus which had a driver and student. They said two bikes of traffic cops were burnt by the demonstrators, adding two police booths in the area was vandalised and CCTV cameras installed there were taken away by the mob. Police said two FIRs have been registered at Seelampur and Jafrabad police stations in connection with the incident. The clashes erupted two days after violence broke out during a protest in the New Friends area in South Delhi near Jamia Millia Islamia. Police said there were initially small groups of people who started the protest against the citizenship

Tribal animists in eastern India earlier this month surrounded a church building with axes, threatened to kill Christians within and later burned down the thatched-roof structure, sources said. Hard-line animists in Odisha state’s Perigaon village, Rayagada District, attacked on Dec. 1 after having raided Christians homes to seize and burn Bibles five days earlier. “After we concluded the prayers and community lunch service [on Dec. 1], a batch of around 15 tribal men came with axes, surrounded the church and threatened that they will chop us into pieces,” pastor Bibudhan Pradhan told Morning Star News. The assailants surrounded the pastor and his wife as they were trying to return to their home in another town, he said. “They took us inside the village and held us hostage for more than four hours,” Pastor Pradhan said. “They abused us in vulgar language, words that I can’t utter with my mouth, and threatened us that their gods and goddesses will swallow us alive for propagating Christianity in an Adivasi [indigenous tribal] hamlet.” Tribal animists burned church building in Perigaon village, Odisha state, India, on Dec. 1, 2019. (Morning Star News) He and his wife remained calm in captivity, he said. Church members told the assailants that the pastor

Religious extremists interrupted a peaceful prayer gathering of 12 and accuse the Christians of forced conversion in Bilkua, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal. When the village pastor, Ramu Hala tried to restart the prayer meeting, the extremists were furious. They stopped him and warned him not to enter the village again. After which, the pastor could no longer lead a worship service in Bilkua. Pastor Hala, who serves with Oasis Ministries, travels to different villages to deliver the gospel and pray for the sick. When the villagers saw how the gospel healed the sick and drive out evil spirits from people, they were happy to receive Jesus Christ and started to gather at Gopal Bhakta, a fellow villager's house. Seeing this, the extremists threatened the Christians to reconvert to Hinduism or face social boycott. Concerned for the Christians in Bilkua, pastor Hala started holding worship services in nearby village and made it easy for Bilkua believers to come join the worship service and pray together. According to Persecution Relief, on December 12, around 16 Christian women, whose husbands had still not come to the saving faith, were invited to a meeting. The village head told the women to get their husband for the next meeting on December

When Nazi Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, they made it illegal for non-Germans to be citizens. Germans to prove that they had Aryan ancestry. https://youtu.be/7XWHGh7fYkY India’s Citizenship Amendment Bill mirrors those Nazi laws. Instead of segregating people by genetics, it segregates them by religion. It makes religion the basis for citizenship. CAB is only the latest in a line of recent fascist actions in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “New India.” It has been a grim year for India as Modi’s BJP rams through its Hindu nationalist agenda with blitzkrieg speed. After Modi was re-elected in May, he wasted no time in implementing the BJP’s long-standing demands. That includes: 1 — Enacting the National Register of Citizens in Assam, ultimately stripping nearly 2 million Assamese of citizenship. Modi’s government is currently building concentration camps to house these people who have been newly-made stateless. 2 — Scrapping Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. Modi’s government stripped the only Muslim-majority state in India of its semi-autonomous status — then stole away its statehood. Kashmir remains under martial law. 3 — Giving the green light to build a temple on disputed land in Ayodhya — and handing over the rights to do so to the same people responsible for the violent demolition

John Dayal and Jesuit Father Cedric Prakash were among hundreds of human rights activists on December 19 detained in various parts of India for protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which they say is divisive. The Delhi Police detained Dayal, a senior journalist and human rights activist, along with others for protesting in front of police headquarters Others detained included socialist leader R K Jain, former Karnataka legislator B R Patil, Nisar Alam of Madhya Pradesh, Manoj Sehrawat and M A Johar of Mushawarat. They were later released. All were picked up from Shaheed Park headquarters and were taken to Shaheed Park Police Station, said A.C. Michael, former member of Delhi Minority Commission. Father Prakash was detained with others in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Upon the detention, the Jesuit priest said, “We are truly living in a fascist state.” In Bengaluru, capital of Karnataka state, as many as 25 people, including historian and author Ramachandra Guha, were detained by the police when they tried to stage a peaceful protest at Town Hall. Guha was bundled into a van when he tried to defend his right to take out a peaceful rally. The police also rounded up protesters from surrounding streets and roads as they were making their way to