Christians against Modi

The Catholic Herald has quite a strongly worded piece saying that Christians in India are dismayed that Modi won the Indian election (and so convincingly).  The problem - his Hindutva support base:

The outcome of the elections is not good news for the country’s Christians. Although Christians comprise only 2.3 per cent of India’s population, they are known for running excellent schools and well-maintained hospitals. Anti-Christian sentiment is not a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, the situation has grown worse since the current ruling party’s rise to power in 2014.

In general, there are three primary means of exclusion under which religious minorities suffer in India today: social hostility, laws curbing religious freedom, and caste discrimination.

In a report published in 2018, the US based Pew research centre gave India the highest score for “social hostility” towards religious minorities, including Christians. This intolerance appears to be growing. The faith-based legal organization ADF India and the United Christian Forum run a helpline for victims of persecution. In the first quarter of 2019, there were more than 80 reported cases of mob violence against Christians. This means one violent attack almost every day, targeting priests, pastors, families, and whole church communities.

The aggression against minorities has been fuelled by the propaganda of the so-called Hindutva movement in the run-up to the elections. This movement seeks to purge India of everything non-Hindu and ultimately to build a Hindu nation with the BJP as its political arm. Needless to say, Christianity fits poorly into this nationalist concept.

Meanwhile, the Indian state of Uttarakhand introduced a new law last year ironically called the “Religious Freedom Act”. The BJP-led state is the 10th in India to introduce a so-called anti-conversion law. It is designed to prevent people from converting to religions other than Hinduism. One has to register with the authorities long in advance before being granted permission to accept another faith.

In the more radical versions of such laws, priests who want to baptise an adult and accept him into the Catholic Church also need to register.

Yes, it is worse than I realised....