Today, India celebrates its Independence Day.
This year, however, Christians within the country are feeling downbeat.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, attacks on Christians have increased to such an extent that they resemble anything and everything that you have heard about occurring under Twentieth Century despots and dictatorships.
Many Western liberals will be able to tell you about their definition of ‘Christian Nationalism’, which appears to be at best a loose and derogatory definition of enemies of liberalism in Western nations, but they would be hard pressed to explain to you what Hindutva is. Hinduvta is Hindu Nationalism, practised and promoted by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which itself emerged from the radical Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Modi is often styled in Western media as an affable Indian who is merely interested in work and investment and technology and so forth, in reality he has been happy to allow very radical extremists to prosper under his rule. Many of these extremists are particularly hateful towards Christians and also towards Muslims.
This violence against non Hindus has taken many forms. In some cases it involves mobs attacking people who are suspected of ‘cow slaughter’.
The most nefarious form is the violence committed under the protection of so called ‘anti conversion laws’. These laws are not designed to actually prevent forced conversions of Hindus to Christianity or Hinduism, they are designed to equip Hindus who wish to intimidate and attack Christians under a false pretence and legal protection. The legal protection means that the Christians and Muslims are often arrested for being attacked, yes you read that correctly. The attackers often use the fact that the victims possess a Bible or a statue as evidence that they were forcing people to convert.
The footage from these attacks says everything that you need to know about them.
In this incident, you can see Catholic nuns being screamed at and abused before being arrested. The hysterical woman leading the abuse was listing that fact that they had a Bible amongst reasons for their arrest.
In another, two women were brutally chained to a pole on Christmas Day. You can see the Christian images which were used as evidence of ‘forced conversion’ .
In another, a statue of Our Lady was smashed.
If you read the comments on these types of videos, the replies veer between ‘it never happened’ to ‘that is Syria’ to ‘that is what they get for forced conversion’. In all of our years of posting Catholic related content, these have easily been the most hateful and violent replies that we have ever gotten from any group.
In another, a man was accosted for having copies of the Bible.
There are also plenty of videos of prayer gatherings, in many cases of women, being violently attacked before police come to arrest the Christians.
To top it all off, members of Modi’s party are now offering bounties for people who murder priests and nuns.
The Catholic Church is being persecuted by Hindus in a very real way and real nuns and priests are bearing the brunt of it.
There is no doubt that authorities completely support such attacks, in 2023 they instituted a ban on the internet to prevent footage emerging of Christian women being paraded naked through the streets after being beaten and raped by Hindu Nationalist Indian men. The fact that this story did not cause international uproar is indicative of the fact that Western liberals deep down do not really believe that we live in a Global Community or that people in poorer countries count as much as people in the West. They might count as much when they get to the West, but not before then, and less so if they are Christian.
Open Doors, an organisation which tracks anti Christian hate around the world, has ranked India as 11th in the world for being unsafe for Christians. That is likely to rise this year based on the videos emerging from the country.
