Author: Chad Groening and Jody
Brown
Publication: AgapePress
Date: March 31, 2004
URL: http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/312004e.asp
A Christian organization dedicated
to helping the persecuted Church says the upcoming national elections in
India will be a referendum on how Christians are treated in that country
in the future.
India is home to more than 40 million
Christians. But according to the Voice of the Martyrs, the persecution
against Christians has intensified over the past several years because
of the efforts of radical Hindu groups that are tied to India's ruling
party. VOM spokesman Todd Nettleton says next month's elections are very
important.
"This national election is in some
ways a national referendum on these parties that are tied to the radical
Hindus," he says. "It's a national referendum on how Christians will be
treated, among other issues."
According to Nettleton, many Hindu
state-level governments have passed anti-conversion bills, thereby making
evangelism much more difficult -- and a big win by the Hindus, he says,
could make things worse. He claims the nation's ruling party has already
clamped down on the rights of the millions of Christians in India.
"In terms of Christian persecution
[in India], we have seen a dramatic increase over the last three or four
years," Nettleton says.
Another Christian persecution ministry,
International Christian Concern, has posted on its website a petition to
President George W. Bush asking him to meet with the Indian ambassador
to the U.S. to request that both the violence against Christians and the
anti-conversion laws be stopped.
Missionaries, Too
Apparently the national converts
to Christianity are not the only ones in India being singled out. In mid-March,
a prominent Hindu leader accused Christian missionaries of working against
India and called for their expulsion from the country.
According to AsiaNews/Ucan, Shankaracharya
Saraswati said the "sole objective" of those individuals is to convert
those who are illiterate and those from lower castes to Christianity. He
also alleged that Christians have never worked to improve society but are
"preoccupied" with dividing society along religious lines.
"[T]hey are working to destabilize
the Hindu nation and to install a Christian nation," Saraswati said on
March 18, calling for all the missionaries to be banished from the country.
Catholic leaders in India are dismissing
the comments, saying that fundamentalist Hindu leaders often make such
anti-Christian remarks. Saraswati, they say, has "only repeated what are
routine allegations."
