Although Christians make up only some three percent of India’s overall population, in some areas their votes could be decisive.

The Church plays a crucial role in several Christian pockets, especially in Kerala, Goa and some northeastern states. The election comes at a time when Christians are facing challenges from governments and religious fundamentalists in various places.

In the southern state of Kerala, Church leaders are at odds with ruling communists, whose government they claim is trying to smother Christians. Media have accused Kerala-based Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil of Ernakulam-Angamaly, president of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India, of saying in his recently published biography that communists are a greater evil than the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian People’s Party).

However, Christians in the eastern state of Orissa, where Hindu radicals waged seven weeks of anti-Christian violence beginning last August, have identified the BJP as the force to defeat. The party, which supports a Hindu nationalist ideology, was part of the two-party coalition that ruled the state during the violence. When that alliance split on March 7, Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, head of the Catholic Church in the state, said he was happy.

Beginning last August, Orissa was the scene of widespread and pre-planned anti-Christian mob violence.

This year India jumped from No. 30 to No. 22 on Open Doors’ World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most severe persecution. The increased violence is driven by rising anger among Hindu extremists over Christian conversions and the growth of Christianity. Some Hindus charge that the conversions are forced on poor Indians, mostly the lower-caste Dalits, by Christian missionaries. Five states in India have passed anti-conversion laws and two more states are preparing to implement laws.
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Since August in Orissa more than 60 Christians have been killed, 252 churches and 1,500 homes razed or destroyed and an estimated 50,000 Christians displaced. Around 1,500 Christians are still living in refugees camps — and living in fear. Open Doors is partnering with organizations to help the displaced with basic food supplies and medicines.

Abhishek Singh, the director of Open Doors in India, expects persecution to continue to increase in India.

Persecution watchdog organisation Open Doors has initiated a prayer campaign for India and the Christians who live there. A three-page backgrounder with prayer items is posted here. This is the prayer campaign video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoijxxIw6f0[/youtube]

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty calls this “the world’s most important election”, of even greater significance than last November’s US election.

[A]n election [is] pending which will have far more important economic impact on the fate of mankind, causing a fifth of the world’s population either to remain mired in poverty, or to move rapidly toward economic growth and prosperity. That election is in India.

Read the whole thing for analysis of the economic policies and electoral prospects of the various parties.

BBC News has posted a detailed map with brief state-by-state election previews.

h/t: International Christian Concern and The Black Kettle

Mr. [Ashok] Sahu made the provocative speech at a public meeting at Raikia town April 5. He allegedly accused the church of indulging in conversion. He also allegedly claimed that Congress Rajya Sabha MP Radhakanta Nayak was using foreign money to spread Christianity.
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Mr. Sahu, a senior functionary of VHP [World Hindu Council] and belived [sic] to be mastermind in engineering attacks against christian minority, had also made similar remarks during the communal violence last year. Christian leaders had immediately refuted the allegations.

After listening to a recording of Mr Sahu’s speech, the Election Commission filed additional charges against him under two other sections of India’s Penal Code.

The Evangelical Fellowship of India has issued a statement condemning the use of hate speech by BJP candidates.

The BJP has also nominated for office Manoj Pradhan, who is now in jail accused of being a ringleader in Orissa rioting.

He expressed the community’s dismay and shock that persecution had arisen in India – a land known for its tolerant spirit. But now that persecution has arisen against Christians, he encouraged the believers to look to the cross for comfort and encouragement during persecution. He said that forceful conversion was not plausible in a democratic society. The Archbishop Emeritus said conversion was by conviction and was the work of God and not of man. He reminded the audience of the history of the church and the Roman dictum “Christians to the lions.” He said as the persecuted, we are to pray for the persecutors and be strengthened by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus. He encouraged the believers with Jesus’ promise to reward those who suffered for him in heaven and reminded them of their inheritance and place kept in Heaven for them. He quoted Jesus who said, “Do not be afraid for I have overcome the world” and urged the believers to apply the merits of Jesus’ salvation to their lives by being filled with love, joy and peace.

Amen to that!

Believers who had survived widespread and prolonged anti-Christian mob violence in Orissa state were among those attending the three-day meeting, which was organised by the Global Council of Indian Christians.

Manoj Pradhan is the prime accused in last year’s ethno-communal riots in Kandhmal and currently behind bars. But that hasn’t stopped BJP from giving a ticket to Pradhan to contest from the communally-split G Udayagiri assembly seat.

More than 600 people were arrested in connection with the violence that left over 120 people dead in Kandhmal after the killing of senior VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in August last year. Cops described Pradhan as a “prize catch”. […] “Pradhan was the field commander who allegedly led mobs at various places and engaged in violence,” police said.

Police have charged Pradhan in over a dozen cases of arson and murder.

Another BJP nominee, Ashok Satu, blamed “Christian terrorists” for Swami Saraswati’s murder that touched off the mayhem. In fact, however, the swami was murdered by a Maoist group that took credit for the killing.

Over 3000 Orissa Christians remain in relief camps, fearing their lives are at risk if they return home.

Orissa’s Archbishop Raphael Cheenath recently reported that, while Christians are free to move around their relief camps, most are too fearful to return to their villages. Christians who have returned to their villages have been forced to ‘become Hindus’ or pay a fee. Archbishop Cheenath reports that ‘humiliating and discriminatory rituals are imposed upon the Christians by the Sangh Parivar [Hindu nationalist] elements with impunity’. He says the Christians are not permitted to use the public restrooms when Hindus are there; they must salute tribals whenever and wherever they meet them; and Christian women are forced to wear humiliating clothing. ‘If a Christian is riding a cycle and happened to meet a “Hindu” Tribal, he has to get down from the cycle and walk. While bathing in the pond in the village, tribal “Hindus” have to … bathe first, only then Christians can bathe.’ Furthermore: ‘Christians are threatened with dire consequences if they dare to go to the Church. If they still make an attempt they are prescribed sanctions like they will have no access to drinking water wells, ponds, gathering of firewood, etc.’

Such discriminatory treatment belies government claims to have restored peace in the troubled region.

The church in Batticola was rased to the ground and burned last August, at the beginning of the violence against Christians. Now, a foundation about one meter high has been laid in order to build a Hindu temple there. “On Feb 2nd around 12 noon, about 17 people, mostly men, left the G. Udaygiri relief camp to check on conditions at the Dokewadi hamlet in Jhimangia village before returning there. These Christians were surrounded by the Hindu villagers and given a dire warning: if they wanted to come back to the village, they had to convert to Hinduism.”
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Other sources say that some Christians who have gone back to Batticola have faced constant humiliation and discrimination. The Hindus in the village have instituted 15 unwritten rules against the Christians. One of them is that Christians should always give way to Hindus in the street; that in the public baths, the Christians should bathe last; etc.

The Supreme Court of India has ordered the Orissa state government to protect Christians and other minority groups from mob violence.  It remains to be seen if the government is willing or able to do so.

The Supreme Court today said it would not allow “persecution” of minorities and asked the Orissa government to resign if it was unable to protect Christians who were targeted in recent riots that followed the assassination of a VHP leader.
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“It is the duty of the state government to protect the minority community. You (State) have done only after 50,000 people of the minority community fled to the jungles,” the Bench said when senior advocate K K Venugopal said that the Orissa government has complied with the orders of this court.

“We will not accept the persecution of minority. If the state government is unable to protect them it should resign,” Justice Katju observed and added, “we have to protect the minority. No minority community should be insecure in the country,” he said.

As cold winter weather arrives in Orissa, hundreds of Christians are still hiding in forests in fear of violent persecution if they return to their homes. 8000 more are living in relief camps, while 15,000 who fled the district altogether have not returned.

“The going price to kill a pastor is $250 (£170),” Faiz Rahman, the chairman of Good News India, said.

A spokesman for the All-India Christian Council said: “People are being offered rewards to kill, and to destroy churches and Christian properties. They are being offered foreign liquor, chicken, mutton and weapons. They are given petrol and kerosene.”

A spokesman for one of India’s largest Hindu nationalist groups, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, denies everything.

The government of Orissa state recently announced a program of compensation for destroyed and damaged churches and other Christian religious sites, prompting a strong protest from the radical Hindu group Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).

“The government has no right to spend taxpayers’ money to appease the Christian community. Churches and Christian training centres are patronising conversion activities,” general secretary VHP’s Orissa unit Gouri Prasad Rath said.

“If the government wants to restore communal harmony in Kandhamal [district in Orissa] it must stop any kind of financial help for their reconstruction,” he said.

The VHP and Sangh Parivar, have also demanded that Orissa’s government put a stop to all Christian conversions in the state. If this and other demands are not met by 15 December, a bandh (illegal statewide strike) will be called for 25 December.

Hundreds of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have been forced to renounce their religion and become Hindus after lynch mobs issued them with a stark ultimatum: convert or die.

The wave of forced conversions marks a dramatic escalation in a two-month orgy of sectarian violence which has left at least 59 people dead, 50,000 homeless and thousands of houses and churches burnt to the ground. As neighbour has turned on neighbour, thousands more Christians have sought sanctuary in refugee camps, unable to return to the wreckage of their homes unless they, too, agree to abandon their faith.

Members of the influential Hindu nationalist pressure group Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) have apparently approved the conversion offensive.

Ironically, as Hindu extremists are forcing Christians to convert to Hinduism, another Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is demanding a blanket prohibition of all religious conversions.

Meanwhile, The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Orissa, Raphael Cheenath, states that he has no faith in the two judges appointed to head the commission of inquiry into the anti-Christian violence. He says the judges were chosen and the commission established without consulting local Christians.

Widespread violent attacks by Hindus against Christians in Orissa state, India, are getting worse. Churches have been vandalised and desecrated, thousands of Christians have been driven from their homes and many killed, and the bloodshed and persecution continue.

Holy war strikes in India: 35 Christians killed and 50,000 forced from their homes

For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa – a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages – is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called it a “national disgrace”.
[. . .]
The journey to the heart of the violence follows a bone-shaking road east from Bhubaneswar to the district capital, Phulbani. It was here in late August that thousands of Hindus armed with swords, sticks and primitive guns began taking matters into their own hands after the murder of an elderly religious leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati.

The swami, a senior member of a right-wing Hindu organisation known as the Vishswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), had reportedly been working to prevent low-caste Hindus converting to Christianity.

Earlier this week, a Maoist leader claimed credit for the Hindu swami’s murder. He also said the government knew who was responsible for the killing but concealed that information in hopes that Christians would be blamed and attacked.

Some see the roots of the conflict in the legal and historical relationship between two groups at the bottom of India’s socio-economic ladder.

Many activists believe the fight is an economic dispute between two of India’s poorest groups, complicated by the issue of caste and ethnicity.

For decades there has been conflict over land and resources between the two groups at the bottom of India’s complex social system – the indigenous people of the region officially listed as scheduled tribes (ST) and non-indigenous poor known as scheduled castes (SC).

SC people are also known as Dalits.

While the ST are Hindu, increasing numbers of SC have converted to Christianity to escape the misery of the caste system, for perceived economic benefit and because of the efforts of missionaries. Many politicians have accused right-wing Hindu groups of agitating tension for political reasons.

Persecution Update India reports that the Indian government has proposed that children of inter-caste marriages may be granted SC status only if the non-Dalit parent is Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh. This would enact legal discrimination against children of Christians and Muslims.