Playback speed:
During Thursday’s “Washington Watch,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins observed, “India, [the] largest so-called democracy in the world, is a place of great hostility and discrimination toward Christians,” and this persecution is only “growing ever more severe.” Despite the rising rates of hostility in that country, and the push Perkins made for reform during his time at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, India has not been recognized as a country of particular concern.
As such, Perkins added, the “tools” needed for the federal government to confront this hostility are lacking, suggesting that “they’re turning a blind eye to the attacks and to the abuse and discrimination toward Christians and other religious minorities.” FRC’s Director of the Center for Religious Liberty Arielle Del Turco weighed in on the topic. Concerning this Christian persecution, she emphasized, “We don’t hear about it that often, but attacks against Christians are shockingly frequent.”
As detailed in a new FRC publication, research has found that, “in 2023 alone, there were 687 reported incidents of violence against Christians in India.” Additionally, among other acts of persecution, “Indian officials consistently downplay violent attacks against religious minorities and fail to take adequate steps to protect them. In some cases, local authorities participate in the targeting of minorities.” Just in the past week, Del Turco stated, “we saw there was a church where … a mob of 200 people came and interrupted a worship service, beat people with iron rods simply because they were attending a Christian worship service in their community.”
When police finally arrived, she continued, “they didn’t show up to protect the Christians necessarily. They showed up. They took the pastor in for questioning, and they asked him if he was responsible for ‘forced conversions,’ of all things. There was no basis for this.” As Del Turco explained, this case demonstrates how Indian authorities sided with “the mob over the Christian citizens who were attacked simply for worshipping their God. So, we’re looking at not only a situation where there’s a lot of violence and Christians face uncertainty and attacks, but [where] the police are at worst complicit and at best completely turning a blind eye to Christian suffering.”
“We see that happening a lot in some countries,” Perkins added, “like Nigeria and others, where it’s not necessarily at the hands of government that we see this systematic persecution … but they’re just turning away, allowing the mobs … to carry this out with impunity.” In fact, Perkins highlighted how there have been reports that, on March 1, “there is going to be an all-out attack [in which] Hindu extremists in the nation have called for a day of mob violence targeting Christians, accusing them of being cow slaughterers.” This serves as “yet another painful reminder that though India claims to be the world’s largest democracy, many of its policies reinforce the perception that the nation has succumbed to this Hindu nationalism that is worsening into extremism.”
Assuming this potential attack is set to become a reality, Perkins asked, “How [can] we as Christians here in the United States … be responding to this threat for March the 1st?”
It’s “very scary,” Del Turco noted. She explained how the concern has come from “a few viral videos [that] went around social media in India where Hindu leaders were calling on their followers to physically attack Christians. … Christians in India are very frightened, so they would really appreciate our prayers.” She went on to highlight how Indians “have reached out asking for prayers, asking for awareness on this issue.”
As Del Turco further explained, religious persecution has been “growing rampant in India over the last several years. India went from a country that was number 32 on the most dangerous list of places to be a Christian, according to Open Doors, [to] number 11. So, we’ve seen a serious [decline] in safety for Christians in India over the last decade or so.”
Perkins asked if Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed the crisis. Del Turco responded, “He has largely been entirely silent on violence against Christians, and partially it’s because some of his supporters, not all … are fomenting this type of violence. So, it’s not politically advantageous for him … [as] part of a Hindu nationalist movement, to really be speaking out against this.”
Ultimately, Del Turco concluded, “we live in unprecedented times with President Trump really having a bit of an unpredictable foreign policy. But he has a good relationship with Modi, and I think he has a chance here to call India out, to call up Prime Minister Modi and ask him to protect Christians.” Since “we’re coming up against March 1st, this would be a good time to do that.”
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON STAND
