ICC Note: According to new reports, incidents of anti-Christian violence in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013. The violence includes murders, beatings, and destruction of Christian property, usually at the hands of radical nationalist Hindu groups. Christians across India are concerned about the upcoming national elections and the possibility that the the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win the elections, making Narendra Modi India’s next prime minister. Attacks on religious minorities across India are often conducted by groups linked to the BJP or it’s more radical offshoots. 
3/4/2014 India (WWM) – Church leaders in India are alarmed over a dramatic increase in attacks on Christians in the state of Andhra Pradesh, where in recent weeks one pastor has been murdered, others beaten, and churches demolished.
The All India Christian Council documented 72 incidents of anti-Christian violence and hostility in Andhra Pradesh in 2013, nearly double the 39 recorded in 2012. Today the state, India’s fifth-most populous, has the country’s highest rate of anti-Christian incidents, according to the All India Christian Council.
“The jump from 39 incidents in 2012 to 72 incidents in 2013 is alarming, and the reasons for this escalated growth on the Christian minorities is the culmination of every effort of the right-wing political party to woo the majority of the communal agenda in the coming election of 2014,” Moses Vatipalli, a project coordinator for the All India Christian Council, told WWM.
India’s “communal agenda” arises from the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party’s promotion of “a clear vision of India’s civilisational consciousness,” which it says “has its roots in Bharatiya or Hindu world view”. In that view, according to the party, “almost all religions practised in different parts of the world have existed peacefully in India and will continue to do so”.
The reality is somewhat different. The BJP is the ruling party in three of the five Indian states with laws that forbid forced religious conversions — laws that are used frequently to shut down churches or intimidate Christians who speak about their faith. The party has proposed stiffer penalties in one of those states, Madhya Pradesh, India’s second-largest.
Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, another BJP-ruled state with anti-conversion laws on the books, is “the poster child for India’s failure to punish the violent”, said Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Commissioner Mary Ann Glendon in a joint November opinion column.
While under BJP rule, Karnataka state had the country’s highest rate of attacks against Christians from 2010 to 2012. In early 2013 the Indian National Congress Party took over; the number of attacks dropped from 50 in 2012 to 28 in 2013, according to the Global Council of Indian Christians.
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