ICC Note:
A committee in Nagaland, India has questioned the connection between the rise of Christian persecution in India and the rise of the BJP to India’s central government. Many experts has also raised concerns between this connection saying that the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda divides India’s religious communities and raising intolerance of minorities. Since coming to power in 2014, the BJP government has seek a dramatic rise in attacks on minorities, especially Christians and Muslims. In this year alone, Christians in India have already been attacked on nearly 200 separate instances.
10/10/2016 India (Eastern Mirror) – The Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has questioned the reasons behind the Nagaland Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being in ‘denial mode’ about the latter’s connection to religious persecution of minorities in India, especially of Christians.
The NPCC issued a press release listing out elaborate events over the years connecting the right-wing Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its units such as the VHP and the BJP, to atrocities against Christians.
“Whatever has happened against Christians, has happened in BJP ruled states and by BJP frontal organizations. It has escalated when BJP came power in 2014. Anti-Christian activities flared up from Gujarat BJP government. They started burning Holy Bibles, raping nuns, burning church buildings, persecuting pastors by way of parading them on donkeys with half shaved heads and Christian schools closed,” the NPCC’s statement began. “Christian sanctified days are engaged as working days. After the BJP government came to power, they have declared Christmas Day as Good Governance Day and Good Friday as Judges’ Conference day.”
Now, the NPCC stated, the Hindu nationalists want to disturb the sacred festivities of Christians and “let people forget Christmas and New Year Holy days in times to come by changing the financial year ending to the month of December from what is presently conducted in March.”
People will have no time to celebrate the festival and their holy days, the NPCC stated. The Congress also accused the BJP of changing school and university syllabus. “Hindi and Sanskrit are compulsory in schools and they intent to enforce in universities also. The BJP Government is working very hard to change the nation to Hinduism,” the press release stated.
The NPCC cited some of the anti-minority upheavals in India: Dara Singh, a Bajrang Dal member who was convicted for leading a religious mob that murdered Australian Christian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6) on January 22, 1999.
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