ICC Note:
Earlier this week, the Archbishop of Guwahati warned that Hindu radicals in India are using anti-conversion laws to harass Christians and other religious minorities. On their face, these anti-conversion laws are meant to stop individuals from being forcefully converted from one religion to another. In practice, these laws are used to make false accusations against religious minorities as a form of harassment. Unfortunately, local authorities in India often side with Hindu radicals and allowed this harassment to go on unabated.
07/06/2017 India (Christian Daily) – Hindu nationalists are harassing Christians and other members of the religious minority in India by accusing them of attempting to convert people to their faith, an archbishop in India has warned.
Speaking to Crux during the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle on July 3, Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil, SDB, the Archbishop emeritus of Guwahati, expressed concern over the increasing incidents of harassment affecting Christians in the last few months. He said a lot of Christians have been arrested over accusations of attempted religious conversion, while some churches have also been vandalized by Hindu nationalists.
“Even the best church worker also can be accused of a conversion bid,” Archbishop Menamparampil told Crux. “The better the person, the greater the danger.”
In addition, Menamparampil warned that any Christian teacher, social worker or preacher can be summoned to court. He brought up incidents wherein teachers taking students for a picnic were questioned while nuns taking nurses somewhere for training were detained.
The Indian archbishop noted that Christians make up only 2.3 percent of the country’s population and yet the Hindu majority thinks that these minorities are a threat to their culture when the issue of conversion comes up. He also said police are yielding more to the will of the Hindu extremists and fears that the same thing would happen to the country’s courts.
“With the passage of time all the structures of a totalitarian regime can be in position,” Menamparampil added.
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