05/28/2019 India (International Christian Concern) – Minority communities in India, including Christians, Muslims, and Dalits, have expressed concern regarding their communities’ security following the electoral victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These communities fear that the levels of Hindu nationalist and religious intolerance will rise in India has they have under the last five years of BJP rule.
On May 23, Prime Minister Modi and the BJP won India’s national elections by a landslide. According to the election results, the BJP won 303 of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament.
Many minority communities in India fear that this victory by the BJP represents another five years of difficulty and growing religious intolerance. Since 2014, the year the BJP initially took power, attacks on religious minorities across India have increased dramatically.
According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), attacks on India’s Christian community more than doubled under BJP rule. In 2014, EFI documented 147 violent attacks on Indian Christians. In 2018, that number rose to 325.
Speaking to ICC, Vijayesh Lal, General Secretary of EFI, told International Christian Concern (ICC), “The situation for minorities in India [will] not improve because the damage has already been done at the grass roots level. India has been successfully polarized along religious and ethnic lines.”
“The [return] of Mr. Modi will likely result in greater impunity for those who attack and malign religious minorities,” Lal concluded.
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