A bill that could let India’s government seize the schools, hospitals and hostels run by faith-based charities over generations will not come to a vote just yet.
A sweeping new law regulating religious conversion took effect in Maharashtra last week, threatening to turn catechism classes, charity work and even prayer meetings into grounds for a police investigation, Christian leaders said.
Under a canopy at Nirjuli Village-I, district Papum Pare, at the residence of Mrs. Jumshi Tana, mourners gathered on the morning of July 13 for the funeral of the Reverend Khoda Tana – a founding figure of the Christian faith among the Nyishi, the largest indigenous tribal community in India’s northeastern border state of Arunachal Pradesh.
When Christian Daily International last reported on this movement on July 24, India’s government had met two of three demands set by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but was withholding an answer on the central one.
India’s government has given itself until Saturday afternoon (July 25) to answer the one demand it has not yet met: whether Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will lose his job.
Police in eastern India have opened a criminal investigation into the disappearance of an official report on the killing of about 100 Christians and the destruction of hundreds of church buildings in 2008.
Six Naga men taken hostage in India's northeastern state of Manipur, two of them pastors, were found dead on June 10, their remains reportedly mutilated. More than a week later, their bodies have still not been handed over to their families.
In central India’s Chhattisgarh state, followers of tribal religion in Bastar District recently dug up the grave of a tribal Christian buried 20 years before. They unearthed his skeleton, burned it and scattered the ashes.
They arrived waving Indian flags and clutching schoolbooks. Many wore cockroach masks. The placards were satirical; the anger was not. On June 6, crowds gathered at Jantar Mantar as what many commentators are calling India’s first Gen Z political uprising moved from smartphone screens onto a street. Jantan Mantar is New Delhi’s designated public protest zone, historically the gathering point for the country’s largest anti-corruption and farmers’ demonstrations.
On the morning of May 10, members of a Hindu nationalist organization arrived at Christian Sunday worship services in several neighborhoods of Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh state, India.
Three Baptist pastors were shot dead in an ambush in India’s northeastern state of Manipur on Wednesday, May 13, while traveling home from an interchurch peace conference focused on easing tensions between tribal Christian communities in the conflict-hit state. At least five others were wounded.
When India’s Election Commission declared results on May 4 across four states and one Union Territory, the numbers told one story. The pattern behind them told another.
