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September 20, 2024By OSV News
BENGALURU, India (OSV News) -- About 40 Christian leaders who gathered in mid-September expressed "serious anxiety" over "the increasing atrocities on Christians and other minorities," and they demanded protection for minority rights and security for minority communities.
Christians make up less than 3% of predominantly Hindu India and, amid growing pressure on minorities, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India gathered leaders of India's major Christian denominations for ecumenical dialogue, prayer and a fellowship dinner.
In their statement after the meeting, the Christian leaders continued their demand for equal status and constitutional rights of Dalit Christians. In India, Dalits, the lowest of the now-outlawed caste system, receive government social welfare benefits to help lift them out of poverty.
However, once they become Christian or Muslim, the Hindu-led government stops those benefits, saying their new religions do not recognize the caste system, a Hindu class system that was officially eliminated in 1950 but that remains a social hierarchy.
Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, president of the CBCI, gave the welcome address and chaired the Sept. 13 session, while Bishop Joshua Mar Ignathios, chairman of the CBCI's Office for Dialogue and Ecumenism, gave the opening address.
Just days after the meeting, Indian government leaders held a media conference in New Delhi and announced a roadmap for peace in Manipur state, where Hindus and Christians have been fighting for 16 months. Nearly 53% of Manipur's 3.2 million people are Meitei Hindus, while 41% are Christians, mainly Kuki-Zo tribal people. The Asian Catholic news agency ucanews.com reports Christians are against the pro-Hindu government's move to include prosperous Meitei Hindus in the affirmative action policy that would guarantee them reservation quotas in education and government jobs.
Manipur's Christians are demanding a separate administration in the hilly areas where they are dominant. The Meiteis, who stay mainly in the valleys, want Kuki-Zo people removed from those areas. Christians say Meiteis have destroyed more than 11,000 homes of Christians and some 360 churches in the valleys.
On Sept. 15, in Uttar Pradesh state, police arrested 10 Christians, including six women and a pastor, during a Sunday prayer service, reported ucanews.com. A Hindu group accused the Christians of trying to convert Dalits, and religious conversion is banned in the state, where Christians constitute 0.18% of its 200 million people. The state ranks second in anti-Christian violence.
In August, more than 300 Christian leaders, mostly from the U.S., urged the State Department to designate India as a "Country of Particular Concern," a status contained in the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. Human Rights Watch also has expressed concern about anti-minority violence in states ruled by India's Bharatiya Janata Party.
Now-retired Archbishop Felix Machado of Vasai told OSV News last year that "the wave of hatred (against Christians) at the moment is multiplying." The archbishop, then-secretary-general of the CBCI, acknowledged that the situation of Christians is different in different parts of India, a country in which Christians provide about 35% of education and health care, second only to the government.
Also in 2023, Jesuit Father Stanislaus Alla, a Delhi-based theologian and ethicist, told OSV News when a Christian institution or an individual works to empower the poor, such as Dalits, by making them aware of their dignity or fighting for their rights, the Christian center is seen as a threat. "When you unsettle the socio-cultural hierarchy, then you are seen as a threat. A prophetic stand taken can be risky," he said.