A group of 93 former civil servants on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak against the rise in hatred and incidents of violence against Christians in India.
The former bureaucrats alleged that Christians are being made to feel like strangers in their own country by some vocal extremists, who have been operating with impunity and sometimes with the approval of political or law enforcement authorities.
“Christians constitute but 2.3% of India’s population, and this percentage has remained more or less the same since the census of 1951,” the former civil servants said. “Yet, in the minds of some, this minuscule number poses a threat to the 80% of the population that is Hindu!”
Over the last few years, there have been several instances of Hindutva groups attacking churches and Christian prayer halls after accusing them of engaging in forced conversions.
On March 2, a group of men vandalised a book stall at Delhi’s World Book Fair as they allegedly objected to the distribution of copies of the Bible there. The stall was run by a Christian non-profit organisation named Gideon International.
On February 28, a pastor and his wife were arrested in Ghaziabad on complaints filed allegedly by members of the Hindutva group Bajrang Dal. They claimed that the pastor and his wife were converting residents to Christianity through persuasion and allurement.
This story was originally published in scroll.in . Read the full story here