Arrests, Beatings and Secret Prayers: Inside the Persecution of India’s Christians:
The Christians were mid-hymn when the mob kicked in the door.
A swarm of men dressed in saffron poured inside. They jumped onstage and shouted Hindu supremacist slogans. They punched pastors in the head. They threw women to the ground, sending terrified children scuttling under their chairs.
“They kept beating us, pulling out hair,” said Manish David, one of the pastors who was assaulted. “They yelled: ‘What are you doing here? What songs are you singing? What are you trying to do?’”
The attack unfolded on the morning of Jan. 26 at the Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra Christian center in the city of Indore. The police soon arrived, but the officers did not touch the aggressors. Instead, they arrested and jailed the pastors and other church elders, who were still dizzy from getting punched in the head. The Christians were charged with breaking a newly enforced law that targets religious conversions, one that mirrors at least a dozen other measures across the country that have prompted a surge in mob violence against Indian Christians.
Pastor David was not converting anyone, he said. But the organized assault against his church was propelled by a growing anti-Christian hysteria that is spreading across this vast nation, home to one of Asia’s oldest and largest Christian communities, with more than 30 million adherents.
The article makes it clear that this is mostly a feature of the “Cow Belt” and due to the conversion of Dalits and the like. This is The New York Times so I view this skeptically, but if this is happening it seems likely a large proportion of Dalits will convert to Christianity since the Hindu reaction here is depicted as literally reactive.
One thing that does cross my mind is that the Hindus in the piece are depicted as aggressive. But the Christians have an ambition of converting most of the population, and once and if they became the majority they would surely not be the gentle flock they are now. It’s sad, but true.