Christians in India face an “existential threat” from violent nationalist persecution, according to the findings of a report commissioned for persecuted church support organisation Open Doors which detailed numerous examples of attacks and discrimination.
The report, which was compiled by researchers from the London School of Economics, found that daily life for many Christian and Muslim communities in India has become, according to a summary of the its findings, “an excruciating struggle to earn a living and practice their faith while also remaining alive and under the radar of the far-right Hindutva organizations that now dominate the Indian public and political sphere”.
Christians at a worship service in India. PICTURE: Open Doors.
The researchers said they found “an atmosphere of deep trauma, fear and anxiety” pervaded Christian communities when they visited in rural areas, medium-sized towns and villages and on the outskirts of larger cities.
“These fears and anxieties are based on thoroughly evidenced experiences of exclusion, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, violence and injustice,” the researchers wrote in the summary. “It would not be too far-fetched to say that the circumstances in which we found our research subjects living was one of imminent existential threat.”
The report, Destructive Lies – Disinformation, speech that incites violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India, detailed numerous instances of bullying, harassment, violence and the perversion of justice which targeted both Christian and Muslim individuals and communities. They found that attacks and persecution are ignored – and even condoned – by state and regional governments, police, and the media in a bid to ensure they remain in favour with Hindutva organisations.
“The extent to which…state actors are complicit in the violence is shocking; it was there even at the ground level,” said one of the report’s authors, who asked not to be named, in comments released with the report. “The bureaucrats, the police, the lower court judges, all of them are…openly colluding to harass these minorities. And politicians, top religious leaders and powerful media owners [are giving] very overt signals that this [behaviour] is desirable.”
The report found that Christians and Muslims have been targeted in concerted campaigns of misinformation, including promoting claims that they are deliberately trying to spread COVID-19 and infect Hindus through their acts of worship. It also found that the campaign of violence and intimidation targeting religious minorities – which, alongside violent attacks, includes the burning of places of worship and religious items – was heavily fuelled by the use of social media platforms with perpetrators of violence taking phones from their victims to prevent them from documenting attacks and instead making their own recordings which are shared on social media.
The report, research for which was conducted in February and March this year by an LSE team based in India, contains a series of case studies. They include an account of how one woman in Madhya Pradesh gave birth to a still-born baby after a Hindutva mob violently kicked her in the stomach and another of a labourer who was entrapped and beaten by a mob and left to die in a cell by police in Jharkland as well as details of an attack on a Muslim village in Madhya Pradesh by a 6,000 strong mob who committed arson and drove many from their homes permanently.
Among the report’s recommendations is a call for an immediate international fact-finding commission into the violence and other human rights violations against religious minorities in India. The report also said politicians or police who have colluded in anti-Christian and/or anti-Muslim pogroms, in lynchings, and other violence and human rights violations should be tried and held accountable.
Other recommendations called for a greater response from social media companies including adding more moderators to address local issues of discrimination, harassment, and violence, overhauling algorithms to address dehumanisation and incitement against religious minorities and the immediate suspension of accounts spreading such materials.
