Missionaries Attacked During Film Showing in North India
A team of four missionaries was badly beaten last week during a Christian film showing for villagers.
by Dibin Samuel, Christian Today India Correspondent
Posted: Tuesday, August 21, 2007, 8:45 (BST)
A team of four missionaries was badly beaten last week during a Christian film showing for villagers.
While the people outside the village gathered last Tuesday to watch the movie "Man of Mercy", an Indian-made film portraying the life of Jesus, some anti-Christian elements disrupted the show and started beating the missionaries from the mission group Gospel for Asia.
The police reportedly confiscated the film equipment and started to beat the GFA missionaries, before arresting them.
Following the intervention of the GFA state leader in Rajasthan, the four men were released around noon the following day. The film equipment, however, is allegedly still in police custody.
Elsewhere, two Gospel for Asia missionaries and two Bible college students in North India were attacked while distributing leaflets to people.
Chetan, one of the GFA missionaries, was badly beaten and injured.
Christians and Christian organisations continue to report a dramatic increase in the level of persecution in India in recent years, with more incidents recorded between 1998 and 2003 than in the previous 100 years.
Open Doors, a ministry that serves persecuted Christians worldwide, says this is largely due to a surge in Hindu fundamentalism. The ruling Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has created cells of young Hindu activists in many towns and universities. Hindutva, an awakening of militant Hinduism, is gaining ground as a result.
Last week, as India celebrated the 60th anniversary of its independence from British rule, police in Mysore, India, told a group of 70 believers to stop offering Independence Day prayers without permission after Hindu radicals barged into the prayer hall and disrupted them.
The latest incident is one of many in the recent escalation of attacks on Christians in Karnataka state.
In the nation of 1.1 billion people, only 2.3 per cent is Christian, according to the 2001 census, while Hindus make up 80.5 per cent and Muslims 13.4 per cent of the population.
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Added: Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 20:15 (GMT)
I had been on a visit to India a fortnight ago and have visited the place where the church was attacked by Hindu activists. I was surprised to learn from the village folks that a group of missionaries assisted by converted christian brothers have forced the poor villagers to convert them to christianity at a convention organised by the local church. This stirred their righteous indigantion, followed by the attack on a hindu procession by the christians around there which resulted the mayhem. It is a shame on the christian network in India to deceive the illiterate and financially poor fellows to convert into christianity. I think I am losing the faith in the church culture and the priest class work. The Hindus in India, as I had witnessed on many an occasion, are usually patient and tolerant towards the christian religious aggression. Abusing other religion and deciving them into a philosphy that only one Jesus alone can save them and liberate them is absurd and is a concocted theory.
I want to ask the christians in India how many of you have benefitted spiritually from christianity? Let alone the fleeting financial and food aid they have received. Our faith is only a faith without any basis. Just a 50 gm Bible alone cannot serve as the guide for man's liberation and state that it alone helps reach the god. It is nonsense! Instead there are a helluva lot more in Hinduism. Their way of life itself is found to be based on the science, especially most of the traditions and rituals. Their spirituality is based on the pure science of God unlike the christians who blindly follow the stupid dictations of the church culture. This is just like a blind leads another blind. So stop the complain that Hindus attacked christians and calling the followers of intelligent men under the sky "Hindu militants or fanatics". If Jesus comes back all the christians today will be executed and send to the hell.
David
David Hoffman, Nevada/USA
Added: Tuesday, September 4, 2007, 10:42 (BST)
We should pray for the saints in India............i cant imagine what the christians there are going through.
sylvia kirabo, kampala, Uganda
