India's Christians are losing confidence in the government following an increase in tensions leading up to Christmas, according to the country's President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference.
Cardinal Baselios Cleemis told The Indian Express India was being 'polarised due to religious affiliations'.
He referred to the attack on priests from the seminary in Satna, Madhya Pradesh, who were conducting a carol service, and subsequent moves instigated by right-wing Hindu activists to charge them with forced conversion.
'From the point of Christian community, this whole incident of attack on priests and seminaries in Satna and the state government's move to file cases against the priests, arresting the poor and the innocent instead of finding the culprits, do not help us to keep our confidence in the government intact,' Cleemis said.
He had led a delegation to meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh and expressed the hope that justice would be done. He described the Satna incident: 'It was a pre-planned attack. The conversion allegation in Satna is baseless. The diocese does not get into conversion at all.'
A C Michael, the national coordinator of the United Christian Forum, said: 'We are afraid of Christmas this year. We anticipate more anti-Christian violence and harassment. The Indian constitution guarantees the freedom to practise and propagate religion to every citizen.The arrest of 32 seminarians for the simple reason that they were singing Christmas carols violates this basic right.
'The state should never target people because of their religious beliefs.'
In a separate incident, another nationalist organisation, the Hindu Jagran Manch, warned Christian schools against celebrating Christmas. It wrote to Christian-run schools in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, saying Christmas was 'essentially a ploy to lure and convert Hindu children'. According to the Brisbane Times, the organisation's local head Sonu Savita said that the warning against celebrating Christmas was not directed against Christians, but at a Christian festival being foisted upon Hindu children in their schools.
'No school has a majority of Christian students. So why do these schools where Hindus are in a majority celebrate Christmas?' he asked.
The Manch campaigns to 'return' Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, which it regards as the authentic religion of India, and promotes controversial 'ghar wapsi' ceremonies marking reconversion.
Hindu nationalism has been on the rise in India, officially a secular state, with the ideology explicitly espoused by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both Christians and Muslims have been targets of violence and attempts to enforce conformity or conversion. Incidents of 'cow vigilantism' in which non-Hindus have been beaten or killed for butchering the animal sacred to Hindus have increased, and scare stories around so-called 'love jihad', in which Muslim men are alleged to target young Hindu girls for marriage and conversion to Islam, are a staple in right-wing rhetoric.
