Hindu militants apparently abandoned plans to burn and kill them.
Members of the Believers’ Church in India (BCI) in Baijnath town reportedly met peacefully on Sunday, November 20, the day Hindu extremists threatened to burn them alive if they failed to "reconvert" to Hinduism.
The planned reconversion ceremony was apparently dropped due to police intervention, reported Christian news agency Compass Direct.
"About 20 people came for the service. This was lower than usual as some villagers were facing opposition, but at least we were able to meet without incident," Pastor Ramesh Masih Battih was quoted as saying.
FATHER RECOVERING
His father, 62-year-old pastor, Feroz Masih, was reportedly still recovering from beatings he received from members of the nationalist Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or ‘World Hindu Council’ and its youth wing, Bajrang Dal earlier this month.
The same groups said "they will conduct a Puja ritual on November 20 to forcefully convert the Christians in the church," said Gospel for Asia (GFA), which supports native missionaries, in an earlier statement to BosNewsLife.
Police Inspector Sureshta Thakur of the Baijnath police station reportedly said she had warned the VHP and its supporters against taking the law into their own hands.
ILLITERATE PEOPLE
"There are many illiterate people in Baijnath who can easily be misled to believe that Christians are forcibly converting Hindus,” she added. “These misconceptions are the root of the problem."
The church, whose members are mainly former Hindus, has denied it forced Hindu villagers to become Christians. Elsewhere in India, problems over alleged forced conversions also created tensions.
In India’s state of Chattisgarh a local Hindu extremist group leader told a pastor he wanted to become a Christian during a baptism ceremony, but then asked asked militants to attack the church, news reports said.
PASTOR ATTACKED
Pastor Masih Das Rai and a dozen other Christians were attacked on November 10, the day Govind Verma, chief of a local chapter of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was to be baptized, Compass Direct reported.
The pastor was later arrested by local police and still in detention this week on charges of "forced conversion," the news agency said.
Lawrence Rao, a Christian from Jabalpur city in the state of Madhya Pradesh, reportedly escaped criminal charges on November 6 after Hindu extremists accused him of attempting to convert a Hindu villager.
Human rights groups and churches have expressed concern about what they say are stepped up attacks by Hindu militants against minority Christians. (With reports from India and BosNewsLife Research).
