Madhya Pradesh, the latest in a series of arrests of Christians in the central Indian state, Christians said Wednesday, April 19.
An independent Pentecostal pastor from the town of Jabalpur six other Christian leaders were detained late Tuesday but released hours later in bail at midnight, reported Compass Direct, a Christian news agency.
Madhya Pradesh police allegedly burst into the pastor’s home around 8:30 local time. When Lal tried to phone for help, activists from the hard-line Hindu group Bajrang Dal reportedly grabbed his mobile phone.
“Police barged into our house, and in loud and threatening voices, they shouted abuses and began pounding the furniture with their batons,” Pastor Lal was quoted as saying. “They slapped me while another policeman grabbed [another Christian leader] by his ears – all the while we could hear the loud ranting of the Bajrang Dal fundamentalists outside.”
MORE ARRESTS
The reported incident came shortly after BosNewsLife monitored that over the weekend two Christian women accused of trying to convert people to their religion were arrested in Jabalpur district of Madhya Pradesh.
The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) quoted officials as saying that the women – Mariamma Mathew, 36, and B. Godwil, 65 – were arrested Friday, April 14, after they were found distributing pamphlets telling people how they could overcome their problems by following the Bible. Several other "objectionable"’ pamphlets were seized from them, an official said.
In state capital Bhopal, Christians were also beaten up for allegedly holding a meeting to convert some children brought from outside the city, IANS quoted activists as saying.
Tensions rose in Madhya Pradesh after the government reportedly set up a panel to look into reports of what rightwing parties call “forced conversions." Officials could not immediately be reached to comment on the latest arrests. However Madhya Pradesh is among several Indian states that have introduced controversial anti-conversion laws which evangelicals say make it virtually impossible to evangelize, a core aspect of the Christian faith.
CHRISTIANITY SPREADS
In published statements, the panel said that in another state district, the Christian population had gone up by 80% in the past two decades.
Christians make up just over 2% of India’s 1.1bn population, but radical Hindus have accused evangelical Christians and missionaries of aggressively seeking converts among the country’s majority Hindu population.
Evangelicals have denied the accusations. “Christians in this state have been under pressure for long and such atrocities on them have increased further under the rule” of the Hindu oriented Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Anil Martin, general secretary of the Madhya Pradesh Christian Association in a statement.
The BJP embraces the ideology Hindutva, or "Hinduness", which seeks to make turn all Indians to Hinduism. (With BosNewsLife Research and reports from India. BosNewsLife, Hungary).
