India See Increase in Religious Persecution in 2007
by Stanley Scism
All India Christian Council compiled statistics to say Christians were attacked over 1000 times in India in 2007.
And 2008 isn’t starting well, with many attacks in Orissa, and a ripple effect in other N Indian states. Many of the gun, knife and bomb assaults have been done by Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, and in the police’s presence. The VHP is trying to hide evidence, and so many bodies are missing.
Near Barakhama Village, 415 of 450 homes of tribal Christians were burned. One Christian of that village, Bhogra Naik, was cut to pieces by attackers after they destroyed his home.
From 1950 to 1998, government figures showed only 50 anti-Christian attacks. In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the central government, and the attacks began escalating because attackers knew the government would do nothing to punish them.
Although now the central government is no longer under the BJP, several state governments are. The present wave of attacks started on Christmas Eve. A Hindu mob, angry because some Hindus have become Christians, attacked Christians and churches.
Demonic attacks like this have failed before, and they will fail now. Times of persecution have been some of the times of most rapid Christian growth. In Christianity’s early history, people noted that, for every Christian killed, ten more people became Christians, and said, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.’ Some day, when the dust clears, we’ll see that a larger proportion of India’s people became Christian during this time, as people turned from hatred to God’s love shown to mankind by his coming down as Jesus Christ to save us from sin.
Only people afraid that their faith’s dominant position is endangered attack others. Notice that the Christian majority nations are, generally speaking the ones in the world with religious freedom, simply because Jesus Christ has the best message, and it can take the competition in the theological and philosophical marketplace of ideas.