Hundreds of Christian leaders appeal for persecuted religious minorities in India

CNA Staff, Aug 8, 2024 / 16:22 pm (CNA).

A group of over 300 U.S. Christian leaders sent a letter to the U.S. State Department this month urging the agency to put India on a watchlist of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. 

The Aug. 1 letter, organized by the Federation of Indian-American Christian Organizations in North America (FIACONA), called for India to be named a “country of particular concern” (CPC).

Violence against Indian Christians has “skyrocketed” since the 2014 ascent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Christian leaders said in their letter. FIACONA says it documented 1,570 attacks on Christians in 2023, up from its previous report of 1,198 in 2022. 

According to FIACONA, the signatories include 18 bishops, three archbishops, 167 clergy from diverse denominational and nondenominational backgrounds, eight current or former presidents and deans from five theological schools, and leaders from more than 40 Christian organizations. 

“The U.S. Church is tragically silent as India becomes not only our nation’s greatest ally in Asia but also the most dangerous democracy in the world for Christians,” said Pieter Friedrich, a FIACONA board member and journalist who specializes in South Asian affairs.

“It is encouraging to see the narrative shift as, finally, hundreds of Christian leaders from diverse backgrounds raise a voice for the persecuted Church in India.”

Though most of the signatories are Protestant, among the signers of the letter are several Catholic priests as well as Bishop Mar Joy Alappat of the St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of Chicago. The Syro-Malabar Church is an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with Rome based in the Indian state of Kerala. 

The U.S. Department of State defines a “country of particular concern” (CPC) as one that has “engaged in” or tolerated “particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”

Human rights activists and experts have called for years for India to be designated as a CPC and expressed “outrage” that countries such as Nigeria and India have been excluded from the list in recent years. 

Aside from CPC designation, the Aug. 1 letter asks the U.S. State Department to “hold the Indian government accountable for advancing equal human rights for all religious communities, to consider targeted sanctions on Indian government agencies and officials responsible for severe violations of religious freedom and human rights, and to support independent religious organizations and human rights groups in India and the U.S. who are targeted for their advocacy of religious freedom and human rights.”

CNA has reported on several instances of attacks on Christians in India that seem to be animated by anti-Christian, Hindu nationalist sentiment. Notably, the BJP governs the northeast Indian state of Manipur, which has seen mayhem and bloodshed amid an ethnic conflict that has killed hundreds of Christians since last year. In addition, reports have emerged of persecution of Sikhs, a religious minority in the northwestern state of Punjab in India.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said in 2023 that it was “alarmed by India’s increased transnational targeting of religious minorities and those advocating on their behalf.” As recently as May, a USCIRF report included India among the countries with the worst religious persecution in the world.