Before I begin, I’d like to make it unequivocally clear that this is not an attempt to disregard, downplay, or otherwise ridicule any legitimate claims of persecution by Christians occurring in India. I will never support violence against Christians. My criticisms in this piece is in the context of what seems to be a growing effort by global Christian organizations to spread deception in a conspiracy to defraud the government of India and cheat Indian taxpayers while claiming victimhood status to continue such shameful forms of theft and cowardice.
In the United Kingdom’s Interim Report sponsored by the UK’s Foreign Secretary and written by the Bishop of Truro, Reverend Philip Mounstephen, there are glaring irregularities in their cited report on India. Mounstephen’s first citation of reported violence in India within 2017 by an organization called “Persecution Relief” only goes to a “we will be back soon” page with nothing to substantiate the claims of violence cited in that part of the report in the 28th citation. Furthermore, the 53rd citation referring to ‘militant vigilante groups’ that ‘patrol the streets’ goes only to a generic UN report with no specifics regarding India, the Modi government, or South Asia in general:
It is crucial to note that unlike the Secular Republic of India, the United Kingdom is still legally a Constitutional Monarchy with no physical constitution and no formal democratic process for electing the upper-house of their parliament referred to as the House of Lords. The House of Lords is still appointed by a secret committee whose explicit purpose is loyalty to the Monarchy above all and the British people are legally considered subjects of the British crown instead of as citizens. Their supposed democracy still weds itself with the Anglican Church having reserved seats with no separation of Church and State. As such, it is no surprise that their “special report” has the equivalent value of the monarchy of Saudi Arabia making special reports on Muslim persecution. They cannot truly be independent or neutral when the religion and the State are unified forming a clear conflict of interest in desiring to spread Christianity across the world. Perhaps someday the Western Barbarians of the British will finally become a Republic, but who can really say what the future will hold? It already seems as if the Truro Bishop and the UK’s Foreign Secretary didn’t do their due diligence in their interim report with the astonishing claim that Christian persecution was reaching genocide levels since the cited Christian organization of Open Doors listed India as the tenth most dangerous country for Christians. This sort of hysteria and click-bait is shameful on the part of the British government and it did not escape my notice that they never bothered to cite Hindus being persecuted by either Muslims or Christians in India, which certainly does happen.
Other irregularities are revealed when probing deeper in the context of citations regarding India. Mounstephen’s citation 56 claiming a source for social persecution of Christians only leads to a “404 Not Found” page on Open Doors UK’s website. Citation 55’s second cited document by ecoi.net (European Country of Origin Information Network purportedly formed by the Australian Red Cross) specifies Hindu reconversion as discrimination but not Christian conversions in a blatant discriminatory double-standard against the Dharmic faiths:
The ECOI article:
Large-scale ‘homecoming’ (religious reconversion) ceremonies
across the country are spearheaded by offshoots of the Sangh
Parivar, who claim to be ‘protectors’ of the Hindutva ideology.
Their justification for pursuing these campaigns is their claim
that all Indians were once Hindus and were later converted to
Christianity and Islam through force or allurement.
Finally, the PDF source of citations 54 and the first source of citation 55 by Open Doors UK titled “We’re Indians Too” explicitly conflate violence against Christians with defrauding the Indian government on its pages 14 and 26 with page 26 demanding “reform” to justify this defrauding of India’s affirmative action program meant exclusively for Hindu Dalits.
Conflating legitimate claims of violence with an insidious attempt to support defrauding the Indian government on page 14 (The bold is emphasis added by me):
If Christians are not forced to leave the village, they are
often denied access to water, education, or government
rations on the basis of their faith. In October 2014, a mob
of Hindu extremists put a picture of a Hindu god on a water
pump used for drinking water, located outside a church, and
told the Christians that they no longer had access to this
water source. In Jharkhand in 2018, Christians were made
to use a river, used for sewerage, for their drinking water. In
September 2015, children receiving government education
were banned from attending school because they did not
attend Hindu religious classes at the school on Sundays.
Police officers threatened a woman in Uttar Pradesh in
2016 with losing her government ration card because of her
Christian faith.
Page 26 demanding “reform” that legitimizes Christian organizations attempts to defraud the Indian government:
The Double
Vulnerability of
Dalit Christians
The intersection of religion and caste identity is a key factor
driving the heightened number of incidents against Muslims
and Christians in India. Dalit Muslims and Christians are
doubly vulnerable, often discriminated against on the basis
of their faith and class, through institutional and societal
means. Despite being outlawed in Article 17 of the Indian
Constitution, the practice of the caste system is still a
reality in India. Dalit Christians and Muslims are subject
to discriminatory laws and government policies, such as
the denial of access to affirmative action and to protections
provided to other Dalits. The major contention lies in the
fact that the state considers Dalit Christians and Muslims
to be outside the caste system, and as people who have
access to other forms of economic resources through their
new faith and so therefore do not require affirmative action
and protection from the state. According to the Constitution
(Scheduled Castes) Order 1950, only Hindus were considered
as Scheduled Castes (the government classification for
Dalits), with Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Buddhists then included
under this provision in 1956 and 1990 respectively.
Christians and Muslims do not therefore have access to
affirmative action in employment and education sectors as
do Dalits of other religious backgrounds. Furthermore, since
Dalit Christians and Muslims are not considered to be of a
Scheduled Caste, they also do not fall under the purview of
the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of
Atrocities) Act 1989, which offers additional legal protection
and rehabilitation for victims of caste-based violence.
Despite numerous recommendations in government reports
such as the Mandal Commission in 1980, the Sachar
Commission in 2006, and most recently by the National
Commission for Minorities in 2008, the law still denies this
affirmative action to Dalit Christians and Muslims because
of their religion.
Despite being refused these benefits, numerous government
reports suggest that caste, as a social category, transfers
upon conversion to a different religion. Therefore, Dalits who
convert to Christianity or Islam are still considered to be of
the lowest caste after conversion. As such, they are subject
to the same forms of ill-treatment as other Dalits, but
without any government assistance. A report by the Indian
Institute of Dalit Studies says that this ill-treatment includes
being prevented from using upper-caste streets, sharing
sources of drinking water and other public resources, and
being made to walk around with brooms tied to their waists
in order to purify the ground they walk. Based on data from
the National Sample Survey Office of India, it has also been
determined that Dalit Christians continue to be poorer than
‘other Christians’ and ‘tribal Christians’ and comparable to
other Dalits in economic terms.
It is for these reasons that many Dalit Christians and
Muslims choose not to practice or even acknowledge
their faith in public. Those who do are at risk of severe
discrimination because their heightened vulnerability on
the basis of faith and class multiplies their marginality
within Indian society. When this is considered, it explains
an additional driver for the escalating persecution and
discriminatory incidents perpetuated against them.
The reason these reports by Christian organizations defend defrauding the Indian government and Indian taxpayers while supporting “reform movements” to justify these illegal activities is because Christian Churches just want to expend money for more conversions after giving their false and empty promises to new converts about being taken care of by Jesus “saving” them. To suggest the Indian government should change its policies is to justify the process of hoodwinking those gullible enough to be converted to Christianity and to justify the legalization of theft by Christian converts in India. Christian Churches and Islamic Mosques are funded in the billions for conversion purposes in India, yet they cannot use even a fraction of those billions to help the new converts of their faith and instead support lying about their Christian identity, lying to their neighbors, and cheating the taxpayers by defrauding the Indian government. Why is that? Is that what the teachings of Christianity preach to new converts of the Christian faith? It is incumbent on Hindus to call out any Christian converts on this; tell them openly that they’re defrauding the Indian government, that they’re too cowardly to be Christians openly by proclaiming themselves Christians and are therefore liars breaking their own Christian teachings, and lodge complaints to your local police officials and government officials about these shameful Christian tactics of defrauding the Indian government. Oh, and if you believe that I’ve deliberately misled or misconstrued these Christian organizations, then why did Christianity Today in its 2016 article titled “Incredible Indian Christianity” have Richard Howell, the Delhi-based leader of the Asia Evangelical Alliance, fully admit that this is what they were doing? (Bold Emphasis in the bottom of the paragraph added by me):
A Subcontinental Savior
Richard Howell, Delhi-based leader of the Asia Evangelical Alliance, says that “word, works, and wonders” require different permutations in India than Western Christians are accustomed to. He cites a Brahmin, a member of India’s highest caste: “We have not rejected Jesus Christ; you have not presented him in a way we can understand.” Ever since the British left, Indian evangelicals have been working to change that.
One promising strategy is to present Jesus as the path to enlightenment sought by many Hindus. “If you begin with total depravity, they don’t understand,” says Howell. “But if you present the need for restoration, they understand.” Howell says both high and low castes share a primary aspiration: hope. So Indian evangelicals are tapping into Hinduism’s many “stories of hope.” For example, Christians are reinterpreting the myth of the Baliraja—the “sacrificed king”—to show that Jesus is the one Hindus have waited for.
“Christianity is not being presented as opposed to Indian culture,” says Howell. “Instead, Christianity is being presented as the fulfillment of the cultural aspirations that Indians already have.”
While Western evangelicals have grown familiar with the C1–C6 debate over “insider movements” among Muslims [see “The Hidden History of Insider Movements,” CT January 2013], in India the contextualization debate centers on “Christward movements.” “This terminology better captures what is happening,” says Singh. “People are being drawn to Christ; maybe not to Christianity or to the church as we know it, but undeniably to Christ.”
“Christward movements are culturally Hindu yet Christian in faith,” says Howell. Members read the Bible and pray openly, but they meet on Saturdays in homes, not churches, in order to avoid “the impression that Christianity is Western.” Their biggest break is not with the Western church as much as the historic church: They don’t perform baptisms.
Howell supports their abstention. He estimates that 70 percent of Christians in India are of Dalit background, and thus constrained by the Scheduled Caste welfare regulations. “They worship no god but Jesus,” he says. “But they don’t take baptism because they will lose their jobs and families, because their benefits will be taken away by the government. The church is not equipped to help them. If they take baptism, millions would be out of jobs. What would we do?” The abstention is strategic, not syncretistic, he says.
“It’s conversion of the heart that really matters,” says Howell. “You can take 10 baptisms, but if there isn’t a change of lifestyle, it doesn’t make sense.”
Howell promotes the Christward movements as examples of “fulfillment theology.” “Let us take [Hindu practices] and put them under the lordship of Christ by giving them a Christian interpretation.” He knows that many Western Christians are “nervous” to stray so far from the historical forms of Christianity. “But we need to let God control the narrative.”
If you care about peacefully fighting back against such tactics by working to de-convert these gullible Indians who’ve fallen for the narcissistic ravings of Jesus Christ, please consider obtaining my ebook, Questioning Christianity: Book Edition. It is available for free from now until December 27th 2020 at 12 PM PST. I’ve written it to help people in India to peacefully end and reverse Christian conversions. Alternatively, I have Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here in blog form for those who would prefer simply copying and pasting useful information from this blog. Also, to show I don’t harbor any anti-UK animus for the modern-day people of the UK (my animus is reserved for your government structure which I will never stop mocking and for your imperialist history, especially in the US and India), for those living in the UK, consider getting my other ebook, Faith in Doubt, at a discount price.