Christian families in India who were forced to stop attending church after Hindu radicals threatened to beat and kill them have vowed to continue worshipping in secret.
One priest who leads a congregation in India’s Madhya Pradesh State, told International Christian Concern that 15 families have stopped going to his church in recent months after facing threats and intimidation at the hands of Hindu radicals.”The radicals say they will beat and kill my church members if they continue to attend the services,” said Pastor Singh
Shankar Damor, a 37-year-old from Kardubadi village near Jhabua, told ICC his family stopped attending church because they were under serious threat of physical attack. “In a meeting last May in the village of Kardubadi, the Christians were told that we should not attend any church and should not even pray in our homes,” Shankar explained. “When we complained to the village diktat, the entire village stopped associating with us. No one attended our weddings and we were totally cut off from the people of the village.”
He added: “In that same month, when my family was praying in our house, someone from the village called the police and I was taken to the police station on false charges of forced conversions,” Shankar said. “The police beat me brutally and harassed me while in custody.”
India ranks as the 11th worst nation in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USA’s 2018 World Watch List. While religious freedom is supposed to be a constitutional right in the country, several Indian states have implemented anti-conversion laws, making it illegal for anyone to use force or allurement to convert others to another religion. Such laws are often abused by Hindu radicals to file false complaints against pastors and pressure Christians not to share their faith.
