World is watching, says Rahul on reports of ‘persecution’ of Christians

“The world is watching”, says Rahul Gandhi on reports of ‘persecution’ of Christians with attacks on churches during Christmas Day.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the world is watching developments within the country, mentioning reports of “persecution” of Christians in India in a section of the global media.

“While many in our own country are living with their heads buried in sand, the world is watching,” Gandhi said on Twitter referring to a report in ‘The New York Times’ titled ‘Arrests, Beatings and Secret Prayers: Inside the Persecution of India’s Christians’.

“In times of injustice, silence is complicity,” the former Congress president said in the tweet with the hashtags “SpeakUp” and “NoFear”.

While many in our own country are living with their heads buried in sand, the world is watching.

In times of injustice, silence is complicity. #SpeakUp #NoFear pic.twitter.com/qF99MTGHMw

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) December 28, 2021

On Christmas day, in different parts of India, several men from the Bajrang Dal stormed into churches and did not allow Christmas worship to be performed in BJP-ruled states such as Haryana, Karnataka, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Agra city, Madhya Pradesh, and others, Christmas services were disrupted. Miscreants broke statues in Holy Redeemer Church in Haryana’s Ambala district built in 1848 under British rule when troops of East India Company were transferred from Karnal to Ambala, and burned the effigy of Santa Claus.

Something that was never witnessed before in India is happening:  Online hate speech and slurs on Christians are increasing where Christians and Muslims are either told to get out of India because they were “foreign invaders”, being called rice bag converters or Muslims called Jihadis and threatened to reconvert back to Hinduism.   Strangely, some of the attacks come from American Indian pro-Modi supporters who live in the USA and it is surmised they are working collectively to suppress minorities in India which is viewed to be unfair because they enjoy equal rights in America but are advocating for minority suppression in India.

Ashok Swain (Associate Professor and Director of the Programme of International Studies, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, from Sweden) once said, “Indian American Hindutva groups, largely upper-caste Indians, are advocates of minority rights in the U.S., but simultaneously and contradictorily supportive or uncritical of cultural supremacism and majoritarianism in India.”