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September 6, 2008 India: Where Christians Are A Target For The Religious Murder Mobs Rhys Blakely in Bhubaneswar Namrata, a young Christian villager who was injured in an attack by a Hindu mob. The mob appeared an hour after sunset, armed with axes, clubs and paraffin. The carnage that followed would have been much worse if the Christians of Gadragaon, a remote village in northeast India, had not been warned by text message: “The Hindus are coming to kill you.” The alert gave most enough time to flee to the jungle, where 114 of them would hide for a week,...

Faced to increased security concerns leading up to national elections, Bishop Gerald Mathias of Lucknow has cancelled traditional Christmas festivities in his diocese. Aid to the Church in Need reported that the bishop of the northern Indian diocese called off the activities that normally draw tens of thousands of people to the city, including an annual Christmas "Dance Drama," and a traditional event for the chief minister of the state, governor and other dignitaries. The diocesan vicar general, Father Ignatius D'Souza, explained to the charity that the period preceding a major election is an unstable time, with the "risk of...

“We are concerned about fundamentalist activity. The extremists’ strategy is very long term and they might see our diocesan Christmas activities as an opportunity to take action.”

The BJP today alleged that the CPI(M) in Kerala was "appeasing" the muslim community while it was "attacking" the Christians. Party National Secretary Balbir Punj lashed out at the CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan for lauding various muslim organisations while flaying the church for not coming to the negotiating table to discuss fears over reglious freedom for muslim students and other provision of Kerala Education Rules (KER) norms.

Nine people are dead and dozens of churches and hundreds of Christians' homes have been torched during a surge of Hindu violence in India, according to reports from organizations working there. Compass Direct News reports that the deaths and damage have been reported since Christmas Eve, when members of the extremist World Hindu Council launched their assaults on the faithful belonging to Christianity. "Orissa state's Kandhamal district remains tense 10 days after the series of anti-Christian attacks began, and thousands of Christians whose houses have been burned down are facing hunger and fear," the Compass Direct report said.

BHUBANESHWAR, India - Hundreds of Christians are fleeing to relief camps in eastern India after clashes with Hindu nationalists. The government-run camps are providing food, medicine and security. Officials say the clashes left at least four people dead last week, including three killed when police fired on a group of hardline Hindus that had torched a police station. Hindus complain the police aren't protecting them from Christians. The killings and subsequent flight of nearly 700 Christians to four relief camps are the latest in a series of religious and political power struggles in the secular but Hindu-dominated state of Orissa,...

Twelve village churches were burned and ransacked in eastern India over Christmas as Hindu extremists clashed with members of the Christian minority. One person died and more than 25 were injured in the violence in Orissa state. It was sparked after Hindu hard-liners objected to the scale of a Christmas Eve prayer vigil, according to the Catholic Bishops Conference in New Delhi. More than 450 police had to be deployed to quell the violence, which saw groups of Hindus rampaging through villages in the Kandhamal district, burning the mud and thatch village churches. By yesterday afternoon police said the worst...

NEW DELHI - Hindu extremists attacked Christians celebrating Christmas in eastern India, ransacking and burning at least six village churches, officials said Wednesday. One person was killed in the violence. Authorities in the remote district where the churches were attacked have deployed 450 police to quell the violence, which had tapered off by Wednesday, said Bahugrahi Mahapatra, a government official. There were conflicting reports of what sparked the unrest in Orissa, a state in eastern India with a history of violence against the area's tiny Christian minority. Mahapatra called the violence a "sensitive matter" and refused to discuss how it...

In India Thousands of Youth Rock for Jesus and for Life with Canadian Musician David MacDonald By John-Henry Westen POTTA, India, August 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of the inspiring occurrences which took place on my recent speaking engagement in India was getting to know another Canadian - singer/songwriter David Macdonald.  Although I knew David by reputation - he is the main musician at the annual March for Life in Ottawa every year - I had not until India had a chance to speak with him in person.  David is a fascinating man.  A pop musician who can do fancy...

Bhopal, India, Jul 10, 2007 / 10:53 am (CNA).- A group of Christians set a new world record by writing out the entire Bible in 232 minutes. They chose to do this on the seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millennium. An ecumenical team, which ranged in age from 11 to 77 and included priests, nuns, pastors, brothers, and lay people, was led by local layman Sunil Joseph, reported ICNS. Joseph set his own record in 2005 by writing out the Bible on his own in 123 days. The writing began at 5...

Laxmi Narayan Gowda, an independent pastor and representative of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), was recovering in a hospital at press time with swelling and numerous bruises. The incident took place at about 7 p.m. in Hessarghatta, about 30 kilometers from Bangalore, when a group of about 50 people barged into the pastor’s house and threatened him with violence unless he moved out of the area, said Sam Joseph, a Karnataka-based leader of the All India Christian Council (AICC). The group returned with 100 more people shortly after, cornered Pastor Gowda in a room in his house, and...

I received an e-mail from India from an Indian Catholic of Portuguese Descent from the Portuguese Colony of Goa in India ; name withheld on request. In modern times, the Catholic Church is destroying herself. This has never happened in the course of history. "My ancestors were evangelized by Catholic Missionaries such as Saint Francis Xavier and good Dominican, Franciscan, and Jesuit Missionaries and I live in India I have a great devotion to the Divine Mercy, Sacred Heart, The Blessed Sacrament, and Our Lady. I am shocked and scandalized that there are Indian Priests who are heretics and prepared...

NEW DELHI: Christians across India on Sunday joyously observed Christmas, a festival that has acquired a universal appeal in this land of over one billion, with people from other religions too joining in the festivities. From Chandigarh in the north to Chennai in the south, and from Mumbai in the west to Kohima in the northeast, the faithful flocked to churches for the midnight mass and to pay obeisance at the nativity tableau that depicts the birth of Jesus Christ. Millions of homes across the country were gaily decorated with lights, buntings, stars, Santa Claus cut-outs and Christmas trees...

Children light candles at the Sacred Heart Church on Christmas Eve, in Delhi on Saturday, Dec 24, 2005. (AP) NEW DELHI: Christianity came to India much before it went to the West, perhaps a reason why India's 25 million Christians prefer to be Catholic in faith, oriental in worship and Indian in culture. It has been a two-way process - a process of osmosis where Christianity has over the centuries become an indelible part of Indian plurality. Not only for the urban middle classes enthusiastically getting ready for Christmas, a festival that long ago surpassed the boundaries of mere religion,...

Since colonial times to the present, the impetus for Christian proselytizing work in India has largely emanated from Western Christian Church groups and missions. The latter's continuing obsession for promoting religious conversions under the aegis of India's Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom has triggered a raging debate among religious and political leaders of that country. Many Hindus of the Indian Diaspora have also been drawn into it. Over seventy years ago, Mahatma Gandhi stated that: “proselytizing under the cloak of humanitarian work is unhealthy, to say the least. It is most resented by people here.[1]” The resentment that Gandhi alluded...