Where it is a criminal offence to convert to Christianity ...

Hindus have made great contributions in business and technology in the US, but so have Christians made enormous contributions to India in the all levels of education and in social and humanitarian work among India's impoverished masses.

Christians and Christian institutions are violently attacked several hundred times each year. A landmark event was the case of the Australian Graham Staines and family. Graham Staines, 58, and his sons, Philip, 10, and Timothy, 8, were burnt alive when Hindu fascists doused their jeep in which they were sleeping with kerosene and set it ablaze. When the three terrified occupants tried to break out of the vehicle, the Hindu mob pushed them back into the burning inferno. Staines' crime was that he had devoted 34 years of his life to serving lepers in India.

Nuns have also been gang-raped.

These attacks occur in states where Hindu political parties are in power.

Hindu attacks on Christians in India have increased dramatically during and after the rule of the BJP Government in 1996. There were 109 attacks against Christians in Gujerat in 2001 alone and 155 attacks against Christians in the rest of India - a total of 264 attacks in 2001.

The role of the BJP is obvious. Implicitly or explicitly, the BJP which was in power at this time, provided the political and criminal atmosphere for these assailants to act against Christians with impunity and immunity. The following sample case provided by Compass Direct News, an American Christian watchdog, illustrates the problem:

When four tribal Christians in Toranpada village, Maharashtra state, asked for help following an attack by Hindu extremists last month, police responded by taunting and kicking the victims, then filing charges against them. The four converts filed a complaint at the local police station immediately after the attack. When they returned on June 15 to ask what action had been taken, one police officer told them, “Ask Jesus to call me on my mobile phone”.

Three police officers then asked for a demonstration of prayer. When the four Christians knelt down, the officers kicked them and taunted them. The officers then filed charges against them for breaching the peace. (July 6, 2006)

Christian education in India

Compared to other religious groups, Christians are highly literate (men have a literacy rate of 80.5 per cent and females are 76.2 percent literate). They are mostly part of the educated middle class. The literacy rate for Hindus is 65.1 per cent with 53.2 per cent for women; Muslims 59.1 per cent and 50.1 per cent; and Sikhs 69.4 per cent and 63.1 per cent. (From the 2001 Census.)

Christians in turn have provided education at all levels to other religious groups without prosyletisation. By far the best schools and colleges in India are run by Christian institutions, either Catholic and Protestant, where the student populations are more than 90 per cent non-Christian. According to Tahir Mahmoud, an Indian Muslim journalist, “The 2.3 per cent Christians in the Indian population cater to 20 per cent of all primary education in India, 10 per cent of all the literacy and community health care, 25 per cent of all existing care of destitutes and orphans, 30 per cent of all the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients etc”.

India’s parliamentary democracy and federal systems, its administrative, legal, financial, educational and railway and transport systems, and the fortuitous use of the, now international, English language, are the legacies of British rule. Indeed, India’s existence as a united country instead of a thousand splintered units is the legacy of the British.

Its technological advancement and prosperity today come from Western Europe, United States and Russia, all parts of the Christian world. Hindus have flocked to the tolerance and hospitality of the Christian world and prospered beyond imagination in their education and economic, social and political conditions. Thousands of Hindus have become millionaires and billionaires. Yet many of these overseas Hindus, especially in the US, are supporters and contributors to the Hindu nationalists in India engaged in the persecution of Indian Christians.