Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won re-election this past May in a critical victory that has been a blow for religious protection in India. Narendra Modi is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party with many in the party who have pressed for India to be a Hindu-only nation. BJP’s president and Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah called Muslim immigrants “infiltrators” and “termites” and promised to “remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha, Hindus, and Sikhs.”[i]
Other members of the BJP party include Pragya Singh Thakur, who is currently facing terrorism charges connected to a bomb attack on Muslims. Indian President Ram Nath Kovind declared that “Islam and Christianity are alien” to India.
In this environment, religious hate crimes have risen dramatically. In the past decade, 90% of the hate crimes have been committed since Modi was elected in 2014.[ii] A group of leaders have vowed to rid the country of Christians and Muslims by 2021. The group’s leader and member of the BJP party, Rajeshwar Singh proclaimed, “The Muslims and Christians don’t have any right to stay here. So, they would either be converted to Hinduism or forced to run away from here.”[iii]
And yet, in the midst of this hostility, God’s church is flourishing in India. Only 2% of Indians are Christian, and yet even that number is miraculous. Many of those who have come to Christ out of Hindu backgrounds have suffered rejection and beatings from their families.