“Police in India have banned Christians from holding Christmas services as threats of violence from Hindu militants continue to increase. Authorities in the southwest state of Karnataka have clamped down on Christmas meetings in churches, halls and homes as Hindu radicals have disrupted Christian meetings according to Release International. Archbishop Joseph D’souza says, ‘We have not seen anything like this before. They are interrupting Christian services with their Hindu chants. And these extremists are not being arrested.’ Spokesperson Andrew Boyd says Hindu militants have been attacking and killing Christians there for ‘quite some time.’ ‘There’s a movement in India called Hindutva which is very, very intolerant to anything other than Hinduism. It claims that if you are Indian, you need to be a Hindu and absolutely nothing else will be tolerated. That’s actually gained ground since the election of the nationalist BJP to government and President Prime Minister Modi was re-elected,’ he said. ‘The police should be protecting the Christians not preventing them from meeting,’ Boyd said ‘India’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, if you have extremists threatening violence that violence needs to be stopped.’ A growing number of anti-conversion laws are being passed across India, which Boyd says is very worrying as they go against the Indian Constitution and put more Christians at risk of persecution.”
“You can’t surrender to lawless mobs,” Premier Christian News UK, Dec. 20, 2021