India: Local Officials Force Shutdown Christian 'House Churches'

At least 50 Christian “house churches,” or private Christian worship services held inside a person’s home, were recently forced to halt operations in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state after a local district issued an order banning the gatherings, the Christian Post, an online newspaper, reported Monday.

“More than 50 house churches in the Jhabua District of Madhya Pradesh state” are no longer allowed to gather for worship “due to the Sub-Divisional Officer issuing a circular to police stations in the Thandla and Megnagar blocks declaring a complete ban on Christian gatherings that do not have permission from the local magistrate,” the Christian Post reported on November 22, citing an original report by Persecution.org on November 18.

“The circular was distributed at the behest of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and other radical Hindu nationalist groups,” according to Persecution.org, which is run by the International Christian Concern (ICC). The ICC’s website says it “exist[s] to bandage the wounds of persecuted Christians and to build the Church in the toughest parts of the world.”

“As a result of the circular, more than 50 house churches in the Jhabua district were not allowed to gather for worship last Sunday, November 14,” according to Persecution.org.

The ordinance has caused “concern” among the local Christian minority community, many of whom worry “they will not longer be allowed to exercise their religious freedom rights, guaranteed to them by India’s constitution [sic],” the ICC noted on November 18.

Madhya Pradesh is home to nearly 89 million people. About 91 percent of the state’s population practices Hinduism, while just 0.29 percent of the state’s population identifies as Christian, according to India’s latest census data. Hindus account for 80 percent of India’s population of over 1.3 billion. Christians account for 2.3 percent of the Indian national population.

Madhya Pradesh police arrested nine Christian residents of the state in February following reports they had allegedly forced Hindus to convert to Christianity, Breitbart News reported at the time. The police officers said they based their arrests on a then-newly passed anti-religious conversion law, which forbids proselytism of any kind in the state.

The detentions stemmed from a specific incident on January 26 in which a mob made up mainly of Bajrang Da members stormed “a Pentecostal prayer meeting held at a center run by a Catholic non-profit group called the Sat Prakashan Sanchar Kendra” in the Madhya Pradesh town of Indore, Breitbart News detailed. Bajrang Da is the youth wing of Vishva Hindu Parishad, a Hindu nationalist organization.

A woman who attended the meeting later told Indore police she was forced to participate in the gathering by “her parents, under the pretext of taking her to her grandmother’s home,” Asia News, the official press agency for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (P.I.M.E.), reported on February 5.

“Some women pulled my hands and legs and beat me up there (at the centre). I was forced to sit in a hall,” the 25-year-old woman alleged according to a transcript of a criminal report she filed with Indore police.

“I was born a Hindu and I practice the same religion … but my mother and those present forced me to leave my religion,” she said.

“Based on her complaint, police … registered a case under the relevant provisions of the Madhya Pradesh Religious Freedom Act against her parents and the people present at the meeting,” Asia News relayed.

“Nine people, including the woman’s parents, have been arrested and we are searching for two other accused,” Indore Police officer Santosh Kumar Dudhi told the Christian news agency.

Madhya Pradesh’s Freedom of Religion Ordinance in 2020 “provides for 10 years in jail in some cases if the accused is found guilty of conversion through fraudulent means,” Asia News noted.