Christians arrested for distributing religious literature in northern India

MUMBAI, India – Police in India arrested 19 Christians for distributing religious literature at two government-run schools without permission from school staff.

The arrests took place on Friday, September 26, in Bihar, a state in eastern India.

According to the Times of IndiaAccording to police, 17 of the 19 people arrested were from the southern Indian state of Telangana.

Religious literature included Bibles, photographs and pamphlets. This literature – along with three four-wheelers and a bicycle – was confiscated by the police.

The arrests came after a complaint from the school principal in Nibiya village.

Bihar is the third largest state in India with over 130 million inhabitants. However, there are only about 100,000 Christians.

The Christians were accused of trespassing, obstructing government work and illegally spreading religion. They were granted bail after the charges were announced.

However, the accused claimed that the literature was distributed at the invitation of the school principal.

While I'm talking to him Sunday Times of India From Bihar, the Christians claimed that a group of Christians from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh went on a tour to visit various places in Varanasi and Bihar. After completing their trip to Varanasi, they said they went to Bihar to meet community members besides local attractions.

“Wherever we go, we distribute Christian literature to interested people. In the same way, we distributed books by standing on the streets,” Bhanu Victoria, who hails from Hyderabad state, told the newspaper.

“A man who had looked through the books expressed an interest in literature. He introduced himself as the headmaster and invited us to distribute the literature in his school. At his invitation, two of us went to school. Why else would we go?” Victoria said.

Someone at the school made a video and shared it with the district's top administration. More than 50 people gathered at the school and began questioning the two women about how they could distribute the literature in the school. Police subsequently took all 19 people into custody and filed an official complaint against the school teacher's allegations.

“What did we do wrong? I have the right to share literature of my religion,” Victoria said Sunday Times of India.

The national government in India is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has close ties to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization.

Hindu nationalists often accuse Christians of using violence and stealth tactics in conversion, often storming into villages and conducting “conversion ceremonies” in which Christians are forced to perform Hindu rituals.

This pressure on Christians, which also impacts Muslims and other religious minorities, is part of what observers describe as a sweeping program to “saffronize” India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, described as an attempt to impose Hindu values ​​and identity while rivaling them to suppress beliefs.

Although the BJP is not the ruling party in Bihar, it holds the post of deputy chief minister.