It is happening with frightening regularity: The bashing of Christians, primarily in States run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A meticulous and well-orchestrated campaign to denigrate and demonise the Christians.

Their design is devious: a clear method in their 'madness!' The divisive agenda is to polarise sections of the majority community against the Christians. The bogey of so-called 'conversions' is always raised, creating unfounded 'fears' that the population of Christians is increasing in the country. In contrast, the official Government statistics unequivocally prove that over the years, there has been a decline in the Christian population of India!

Christians are consistently targeted: intimidated and harassed; they are arrested on false and fabricated charges; their institutions are attacked. Christian literature is burnt, undemocratic demands are made on the Christians, anti-Conversion laws are weaponised, and dead Christians, in some places, are denied even the right to a decent burial.

Reports of these attacks (all unjustified) come in daily, and they don't seem to stop! Above all, those who are responsible for these heinous crimes do so with impunity and are apparently guaranteed impunity by the bosses and their ilk!

The long-term strategy of the 'hindutva-vadis' is clear: they bash up Christians (as they have done with the Muslims) and, in several cases, notch up electoral gains! Hate speech against Christians and other minorities has now become the rule rather than a rarity!

On June 17, BJP legislator Gopichand Padalkar in Kupwad, Sangli, Maharashtra, allegedly said, "whoever beats the first priest will get five lakhs, the second four lakhs, and the third three lakhs." There is plenty of well-documented evidence to prove all this. Besides all these bogeys and myths, the way is gradually being paved for a national anti-conversion law! Ultimately (God forbid it will ever happen!), they would like to usher in a nation-state based on the 'hindutva' ideology!

The latest is the arrest of the two Religious Sisters in Durg, Chhattisgarh. Sr. Preeti Mary and Sr. Vandana Francis, belonging to the Congregation of the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate (ASMI) (also known as the 'Green Gardens Sisters'), were arrested along with another young man (Sukhman Mandavi, a resident of Narayanpur) at Durg Railway Station on July 26.

They were accompanying three young adult women to work in a hospital attached to an Agra convent. The three were charged with offences under Section 143 (human trafficking) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023 and under Section 4 (unlawful religious conversion) under the Chhattisgarh Religious Freedom Act, 1968. They are currently in judicial custody; their bail application was rejected by a lower court on July 29.

Significantly, in an earlier order, the Chhattisgarh High Court has taken cognisance of previous cases where Bajrang Dal activists were accused of misusing anti-conversion laws, raising further questions about the legal basis of such arrests.

The unfortunate incident began after a railway ticket examiner questioned the girls and the man accompanying them from their village regarding their tickets. The group said that the nuns who were already on the platform had the tickets with them.

In a matter of minutes, the local Bajrang Dal outfit was informed, and they arrived in large numbers. The Railway police then detained the nuns, the man, and the three women. Bajrang Dal members protested at the police station, pressing officers to register a First Information Report (FIR). The three girls were later moved to a government-run shelter home, while the nuns and the man were remanded to judicial custody.

A fairly long video has since been going viral on social media. In it, one sees Jyoti Sharma, a Bajrang Dal activist, threatening, abusing and even assaulting the detained group inside a police station and in full view of the policemen.

Sharma is heard yelling at the man, "Do you understand? Will you speak? Or should I hit you?" She then turns to the nuns and threatens, "If you don't want to speak, I will smash your face, I'm warning you." She accuses the nuns of being part of a human trafficking and religious conversion racket, claiming that their bag contained "a Bible, a photo, a passbook, an ATM card, and a diary with pastors' numbers." She tells the crowd who had gathered in support of the nuns, "These numbers prove this is a racket. If they don't have a racket, why would so many people gather for two nuns who are not from here? I am from a Hindu organisation. I have come to save my daughter. Who have they come to save?"

She questions those detained in a harsh and intimidating manner. She pulls their bags from their hands and begins to inspect their contents and documents in them as though she were above law and order. Referring to the documents in their possession, Sharma questions them in such a horrible way, which would put even a hard-core Nazi to shame!

Interestingly, she does all this in front of the police, and the police sit in silence, completely acquiescing to her blatant crimes. The video, which shows Sharma in a pathetic light, has drawn widespread condemnation from every section of society. Not perhaps with her political bosses, who might soon felicitate her and even give her a seat in Parliament!

Speaking later to a news outlet, she says, "I don't hit everyone. I just hit people who convert Hindu girls to Christianity. I am sure that those women are Hindu, they have Hindu names. It's the duty of Hindu organisations as well as the police to protect them". Why is she not booked?

Adding fuel to the fire, the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Vishnu Deo Sai, wrote on his handle X, "Three daughters from Narayanpur were promised nursing training and job placements. They were handed over to two nuns at Durg station, who were taking them to Agra. Through inducement, an attempt was being made at human trafficking and conversion. This is a serious matter related to women's safety. The investigation is ongoing, and the matter is under judicial review. The law will take its course. Chhattisgarh is a peaceful state where people of all communities live in harmony. It's unfortunate to politicise this issue."

The arrest of the nuns has naturally sparked national outrage. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India(CBCI), which has usually been very reticent, cautious and even afraid of taking on the Modi regime, finally held a Press Conference in New Delhi on July 28. The Press Release issued by the CBCI highlights some facts but is relatively mild in tone.

The Church in Kerala, which has been toeing the BJP line so far, has, through its official mouthpiece 'Deepika,' denounced the arrests in unequivocal terms. At the same time, the CSI and Orthodox Churches have also registered their protest.

Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Thrissur, who is also the President of the CBCI, criticised the arrests and condemned the actions of Bajrang Dal members. He said, "This has happened in a country where freedom of religion is allowed. The nuns were attacked by the Bajrang Dal activists, and none should forget that nuns always stand and work for the uplift of the downtrodden." He also thanked Members of Parliament (MPs) from Kerala for raising the matter in Parliament, though a motion to debate it was disallowed.

Meanwhile, Opposition Parliamentarians, from all parties, have strongly condemned these arrests and some Parliamentarians have also visited the three who are incarcerated in Durg. Members of civil society, including academics, intellectuals, and human rights defenders, have strongly condemned these attacks on Christians and, of course, on other minorities in the country.

Meanwhile, in a powerful indication of the rabid state of the BJP, their Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs, George Kurian, asserted that the arrest of two nuns from Kerala in Chhattisgarh is part of a conspiracy to create divisions between Christian and Hindu communities in Kerala. He also suggested that the media should direct their inquiries to Jesus. The sanity of the Union Minister is now being questioned by all.

The BJP is systematically destroying the country; they have eroded the secular fabric of the Constitution and the democratic ethos of the country. They have polarised the country into majority versus minority through false, fabricated, divisive propaganda and hate speeches.

India today is a laughing stock on the world stage. The Prime Minister roams the world, at the taxpayers' expense, for his self-glorification. On every global index/indicator, the country is among those scraping the bottom of the barrel. Whilst the crony capitalist friends of the ruling regime have a ball, it is the poor and the marginalised of the country that have to bear the brunt.

They have sabotaged the electoral process and used Constitutional bodies according to their whims and fancies. They have curtailed Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech and expression, and Dissent. They have tried to instil fear into every section of society.

What the nation needs at this moment is that people must be awake to the realities around, be aware of the manipulations of the ruling regime, and rise as one nation to act now. Rabindranath Tagore puts the reality of today strongly when he writes,

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future;
Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night's stillness,
mistrusting the star that speaks of truth's adventurous paths;
freedom from the anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind, uncertain winds,
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.
Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet's world,
where movements are started through brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits,
where figures wait with patience and obedience for the
master of show,
to be stirred into a mimicry of life.

India, wake up and act NOW, before it is too late!