India is around 80% Hindu. 14.23% of the population is Muslim, and 2.3% are Christian. Many Hindus regard Christianity as a foreign faith, although it was brought to India by the Holy Apostle Saint Thomas.
“Hindutva groups increase attacks on India’s Christian school,” by Rita Joseph and Ellen Teague, The Tablet, August 15, 2024:
Christian schools in Indian states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have faced increased attacks since the party’s general election victory in June. Officials from the federal and state child rights panels raided several Christian schools and orphanages in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. They registered cases against Church figures, including a bishop, priests, and nuns under the state’s stringent anti-conversion law. Last month, officials registered a case was registered against Vandana Convent School at the state’s Guna district for its insistence on recitation of prayers in English, which they claimed was “hurting the religious sentiments” of pupils. “Ours is an English medium school. But a case has been registered against us for following the medium of instruction that is English in our 50-year-old school,” said the vice principal, Sr Rashmi Kuzhyil. The school management and its principal Sr Catherine Vattoly were named in a complaint filed by the students wing of the BJP, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). On July 22, nearly 50 ABVP activists broke into the school and began to shout slogans against the principal and management, calling for Vattoly’s dismissal for “hurting” religious sentiments. A week later, the ABVP activists in Madhya Pradesh led a raid on St Peter Higher Secondary School in Indore, part of the Diocese of Jhabua. Activists entered the school on 27 July with portraits of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, demanding that they replace the school’s statues of St Peter and the Virgin Mary. They installed the portraits on the walls and warned the management against removing them. These attacks followed a series of official and vigilante measures against Christian schools earlier this year….
