India: 10 years after riots, innocent Christians still suffer, wait for justice
New opportunities, new life
Daniella shares her testimony with young girls as she trains them to give hair and skin treatments. This peaceful scene inside the beauty parlor is juxtaposed with the hostile streets of Kashmir that exist just beyond the building’s walls. These girls learn skills that they can apply to work on their own one day, something their government would never do for them. Daniella tells them about her daughter, who doctors thought was going to be born paralyzed with several serious health conditions. Through fervent prayer, faith and hope, her daughter was born perfectly healthy. Her middle name is nontraditional in Indian culture,
but is a testament to the work that God has done in their lives: Grace.
Efforts such as these are made possible throughout India by the help and support provided by Cooperative Outreach of India.
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COI was founded in 1993 to address the needs of the most disadvantaged members in India: women and children. This demographic accounts for a large portion of those living in absolute poverty in the country.
COI has perhaps the greatest reach in bringing people to Christ in this country of over 1 billion people. Their work spans the entire nation, uniting Christian leaders and other believers together and offering them help and support for their ministries. This organization is run by a group of true warriors for Christ, led by Ramesh Landge and his son Ravi, or “Bearded Man” as many know him.
Bearded Man fills us in on the social climate as we arrive at a new location. He paints the picture for us, sometimes a dangerous one, with a smile. He offers love and compassion to all whom he meets, including those who want to kill him because of his efforts to spread the Gospel in this land.
When Ramesh came to the Lord in the late 1970s, the Christian population was less than 1 percent in India. Today, statistics show that number has officially grown to 2.5 percent, though many believe that number is greater than 5 percent and could be as high as 10 percent.
Since June 2010, Ramesh and other Christians in India have produced a TV show called “The Truth.” They discuss various topics on religion, many of which are controversial to nonbelievers. The program averages 16 million viewers an episode, and for thousands upon thousands that live in Muslim cultures, this is the first time that they hear the Gospel.
“When they get to know the truth, their eyes pop open,” Ramesh said.
Several thousand have been converted to Christianity through the program since it started less than a decade ago.
Locally, COI holds events through their Love Delhi Campaign that unites young adults in their city for a night of food, music, and a message of God’s love. In northern India, they have been running sewing and tailoring centers in 100 percent Muslim regions for the past 12 years. Hundreds of women have heard the Gospel
through this mission, which currently operates three different tailoring centers. According to Ravi, the women arrive at the center wearing their burkhas, but remove the veil once they’re inside the building because they feel at peace there.
No compassion for the children
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected to power in 2014. Since then, nationalists have made it a priority to end Christianity in their country. India is now ranked as the 15th most difficult country to live in as a Christian, according to Open Doors World Watch List. Just five years ago in 2013, India was ranked 31st on this same list. According to a petition on Change.org aimed at raising funds from the Modi administration for children, of the more than 470 million children in India, 33 million are child laborers, 80 million are without an education, and 97 million are undernourished.
Before they were forced to close their doors for good in March 2017, Compassion International supported as many as 145,000 children in India. These children were given an education, meals, school supplies, clothes, and several other benefits. According to local reports, Compassion closed by saying they had to shut down due to a lack of funding resulting from government restrictions.
“Compassion’s main tagline was, ‘releasing children from poverty in the name of Jesus.’ They did not like that,” said Ramesh Landge. “Compassion International was shut down because the government knew a lot of children were accepting the Lord.”
These kids were taken out of school, denied opportunity, and stripped of many of their human rights because the government viewed this as a threat to their culture.
“The ban severed the influence churches had over various communities across India,” said Ravi Landge. “This meant that many Christian community clinics, churches, and tuition centers got shut down because they couldn’t sustain themselves. What we are seeing is discrimination in the government sector (with the BJP in power) where people groups from minority religions are denied access to good jobs.”
Landge described that this creates a sense of inferiority and economic instability within Christian communities across India. The government recognized that if these children grew up holding on to the Christian faith, it would put a dent in Hindu ideology. So, they denied them education, opportunity, and much needed care.
Hope for the children
When Compassion International was forced to shut down, COI stepped in to take over the support for as many of these children as they could, starting a project called Genesis of Hope. Many of the teachers who worked with Compassion before the shutdown continue to work with the same students, but do so at a fraction of the salary they used to make. Genesis of Hope has six centers where they pay for the students’ education and provide them with meals.
“We continue to still run the six centers passionately, because for us, it was about the relationship with the teachers and kids,” said Ravi. “GOH is a replacement portal for our kids who lost sponsors.”
There are still 350 children who are waiting on sponsors. Those who are willing to invest in these children can sponsor a child for just $1 a day at www.genesisofhope.org.
'If it’s called an orphanage, the government will shut it down'
The orphan crisis in India is not only ongoing, but growing. Any establishment that houses orphans must operate under the name “tuition center,” or else the government will shut it down. Local pastors who we met with in Kandhamal, where the riots occurred, are fearful that they will lose a generation of believers if the orphans are neglected and become dropouts. Through the support of Christian NGO’s, they receive funding to help these children that the Indian government does not give a chance.
We arrive at one of these tuition centers, where several young children greet us with a smile. Their parents are gone from this earth. Many of them were just months old when the injustice that took place orphaned them. Some were just old enough to understand what was going on; they carry the memories of seeing their
parents murdered in front of them and dragged out the door. They never got to say goodbye to their parents, but today they say hello to us, strangers.
They gather by the entrance and wipe their hands across our feet, a sign of respect and gratitude in their culture. Their educational opportunities are few and far between. The care they receive, they share among themselves, from a good Samaritan who dedicates their life to helping these children. Just hearing the
stories of how they got there is heart wrenching. Conceptualizing the injustice they have endured and the lifetime of hardship that has been thrown onto their backs would knock the strongest of souls over. But they stand there. They laugh amongst each other, often looking back at us to see if we understand the jokes
they are presumably saying about us.
These young, bold, Christians line up to sing us a song before we leave. No spotlights come on, but the joy they express when they sing is illuminating. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus, they sing.
They clap and smile and sing some more, and you can see God’s glory in this moment. Their performance wraps up, and on our way out, they come over again to touch our shoes, not realizing how much their strength and faith has touched our hearts.
‘Truth alone triumphs’
Many of the individuals interviewed for this story have asked for their real names to be published, however many of the names have been changed to protect the persecuted. Studies show that the rise of religious nationalism in countries dominated by Islamic and Hindu ideology has brought high, very high, or extreme
levels of persecution to more than 200 million Christians around the world.
According to Open Doors, 39 million of the approximately 64 million Christians in India have experienced direct persecution. These examples of direct persecution reflect much of the aforementioned: abuse, deprivation of education and work, imprisonment, and death.
When the 2019 election comes around, if BJP officials stay in power, there is expected to be a radicalized Hindu movement. The RSS, the radical Hindu organization involved in the riots, were the ones who got the BJP and Prime Minister Modi’s administration into power. Locals in predominantly Muslim states brought up the likelihood of a civil war, between Hindu nationalists and militants from Muslim states.
Within this core, the innocent Christians who were framed and imprisoned for a murder they did not commit, denied work and an education, were habitually abused and neglected, will continue to wait for their day of justice. They reflect on the pain and persecution they’ve endured in this life, and reminisce on times they had with their Christian brothers and sisters before they were martyred. They remember these times, these people, and they pray to their God. They carry their cross and focus on His promise, that one day Christ Jesus will come again and deliver them from the brokenness of this world.
“And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.” Revelation 22:5 (NASB)
This article was originally published at God Reports here.
