Source: Religion News Service, November 29, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While they purport to protect poor Hindus from being exploited, anti-conversion laws have been found to have a more demonstrable effect of generating violence against Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In July, more than two years after a Christian prayer service at his home was raided by police, a court in Uttar Pradesh in northern India acquitted Abhishek Gupta, a 41-year-old radiologist, of violating the state\u2019s anti-conversion law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legally, his victory was more than a win; it was a rout: The judge in the case cleared Gupta and a co-defendant of trying to recruit Hindus into Utter Pradesh\u2019s tiny Christian minority but further ruled that the complainant, a member of a Hindu nationalist activist group, was not eligible to file the case and that police investigators were \u201cthe real culprits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But personally, the case has ruined Gupta, he said. \u201cMy entire family is Christian. I pray on Sundays. I don\u2019t know why anyone would think I was converting anyone,\u201d Gupta told RNS by phone from his home village in Gorakhpur, where he moved after he and his wife, a nurse, were asked to resign their jobs for fear their employers would be harassed by vigilantes. \u201cWe exhausted our life savings, and our life was turned upside down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read or listen to the full story<\/a>, which provides more context on these laws and recent developments and reports that there have been 733 incidents of violence against Christians [in India] in the past two years, most spurred by false allegations of conversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n See also Christians in Vietnam Arrested Before Christmas<\/a> (International Christian Concern) and 25 Christians Killed During Christmastime Celebrations in Nigeria<\/a> (various sources, via The Roys Report).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Religion News Service, November 29, 2024 While they purport to protect poor Hindus from being exploited, anti-conversion laws have been found to have a more demonstrable effect of generating violence against Christians. In July, more than two years after a Christian prayer service at his home was raided by police, a court in Uttar … Continue reading India: How Anti-Conversion Laws Are Used to Police Christians<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13506,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13505\/revisions\/13506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}