Karnataka most dangerous state in India for Christians says report

(January 17, 2012) A recent report has identified southern India’s Karnataka state as the most unsafe place for Christians for the third consecutive year. With 49 cases of violence and hostility against Christians in 2011, Karnataka remained the state with the highest incidence of persecution, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India’s annual report entitled, “Battered and Bruised…” The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), which is based in Karnataka state capital, Bangalore, initially reported most of the incidents, and also documented at least six anti-Christian attacks between Christmas Eve 2011 and New Year’s Day. The attacks on Christians in Karnataka are “shameful” and “a blot on the secular and democratic India,” GCIC President Sajan George said. The local government and authorities were “complicit in the persecution against Christians,” he added. Anti-Christian attacks increased in the state after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in Karnataka in May 2008. At least 28 attacks were reported in less than two months in August and September of that year. In 2009, Karnataka witnessed at least 48 attacks, and the number grew to 56 in 2010, according to the Evangelical Fellowship of India. However, in scale and brutality, Christians in eastern state of Orissa faced the worst in the Christmas of 2007 and in August 2008. Christians account for about 2.3 percent of India’s some 1.2 billion population.