300 religious leaders urge State Department to address religious persecution in India

(OSV News) — A Chicago Catholic bishop from the Eastern Church, which traces its roots to St. Thomas the Apostle, has joined about 300 religious leaders who have sounded the alarm about religious persecution in India.

Bishop Joy Alappatt of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of St. Thomas in Chicago is one of more than 300 people who have signed an open letter to the U.S. Department of State asking Secretary Antony Blinken to designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern” (CPC) for its grave violations of religious freedom against Christians, Muslims, Dalits and indigenous people.

Such designations are made under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, which requires the president to review the state of religious freedom in every country in the world and designate those whose governments commit or tolerate particularly serious violations of religious freedom.

Torture, prolonged detention without charge, enforced disappearances, or other egregious denials of life, liberty, and security all trigger a CPC designation. Nations that meet some, but not all, of the criteria are placed on a special watch list under the Wolf Act of 2016. The secretary of state is delegated by the president to make the designations.

News of the open letter was announced in an Aug. 1 press release from the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations. The Washington-based nonprofit organization FIACONA advocates on behalf of approximately 1 million Indian American Christians in the U.S. and Canada while working to reduce anti-Christian violence in India.

According to a FIACONA press release, the letter is the first “written by American Christian leaders concerned with religious persecution in India” and was endorsed by “18 bishops, three archbishops, and 167 clergy from various denominations and non-denominational groups, eight current or former presidents and deans of five theological schools, and leaders of more than 40 Christian organizations.”

In addition to Bishop Alappatta, Catholics supporting the letter included Pauline Father James Michael DiLuzio, executive director of ecumenical and multifaith relations for the congregation, and numerous Hindu and Indian-American Catholic clergy and lay leaders based in the U.S. and India.

The letter warned of “rapidly escalating state-sanctioned human rights abuses against religious minorities.” Under the current Bharatiya Janata Party government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — before which there were “significant but sporadic incidents of persecution” against Christians and religious minorities — “the situation has radically changed for the worse,” the signatories said.

The signatories noted that India currently ranks 11th on Open Doors International’s World Watch List for persecuted Christians. The majority of the country’s 1.4 billion people (nearly 72%) are Hindus, with Muslims (about 15%), Christians (5%) and ethnic religious (3.7%) making up the remaining quarter.

In its 2024 letter, Open Doors — whose 2023 report was cited by the State Department in its annual assessment of religious freedom in India — said that “the rights of all categories of Christian communities are being violated in India because radical Hindutvas” who seek to create a Hindu nationalist state “view all of them as alien to the nation.”

“They want to cleanse their country of Islam and Christianity and do not hesitate to use widespread violence to achieve this,” he told Open Doors, noting that Hindu converts to Christianity bear the “burden of persecution in India” and are “often physically attacked and sometimes killed.”

FIACONA’s letter also cited the Delhi-based ecumenical forum United Christian Forum, which recorded 720 attacks on Christians in 2023, a drastic increase from 127 in 2014 when Modi first took office.

FIACONA reports that 1,570 attacks were recorded in 2023, while 1,198 were recorded in 2022.

The letter also noted that India was named the third worst “persecutor of the year” in a 2023 ranking by Washington-based non-profit organization International Christian Concern.

In a separate press release on August 1, the ICC announced that lawmakers in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, passed a bill on July 30 increasing penalties for violators of the 2021 Anti-Conversion Law. The ICC said the move “will make Christian missionary groups easy targets.”

Despite these figures, “the persecution of religious minorities is nevertheless buried by the U.S. admiration for the current Indian regime,” said United Methodist Pastor Neal Christie, executive director of FIACONA, in a news release.

“This letter is a resounding call to the American church to remain vigilant against the abuses of religious nationalism in what has been a pluralistic and secular India,” said Rev. Peter Cook, executive director of the New York State Council of Churches and a FIACONA board member, in a press release. “We hope it inspires the U.S. government to stop ignoring the way Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party has systematically implemented an agenda of religious nationalism in both India and America.”

OSV News reached out to the Indian Embassy in Washington for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @GinaJesseReina.