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22 December 2017•Update: 22 December 2017
By Shuriah Niazi
NEW DELHI
The Roman Catholic community is losing confidence in the government, a senior church leader said Friday.
Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told The Indian Express newspaper that attacks on Christians had left them feeling vulnerable and marginalized.
“The country is being polarized due to religious affiliations and the community is losing confidence in the government,” he said.
Last week, two Catholic priests and 30 seminarians were attacked by a right-wing Hindu group, Bajrang Dal, in Satna district, Madhya Pradesh.
The Catholic group, which had been singing Christmas carols, were arrested after they were accused of trying to convert people to Christianity.
Madhya Pradesh is ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“From the point of Christian community, this whole incident of attack on priests and seminaries in Satna and the state government’s move to file cases against the priests, arresting the poor and the innocent instead of finding the culprits, do not help us to keep our confidence in the government intact,” Cleemis said.
Persecution Relief, an organization involved in helping persecuted Christians, has said that 62 incidents of violence against the community were registered in Madhya Pradesh this year.
The state has some of the strictest anti-conversion laws in India.
