India: Fasting, Prayer, and Mobilization on the Eve of Elections

During the first three months of the year, India saw a significant increase in acts perpetrated against the Christian minority, which represents around 2% of the population. Thus, from January 1 to March 15, more than 160 anti-Christians acts were recorded by the NGO United Christian Forum (UFC).

With 47 violent incidents reported, Chhattisgarh (in the northwest of the country) is at the top of the list of Federation States where Christians are the most targeted. This is the case even in death, because the baptized are often refused a Christian grave in favor of forced cremation: a way for the Hindu majority to impose an act of conversion post-mortem, the famous Gharwapasi--return to the home--which is at the heart of the program carried out by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Speaking to Indian media on March 22, 2024, in Kottayam, a city in the State of Kerala (southern India), the Patriarch of the Catholic Syro-Malabar Rite described the situation that Christians are living there: “The increase in attacks against us is painful, especially when we recall that the country has a solid Constitution which gives us the right to practice our religion,” Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil stated.

The high prelate--whose Eastern Church united to Rome is beset by deep liturgical divisions--calls on the faithful to exercise their right to vote in the national elections which will take place from April 19 to June 1: “The Church does not support any political party, but we remain very concerned about the tightening of religious liberty in the public sphere,” Fr. Antony Vadakkekara, spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Church, says.

In order to prepare for elections which will be decisive for the future of the country’s Catholics, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India proclaimed Good Friday 2024 as a “National Day of Fasting and Prayer.” On this day, the faithful responded in large numbers to the bishops’ call, gathering in parishes to participate in the many spiritual activities planned in addition to the traditional services of the Easter triduum.

The 18th legislative elections of the Indian Republic will be spread out into seven phases in order to allow close to a billion Indians to vote: thus, some 970 million voters will be called successively to the ballot boxes, according to their region, to elect the 543 representatives of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

To achieve this electoral feat, it will be necessary to use the services of 15 million electoral agents to man a million voting stations and transport electronic machines to the poorest regions of the country.

At 73 years old, Narendra Modi, the strong man of India, courted by heads of State from around the world, intends to win a third term but also to obtain a qualifying majority.

The opposition fears that he wants to modify the Constitution of 1950 to install a different regime from the one left by the founders after independence, in the name of an intensified nationalism where no religion, except Hinduism, has a place on Indian soil.