On his recent trip to the subcontinent, Gordon Brown was shown all that is positive about a nation that will soon take its place among the world's leading economies. But there was no public reference to the Hindu nationalists that are terrorising Christians in many areas
For the wretchedly poor Christians of Kandhamal, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, Christmas is usually a time of rejoicing. Not this year. On Christmas Eve, a rabble of hard-line, extremist Hindus, some armed with guns, others with knives, went on the rampage, setting fire to Kandhamal's small mud-and-thatch churches and chasing Christians out of their houses. By Boxing Day, according to the Catholic Archdiocese of Bhubaneswar, the casualty list ran to four Christians killed, and 600 houses, 55 village churches, five convents, three presbyteries, six hostels, two seminaries and a medical dispensary destroyed. The All India Christian Council, an umbrella group of Churches, describes the attacks as the worst case of anti-Christian violence in India since independence in 1947.
The violence left hundreds homeless, frightened, and sheltering in camps. Hindu extremists blamed Christians, saying a group had attacked a leader from the hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) group, but the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India claimed that the fighting was sparked by objections to a Christmas Eve show, believing it was designed to lure Dalits - formerly known as untouchables - into the Christian fold.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch was unambiguous in its appraisal. "For several years, extremist Hindu groups in Orissa have been conducting an anti-Christian campaign that has grown violent at times," it said in a report published on 29 December.
State authorities had failed to respond fast enough, it added, "leaving vulnerable groups at risk". Orissa has a history of anti-Christian violence. One of the nastiest incidents occurred in January 1999, when the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned to death in their jeep after a Bible class. In September 2004, 13 men were finally found guilt of involvement in the murders, after a trial lasting two and a half years, although seven were later released for lack of evidence.
India's Christian leaders say that antipathy to Christians has flourished right across India, with violent attacks and disruptions of church services. Hindu extremists justify their anti-Christian activities by claiming that a rapacious band of "alleluia wallahs" is sweeping across Bharat (India), forcing poor Hindus to convert and threatening India's Hindu identity. On 14 January the VHP called for a nationwide law against conversions to Christianity. Certainly, this violence in India has little do with theology. It has, instead, a good deal to do with prejudice and power politics.
In overwhelmingly Hindu but officially secular India, Christians are said to constitute less than 3 per cent of the population. Hindus make up 82 per cent and Muslims 13 per cent. Many, including several Christian leaders, believe these figures are conservative; indeed, the list of damaged buildings in Orissa, where Christians are said to make up 1 per cent of the population, suggests converts to Jesus are not so few in number.
There is little doubt that the overwhelming majority of converts are from the Dalit community. Although "untouchability" was abolished in 1950, it still persists throughout India. Dalits, who constitute more than 16 per cent of India's 1.1 billion population, are routinely ill treated and assigned the most degrading jobs, from clearing human excrement to scavenging through rubbish. There are regular reports that they have been barred from temples, beaten up, even killed on the grounds of their caste.
Hindu nationalists - a powerful political lobby in India that seeks to unite the Hindu population against Christian and Muslim "outsiders" - have long used emotional tales of Dalits being enticed away from Hinduism to mobilise support.
Under India's constitution, Dalits are entitled to affirmative-action benefits, including 15 per cent of admissions to universities and central-government jobs. Today, any Dalit who is found to have left Hinduism for Christianity or Islam loses these benefits. But there is a growing movement to restore them to converted Dalits; indeed, a bill to allow this is pending in parliament. Minority groups that benefit from affirmative-action programmes now worry that Dalit Christians may before long receive them too, so reducing their own chances of getting one of the reserved jobs. Right-wing Hindu groups like the VHP play on these fears, as no doubt they did in Orissa, which has a large number of "scheduled tribes", one of the groups entitled to benefits.
"It is all political," says Dr Abraham Mathai, general secretary of the All India Christian Council. "Hindu nationalists come to power by dividing the people of India."
Hinduism, unlike Protestant forms of Christianity, does not have a proselytising tradition. Instead what Hindu zealots can do is pass laws that make it illegal or extremely difficult for Hindus to leave the religion of their birth. At least seven Indian states have now introduced some form of anti-conversion legislation - including Orissa.
The most recent state in India to pass such a law was the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, and its example is revealing. Although the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the state in December, the law was passed under a Congress government anxious, say observers, to prevent the BJP winning votes on the back of such a law.
The title of the state's new Freedom of Religion Bill belies its terms. Anyone wishing to convert to another religion must inform the district magistrate 30 days in advance, or risk a fine of up to 1,000 rupees (£12). And if a person converts another, "by the use of force or by inducement or by any other fraudulent means", they may be imprisoned for up to two years, fined up to 25,000 rupees, or both. Tarsem Bharti, president of the Himachal Pradesh chapter of the All India Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Mahasangh (federation), which works with Dalits and tribal people, campaigned for the law. He argues that in Himachal Pradesh, at least, the Christian population is much larger than the official figures suggest.
Mr Bharti first became aware of the reach of missionaries, he says, when looking through his organisation's membership forms. "I saw that hundreds were describing themselves as ‘Hindu-Christians'," says the affable Mr Bharti, who admits that he is also a member of the BJP. "I discovered that Christian missionaries were luring poor people, telling them ‘if you pray before God all your troubles will be gone'. These people became trapped and we needed the new law to protect them." He does not, he adds, know the names of the Churches that proselytised in this way.
In Shimla, the state capital, a pretty town in the foothills of the Himalayas which was used by the colonial British as their summer capital, there is a constant reminder of Christianity in the shape of Christ Church, a grand neo-Gothic building with huge stained-glass windows that dominates the skyline. Today, the church belongs to the Church of North India, part of the Anglican Communion. But here, as in most areas of India, most conversion to Christianity takes place outside the mainstream denominations, in indigenous, largely invisible, house-based Churches.
"We are a growing and powerful Church," says the pastor of one such church, who asks that neither his name nor that of his Church be published. "We don't want any trouble. We aren't forcibly converting anyone; we're just telling them the truth."
Because his Church has no specific conversion rite - "conversion happens within a person's soul" - it is impossible, this pastor says, to inform the district magistrate of the intention to convert, as the new law requires. But what really bothers him is the use of the term "inducement" in the law and the way it is defined. "Inducement", states the law, "shall include the offer of any gift or gratification, either in cash or in kind or grant of any benefit either pecuniary or otherwise." "That could mean anything," protests the pastor. "In our culture it is traditional to give food. In Christianity, it is traditional to feed the poor."
He denies, of course, that his Church ever forces Hindus to adopt Christianity. And indeed, in Himachal Pradesh, no one has yet been arrested for this crime. In other states where such laws exist, there are no records of numbers for arrests or convictions, but reports by non-governmental organisations and media suggest that they are few. Church leaders from mainstream denominations and secular observers concur with this view.
But anti-conversion laws shape attitudes in the states where they are enacted. In Orissa, which has had an anti-conversion law since 1967, Hindu extremists had no difficulty inciting local Hindus to attack Christians on Christmas Eve. The Government, meanwhile, according to the Human Rights Group, "looked the other way".