Hindus

Christians in India face persecution “in all areas of public and private life,” according to a study by the Christian Aid group Open Doors.

Indian government officials expect “several million” people to gather in northern India’s Uttarakhand state over the next several weeks as part of the Hindu Kumbh Mela pilgrimage.

Police in the northern Indian town of Kushinagar halted a marriage ceremony between two Muslims last week and arrested the groom after local residents reported the union to authorities, falsely claiming that the bride was once Hindu, Indian news site The Wire reported on Sunday.

Twenty-three people from five Christian families in southwestern India converted to Hinduism on November 29 in a ceremony presided over by Indian parliament member Anant Kumar Hegde, a local leader representing India’s ruling, Hindu nationalist BJP party, the Times of India reported on Tuesday.

India’s most populous state passed a law on Tuesday establishing a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone found guilty of using marriage to force someone to change religions.

E-commerce giant Amazon said on Tuesday it had removed listings of products including underwear and doormats emblazoned with Hindu sacred symbols from its overseas websites.

A government advisory body in India recently launched a campaign to boycott Chinese-made plastic lights for the upcoming Hindu festival of Diwali in favor of domestically manufactured oil lamps made of cow dung.

An Indian group known as Hindu Sena (Hindu Army) in Delhi on Tuesday conducted fire rituals and chanted verses for U.S. President Donald Trump’s victory in the November 3 presidential election.

A Muslim mob vandalized and burned down at least ten Hindu households and two Hindu temples in Cumilla, Bangladesh, on Sunday after a local man reportedly praised French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments against Islamists’ violent response to satirical cartoons on Facebook.

The only known Jewish citizen in Afghanistan says that the country’s future political system “should ensure the protection of all minorities in the country and their humanitarian rights,” Afghanistan’s TOLO News reported on Thursday.

The State Department accused Indian officials on Wednesday of permitting, and sometimes promoting or participating in, mob violence against Christians, Muslims, and other religious minorities in its annual religious freedom report.

The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh announced on Tuesday increased penalties for crimes against cows, considered sacred by Hindus, including up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to 500,000 Indian rupees ($6,607), the Times of India (TOI) reported.

Christian groups in Pakistan accused the country’s Muslim leadership of denying religious minorities pivotal economic aid to survive the ongoing lockdown to contain the Chinese coronavirus, the Christian website Aleteia reported on Thursday.

The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is tolerating, or engaging in, the violent and “particularly severe” persecution of Muslim and Christian minorities in India, a bipartisan U.S. watchdog group reported this week, echoing several other assessments.

Protesters fought with police in New Delhi, India, on Monday over India’s highly controversial citizenship law. A policeman and two civilians identified as Muslims were killed just hours before the arrival of visiting U.S. President Donald Trump.

Pakistani authorities arrested a Hindu principal over the weekend after “blasphemy” allegations against him prompted a mob to ransack a temple and damage a school and homes belonging to the minority group.

India’s Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday hailed his decision to revoke New Delhi-administered Kashmir of its autonomy last week as “path-breaking.”

Lawmakers in India passed a bill Tuesday that strips the statehood of the Indian-administered portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Lawmakers in India this week outlawed the centuries-old practice that allows a Muslim man to instantly divorce by saying the word “talaq” three times in his wife’s presence.

A mob of alleged Hindu extremists beat a group of Muslim students playing cricket and forced them to chant Hindu slogans in northern India, the Hindustan Times reported this week.

One can point to a slew of conservative nationalist world leaders, in addition to India’s Narendra Modi, including Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, and Bibi Netanyahu, who have a sense that they are leading their country, starting with a majority of their people.

“Violence and terrorism against people of all faiths must end and it must end now,” Trump said, as the audience applauded.

The registrar general of India announced on Monday that some four million people have been removed from citizenship rolls in the northeastern state of Assam, which borders Bangladesh.

Contents: Sri Lanka declares state of emergency after Buddhist-Muslim violence; Growing violence by Sri Lankan Buddhist hardliners against Tamils; North Korea says it will denuclearize if the regime is ‘secure’

Al-Qaeda’s Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) wing is urging its supporters in India to target Hindus and their religious places, reports the Times of India (TOI), citing a recently released propaganda video titled “Saffron Terror” and intelligence sources.

India is struggling to contain a growing epidemic of violent assaults, some of them lethal, against meat-eaters by self-appointed Hindu cow vigilantes.

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Contents: India forced to delay Kashmir elections after large surge in violence; Hindu activists push for ban on cow slaughter across India; Why is a US carrier group strike force going to the Korean peninsula?