Christians in Meghalaya State in India have overturned a government proposal to make Good Friday a normal working day. However, in other parts ,of the country there have been a series of violent atatcks over the course of the Easter period.
Christians in India have overturned a government proposal to make Good Friday a normal working day.
In Meghalaya, a state in north-eastern India, Christians account for 75 per cent of the state’s population of three million. Nevertheless, the State's coalition government declared that Good Friday would be a normal ‘working day’. The move was withdrawn after widespread protests from Christians who argued that they were being denied the religious freedom guaranteed to them under the constitution.
“We are happy that the government officials acted promptly and reversed the controversial order,” a senior Christian leader told World Watch Monitor.
The proposal is believed to have come from the Hindu nationalist BJP - which is a partner in the coalition.
Certainly they have a history of attempting to 'ban' Christian festivals. In 2017, the BJP-led federal government chose Good Friday to launch ‘Digital India Day’. In 2016, the BJP-led government in Gujarat in western India, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was forced to retract its bid to make Good Friday a ‘working day’, while in 2015, India’s second-most populous state, Maharashtra, launched Good Governance Day and asked its employees to conduct training programmes on Christmas Day. Both Good Friday and Christmas Day are national holidays in India.
“This episode shows that the BJP will do anything, wherever they are in power,” said P.B.M. Basaiawmoit, former Vice-President of the National Council of Churches in India. “We have to be on the alert.”
While Christians are celebrating a victory in Meghalaya, elsewhere the Easter week saw a number of brutal attacks against Christians:
These examples are just some of the many hundreds of incidents of violence, abuse and discrimination which Christians face in India on a daily basis. India has risen to number 11 on the Open Doors 2018 World Watch List. Radical Hindu groups are increasingly enjoying impunity when they harass Muslims or Christians.
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