ICC Note:
The Catholic Secular Forum, a Christian NGO based in Mumbai that monitors attacks on Christians in India, has reported that attacks on Christians in five election-bound states have spiked. The NGO went on to say that this is part of the normal BJP strategy that uses anti-minority rhetoric to “catch votes”. Religious freedom observers, including the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, have maintained that the religiously divisive rhetoric used by the BJP-led government coupled with the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of violence against minorities is one of the leading factors in the increase in attacks on religious minorities in India. Will this trend continue in these five election-bound states?   
01/23/2017 India (Hindustan Times) – The five states going to the polls this February and March recorded a spurt in attacks against Christians last year, said a non-government organization in a report that could reignite a debate on the alleged rise in persecution of minorities.
The Mumbai-based Catholic Secular Forum in its report, titled Indian Christian Persecution, said Uttar Pradesh registered an almost three-fold increase in cases of violence against people from the religious minority.
Less than 1% of India’s most populous and politically crucial state follows Christianity.
In Punjab, another state that will vote on February 4 for a new government, violence against Christians increased from just one case in 2014 to 11 in 2016.
The report said similar spikes were witnessed in Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa, a former Portuguese colony with a sizeable Christian population.
NGO chairperson MF Saldanha, who was a judge in Karnataka and Bombay high courts, blamed the NDA government for the spike in attacks on Christians.
“The type of repression started now marks a general pattern, of attacking minorities and the backward classes. The idea, I suppose, is to terrorize and subjugate, which is not what is expected in a democracy,” he alleged.
He accused the government of “following an ultra-aggressive policy”.
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