A simple request may, at times, allude to a complicated reality. Christian leaders across the Northeast urged fellow Christians last week to vote with a clear and informed conscience ahead of the assembly elections in Meghalaya and Nagaland. This would mean upholding the principles of truth, justice and fairness taught by their faith and refusing to be allured by false promises to remain alert to constitutional freedoms and elect leaders committed to the unity and good of the community and the nation. The exhortation came against a background of growing violence against the community, disruption of worship and desecration of churches, and eviction of tribal families under the guise of clearing encroachments on forest land. This gathering could be regarded as a forerunner to the protest of some 2,000 members of the community along with bishops and other leaders in Delhi last Sunday against the hate speeches, humiliation, violence, undue arrests in so-called ‘anti-conversion’ drives, eviction — in Chhattisgarh — upon refusal to convert to the majority religion and other forms of oppression that the community faces.

Attacks against the community rose by 400% from 2014 to 2022. This could not have happened without State blindness, if not indulgence. Uttar Pradesh heads the six states with the greatest number of targeted incidents, as in most cases of faith-based or gender violence. The prime minister’s endorsement of UP’s chief minister during the 2022 assembly elections after the latter’s first five years of violence-inducing reign was visibly full-hearted. The Christian community will be sending a memorandum to the president of India regarding the growing violence against it and ask for a national redressal commission to address the fallout. The community’s protest and the memorandum are unmistakeable indicators of the sickening of India’s democracy and secular spirit. They suggest that a huge number of India’s citizens have overcome their polite or fearful silence to speak up against active hate and unpunished crimes. That their individual predicaments did not matter is undemocratic. Oppression of minorities by a dominant group makes nonsense of equality in every sphere. Turning to the president is symbolic: one segment of citizens wishes to show its loss of trust in the ruling dispensation.