On December 22, 2021, 14-year-old Arzoo Fatima, a girl who was kidnapped and forcibly married to a 44-year-old Muslim man, has agreed to return to her parents after being away from them for over a year. The agreement carries the condition that she is allowed to continue to practice Islam while being raised by her Catholic parents.
Sunita Devi, a Dalit woman who was hired to be a school cook in Sukhidhang government inter college (Secondary school), was fired after students refused to eat her food. Devi supposedly had no issues on her first day. The day after, however, 44 out of the 60 students, with support from their parents, refused to eat the school food and began bringing food from home.
Devi was hired in early December. The temporary position only paid Rs. 3000 ($40.23 USD) a month.
On December 23, 2021, during the winter assembly of the legislative body of the state of Karnataka, India, the controversial Karnataka Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion Bill 2021 was successfully passed. The bill explains that “No person shall convert or attempt to convert either directly or otherwise any other person from one religion to another by use of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means or by marriage, nor shall any person abet or conspire for conversions”.
Anti-Christian violence is on the rise in India, much of which occurred in Karnataka. Especially on the eve of the winter session of the assembly in Belagavi, Southern India. Basavaraj Bommai, Chief Minister of Karnataka, hinted at the possibility of banning religious conversion altogether.
On December 14th, local Indian police in Vadodara City began investigating accusations of forced conversion by the Makarpura facility for Missionaries of Charity (MOC), the charity famously started by Mother Teresa in 1950. The charity was started in Vadodara, in the Makarpura area of the state of Gujarat, which is also the home state of the Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
On Monday, December 6, a mob of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) members, two notoriously militant right-wing Hindu groups, attacked St. Joseph’s School in Ganj Basoda, India. The incident happened around 12:10 at noon when more than 300 protesters started gathering outside the school’s compound.
The attack happened while the school was administering exams for their grade 12 students.
A Tweet posted on November 30 by the user Rakesh Prakash showed people praying over a pothole in Bangalore city, Karnataka, India. They surrounded the pothole with flowers while two priests performed religious ceremonies.
On Saturday, November 27, Vishesh Dhuria, director and founder of Curtain Call, received a letter from the Ashokanagar police office. The police officers of the Ashoknagar in Bangalore city requested Dhuria and his production to cancel Munawar Faruqui’s show.
