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”.
On December 21, 2021, several videos surfaced showing several prominent Indian figures, including a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, calling for citizens to attack Muslims. The calls for violence originate at two separate events in Delhi and Haridwar on December 17 and 19.
On December 18, with tensions already high within the Sikh community of the Indian state of Punjab, the second post-sacrilege lynching took place in so many days. A man in the Kapurthala district was supposedly seen “disrespecting” the Nishan Sahib (the Sikh flag) by locals. Harkamalpreet Singh, a police officer at the scene, further explained that the man tried to steal the flag.
On Saturday, December 18, 2021, a man was beaten to death after attempting to steal a ceremonial sword that is kept next to the Guru Granth Sahib, Sikhism's holy book, during prayers inside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. The event was caught on camera in the video below.
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.
