The report notes that police and other enforcement agencies were slow to “effectively counter societal attacks, including attacks against religious minorities.”

“Despite government efforts to foster communal harmony, some extremists continued to view ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities, particularly at the state and local levels, as a signal that they could commit such violence with impunity, although numerous cases were in the courts at the end of the reporting period.”

It further states say that despite the federal government’s efforts to reject Hindutva, the nationalist ideology espousing Hindu religious and cultural norms above all others, “it continued to influence some government policies and actions at the state and local levels.”

The report also said that while the UPA government was not accused of violating religious freedom, human rights activists criticized it for alleged “indifference and inaction in the face of abuses committed by state and local authorities and private citizens.”

Lack of Effort

There is a general feeling among Christians that the UPA government is not making efforts to check Christian persecution.

Dayal pointed out that the federal government’s proposed law against religion-related violence may curb anti-Muslim violence, but it would be toothless against anti-Christian attacks as it seeks to check only “large-scale” incidents.

“We do not come under the scrutiny of its defining and screening measures,” Dayal said. “The Christians are dispersed. The violence against them is also dispersed. It may be just one case a year in one village across the country. But there are 400,000 villages, and the total violence may be as much.”

He added that the incidents of persecution may be spread out, but they are not isolated. “If 1,000 isolated cases occurred in one country, they fit a pattern.”

Some Christians said they feel that any attack on religious minorities in a democratic country like India is an attack on freedom.

“Particularly attacks on Christians are not in retaliation against some committed crime, but purely because they practice a different religion from the majority,” Father Dominic Emmanuel, spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Delhi, told Compass. “These attacks cannot be tolerated at all. The government should do its utmost to stop them.”

Copyright 2007 Compass Direct News