Missionaries have been working towards improving the poor in India for decades. Some are foreigners, and some are Indians. The foreigners leave their life of comfort to come to an unknown place and try to share the Gospel of Christ while serving the poor. They learn a new language and get acquainted with a people and culture entirely different from their own. But that isn’t the biggest challenge they face. It is the Hindutva nationalist groups who are out to kill and murder them.
They never accepted the Indian missionaries sharing the Gospel in their own country. India is the tenth most dangerous country for Christian missionaries who share the Gospel of Christ. In 2008, for instance, Christians in Kandhamal, Odisha, faced mass persecution. In a series of riots, Hindu nationalists killed over 100 people and injured thousands. Even today, the Christians of Kandhamal face violence at the hands of the Hindu nationalist groups, albeit on a smaller scale. Yet the consistency is scary, as is the increase of anti-Christian violence all over the country.
This points out that foreign missionaries can never expect to be safe in the country. In 1999, a Christian missionary named Graham Staines was burnt alive with his two sons, Philip and Timothy. On the fateful night of January 22-23, Graham Staines was sleeping with his two children inside a wagon outside a church. Suddenly, a mob came in and attacked the wagon. They poured petrol on the wagon and set fire to it, killing all three people inside.
The news made headlines. The killing had occurred in Manoharpur, Odisha. Within a few days, everyone knew where Manoharpur was because of the incident. It highlighted the dangers faced by the Christian community because of Hindutva nationalists.
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