'Hostile environment for Christians': Proposed amendment to India law may lead to seizure of church properties

Overseas funding for Christian mission work in India could be inhibited by a proposed amendment to a law surrounding foreign funding.

The amended Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill would allow the Indian government to seize the assets of any organization that has its FCRA license blocked or that has a lapsed license.

The FCRA license is what permits NGOs in India to accept foreign funding.

Joseph D’Souza, head of the All India Christian Council, said, “This is a dangerous and deeply alarming crisis, with immediate and potentially irreversible consequences.”

Critics of the new law fear it will be used by Hindu nationalists to seize Christian properties, particularly those meant for the benefit of Dalits and other marginalized groups in India.

Release International accused the Indian government of seeking to exert control over Christian charities and mission organizations by limiting their access to foreign funding.

The group noted that since the BJP came to power in 2014, over 20,000 FCRA licenses had lapsed or been canceled, cutting off foreign funding sources for those impacted.

Debate on the proposed amendment has been delayed to the June-August session of parliament. Release International called on both local and international Christians to do all that they could to oppose the bill.

The group’s local partner said in a statement, “This legislation is a deliberate effort to enable the state to take over ecclesiastical property, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities built over decades of global philanthropy, marked by sacrifice.

“For more than 50 years, the sacrificial offerings of ordinary believers — from Brazil and South Africa to Mexico and Australia — have been the foundation of social upliftment for India’s most marginalized.”

Paul Robinson, CEO of Release International, said that the proposed amendment reflects an increasingly hostile environment for Christians in India.

He pointed in particular to anti-conversion laws active in a number of states. The laws, while officially meant to protect people from forced conversions, more often than not seem to actually serve as a pretext to persecute Christians and other minority religions that threaten Hindu dominance. No one has ever been prosecuted for using force or coercion to convert someone to Hinduism.

This article was originally published at Christian Today