The persecution of Christians in India has grown deadly enough to concern people in the United States.
On Jan. 20, Pr Gideon Periyaswamy was found hanging from the thatched roof of his church in Tamil Nadu on the day he and his church members had planned to hold fasting and prayer.
"This pastor, Pastor Gideon, was harassed and harassed, beaten over the last six months and then, of course, he's found brutally murdered by these Hindu extremists. And the government of India, which is number 11 ... on the *World Watch List, needs to realize they are part of this," said David Curry, president of the U.S. based Open Doors as he shed light on the grisly death of the pastor.
Periyaswamy was the pastor of the Maknayeem Church in Adayachery village, Kanchipuram District.
His body showed signs of welts, bruising and torture, the church members who found him dead reported. The assailants hung Periyaswamy up from the ceiling to make it look like a suicide, and that's exactly what the local officials and police ruled it as.
However, the death threats and physical abuse the pastor endured in these past months at the hands of Hindu extremists is a strong sign that his death was an execution.
Persecution of Christians has been increasingly rising in India over the past few years even as the country climbed from number 15 on the World Watch List to number 11 in a matter of just one year.
"They keep inciting this racial and religious violence against Christians...It's a nationalism, it's going to spread and it is spreading into Nepal which wasn't on our World Watch List but jumped all the way up into the high 20s this year because of that same thing: Hindu and Indian national pride," said Curry.
"The ambassador regularly lies about this subject. The Prime Minister distances himself from it. But his prime people are on TV regularly saying they're going to push every Christian out of India by 2021," he added.
