Several villages in central India have outlawed the open practice of Christianity – a move of questionable legality that worries church leaders who say it has already encouraged anti-Christian violence.
The village of Belar, in Chhattisgarh’s southeast district of Bastar, convened a village assembly on July 6 and passed a resolution banning all non-Hindu religious activities.
Two months earlier in the Sirsiguda village, also in Bastar district, delegates from about a dozen villages passed a resolution outlawing the outward practice of minority faiths. The resolution ‘bans religious activities such as prayers, meetings and propaganda of all non-Hindu religions’.
