In its bid to deflect Washington’s tariff push on a wide range of European products, the European Union (EU) is showing renewed keenness to conclude the protracted Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India, which officially began in 2007, even overlooking its repeated censure of New Delhi for the “escalating violence and discrimination faced by Christian communities” across the country.

Under the Treaty on European Union of 1993, the EU has included clauses in its international agreements prescribing ‘appropriate measures’ against a party, including suspension of an agreement, if it fails to uphold human rights and democratic principles.

Church leaders in India caution vigilance to the community particularly around Christmas, and petition authorities for stronger protection and action against perpetrators.

Days after a visiting high-level EU delegation conferred with Indian counterparts over a week in November, Members of the European Parliament and human rights advocates participated in a meeting on Targeted Violence against Christians in South Asia organised at the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels on 4 December by the Christian legal advocacy group, ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) International.

Participants expressed concern that ever since India’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power in 2014, attacks on minorities – Muslims, Christians and Dalits - have been widespread and systematic.

This year too, as it celebrates the Christmas season, the Christian minority – estimated at around 32 million, or 2.2 per cent of the overall 1.46 billion population – is apprehensive about anti-Christian violence and rhetoric by RSS-affiliated Hindu extremist groups like Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Hindu Mahasabha.

Hindu vigilantes routinely deem Christmas festivities as provocations to attack churches and Christians, including priests and nuns, disrupt congregations, destroy property, and storm schools to tear down Christmas decorations, vandalise classrooms and terrify teachers and pupils found celebrating.

The EU has been particularly alarmed by the ethnic violence raging in Manipur since 2023 between the majority Hindu Meitei tribals and the minority Christian Kukis. Over 250 people have lost their lives, a thousand others wounded, some 67,000 displaced, and hundreds of churches and thousands of homes ransacked and destroyed. Many women have been raped before being........

© National Herald