Senior Policy Officer of the Christian Persecution charity Open Doors, Mathew Rees, revealed that in countries around the world Christians are violently abused because of their faith. The Open Doors charity release an annual list of countries where persecution of Christians is most prevalent – the surprising addition to the top 10 this year was India. Dr Rees explained the rise in Hindu extremism and strict national identity conformity pressures have resulted in the nation seeing a substantial increase in harm towards followers of the Christian faith.

“India is the biggest democracy in the world and it is also a country that is looking to put Man in space by 2022.“Unfortunately, what we have seen, again it is interesting because it is really in the last five years that we have seen this escalation and we have seen a really toxic environment about the way people are talking about the what it means to be Indian.

“So, unfortunately, there is a lot of Hindu extremism that has developed in India and it is also a lot of nationalism and connecting national identity of being Indian with Hinduism.”

The Charity worker added that a narrative Christianity was not part of the Indian identity was beginning to develop with a lot of high profile politicians which then filtered down into society.

Dr Rees closed by saying: “The idea of being from India and therefore having to be Hindu or being Hindu and therefore being from India has grown.

“Obviously this then filters down into society.

“We have kind of been left with a situation whereby a lot of people see Christians and people who are not from the Hindu faith as a kind of second class citizen.

“If you are a second class citizen then you have different levels of rights and you have a different level of extent at which you might be entitled to certain things.

“Unfortunately at the extreme end, this is manifesting itself through violence and beatings.”

The top five countries for Christian Persecution according to the charity was North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.

India stood tenth on the list, just over the war-torn nation, Syria.