India — A teacher working in a village government school in India’s southern state of Telangana was suspended for allegedly packing Bibles in Christmas gift boxes and distributing them in the school.

The teacher, Gali Pullaiah, had distributed about 100 Christmas gift boxes containing assorted items, including stationery, water bottles, a small copy of the New Testament, and a card containing printed Christmas and New Year greetings.
Pullaiah had received these gift boxes from a Christian organization for distribution in the school. Pullaiah claimed he had taken due permission from the school head before the distribution.

When children took the gift boxes to their homes, their parents discovered the Bibles. Parents then complained to members of the Hindu nationalist political party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who quickly complained to the district educational authorities and the police.

The BJP workers then stormed into the school, detained the teacher, and filed a police complaint against him. They also pressured school authorities to press false charges against Pullaiah, stating he distributed the boxes without authorization. Students were also forced to return the gift boxes.

The moderate-leaning Indian National Congress party currently rules the state of Telangana. The Telangana government has also officially granted permission to Christians in many regions of the state to publicly celebrate Christmas.

Despite this, Hindu nationalists in many places are violently opposing Christians who are exercising their constitutional rights under Article 25 to practice, propagate, and practice a religion of their choice without causing public and moral nuisance.

Most government schools celebrate all local religious festivals and follow numerous traditions related to Hinduism, but Hindutva ideologues take prompt umbrage to any signs of propagation of religions like Christianity and Islam in both public and private educational institutions.

Pastor Nagireddy, who hails from the same village as Pullaiah, told an International Christian staffer that the teacher’s relatives were monitoring him to get him in trouble for his Christian faith. This incident moved Pullaiah’s relatives to get revenge on him.
The district education officer, meanwhile, conducted an inquiry and placed Pullaiah on suspension.
Sources:persecution

http://theendtimeradio.com

India — The United Christian Forum (UCF) has called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to establish a national-level inquiry to stem the alarming rise in incidents of violence against Christians in India.

In a Dec. 20 press release, A. C. Michael, UCF national coordinator and former member of the Delhi Minorities Commission, said a secretary-level official should lead the inquiry to investigate the persecution of Christians in India.

Modi leads a coalition government in which the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with Hindu has a majority and has ruled the country since 2014. The UCF report states that there has been an exponential increase in the number of incidents from 127 in 2014 to an all-time high of 745 incidents of violence against Christians by the end of November 2024.
These figures are derived from complaints received on the UCF toll-free helpline set up in January 2015 amid a disturbing surge in violence against Christians in India.

“Many other incidents may have occurred that were not reported through our hotline and, therefore, are not included in the total number,” the UCF stated.

According to the UCF, the helpline service was designed to help those in distress, offering guidance on how to approach public authorities and secure legal remedies in the face of escalating persecution.

UCF also stated that, once again, no data on attacks on Christians and churches in the northeast state of Manipur has been included.

“Last year, the tragic violence, bloodshed, and the demolition of over 200 churches in Manipur were also not reflected in the UCF figures,” UCF stated.

Sectarian violence has been raging in Manipur since May 2023, with Kuki and Meitei tribals fighting against each other in gun battles and the destruction of religious places, especially those belonging to Christians.

Meanwhile, the Christian forum lamented that a petition filed with the Supreme Court, demanding strict action against anti-Christian vigilante groups engaged in violence against Christians in India, has not been heard again since the initial hearings in 2022.
Sources:persecution

http://theendtimeradio.com

Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who governed the South Asian country for two terms and liberalised its economy in an earlier stint as finance minister, has died. He was 92.

Singh, an economist-turned-politician who also served as the governor of the Central Bank of India, was ailing and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi late on Thursday.

His health deteriorated due to “sudden loss of consciousness at home”, the hospital said in a statement. He was “being treated for age-related medical conditions”, the statement added.

A mild-mannered technocrat, Singh became one of India’s longest serving prime ministers, holding the office from 2004 to 2014 and earning a reputation as a man of great personal integrity.

Singh adopted a low profile after relinquishing the post of prime minister. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who succeeded Singh in 2014, called him one of India’s “most distinguished leaders” who rose from humble origins and left “a strong imprint on our economic policy over the years”.

“As our Prime Minister, he made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives,” Modi said in a post on X. He called Singh’s interventions in parliament as a lawmaker “insightful” and said “his wisdom and humility were always visible”.

Born in 1932 into a poor family in a part of British-ruled India now in Pakistan, Singh studied by candlelight to win a place at Cambridge University before heading to Oxford, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the role of exports and free trade in India’s economy.

He became a respected economist, then India’s Central Bank governor and a government adviser but had no apparent plans for a political career when he was suddenly tapped to become finance minister in 1991.

During that tenure to 1996, Singh was the architect of reforms that saved India’s economy from a severe balance of payments crisis and promoted deregulation and other measures that opened an insular country to the world.

Singh’s ascension to prime minister in 2004 was even more unexpected.

He was asked to take on the job by Sonia Gandhi after she led the centre-left Indian National Congress party to a surprise victory. Italian by birth, she feared her ancestry would be used by Hindu-nationalist opponents to attack the government if she were to lead the country.

Riding an unprecedented period of economic growth, Singh’s government shared the spoils of the country’s new-found wealth, introducing welfare schemes such as a jobs programme for the rural poor.

In 2008, his government also clinched a landmark deal that permitted peaceful trade in nuclear energy with the United States for the first time in three decades, paving the way for strong relations between New Delhi and Washington.

However, his efforts to further open up the Indian economy were frequently frustrated by political wrangling within his own party and demands made by coalition partners.

In 2012, his government was tipped into a minority after the Congress party’s biggest ally quit their coalition in protest at the entry of foreign supermarkets. Two years later, Congress was decisively swept aside by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

At a news conference months before he left office, Singh insisted he had done the best he could for the country.

“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or, for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament,” he said.
http://theendtimeradio.com