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Indian Prime Minister Claims Election Victory | NEW DELHI, India - May 16, 2009 | Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared victory in India's national elections on Saturday, saying voters had given the Congress party-led coalition a "massive mandate." View Entire Article (Time)
Indian Prime Minister Looks Set for Second Term | NEW DELHI, India - May 16, 2009 | Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared set for a second term as his Congress party and its allies scored a decisive lead over their opponents on Saturday in a vote count after the country's monthlong general elections. View Entire Article (CNN)
National Consultations on Christian Approach to Indian General Elections 2009 | NEW DELHI, India - March 3, 2009 | The Church in India has called upon all people, especially Christians, to fully take part in the political democratic process, including exercising their voting rights in the coming General Elections. View Entire Article (ANS)
Official: More Than One Million Child Prostitutes in India | NEW DELHI, India - May 11, 2009 | Around 1.2 million children are believed to be involved in prostitution in India, the country's federal police said Monday. View Entire Article (CNN)
"Untouchable" Seeks Power in Indian Election | LUCKNOW, India - April 14, 2009 | Her father was a low-level government clerk from a caste so poor and uneducated it was shunned for centuries as "untouchable." Her mother was illiterate. But the daughter they named Mayawati sought a different destiny. She wanted political power, diamonds and - she'll tell you - a chance to help India's forgotten people. She wanted to build monuments to her heroes, memorials that would swallow up acres of this ancient city. Eventually, she got all that. Now, as the nation of 1.2 billion people heads into a national election starting Thursday, she has an even larger goal: to run all of India. View Entire Article (Associated Press)
Indians Start Voting in Monthlong Elections | NEW DELHI, India - April 16, 2009 | It takes a month to elect a new leader in the world's largest democracy. View Entire Article (Washington Post)
The Untouchable and the Unattainable | RAJGARH, India - April 16, 2009 | WAVING regally, with fingers and thumb touching, Mayawati greets 100,000 of India’s poorest people, and they wave back. Smiling sweetly, the 53-year-old chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) plonks her handbag, then herself, onto a blue armchair facing the crowd, and awaits presents. The local candidate for her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) proffers an elephant—the BSP’s electoral symbol—made in silver. Then Miss Mayawati stands and urges the people of Mirzapur, a district of eastern UP that participated in the first round of India’s month-long general election on April 16th, to vote for the elephant. “UP is ours, now we are going for Delhi.” View Entire Article (Economist.com)
India | February 20, 2009 | Human settlement in South Asia began about 9,000 years ago, when people started farming in the Indus valley along the modern-day India-Pakistan border. Since then, the story of what we now call India has been one of successive waves of arrivals and invaders, many of whom ended up assimilating into the existing society: Aryans from central Asia, who literally wrote the books from which Hindu religion and culture derives; Persians; Greeks; Muslims. View Entire Article (Time Magazine)
UN Investigator Upholds Civil Rights for Dalits of All Faiths | GREENWOOD VILLAGE, COLORADO - February 12, 2009 (ANS) -- Two Christian human rights watchdog groups are welcoming the newly-released report of the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ms Asma Jahangir, on her fact-finding mission to India in 2008. View Entire Article (Assist News Service, ANS News)
God's Moment for India | February 2, 2009 | Last year on a hot, humid evening in Warangal, a city in southern India, about 8,000 locals gathered in a giant sports field while what seemed like 100,000 insects buzzed in the night sky. Most of the people were Hindus, but this did not stop them from visiting a Christian event hosted by a local evangelist, Harry Gomes, who is based further south in the city of Coimbatore. View Entire Article (Charisma Magazine)
Slumdog Millionaire's India: My Sobering Reality | January 23, 2009 | The movie Slumdog Millionaire and the Booker Prize-winning novel White Tiger have highlighted the non-shiny part of India. Far from exploiting poverty, these are stories about India that demand a global response — especially for the sake of the children. This is the India of 80% of the population — the India of the slums, the outcasts, the exploited, and of abject poverty. The India where Dalit, tribal, and poor children are sold into the sex trade. Where fully healthy children are maimed into becoming beggars. Where children become victims of religious communalism. And where the elite classes keep them out of prosperity and development by not being willing to change a system that disenfranchises the children of the downtrodden. View Entire Article (Sojourners)
A Surprisingly Peaceful Christmas in Orissa | ORISSA, INDIA - January 5, 2009 (ANS) -- Despite months of ongoing attacks and dire threats that Christmas would be disrupted by violence, Christians in Orissa, India, were able to peacefully celebrate Christ’s birth. Gospel for Asia leaders in Orissa report that both the state government and India’s federal government stepped in to make sure that Christians could enjoy the holiday safely. View Entire Article (Assist News Service, ANS News)
In Outcry Over Siege, Two Indias Emerge | MUMBAI, India – December 8, 2008 | In a dilapidated neighborhood along Tulsi Pipe Road, a shoe store proprietor, David Ronel, recalled the series of seven train bombings in 2006, one of them at the Mahim Junction station, just across from his shop. He and other merchants along the dusty street rushed to carry out the injured and the dead. View Entire Article (Washington Post)
India Demands Pakistan Take 'Strong Action' | MUMBAI, India – December 1, 2008 | India demanded Pakistan take "strong action" against those behind the 60-hour siege that left at least 172 people dead, as new details emerged Monday about the gunmen and the survival training that enabled them to thwart Indian commandos. View Entire Article (MSNBC)
In Just Minutes, Mumbai Was Under Siege | MUMBAI, India – November 30, 2008 | It was just after dinner, about 9 p.m., when the fishermen noticed four strangers come ashore on an inflatable raft. Moments later, another four pulled up to the boat launch in a speedboat. Only two got out of the boat. They were young, muscular men, with backpacks and bulky duffel bags slung across their shoulders. View Entire Article (Washington Post)
Mumbai Siege Ends, Indian Forces Kill Last Militants | MUMBAI, India – November 28, 2008 | Indian officials have brought a terrorist attack on the city of Mumbai to an end, killing the last militants inside a luxury hotel that was the final battleground of a terrorist siege.The Voice of America News Service (VOA) reported that police say combat operations ended at the Taj Mahal palace hotel Saturday, more than two days after groups of militants launched coordinated attacks against multiple targets across the city. About 150 people were killed in the attacks, including 16 foreigners. View Entire Article (ANS)
India Under Attack | MUMBAI, India – November 27, 2008 | The sheer scale and audacity of the assault were staggering. Gangs of well-armed youths attacked two luxury hotels, a restaurant, a railway station and at least one hospital. Gunfire and explosions rang through Mumbai overnight on November 26th-27th and through the next morning. As The Economist went to press, more than 100 people were reported to have been killed, and the toll seemed likely to rise. Several foreigners, including some from America, Japan and Britain, were among the dead. So were over a dozen policemen, including Mumbai’s chief counter-terrorism officer. Up to 100 hostages, including selected American and British guests, were alleged to be held hostage inside a hotel. View Entire Article (Economist.com)
Wave of Coordinated Bombings Kills 61 in India | GAUHATI, India – October 30, 2008 | A series of coordinated blasts tore through India's volatile northeast on Thursday, killing at least 61 people, wounding more than 300 and setting police on a frantic search for any unexploded bombs, officials said. View Entire Article (MSNBC)
At Least 25 People Killed in India Fireworks Blast | NEW DELHI, India – October 23, 2008 | An accidental explosion ripped through an illegal fireworks factory in western India, killing at least 25 people, including 12 children, just days before one of India's biggest festivals. View Entire Article (MSNBC)
US Legislators Concerned About Violence Targeting Christians in Orissa | HYDERABAD – September 6, 2008 | Seven United States members of the House of Representatives sent a letter on Sept. 4, 2008, to India’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ronen Sen, expressing concern about attacks on Christians in Orissa state. Also, on Sept. 3, 2008, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom called for action to stop the violence and accountability within India.View Entire Article (AICC)
India's Central Government Responds to Spreading Attacks on Christians | HYDERABAD – September 19, 2008 | Since August 23, 2008, over one hundred churches were burned and thousands of Christians attacked in six states across India. Last night, India’s central government implemented Article 355 of the Indian Constitution to halt the spread of violence, specifically in Orissa and Karnataka states. Tomorrow, September 20, 2008, the All India Christian Council (aicc) will sponsor a rally in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, to urge civil society and Indian citizens of goodwill to insist the state governments arrest people behind the anti-Christian violence.View Entire Article (AICC)
Flood Victims Face Caste Discrimination | BIHAR, India – September 12, 2008 | Hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless after floods hit the Indian state of Bihar last month. Some of the victims face the additional hardships that come from being members of the low caste dalit community. Rajan Khosla of the charity Christian Aid has been meeting some of them in the village of Mirzawaa, where 500 families live in temporary shelters. View Entire Article (BBC News)
Bihar's Annual Sorrow | DELHI, India – September 4, 2008 | AS NEW ORLEANS survived the worst Hurricane Gustav could throw at it, the scale of devastation wrought by another natural fury was becoming horribly apparent. On August 18th the monsoon-swollen river Kosi, a Ganges tributary that flows from Nepal to India, burst an embankment on the Nepali side of the border and flowed into a channel it had abandoned a century earlier. The water gushed into hundreds of villages in the Indian state of Bihar, killing an unknown number and displacing more than 3m, many of whom have been marooned on roofs, trees and tiny islands of dry land. Hundreds of thousands are living in makeshift camps.View Entire Article (Economist.com)
