Prayers Needed After Attacks on Christians in Northeastern India

Prayers are needed for Christians in and around the city of Imphal in India, near the border with Myanmar, where more than two dozen Christian churches have reportedly been burned down in recent days. 

“We are asking that for now, you pray fervently for their safety and that they will be spared from harm,” wrote Tom Seggelke, president of the Kuki Christian Church Mission, late this week. “Our God is a God of miracles, and the Kuki people need a miracle.” 

“The [KCCM] office building, staff buildings, and the library on the campus [of Trulock Theological Seminary] have all been burned,” he wrote a little later. A Christian leader’s house also had been burned, along with “a newly built church near her home. . . . The good news is, as far as we know, no one has lost their life.” 

Veteran Christian educator Paul E. Boatman called Khongsai Christian Church’s new building, which was burned, “a wonderful demonstration of the indigenous maturing of the church.” Boatman had visited the church.  

Additionally, a hospital run by Kuki Christian Church also was burned to the ground, media reported. 

The burning of the churches, vandalism to property, and violence is occurring in the state of Manipur in northeastern India. It initially was unclear what precipitated the violence or who exactly was involved. (Some initial reports said it was Hindus and Muslims.) It now appears the attacks are a result of the growth of Hindu nationalism among the dominant Meitei community, and resistance to them by established tribes in the region, some of whom have a large Christian population. 

Seggelke provided Christian Standard with numerous links to online articles that describe a sequence of events that began in late April and culminated in the rioting that started May 3. On that day, an all-tribal student group organized a march to protest the reclassification of the Meitei ethnic group to the “Scheduled Tribe” category. Such a change would have major implications for land distribution and governmental jobs. 

The Kuki people are largely Christian and live on both sides of the border with Myanmar.  

“This [violence] affects all those we support there,” Seggelke wrote, “including the orphanage, the college, seminary and hospital with nursing school.”