Christians will long remember Palm Sunday 2017 as the day that bombers struck two Egyptian churches, killing at least 45 people. On Holy Saturday, Coptic Pope Tawadros II described the victims as martyrs who are now serving as “ambassadors in heaven” for persecuted Christians. But the bombings in Tanta and Alexandria were not the only attacks on Christians on Palm Sunday. Some 3,000 miles away in India, Hindu fundamentalists disrupted church services in five separate states.
These intrusions did not generate anywhere near the same coverage. Understandably so: they claimed no lives. But they did leave local Christians badly shaken. The five incidents – in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu – followed a pattern. Hindu activists interrupted Sunday prayers and accused churchgoers of converting Hindus to Christianity. In Jahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, a mob roughed up an Evangelical pastor before handing him over to police.
