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The Easter baptism video didn’t cause a stir when it first appeared online. It was shared by Christians at the Wesleyan church in the small village of Dandi in Gujarat, India, to celebrate the baptism of seven brothers and sisters in Christ. The ceremony and the video were both simple. The Christians rejoiced as they have since a woman named Ela Burman made the first profession of faith in Dandi more than 80 years ago.
Then, after the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions eased, the video mysteriously started circulating again. This time, it came with a warning.
“This is a wakeup call to all Hindus,” the edited video said. “If we do not wake up and act now, the entire village will become Christian.”
The next day, the baptism video made headlines in local papers and the story was picked up by several TV stations. The day after that, police showed up and took the church’s pastor, Daniel Dandiwala, into custody.
“I think it was planned,” Dandiwala told CT.
Dandiwala hadn’t done anything illegal, so authorities had to release him. But that didn’t end the harassment. Local authorities seized all the church’s account books and files and, according to leaders at the Evangelical Fellowship of India, attempted to challenge the church’s long-established legal standing.
Then right-wing Hindu nationalist groups organized a march, gathering around 1,000 people to protest conversions. A temple was constructed right next to the church, opening its doors in January 2023. Hindu religious leaders seemed to start targeting the 80 young people who attended Wesleyan prayer meetings.
By late summer, the temple had convinced about a quarter of them to “revert” to Hinduism.
“They are engaging in a form of rivalry with the church,” said John Parmar, the current Dandi pastor. Some of the young people, he said, “have been deeply swayed by right-wing ideology and a few of them have even developed a negative ...