When we present Jesus to our non Christian friends, here in India, accepting Jesus as one of their god is easy, because they have 33 million god adding another one does not hurt them at all. But when we say Jesus is the only way and He is the only one God and you need to abandon other gods if you need to follow. That’s where people have to really make a big decision. When people make that decision they encounter one or all of the following type of persecution.
1. Excommunication from family and relatives. You lose your identity and share in the property, no one talks to you and cannot participate in any family function. Many times physical abuse and ill treatment takes place.
2. Excommunication from community / village. This means you will not able to take water from the public well / bore well, cannot buy things from the local store, cannot buy milk from the milk man and no one would talk to you in the entire village. It is a way of forcing you to leave your house and get out the village. It’s is a big humiliation, eventually people have to leave the village as they cannot survive even if they are rich.
3. Persecution from fanatic groups. People from other faith come and attach and burn properties and people. People are killed, raped and forced back to come back to their original religion.
4. Losing government benefits / organized persecution. The movement you became Christian, the government stops all the benefits, includes scholarship in education, job, promotion in housing and etc. There are few states in India has anti conversion law, that put the Christians in danger of paying fine up to $3000 or jail for three years, if you convert people to Christianity. There is also organized attack on Christians. See the link below. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/world/asia/13india.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
http://www.conservapedia.com/Anti-conversion_legislation_in_India
In the above background, if someone comes forward to take baptism, it is a huge thing. They have experienced Jesus in a personal way that makes them bold and they are ready to face any problem for taking, public confession of faith in Jesus through, Baptism. Brother Varadaraja Perumal, who was a Hindu Priest, is leading people to follow Jesus. His testimony is here.
He is currently undergoing the PDT training. He has completed Level 2 training and recently he have lead a group of people to take baptism. I had the joy of participating in the event. Here is the video.
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