India, April 13 -- It is a nice, warm, abiding myth, and was possibly true also in the first two decades of India's independence. The myth that the then-ruling Congress party and the Indian Christian community had a love bond that no opposition group could break.

True, perhaps, when Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister, and till about 1975, when, in the passion of the Emergency she had declared in 1975, Indira Gandhi brought in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, dangerous even then and now totally weaponised by the Narendra Modi Government.

In the interregnum, the Christian community, especially those outside Kerala and in particular converts from Dalit and Tribal communities, have learnt to their cost that governments, and politic...