India’s largest forum for Protestant and Orthodox Churches on March 24 launched weeklong prayers for a new government. “Constitutionally, the Indian state cannot have any appeasement to any religion whether majority or minority. The contemporary tendency to polarize people in the name of religion, for political gain, has to be countered,” says a statement from the Policy Governess and Public Witness of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI).

About 80% of the Indian population is Hindu. Muslims make up almost 15% and Christians are 2.3%.

The Indian Constitution upholds the country as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic that does not discriminate people on the basis of religion, caste, language, gender or ethnicity. “Indian secularism is not the same as that which we see in the Western countries. Our secularism is neither antagonistic nor religiously charged. It is neutral to all religions but respects all religions and non-religious ideas,” the NCCI statement explains.