Question: How could God allow such cruel things to happen?

Question: How could God allow such cruelty to befall mankind, such as the ignorant millions in India suffering starvation, pain, disease, etc., and brainwashed into a false religion?

Response: I sense the pain of your heart. There are some key words in your important question; the first is “allow.” This is not the world as God wants it to be or made it to be; it is the world that man has made in his rebellion and that God has allowed.

Why would God “allow” sin, suffering, idolatry, etc., all of which will lead to eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire? The biblical answer is clear: He has given man the power of choice. Without free will, we could neither love one another, nor God, nor respond to His love for us. Love is the highest expression of God’s character and image in the man whom He created. Obviously, love must come from the heart, or it is not love. The ability to love would be meaningless without the ability not to love and even to hate: obedience is meaningless unless one has the option and ability to disobey.

Rejecting free will, the Calvinist says that this evil world is exactly as God predestined and brings to pass. But the very conscience God has given us will not allow such a wicked charge against God who “is love” (1 John:4:8He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
See All...,16), who is “good to all: and his tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm:145:9The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
See All...), and who desires “all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy:2:4Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
See All...). That many will suffer in the Lake of Fire for eternity is not what God desires for anyone!

Your next key word is “ignorant.” On the contrary, God has given each person the witness of creation and conscience. No matter at what time in history or in what place and society anyone is raised (even in the pagan Far East, like India or China, where one-third of earth’s population lives), the Bible says that “they are without excuse” (Romans:1:19Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
See All...,20). No one is totally “ignorant”—and to those who obey the light God has given them, more light and grace will be given. But those who reject the light of creation and conscience that God has given to all are given up by God to their own willful perversions.

Your third key word is “brainwashed.” In fact, no one is a pawn of Satan without first having rejected the light God has given them in creation and conscience. Even then, Satan may need to do little, because “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (James:1:14But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
See All...).

The world in Noah’s day was so far from what God desired it to be that “it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” to such an extent that He said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth...” (Genesis:6:6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
See All...,7). Indeed, God destroyed everyone except one man and his family, Noah, who “found grace in the eyes of the LORD” (v 8).

Jesus said that in the last days just before His return, conditions on the earth would be as they were “in the days of Noah [and] in the days of Lot” (Matthew:24:37-39 [37] But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [38] For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, [39] And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
See All...; Luke:17:26-30 [26] And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. [27] They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. [28] Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; [29] But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. [30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
See All...). So we know that the world of sin and suffering you describe is not God’s doing. Has He allowed it? Yes. But the only other alternative would have been to destroy mankind. We are glad that He did not, because many, like Noah, have found grace by accepting salvation in Christ Jesus—and there is a new universe coming, entirely without sin or suffering!