Persecuting Faith

On 27 January, the Supreme Court delivered a crucial judgment on a case involving the burial of a Dalit Christian pastor in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district. The deceased, Subhash Bhagel, was denied burial in his village. His son Ramesh, who took the matter to court, faced disappointment from both the Chhattisgarh High Court and the apex court, which ordered that the burial should take place at a Christian graveyard—over twenty kilometres away from their village.

This was not the first instance of Christian converts being denied burial in the region. In October 2022, the dead body of Dulari Padda, a Christian Adivasi, was dug up by residents of Khalebedi, a village in Kondagaon district. Similarly, in November, in Kanker district’s Kurutola village, the dead body of Chaitibai, an Adivasi woman, was also reportedly exhumed. According to a Newslaundry report, the incident took place in the presence of Bhojraj Nag, now a state legislator from the Bharatiya Janata Party, and Santlal Dugga, the president of the Gondwana Samanvay Samiti’s Kondagaon chapter, among others. Both are Adivasis—one affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, while the other is part of a tribal organisation.

There has been a spate of violence against converted Adivasis over the past few years. In January 2023, a church was vandalised in Narayanpur district over alleged conversions. A month earlier, according to an NDTV report, Christian protesters from 14 villages of the Adivasi-dominated district claimed that they were assaulted and evicted from their home because of their religion. In December 2022, a fact-finding committee formed by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism and other organisations found an alarming trend. In that month alone, attacks on 18 villages in Narayanpur district and 15 villages in Kondagaon district, displaced about a thousand Christian Adivasis. During my visit to these villages in Bastar, two years ago, I found that a majority of the conversions had taken place among the poorest in the community, often after deaths of family members due to illness. After failing to find support from richer members of the community and the village, many families found support in Christianity.

The history of anti-Christian violence in Chhattisgarh goes back to the early 1950s, when the RSS established its first Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in the Christian-dominated district of Jashpur. Balasaheb Deshpande, the VKA’s founder, had encouraged physical intimidation and violence against Christians and potential converts. In 1954, the Madhya Pradesh government, under Congress rule, formed the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, after complaints had been made about “illegitimate means” adopted by missionaries to lure people either “forcibly or through fraud.” Their report pointed out that efforts to reconvert Adivasis have been underway in the region. Both the RSS and the Congress, therefore, tried to stop the growing influence of Christianity in the region.