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Religious Persecution in the World’s Largest Democracy
Attacks on churches and mosques are only one symptom of the Hindu nationalism gripping India.
By Jetti A. Oliver
January 24, 2025
The Evangelical Church of India has several churches, seminaries, and health centers throughout the country. Broadwell Christian Hospital in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, has cared for the people in the region for 114 years. But when its annual convention in February 2023 drew huge crowds, a local official reported an illegal mass conversion event to the authorities. Doctors, pastors, and other hospital staff came under scrutiny and several were arrested. Officials at an unaffiliated Christian university fifty miles away faced harassment from government officials. The hard evidence? Gideon Bibles had been placed in the hospital wards. According to local police, these are a clear sign of proselytizing, which is illegal under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion laws. Although some of the Christian doctors and hospital staff were acquitted by India’s Supreme Court in September 2023, others remain in custody.
India is a secular, socialist, democratic republic with a parliamentary system of government. It is also the land of Gautama Buddha, who taught self-denial, and Mahatma Gandhi, who taught nonviolence, and a land where the gospel of Jesus Christ, who taught love of neighbor and enemy, has been preached for two thousand years. For more than seven decades its people have found ways to share a land that today is roughly 80 percent Hindu, 14 percent Muslim, and 2 percent Christian, with Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and others making up the remaining 4 percent.
Photograph by Friedrich Stark / Alamy Stock Photo.
At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, a new India was born with an immense challenge before it: to build a nation where people of diverse cultures, faiths, and languages could live in peace and harmony under self-rule. The pains of partition followed immediately, as Pakistan was involved in a conflict that would cost two million lives. Independence leaders Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, B. R. Ambedkar, and others made great sacrifices to draft and approve a national constitution. And when we speak of India’s founding, we can’t forget the various social protagonists of pre-independence days, such as Dr. William Carey and Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who bore the brunt of unruly mobs, suffered torture, and even laid down their lives for the cause of liberation.
My nation remains indebted to the father of the Indian constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar, and the Constituent Assembly he led. The resulting constitution aims to ensure freedom in its fullest sense: the equality and fraternity of all citizens without discrimination on the basis of faith, culture, language, regional origin, caste, or gender. It also prescribed the strictest adherence to the rule of law. With the exception of the state’s protective policy it shares with other social democratic nations – to intervene in favor of the weaker party – laws are to be applied equally to all citizens.
But in recent years greed has become more apparent, political ambitions have taken a front seat, and the ends are justifying the means. Power-mongering is daily fare, with more focus on the next election than the next generation. This disease has not been confined to partisan politics but has infected all four pillars of democracy: the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches, as well as the media. It would be unfair not to recognize the principled few in each of these spaces who have stood, and continue to stand, for justice. In a democracy, however, the majority rules while the rest are often ignored, resulting in these outliers seeking personal favors from officeholders as the only recourse for assistance. This creates a climate of survival of the fittest and leads to authoritarianism, which has now made inroads into democracy to the detriment of the national well-being. The result, one writer has quipped, is a new definition of democracy: “buy the people, far the people, off the people.”
There used to be a notion that religion should be separate from politics. Later, some argued that religion is nothing more than dharma (justice). Since politics without dharma cannot be good, religion should be allowed into politics, disregarding the nation’s secular charter. However, as we have seen, if dharma is caste-driven, oppressive, dominating, gender-biased, and exploitative, it will not bring about governance that fosters the peace and prosperity of all citizens.
In addition, offices of leadership should be earned through a fair election process. Unfortunately, flouting democratic norms and grabbing power through oppressive tactics has become increasingly common, in India and elsewhere. Moreover, to a large extent there is nothing like a free press, because all major media outlets are either owned or unduly bankrolled by the ruling class. Where there is room for constructive criticism, there will be space for a creative tension that works toward justice through jurisprudence. But the suppression of opposition leads to autocracy.
In recent times, the misguided fear of Christian evangelism by powerful Hindu nationalists has resulted in the passing of draconian anti-conversion laws in seven Indian states. The anti-conversion laws now on the books in some states have wreaked havoc on minorities and disadvantaged communities. Christian institutions and individuals are wrongly accused and harassed. Warrants are issued for their arrest, and then the targeted individuals languish in jails for months without trial. Judicial interpretations that please the rulers appear to be increasing. Official narratives that distort the facts echo the interests of the powerful. The administrative bureaucracy is completely at the disposal of the rulers to persecute those who resist. Through censorship, the common people are losing their voice.
Religion-based exclusion goes back decades. Because of past injustices, universities, employers, and even the government reserved affirmative action quotas for Dalits, members of the lowest caste. But a 1956 presidential order specified that the reserved slots for “Hindus” were only for people of the Hindu faith. Historically, “Hindu” was an ethnic and cultural designation for the people living on the north side of the Indus Valley. But over time, “Hindu” became the name for a religion, excluding all Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Buddhists, in spite of them being culturally and ethnically Hindu. The change, of course, was hotly contested: the quotas were originally caste-based and sought to remedy centuries of Dalit oppression. However, lobbying groups managed to enlist the support of Sikh and Buddhist Dalits in excluding Christian and Muslim Dalits. This is still a bone of contention among cultural Hindus of Dalit origin.
Meanwhile, church ministries in health care, education, and social services, which seek to address pressing needs among underserved populations, are often misunderstood as secret conversion tools. This misinterpretation of the Christian conviction of being “compelled to serve” others, which has continued unabated, has led to ostracism, persecution, imprisonment, and even death. In 1999, the Australian missionary Dr. Graham Stuart Staines and his two young sons, Philip and Timothy, were burned alive. Dr. Staines had been serving patients affected by Hansen’s disease in the state of Orissa. More recently, Fr. Stanislaus Lourduswamy, SJ, was tortured and denied compassionate release in spite of his advanced Parkinson’s disease. He died in prison in May 2021. He was targeted for his work with tribal peoples in central India and was accused of inciting violence, although the evidence seems flimsy. And in May 2023, ethnic and religious violence broke out in Manipur between the nontribal, nationalist Hindu Meitei and the tribal Christian Kuki. The federal government seems deaf to the pleas of the Kuki, and the unrest continues.
In the days when my country’s constitution was respected, the so-called principles of dharma (derived from the scriptures but written in a subtle way to the advantage of the writers) were kept at a distance. Because of this, earlier administrations made progress against various evils in our society such as untouchability, the exclusion of women from education and employment, and rules that forbade people from choosing their cuisine, faith, and vocation. The infringement of minority rights was declared punishable by law.
Today, however, certain elements in the governments of various states are on an all-out campaign to bring back dharma. The ruling party’s ideologues are attempting to rewrite history to align with their goals of Hinduizing the nation. The growing intolerance, faith-based discrimination, intercommunity hatred, and partisan governance need to be challenged and legally addressed. How can we be considered a humane society if a human who slaughters a cow to eat must be lynched? The rules dictating what to eat, what to wear, whom to marry, and which God to worship should be examined by an independent judiciary and an independent fourth estate, without which the rights of the nation’s minorities will continue to deteriorate.
Hinduism is widely known as a tolerant religion, and there is no problem when people follow it in an openhearted manner. But when it becomes a violent, nationalist political force, it becomes a danger to a pluralistic nation’s peace and security. Those across the nation who respect political secularism, take pride in pluralism, and sympathize with minorities need to speak out and resist the current unjust governance. We must strive for justice and peace so the fruits of democracy can be enjoyed without fear by all citizens of this great nation.
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Anthony James
It seems Amit chooses to ignore the evidence mentioned not just in the article, but the news reports that we see even here in the US. Religious persecution is real in India, even if the vast majority of the people would not support it, has the poll he mentions seems to indicate. Marginalized peoples all around the world, even including now here in the United States, are coming under increased persecution. It is something that we as people of faith should be alarmed about.
DeVonna Allison
I read with interest, the letter by Amit Majmudar concerning the article by Jetti A. Oliver’s article, “Religious Persecution in the World’s Largest Democracy". In contrast to Mr. Majmudar’s denial that Christians face religious persecution in India, a simple internet search presents numerous articles, from organizations both secular and religious, reporting that between 2022 and 2024, there has been a 102% increase in reported instances of religious persecution in India. (From 413 in 2022 up to 834 in 2024) (The News Minute.)Many more incidences go unreported due to Christian’s fear of retribution from their neighbors and local authorities. The attacks against Christians in India are not occurring in a vacuum however– the rise in the number of attacks coincides with the rise in India of Hindu nationalism and a government that encourages, obliquely, different forms of violence against minorities by denials, by both state and non-state actors, that these attacks are happening and on the increase. Attacks are often referred to as “land disputes” in the media, if they are reported at all. Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, told The Wire, “We have seen increasing communal tensions in India, fanned by hate speeches from political leaders promoting a majoritarian Hindu ideology, that incite violence,” Sadly, India is not alone. At the very heart of India’s problem with religious persecution is the growing global phenomenon of the rise of far-right extremism. From the recent US elections to governments across the globe, there is a marked and obvious rise in the acceptance and embracing of the idea of “otherness”, the division of peoples into an “us and them” ideation. Politicians touting a “return to traditional values” are drawing in record numbers of supporters. Why? There are many theories, but the one I find most telling is that the rapid growth of the internet has fueled a cross-cultural expansion that the world has never experienced before. Borders have fallen, virtually, as people around the globe are exposed to the ideas, lifestyles and traditions of different cultures. In my own country, the U.S., for example, waves of immigration have been met, historically, with equal waves of resentment and suspicion toward those new immigrants. Irish people fleeing the Potato Famine from 1845-1852 experienced this xenophobia, as did Chinese people during the Gold Rush of 1848-1859 and Eastern Europeans escaping the Nazis between 1933-1945 during World War II. In each of those instances immigrants faced an often reluctant but gradual assimilation within established society. Not so these days. The internet has ushered in a new wave of cross-culturism whereby differing societies are connecting across physical borderlines, bringing about rapid influxes of ideologies, religions and traditions. Many people, I suspect, feel their personal, national identities and heritages are in danger of being usurped by this rapid virtual melding. In a word, we’re scared. According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute, countries around the world spent $2.24 trillion on defense in 2022, the latest year for which data is available. Imagine what our world could be like if even a fraction of that amount were dedicated to the development of dialog and building respect between the many cultures of the world. Perhaps then we could learn to support one another as different but equal partners with a shared humanity. In lieu of a mainstream global movement toward non-marginalizing societies, our responsibilities as Christ-followers becomes even more important. We may not be able to affect global or national change as individuals but as a group, as faith-builders, we can take steps in our homes, our neighborhoods and, dare I say it, our congregations toward a more inclusive society. We cannot achieve any success, however, until we are first willing to admit the problem exists. Peace.
Dale Tuck
Thank you Amit. I always need to draw one significant comment made by Mahatma Gandhi, I love your Jesus Christ but I do not like you Christians. Christians are the most unforgiving and obnoxious of peoples, it is true. We have the superiority of the "truth" and it goes to our heads making us really evil. Christ taught us to love one another but a hateful, contemptuous, superior people can never love. That is impossible. But, we simply do not understand what we are doing. It is really hard to understand, really hard. Pray for us Amit.
Shoshana Piatek
Well said and we’ll written, Amit Majmudar. I am a Christian Jew living in the USA. In the area where I live is a University and many of our neighbors in the complex are young students from India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Having recently discovered my genetic roots going back centuries and seeing a map of migration by my ancestors, I see locations in India, Bangladesh and Nepal! This was shocking to me as my heritage is mostly German, Scottish and English. At any rate, after reading the data on my DNA sequence and discovering these genetic roots I am very interested to learn more about these places where some of my long ago ancestors lived. Perhaps you could recommend a BOOK IN ENGLISH about the overall, basic history of the region which includes the countries I have mentioned? Thank you again.
Amit Majmudar
As someone who has contributed poetry by invitation to Plough in the past, and as a practicing Hindu, I was surprised to see the biased elisions and misrepresentations in Jetti A. Oliver’s article about Christianity in India (“Religious Persecution in the World’s Largest Democracy”).
Anti-conversion measures in India date back to the era in which European Christians governed it. The British Raj discouraged evangelization after the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion in order to keep the peace. They understood that aggressive proselytization would disrupt South Asia’s delicate social weave of religious faiths. In any case, modern India’s anti-conversion laws are rarely enforced. That is why some states in eastern India have been entirely Christianized; Nagaland, for example, has a higher percentage of Baptists than Mississippi.
In any case, the supposed persecution of Christians by Hindus is overstated to the point of mendacity. The Catholic Church is the second largest landholder in India, second only to the Government of India itself. This is the same Catholic Church whose Portuguese adherents perpetrated the Goan Inquisition, literally torturing Hindus into conversion over the course of centuries. Dozens of shrines and temples were demolished by the Portuguese Catholics, too; the future St. Xavier proudly recorded himself doing so in his letters home. In several Indian states today, Hindu temples are controlled and taxed by the government; zero Christian churches suffer such extractive exploitation and lack of autonomy.
Furthermore, many Christian-run educational institutions in India receive government funding. Some Indian states, like Mizoram, offer government scholarships exclusively to Christian students. Often government-funded Christian schools reserve seats for Christians at a far higher percentage than their share of the population—even though their funding comes from a mostly Hindu taxpayer base. Mostly Hindu tax revenue sustains the massive budget of India’s Ministry of Minority Affairs (which covers all of India’s non-Hindu faiths, not just Christianity). Right across secular India’s borders, the Islamic Republics of Pakistan and Bangladesh have no such dedicated Ministry to protect their Hindu and Christian minorities. Regionally, there are few better places to be Christian than India—which is why India currently harbors Christian refugees from Pakistan, but Pakistan harbors no Christian refugees from India.
The largest poll ever conducted on freedom of religion in India, the Pew poll of 2021 (seven years into Narendra Modi’s tenure as Prime Minister), established that 89% of Indian Christians feel they are “very free to practice their religion.” For reference, a nearly identical percentage of Hindus—91%—feel that way. A larger, more statistically significant difference was found when Indians were asked whether respecting all religions was “important to being truly Indian.” 85% of Hindu Indians answered in the affirmative...compared to only 78% of Indian Christians.
Mr. Oliver’s article gives us all some insight into that gulf. Missionary propaganda has poisoned Indian Christians against a religion that has been a gracious host to Christians since late antiquity—as well as Persian Zoroastrians and Baghdadi Jews fleeing Islam. Remember that proselytization, traditionally and to this day, does not involve simply “selling” one’s own religion through preaching and charity. It involves defaming the target religion. In India, anti-conversion laws at worst result in a fine or a few years in jail. Right across the border in Pakistan, the penalty a Christian would face for defaming Islam is death. Mr. Oliver can publish his defamatory distortions while continuing to live and work, unmolested, in contemporary India; India's two neighboring Muslim-majority countries, as any student of the region knows, are not nearly so forgiving. Until this asymmetry is noted and praised, any account of South Asia's religion and politics is incomplete.
This article’s publication is particularly disheartening to witness at a time when anti-Indian and anti-Hindu sentiment is at an all time high on social media platforms and in public policy. I am shocked that Plough has added its voice to those of white nationalists and toxic online immigrant-haters—but most crucially, that it has not fact-checked the article against the reality of Pew polls, historical precedents, and modern-day realities. I believe Plough’s nature and mission is better than this, which is why I have taken the time to write this letter. I can only hope that you share it, in its entirety, with your readers.