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.

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.