2.3% and Under Siege: The Myth of Christian Conversions in India

On July 26, 2025, two Christian nuns were detained at Durg station in Madhya Pradesh. The charges against them were serious, but the matter was simple: they were accompanying three women who wanted to be trained as professional nurses. An all-party delegation led by Vrinda Karat of the CPI(M) was not easily permitted to meet them. The charges related to human trafficking and attempted conversion. While the Chief Minister of the state insists on the charges of human trafficking and conversion, the parents of the women stated that they had given permission for their daughters to go in search of better job opportunities.

Harassment Normalised in Remote Areas

This intimidation of Christians—on one pretext or another—has been on the rise over the last 11 years, particularly in BJP-ruled states. Various reports from local and international agencies have documented the increasing harassment of Christians in India. Prayer meetings are attacked on the pretext that they are being organised for conversions. Pastors and nuns in remote areas are increasingly susceptible to being harassed or assaulted on one ground or another. Bajrang Dal activists are particularly aggressive in taking direct action against vulnerable pastors and nuns in these distant regions.

Denied Even in Death: Burial Rights Under Threat

Another issue that has come to light is the denial of burial rights to Christians. They are being prevented from burying their dead in shared or Adivasi burial grounds. For example, on April 26, 2024, in Chhattisgarh, a 65-year-old Christian man died in a hospital. His grieving family faced further distress when local religious extremists blocked them from burying him in the village and demanded their “reconversion” to Hinduism. The family was able to conduct the burial according to Christian customs only under the protection of about 500 police officers, which ensured peace in the village.

“Every day, we have four or five attacks on churches and pastors, and every Sunday it doubles to roughly ten—this we have never seen before,” said a persecuted Christian leader of a major denomination in 2023. According to him, the main source of Christian persecution in India is the Sangh Parivar, a group of Hindu nationalist organisations that includes the influential paramilitary group RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ruling BJP, and the Bajrang Dal, a violent youth wing.

The major organisations Open Doors (at the global level) and Persecution Relief (at the Indian level) are doing vital work in monitoring these atrocities, as mainstream print and television media are either silent on the issue or misrepresent the facts.

Data Confirms Escalation in Hate Crimes against Christians

In its 2020 report, Persecution Relief noted: “Hate crimes against Christians in India have risen by an alarming 40.87 percent… That increase came despite a complete nationwide lockdown that lasted three months to stem the spread of Covid-19 infections.” According to Open Doors, India ranked 11th on the 2024 list of countries of particular concern in terms of Christian persecution.

Sudhi Selvaraj and Kenneth Neilson rightly observe: “This (anti-Christian) violence is… characterized by a strong convergence of direct, structural, and cultural forms of violence, involving vigilante attacks and police complicity, but also an increasingly coercive use of state law, coupled with the production of a wider cultural common sense about the anti-national essence of non-Hindu religious minorities.”

The broader picture of the rise in anti-Christian violence across diverse forms has become increasingly clear over the past few decades. It is not that such violence is new—it has long existed as an undercurrent, especially in remote areas. In contrast to anti-Muslim violence, which often takes on horrific proportions and garners wide media attention, anti-Christian violence has typically remained more insidious and less visible. Except for the high-profile incidents like the burning of Pastor Stains and the Kandhamal violence, it has continued largely unnoticed.

The first major incident was the brutal hacking of Rani Maria in Indore in 1995. This was followed by the horrific killing of Pastor Graham Stains in 1999, an Australian missionary working with leprosy patients in Keonjhar, Odisha. He was accused of conversion activities. The attack against him was led by Bajrang Dal’s Dara Singh, who incited people to violence. Stains and his two minor sons, Timothy and Philip, were burned alive while sleeping in an open jeep.

Then-President KR Narayanan described the attack as belonging to “the world’s inventory of black deeds.” The NDA-BJP government, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, at first dismissed the incident as a conspiracy by foreign powers to defame the government. However, the Wadhwa Commission later identified Rajendra Pal, alias Dara Singh of Bajrang Dal, as the main conspirator. He is currently serving a life sentence in prison.

A Long History of Demonising Christian Missions

Prior to this, the RSS had established Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams to promote the belief that Christian missionaries were using education and healthcare work as a front for conversions. These ashrams were set up in regions like Dangs (Gujarat), Jhabua (Madhya Pradesh), and Kandhamal (Odisha). Figures like Swami Aseemanand and Swami Laxmananand propagated anti-Christian sentiments in these regions. At the same time, cultural-religious events like the Shabri Kumbh were organised to convert Adivasis to Hinduism.

In these Adivasi areas, Shabri—a symbol of destitution—was transformed into a goddess figure, and Hanuman was promoted as the ideal devotee of Ram. Temples were erected in their names. Amidst all this, what is often forgotten is that Christianity has ancient roots in India. The apostle St. Thomas is believed to have established a church on the Malabar Coast in AD 52. Despite nearly two millennia of Christian presence in India, Christians make up only 2.3% of the population today. Interestingly, in 1971, Christians made up 2.6%—a figure that has actually declined—while propaganda continues to claim that conversions are happening on a massive scale through force, fraud, and allurement.

Several states have enacted anti-conversion laws that further intimidate missionary workers.

MS Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, had written in Bunch of Thoughts that Muslims, Christians, and Communists are the internal threats to the Hindu nation. After years of anti-Muslim violence, the anti-Christian agenda is now becoming more visible and dangerous.