When Ramesh Baghel’s father, Subhash, died in early January, Baghel wanted to bury him next to his grandfather and other Christians in their ancestral village of Chhindwada. Subhash had pastored a church there for 33 years.
Yet right-wing Hindu groups, with the support of authorities, objected to having a Christian buried in the village in Chhattisgarh state, Baghel said. For 20 days, Baghel kept his father’s body in a hospital mortuary in the city of Jagdalpur, 34 miles away, while he petitioned the Chhattisgarh High Court and then the Supreme Court of India for permission to bury his father.
The High Court rejected Baghel’s appeal, citing concerns that it “may cause unrest and disharmony in the public at large.” At the Supreme Court, Justice B. V. Nagarathna advocated for Baghel’s right to bury his father in his village, stating that the village council’s attitude represented “hostile discrimination” that betrays India’s principle of secularism. However, another justice claimed that a Christian cemetery was available 12 miles away from Baghel’s village.
Despite the split ruling, the judges decided to go with the latter option, so Baghel buried his father on January 27 at the Christian cemetery. Police observed the burial to ensure he followed the court’s ruling.
“It was my father’s [dying] wish to be buried alongside his father,” Baghel said. “What kind of a son am I that I could not fulfill his last wish?”
Baghel’s case illustrates a broader pattern of discrimination against tribal Christians all over the country. In recent years, Hindu nationalist groups have intensified pressure across Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, where Baghel’s village is located, and other parts of India, such as Odisha state. They use organized campaigns and a network of WhatsApp groups to quickly mobilize against religious minorities. Villagers ostracize Christians, boycott their businesses, and prevent them from being buried in the villages unless they convert.
The right-wing Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates organized mobs to target Christian converts in Bastar. RSS is a far-right paramilitary organization that seeks to reshape India into a Hindu nation. It made inroads in the Adivasi, or tribal, community in Bastar through the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA), a nonprofit founded in north Chhattisgarh in the ’50s. The VKA now operates in 50,000 villages and runs schools, health camps, and disaster relief programs, building its influence and reframing tribal faiths as branches of Hinduism.
In the past, tribal Christians could worship peacefully and bury their dead in their own villages. Surender Yadav, a Christian leader in Bastar, said things worsened for Christians after 2018. That year, India’s centrist India National Congress (INC) party ended the 15-year rule of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Chhattisgarh.
“The BJP may have lost power, but the groups targeting Christians became more organized and emboldened,” Yadav said.
Since then, anti-Christian attacks, such as forced conversions, escalated sharply as the RSS-affiliated Janjati Suraksha Manch (Tribal Protection Front) ramped up its activities.
Beginning in 2022, the Janjati Suraksha Manch held rallies across tribal regions of Chhattisgarh, demanding that Adivasi who converted to Christianity or Islam lose their official status as part of a Scheduled Tribe—a legal designation in India that grants historically marginalized Indigenous communities access to affirmative action in education, government jobs, and political representation.
Speaking at a rally in Narayanpur, former BJP legislator Bhojraj Nag declared, “These people are using the benefits meant for tribal communities, but at the same time introduce themselves as Christians and Muslims. They should not get a reservation, and we are prepared to take this matter to the court.”
The surge of anti-Christian violence in the Bastar region coincided with the widespread use of smartphones and WhatsApp during COVID-19. This empowered Hindu nationalist groups to better monitor and target Christian communities, particularly in remote areas they previously struggled to reach.
In Bastar, another RSS affiliate called Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Council of Hindus, built a wide-reaching communication network on WhatsApp, organizing its thousands of members into different chat groups. Larger groups chats included members from nearly 50 villages who coordinated smaller, localized group chats. This setup allows for swift coordination and real-time updates across the region.
When VHP members receive word that a Christian has died, they spring into action on WhatsApp, organizing mobs to prevent burials unless the family converts to Hinduism, according to Rest of World.
“Christians died in villages earlier, too, but we got to know of it two or three days after the incident,” Hari Sahu, a VHP leader in Jagdalpur, told Rest of World. “Even if we found out sooner, it took a couple of days and a lot of work to mobilize people. But with WhatsApp, what took us three days now takes us less than an hour.”
Throughout Bastar, Christian activists have documented multiple cases where villagers forcibly exhumed bodies of Christians buried on private land. Such desecrations represent a broader Ghar Wapsi (“homecoming”) campaign aimed at converting tribal Christians to Hinduism.
For instance, Rest of World reported that when Jaldhar Kashyap’s mother died, a mob of more than 50 people appeared at his home and prevented access to the burial ground. “We were given an ultimatum,” Kashyap told the publication. “If we wanted to carry out her funeral in the village, we had to abandon Christianity.”
So Kashyap and his father sat in their dirt courtyard for a conversion ceremony. Although this restored his standing in the community, the cost to his conscience has been severe. “I can’t turn back now,” he said. “I did what I had to do.”
VHP members also record videos of Christians being forced to convert to Hinduism and share them through WhatsApp, further normalizing and encouraging these actions.
The campaigns follow a consistent pattern that the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (Save Chhattisgarh Movement) calls Roko, Toko, Thoko—“stop, harass, and beat up.” Village leaders summon Christian families to community meetings where they threaten them with eviction from their villages if they do not renounce their faith.
In Chandagaon village in Narayanpur, local council members repeatedly summoned 12 Christian families to village meetings throughout October and November 2022. They accused the families of weakening village traditions and dishonoring local deities and pressured families to abandon their faith. When the Christians refused, villagers began restricting their access to farmland and threatened them with eviction.
Then, on December 18, mobs launched coordinated attacks across multiple villages. In Chandagaon, a crowd of about 100 people ransacked a Christian family’s home and locked them out. In nearby Gohda village, 10 other Christian families faced similar violence. The attacks displaced more than 1,500 Christians, who were left to fend for themselves in the bitter cold of the Christmas season.
For those who resist conversion, the consequences extend far beyond burial rights. In Chhindwada and surrounding villages, Hindu nationalist groups enforce comprehensive social and economic boycotts against Christian converts, including Baghel.
In February 2024, Chhindwada’s village council passed a resolution imposing a fine of $60 USD on anyone who made purchases from Baghel’s grocery shop or interacted with his family or the other Christian family in the village.
“Our neighbors would not even offer us basic courtesies for fear of being penalized,” said Baghel. “No daily-wage laborer was allowed to work in our agricultural land, and we have been facing this total boycott for almost two years now.”
When Baghel’s father passed away, his family grieved without community support. In many Indian villages, it is customary not to cook in the house of the bereaved until after the funeral, with neighbors stepping in to provide meals. But after Subhash’s death, only a Christian family from neighboring Junapada came forward—walking more than a mile each way to bring food three times a day. During his memorial service, Hindu neighbors who wished to pay their respects stayed home, afraid of being fined, Baghel said.
Similarly, Shobharam Kashyap’s family (of no relation to Jaldhar) in Bastar faced severe consequences after refusing to convert during a relative’s funeral in June 2023. Villagers boycotted the family, refusing to sell groceries to Kashyap, which forced him to travel miles to buy food.
“Attackers destroyed and stole my crops, causing financial losses equivalent to my annual income,” said Shobharam Kashyap. Eventually, a mob attacked him while he prepared to plant rice, leaving him with serious injuries that required hospitalization. They ultimately forced him to leave his village permanently.
According to Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, attacks on Christians in the state have increased dramatically in recent years. Nationally, the United Christian Forum documented an increase from 127 attacks in 2014 to 834 in 2024, with 165 cases recorded in Chhattisgarh alone.
These increases occurred after BJP regained a majority in Chhattisgarh’s 2023 elections, where the party secured 54 of 90 assembly seats. Before the elections, Amit Shah, minister of Home Affairs, claimed that the then-incumbent INC government had misused state power to convert impoverished tribal members to Christianity.
Despite clear evidence of coordinated violence, authorities have rarely held perpetrators accountable. Degree Prasad Chouhan, president of the Chhattisgarh chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, observed that laws are often applied unevenly, with Christians facing harsher treatment than Hindus.
For most of Bastar’s Christians, the struggle continues. Yadav, who has helped many victims over the years, says activists like him are struggling as the number of cases mounts. “We are not as networked as right-wing groups are, so we struggle to respond properly after an incident has taken place.”
The Supreme Court’s split verdict in Baghel’s case has laid bare the widening gap between India’s constitutional promise of religious freedom and the lived reality of its Christian. Although the court ordered the Chhattisgarh government to set aside designated graveyards for Christians across the state within two months, nothing has been done.
Baghel plans to petition the Supreme Court to force the state government to act. For him and other tribal Christians in Bastar, their faith has been passed down through the generations and is a vital part of their identity.
“Our fight is not just for rights on paper but for the right to live, worship, and be remembered on our own terms,” said Baghel.
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