Anti-Christian Violence in India

It is reasonable to argue that the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party [hereafter BJP] to relative supremacy in Indian politics over the course of the last few years bears a direct relationship to the considerable, even dramatic,increase in violence against Christians and other minorities in India. In this short paper, I shall be furnishing a brief chronicle of the recent violence, besides foraying, again briefly, into such questions as the politics of conversion, the inaccuracy of claims regarding the alleged growth of the Christian population in India, and so on.
Christians in Modern India: A Brief Political and Social Survey

The history of Christianity in India goes back to a few decades after the birth of Christ, and there is evidence of Syrian Christians having established themselves in Kerala before 100 AD. India’s contacts with Christianity were renewed with the coming of the Portuguese in 1498: this was wholly inauspicious for the modern beginning of Christianity in India, since the conduct of the Portugese is without exaggeration described as barbaric. The Christian presence became more marked in some respects in the nineteenth century after British rule had been consolidated in India, though here again the pretense was often maintained that British rule had no association with Christianity. The sleight of hand is witnessed, for example, in James Mill’s fatal characterization of Indian history into three periods: Hindu; Muslim; and British.

Some of the anti-Christian sentiments harbored by contemporary Hindu extremists dwell on the time when India was under British colonial rule, and when a substantial number of Christian missionaries openly voiced crude anti-Hindu sentiments. There is also the widespread belief among advocates of a more militant Hinduism that the colonial state encouraged conversions of lower-caste Hindus and otherwise promoted Christianity as a state religion, but on the whole there is little to substantiate this view, though doubtless Christians were looked upon more sympathetically than they had been in India under Muslim or Hindu rulers. It is a remarkable fact that in 200 years when India was under British rule, the Christian population of India never exceeded 3% of the population. Though the sentiments of Hindus were often flagrantly wounded by Christian missionaries, whose insensitivity and arrogance come across in countless number of texts, missionaries today are nonetheless more often remembered for performing social work in both metropolitan centers and more remote parts of the country, and for establishing schools where the bulk of the Indian elites still receive their schooling (see Bhavana Pankaj, "India’s Christians Protest Persecution", Asian Week [7 January 1999]).

The reality faced by Christians in modern India is that they are a small minority and not noticeably present in public life. They are dwarfed by the Hindus (nearly 78% of the population) and Muslims (around 14% of the population). The much smaller Parsi population has had a far more tangible and far-reaching impact on Indian civilization as well as what is called "nation-building". The militant Hindus have spread a canard that the Christian population is increasing rapidly in India, and they have attempted to create the widespread impression that lower-caste Hindus are being forcibly converted in large numbers to Christianity. For instance, on the very day that Pope John Paul II arrived in India in late 1999, an advertisement in the form of an open letter addressed to the Pope was placed in Indian newspapers by the Citizens Committee of the Dharma Raksha Sammelan [Association for Protection of the Hindu Faith] in Chennai [Madras], which stated that "the Christian missionary activity in our nation is tearing apart families and communities in every strata of our society." The letter states that "religious conversion, which seems to be synonymous with papal work, is violence pure and simple." Purporting to speak on behalf of the nation, the letter concluded thus: "We Indians are deeply hurt by the spurt in the aggressive campaigning of the Church to convert the people of India by all available means" (see V. Sridhar, "A Numbers Game", Frontline [Madras], Vol. 16, no. 25 (27 November 1999). In fact, there have been many other similar calls for an end to conversion (for example, M. V. Kamath, "Mission Impossible: Putting an End to Conversion Activity", Times of India 13 October 1999), all implicitly based on one of more of the following assumptions, all patently false: (1) Christian missionary activity is illegal; (2) the Christian population is increasing dramatically; (3) and that conversions take place forcibly, or are otherwise inauthentic because the converts are seduced with offers of money or other forms of patronage.

The evidence to the contrary is ample. The Constitution of India (1950) recognizes the right to freedom of religious worship, and the Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Indian Constitution, recognized further that people have the right to "propagate religion". More importantly, the Census of India, which remains the most authoritative source for population statistics, clearly shows that the Christian community has stagnated and even registered a small decline in recent years. In an article published by Rajendra K. Chaddha in the magazine Organiser (31 October 1999), which is the mouthpiece for the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party that has been governing India since March 1998, it was claimed that the Christian population had grown from 2.53% of the total population of India in 1981 to 2.61% of the total population. However, the Census of India tells a different, and obviously more reliable, story. While the rate of growth of the Christian population was higher than that of the population as a whole between 1921 and 1971, the gap narrowed and was eventually reversed. Thus, between 1981 and 1991, Christians declined from 2.45% to 2.32% of the entire population. Moreover, while the population of India increased by 23.79% between 1981 and 1991, the Christian population grew by only 16.89% in the same period. . The Justice Wadhava Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Government of India came to the same conclusion, and it adds the interesting fact that between 1991 and 1998 the Hindu population increased by 2.5%, while the Christian population increased by .008% (see V. Sridhar’s article in Frontline [above]; Rajeev Dhavan, "Christians in India", The Hindu (5 November 1999); and P. R. Ram, "To Be or Not To Be: The Conversion Debate", available through South Asia Citizens Wire).

In short, the most common rationale offered for violence against Christians in India, namely that the community is growing at an alarming rate through forced conversions, is absurd and has been decisively rejected by the print media and the world of scholarship. Even if the allegations made by Hindu extremists were true, they cannot be offered as an excuse for violence against another religious community. It is also the case, though the scholarly and popular literature on this question leaves much to be deisred, that recent converts to Christianity fare much worse than those Indian Christians who have been members of that faith for one or more generations. Recent converts are seen as traitors to Hinduism, as people who are against the tide of history and fail to recognize that India is -- as the Hindu militants would like to think -- a Hindu nation, and as people who are determined to weaken India in the face of opposition from hostile countries, including Pakistan. There may also be some resentment against the generally improved lifestyle of Christians: rates of literacy among both Christian men and women are higher than among Hindu men and women, and in the various indices that are used internationally to determine social and economic development, such as infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, and death rate, Christians score better.

The Hindutva literature on conversion, finally, has entirely failed to enter into an engagement on the complex philosophical, political, and ethical questions surrounding conversion. Some of the Hindutva advocates, whose contempt for Gandhi is barely disguised, have brazenly furnished Gandhi’s views as justification for their opposition to conversion. Gandhi was not keen on conversion, partly because he held to the view that the convert had an inadquate understanding of his or her own faith; and Gandhi did not think that any one religion was superior to another. But absolutely nothing in Gandhi’s life, teachings, or writings can even remotely be summoned in support of the view that Gnadhi would have opposed a person’s right and desire to convert, and it is unthinkable that he would have countenanced the use of violence to prevent conversion. In this matter as in many others, the militant Hindus have shown themselves extraordinarily adept in abusing and manipulating Gandhi.

Anti-Christian Violence in India, 1997-2000


The media first actively began to report incidents of violence against Christians in 1997. As I have argued earlier, the increase of violence against Christians must be viewed in the context of the rise of Hindu nationalism and the ascendancy of the BJP to political power at the center of the nation. From 1964 to 1996, only 38 incidents of violence against Christians were registered in the country, though doubtless many incidents were not recorded at all; in 1997 alone, 24 incidents were noted by the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, and in 1998, the number had gone up to 90, though some Christian spokespersons have claimed that the true figure is several times higher. Hindu militants, one can safely conclude, see the rise of the BJP and other like-minded parties as an invitation to commit violence against Christians and other minorities with impunity.

Though incidents of violence against Christians have occurred in nearly all parts of India, the violence has been largely confined to north, central, and western India, to the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and the capital area of New Delhi -- not coincidentally, most of these areas have been under BJP rule in recent years. Some of the more gruesome incidents took place in eastern India, in the state of Orissa. Intimidation of Christians has extended to such acts as arson (the fire-bombing of Churches), the distribution of threatening literature, the forcible reconversion of recent converts back to Hinduism, the burning of Bibles; there have also been incidents, though much fewer in number, involving the rape of nuns and the murder of both Christian priests and missionaries. Cases of physical assault have also been recorded from various parts of the country: on 5 November 1999, 26 students -- not all Christians -- of St. Joseph’s Evening College, Bangalore, were attacked by 40 VHP activists for allegedly converting lower-caste Hindus (the Dalits) to Christianity (Walter Fernandes, "Caste as vested interest", The Hindu [4 January 2000]). In Gujarat alone, where the BJP grip over power is very strong, 22 churches were burnt or destroyed, and another 16 damaged, in 1997. In the following year, 1998, according to the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, 5 nuns were raped, 9 killed, and 25 subjected to physical abuse (see Ravi Arvind Palat, "Violence against Christians in India", New Zealand Herald [26 January 1999]; also V. Venkatesan, "A pattern of persecution", Frontline 15, no. 26 [19 December 1998]). In mid-June 2000, four churches in different parts of India were bombed, while in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, church graves were desecrated. In the same month, a church in Maharashtra was ransacked, and an evangelist working for the India Campus Crusade for Christ was found stabbed to death at his home (see Robert Marquand, "In India, a Pattern of Attacks on Christians", Christian Science Monitor ([29 June 2000]).

There have also been at least five widely known cases involving the murder of Christian clergymen, though perhaps as many as 20 priests and pastors may have been killed. Two might be mentioned by way of illustration. The entire country was shocked in January 1999 when an Australian Baptist missionary, Graham Staines, was murdered along with his two sons by being burnt alive inside a locked car. Staines had lived in India for the greater part of his life, and was working among lepers in Orissa, one of India’s most deprived regions (see the Human Rights Report and State Department Report, as cited below). His assailant, a Hindu militant by the name of Dara Singh, went around boasting about his deed, and even gave television interviews, while the police claimed that he could not be found. On 7 June 2000, the Catholic priest, George Kuzhikandam, was murdered in his sleep in a church in Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. The church cook, Vijay Ekka, who slept near the murdered clergyman and first reported the murder, was taken away by the police for interrogation, and himself died in police custody. Though the police claimed he had committed suicide, the autopsy indicated that he had been strangled. It is widely believed that the cook was silenced.

Anti-Christian violence in India has been widely noted, and in April 1999 Human Rights Watch visited the Dangs district in southeastern Gujarat, where over a period of 10 days, from 25 December 1998 to 3 January 1999, there were numerous violent and clearly premeditated attacks on Christians and their institutions. Their 1999 report on the violence perpretrated against Christians furnishes a detailed record of what they saw and heard, and provides the testimony of those victimized (it can be accessed at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/indiachr/christians). A chronological record, as well as the historical background to the present spate of violence, can also be found in the U.S. State Department’s Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999: India (released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Washington, DC, 9 September 1999). Shortly before dying in a car crash in Poland in the summer of 2000, Archbishop Alan de Lastic of New Delhi addressed a letter to Prime Minister Vajpayee, drawing his attention to the attacks upon Christians in all parts of the country, and stating that the thugs engaged in violent activity and attacks upon Christians "know no action will be taken [against them], and they can get away with any kind of violence" (Seema Mustafa, "Archbishop to PM: Your Silence Kills", The Asian Age (14 May 2000). The Archbishop noted that the Christian community was threatened with its worst crisis since India acquired independence in 1947 (see Pamela Constable, ‘The Burden of the Cross in India", Washington Post [3 July 2000]).


The evidence for violence against Christians in India is consequently incontrovertible. There are numerous compilations of atrocities perpetrated upon Christians, and they suggest an alarming pattern of violence: the intimidation of priests; threats placed against Christian schools; false allegations against Christian priests; the destruction of Christian institutions, such as the Damian Leprosy Hospital complex run by Catholic nuns for 31 years; attacks upon churches; assault upon Christian nuns and pastors, such as in the city of Jhansi on 2 May 2000; the distribution of scurrilous literature; and murder of Christians.