One of the victims of a June 2025 Hindu nationalist attack on Christians in Odisha state. catholicconnect.in
In 2025, local monitoring groups recorded nearly 900 cases of physical assaults, disruptions to church services and threats against worshipers across multiple states in India, according to local sources of Christian Solidarity International (CSI).
Attacks surge over Christmas
Nationwide tension escalated during Advent and over Christmas as incidents were reported from several states, including Delhi, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, involving harassment of carolers, church raids and canceled public events.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur city, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician Anju Bhargava entered a church on Christmas Day and assaulted Safalta Kartik, a visually impaired woman attending a prayer service. Video footage showed Bhargava confronting Kartik in front of children and other worshipers, drawing widespread attention on social media, Indian news site The News Minute reported.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India called for Bhargava’s removal from the BJP and urged the central and state governments to act against organizations spreading communal hatred. It also raised concern over hate-filled digital messages circulating in states such as Chhattisgarh.
In Kerala’s Palakkad district, a man identified as Ashwin Raj, from the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was arrested after attacking a group of children under 15 and damaging musical instruments during a carol performance.
Christmas-related events disrupted
Carol singing was restricted in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district, where local police denied permission for events in four Catholic parishes. The decision was eventually challenged in the state High Court, which ruled in favor of the church.
Another Hindu nationalist group, Sarva Samaj, called for a statewide ban on Christmas Eve in Chhattisgarh, citing allegations of forced religious conversions.
The Uttar Pradesh government, ruled by the BJP, announced that schools would stay open on December 25, ending the usual practice of observing Christmas as a public holiday.
At least 60 Christmas-related events were disrupted by Hindu vigilante groups across the country, ranging from street-level intimidation to raids on religious gatherings, according to The Telegraph.
Record violence against Christians
The Christmas-time attacks capped a year that saw the worst violence Christians have faced since India’s independence in 1947.
From 2021 onward, each successive year has set a new record for reported violence in India, according to data by the United Christian Forum (UCF).
There were 486 incidents in 2021, 601 in 2022, 734 in 2023 and 834 in 2024. The number rose to nearly 900 in 2025, though the annual report on attacks on Christians is yet to be released by local faith-based groups.
Conversion claims and laws used to harass Christians
Human rights advocates have identified misinformation about “forcible” religious conversion, spread for political gain, and the misuse of anti-conversion laws as the main drivers of these incidents.
The BJP, which has held power at the federal level and in several key states for over a decade, has been accused of targeting the Christian minority to consolidate its Hindu votebank and shift electoral focus toward religion and nationalism, rather than governance and public accountability.
While Christians point to government census data showing they make up just 2.3 percent of India’s population, BJP leaders and figures within the larger Hindu nationalist movement routinely allege that Hindus are being converted to Christianity through money or fraud, claims made without evidence.
Anti-conversion laws, enacted in several states in response to the Hindu nationalist claims, prohibit conversions by “force,” “fraud,” or “inducement.” Christians say the laws are frequently invoked without evidence and used to target pastors, churches and prayer gatherings. They say that, in practice, the laws allow Hindu nationalist groups to file police complaints based solely on accusations, disrupting services and pressuring Christians to abandon their faith.
Human rights lawyers say the process of arrest and legal action itself functions as intimidation, even in cases that do not go to trial or result in conviction.
As of January 2026, at least 110 Christians remained in jail on charges under anti-conversion laws, according to CSI’s local sources, which said this figure follows the release of more than 600 Christians in 2025 after legal intervention by faith-based groups.
Tribal communities face intensified pressure over faith and identity
Most of the violence in recent years has occurred in Uttar Pradesh in northern India, the country’s most-populated state and a stronghold of Hindu nationalists, and in the central and eastern regions, which are home to tribal, or indigenous, communities, particularly in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha.
While attacks and harassment of Christians have been reported across the country, tribal regions in particular have increasingly become targets of Hindu nationalist groups, who oppose the presence of Christian missions and accuse tribal converts of abandoning their traditional identity. Though most tribal communities do not identify as Hindu, they are officially counted as such in the census.
Tribals make up around nine percent of the country’s population of 1.4 billion. Their votes are actively courted by all political parties, as they have remained largely ideologically neutral. Hindu nationalist groups have sought to consolidate these votes by opposing conversions and demanding that Christian converts be excluded from affirmative action benefits reserved for tribal communities.
Hindu nationalists also claim that Christian burials insult tribal deities. As a result, tribal Christians often face social resistance or violence when they seek to bury their deceased relatives. The UCF documented at least 23 burial-related incidents in 2025, including 19 in Chhattisgarh, two in neighboring Jharkhand, and one each in the states of Odisha and West Bengal.
In response to the surge in violence, hundreds of Christians and civil society groups staged protests in New Delhi in late December 2025, demanding government accountability and the repeal of anti-conversion laws. Demonstrators gathered at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in the capital, holding placards and chanting slogans against religious persecution.
