Justice is a parody for Christians in India

Sometimes, even death does not end the misery of victims of religious persecution and government apathy

Updated: February 05, 2025 05:42 AM GMT

It is a system designed to silence faith, senior lawyers say after years spent in pleading cases across India’s 800 district courts, 25 state high courts, and the Supreme Court at the top. 

The police are almost routinely complicit in fabricating criminal cases against Catholic priests, non-denominational pastors, and groups of worshippers, conniving with political and Hindu nationalist groups affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or national volunteers’ corps).

Just about anyone with even a hint of political ambition finds targeting Christian groups an easy way to social recognition in the 12 states where anti-conversion laws operate. Even home churches are targeted, in an attempt to intimidate small worship gatherings.

As if looking for a pretext for action against worshippers and pastors, the police at the village or district level do not even bother to find out whether the complainant has a locus under the law to file a complaint.

Anti-conversion laws against Christians were viciously weaponized and purposed in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term from 2019-2024. Later, Muslims were brought into its ambit by bringing mixed marriages under its purview and targeting them for converting their wives to Islam.

Laws are becoming harsher, defense lawyer collectives say.

Under the amended anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh, penalties now range from 20 years to the remainder of a person’s life for conversions involving minors, women, Dalits (former untouchables), and Adivasis (tribal people).

In states such as Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the anti-conversion provisions of the criminal code have been used to stop not just church services but even prayers at the sickbed of a Christian, or the birthday festivities of a child in a small town.

The police in these states filed 197 First Information Reports (FIRs containing essential information about an alleged crime following a complaint) against Christians. Many FIRs are filed by political activists who make no effort to hide their identity while objecting to religious activity in a home or a church in the hinterland.

In 2024, this led to 724 instances of imprisonment or illegal detention of Christians. Late last month, a Malayali couple from Kerala, Sheeja and Jose Pappachan, was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of illegal conversions to Christianity in Uttar Pradesh.

Misuse of the anti-conversion laws against innocent citizens has led to 1,000 or more people, including women and children, spending time in police lockups or jails.

“Each statistic tells a heartbreaking story — one more devastating than the next — a family torn apart, a church forced into hiding, a believer unjustly imprisoned for their faith,” says a lawyer.

Many of those arrested are pastors, and others from several groups who are first-generation converts to Christianity, often tribal people or Dalits.

Untouchability was outlawed soon after independence in 1947, but caste barriers not only remain but have sharpened in recent years. The divides have been heavily politicized in successive elections.

Christian groups such as the Evangelical Fellowship, United Christian Forum, and Persecution Relief recorded some 834 incidents of hostility against Christians in India last year — the highest on record. The actual number may be several times higher, as police are loath to register complaints, or victims are scared to even approach the authorities.

Over 200 of these cases were reported from Uttar Pradesh alone, making it the most dangerous state for religious minorities. 

The two Catholic umbrella groups, the supra ritual Catholic Bishops Conference of India, and the Latin diocese group Conference of Catholic Bishops of India have no system of their own to document persecution or legal cases. The Protestant group, National Council of Churches in India, also does not publish such data.

Sometimes, even death does not end the misery of victims of religious persecution, ostracization, and government complicity.

Ramesh Baghel’s almost month-long legal battle this January to bury the body of his dead father in their village graveyard is a sordid footnote in the Indian judicial system’s record of failed justice for religious minorities.

The village elders stoutly refused permission to bring the body home, saying the local graveyard was meant for Hindus and faiths akin to them. The Baghel family pointed to several graves of their ancestors in the same graveyard as evidence that the ground served the head of all communities. The village council would not budge.

Baghel found strength in his sorrow to go to the district courts. Expectedly, the ruling was against him. He would not be allowed to bury his father.

The now angry young man petitioned the High Court of Chhattisgarh in Bilaspur city. The state government told the court the burial would be opposed by the villagers, and there would be a threat to law and order, and peace in the village.

Baghel got one of the most senior lawyers in India, Colin Gonsalves, to raise the matter before a Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice R V Nagarathna, and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma.

Gonsalves’s impassioned arguments seemingly moved the court as he focused on the right to dignity, and equality, in death, and the issue of religious minorities and their rights guaranteed in the constitution of a secular India.

He also produced photographs that clearly show several Christian graves in the cemetery where the Baghel family had been denied the funeral of their father.

Justice Nagarathna was clearly moved when she saw the photographs of Christian graves in the village burial grounds. So why were the village elders protesting and threatening now, she asked.

“Our tradition teaches tolerance. If philosophy tolerates breaches, our constitutional practices should not. Let us not dilute it,” she said.

Quoting Gandhi, she added, “Our existence is momentary if we shatter the chains of egotism and melt into the ocean of humanity. We share his dignity.”

The judge urged the state and authorities to realise the importance of these valuable thoughts and, with that, set aside the judgment of the High Court.

Justice Sharma, the other judge on the bench, thought otherwise. He ruled that maintaining public order was paramount in the larger interest of society.

Ideally, the chief justice of India would have been asked to help decide the case in a majority decision.  

The body was now rotting, and the two judges, while maintaining their judgments, made a common order — the body was to be buried under police supervision in a Christian graveyard in a village some 25 kilometers away.

Left with no choice, Baghel buried his father as directed by the Supreme Court.

Though the highest court in the land had, in a way, supported the Hindu villagers in denying the Baghel family’s request for burial near the graves of their ancestors, the judges sought to make amends by ordering that the government assure burial grounds to Christians in every district of the state.

If state governments obey the Supreme Court, this could well assure the Christian community — and by extension, Muslims and other minority communities — a decent interment for their dead in separate and exclusive graveyards.

But for the Baghel family and the Christian community, the might and moral force of the judicial system has buried a little of its sheen.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.