Attack on Catholic priests disrupts Indian parliament

Opposition parties walk out of lower house after ruling party refused debate on anti-Christian violence

Updated: April 04, 2025 08:42 AM GMT

An assault on two Catholic priests in India’s Madhya Pradesh state earlier this week has escalated into a political controversy after the ruling Hindu-leaning government declined a request to address rising anti-Christian violence in parliament.

Members of the opposition block, a coalition of 28 political parties led by the secular Indian National Congress, walked out of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament, on April 3.

The protest followed House Speaker Om Birla, a pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member, denying a request for a debate on rising religion-based violence in the country.

Dean Kuriakose, a Congress party parliamentarian from southern Kerala state, submitted a motion for a parliamentary debate after a Hindu mob attacked two senior Catholic priests inside a police station and harassed around 50 Catholics on March 31 in Jabalpur city, in Madhya Pradesh.

The motion said that in the wake of the attack on the priests, it has become an “urgency” to discuss the assaults on minority Christians in Madhya Pradesh.

Members of the Congress party, the largest opposition party, also protested in the parliament complex against the attack on the priests.

Congress parliamentarian K. C. Venugopal, also from Kerala, told reporters that the priests were “brutally attacked” by members of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP-world Hindu council), one among a cluster of Hindu groups that support the BJP.

The attack on the priests “is just another example” of how the BJP and affiliated Hindu groups “are attacking minorities and churches,” the senior Congress leader alleged.

Last year, Hindu groups attacked at least 753 churches. “The government is not taking any action,” he told reporters in the parliament complex.

The priests — Jabalpur diocese’s vicar general, Davis George, and procurator George Thomas — went to Ranjhi police station to assist about 50 Indigenous Catholics detained on allegations of religious conversion.

The tribal Catholics, from a town some 100 kilometers away, were visiting churches in Jabalpur as part of a Lenten pilgrimage when several Hindu activists seized control of their chartered bus and took them to the police station.

The Hindu activists accused the Christians of violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law. They also manhandled and slapped the priests, who arrived at the police station to vouch for the detained tribal people.

Jabalpur Superintendent of Police Sampat Upadhyay told the media that a case has been registered against three unidentified people for attacking the priests, and the probe is ongoing.

Father Thomas told UCA News that police had taken their statement and also gave them a medical examination.

“We hope the police conduct a free and fair probe,” the priest told UCA News on April 4, adding that he is “yet to recover from the shock” of being attacked.

Madhya Pradesh is one of the 11 states in India with a law that criminalize religious conversion via use of force, allurement, and fraudulent means.

Christian leaders say the laws are “thoroughly misused” to target them and their institutions, portraying their mission work as allurement and force.

The state has registered several cases against bishops, priests, nuns, pastors and other Church workers, accusing them and their institutions of violating the anti-conversion law.

Christians are a tiny minority in Madhya Pradesh,  just 0.27 percent of more than 72 million people, with Hindus making up 80 percent.

Nationally, the Christian population accounts for 2.3 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people, 80 percent of whom are Hindus.