Hindu Nationalists Double Down on Demands for a Church-Free Indian State

“Speakers at the commemoration called for the elimination of Christians from the Kandhamal district... They openly called for a ‘church-free’ Odisha.”

Hindu Nationalists in Odisha, an eastern Indian state, want Christians out.

The fresh calls were made during a book launch in memory of local Hindu Nationalist leader Lakshmananda Saraswati, who was assassinated in 2008.

Although Communists (Maoists) admitted to killing Saraswati and four followers, his slaying was initially blamed on Christians.

As a result, Hindus hunted them down, slaughtered them and looted churches.

This is despite local authorities allegedly knowing that Maoists were responsible.

Instead of de-escalating the destruction, the government apparently buried this fact, thereby encouraging the persecution of Christians to continue.

An October 5, 2008 piece from The Hindu reported that Maoists “left two letters at the scene claiming responsibility for the killing.”

A spokesperson for the Communist Party of India then claimed the government “suppressed those letters to help rioters continue with their attacks on the [Christian] minority community.”

He added that Maoists killed the Hindu monk and political leader because he was “forcing tribals and Dalit Christians in Kandhamal to convert to Hinduism.”

Discussing the book launch, John Dayal, a New Delhi-based human rights advocate and author, claims “speakers at the commemoration called for the elimination of Christians from the Kandhamal district.”

Hinting at ethnic cleansing, he alleged that hardline Hindu Nationalists “view Kandhamal as a testing ground for a model that could be extended across the country.”

During the event, Dayal said they openly “called for a ‘church-free’ Odisha and for curbing the activity of people they termed “vidharmis” (infidels).

This “refers to Christian and Muslim citizens, implying their faith is foreign to India’s soil.” For instance, the belief that “to be Indian is to be Hindu.”

Some senior members of the Modi government were in attendance, he recalled, adding that the story of the slain Hindu political leader would be embedded in the school curriculum.

“The Government Medical College and Hospital in Phulbani would also be renamed after Saraswati.”

Commenting on the 2008 persecution of Christians, Dayal described the slaughter as “one of the worst outbreaks of anti-Christian violence in Independent India.

“The violence,” he recounted, “killed at least 39 Christians, though Christian families said they counted more than 100 dead.”

This includes “more than 40 women sexually assaulted, a Catholic nun and a young Hindu woman who was employed by a Christian NGO.”

Additionally, “395 churches were [reportedly] razed or torched, between 5,600 and 6,500 houses plundered or burnt down, over 600 villages ransacked and some 75,000 people left homeless.”

“Many Christian families were burnt alive,” Dayal said, “and thousands were forced to convert to Hinduism under threat of violence.

“Some Hindu families were also assaulted on suspicion of being friends with Christians, and supporters of the Indian National Congress or Congress party,” Modi’s opposition.

He then argued that the investigation and trial of those allegedly involved in the assassination were sketchy, saying, “Prosecutions crawled through the courts for over a decade and produced a conviction rate that lawyers still call a scandal.”

The calls for kicking Christians out of India hit International Christian Concern’s radar hard.

ICC said the book launch was just a guise that “marks a chilling escalation in the fusion of state authority and radical ideological movements.”

The presence of chief government officials, they asserted, “signals that the ‘church-free’ mandate is no longer a peripheral demand.”

Their anti-Christian activism, ICC remarked, is unconstitutional.

“By explicitly demanding a “ban on the activities of heretics,” the movement presents a direct challenge to Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate religion.”

What’s deeply concerning about this, ICC said, is that it’s “not merely a rhetorical flourish.”

It is “a calculated effort to dismantle the operational freedom of Christian institutions by framing their existence as an existential threat to the state.”