Dangerous dilemma

Indian Christians stand at a critical crossroads, yet majority of them behave as if nothing fundamental has changed in the country’s political climate. For more than a decade, the consolidation of Hindutva under the BJP-RSS ecosystem has steadily redefined who is seen as fully belonging to the nation, and who is merely being tolerated. Christians are increasingly treated not as equal citizens under the Constitution, but as suspect minorities whose followers are allegedly loyal to the west. Data and documentation of anti-Christian incidents leave little room for denial. Rights groups and church monitoring bodies have recorded a sharp rise in attacks on churches, prayer meetings, pastors and Christian institutions over the last five years, with 2025 marking yet another record year for violence and harassment. Anti-conversion laws, vigilante mobs, social boycotts, and police complicity form a pattern- Christianity being cast as an alien intrusion, and Christian activity among Adivasis and Dalits framed as a threat to a Hindu civilizational state. A recent study on hate speech incidents in India found more than 1,300 cases in 2025 alone, with a marked surge in explicitly anti-Christian rhetoric, underscoring that the community is now a significant target of Hindutva mobilization, not a marginal afterthought. This is not an accidental but a logical outworking of an ideological project. Hindutva groups openly envision India as a Hindu rashtra in which other faiths exist only on majoritarian terms. The BJP’s electoral success since 2014 has emboldened foot soldiers and fringe outfits, to constantly denounce “minority appeasement” as a green light to push toward something closer to “Christian-mukt” or at least Christian-silenced Bharat. Even where the Prime Minister has, on international and ecumenical platforms, promised “complete freedom of faith” and “equal respect to all religions,” those assurances have not translated into consistent protection on the ground or firm action against perpetrators of communal violence. The gap between rhetoric and reality is precisely where minorities bleed. Some Indian Christians look to leaders like Donald Trump who speak of putting Christianity “back at the center” of public life in the United States. Washington’s churn cannot substitute for vigilance in UP, MP, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Assam or Manipur. It is a dangerous illusion to imagine that a pro-Christian posture in the US somehow shields churches in Chhattisgarh or Assam from local extremists and partisan police. The deeper problem is internal or a tendency within sections of the Indian church to retreat into pious private worlds while hoping that “it will not get too bad” or that courts and bureaucracy will ultimately hold the line. Yet reports of vandalised churches, disrupted Christmas services, fabricated “conversion” cases, and targeted social media vilification suggest that bad days are not merely ahead; in many places they have already begun. Denial-whether born of fear, habit or misplaced optimism- only shortens the time available to prepare. Preparation does not mean panic or mirror-image militancy. It means taking constitutional rights seriously, documenting every incident, building alliances with other threatened communities and investing in civic education within churches. Above all, it requires Christians to shed the comfort of imagining that India’s secular promise will enforce itself automatically. The sooner Indian Christians recognise the scale and intent of the project arrayed against them, the better chance they have-not only to protect their own freedoms, but to stand with others in defending the plural, constitutional India that remains the best common home for all faiths.