As hate spirals in India, Hindu extremists turn to Christian targets

On Christmas Eve, Hindu hardline groups affiliated with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced a shutdown successful the cardinal Indian metropolis of Raipur. The protestation was called implicit allegations of “forced” spiritual conversions by Christians, a assertion often levelled against the Christian assemblage contempt scant evidence.

That aforesaid day, groups of men equipped with woody sticks stormed a buying promenade successful Raipur, vandalising Christmas decorations and disrupting celebrations. Police filed a lawsuit against 30 to 40 unidentified attackers, but arrested lone six. They were released connected bail wrong days and, upon their release, were greeted with nationalist processions, garlands, and chants extracurricular the jail, videos of which circulated wide connected societal media.

On Christmas morning, Modi visited a Catholic religion successful New Delhi to observe the occasion, but did not condemn the violence.

This incidental was not the lone one. According to a caller report, spiritual hatred code and unit successful India are escalating, with the country’s tiny Christian number emerging arsenic an progressively disposable target, alongside Muslims, successful a clime of intensifying Hindu majoritarian rhetoric.

The probe by India Hate Lab, a task of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), has recovered that the state recorded a full of 1,318 hatred code events successful 2025, an mean of much than 3 per day.

These events, organised and led mostly by Hindu majoritarian groups arsenic good arsenic the governing BJP, targeted Muslims and Christians, marking a 97 percent summation successful hatred code since 2023, and a 13 percent emergence implicit 2024. While Muslims remained a superior target, the study recovered a crisp emergence successful anti-Christian rhetoric. Hate code events targeting Christians roseate from 115 successful 2024 to 162 successful 2025, a 41 percent increase.

This was borne retired successful the unit and intimidation unleashed by Hindu supremacists connected Christmas celebrations past month. Instances were recorded crossed India, successful the superior authorities of Delhi, arsenic good arsenic the states of Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Chhattisgarh. Raipur, wherever the mob ravaged the mall, is the superior of Chhattisgarh.

In Madhya Pradesh, a person from Modi’s BJP led a mob that disrupted and attacked a Christmas luncheon for visually impaired children. In Delhi, women wearing Santa caps were intimidated by Hindu supremacists. In Kerala, immoderate schools reportedly received threats from officials belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the genitor organisation of the BJP and galore different Hindu majoritarian groups – informing against holding Christmas celebrations, prompting the section authorities to denote a probe into the matter. This came aft an RSS idiosyncratic attacked teenage carollers successful the aforesaid state.

Christians relationship for lone 2.3 percent of India’s population, portion Muslims relationship for 14.2 percent. The Hindu assemblage makes up 80 percent.

Hindu supremacists person fuelled suspicion, choler and hatred against spiritual minorities, based connected conspiracy theories and different incorrect claims.

An Indian Christian pistillate receives beatified communion, arsenic others hold successful a queue during Christmas astatine St Mary’s Garrison church, successful Jammu, India, Thursday, December 25, 2025 [Channi Anand/AP Photo]

An escalation

However, the latest figures people a caller escalation successful the spiritual hatred that India’s spiritual minorities person had to combat ever since the BJP came to powerfulness successful 2014, said experts.

The BJP’s ideological mentor, the RSS, founded successful 1925, believes that India indispensable beryllium a “Hindu nation”, an thought that runs antagonistic to the constitutionally enshrined worth of secularism. Historical Hindu nationalist ideologues – similar Vinayak Savarkar and MS Golwalkar, who Modi has publically honoured – insisted that spiritual minorities similar Muslims and Christians were “unwanted” and “internal enemies” of India, and called for a “permanent war” against them.

Raqib Naik, the CSOH’s said the instances of hatred code recorded successful the caller study reflector this rhetoric. They contiguous Muslims and Christians arsenic “dual threats”, which are “foreign, demonic forces” that privation to harm Hindus.

“Central to this is the ‘forced conversion’ narrative, which portrays each enactment of Christian charity, education, oregon healthcare arsenic a deceptive instrumentality for converting Hindus to Christianity,” Naik said. “The astir pervasive taxable crossed [the] 2025 incidents is the allegation that Christian missionaries are converting Hindus done inducement.”

This is contempt the information that betwixt 1951 and the past nationalist census successful 2011, the Christian assemblage successful India has ne'er exceeded 3 percent of the full population, according to information from the Pew Research Center.

Within the country’s Christian community, the hatred incidents person led to fearfulness and a heavy unease, said John Dayal, the erstwhile president of the All India Catholic Union and a erstwhile subordinate of the National Integration Council, an Indian authorities advisory assemblage connected matters of spiritual harmony. The fearfulness of vandalism by Hindu supremacists has led to galore taking antithetic and utmost steps, Dayal said.

“In Raipur, the archbishop was forced to counsel each churches and Christian institutions to question constabulary extortion during Christmas,” Dayal said. “I couldn’t judge that specified a missive had to beryllium written.”

Relatives and neighbours wail adjacent the assemblage of Mohammad Mudasir, 31, who was killed successful inter-religious unit successful New Delhi, India, February 27, 2020 [Manish Swarup/ AP Photo]

Attacks connected Muslims rise

Beyond this rising anti-Christian rhetoric, hatred code against Muslims has besides changeable up, according to the report. The CSOH recorded that 1,289 of the full 1,318 hatred code events had hateful, convulsive references to Muslims.

In 2024, this fig was 1,147, portion successful 2023, it was 668. This shows a 93 percent summation successful anti-Muslim hatred code betwixt 2023 and 2025.

In these hatred events, speakers – often from the BJP oregon affiliated Hindu supremacist groups – invoked conspiracy theories against Muslims: from claiming that Muslims were capturing Hindu onshore (“land jihad”), to Muslims strategically outnumbering Hindus (“population jihad”), to Muslim men seeking to lure Hindu women successful a bid to person them into Islam (“love jihad”).

Using specified conspiracy theories, a immense bulk of these events ended with calls to unit against the Muslim community, the study found. The calls ranged from boycotting Muslims to destroying their places of worship, to picking up arms and violently attacking them.

“These narratives were designed to overgarment minorities arsenic organised aggressors, intent connected eviscerating Hindu culture, demographic dominance and wealth,” said Naik from the CSOH.

“The large-scale dissemination of these conspiracies is simply a deliberate strategy to manufacture an situation of perpetual Hindu victimhood, and to alteration the transition of anti-minority laws to ostensibly code these imagined threats,” helium added.

Since the BJP came to power, respective Indian states person introduced laws that criminalise coercive spiritual conversions, but critics person said these laws are veiled attempts to forestall interfaith marriages. Several ministers successful these states person publicly called the laws attempts to curb “love jihad”.

In November 2025, the United States Commission connected International Religious Freedom, successful its annual report, highlighted what it called “several discriminatory pieces of legislation” successful India, including connected citizenship and spiritual conversion.

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah adjusts his turban during a temple inauguration ceremonial successful Salangpur, successful the occidental authorities of Gujarat, India, October 31, 2024 [Amit Dave/ Reuters]

A BJP link

Much of this hatred has a nexus to the BJP, the study found. Almost 9 retired of 10 hatred code events, 88 percent successful all, took spot successful states governed by the BJP oregon it allies. Among the apical 10 actors progressive successful the astir hatred speech, the study recovered 5 to beryllium associated with the BJP, including Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, wide viewed arsenic India’s second-most almighty idiosyncratic aft Modi.

The main curate of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, arsenic good arsenic of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, are others named successful the study arsenic perpetrators of hatred speech. In fact, Dhami topped the database of hatred code actors, with a full of 71 hatred code instances.

Al Jazeera has reached retired to the BJP’s main spokesperson, Anil Baluni, implicit substance and email, arsenic good arsenic to the Ministry of Home Affairs, for comment. Neither has responded.

Ram Puniyani, an writer and the president of the Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS), a probe assemblage that works connected promoting spiritual harmony, said the emergence successful hatred is straight linked to the BJP’s electoral fortunes. The 2024 wide elections delivered an electoral setback to Modi, whose BJP mislaid its parliamentary bulk but returned to powerfulness with allies.

“The Hindutva ft soldiers person go much and much emboldened by the party’s instrumentality to power, and hence, attacks connected spiritual minorities are connected the rise,” Puniyani said. Hindutva is the Hindu majoritarian governmental question advocated by the RSS.

Pointing to the attacks connected Christian missionaries, Puniyani said it was an effort to consolidate the BJP’s basal among tribal and Dalit communities, wherever Christian missionaries predominantly work. Dalits, historically viewed arsenic the assemblage slightest privileged nether Hinduism’s analyzable caste system, person faced systematic favoritism for centuries.

“All this is precise dangerous”, Puniyani said, “because hatred code yet leads to violence”.