On the morning of May 10, members of a Hindu nationalist organization arrived at Christian Sunday worship services in several neighborhoods of Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh state, India.
The members of the Hindu Jagran Manch arrived at churches in Kamal Vihar, Sen Chowk Shriram Nagar, Ambedkar Chowk Depot Para Sorid and Tikrapara, among other areas of Dhamtari, with verbal confrontations taking place with pastors at some locations. The Hindu nationalists demanded pastors produce identity papers, and police were deployed to monitor sites.
The Hindu nationalists labelled the worship services as illegal “healing meetings” linked to conversion activity and demanded that authorities strictly enforce the state’s new law against fraudulent and forcible conversions.
“When we arrived, there were several people present,” Chitresh Sahu, district co-coordinator of the Hindu Jagran Manch, told local media. “When we asked for their identity and identification documents, they started evading.”
The Hindu nationalists told police that if they did not act, further protests would ensue and officers would be responsible for any crimes.
The same day, Hindu mobs nearly 400 kilometers (249 miles) away in Bastar District prevented the burial of an elderly Christian woman. Rukmini Kurre, an 83-year-old retired teacher who had converted to Christianity, had died in Karanjdola village in the Bhanpuri area near Jagdalpur.
When her family attempted to bury her near the village, residents objected, saying the land belonged to the state forest department. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Council of Hindus) and Bajrang Dal, two militant Hindu nationalist groups, joined the protest.
Police arrived and reportedly mediated for several hours. The family eventually agreed to bury Rukmini Kurre at a Christian cemetery in Karkapal.
Bishop Akhilesh Edgar of Milap Church and advisor to the National Christian Front, said the situation had deteriorated for the Christian community in the state.
“For many Christians in tribal areas, the situation has worsened in daily life through social boycotts, restricted access to forest produce and other livelihood resources, and growing intimidation,” he told Christian Daily International (CDI). “The new Freedom of Religion Act 2026 and passed resolutions of gram sabhas [village councils] concerning reconversion deadlines have heightened tensions rather than resolved them.”
The prior day, May 9, a Christian tribal family in Kondagaon District was attacked while working in their own orchard. Members of the Karanga family were picking mangoes on land they have cultivated for years in Madgaon village when two men from the same village assaulted them, according to the Progressive Christian Alliance (PCA), a network of pastors and church workers from the region.
The PCA identified the attackers as Mahesh Karanga, 24, and Birendra Karanga, 28. Five family members sustained injuries: Phunau Karanga, 22; Manau Karanga, 35; Milki Bai Karanga, 52; and two children, Devi Karanga, 11, and Jageswari Karanga, 8. All received treatment at a hospital in Keshkal.
The attackers reportedly told the family that by embracing what they called a “foreign religion,” they had forfeited the right to live in the village and use its land and forest resources.
The assault followed months of earlier intimidation, including public humiliation at village meetings, threats of expulsion if the family refused to renounce their faith, and denial of access to forest produce that tribal families depend on for income, according to the PCA.
Despite earlier complaints to police, no formal case was registered before the May 9 attack. After the assault, police filed a First Information Report (FIR), though reportedly under mutual altercation provisions rather than provisions that would reflect the alleged religious motivation.
A later update from the Progressive Christian Alliance said the family had returned home after their discharge from the hospital but found that their tamarind and mango harvests had been stripped while they were away. Concerns about their safety, the update said, had not eased.
These incidents are among the most recent in a series of confrontations, assaults and acts of economic pressure against Christians in Chhattisgarh since the state’s Freedom of Religion Act was signed into law in April.
The Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Act was passed by the state assembly on March 19 and signed by Gov. Ramen Deka on April 7, as CDI previously reported.
The law makes religious conversion through force, fraud, allurement or misrepresentation a non-bailable criminal offense, with penalties ranging from seven years to life imprisonment. “Mass conversion,” which the law defines as involving even two people at a single event, carries a minimum of 10 years and up to life imprisonment.
The law specifically exempts returning to Hinduism from its scope. It requires people wishing to convert to notify district authorities in advance and allows proposed conversions to be publicly displayed, giving neighbors and officials an opportunity to object. Christian leaders say the provisions are structured in ways that invite false accusations and shield complainants from legal consequences even if their allegations prove unfounded.
Christian organizations submitted more than 45,000 objection letters to the governor before the law was signed. None received a substantive response.
The Christian community responded with a wave of public protests that began in late March and extended through May, representing some of the largest coordinated Christian mobilisation the state had seen in years.
A torch march in Raipur on March 22 drew thousands of participants. On March 28, the United Christian Society attempted to march to the state secretariat. On April 13, the Christian Unity Forum organized a rally in Jagdalpur, the main city of the Bastar region, that drew more than 30,000 people from seven districts, according to the International Christian Concern.
One of the largest single gatherings came on April 18 at the Tuta protest ground in Naya Raipur, held under the name “Samarthya Satyagraha,” meaning roughly a nonviolent resistance of strength. Temperatures that day reportedly reached 49 degrees Celsius, high enough that schools across the state were closed. Organizers covered two acres with tents and distributed oral rehydration salts to participants.
In video addresses circulated on the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum’s YouTube channel before the rally, forum president Arun Pannalal urged speakers to maintain restraint and operate within constitutional limits.
“Whatever protest we do, we will do it strictly within the framework of the Constitution,” he said. “We may challenge the office of the chief minister. We may challenge the office of the governor. But we cannot attack an individual person.”
Organizers said about 700 buses arrived from across the state, and that 124,000 people registered their names at the event. Those figures could not be independently verified.
Three days later, on April 21, Bharat Mukti Morcha and allied organizations held a separate rally at the same ground under Vaman Meshram, a prominent activist from the Dalit rights movement. The Progressive Christian Alliance reported that about 20,000 people attended, including members of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Class and minority communities. A memorandum demanding repeal of the law was submitted to the governor.
On May 5, a multi-party coalition called the Sarvadaliya Sabha held a torch rally in Bilaspur, also declaring the law unconstitutional. A severe storm struck during the rally, uprooting tents and flooding the ground, but participants continued into the rain.
Despite the scale of the demonstrations, church leaders and advocacy groups say the picture on the ground is mixed but remains deeply concerning.
Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, said that organized raids on Christian prayer meetings and worship services have decreased since the April protests. He attributed this partly to the public visibility the protests had created.
But the pressure has shifted rather than lifted, he told CDI. Village-level meetings led by local chiefs were now spreading social and economic pressure through communities, he said. In the central belt of Chhattisgarh, dominated by communities classified as Other Backward Classes (OBCs), where most prayer meeting disruptions had previously occurred, house churches have seen reduced interference. In tribal areas, however, the more acute problem was now economic exclusion.
Bishop Edgar said the incidents were not isolated.
“These are part of a broader social, economic and political shift,” he told CDI. “Patterns include the use of gram sabha resolutions to restrict Christian access to resources and burial grounds, alongside ideological mobilization around tribal identity and anti-conversion efforts.”
Gram sabhas are village-level governance assemblies with legal authority over community decisions in tribal areas.
Pannalal said economic exclusion was among the least visible but most damaging consequences now facing tribal Christians. He described what the Forum had documented in Kanker District, where Christian tribal families were being shut out of the official system for selling tendu leaves.
Tendu leaves are harvested each summer from forest trees and used primarily to make bidis, small hand-rolled cigarettes widely smoked across India. They are also used to make disposable cups and plates. The leaves are sold through a government-managed system at the village level, and the income they generate is for many tribal families their most important source of cash for the year.
A government-appointed record-keeper maintains a register of how much each person brings in, and payment is distributed accordingly. According to a written statement by Pannalal, village authorities in parts of Kanker had directed the record-keeper not to enter the names of Christian collectors.
With their names absent from the register, their leaves went unsold and they received no payment.
In video documentation posted on the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum’s YouTube channel, a record-keeper confirmed on camera that villagers were pressuring him not to record or purchase tendu leaves from Christian families. He said villagers had warned him they would impose a fine of ten thousand rupees, roughly $120, if he did.
A newspaper notice published on April 30, Pannalal said, called on all Christians in one village to leave. He said neither the district administration nor any other authority had responded.
“The Christian’s names have not been entered hence do not appear in the record register thus they do not get any money,” Pannalal told CDI. “Religious discrimination is taking place just because they follow the Christian religion.”
The Forum has filed an application in the High Court in Bilaspur seeking legal relief over the tendu leaf exclusions, Pannalal said. He said the petition was expected to be formally placed before the court within days of his speaking.
Earlier this year the Chhattisgarh High Court ruled that Christians do not require prior government permission to hold prayer meetings in private homes, after police interference with Christian gatherings in Janjgir-Champa District led to legal challenge. Church leaders say the Dhamtari confrontations in May suggest that ruling has not deterred organized pressure against Christian worship.
The Forum also said it planned to file an intervenor application in an appeal arising from a 2026 conviction in Gariaband District.
In that case, a woman documented in court records as a practitioner of traditional sorcery, Ishwari Sahu, was convicted of culpable homicide after a woman died during a ritual. A crucifix found among her possessions led to proceedings under the older 1968 anti-conversion statute, and references to Christianity entered the court record, despite Sahu being Hindu with no documented connection to the Christian faith.
Pannalal said the case illustrated precisely the kind of misuse Christians had warned the new law would enable.
On the broader legal front, Pannalal said the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum had already filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India. The petition, running to 5,880 pages, argues that all state anti-conversion laws are unconstitutional and that they violate Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. The petition was originally filed in 2022 and the Supreme Court had issued notices to all states, including Chhattisgarh. The state of Chhattisgarh, Pannalal said, had not replied to that notice.
“We have filed a petition that this anti-conversion bill is totally ultra-vires to the Constitution,” he told CDI. “The petition has been made. The petition has been filed. We want some powerful advocates who could present our case.”
He said the Forum was seeking senior advocates willing to argue the case on a pro bono basis and that he planned to travel to Delhi to approach lawyers directly.
“We are not opposed to a law against forced conversion,” he told CDI. “We have no fear of such a law because we do not carry out forced conversions. But we oppose false allegations and provisions that can be misused.”
Bishop Edgar said the protests had carried a clear message to both the state government and wider Indian society.
“To the government: repeal or amend the law, stop harassment, implement court orders,” he told CDI. “To society: Christians are peaceful, law-abiding citizens seeking dignity and equal rights. Public mobilization shows unity and democratic recourse, not division.”
Weeks of mass protests, thousands of kilometers of travel and hundreds of memorandums have not yet produced a formal response from the state government.
In Madgaon, the Karanga family has returned to their orchard. Their harvest is gone. The fear, their community says, has not gone away.
Chhattisgarh is a central Indian state with a population of approximately 33 million. Christians constitute around 2 percent of the population. In 2025, the state recorded 177 documented incidents of hostility against Christians, the second-highest number reported in India after Uttar Pradesh.
