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17-01-2026
NEW DELHI: On Christmas Eve, Hindu hardline groups affiliated with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced a shutdown in the central Indian city of Raipur. The protest was called over allegations of “forced” religious conversions by Christians, a claim frequently levelled against the Christian community despite scant evidence.
That same day, groups of men armed with wooden sticks stormed a shopping mall in Raipur, vandalizing Christmas decorations and disrupting celebrations. Police filed a case against 30 to 40 unidentified attackers, but arrested only six. They were released on bail within days and, upon their release, were greeted with public processions, garlands, and chants outside the jail, videos of which circulated widely on social media.
On Christmas morning, Modi visited a Catholic church in New Delhi to celebrate the occasion, but did not condemn the violence.
This incident was not the only one. According to a new report, religious hate speech and violence in India are escalating, with the country’s small Christian minority emerging as an increasingly visible target, alongside Muslims, in a climate of intensifying Hindu majoritarian rhetoric.
The research by India Hate Lab, a project of the Washington, DC-based Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), has found that the country recorded a total of 1,318 hate speech events in 2025, an average of more than three per day.
These events, organized and led largely by Hindu majoritarian groups as well as the governing BJP, targeted Muslims and Christians, marking a 97 percent increase in hate speech since 2023, and a 13 percent rise over 2024. While Muslims remained a primary target, the report found a sharp rise in anti-Christian rhetoric. Hate speech events targeting Christians rose from 115 in 2024 to 162 in 2025, a 41 percent increase. This was borne out in the violence and intimidation unleashed by Hindu supremacists on Christmas celebrations last month. Instances were recorded across India, in the capital state of Delhi, as well as the states of Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Chhattisgarh. Raipur, where the mob ravaged the mall, is the capital of Chhattisgarh.
In Madhya Pradesh, a leader from Modi’s BJP led a mob that disrupted and attacked a Christmas lunch for visually impaired children. In Delhi, women wearing Santa caps were intimidated by Hindu supremacists. In Kerala, some schools reportedly received threats from officials belonging to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organization of the BJP and many other Hindu majoritarian groups warning against holding Christmas celebrations, prompting the local government to announce a probe into the matter. This came after an RSS worker attacked teenage carolers in the same state.
Christians account for only 2.3 percent of India’s population, while Muslims account for 14.2 percent. The Hindu community makes up 80 percent.
Hindu supremacists have fueled suspicion, anger and hate against religious minorities, based on conspiracy theories and other incorrect claims.
However, the latest figures mark a new escalation in the religious hate that India’s religious minorities have had to combat ever since the BJP came to power in 2014, said experts.
The BJP’s ideological mentor, the RSS, founded in 1925, believes that India must be a “Hindu nation”, an idea that runs counter to the constitutionally enshrined value of secularism. Historical Hindu nationalist ideologues like Vinayak Savarkar and MS Golwalkar, who Modi has publicly honored, insisted that religious minorities like Muslims and Christians were “unwanted” and “internal enemies” of India, and called for a “permanent war” against them. (Int’l News Desk)
