By Ronald Boyd-MacMillan
As the Violent Incidents Database raises its profile and its data gets presented in various attractive and accessible forms—such as the GCR Red List—we hope this pathbreaking instrument will make a big difference in the world of supporting the world’s persecuted Christians.
Beneath every data point however, every stat, every fact, lies a story—a story that has been building for years before the eventual act of violence takes place. After forty years of visiting persecuted Christians, reporting on their needs, weeping with them at the injustice, and anger at the global indifference to their sufferings, I still get heartbroken at seeing how well-organized violence against Christians is … on the ground.
I got a vivid sense of this on a visit to India before Christians at the end of 2024. I was travelling in the hinterlands of Chhattisgarh, a state mainly populated by tribal groups; Adivasis are the local term for them, meaning “ancient dwellers”, although Hindu extremists refer to them as “Wadvasi”, jungle dwellers, because they cannot admit any other religion predates Hinduism.
Since 2014, when the Hindu extremists took power nationally, families that have converted to Christianity have been hauled up before the local community gathering, or panchayat, and suddenly told they must return to their tribal faith or leave the village. There is a mob on hand to enforce this with violence. They are burned out of their homes. Sometimes the beatings leave them in hospital. They cannot return. Their fields are burned or confiscated. This happens literally hundreds of times, and even when I was there for a week, couples were coming into the main town and throwing themselves on the charity of local churches, having been forced to flee their home in as little as fifteen minutes.
Lift the lid, and you see how this all works.
It starts with the arrival of representatives of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a five-million-member organization (entirely male) that are the ideological promotors of Hindutva, that India should be a Hindu nation. They have a set of ancillary organizations such as the political party the BJP, a youth wing called the Bajrang Dal, et cetera. They are trained mainly in Gujarat and Nagpur, and they start by establishing “dollar a day” schools in the villages. At these schools, they teach their ideology and begin the brainwashing of the people, while carefully noting the Christian families in the villages.
Then the strategy kicks into another gear. Here’s the sickening pattern.
- They target the local school headmaster, getting him on side with their agenda.
- Then they recruit the local police inspector.
- And finally, the person who is the land register.
- Then the panchayet is called. That’s a village council.
- This often happens in the context of a feast, where the people have been plied with the local liquor (supplied by guess who…the RSS) which is a homemade lethal brew.
- The mob grab the Christian families and bring them to the panchayat, where accusations are made – often by the schoolteacher – that they are Christians, and have only become so because they have accepted the bribes of foreigners.
- The families are told to recant their faith and return to their tribal religion. They are warned if they do not, they will be forced to leave the village.
- If the family does not recant on the spot (and sadly the majority do) then the drunk mob goes to their house, loots it, and burns it. They beat the Christian family. And remember, this violence is conducted by childhood friends of the Christian victims, and sometimes even by family members.
- The family must flee. If they call for police protection, mysteriously it does not come. And if they go to the police station, the local police inspector is there to thwart their attempts to file a case.
- Even if they manage to file a report, it is another matter entirely to get a court hearing, especially if the judge is BJP appointed. He will just refuse to schedule a hearing.
- The register of land then moves to try to grab the land of the family burned out of their house.
- The family must turn to relatives in other places or go to churches in larger cities. The problem is getting back to their lands. In the meantime, they are dependent on the charity of other Christians for food and shelter. The man will offer himself as a day labourer to continue to feed his family.
See how well organized this violence is? Talk about cultural capture! At every stage, the Christian’s recourse for justice is blocked.
The Christians try to respond. They meet quietly in homes. They do not sing any more. They dig their own wells as they are forbidden to draw from the main wells. They may try to sow their fields under cover of darkness.
One fact stands out above all—Christians are still a growing group!
How? One reason is, ask any Christian how they came to faith, and they invariably reply, “But I wouldn’t be alive today if Jesus had not healed me, or my wife, or my father, etc.” Said another, “We will not leave Christ … nobody is bigger than Christ.”
Then there’s the big one…an eternal future with Christ. Said a young farmer who had to flee his house in flames and his crazed brother running after him with a bamboo stick: “When heaven is all we have, it becomes everything!”.
It almost makes you feel sorry for the Hindu extremists. However well organized, they are not bigger than Christ! And never, ever, will be!