Amid PM Modi outreach to Church, a look at Sangh Parivar’s fraught ties with Christians

With the CBCI hosting the PM for the Christmas event, a section of the organisation, which represents about half the churches in the country, however, also said that it should have pressed the central government to address concerns regarding attacks on Christians and churches.

Modi’s move indicates the BJP’s bid to turn a new leaf, with some party insiders saying that reaching out to Christians has become “part of BJP’s strategy as the party has now high stakes in several states with a significant Christian population”.

“The BJP and NDA are a dominant electoral force in the North-east now, and many seats with significant Christian populations have also been won by the ruling alliance. So the Church outreach is now part of the BJP’s larger politics. The BJP is also a major force in Goa, which also has a significant Christian population. And the party is seriously looking at making inroads in Kerala, which again has a high Christian population,” a BJP leader said on condition of anonymity.

After visiting Sacred Heart Cathedral in Delhi on Christmas last year, BJP president J P Nadda said, “I am fortunate to visit this Church on the pious occasion of Christmas… The life of Jesus Christ is a source of inspiration for entire humanity.” Before Nadda, PM Modi had also visited this Cathedral on Easter last year.

On Wednesday too, Nadda along with several party leaders visited the CBCI headquarters and Sacred Heart Cathedral to mark Christmas.

“PM Modi had told party leaders during our office-bearers’ meetings to reach out to all communities,” said a BJP leader.

The relations between the Sangh Parivar and the Christian missions have however always been tense. The RSS, the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, had in 1952 set up its affiliate Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, headquartered at Jashpur in Chhattisgarh, in a bid to check alleged conversions by the Christian missions. To counter them, the Sangh also launched various social work activities in order to ensure that tribals did not convert to Christianity. In Chhattisgarh, the Kalyan Ashram assisted by late BJP MP Dilip Singh Judeo also organised many “ghar wapasi” programmes with the avowed objective to “bring Christian tribals back into the fold of Hinduism”.

The Kalyan Ashram claims it set up its base in Jashpur on the invitation of Ravi Shankar Shukla, former Congress chief minister of what was then Central Provinces and Berar. It was reported that Shukla was shown black flags by some Christian tribals, who wanted a contiguous tribal state with then neighbouring south Bihar (Jharkhand), and that he decided afterwards to “invite the Sangh to keep the Church in check in the region” .

However, despite the tension between the Sangh Parivar and tribal Christians in states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the RSS and the BJP have been more moderate in the Northeastern states, where tribals have turned Christian in large numbers. In recent years, the BJP has also emerged as a dominant force in the Northeast.

In 2017, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said the Northeast people ate what they liked. “When the civil societies and press (in Aizawl) asked me if they have to go to Pakistan for beef consumption, I said India is a secular country and food habits cannot be stopped but the Hindu faith and sentiment must be respected in Hindu majority states, in the same manner as other communities have rights in their own dominant states,” he said, signalling the BJP’s flexibility over the beef row in the context of the Northeast.

The RSS’s approach to the Church has ranged from its staunch criticism of conversions to its call for an “Indianised Church”.

At the Sangh’s 2011 Samajik Mahakumbh at Mandla in Madhya Pradesh, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, referring to conversions, said: “If all religions are equal, why should I not stay in my religion? But the world is imperialist; they can’t accept diversity … We (Hindus) will have to act and not just talk. Throw open temples, public wells and cremation grounds for all without restrictions of caste, region or language.” While opposing conversions, he thus advocated social reform within the Hindu community.

In 2003, the Sangh praised the Syrian Christians of Kerala. When 53 children were initiated into formal education on Vijay Dashmi on October 5, 2003, at Thiruvananthapuram’s St George Orthodox Syrian Cathedral — a ritual similar to the Hindu ritual of Vidyarambham – Ram Madhav, then with the RSS, praised the move. He was quoted as saying, “This has been the tradition of original Christian settlers of Kerala from early centuries of the first millennium. They mixed very well with local culture. They are now reviving it and we welcome it.”

Two years prior to that, then RSS chief K S Sudarshan had said in his Vijay Dashmi address that Indian Christians should free themselves from the control of the Vatican and evolve a “Swadeshi Church”. His statement was slammed as it was widely seen as an “interference in Christian practices”.

In recent years, the RSS and some Christian leaders seemed to have found a common ground in Kerala, as they together charged that the “threat of love jihad” was “real” and needed to be countered. However, this has not translated into any notable electoral success for the BJP, which ended up winning just one seat in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

However, the point remains that the Sangh Parivar’s relationship with Christians has largely remained uneasy, with conversion being a constant red flag for the RSS and its affiliates.

Former RSS chief M S Golwalkar wrote in his book “Bunch of Thoughts”: “So long as Christians here… consider themselves agents of the international movement for the spread of Christianity,… they will remain here as hostiles and will be treated as such.”

The BJP-ruled states have in recent years moved to make their anti-conversion laws more stringent. The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2024, passed by the Yogi Adityanath government, provides for even life imprisonment for fraudulent or forced conversion.

In 2022, the BJP-led Haryana government passed the Haryana Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion legislation against conversion by force or allurement, and placed the onus of proving innocence on the accused.