(LifeSiteNews) — “We won’t let you bury your dead in our land because you and your family left Hinduism to follow a foreign religion,” Hindu supremacists are telling India’s Dalits (untouchables) and tribals (indigenous peoples) who have converted to Christianity.
The reasoning of the militant Hindus is rooted in the theo-ideology of Hindutva or Hindu ethnonationalism: “Your rotting corpse will contaminate the sacred soil of Mother India.”
Pastor Subhash Baghel’s body was unceremoniously dumped in a hospital morgue for three weeks in the town of Jagdalpur in India’s northern state of Chattisgargh. Hindutva vigilantes wouldn’t let him bury his father in the cemetery where his ancestors were laid to rest.
Terrorized by Hindu mobs who were supported by the village authorities, Ramesh Baghel, the pastor’s grief-stricken son petitioned the Chattisgargh High Court. To his shock, the bench rejected his plea. The court ruled that interring the pastor in the village graveyard “may cause unrest and disharmony among the public at large.”
Undeterred, Ramesh threw himself at the mercy of India’s Supreme Court. Bizarrely, the highest court in the world’s largest democracy delivered a split verdict at the end of January.
An affidavit filed with the Supreme Court by the region’s Superintendent of Police said that birth, marriage, and death rituals must follow traditional customs and “any person who has forsworn the tradition of the community or has converted into a Christian is not allowed to be buried at the village graveyard.”
“Every time a member of the Mahar Christian community dies, police intervene to prevent clashes and help find a solution,” the affidavit added, revealing that the case of Pastor Baghel is not an isolated incident of persecution.
Justice B.V. Nagarathna slammed the local administration, saying: “Denying a person a dignified burial due to their religious identity is against the principles [Articles 21 and 14 ] of the Indian Constitution.” She admitted that “death is a great leveler” and the village panchayat’s (council) attitude “gives rise to hostile discrimination.”
But instead of ordering the village authorities to permit the burial Nagarathna suggested that Baghel be buried on his private agricultural land in Chhindawada.
In contrast, Justice Satish Chandra Sharma prioritized the need to placate Hindu sentiment over India’s constitution, ruling: “Burials must take place in officially designated areas to maintain public health standards and ensure communal harmony.” Sharma argued against “stretching the right under Article 25” (freedom of profession, practice and propagation of religion).
Ramesh’s lawyer Colin Gonsalves had argued that the pastor’s Dalit family members were buried in the village burial ground even though they had converted to Christianity. “I don’t want to go outside the village… I don’t want to be treated like an untouchable just because I converted,” Ramesh said, echoing his father’s last wishes.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Chhattisgarh government, opposed Ramesh’s petition and said this was the beginning of a “movement” that may lead to conflict between tribal Hindus and tribal Christians. “Just 20 kilometers away there is a Christian burial ground. This ground is a Hindu tribal burial ground,” he said.
The top court decided not to escalate the case to a larger bench because the corpse had already remained in the morgue for 20 days. Instead, the two judges ruled that the pastor be buried in a Christian burial ground in Karkapal, 25 kilometers away from the family village of Chhindawada.
The Supreme Court ordered the state government to demarcate “exclusive sites as graveyards for burial of Christians” throughout Chhattisgarh to avoid similar situations in the future, within a period of two months from the ruling. But Hindutva activists in Chhindwada said that they would not allow a Christian graveyard in their village.
“It’s impossible to describe the pain I’m feeling,” Ramesh, a Dalit who belongs to the Mahar sub-caste, told the media. “My father was a pastor. He did not even get a respectable farewell.”
“Among Christians, burials are not done after sunset, but my father was buried at midnight,” Ramesh lamented. The wanted to wait until the next day so that relatives could attend. “Nobody listened to us,” he said. Ramesh said his grandfather, who died in 2007, was buried in the village. His father had been a pastor in the New Apostolic Church for 33 years.
“This is one-sided justice. It’s a dictatorship. Implementing law and order is the government’s responsibility,” he said. “What can a common man do?”
Nearly 250 of the 450 Mahars in his village are converts to Christianity. Many of their deceased are buried in privately owned farms because of opposition from Hindu ethnonationalists. The village, which is home to 6,450 people, is predominantly tribal.
In at least three incidents in the past two years, village councils have denied Christian families the right to bury their dead in village burial grounds, despite a Madras high court ruling that the right to a decent burial is included in the Constitution of India’s fundamental right to life.
A similar case occurred in the neighboring villages of Arracote and Chhindbahar in 2024. “With the help of the pastors and leaders of the Christian community, we went to the high court,” Jilo Koram, daughter-in law of the late Ishwar Koram of Chhindbahar village, said. Four days after the death, the high court permitted a burial in their land.
In April 2024, Ramlal Kashyap died of cancer in Arracote village. Local Hindutva activists refused to permit the body to be buried in the village graveyard or in the Kashyaps’ own land. The high court ordered that the body to be buried in the family’s privately owned land.
The persecution of Christians even after their death is not limited to Chattisgarth. In March, four Christians in the Santa family were forced to convert to Hindism so they could bury the head of their family in a Hindu-majority village in eastern India’s Odisha state, UCA News reported.
Hindus at Siunaguda village in Nabarangpur district refused to bury Kesab Santa, 70, in the village burial ground unless the family members converted to Hinduism.
“My cousin Turpu Santa and family had no option but to become a Hindu to bury his father,” Gangadhar Santa, a relative and a Christian, said. The family are members of the local Brethren Assembly.
“The village burial ground is for the Hindus and not for Christians. So we asked Turpu Santa to become a Hindu to use our burial ground, and he accepted it,” said Tularam Dishari, a village panchayat (council) member.
Three years ago, Hindus did not allow the burial of a Christian man in another village. “So the body was carried 15 kilometers away from the village and buried near the roadside,” Santa said.
Pastor Benjamin Upadi, who leads the Brethren Assembly in the region, said that the Hindus had become “very intolerant and aggressive” towards the minority Christians and did “do not want any Christian families to live in the village.”
Upadi said the pastors of different denominations have now decided to buy a plot of land for a burial ground, pooling together around US$7,000.
While India’s tribals have followed their own indigenous religions, the Hindutva movement has been seeking to classify them as Hindus over the last six decades. Many tribals in North India have been converting to Christianity.
While Dalits are considered as outcasts in Hinduism and discriminated against particularly by not permitting them funeral rites in the same site as upper caste Hindus, the high rate of conversion to Christianity has alarmed Hindu ethnonationalists.
The directive for state authorities to designate Christian burial sites sets a precedent for discriminating against Christian converts who wish to be buried in their ancestral graves.
Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, activist, and human rights worker. He is also the author of three books, the latest of which is The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset.
