Attacks on Bengali Christians and their churches have started following the BJP's victory in West Bengal. A study showed 48 attacks since May, with many cases lacking FIRs. Former MP Jawhar Sircar said, "thugs were positioning themselves as party leaders." These violent incidents against worshippers are likely to grow.
Attacks on Bengali Christians expose how Hindutva's majoritarian politics is reshaping religious freedom, with the state looking away
Attacks on Bengali Christians and their churches have begun in the wake of the BJP's victory in West Bengal. Last week, a group of us led by Karwan-e-Mohabbat (the organisation founded by former IAS officer Harsh Mander), heard testimonies from Christians across the state. We came away with the conclusion that this was a new phenomenon, one that was being condoned -- if not actively encouraged -- by the government, and that it was likely to intensify with time.
One of us, former TMC MP Jawhar Sircar, theorised that the attacks were taking place because thugs were positioning themselves as party leaders. Given the relative absence of a BJP organisational structure at the local level in the state, this space was being occupied by those seeking to make a name for themselves through violence. This explanation seems convincing, particularly after hearing the accounts of survivors, and reinforces the conclusion that the attacks are likely to grow.
The stories bore a striking resemblance to what has been happening in other states captured by the BJP, such as Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Mobs descend on places where people have gathered to pray, sometimes village churches and sometimes private homes.
Churches are desecrated; in one instance, a cross was vandalised. Those gathered for worship are abused and beaten up. Women worshippers are not spared and are sometimes sexually assaulted. Christian children have been slapped around. Pastors face the harshest treatment. Property is looted, and cases are usually filed against the victims. One study estimated that there had been 48 attacks since the BJP came to power in May. In 33 of these instances, no FIR had been registered at all.
.Bengal: Now Christians too in the crosshairs of Hindutva goons. In one instance, a pastor who was attacked in his own home was jailed for over a month after the attackers' complaint was given greater credence than the account of their assault and trespass. This, too, is a familiar pattern. The police take their cues from the ideology of the government, and we are left in little doubt about where the BJP stands on this count.
The attackers take offence at the fact that some worshippers wear bangles and sindoor . The idea that this is a country where faith is fluid, where one can visit a temple, gurdwara and dargah and find meaning in all three, is now unacceptable.
A few other things are worth noting. First, at least so far, the mainline churches have not come under attack. In other words, the Roman Catholic community and other established churches in Kolkata and other cities appear to have been deliberately spared by the mobs. This is likely to be a strategic choice, since there would be a much stronger backlash from within India and across the world if BJP-backed mobs were to vandalise, say, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.
The second point is that Bengalis must not assume they are insulated from this kind of hatred merely because of their traditions and liberalism. The rest of India is a glaring example of how easily societies can go down this path, and how little resistance there can be, particularly from the state. There is virtually no interest among IPS officers and senior bureaucrats in doing what is right, as opposed to doing what the government wants them to do.
There may be others, but I can think of only two IAS officers in my lifetime who resigned on matters of principle in the face of state-driven communalism. One was Harsh Mander, who quit after the 2002 pogrom in Gujarat, and the other was Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. That is it. With two years of his Rajya Sabha term remaining, Jawhar Sircar, too, resigned in 2024 over the R.G. Kar murder case.
.The Hindutva paradox: Secular abroad, communal at home. The norm is that those who may have appeared perfectly normal for decades can turn on a dime and enthusiastically embrace majoritarianism. Take a close look at our foreign minister, for instance.
'How was it possible for a mere handful of foreigners from a distant land to make themselves masters of a large subcontinent, the inhabitants of which numbered many millions?' asked Sir Penderel Moon in his two-volume work on the British conquest and dominion of India.
His answer was that the British conquered the country with the assistance and connivance of Indians themselves, and then ruled over it for a century with their collaboration. The same phenomenon is being played out today, with those who have sworn allegiance to a secular Constitution selling themselves for the baubles of office.
The third point is that this is part of the continuing erosion of the Constitution under the BJP. The right to peaceful assembly under Article 19 is dead. Even the earlier relegation of protests to designated areas such as Jantar Mantar is now being rolled back, with demonstrations being disallowed there, too.
Similarly, Article 25 is no longer a meaningful fundamental right. It promises us that we all have 'the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion'. These are merely words, bearing little resemblance to the laws in force. They are a fib that we tell the world, alongside grand but meaningless phrases such as vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is a family) and sarvadharma samabhava (equal respect for all religions), in a country that has criminalised the propagation and practice of faith.
Muslims across India have long recognised the real and singular objective of Hindutva, something that, unfortunately, Christians in Bengal are now discovering for themselves.