India has recorded the best variety of assaults on Christian properties globally, with 4,949 incidents concentrating on houses, companies and locations of worship between November 2022 and 2024, in line with a brand new report by World Christian Reduction (GCR). This discovering is corroborated by the Worldwide Christian Concern’s (ICC) 2025 World Persecution Index, which locations India in its “reasonable persecution” class.
As per GCR findings, the violence towards Christians peaked in Manipur state, the place ethnic tensions erupted in Might 2023 as Hindu extremists from the Meitei tribe systematically focused predominantly Christian Kuki communities. A Kuki pastor from Imphal described the organised nature of assaults: “They knew precisely the place I lived… and so they arrived on vehicles with flamethrowers and fuel canisters to burn us out of our houses.”
The ICC report identifies three important teams driving persecution: the Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP), regardless of its decreased parliamentary majority after the 2024 elections; the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary organisation selling Hindu supremacy; and radicalized Hindu mobs who usually livestream their assaults, growing important social media followings.
Key figures highlighted within the ICC report embrace Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who publicly declared, “After I ask them to rise and defend our Hindu tradition, they obey. If I ask for blood, they’ll give me blood.” Beneath his administration, the state’s anti-conversion ordinance has led to over 230 imprisonments since 2021.
The persecution sample follows a broader development seen in anti-Muslim violence, with large-scale riots now more and more concentrating on Christian communities in states like Chhattisgarh and Manipur. Almost half of India’s 28 states keep anti-conversion legal guidelines, which the ICC notes are “so broadly phrased as to outlaw even probably the most primary practices of non secular life.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s management since 2014 has seen India take an more and more nationalist course. The ICC report criticises Modi for selling radical figures like Adityanath and championing nationalist causes such because the Citizenship Modification Act, which restricts non secular minority rights.
The disaster has pressured huge displacement, the ICC famous, with over 60,000 Christians compelled to flee their houses in Manipur alone, many now dwelling in short-term camps. Regardless of 1000’s of authorized instances beneath numerous anti-conversion legal guidelines, the ICC studies that no Christian has ever been convicted of pressured conversion, highlighting the legal guidelines’ use as instruments of intimidation.
The ICC report concludes that whereas the BJP’s decreased electoral mandate in 2024 could hamper its nationalist agenda as a consequence of extra secular coalition companions, the systematic oppression of non secular minorities continues to pose a big menace to spiritual freedom in India.
Whereas the ICC report highlights the political and social drivers of persecution, the GCR’s inaugural ‘2025 Pink Listing’ report supplies quantifiable knowledge throughout 5 classes: killings, constructing assaults, arrests, displacements, and abductions and assaults. This knowledge, compiled by GCR’s Violent Incidents Database in partnership with the Worldwide Institute for Spiritual Freedom, locations India’s persecution inside a broader regional context.
Whereas India leads in assaults on Christian properties with 4,949 incidents, neighbouring Myanmar recorded 1,490 constructing assaults throughout the identical interval, highlighting the regional scope of anti-Christian violence.
Ukraine has seen the best variety of church-specific assaults globally, with 1,270 recorded incidents, primarily from Russian artillery strikes. Nonetheless, India’s sample of persecution stands distinct, because it encompasses systematic concentrating on of each non secular buildings and personal Christian houses, notably evident in states like Manipur and Chhattisgarh.
The Pink Listing knowledge, drawn from GCR’s Violent Incidents Database launched in January 2024, demonstrates that persecution in India has advanced into a posh net of social, political, and institutional discrimination. Brian Orme, GCR’s appearing chief government, notes that regardless of these challenges, Christian communities present outstanding resilience. “Even within the darkest circumstances, the Church not solely survives however grows stronger. Tens of millions are selecting to comply with Jesus regardless of understanding the dangers they face,” he said within the report.
The persecution in India follows completely different patterns from different high-ranking nations on the Pink Listing. Whereas Nigeria leads in Christian deaths with 9,814 killings, and China tops arrests with 1,559 detentions, India’s persecution is marked by systematic destruction of property and compelled displacement, suggesting a coordinated effort to dismantle Christian communities’ financial and social foundations.
Ethiopia, which ranks fifth on the GCR Pink Listing for Constructing Assaults with 488 incidents, supplies a stark comparability to India’s scenario. Whereas Ethiopian Christians face focused assaults from Islamic militants primarily in particular areas, India’s persecution spans a number of states and entails numerous actors, from state authorities to mob violence.
Ron Boyd-MacMillan, GCR’s chief of analysis and international technique, led the compilation of the Pink Listing alongside a crew of persecution consultants, scientists, and researchers. Their findings counsel that India’s anti-Christian violence represents a novel problem as a consequence of its multi-faceted nature, combining grassroots violence with institutional discrimination and political marginalisation.
The report signifies that in comparison with nations like Azerbaijan, the place 120,001 Christians have been displaced in a single occasion, India’s displacement of 60,000 Christians represents a extra gradual however equally harmful sample of persecution. The displacement in India, notably in Manipur, has created a humanitarian disaster with 1000’s dwelling in short-term camps, their houses and livelihoods destroyed.
