Jagdalpur, Bastar: For 20 days, Ramesh Baghel kept his dead father’s body in a hospital mortuary in the town of Jagdalpur while he petitioned the Chhattisgarh high court and then the Supreme Court of India for permission to bury him in a graveyard in Chhindwada village in south Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district.
Finally, he buried his father, a Christian pastor, around midnight on 27 January, at a cemetery 25 km away from their village.
“I have not lost, humanity has,” Baghel, who owns a small general goods store, told Article 14.
Pastor Subhash Baghel died on 7 January 2025 at the Baliram Kashyap Memorial Government Medical College hospital in Jagdalpur, about 300 km south of Raipur in the south Bastar region of Chhattisgarh.
When a section of right-wing Hindu villagers objected to Ramesh Baghel burying his father’s body in the village marghat or graveyard, he approached the Chhattisgarh high court, contending that he had earlier buried other family members there.
Undeterred by the rejection of his plea, Baghel knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court.
Unable to reach a consensus, a two-judge bench of the SC gave a split verdict on 27 January. Instead of referring the matter to a larger bench, however, using the apex court’s powers under Article 142 of the Constitution pertaining to enforcement of decrees and orders, Justice B V Nagarathna allowed Justice S C Sharma’s main holding to stand. Seeking to avoid further delay, this order directed Ramesh Baghel to bury his father in the Christian burial ground in Karkapal village.
Ramesh Baghel belongs to the Mahar community, a scheduled caste (SC). He is among 200 million Dalits, Indians of historically marginalised communities officially categorised as SCs and guaranteed by the Constitution representation and quotas in government employment and colleges besides ameliorative government policies.
Nearly 200 to 250 Mahars of Chhindwada are converts to Christianity. Many of their relatives are buried in the village crematorium and in privately owned agricultural lands.
Ramesh Baghel’s three-week legal battle to enforce his Constitutional rights underscores Dalit Christian, tribal Christian and other religious minorities’ struggles to safeguard their religious rights in Chhattisgarh in the face of far-right Hindu groups’ shrill and persistent campaign claiming large-scale conversion of marginalised communities to Christianity (see here, here and here).
Union home minister Amit Shah claimed in the run-up to assembly elections in November 2023 that the incumbent Congress government had “misused state machinery” to convert impoverished indigenous people to Christianity. In at least three incidents in only the previous two years, local village councils have denied Christian families the right to bury their dead in village burial grounds, prompting a challenge in courts, notwithstanding a Madras high court ruling that the right to a decent burial is included in the fundamental right to life.
These developments are set against rising violence against Christians in the state’s tribal belt, at the hands of far-right Hindu groups.
Article 14 reported in February 2023 that since the latter half of 2022, tribal groups opposing conversions to Christianity had launched violent attacks against Christians in at least four districts of south Chhattisgarh (see here, here, here), purportedly to save Hinduism. Churches were vandalised, nearly 100 homes ransacked, and more than 400 Christians from 19 villages of Kanker, Kondagaon and Narayanpur districts had to flee their homes after mobs of local tribals backed by Hindu right-wing vigilantes threatened to kill those who had converted to Christianity.
Attacks on Christians across the country have increased since 2014, the year when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the centre. According to civil rights group United Christian Forum, attacks on Christians went from 127 instances in 2014 to 834 instances in 2024.
In Chhindwada and surrounding villages, incited by right-wing leaders, influential tribal villagers have enforced a near-total socio-economic boycott of Dalit Christians and tribal Christians.
“The Indian Constitution allows any person to go to any religious place,” said Chhattisgarh Christian Forum's vice-president Ratnesh Benjamin, adding that Christians all over Bastar were being harassed in the name of illegal conversions. He said this was despite the state’s long history of tribals adopting the Christian faith, as far back as 1933 when the region’s first church was built in Jagdalpur.
According to the 2011 census in Bastar district the Christian population was 1.98% (27,951). The community, however, has a population of 9.44% in Jagdalpur.
According to the petition, of Chhindwada’s approximate population of 2,000-2,500, about 750 individuals belonged to the Mahar community of scheduled castes, while 200-250 are Christian. The remaining, the majority, belong to indigenous communities.
What Happened In Court
On the evening of 7 January, members of the Sarva Adivasi Samaj, including some BJP members, went to the Baghels’ residence in Chhindwada and announced their decision to prohibit his burial in the village. The police were called, and an attempt was made to resolve the matter.
Ramesh Baghel named Tundul Nag, Mahesh Baghel, Dhani Bais and Bablu Nag. Tundul Nag had been the first to arrive and cause a ruckus, he said. With the visitors refusing to relent, the grieving family said they would seek the intervention of the courts.
On 8 January, Ramesh Baghel filed a petition in the Chhattisgarh high court requesting permission for his father to be buried in the village graveyard in Chhindwada. This was the third incident in recent years before the high court on the subject of burials for converted Christians in Chhattisgarh. In the two previous cases, the court had allowed the burial.
On 9 January, the court dismissed Ramesh Baghel’s plea on the grounds that “it may cause unrest and disharmony in public at large”.
To the petitioner’s contention that until only a few years earlier his ancestors had been buried in a part of the village crematorium, the Chhattisgarh state government told the court that there was no separate cemetery for Christians in Chhindwada.
On 27 January, during the Supreme Court hearing of Ramesh Baghel’s appeal against the HC verdict, Justice Nagarathna said the state’s stand violated Articles 21 and 14 of the Indian Constitution (pertaining to the fundamental right to protection of life and personal liberty; and the right to equality before the law) by discriminating on grounds of religion. The attitude of the village panchayat gave rise to “hostile discrimination”, Justice Nagarathna said. “…it betrays the sublime principle of secularism…”
Justice Sharma said a designated burial ground for Christians was present 20 km away, and to claim that rights existed over the burial areas of another faith would be “stretching the right under Article 25” (freedom of profession, practice and propagation of religion).
To prevent unrest and further delay, the court ruled that Subhash Baghel’s body be buried in the Christian cemetery near Karkapal.
The order also directed the State 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.
Local BJP workers in Chhindwada said, however, that they would not allow a Christian graveyard in their village.
Tundul Nag told Article 14, “We will not allow such a cemetery to be built anywhere within the village boundary. “
Asked about the directive, Jagdalpur's additional collector C P Baghel said if the Supreme Court has given such an order decision, then it would be followed. “Work will be done when the time comes,” he said.
A Divided Village, A Hasty Burial
Located 30 km south of Bastar district’s administrative headquarters Jagdalpur city, Chhindwada in Darbha tehsil comprises three gram panchayats or elected village councils. Ramesh Baghel is a resident of Chhindwada 1.
On 29 January, two condolence meetings were underway in the village, one at the home of a Hindu family and the other a Christian home. The meetings were both attended by members of the respective community only.
Hindu neighbours of the Baghels did not attend the memorial service for Subhash Baghel.
A group of women gathered in the house of sarpanch (elected head of the village council) Sukai Nag before attending the Hindu family’s condolence meeting said they wouldn’t also be attending the Baghels’ memorial service. “We have nothing to do with them,” one woman told Article 14.
"My father was a pastor. He did not even get a respectable farewell,” Ramesh Baghel told Article 14 later that evening. “Among Christians, burials are not done after sunset, but my father was buried at midnight.”
According to the Baghel family, soon after the Supreme Court passed its order on 27 January, local administration officials visited his house and ordered that he bury the body as soon as possible. The family sought time until the next day so that relatives could attend. “Nobody listened to us,” said Ramesh Baghel.
Personnel of the Chhattisgarh police were stationed outside their home as well as at the cemetery in Karkapal, he said.
The fault lines in the village are not limited to burials and rituals surrounding death. Like a few other villages in Bastar, the Chhindwada gram panchayat passed a resolution in 2024 ordering a virtual social and economic excommunication of Christians.
“Neither are we allowed to take rations (from the government-run public distribution system’s fair price shop for subsidised foodgrains) nor do labourers come to work for us,” said Ramesh Baghel. He added that Christian shop owners are not allowed to operate in Chhindwada.
For any violation of these rules, the gram panchayat imposes a fine of Rs 5,051.
Neighbours would not even dare to offer the bereaved family a cup of tea in the weeks after Subhash Baghel’s death, when it is customary not to cook in the household.
Everyday from 7 January until 28 January, a Christian family from neighbouring hamlet Junapada sent food three times a day, as well as kettles of tea, ferrying these by foot over the 2-km distance to the Baghels’ home. “Their Hindu neighbour would have to pay a fine for sending over a cup of tea,” said Pratima Bais of Junapada, whose family sent the meals.
On 29 January, during the memorial service, Hindu neighbours who wanted to pay their respects stood outside their homes, wary of being penalised for breaking the village’s rules, Ramesh Baghel said.
‘How Can Christians Come Here?’
Dhaniram Nag, son of Chhindwada village’s sarpanch Sukai Nag, said that the gram sabha (a general body meeting of adult village residents) had on 7 February 2024 passed a 13-point resolution by which it was decided that no Christian person would be permitted to be buried in the village crematorium.
The resolution was passed just over two months after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the state assembly elections in Chhattisgarh in a surprise victory to wrest the state back from the Congress.
Deputy sarpanch Rameshwar Nag of Chhindwada, a local BJP leader, told Article 14 that 23 families in the village had converted to Christianity. “Until 15 years ago, only two families in the village were Christians,” Rameshwar Nag said. “In surrounding panchayats, half the village has become Christian.”
According to Rameshwar Nag, discontent against burying Christians in the village crematorium was brewing in Chhindwada since 2015, leading up to the 2024 gram sabha resolution.
Had Christians been residents of the village for decades, he claimed, they would have had a designated Christian cemetery.
“This is a village of indigenous people,” he said angrily. “How can Christians come here?”
In response, Ramesh Baghel 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, he said. “This clearly shows that Christians are not new here.”
On Village Outskirts, Graves With A Cross
According to pastor Virender Nath of neighbouring village Arracote, where a similar case occurred in 2024, said most villages in the region had designated spaces for different castes within their graveyards. Many villages had also designated spaces for Christians to bury their dead within these graveyards, he said, a practice that had continued without objection until recent years.
Virender Nath said tribal Christians have been sending their children to school, and they shun substance abuse. “The RSS claims this is religious conversion by luring people with money,” he said, “but the truth is different.”
In Chhindwada, members of the BJP and the Sarva Adivasi Samaj, an umbrella organisation of tribal groups in Chhattisgarh, said the village had no cemetery for Christians. The Sarva Adivasi Samaj, supported by the BJP, has been demanding that members of scheduled tribes (STs) who convert to Christianity be stripped of special rights accorded by the Constitution to STs.
Article 14 found that in a crematorium in a corner of Chhindwada village, a handful of graves dating back to the 1990s and 2000s bear a cross mark on the headstones, suggesting that they are Christian graves.
Rameshwar Nag and Tundul Nag claimed the cross did not mean it was a Christian grave. “Tribals adopt all kinds of cultures,” Rameshwar Nag said.
Dilip Baghel, a resident of Junapada, an adjoining hamlet, said it was true that graveyards in nearby villages all had designated spaces for different castes. “But the Mahars’ graveyard near the drain used to be for both Hindus and Christians,” he said.
Dilip Baghel said the atmosphere in the village was vitiated by communal politics, with people fined for even interacting with those of another community. “Due to this fear, people do not meet,” he said.
‘Reconvert To Hinduism, Or Remain Boycotted’
In 2024, Sankar Kashyap, secretary of the Chhattisgarh Sarva Adivasi Samaj, filed an application under the Right To Information Act 2005 seeking information from the district collector’s office about the Christian population of Chhindwada’s three panchayats. In response, he was told there was no information on the matter.
Kashyap, who was vice-president of the BJP in Chhindwada before panchayat elections in February 2025, made an extrapolation from this response that there were no Christians in the village.
“In the RTI reply, we haven’t received information about this,” he told Article 14. “So how can we believe that Christians are present in the village?”
Rameshwar Nag and Shankar Kashyap said they had run a ‘ghar wapasi’ campaign for a whole year in 2018, literally translated as homecoming.
This was part of Hindu organisations’ effort to convert Christians and Muslims ‘back’ to Hinduism, a contentious pan-India project (see here, here, here and here) that seeks to appropriate tribal belief systems into the ambit of Hinduism, while opposing the adoption of any other faith by indigenous and other people.
“We gave time to people to return to their original religion,” Kashyap claimed.
He said tribals who ‘reconvert’ to Hinduism would be welcomed wholeheartedly. “Otherwise, the same situation will continue—people of either community will not meet the other.”
Kashyap said the rift between the communities began to widen after the Jheeram Ghati massacre of May 2013, a Maoist attack that killed 32 people, including top Congress leaders of Chhattisgarh.
A pastor was among those killed in the attack, Kashyap said. According to him, the incident led to Christian families suspending tribal customs that they had continued to follow, and putting a stop to donations to Hindu shrines.
“Now the Christians do not participate in any of our activities. Therefore, we also started boycotting them,” he said.
Their opposition to Christians burying their dead in Chhindwada began in 2024, Kashyap said. When a group of 10-15 men insisted that the bereaved Christian family “return” to the Hindu fold if they wanted to proceed with a shroud burial, the family agreed to do so, he claimed. “But till date no one has returned to their original religion,” he added.
A Family With Hindus And Christians
In the Junapada hamlet, where there are 35 Christian families among 42 houses, local BJP and other right-wing organisation members have been unable to divide the communities, said residents.
Anjali Bais and Pratima Bais, the great-granddaughters of Pachmi Bais, a Christian who died in 2024, said even within their family there were some who followed Christianity and others who followed Hinduism.
According to Pratima Bais, when family members went to dig a pit for the burial, some tribal villagers arrived and refused to allow the burial to proceed. They demanded that the family convert to Hinduism first.
“She died at the age of almost 90—and in all those years she had never faced any problems due to her religion,” said Pratima Bais.
The family stood against those demanding a conversion. Other family members were buried in the village, they said, and their grandmother would be buried there as well. “Permission was then given to bury her,” said Pratima Bais.
The Bais family went ahead and visited pastor Subhash Baghel's memorial service as well, she said, despite local BJP leaders imposing a fine. “We have stopped paying attention to what these people say," she added.
The Bais family has tried to protest the exclusion of their family and other Christians from a WhatsApp group for updates from their gram panchayat, but without success.
VHP Mobilises Bastar’s Tribal Youth
Ravi Brahmachari came to Bastar in 1992 as an activist of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a far-right Hindu nationalist group. Now secretary of the organisation in the region, Brahmachari told Article 14 he is focusing on cases of religious conversion, ‘love jihad’—the conspiracy theory floated by Hindutva groups that Muslim men strategically lure and entrap Hindu girls to convert them to Islam—and cow slaughter.
He said religious conversion was a grave subject in Bastar, a practice that had “changed the demography of the state”. VHP activists are active in every village, he said.
According to Brahmachari, conversion to Christianity is so rampant that tribal groups have joined the VHP. He said 1,500 youth pledged, with tridents in their hands, to not allow conversions in their village, to prohibit visits by pastors.
Connected to him through WhatsApp groups, members protest when incidents of burials or similar matters crop up. He claimed that the local police supported them too.
“Contrary to the claims of Christian organisations, there is not a single official Christian in the village,” he said about Chhindwada. “Despite this, there are churches in the village. If there is not a single Christian, how can they be allowed to bury the dead?”
In December 2024, right-wing groups including the Sarva Adivasi Samaj and the VHP held a press conference in Jagdalpur just before Christmas. A former BJP member of the legislative assembly (MLA) from Bastar, also state executive chairman of the Sarva Adivasi Samaj, Rajaram Todem spoke at the event where the groups declared their intention to campaign against alleged illegal churches in Bastar, vowing to demolish them and replace them with Hanuman temples.
Speaking to Article 14 in Jagdalpur, Raja Ram Todem said they were not against any religion, but were opposing conversions. “If someone makes tribals give up all their rituals, how will they remain tribal?” he asked. Burials that were not according to tribal customs would not be allowed, he said.
Totem claimed they received information through the RTI law that 66,000 people had converted to Christianity in Bastar, while the 2011 Census of India pegged the number of Christians in the region at only 250. Asked about the source of this number, Todem claimed they received “intelligence about this data” from the collector’s office.
Chhattisgarh Christian Forum's vice president Ratnesh Benjamin said there were no conversions being undertaken. “This is just a political issue,” he said.
About the numbers of Christians in Bastar, Benjamin said there were several churches from different missions in Jagdalpur, including two major ones, the Chandaya Memorial Methodist church with more than 5,000 members and the S Joseph’s Cathedral Roman Catholic church, with more than 2,000 registered members.
Two Previous Burial Cases In HC
In two similar cases in 2024, Christian families from Bastar approached the Chhattisgarh high court, where they were granted permissions. The first case was from Arracote village, and the other from Chhindbahar, both located in the Darbha block.
Jilo Koram, daughter-in law of the late Ishwar Koram of Chhindbahar village, said their family had been going to church for 25 years.
When her mother-in-law died a few years earlier, the family buried her in their privately owned land in the village, she said, seated on the ground outside her home on the outskirts of the village. When her father-in-law died in 2024, their own relatives and a few other villagers showed up and said they would not permit the burial of a Christian.
“With the help of the pastors and leaders of the Christian community, we went to the high court,” she 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 groups would not permit the body to be buried in the village graveyard or in the Kashyaps’ own land. Finally, the high court ordered that he be allowed to bid his mother a final goodbye in the family’s privately owned land.
Less than a year later, Ramesh Baghel made the rounds of the courts with a similar plea, before making his peace with a grave located 25 km away.
(Poonam Masih is a freelance journalist.)
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