Hate Crimes in Odisha: India’s Best Kept Secret |
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Odisha has long carried the scars of anti-Christian violence. The burning alive of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons by Bajrang Dal leader Dara Singh in 1998 and the 2008 Kandhamal violence remain among the darkest episodes in the state’s history.
Low-intensity divisions between Christian converts and Hinduised Adivasis have long simmered. But as Bishop Pallab Lima has observed in a Scroll article, prejudice against Christians in Odisha is not new. What has changed, he argued, is the degree of political backing and impunity enjoyed by Hindutva organisations. Both survivors and local observers also testify to us in our recent travels in the state that both the frequency and intensity of attacks have escalated sharply since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in the state less than two years earlier.
Odisha was also the first state in India to enact an anti-conversion law through the Odisha Freedom of Religion Act, 1967. For decades, convictions under the law remained negligible but in recent years, the law has increasingly become a tool for harassment, intimidation and disruption of Christian prayer gatherings.
So, how has a state that once appeared – apart from the explosions of the late 1990s and 2008 – relatively insulated from the overt communal polarisation seen elsewhere, arrived at this moment?
To understand this, in the opening week of May 2026, a people’s tribunal organised by Karwan-e-Mohabbat and a collective of concerned citizens travelled across Odisha to document the rise in anti-Christian violence in the state. Over four days, the tribunal visited Nabarangpur, Jeypore, Balasore and Baripada, recording testimonies from nearly 300 individuals from districts including Koraput, Malkangiri, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Dhenkanal and Sambalpur.
The Sangh’s vicious playbook
During the tribunal hearings, one justification repeatedly surfaced for attacks on Christians: that Christianity is a “foreign religion” threatening Hindu civilisation. This narrative has circulated in Odisha for decades. In her 2009 book Violent Gods, anthropologist Angana P. Chatterji argued that the Sangh Parivar’s mobilisation among Adivasis – who constitute nearly 70% of Odisha’s Christian population – has been deeply strategic.
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Conversion to Christianity among Dalits and Adivasis, Chatterji noted, is framed by Hindutva organisations as a betrayal of the Hindu fold. “Reconversion” campaigns seek to absorb tribal communities into a broader Hindu identity, while Christian institutions are portrayed as foreign intrusions.
Chatterji also documents how Hindu nationalist organisations expanded their presence in impoverished tribal regions through schools, welfare programmes and relief work, gradually building social legitimacy. Central to this project was the reframing of Adivasis as “vanvasis” – forest Hindus – while depicting Christians and Muslims as outsiders threatening indigenous culture.
The political effect of this strategy........