On 5 November the family of Gajendra Sahu, whose name has been changed for security reasons, attempted to bury him in his ancestral village of Kodekhursi, in Kanker District, in India’s Chhattisgarh State.
Gajendra had converted to Christianity three years previously. He had also given up drinking after years of alcohol addiction, but sadly passed away following a prolonged period of ill-health caused by it.
His relatives should have been permitted to lay him to rest in peace, however, because of his conversion to Christianity, residents of Kodekhursi refused to permit his burial within village boundaries, and even on his family’s own plot. Repeated requests for intervention from the authorities proved unsuccessful, and the family was ultimately forced to travel close to 200km – with a police escort – to the state capital Raipur where they were finally able to conduct a dignified funeral service in a Christian cemetery.
The episode highlighted a disturbing pattern of religious discrimination which has emerged in the tribal belt of India, particularly in Chhattisgarh State, as well as Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, wherein Christians from tribal communities whose faith offered them solace in lives otherwise scarred by poverty and discrimination are denied dignity not just in life but even in death.
Identity revoked
Tribes like the Gond, Halba, and Maria are classified as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution due to the historical disadvantages they have faced. Many have converted to Christianity over generations, but these converts are branded ‘foreign’ intruders, their tribal identity revoked not by law, but by mob decree.
Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) groups amplify this discrimination by pushing to delist tribal Christians from Scheduled Tribe benefits, including reservations in education and government jobs, and protections for land and forest rights, arguing that their faith severs them from tribal heritage. Bloodlines are now policed by belief and kin turned against kin in lands that belonged to their ancestors for generations.
Regarding burial rights specifically, what should be a solemn rite of passage has become a battleground of exclusion, where bodies are left to decay in distant morgues, exhumed in fits of communal rage, or shuttled across hostile villages.
Tribal Christian families, already burdened by poverty and marginalisation, endure the added burden of finding a place to bury their loved ones. The dead become pawns in a larger war over identity, their graves denied as punishment for their faith.
At the epicentre of this problem lie misused laws and inflamed ideologies. The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, is one example. The PESA empowers Gram Sabhas – village level community assemblies where residents participate in decision-making processes in areas with high concentrations of tribal ‘adivasi’ populations – to safeguard their land, culture and self-governance.
These village councils have been known to convene to pass resolutions barring Christians within their tribal community from accessing communal graveyards, forests, and even their homes, by invoking Dev Pratha – a traditional tribal practice involving community-led rituals which includes specific cremation or burial rites that are often associated with ancestral or deity worship as a justification for granting Hindu-access only.
Hindu nationalist groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) fan these flames, framing conversions as cultural invasions and stoking fears of the erosion of traditions. Billboards warning against pastors precede mob action, while anti-conversion laws provide selective cover for vigilantes.
Police inaction adds to the turmoil. In some cases, the authorities allow exhumations to proceed without intervention; First Information Reports (FIRs) required for the police to open investigations are often registered against grieving families over ‘illegal burials’; and officials prioritise public order over constitutional mandates. In this conflict, tribal solidarity is fractured along the lines of religion or belief, turning autonomy into a tool for discrimination.
‘Convert or be cast out’
Statistics show that these are not random outbursts, but part of a relentless rhythm of persecution. In Chhattisgarh’s Bastar and Kanker districts, early 2025 saw a surge tied to judicial delays and village pacts. In January the death of Pastor Subhash Baghel in Chhindwada village triggered a 21-day morgue ordeal, his body finally buried at midnight in a distant, undocumented site in Karkapal.
In July, the burial of Christian convert Somlal Rathore ignited a riot in which over 1,000 villagers exhumed his remains in a public desecration, vandalising churches and homes while officials looked on.
The pattern has also spilled into collective edicts, as in Ka 5 October resolution passed in Kanker by over 400 residents from 22 villages mandating a blanket ban on Christian burials, resource access, and church existence, enforced under PESA.
Across the border in Odisha’s Malkangiri and Nabarangpur, assaults on over 30 families in June included forced ‘reconversions’ of the dead and corpses subjected to Hindu rites for cremation permission.
These clustered horrors, from exhumations to enforced reconversions share a common thread: convert or be cast out.
On 27 January India’s Supreme Court issued a landmark split verdict in the case of Ramesh Baghel v. State of Chhattisgarh, stemming from the denied burial of Pastor Subhash Baghel. Justice BV Nagarathna’s opinion robustly upheld the right to dignified burial under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, arguing it extends to death and cannot be subordinated to customary practices that discriminate on religious grounds. She advocated for burial on private village land to preserve ancestral ties.
In contrast, Justice Satish Chandra Sharma prioritised public order, cautioning against burials that could spark unrest in communally charged areas, and endorsed a distant, segregated site. Invoking Article 142 for extraordinary relief, the bench ordered an immediate midnight burial at an unidentified Christian graveyard 45km away, under police protection, while ordering the Chhattisgarh government to demarcate exclusive burial grounds for Christians statewide within two months, a deadline that passed without compliance by April 2025, and remains unfulfilled at the time of writing.
Nine months later, the verdict’s promise rings hollow amid escalating denials. Urgent action is essential to reclaim dignity. The state must enforce demarcations with dedicated funding and oversight, prosecute mob violence and biased officials under anti-discrimination laws, and amend PESA guidelines to prioritise constitutional rights over majoritarian customs.
The crisis facing tribal Christians in India is not merely a challenge over burial grounds, it is a struggle over their identity, a sense of belonging and the constitutional promise of equality. When grieving families must fight mobs, officials and distorted provisions of the law to lay their loved ones to rest, it reveals a deeper collapse of justice and humanity.
The Supreme Court’s intervention has offered some glimmer of protection but without political will, institutional accountability and a firm reaffirmation that constitutional rights outweigh customary exclusion, the Christian community within this group remain unprotected. Restoring dignity requires more than court orders, it demands a decisive rejection of the ideologies that turn neighbours into enemies and the dead into objects of punishment.
By CSW’s India Researcher