Indian Christians Facing Rising Persecution Look to America for Help
Amit recounted a familiar story for Christians in his region of India: the rising incidents of pastors jailed; parishioners afraid to worship in public.
The situation, Amit said, is getting worse “day by day.”
Almost two millennia after St. Thomas the Apostle brought Christianity to the subcontinent, believers in northern India bear witness to a rise in persecution. Laws on religious conversion and physical attacks, including during the 2025 Christmas season, have driven fear into sanctuaries of love and faith.
Deepak, another Christian in northern India, said “there’s a lot of intimidation and harassment going on.”
He said Hindu radicals regularly “attack or disrupt [Christian] gatherings or go to mob violence.”
As a condition of speaking with The Epoch Times, both Amit, who has worked in Uttarakhand, and Deepak, who is based in Delhi, requested that their names and the details of their activities be anonymized out of fear of reprisal.
Statistics from the United Christian Forum, published on local website, The Wire, reflect an increase in violence against Christians in India in recent years. They documented 734 attacks targeting Christians in 2023. In 2024, that figure climbed to 834.
Genocide Watch, the Voice of the Martyrs, and other organizations have also chronicled anti-Christian trends in the country, in line with a similar pattern of growing violence against Muslims and other non-Hindu Indians.
Amit, Deepak, and others who spoke to The Epoch Times linked what is happening to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a political party that has ruled India since 2014 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They decried the influence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a street-level Hindu nationalist group associated with the BJP.
Much of the organized, sometimes violent opposition to Christianity is concentrated in northern India, a BJP stronghold.
Nigel Barrett of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, the episcopal conference for India’s Latin Catholic bishops, told The Epoch Times in an email that “the persecution is not confined to northern India,” citing attacks in the western state of Rajasthan after it passed a conversion law, in the southern state of Karnataka, and elsewhere across the country.
Henry Hiinii, another Indian Christian in Delhi, told The Epoch Times that “the governments are not doing much to help the Christian community” as it comes under attack.
The BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
Some Indian Christians and close observers hope President Donald Trump—the man who has pledged to save Christians worldwide—will respond.
Commissioner Stephen Schneck of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom told The Epoch Times that the U.S. government should “issue targeted sanctions against Indian government officials and entities who participate in or tolerate egregious religious persecution of Christians, Muslims, and others.”
“The month of January alone has witnessed a spate of horrible attacks against Christians,” said Chair Vicky Hartzler. “We are particularly concerned by the report of a Hindu mob beating Pastor Bipin Bihari Naik in Odisha as he was conducting Sunday prayers inside a house. The mob accused him of conducting forced conversions, dragged him outside and forced him to eat cow dung. Such attacks further justify USCIRF’s call for the U.S. Department of State to designate India a CPC.”
Escalating Hostility
Scott Bledsoe, who served as a pastor for 28 years, has visited India twice, cultivating relationships with Christians there. He said his latest visa to visit this past summer was denied.
Bledsoe told The Epoch Times he started to hear about anti-Christian persecution “in the last 10 years,” describing local mob violence against groups attempting to build churches.
Over the same period, major Christian nonprofits operating in the country faced setbacks and scrutiny, often tied to their receipt of money from abroad, including from the United States.
In 2017, Compassion International, a humanitarian organization headquartered in Colorado Springs, said it left India under pressure from the government.
The Missionaries of Charity, the group founded by Mother Teresa, sustained a serious blow in 2021, when it was barred from receiving foreign funding.
Deepak said these incidents are a bad sign for the homegrown Christian missionaries planting and nurturing small churches, including in unfriendly parts of the country.
“If you can go after them, then smaller organizations don’t have any chance,” he said.
In recent years, states across India have passed laws against forced conversion and numerous Christians, accused of coercing people into accepting their faith, have been jailed under the statutes.
Some Christians believe the opposition even extends to a kind of low-level surveillance enforced by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and similar groups. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh alone is estimated to have 4 million members nationwide.
“There are spies and people that are always watching what you’re doing,” Deepak said.
He said some believers worry that singing a religious song in their own home could draw scrutiny from neighbors, leading to arrests and prosecution under forced conversion laws.
Deepak recounted a visit to a church where that fear meant services were kept very quiet.
“I did a small devotion with them from the Bible and how the church was persecuted,” he said.
A wave of attacks on Christmas celebrations in late 2025, linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and similar groups, renewed concerns about the safety and freedom of Christians in India.
“Christians are actually afraid to celebrate Christmas openly now,” Deepak said.
Amit said Christmas services were restricted in many parts of northern India.
Schneck described “a sharp increase in targeted attacks against religious minorities” over Christmas 2025.
“Similar attacks have continued into the new year,” he said.
Amid rising tensions late last year, Modi attended a Christmas service at New Delhi’s Cathedral Church of the Redemption.
The Indian Christians who spoke with The Epoch Times, however, were skeptical of the sincerity of that gesture, attributing it to concerns over votes.
“It is disturbing to see limited official condemnation from the political authorities,” Barrett said.
However, a recent judicial decision on a conversion law drew praise from them.
In December 2025, judges on the Allahabad High Court ruled that merely preaching Christianity and distributing Bibles does not run afoul of a forced conversion statute in Uttar Pradesh, a heavily Hindu state in northern India.
Hiinii described the ruling as “good news” but said many people do not yet know about it.
American Response
The plight of Indian Christians has started to attract the attention of American political leaders.
In a Dec. 19, 2025, op-ed in The Hill, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) and U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom leaders asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate India as a Country of Particular Concern, a designation outlined in the International Religious Freedom Act. They cited its controversial conversion laws and the resultant mob violence.
A 2023 State Department report on religious freedom in India noted Christians’ concerns about those laws and their reports of harassment.
That same year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom held a forum on religious freedom in India.
Sunita Viswanath, executive director of Hindus for Human Rights, testified that “the Biden administration is in denial of religious persecution in India, failing to call out India’s persecution of its 250 million Muslims and 40 million Christians.”
It’s unclear how much attention India’s Christians will get from the Trump administration.
After a 2020 meeting with Modi, Trump defended the prime minister, saying “he wants people to have religious freedom.”
Ahead of his second term, Trump pledged to protect persecuted Christians, promising to broker a peace deal between mostly Christian Armenia and mostly Muslim Azerbaijan—a goal he achieved in August 2025.
Last October, Trump announced that Nigeria would be designated a Country of Particular Concern because of the killings of Christians in that country.
“We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!” he wrote on social media.
Although the Trump administration has sought to align India against Russia and China, some analysts say U.S.–Indian relations have frayed as the administration imposes higher tariffs on that nation and pursues stronger ties with its neighbor and fierce rival, Pakistan.
“The United States specifically targeted India as a strategy to reduce Indian oil purchases from Russia,” wrote Paul Staniland, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, in a column for The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
However, Staniland said, “recent policy actions to improve trade suggest a softening of tensions between the two countries.”
Hiinii said that Christian persecution in India has only increased during Trump’s second presidency.
Some observers believe that the reality could yield leverage in negotiations with the country.
Bledsoe suggested the United States might be able to apply financial pressure to make India more tolerant of Christians within its borders—a proposal in line with the Trump administration’s frequent use of tariffs and similar tools to shape the behavior of foreign counterparts.
Deepak said the Trump administration could urge his government to “speak on this subject more clearly.”
Barrett said his group remains “open to constructive engagement from President Trump or other U.S. leaders, should it arise.”
The Faithful Forge Ahead
Regardless of the United States’ actions, India’s Christians are keeping the faith and planting new churches—sometimes, though not always, underground.
Bledsoe said Christian ministries he follows in India are still holding public services.
“Most of this is in the south,” he added.
That region is less hostile to Christianity than northern India.
Deepak said India’s underground churches are “holding strong.”
“They’re continuing to do the hard work of loving on people—loving their neighbors,” he said.
Amit lauded some of those neighbors—everyday non-Christians in India who have drawn attention to the persecution, including during the recent Christmastime attacks.
He said the faithful continue to proselytize despite threats.
“Many new believers have been added to the church,” Amit said.
By Nathan Worcester | John Fredricks contributed to this report.
The Epoch Times News Service
