Article

Ethnicities
2020, Vol. 20(3) 587–607
Anti-conversion laws ! The Author(s) 2019
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and violent Christian sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1468796819885396
persecution in the states journals.sagepub.com/home/etn

of India: a quantitative
analysis

Nilay Saiya and Stuti Manchanda

Public Policy and Global Affairs, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore

Abstract
Seven of India’s 29 states enforce ‘anti-conversion’ laws, which are designed to prevent
individuals and groups from converting or attempting to convert, either directly or
otherwise, persons through ‘forcible’ or ‘fraudulent’ means, including ‘allurement’ or
‘inducement.’ This might seem a noble enough goal; nevertheless, we argue that
anti-conversion laws actually serve to generate violent anti-Christian persecution by
creating a culture of vigilantism in the states where such laws exist. This article empir-
ically tests this proposition, along with alternative hypotheses, using a time-series,
negative binomial analysis of the Indian states from 2000 to 2015. Our analysis finds
that states that enforce anti-conversion laws are indeed statistically more likely to give
rise to violent persecution against Christians than states where such laws do not exist.
The statistical analysis is supplemented with a brief case study of Madhya Pradesh.

Keywords
Religion, conversion, anti-conversion laws, India, conflict, persecution, Christians,
violence

Corresponding author:
Nilay Saiya, Public Policy and Global Affairs, Nanyang Technological University, School of Social Sciences,
Singapore 639798, Singapore.
Email: nilay.saiya@ntu.edu.sg
588 Ethnicities 20(3)

Introduction
In 2018, Uttarakhand officially became the ninth Indian state to formally enact an
‘anti-conversion bill’. The law, which originally arose over concerns pertaining to
the state’s declining Hindu population relative to its Muslim and Christian pop-
ulations, potentially carries a five-year prison sentence for those found guilty of
forcing another individual to change faiths (Times of India, 2018). Uttarakhand
follows in the steps of several other states which have passed similar laws: Odisha
(formerly Orissa) in 1967, Madhya Pradesh in 1968, Arunachal Pradesh in 1978,
Chhattisgarh in 2000, Tamil Nadu in 2002 (though repealed two years later),
Gujarat in 2003, Himachal Pradesh in 2007, Rajasthan in 2008 (though unsigned
by the state governor) and Jharkhand in 2017. In 2006, both Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh strengthened their laws, requiring anyone desiring to convert to
another faith to first provide their state governments with a 30-day notice before
changing religions or face fines or other penalties. After Uttarakhand passed its
law, political entities in other states expressed strong interest in following suit.
Formally known as ‘Freedom of Religion Acts’, anti-conversion laws, as they
are referred to by their critics, are state-level statutes designed to regulate religious
conversions done through ‘forcible’ and ‘fraudulent’ means, including ‘induce-
ment’ and ‘allurement.’ The basic structure and content of these laws varies only
minimally between states, as newer laws tend to be modelled on earlier statutes in
other states. For example, the first of these laws, the Orissa Freedom of Religion
Act, 1967 states: ‘no person shall convert or attempt to convert either directly or
otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by the use of force or by
inducement or by any fraudulent means nor shall any person abet any such con-
version’.1 The language found in the Orissa bill is virtually identical to that found
in the anti-conversion laws of other states. The Indian Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of state-level anti-conversion laws in the landmark case Rev
Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, declaring that religious conversion inhibits
religious freedom and that ‘there is no fundamental right to convert another
person to one’s own religion’.2
This article examines the effect of anti-conversion laws on violent Christian
persecution in India. It argues that, instead of promoting respect for religion—
the very thing that proponents of these laws believe they do—laws inhibiting con-
version create and sustain environments of hostility towards religious minorities,
thus empowering the voices of extremism and promoting religious conflict. Using a
time-series, cross-state negative binomial analysis of the states of India from 2000
to 2015, we find that states that enforce anti-conversion laws are indeed more likely
to experience religious conflict in the form of violent anti-Christian persecution
than states where such laws do not exist.
Our analysis contributes to the existing scholarship in three ways. First, while
virtually all of the studies on religious conflict in India have focused on Hindu–
Muslim violence, Hindu–Christian violence has been virtually absent from the lit-
erature, largely because violence against Christians has been a relatively recent
Saiya and Manchanda 589

phenomenon, the Christian share of the Indian population remains low and
Christians remain politically insignificant (Bauman, 2015). Yet, Hindu–Christian
conflict has increased precipitously over the past decade and has become a very
significant and contentious issue in India (Kanungo, 2008; Sarkar, 1999; Shah and
Carpenter, 2018). Our focus on anti-Christian violence, thus, fills an important gap
in the literature on inter-religious conflict in India. Second, by using a subnational,
cross-state statistical analysis of all of India rather than focusing on a particular
region, we are able to implicitly compare violent and peaceful states, and, in the
process, help identify the central causes of conflict in one of the countries most
plagued by religious hostility. A comparative, state-level analysis is also warranted
given the decentralized nature of the Indian political system and the great deal of
autonomy given to the states to fashion their own religion–state policies. Third,
our choice of multivariate, time-series analysis instead of descriptive statistics or
ethnographic work allows us to gauge the relative importance of several different
hypothesized explanations of violent religious conflict in India at once.
The study proceeds in six parts. The first discusses the literature on the sources
of religious conflict in India, noting that only one existing study has attempted to
examine statistically the correlates of anti-Christian violence in India and no
empirical analysis on the effects of anti-conversion laws on violent religious con-
flict has yet been undertaken. The second section explains why anti-conversion
laws encourage violence against Christians. The third part discusses the data and
methods used in the quantitative analysis, while the fourth presents the results.
A fifth section presents a brief case study of conversion and anti-Christian perse-
cution in the state of Madhya Pradesh. A sixth section concludes.

Violent Christian persecution in India

Christians throughout the world routinely experience imprisonment, torture, rape
and death for their faith at the hands of both state and non-state actors (Philpott
and Shah, 2018). The Christian NGO, Open Doors, notes that approximately 215
million Christians experience high, very high or extreme persecution (Open Doors,
2018). One in 12 Christians lives in countries where Christianity is ‘illegal, forbid-
den, or punished’ (Christianity Today, 2018). Trends indicate that anti-Christian
persecution is worsening in intensity and scope. The severity of global Christian
persecution prompted Britain in 2018 to commission an independent review into
the persecution of Christians worldwide and recommend practical steps to alleviate
Christian suffering (Financial Times, 2018).
Curiously, despite its status as the world’s largest democracy, the ideals of religious
liberty and equality set forth in its constitution and Christianity’s long-standing pres-
ence in the country, India ranks among the world’s worst countries in terms of its
levels of anti-Christian hostility. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2015,
India had the fourth highest rate of religious conflict in the world, behind only
Iraq, Syria and Nigeria (Pew Research Center, 2017). It is also the country in
which religious minorities faced the highest rates of social hostilities involving religion
590 Ethnicities 20(3)

in the world (Pew Research Center, 2018). In 2017, the modern persecution of Indian
Christians reached a record high, leading one Catholic organization to describe reli-
gious persecution as a ‘new normal’ in India (UCA News, 2018). Many local Christian
NGOs in India provide evidence of escalating violence against Christians. In 2018,
Persecution Relief (2018, 2019) recorded a total of 477 incidents of persecution against
Christians in India, up from 440 in 2017 and 330 in 2016.3 The Religious Liberty
Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (2017) also pointed to increased
targeting of Carol groups, independent pastors and Catholic clergy. The report indi-
cated that in 2017, there were 110 cases of physical violence and threats, 70 cases of
harassment and 64 cases in which church proceedings and worship services were
stopped. There were even three cases of church demolition and two cases where
churches were burnt down.4
Historically, religious violence in India has targeted all of India’s major faith
communities. Major episodes of violence against those of different faith traditions
occurred during the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984, the anti-Hindu riots in
Kashmir in 2000, the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 and the anti-
Christian riots in Odisha in 2008. But in recent times, Christians have suffered
from a disproportionate level of religious persecution, which has intensified after
the coming to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in
2014. At the same time, not every Indian state experiences high levels of Christian
persecution. What explains this variation across states?
With the exception of one study, the scholarly literature to date has not
attempted to empirically test the causes of anti-Christian persecution in India.
The one study that attempts to carry out a subnational analysis of violence against
Christians in India relies largely on descriptive analysis and covers only a two-year
period (Bauman and Leech, 2012). Existing studies have, nevertheless, posited
some explanations for religious conflict in India generally, which theoretically
should also apply to anti-Christian violence.
A first line of argumentation examines how material factors lead to religious
conflict in India, especially poverty, uneven economic development and population
pressures (Chadha, 2005; Urdal, 2008). This claim falls in line with some broader
work on the effects of economic underdevelopment on violent conflict, particularly
terrorism and civil war (Burgoon, 2006; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Hegre and
Sambanis, 2006; Lai, 2007; Li and Schaub, 2004). Because economic prosperity
relieves competition over scarce resources, higher levels of wealth result in greater
satisfaction among the general populace, reducing the likelihood of individuals
blaming outgroups for their plight or turning to violence in order to redress
their impoverished situations. Conversely, underemployment and lower levels of
education foster social unrest, sometimes leading to violence. Economic grievances
can take on a cultural dimension when those who experience economic marginal-
ization scapegoat those of different ethnic, linguistic or religious backgrounds as
being responsible for their declining standard of living. Similarly, population pres-
sures can lead to competition over resources among groups, sometimes leading to
violence between them. A common theme in this first set of studies is that conflict
Saiya and Manchanda 591

between religious groups, in India, and elsewhere, has more to do with non-
religious factors.
A second explanation points instead to cultural difference between India’s reli-
gious groups. Rooted in the ‘clash of civilizations’ theory popularized by the late
political scientist Samuel Huntington, the cultural difference explanation empha-
sizes differences in religious identity and divergent value systems espoused by
India’s different religious traditions (Huntington, 1996). Furthermore, the legacy
of colonialism in India by Christian powers—first by the Portuguese and then the
British—has given rise to a widespread narrative linking Christianity to foreign
rule, external interventions and Western supremacy (Jaffrelot, 2007). Some Hindu
groups thus perceive the Christian faith to be foreign and expansionist, exclusivist
and intolerant in its religious claims, politically opportunistic and inherently
incompatible with the Hindu dharma. In this view, Christianity poses an existential
threat to Hindu unity, especially in its attempt to challenge the caste system by
converting those from lower-caste Hindu communities. Against Huntington’s
argument, though, is the work of Varshney (2002), which reveals that the prospects
for communal violence in India decline when different communities are brought
together in intercommunal networks, which function as vehicles of peace in that
they build bridges and manage tensions.
A third body of work argues that it is not religious difference per se that gen-
erates violence, but rather the politicization of religion by elites. In this view, the
‘divide and conquer’ approach, part and parcel of British colonial rule as evi-
denced in the 1909 Moreley–Minto Reforms and the 1919 Montagu–Chelmsford
Reforms, precipitated the breakdown of communal harmony, constructed com-
munal difference and stoked conflict between Hindus and Muslims, with the goal
of awakening Muslim consciousness as a means to counter emerging anti-British
nationalism (Varshney, 2002). Others trace the politicization of religion in India to
the pre-colonial period (Bayly, 2003; van der Veer, 1994). More recently, political
leaders associated with the family of Hindu nationalist organizations known as the
Sangh Parivar, fearing declining Hindu political and economic power, have direct-
ly or indirectly supported violence against religious minorities in the hopes of
winning or holding on to power by consolidating the Hindu vote (Brass, 2003;
Nussbaum, 2009; Wilkinson, 2006). According to this view, the dramatic rise in the
intensity and frequency of violence against religious minorities in recent times can
be traced to the coming to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), especially the election of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi to Prime
Minister in 2014 and the subsequent election of another Hindu nationalist, Ram
Nath Kovind, to President in 2017. The BJP also presently controls several state
governments. However, other work shows that, to the contrary, the Hindu Right
in general, and the BJP in particular, has never consistently tolerated or encour-
aged violence against minorities, instead vacillating between moderation and
militancy in different states (Basu, 2015). The study on Christian persecution
referenced earlier fails to find a strong correlation between BJP rule and anti-
Christian violence (Bauman and Leech, 2012).
592 Ethnicities 20(3)

This article puts forth, and empirically tests, a related explanation for violent
religious conflict in India in the form of violent anti-Christian persecution: the
presence and enforcement of anti-conversion laws. The increase in violent attacks
against Christians can be understood as a response to religious conversion and the
perceived inroads being made by Christians among marginalized Hindu groups.
This argument is informed by a recent body of scholarship that has examined the
effect of restrictions on religion on the production of violent conflict (Grim and
Finke, 2011; Henne et al., 2012; Saiya, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019; Toft et al., 2011). As
argued in the following section, anti-conversion laws generate violent persecution
against Christians by creating a culture of vigilantism and backlash in the states
where they are enforced.

How anti-conversion laws encourage violent

Christian persecution
Anti-conversion laws in India (and elsewhere) exist for the ostensibly noble purpose of
preventing coerced religious conversions made through ‘force, fraud or allurement’.
Originally introduced by Hindu princely states such as Rajgarh, Patna, Sarguja and
Udaipur before independence as a means of preserving Hindu identity in the face of
Christian proselytization emanating from the West, these statutes would eventually be
reinstated by several Indian states after independence from Britain (Huff, 2009). In the
1970s, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the right to propagate one’s faith did not
necessarily include the right to convert another from his or her faith. To date, nine of
India’s 29 states have anti-conversion laws on the books, though they are enforced in
only seven of them: Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal
Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttarkhand.5 Similar laws have been proposed three times
at the national level but were rejected each time. Punishments for violating the pro-
visions of the laws include fines ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 rupees and prison
sentences of one to three years. These penalties increase in the cases of individuals
attempting to convert minors, women or members of scheduled castes away from
their faith. Sometimes anti-conversion laws require prospective converts to
Christianity to register their intent with authorities before they can officially convert.
Almost always supported by Hindu nationalist groups, anti-conversion laws
represent a codification of the ideology known as Hindutva (Hinduness) and reflect
a fear of intensifying activity by Christian missionaries, who offer marginalized
Hindus the possibility of freedom from the oppressive caste system and the ability
to become dignified and equal members of society (Mosse, 2012; Viswanathan, 1998).
These groups oppose conversion because they fear that the number of Hindus will
decline as the number of non-Hindus rises, altering the dynamics of the vote bank
(Sahoo, 2018). Through these laws, right-wing Hindu groups like the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—the ideological arm of the BJP—seek to perpetuate
the identity of India as a predominantly Hindu nation by regulating conversions to
non-Hindu religions. For example, the Backward Communities Bill of 1960 sought to
Saiya and Manchanda 593

combat the conversion of Hindus to ‘non-Indian’ religions, including the proselytizing

faiths of Islam and Christianity (Indian Law Institute, 2013). More recently, several
ministers of the ruling BJP have given their support to the adoption of a national anti-
conversion law as a means to retain India’s Hindu character. This goal was explicitly
acknowledged by BJP Member of Parliament Tarjun Vijay in 2015 in a statement of
remarkable candor expressing support for a national anti-conversion law: ‘For the
first time, the population of Hindus has been reported to be less than 80 percent. We
have to take measures to arrest [this trend] . . . and I think a bill of this nature will-
. . . allow Hindus to remain a majority in India.’ That same year, Union Home
Minister, Rajnath Singh, and the party’s President, Amit Shah, made similar state-
ments in support of a nationwide anti-conversion law (International Business Times,
2015).
Critics of anti-conversion laws point out that they typically regulate conversions
from Hinduism to other religions but do not restrict conversions or reconversions
to Hinduism in the same way, thus creating an unbalanced playing field in
the religious economy for minority faiths. The United States Commission on
International Religious Freedom found, for example, that anti-conversion laws
‘generally require government officials to assess the legality of conversions out
of Hinduism only’ (United States Commission on International Religious
Freedom, 2016: 5).
Ironically dubbed ‘freedom of religion’ bills, these laws have the two-fold effect of
obstructing peaceable religious conversion through the threat of arrest and incar-
ceration and encouraging harassment and violence against religious minorities
accused of engaging in ‘forcible conversions’ by forces of communalism who
claim they are simply enforcing the law. Because anti-conversion laws are often
passed at the behest of Hindu nationalist groups who fear that India’s Hindu char-
acter is under siege owing to the growth of competing faiths, they disproportionately
target religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, both groups for
whom proselytism is central to the teachings of their faiths. Furthermore, the pro-
hibition against using ‘force, fraud or allurement’ in proselytization efforts would
generally be applauded by advocates of human rights and religious liberty, except
that these terms are so loosely defined in the anti-conversion statutes that virtually
any conversion can be attributed to the use of ‘allurement’ (assurances of eternal life,
salvation and inherent worth, especially for the lower castes and tribes), insofar as
the laws do not distinguish spiritual from material forms of allurement. (The Odisha
law, for example, lists the threat of ‘divine displeasure’ as an illicit form of force.)
Predictably, then, the definitional ambiguity part and parcel of anti-conversion laws
leaves government officials with a great deal of discretion regarding what constitutes
their violation (Osuri, 2012; Sahoo, 2018: 69–70).
Christians would counter that converts to Christianity are not seduced through
incentives or inducements as Hindu nationalists claim, but that marginalized
Hindus voluntarily accept Christianity in the hopes of escaping the oppressive
caste system, achieving dignity and equality and finding spiritual fulfillment. One
recent study offers strong support against the claim that material incentives drive
594 Ethnicities 20(3)

conversion (Sahoo, 2018). As put by Telesphore Toppo, Archbishop of Ranchi,

‘Forced conversions do not exist. We are free people with a free will and a free
conscience and intelligence. No one can force another to convert’ (World-Wide
Religion News, 2017). Former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of
Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, found very little evidence of attempted forced
conversions by religious minorities, as the laws themselves have led to few arrests
or convictions:

Even in the Indian states which have adopted laws on religious conversion there seem
to be only few—if any—convictions for conversion by the use of force, inducement, or
fraudulent means. In Orissa, for example, not a single infringement over the past ten
years of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 could be cited or adduced by
district officials and senior officials in the State Secretariat (United Nations
General Assembly, 2009).

Passed for the ostensibly noble purposes of safeguarding the integrity of India’s
religious communities and traditions, protecting lower-caste groups from exploi-
tation, fighting coerced conversions and preserving social harmony, such laws
actually serve to coerce religious conformity, silence opposing religious views
and weaken the forces of moderation. Indian anti-conversion laws legalize discrim-
ination against minority religious groups and codify the existing reality of religious
persecution in society by affording religious actors the capability to regulate polit-
ical and religious life. Such laws enmesh Hinduism and the authority of the state to
the detriment of religious minorities.
When states limit the religious activities of certain faith traditions, they some-
times contribute to the belief in society that violence against these groups is sup-
ported by official laws and policies. Although anti-conversion laws are passed by
state governments, these governments themselves do not typically engage in violent
persecution of religious minorities. A much more dire threat comes from the extra-
legal enforcement of official laws and policies by mobs, vigilantes and terrorists,
often with the tacit support of politicians. Laws restricting conversion promote
intolerance and increase the political salience of religion at the level of society, and
in restricting the limits of acceptable discourse, they also promote a culture of
vigilante justice in the states where they exist. Thus, anti-conversion laws empower
extremists associated with the religious majority—in this case, Hinduism—to
attack religious minorities. In short, charges of religious conversion work to
kindle passions against those seeking to convert individuals away from
Hinduism, motivate vigilantes and justify acts of violence.
In states enforcing anti-conversion laws, Hindu vigilantes have often attacked
with impunity individuals, homes, places of worship and businesses of those
believed to be proselytizing and converting others, using the very laws passed by
the state to justify their violence. These episodes can range from relatively minor
isolated incidents to large-scale communal riots. In turn, the state commonly turns
a blind eye to violence carried out by Hindus, on whose behalf it inhibits
Saiya and Manchanda 595

conversion in order to retain its good standing with that religious group. Hindu
vigilantes, thus, feel empowered to commit acts of violence with little or no fear of
governmental reprisal because anti-conversion laws, in effect, lend the authority
of the state to extremists and reinforce extreme views. As noted by Bauman
(2016: 37), ‘One of the particularly troubling characteristics of violence against
India’s Muslims and Christians is how infrequently the perpetrators are even
charged, let alone convicted, and how regularly witnesses become corrupted,
or are intimidated into changing their stories in order to exculpate criminals’
(Bauman, 2016).
Consider the case of Odisha—a state that has witnessed a high level of Hindu–
Christian hostility. Originally created by the British colonial administration to
appease the Hindu elite, the Hinduization of tribal populations ultimately led to
the passage of an anti-conversion law in 1967 at the behest of right-wing
Hindu organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal
(Pati, 2003). These groups accused Christians of forcing lower-caste Hindus to
convert to Christianity and leave the caste system. In 2008, communal hostility
between Christians and Hindus took a frighteningly violent turn when militant
Hindus burned down or otherwise destroyed hundreds of Christian churches and
thousands of Christian homes. Vulnerable groups caught in the middle were forc-
ibly displaced into relief camps. The violence in Odisha occurred while the state
turned a blind eye; local police only registered only 827 cases of more than 3,500
reports of violence they received (The Christian Post, 2012).
In summary, supporters of anti-conversion laws claim these statutes prevent
conversion done through force, fraud or allurement. On the surface, this might
seem a noble enough goal. Nevertheless, in reality, anti-conversion laws represent
the codification of fear among some Hindus that Hinduism is beginning to lose
ground to minority faiths. These laws also encourage violence by obstructing
peaceable religious conversion and empowering Hindu vigilantes to violently per-
secute Christians with little fear of governmental reprisal. In the following section,
we discuss the data and methods used in our analysis of the effect of anti-
conversion laws on the violent persecution of Christians.

Data and methods

To assess the relationship between anti-conversion laws and communal violence,
this study tests for the hypothesis that states enforcing anti-conversion laws expe-
rience greater violence against Christians than states not having or enforcing these
laws. This study makes use of a unique dataset that incorporates both pre-existing
data and original coding of religious conflict in India. This dataset includes state-
year observations for 29 Indian states from 2000–2015, the range of years for
which relatively complete data are available.6 In addition to information on violent
persecution of Christians, the dataset also includes various data drawn from
a number of sources on the political, economic, social and religious characteristics
596 Ethnicities 20(3)

of the Indian states. In what follows, we discuss the operationalization of the

dependent, independent and control variables.

Dependent variable
The dependent variable is an event count of the number of identifiable Christian
victims physically attacked by Hindus in each of India’s states every year from
2000–2015. Data for this variable are derived and coded from the annual Religious
Freedom Reports compiled by the United States Department of State. According to
the State Department website

The annual Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom – the

International Religious Freedom Report – describes the status of religious freedom
in every country. The report covers government policies violating religious belief and
practices of groups, religious denominations and individuals, and U.S. policies to
promote religious freedom around the world. The U.S. Department of State submits
the reports in accordance with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998
(United States Department of State, 1998).

Incidents of violence against Christians can include any form of physical assault,
including killings, beatings, displacements, rapes, terrorism and other violent alter-
cations. That our dataset only includes cases in which the victims of religious
violence could clearly be identified also has the efect of understating the findings
we report here. Table 1 provides an example of how states were coded with respect
to violent anti-Christian persecution.
We opted to use these reports to code the dependent variable for two reasons.
First, the Indian government does not make available data on violence against
Christians. Second, a number of Christian NGOs do collect data on the persecu-
tion of Christians, but as the mission of these groups is explicitly to advance the
welfare of Christians, the reports may introduce inflated data on the persecution of

Table 1. Example of coding of violent anti-Christian persecution.

Number of
State Year Christian victims Evidence

Andhra Pradesh 2008 Nine ‘On November 23, 2008, Hindu

extremists attacked nine
Christian pastors in Potuluru,
Andhra Pradesh, in the presence
of police. Police immediately took
the attackers into custody but
later released them.’
Arunachal Pradesh 2008 Zero No reported attacks against
Christians.
Saiya and Manchanda 597

Christians. (It should be reiterated, though, that not including data from Christian
NGOs also almost certainly has the effect of understating our findings.) Moreover,
these reports mostly pertain to relatively recent years and hence do not provide a
longer time series of data as used in our analysis.

Independent variable
The theoretically central independent variable is the enforcement of anti-
conversion laws in the states of India. Through the end of 2019, seven of India’s
29 states enforced anti-conversion laws. Two other states have formally adopted
measures against forced conversion, but do not enforce them. For this reason, it is
important to differentiate between states that have such laws on the books and
those that have mechanisms in place to enforce them. States that had and enforced
anti-conversion laws were coded with a ‘1’, all others with a ‘0’.

Control variables
Various political, economic and social factors may also drive violent anti-Christian
persecution in India. We thus employ several state-level covariates in each model
estimation. Following the empirical literature on civil conflict, we include variables
controlling for the natural log of a state’s population (Logpopulation), the log of a
state’s geographic area (Loggeogarea), the age of a state defined as the number of
years since it was formally integrated as a political unit into the Indian federation
(StateAge), Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) growth rate (gsdp_growth), and
a state’s level of religious diversity measured through the variables log of Hindu
population (LogHindu) and log of Christian population (LogChristian). Logged
population and logged area are included to control for the idea that highly pop-
ulated or geographically large states theoretically make it easier for religious con-
flict to break out (Eyerman, 1998). Large populations may also spur violence over
scarce resources. State age controls for the finding that newer political entities are
more prone to violence (Piazza, 2013). As mentioned earlier, some literature also
finds that poor or uneven socioeconomic development might predict violent con-
flict, thus the inclusion of the GSDP growth rate variable. Religious diversity
variables are included to test for the possibility that larger minority populations
in a state make religious conflict more likely. It could also be the case, alternatively,
that violence against Christians might be more likely in areas where they are most
vulnerable and do not comprise a large proportion of the population. Most of the
control variables were sourced from Census of India, an official survey capturing
various demographic, economic, social and other statistics every ten years. The
data from the Census pertaining to 1991, 2001 and 2011 were used to estimate
projections based on Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). Data on GSDP
were sourced from the Reserve Bank of India and have been indexed to a common
base year of 2011–2012. The descriptive statistics of the variables can be found in
Table 2.
598 Ethnicities 20(3)

Results
The data for all variables were arranged into a longitudinal panel setup over the
period 2000–2015, with the state-year as the unit of observation. Because the
dependent variable, the number of Christians victims of Hindu violence, is an
event count that does not include negative values, is unevenly distributed across
observations and is likely to be dependent on the values of other observations,
negative binomial regression (with robust standard errors clustered on states) is the
most appropriate statistical technique to gauge the relative import of the indepen-
dent and control variables on violent Christian persecution. To check for autocor-
relation (as past incidents may affect the present ones) and to avoid omitted
variable bias, all the models were constructed such that the dependent variable
ChristianVictims (t þ 1) corresponds to the number of Christian victims one year
later than the given state-year observation.
The results of the negative binomial analysis are presented in Table 3 with a
number of specifications. In Model 1, we control for demographic and social
factors, including log of population, log of geographical area, state age and
GSDP. In Model 2, we additionally control for religious diversity by including
the log of Hindu and Christian population as covariates. In Model 3, in addition to
the covariates of the previous two models, we control for the lag of the dependent
variable to check for temporal evidence. The results provide strong evidence for
our main hypothesis that states that have and enforce anti-conversion laws are
more likely to experience higher rates of violent anti-Christian persecution than
states where these laws either do not exist or are not enforced.
As we control for the various factors, the coefficient for the presence of an anti-
conversion law holds statistical significance as well as magnitude in moving from
Model 1 to Model 3. With respect to the covariates, Stateage is consistently sig-
nificant in all the models. Newer states have a greater likelihood of giving rise to
anti-Christian violence. As explained by Piazza (2010), India has had a history of
addressing many ethnic and political disputes through the creation of new states
and relatively newer regimes may be more volatile than older ones. Among the
covariates for religious diversity, both LogHindu and LogChristian are found to

Table 2. Descriptive statistics.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Variables N Mean SD Min Max

Logpopulation 445 9.67 1.65 6.03 12.28

Loggeogarea 441 11.12 1.19 8.21 12.74
StateAge 464 41.09 19.82 14.00 79.00
logHindu 444 16.40 1.89 10.36 19.27
logChristian 444 12.82 1.56 8.39 15.64
gsdp_growth 458 7.28 5.84 15.38 73.61
ChristianVictims(t þ 1) 462 0.43 2.62 0 38
Saiya and Manchanda 599

Table 3. Negative binomial models of anti-conversion laws and Christian persecution.

(1) (2) (3)

ChristianVictims (tþ1) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

AntiConversionLaw 2.00*** (0.51) 2.35*** (0.67) 2.18*** (0.82)

Logpopulation 1.89*** (0.43) 0.09 (0.81) 0.01 (0.74)
Loggeogarea 0.91** (0.43) 0.36 (0.53) 0.37 (0.50)
StateAge 0.05*** (0.01) 0.06*** (0.01) 0.05** (0.02)
Gsdp_growth 0.03 (0.05) 0.03 (0.04) 0.02 (0.04)
LogHindu 1.36*** (0.48) 1.23*** (0.46)
LogChristian 0.49** (0.21) 0.45** (0.22)
ChristianVictims 0.12 (0.18)
Constant 8.359*** (1.999) 23.97*** (4.912) 22.31*** (5.488)
Observations 438 437 436
Robust standard errors in parentheses.
***P < 0.01, **P < 0.05, *P < 0.1.

hold statistical significance across all three models. This suggests that states with a
larger percentage of either Hindus or Christians lead to more cases of violence
against Christians. The lag of the dependent variable, ChristianVictims (t), by
itself is not statistically significant. Importantly, adding it does not cause the coef-
ficient for anti-conversion laws to lose its statistical significance or magnitude. This
adds validity to our findings. In sum, all three models provide support for our
argument that the presence and enforcement of anti-conversion laws leads to more
Christians being violently attacked in the states where these laws exist compared to
states where they do not.
To understand the substantive effects of anti-conversion laws on violent anti-
Christian persecution, we analyze the Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR) of the expected
number of Christian victims of violent persecution. The IRR indicates the ratio of the
rates at which events may occur. Table 4 presents the IRR for all three models. In
Model IRR1, the IRR of 7.42 indicates that states with anti-conversion laws experi-
ence 7.42 times the number of Christian victims than states with no anti-conversion
law. IRRs of 10.57 and 8.87 in Models IRR2 and Model IRR3, respectively, mean
that states with anti-conversion enforcement are likely to experience more than 10
times and more than 8 times the number of Christian victims of violent persecution in
contrast to states with no anti-conversion legislation. Across all the models, the
coefficient for the presence of an anti-conversion law is found to be highly significant.
Further, we conduct a number of robustness checks to strengthen our main
findings. We report the most important of these here. First, we also controlled
for general levels of communal violence (CommunalViolence), defined as the
number of violent incidents involving members of different religious communities
for each Indian state in each year. Expectedly, this variable holds statistical sig-
nificance, while the variable for anti-conversion laws also remains statistically
600 Ethnicities 20(3)

Table 4. Incidence rate ratios.

(1) (2) (3)

ChristianVictims (t þ 1) IRR 1 IRR 2 IRR 3

AntiConversionLaw 7.41*** (3.78) 10.57*** (7.07) 8.87*** (7.28)

Logpopulation 6.66*** (2.87) 0.91 (0.74) 0.98 (0.73)
Loggeogarea 0.40** (0.17) 0.69 (0.37) 0.68 (0.34)
StateAge 0.94*** (0.01) 0.94*** (0.01) 0.94** (0.02)
Gsdp_growth 1.03 (0.05) 1.03 (0.05) 1.03 (0.05)
LogHindu 3.92*** (1.89) 3.43*** (1.61)
LogChristian 1.63** (0.34) 1.58** (0.36)
ChristianVictims (t) 1.12 (0.213)
Observations 438 437 436
Robust standard errors in parentheses.
***P < 0.01, **P < 0.05, *P < 0.1.

significant at the 1% level. This finding is indicative that states with incidence of
communal violence are likely to experience more violence against Christians as
opposed to those states with no incidence of communal violence. In a second
robustness test, we included a variable for BJP rule as a covariate to check if the
BJP being in power in a given state when the anti-conversion law was enacted
influenced the dependent variable. The variable is coded as 1 if a state govern-
ment was led by the BJP when the law was enacted and 0 otherwise. The result,
similar to the previous robustness test, finds that anti-conversion laws continue
to hold statistical significance (at the 5% level), indicating that these laws are not
picking up effects of BJP rule when they were enacted. Moreover, there are only
two states where the state government was led by the BJP when anti-conversion
laws were passed. These results indicate that anti-conversion laws are likely to
cause greater incidence of anti-Christian violence, irrespective of the political
party in power or party enacting the law. In a third robustness test, we altered
the type of regression used in the analysis. One of the potential weaknesses of
standard negative binomial regression involves the fact that it might be inap-
propriate for count data that exhibit over-dispersion and excess zeros (Davis
and Wu, 2009; Hilbe, 2011). It is possible that zero cases of violence against
Christians may occur for different reasons—zero actual cases or zero cases
reported/recorded. This may end up inflating the zeros in the response variable
which, methodologically, can be accounted for with a zero-inflated negative
binomial (ZINB) model as opposed to regular negative binomial regression.
We, thus, ran a ZINB model. The Voung test revealed a z-value which is not
statistically significant, indicating that the ZINB model is not a better fit over the
standard negative binomial model that we have used, thus increasing the reli-
ability of our findings.
Saiya and Manchanda 601

In sum, our analysis, supplemented by a series of robustness tests and different

model specifications, supports our claim that Indian states enforcing anti-
conversion laws experience greater violent persecution of Christians than states
where these laws either do not exist or are not enforced. The fact that a relatively
small percentage of Indian states enforce these statutes adds validity to our finding
by helping to better isolate and discern the effects of such laws on the violent
persecution of Christians.

The case of Madhya Pradesh

To further see the connection between anti-conversion laws and violent anti-
Christian persecution, we take a brief look at the case of Madhya Pradesh.
Indian anti-conversion laws have their roots in the Justice Niyogi Committee
Report on Christian Missionary Activities published by the Government of
Madhya Pradesh in 1956. The report portrayed Christian missionaries as ubiqui-
tous, predatory, under-handed and intent on the establishment of an independent
Christian nation through subtle and pernicious forms of ‘force, fraud and induce-
ment’ (Bauman, 2015: 94–95). This report, commissioned more than 20 years
before the first official anti-conversion laws in India, shows that the roots of an
anti-conversion culture can be traced to Madhya Pradesh. In 1975, the Indian
Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Madhya Pradesh’s restriction on
conversion in the landmark case Rev Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh. The
Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 1968 was the second-earliest official
anti-conversion law passed by a state in India, introduced one year after the Orissa
bill. Under section 3 of the Act, ‘[n]o person shall convert or attempt to convert,
either directly or otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by the
use [of] force or by allurement or by any fraudulent means nor shall any person
abet any such conversion’ (Library of Congress, 2018)7 Subsequent anti-
conversion laws in other states would incorporate the same language into their
bills. Moreover, our data show Madhya Pradesh to be the state with the highest
number of cases of anti-Christian persecution in India during the time period we
examine—a finding corroborated in reports by local Christian non-governmental
organizations, which find especially high levels of violent anti-Christian persecu-
tion in Madhya Pradesh (Persecution Relief, 2018, 2019). These incidents include
attacks on missionaries, strikes against churches and the violent disruption of
Christian events. For these reasons, Madhya Pradesh deserves a closer look.
A number of recent cases reveal violence against Christians in Madhya Pradesh
to be directly related to the issue of conversion. In March 2015, Hindu militants
attacked a Bible convention in Jabalpur over allegations that religious conversions
were taking place (NDTV, 2015). In 2016, a blind pastor, his wife and 11 others
were accused of proselytizing among some villagers. They were all violently beaten
by an angry mob of right-wing Hindu extremists and were charged under the
Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act. In 2019, they were acquitted by the
court, which found them not guilty of all charges. In 2017, a Hindu nationalist
602 Ethnicities 20(3)

group beat Christian parents and a group of children at a railway station in Indore,
accusing the parents of kidnapping the children and forcibly converting them (The
Wire, 2017). Later that year, right-wing Hindu activists attacked Catholic carol
singers in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district and also set a priest’s car ablaze, accus-
ing them of religious conversion (The Indian Express, 2017). In January 2018, a
group of Hindu nationals broke into a pastor’s house in Jhirigamali village and
beat his teenage son, accusing them of illegal conversion (Church in Chains,
2018).8 These and dozens of other cases reveal the severity of violent, anti-
Christian persecution as related to the issue of conversion. As demonstrated in
many of these cases, the act of charging Christian victims of violence under the
anti-conversion law indicates how it contributes to persecution of Christians by
empowering Hindu vigilante extremists. In rectifying misuse of this legislation, in
2019, the new Congress Party government in Madhya Pradesh initiated the with-
drawal of all cases involving accusations of religious conversion against Christians,
which peaked at 264 during the 15-year rule of the BJP government in the state
(Hindustan Times, 2019).
Cross-state comparisons also help show the role of anti-conversion laws in
encouraging violent persecution of Christians. For example, Madhya Pradesh,
Haryana and West Bengal all have a very similar ratio of Christian populations:
Madhya Pradesh at about 0.23%, Haryana at 0.20% and West Bengal at 0.72%.
In 2018, Madhya Pradesh witnessed three times more cases of violent anti-
Christian persecution than Haryana. Madhya Pradesh also recorded more than
twice the number of cases of violent anti-Christian persecution as West Bengal.
Many of the Madhya Pradesh cases of persecution can be directly linked to the
issue of conversion, whereas none of the cases of Haryana and West Bengal can. It
stands to reason that the difference can be attributed to the enforced anti-
conversion law in Madhya Pradesh and the lack of such a law in Haryana and
West Bengal. In short, compared to states with about the same share of Christians
that do not enforce anti-conversion legislation, Madhya Pradesh—a state that has
enacted and enforces an anti-conversion law—has witnessed a substantially higher
level of violence against Christians. Moreover, this violence is often explicitly tied
directly to the issue of conversion.

Conclusion
As the world’s largest democracy, freedom of religion is a fundamental right
guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. The people of India have the right to
practice and promote their religion peacefully within the broad limits of the law
in accordance with Article 25 of the Constitution. India is also a signatory to a
number of international covenants protecting religious freedom, including the
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights. It is also one of the most religiously diverse countries
in the world and the birthplace of several of the world’s major religious traditions,
making freedom of religion all the more important.
Saiya and Manchanda 603

Despite its venerable tradition of tolerance between religious communities and a

legal framework supportive of religious belief and practice, India today is witness-
ing a serious threat to its secular character and commitment to religious freedom.
One of the most important sources of its obstruction involves the passage of anti-
conversion laws which are, in fact, instruments explicitly designed to curb the
rights of India’s religious minorities and assimilate them into the dominant
Hindu culture. Of course, no single causal factor can account for a complicated
phenomenon like anti-Christian violence, but the results of this analysis reveal that
these laws not only pose a serious threat to freedom of religion in the states where
they exist, they also empower activists to resist conversion and provide a pretext
for attacks against religious minorities, sometimes leading to violent conflict spi-
rals. Thus, policy instruments formulated to advance social stability appear rather
to be inhibiting it. This finding holds potentially important ramifications for India
and beyond. Given the contemporary realities of global migration and the conse-
quent increasing of religious diversity found in countries around the world, states
need to think carefully when designing policies for dealing with their religious
minorities.
There remain, however, other dimensions to be explored. One important
avenue for future research would be to establish the universality of these findings
by deploying a comparative perspective— testing the hypothesis for other
nations as well attempting cross-country analysis. Such an approach would
also be useful in understanding if anti-conversion laws have ever worked to
prevent communal violence as opposed to where they have not and to unlocking
the determinants of such variations in outcomes. Second, contrary to our claim
that the enforcement of anti-conversion laws results in violent anti-Christian
persecution, Hindu nationalists might contend precisely the opposite: aggressive
proselytization efforts by Christians lead to social disruption, engender threats to
the purity of Indian society and provoke a violent backlash by Hindus against
Christians. Future work might test this claim by analyzing if regions of India
more hospitable to Christian evangelization programs experience higher levels
of anti-Christian violence. Third, we focused here on violence against Christians,
but Christians are both the victims and sometimes the perpetrators of violent
attacks. Future work might explore the conditions that spur violence by
Christians against those of other faith traditions in India. Fourth, as an exten-
sion of Varshney’s work on the importance of civic engagement in reducing
conflict between India’s Hindu and Muslim communities, future work might
also explore the importance of civic engagement in reducing violent anti-
Christian persecution.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
604 Ethnicities 20(3)

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: A start-up grant from Nanyang Technological
University.

ORCID iD
Nilay Saiya https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1829-9971

Notes
1. Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, Section 3.
2. Rev Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh.
3. https://persecutionrelief.org/about-us/
4. http://files.constantcontact.com/523942c3501/97b6149d-8264-458e-9a98-352cb5a55857.
pdf
5. In the remaining four states, the laws are in place but not enforced, either because they
lack enforcing rules as in Arunachal Pradesh or because they have not yet been signed by
state’s governor as in Rajasthan.
6. The dataset does not include information on the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir,
which has been in a state of fluctuating insurgency since 1989. For this reason, the
exclusion of Kashmir guards against potential outlier effects.
7. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/anti-conversion-laws/india.php
8. https://www.churchinchains.ie/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/India-Report-PUBLIC-
2018-.pdf

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