200 Hindu families forcibly converted to Christianity through inducements by missionaries in Durg, Chhattisgarh

Case ID : 30a8ea5 | Location : Durg, Chhattisgarh, India | Date of Incident : Tue, 3 June, 2025

Case ID : 30a8ea5

Durg, Chhattisgarh, India

3 June, 2025

200 Hindu families forcibly converted to Christianity through inducements by missionaries in Durg, Chhattisgarh

Predatory Proselytisation

Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Victim says was brainwashed/groomed

Case Summary

In Durg, Chhattisgarh, 200 Hindu families were forcibly converted to Christianity through material and health-based inducements and various other temptations offered by Christian missionaries. This came to light during a Gharwapsi (homecoming) ceremony organised by Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Narendracharya Maharaj in Pulgaon, Durg. During the ceremony, 200 Hindu families who had previously been forcibly converted to Christianity returned to Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism). These families stated that they had been lured into converting by promises of better health and financial benefits. The families who attended the ceremony explained that after not receiving the expected benefits that had been offered by Christian missionaries, they decided to return to Sanatan Dharma. One of the victims, Tamradhwaj Maria of Manpur-Mohla district, said that he had been forced to convert about a year earlier under the promise of better health and financial assistance. He said that after converting, he received neither any health benefits nor financial assistance. Later, after reading a book by Jagadguru Narendracharya, he realised his mistake and voluntarily returned to Sanatan Dharma along with other family members. Similarly, Chain Singh stated that his wife and daughter had been ill. During this time, some people said that they could cure their illnesses through prayers and blessings, which led him to contact them. Despite this, he said, his family's situation did not improve, and later his wife and daughter passed away. After this, he decided to return to his original religion. Jait Ram Gawade, a resident of Nalkasa in Balod district, also spoke of converting to Christianity due to health issues and later returning to Hinduism when he did not receive the expected benefits. Several others at the event shared similar experiences. Speaking to the media, Jagadguru Shrimad Ramanandacharya Narendracharya Maharaj stated that religious conversions had increased during Congress rule. He said that political patronage had harmed Hindu society and that vote-bank politics had fuelled the problem. He said that Hindu society currently hoped for more effective efforts to preserve its traditions and culture. He also urged the Central and State Governments to include Indian culture, eternal history, and the glorious traditions of our ancestors in school curricula. Narendracharya said that in many tribal and remote areas of Chhattisgarh, the level of education and religious awareness was relatively low. People living in such areas were often lured and influenced by various inducements to become Christians. He said that the economically weaker and socially backward classes needed to be especially aware. He appealed to both religious leaders and the government to make serious efforts in this direction. In this one-day ceremony held at the Shri Radhakrishna Temple complex in Pulgaon, Durg, approximately 200 families re-embraced Sanatan Dharma. The purification and Gharwapsi ceremony for these families was completed amidst Vedic chanting, worship, and religious rituals in the presence of Jagadguru Narendracharya. Jagadguru Shri explained that as part of the Gharwapsi process, atonement, Ganesh worship, Lord Vishnu worship, and cow worship were performed according to scriptural methods. After this, devotees were given a rosary bearing the name of Lord Ram and were encouraged to live according to eternal values. According to the organisers, Jagadguru Shri listened to people's problems and offered spiritual and life-guiding solutions. The large number of devotees present described this as a significant moment in their lives. Hundreds of seekers also took initiation at the ceremony and pledged to follow the path of religion, spiritual practice, and a life of spirituality. Organisers stated that the organisation had conducted numerous Gharwapsi programmes, body donation initiatives, and blood donation drives. Projects such as the construction of watering holes for animals and birds were also underway. Sachchidanand Upasne, Prabal Pratap Singh Judev, Deputy Peetha Head of the Ramanand Sect in Chhattisgarh Ghanshyam Maheshwari, Peetha Co-head Munnalal Motghare, Peetha Administrator Prakash Angadi, along with officials from various districts, committee members, and thousands of devotees, participated in the programme.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

The primary category selected in this case is: Predatory Proselytisation. The subcategory selected is: Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducements. Predatory Proselytisation is not just limited to threat, harassment, force and violence, but it also has contours of stealth. In several cases, the Hindu victim is exploited to convert, with non-Hindus taking advantage of their poverty. In such cases, the Hindu victim who is suffering financially is offered monetary benefits, including lucrative offers for jobs, health treatment, education, etc, to induce the victim into changing his/her religion. In such cases, the religious identity of the victim and the aim to disenfranchise him from his faith form the heart of the crime. Also, taking advantage of and exploiting an individual’s economic vulnerabilities is widely acknowledged as exploitation, forms of which are often penalised by law. Such cases therefore are considered religiously motivated hate crimes since the victim’s religious identity forms the very heart of the crime itself. The other subcategory selected is:Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination. The tertiary categories selected are: 'Pattern of targeting Hindus' and 'Victim says was brainwashed/groomed'. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. This case stood as a stark instance of an anti-Hindu crime, where 200 Hindu families in Chhattisgarh were forcibly converted to Christianity through calculated material and health-based inducements. Conversions driven not by genuine personal conviction but by external pressures, false promises, and material temptations crossed into outright coercion, fuelling religious hostility against Hindus. In this case, Christian missionaries enticed vulnerable Hindu families with promises of better health and financial assistance, exploiting their economic and personal hardships to induce them to abandon their ancestral faith. Far from being an act of charity, this constituted a systematic effort to further forced religious conversion by taking advantage of vulnerable Hindu individuals. This case unequivocally represented a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus due to the coercive methods employed to convert large numbers of Hindu families to Christianity. The victims themselves stated that they had embraced Christianity after being promised improved health and financial support, benefits that ultimately never materialised. The use of such inducements was not an act of goodwill but a calculated exploitation of poverty, illness, and desperation, deliberately designed to weaken the victims' attachment to their faith and pressure them into conversion through psychological manipulation. Furthermore, the use of promises of miraculous healing and financial assistance constituted a form of psychological coercion that exploited the personal vulnerabilities of the victims. Individuals and families facing illness and financial distress were persuaded to abandon their religion by assurances that conversion would resolve their suffering. Such manipulation undermined their religious autonomy and free will, making the conversions fundamentally coercive rather than voluntary. Exploiting faith, hope, and desperation in this manner represented a profound violation of religious freedom and demonstrated hostility towards the victims' Hindu identity. Here, it is also important to note that the experience of victim Chain Singh further illustrated the devastating human cost of coercive conversions carried out through false promises of miraculous healing. He turned towards Christianity after being assured that prayers and blessings would cure his ailing wife and daughter, placing his faith and hope in those assurances during a period of immense personal vulnerability. Despite these promises, his family's condition did not improve, and both his wife and daughter ultimately passed away. This tragedy demonstrated how exploiting the desperation of vulnerable Hindu families through assurances of divine healing could have irreversible and life-altering consequences. Rather than providing the promised relief, such inducements diverted a distressed family towards false hope, leaving them to suffer profound personal loss while simultaneously alienating them from their ancestral faith. His eventual return to Sanatan Dharma underscored the emotional and spiritual harm inflicted by conversions secured through deception and manipulation, making this incident a powerful example of how coercive proselytisation can profoundly damage the lives, dignity, and religious identity of Hindu victims. This calculated campaign affected approximately 200 Hindu families who later returned to Sanatan Dharma through a Gharwapsi ceremony. The scale of the conversions demonstrated that these were not isolated incidents but part of an organised and sustained effort to draw vulnerable Hindus away from their ancestral faith through inducements and false assurances. The systematic targeting of economically weaker and socially disadvantaged sections of society highlighted a deliberate strategy directed specifically at Hindus, underscoring the religiously motivated nature of the incident. Moreover, the collective decision of these families to return to Hinduism reflected the emotional, spiritual, and psychological impact of the conversions. Several participants publicly stated that they had converted only because of promises of health benefits and financial support and chose to return after realising that those promises had not been fulfilled. Their return through the Gharwapsi ceremony illustrated the sense of alienation and disillusionment experienced after abandoning their traditional faith under inducement, reinforcing the harm caused by coercive conversion practices. Overall, since this case meets several parameters of a religiously driven crime, it is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimers: The Hinduphobia Tracker records incident dates based on when a victim's ordeal begins rather than when the incident is reported by the media. In the present case, media reports do not specify the exact date on which the ordeal of all the victims began. However, one victim stated that he had been induced to convert approximately one year prior to the publication of the report, which was published on 4 June 2026. Accordingly, an indicative incident date of 4 June 2025 has been assigned for this case. This date has been selected solely for documentation purposes and should not be construed as the confirmed date on which all victims' ordeals commenced. In this case, it is mentioned that 200 Hindu families were converted to Christianity. However, the exact number of individuals involved in the conversions is not specified. Due to this lack of clarity, we have relied on the most recent Indian census data, which indicates that the average family size in India is approximately 4.8 members per household. To ensure a standardised estimation, we have opted to consider an average of 5 members per family. Based on this approach, the estimated total number of victims in this case is calculated as 1,000 individuals (200 families × 5 members per family). This estimate has been recorded solely for documentation purposes. Among the estimated 1,000 victims, Chain Singh's wife and daughter passed away after he had been induced to convert through promises that prayers and blessings would cure their illnesses. Accordingly, for documentation purposes, two victims have been recorded as deceased, and the death count in this case has been maintained at two. This classification is based solely on the information available in the source reports and is intended for documentation purposes only. In this case, no gender-wise breakdown of the victims was provided. For documentation clarity, the Hinduphobia Tracker has applied a proportional demographic estimate based on India's Census 2011 and National Family Health Survey-5 (2019–21) rural population data. Accordingly, the 1,000 victims are estimated as 500 men (50%) and 500 women (50%), reflecting an equal gender distribution consistent with typical rural family demographics. This estimation has been made solely for documentation purposes.