Hindu villagers offered inducements for Christian conversion; violently attacked for resisting conversion
Banswara, Rajasthan, India 
4 September, 2025
Case Summary
In Gundi and Kasarwadi villages of Banswara district, Rajasthan, tribal Hindu villagers were offered inducements and brainwashed for religious conversion by Christian missionaries. Furthermore, when the villagers opposed their illegal conversion efforts, they were violently attacked by the missionaries. A tribal Hindu man named Basu, a resident of Bochharda Gundi village, along with his wife Kavita and others, reached the Superintendent of Police’s office to lodge a formal complaint after being threatened and assaulted for resisting conversion activities in their area. He stated that Christian missionaries had been visiting his village to persuade members of the tribal Hindu community to convert to Christianity. He also revealed that some individuals from Kerala had also arrived two months earlier as part of these conversion efforts. Furthermore, another Hindu man named Kamlesh, a resident of Kasarwadi, stated that missionaries carried out illegal conversion by luring economically vulnerable tribal Hindu families with material inducements such as wheat, rice, oil, clothes, and cash. They also offered additional rewards if Hindu villagers converted others to Christianity. Several locations including Muinakota, Kasarwadi, Sodi, Jalungpura, Bhoyka Baria, Maska, and Choravasad were identified as having active churches or centres where priests managed these conversion activities. Villagers reported that those who resisted the conversion attempts were subjected to threats and violence. On 2 November 2025, a group of Christian missionaries entered Gundi village with the intention of carrying out conversions to carry out conversions. When the local tribal families refused, asserting their adherence to their ancestral fatih, the missionaries, intoxicated, attacked them and attempted to kill them. Among those involved in the assault were two or three individuals from the same village. However, Kasarwadi Police Station Officer Narendra Singh claimed that no written complaint had been filed by Basu at the station, while the person named in Basu’s statement, identified as Har Singh, who was carrying out illegal conversion, filed a counter-complaint against him for non-payment of money and physical assault. It is important to note here that the accused Har Singh was earlier booked about two months ago for facilitating illegal conversions in the village.
Why it is Hate Crime ?
This case has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the first subcategory selected is: Conversion/ attempts to convert by inducement. 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 second subcategory under this is: Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, with the tertiary category being - Pattern of targeting Hindus. 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 the 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. The second primary category selected here is - Attack not resulting in death. Within it, the sub-category selected is - Attacked for opposing radicals or trying to save victim. In several cases, Hindus are attacked for opposing religiously motivated crimes being committed against a fellow Hindu or simply for voicing an opinion opposing radical elements, who either have in the past or continue to persecute Hindus. In such cases, the initial attack against the victim, against which the Hindu was trying to defend the victim, would also need to be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime. Since the initial crime itself was religiously motivated and the subsequent crime of attempting to save the victim or speaking against the radical elements ends up inviting a violent attack, it would also be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime under this category. This case has been added to the tracker because tribal Hindu villagers in Gundi and Kasarwadi villages of Banswara district were offered material inducements for religious conversion by Christian missionaries. Firstly, offering incentives such as food grains, clothes, oil, or cash to vulnerable tribal Hindus shows that these incentives are not acts of kindness or charity. Instead, they are calculated moves to exploit vulnerable Hindus because of religion. By providing inducements and false assurances in exchange for conversion, the accused were effectively blackmailing those who might have been desperate for assistance or hope. Such instances are seen in many cases where members of Christian missionary groups target socially and economically vulnerable Hindus to further their agenda of religious conversions. This form of coercion strips people of their agency and dignity and results in coerced conversions. These are not random or isolated incidents, but rather cases deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims. Secondly, when Hindu villagers in Gundi resisted the forced conversion attempts and asserted their faith, they were violently attacked by the missionaries. The assault on Basu, his wife, and others was not a random act of violence but a deliberate attempt to punish resistance and instil fear among those opposing conversion. The violence was an assertion of dominance intended to suppress opposition. Here, too, the underlying animosity stems from a refusal to allow Hindus to safeguard their religious community from coerced conversion. The attack was not a spontaneous personal altercation but a defensive reaction by the perpetrators to protect their religiously motivated operation and deter future opposition. The organised nature of the conversion efforts and the violent response to resistance clearly establish this as a targeted action against Hindus as a community. When individuals or groups focus their efforts on converting members of a particular religion, in this case, Hindus, then it demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the Hindu faith. Conversion, especially when not based on personal conviction but rather on external persuasion or pressure, is not simply about sharing a different belief system. It is an attempt to undermine the values, traditions, and identity of the Hindu community. The Christian faith, by its very theological foundations, places a strong emphasis on proselytisation. In pursuit of conversion objectives, Christian evangelists often employ unethical means, ranging from psychological pressure and misinformation to inducements such as money or jobs. These are premeditated efforts to undermine the Hindu faith, persuade Hindus to discard Hinduism, and convert to Christianity. Such acts were deeply rooted in religious animosity towards Hindu victims, and thus, this case was added to the tracker. It is important to note here that, in this case, while the police claimed that the incident stemmed from a personal dispute and denied any religious motive, the facts on the ground indicate otherwise. Local tribal Hindus from Gundi and Kasarwadi clearly stated that Christian missionaries had been targeting their villages for conversion and that the attack took place only after they refused to abandon their ancestral faith. Despite this, the police avoided acknowledging the religious angle, portraying it merely as a matter of “money and assault.” The police, in many such cases, where the motive behind the crime is obvious but not explicitly mentioned, deny that the crime committed was in any way motivated by a religious bias or say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to the crime. Several factors are generally at play here. Many a time, the police downplay incidents of low-level communal crime because it is their jurisdiction that comes under question. The police also often say that there was ‘no communal angle’ to a crime when there was one because they wish to ensure that, owing to the crime already committed, there is no further flare-up in the area. Likewise, the Left media and the leftist elite are also inclined to emphasise this "no communal angle" trope, especially wherever the victim of the crime is a Hindu. However, only a police statement or a media report, for instance, cannot be enough to determine whether there is a communal angle present in the crime that has been committed. In fact, to determine whether the crime is communal in nature or not, we need to give emphasis to the ground realities. For example, in the case of Rinku Sharma, the Bajrang Dal activist who was mercilessly stabbed in his house in front of his family members in Delhi’s Mangolpuri area in the year 2021, the leftist media and the leftist ecosystem had tried to peddle the idea that there was no communal angle to the crime. Even the police denied that the crime was communal in nature. However, Opindia spoke to several people who are on the ground with the family of Rinku Sharma, and we were told that the communal tension in the area is palpable. The family of Rinku Sharma has said that the Muslims of the area held a grudge against Rinku ever since he celebrated the Ram Mandir verdict Like the case of Rinku Sharma, those cases where even if the police have denied a communal angle or the leftist media have gone on an overdrive to peddle the ‘no communal angle’ trope, the ground reality, like the victim’s family or relative's testimonies, make it clear that there was an obvious religious bias that led to the crime, will be documented in this tracker. Going by the same logic, since the villagers themselves confirmed that they were attacked specifically because they resisted conversion attempts, the violence was not an accident or a personal quarrel but a deliberate act to intimidate and punish those who refused to convert. Therefore, going by the ground testimonies and the pattern of religious targeting, this case has been included in the Hinduphobia Tracker as a clear instance of a religiously motivated hate crime. Disclaimer: It is important to clarify that none of the media sources covering this case have specified the exact date when the accused began his conversion activities, though it is mentioned that the accused was booked for facilitating illegal conversion in the village about two months ago. Thus, to document this case, we have used an indicative date—4 September 2025—as a placeholder to represent the beginning of his conversion activities. While media coverage of the incident emerged on 4 November 2025, the Hinduphobia Tracker records the incident based on when the victim’s ordeal began or when the event occurred, not when it was reported. Disclaimer: Since this entry focuses primarily on the religious conversion aspect of the incident rather than listing every individual victim, the exact number of victims has been kept unknown because the accused had tried to convert many Hindu villagers in Gundi and Kasarwadi. The violent retaliation against Basu and his wife has been treated as a direct consequence of their resistance to these ongoing conversion attempts; hence, they are not being recorded as separate victims.
Case Status
Complaint filed
Perpetrators Details
Perpetrators
Christian Extremists
Perpetrators Range
One Person
Perpetrators Gender
male
Sources 
