Not much hope was held for 2025, the 12th year of Mr Narendra Modi's powerfully personalised prime ministership, and the 100th year of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, his alma mater as a cadre before he was sent to Gujarat as the unelected Chief Minister in 2001.

A decade earlier, in 2014, Mr Modi had led the Bharatiya Janata Party to a momentous victory riding the crest of an election campaign the likes of which had never been seen in the country in its acrid, xenophobic targeted hate. He made a hat-trick last year, in targeted venom against all real and imagined foes of the RSS-BJP in their march towards a Hindu Rashtra, the goal set for them by the founding fathers a hundred years ago.

That had set a template for cadres. The cadres, mostly young men but occasionally women, obeyed the dog whistles throughout 2025.

The sustained incidence of violence and social hostility, often linked to these organised groups, which has created an environment of fear in many regions, seems to have continued unabated. It picked some new forms of aggression against Christians in villages and small towns of Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh in particular.

None of these added to India's glory, despite massive government PR exercises at home and abroad.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom again recommended designating India as a Country of Particular Concern in its 2025 report, citing concerns over religious freedom. Human Rights Watch and other bodies documented issues affecting minorities. The Indian government maintained that actions were lawful and aimed at preventing illegal activities.

The year began with hate campaigns and violence, and saw at its ending multiple pressures converging on a tiny Christian community, a bare 2.3% of the massive 1.40 crore population. The expansion of anti-conversion legislation, as seen in Rajasthan, which became the twelfth state in the country with this terrible law and in its worst form, provided new legal tools for potential harassment.

Hate was in the air, thicker than the highly polluted December air in the national capital. Political rhetoric on religious issues continued. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, in a March 8 address on International Women's Day, vowed death penalties for conversions involving girls, equating faith's free choice with rape's horror—a conflation that poisons public discourse and invites vigilante "justice."

Maharashtra's Gopichand Padalkar, in June-August tirades, auctioned bounties on "missionaries": ?5 lakh for the first thrasher, descending to ?3 lakh for the third—a grotesque gamification of gore that sparked PILs and protests. "Eliminate those coming for conversions; I'll handle the police," he thundered in Sangli.

Similarly, in Uttarakhand and Gujarat, the BJP voices amplified "Christian jihad," morphing Muslim-targeted tropes into minority-wide maledictions, as The Wire chronicled in mid-year dispatches.

By December, reeling under 12 months of such hate and targeted violence in states with bigoted governments and complicit administrations, the Christian community found itself increasingly looking at the Supreme Court and High Courts, with both hope and deep apprehension.

Judicial rulings, particularly on the issue of Schedule caste benefits, posed a threat to the socio-economic rights of a large section of the community, particularly on Dalit converts, and will eventually also impact Christian Adivasis. The community and its religious leadership are grappling with this bitter realisation.

While the Supreme Court's pending verdict on the constitutional validity of anti-conversion laws offers a potential avenue for significant change, the present reality is one of heightened vulnerability.

The documentation from national and international rights groups highlights an apparent disconnect between constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the lived experience of many Indian Christians.

This calls for vigilant protection of minority rights by civil society, a balanced and impartial law enforcement, and a political and social commitment to pluralism if we are to remain the country of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Babasaheb Ambedkar.

In 1956, in letters to some chief ministers, Nehru warned against doing anything that would create religious polarisation. Anti-conversion laws remained a central issue in 2025. These laws, present in 12 states, aim to prohibit conversions through force, fraud, or inducement.

The Christian community, including the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and individuals, including this writer, have argued in court that they are often used to restrict legitimate religious activities.

Rajasthan became the latest, and 12th state, to enforce this law in 2025. The Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, introduced earlier in the year, was passed by the assembly in September, received gubernatorial assent, and became effective in October.

It is the harshest law in this series, imposing penalties, including imprisonment of up to 10 years (or more in some instances) and fines. Provisions include prior notice for conversions and penalties for mass conversions, with exemptions for reconversion to ancestral religion.

Assented to by the Governor on October 3, after passage on September 9 amid opposition boycotts, the law's venom lies in its vagueness—a deliberate ambiguity. It provides life imprisonment for "mass conversions," a term elastic enough to ensnare a village Bible study; property confiscation sans trial, eviscerating the economic sinews of churches and missions; and an "allurement" clause so expansive it criminalises "free education in a school run by any religious body" or even the whisper of a "better lifestyle."

The first case under this law was registered in November in Kota against two Christian missionaries, following complaints from Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal members regarding a spiritual gathering.

No new national directive from the Ministry of Home Affairs specifically on conversions was reported in 2025, though existing guidelines on monitoring continued.

In April, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs' advisory—cloaked in the garb of "national security and social harmony"—mandated states to "strictly monitor" conversions, federalising a witch-hunt that disproportionately devours Christian outreach in tribal belts.

Groups affiliated with Hindu nationalist organisations were involved in complaints leading to police actions under anti-conversion laws. Reports from rights bodies noted the role of Vishva Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal in filing FIRs.

Monitoring organisations documented hundreds of incidents affecting Christians in 2025. The Evangelical Fellowship of India reported 334 cases from January to July, with Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh accounting for many.

Overall figures for the year indicate a continuation of trends from previous years, including attacks, service disruptions, and social boycotts. Specific cases included arrests in Chhattisgarh and assaults in Odisha.

The situation in Manipur, stemming from ethnic conflict since 2023, remained unresolved, with displacement affecting Christian communities among others.

Court rulings on Scheduled Caste benefits impacted Dalit Christians, potentially affecting access to reservations. Social exclusion in villages, including restrictions on resources, was reported in some areas.

While some court interventions provided relief, the overall environment was marked by scrutiny and incidents of hostility. The Supreme Court's pending decisions on constitutional challenges may influence future developments. Documentation from rights groups highlights the need for a balanced implementation of laws to protect the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

The Supreme Court handled challenges to anti-conversion laws from multiple states. In April, a bench heard petitions describing the misuse of these laws.

Former Justice RF Nariman had earlier commented on the need to revisit precedents regarding the right to propagate religion.

On April 16, a bench comprising Justices Khanna and Sanjay Kumar heard pleas decrying these laws as "weaponised" against minorities, linking them to broader challenges to the statutes of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. By September 16, notices reached nine states—Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, among them—demanding responses within four weeks, yet no interim stay materialised, allowing the laws' unchecked reign.

This deliberate dawdle, as retired Justice RF Nariman lambasted on September 18, perpetuates a 1977 fallacy: "no fundamental right to convert." Nariman's clarion call—to revisit this "erroneous" precedent and affirm propagation as intrinsic to Article 25—exposed the judiciary's schism.

The many High Courts, especially in the northern states, alternated between targeting the minorities, especially Christians, and sometimes offering protection.

The harshest decision, which will impact tens of thousands in many states, was Allahabad High Court Justice Praveen Kumar Giri's November 21 order directing Uttar Pradesh to sever Scheduled Caste (SC) benefits for Christian converts, deeming retention a "fraud on the Constitution" since Christianity ostensibly lacks castes. He ignored the lived casteism that shadows converts—social boycotts, spousal abandonment, economic exile—plunging thousands into penury.

In Chhattisgarh, the High Court's November 3 validation of village hoardings barring pastors and converts as "precautionary" against "social menace" sanctified segregation, legitimising bans on movement and worship.

A Madhya Pradesh High Court judge's June bail denial to a pastor, musing on the "necessity of adopting a foreign religion," dripped majoritarian bias, eroding impartiality's facade.

The Supreme Court itself seemed split on this issue; its January 27 verdict on a Chhattisgarh burial denial—invoking Article 142 to mandate interment at a designated site—expressed "pain" at the exclusion but did little on the ground.