Is Hindu Nationalism Friendly to Christianity?

The National Conservatism Conference has always featured an array of Judeo-Christian politicians, clergy, and lobbyists. But this year, Hindu nationalism made its debut at NatCon with speeches by Ram Madhav and Swapan Dasgupta, two leading voices in India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Dasgupta proposed a “natural alliance” with Western conservatives who understand the importance of a unified national identity. Madhav’s speech declared that “we share most of the ideas that you, the NatCons, consider dear—God, religion, tradition, family, patriotism, nationalism.” Proudly presenting Indian conservatism as a political “success story,” both speakers expressed their hope that conservatism will enjoy a similar resurgence in the States. 

This pitch is well-timed to coincide with Hinduism’s rising profile on the American right, where it coexists equably with Judaism and Christianity. Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, is a practicing Hindu, though she supports Vance in his Catholic faith. Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy attended a Catholic high school but now identifies as Hindu, which raised questions about his ability to capture Christian voters. To evangelical audiences, he emphasized that he still shared their “Christian values” and made “God is real” one of his oft-repeated “ten truths” on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, he made friendly overtures to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, praising him as a potential strong anti-communist ally against China.

But is there really a “natural alliance” between Hindu nationalists and American conservatives, particularly religious ones (and particularly Christians)? Madhav’s pitch sounds appealing when he reports that it’s “no longer fashionable” for an Indian to identify as non-conservative or non-religious. “On the contrary,” he goes on, “it is cool to be a Hindu. It is cool to be a Buddhist. It is cool to be a Jain.” Notably, Madhav does not say that it is cool to be a Christian. Yet he reassures his audience that Indian Christians’ freedom of religion is “sacrosanct” and “jealously” upheld. However, the inconvenient facts tell a very different story.

Madhav extols the hard “grassroots” work of nationalist organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), for which he himself has worked tirelessly since the early ’80s as a pracharak, or volunteer leader. He explains that by building support over decades from the ground up rather than seeking immediate regime change, they have successfully purged India of “liberal globalism.” He neglects to mention that it has spent those decades purging and terrorizing Christians. 

The most prominent terrorist group under its purview, the Bajrang Dal, was responsible for the 1999 mob burning of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons. Staines devoted himself to the care of lepers, whom he was accused of “proselytizing.” At that time, Christian persecution was not yet a top-down affair, and the Staines family had support from the Indian government during the year-long manhunt for the chief mob leader, Dara Singh. Yet just last month, Singh submitted a plea for remission on the grounds that he only committed the murders out of a consuming desire to “protect the nation.” 

Madhav’s general condemnation of “proselytism” by “force, fraud, or allurements,” which sounds superficially appealing, must be understood against this background. Like Graham Staines, India’s indigenous pastors and evangelists are frequently smeared with the accusation of “forced conversions” among poor communities, where Christianity is spreading especially fast. Swapan Dasgupta’s speech was slightly more forthcoming, explaining that Hindu nationalists mistrust “Evangelical” rhetoric because the concept of “conversion” has no meaning in Hinduism. Still, both speakers omitted the ugly details of how the “protection” of India’s national identity has manifested for Christians. So far from being left to practice their faith “without fear,” as Madhav assured his audience, they are regularly driven into exile and hiding.

Today, the RSS is a powerful and well-oiled persecution machine, systematically training tribal leaders to beat, rob, and expel Christian villagers unless they revert to Hinduism. This is a typical report from 2023, documenting the testimonies of Christians in Chhattisgarh who narrowly escaped with their lives. There are many more examples. Consequences are especially dire for Dalits or “untouchables,” who live on the bottom rung of India’s ancient caste system. Madhav has vocally supported the reversal of old affirmative action policies that granted Dalit Christians some of their only legal or cultural protections, arguing that they threatened Dalit Hindu rights. Today, sources on the ground tell me that Christians cannot even access benefits supposedly available to all Dalits, including housing loans. Any Indian who converts outside the approved (or “cool”) religions must present the government with official documentation of their conversion. Out of desperation, some will officially declare themselves Hindu or Buddhist in writing and practice their true faith in secret. 

A friend once sent me two maps for comparison, one showing the regional distribution of Christians, the other showing regional concentration of different political parties. At a glance, I could see that a strong Christian presence was inversely proportional to the strength of the BJP—the party of Ram Madhav.

The BJP understands that if Hindu Nationalism is to secure good relations with the States in Modi’s ongoing war on Islamism and globalism, it will find more natural allies on the American right than the American left. And if it wants to make a successful pitch to the American right, it must curry favor with the Christian right. This is why Madhav and Dasgupta extol Christianity as America’s folk religion. It’s not dissimilar to the way Vladimir Putin has made his pitch to the West, in his case even claiming his own brand of “Christian nationalism” while brutally suppressing Russia’s low Protestant minority. Russian Protestants are threatening to Putin, but American Protestants are useful. Similarly, Indian Christians are threatening to Modi, while American Christians are useful. The Hindu nationalist pitch could be summarized as “You have your national religion, we have ours.” Every religion in its proper place. 

Yet it is the very power and glory of Christianity that it will not stay in its place. The everlasting gospel goes out to all that dwell upon the earth, to every tribe and tongue and people. By this gospel, American believers are more kin to our Indian brothers and sisters in Christ than we are to our own secular countrymen. This does not require us to forfeit the national pride that is rightfully ours. It simply calls us to recognize that in Christ, we have a fellowship that transcends nations. 

The representatives of the Indian right are counting on the American right to befriend them against shared enemies. Perhaps that makes sense for nonreligious national conservatives broadly—but Christian conservatives should not assume that the enemy of their enemies is their friend. 

Bethel McGrew is an essayist and social critic.

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Image by Al Jazeera English, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.