5/21/2025 India (International Christian Concern) — Last week, villagers in Odisha’s Nabarangpur district opposed the burial of a deceased Christian, claiming a Christian funeral would defile the gods and the land of the village. Authorities were unable to convince villagers to allow the burial, and the body was taken to another location.

Although Christian burials have long been denied in India, these denials are increasingly occurring as a method of persecuting Christians in Odisha.

In addition to finding increases in targeted attacks and other forms of persecution against Christians, three independent investigations conducted in Odisha between March and April pointed to an alarming rise in the number of Christians denied burial rights. The investigations concluded that the absence of state laws allocating burial land for Christians has enabled the trend.

The fact-finding teams, comprised of lawyers, activists, and researchers, visited the Nabarangpur, Gajapati, and Balasore districts to document the various forms of persecution against Christians. They also uncovered repeated instances of forced conversions, police brutality, and institutional failure against Christians.

In Nabarangpur, investigators documented appalling cases of denied Christian burial. In several incidents, bodies were exhumed, desecrated, or forcibly “converted” to Hinduism before burial.

In one case, the body of Saravan Gond, a young Christian man, was dug up and stolen after burial despite an alleged police presence. His family was physically assaulted and forced to flee their homes. To date, nobody knows the status of his remains.

In multiple villages, Christian families were forced to bury loved ones in remote forests or distant cemeteries because local Hindu nationalist groups refused to allow burials within village boundaries. Christian families could only bury their dead in the village if they converted to Hinduism.

One Adivasi Christian family was forced to sign papers claiming they had reconverted to Hinduism to bury a parent. Another woman was denied burial space for her husband because her sons had adopted Christianity, according to the investigations.

What emerges from these three reports is a pattern: Burial has become a site of religious coercion; police and local officials are indifferent or actively complicit; after formal complaints, no action was taken; and tribal identity was misused to justify discrimination.

This amounts to the weaponization of tribal identity by Hindu nationalist groups who equate the Christian faith with a betrayal of culture. They then use that claim to deny Christians burial rights, the report noted.

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