The ‘threat’ of ‘conversions’: cultural violence in the 2008 anti-Christian violence in India

With the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, a system of anti-Christian violence has emerged. This article explores the movement’s justifications of physical and structural violence against India’s Christians, casting them as a form of cultural violence. It argues that Hindutva’s broad conception and portrayal of India’s Christians as a demographic, cultural and political ‘threat’ allows justifications for violence to be deployed adroitly and flexibly across varying state contexts, and the national level. The portrayal as an internal and external threat enables the movement to escalate tropes about the Christian ‘threat’, as and when required to justify direct and structural violence. Thus, making the system of anti-Christian violence in India more potent. By examining newspaper archives, civil society and government reports, and documents and speeches of Hindutva-aligned organisations, this article revisits the 2008 anti-Christian violence, primarily in Orissa and Karnataka, India’s worst episode of anti-Christian violence.