(ZENIT News / Durg, 08.04.2025).- The arrest of two Catholic nuns in central India has rippled far beyond the confines of a train station in Chhattisgarh, cracking open a national debate on religious freedom, minority rights, and the volatile role of Hindu nationalism in the country’s political landscape.
On the surface, the events of July 25 in Durg might appear simple: two nuns of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate—Sister Vandana Francis and Sister Preeti Mary—were meeting three young women reportedly traveling with the intention of working in a Catholic-run hospital in Agra. The young women, members of the Protestant Church of South India, were accompanied by a male escort, and all had parental consent for the journey. Yet, in India’s current climate, a routine encounter quickly became the spark for a political and religious firestorm.
A crowd, reportedly led by members of Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu nationalist group, descended on the group. Accusations flew. The nuns were accused of attempting forced conversions—an incendiary charge in India, where «conversion» often evokes fears of coercion, even when there’s no evidence of it. Police, rather than diffusing tensions, responded by arresting the nuns and the young man, charging them with human trafficking and forced religious conversion—offenses that can carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. The women were sent to a shelter. Videos of the incident show aggressive interrogations and threats, with at least one Bajrang Dal member captured on camera saying to the nuns: “If you don’t speak, I’ll break your face.”
The incident might have remained one among many unreported cases involving India’s religious minorities. But it didn’t.
From the moment news of the arrests broke, the Church responded swiftly and vocally. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India issued a forceful condemnation, denouncing what it described as a growing pattern of harassment and fabricated charges against religious women. Church leaders stressed that the three women were of legal age, had parental permission, and had chosen freely to travel to Agra for work. Moreover, far from converting anyone, the sisters were not even engaging with non-Christians.
What turned a local controversy into a national scandal, however, was the political response. Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in India’s parliament, framed the arrests as symptomatic of a broader “mob rule” under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He accused the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of systematic persecution of minorities. Others joined him—leaders of the Communist Party of India, the Left Democratic Front, and the United Democratic Front condemned the arrests and staged public protests.
In Kerala, the southern state from which both nuns hail and where Christianity has long flourished, the reaction was swift and fierce. Lawmakers marched in the state assembly holding placards demanding protection for minorities. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), sent a formal letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for the immediate release of the sisters. Support came not only from the Left but also from more centrist political blocs—an unusual display of cross-party solidarity.
Before their arrest, the Catholic nuns were illegally detained, harassed, and humiliated by Bajrang Dal’s Jyoti Sharma and her team, all in full view of the police, who stood by in silence.
🛑No FIR against Jyoti Sharma yet.
Is this democracy or mobocracy? https://t.co/JdUCnb19NY pic.twitter.com/UnGevvou2q
— Anti Christian Tracker Watch – ACT India ✝️ (@ACTWatchIndia) July 27, 2025
Why this incident, and why now?
India’s political and religious climate helps explain the sudden spotlight. The country, home to more than 1.4 billion people, is overwhelmingly Hindu (about 80%), with Christians forming a small 2.3% minority. Yet recent years have seen a rise in religious polarization, especially as the BJP has pursued a vision of India grounded in “Hindutva”—a kind of cultural nationalism rooted in Hindu identity. Laws against religious conversions, promoted in various BJP-led states, have been criticized for enabling mob violence and making it easy to target religious minorities under the guise of protecting traditional values.
That dynamic has grown more tense since the 2024 national elections. While Modi secured a third term as prime minister, the BJP lost its parliamentary majority and now governs in a fragile coalition. This shift has emboldened opposition parties to push back against policies—and narratives—they say are eroding India’s pluralism. For them, the Durg incident is not an isolated case, but part of a dangerous trajectory.
And indeed, there are precedents. In 2021, two nuns and two novices were detained in a similar episode at a railway station in Jhansi. In that case, police quickly concluded the accusations were baseless and released the group. But in Durg, the charges are far more serious, and the sisters remain in custody as of early August.
Caught in the middle is the Church. Keen to defend its own while avoiding further politicization, Catholic leaders are calling for due process, transparency, and above all, restraint. Their position is clear: this is not about politics or power, but about the dignity of individuals—especially religious women—who serve the country quietly in schools, hospitals, and missions, and who now face growing hostility.
Yet whether the Church can avoid being pulled deeper into the political maelstrom is uncertain. The BJP itself is feeling the pressure. Hoping to expand into states like Kerala ahead of the 2026 legislative elections, the party now finds itself forced to walk a delicate line. In an apparent move to contain the fallout, BJP leaders in Kerala distanced themselves from Bajrang Dal, labeling it an independent group whose actions don’t reflect official policy. Others in the party took a harder stance, claiming the sisters were engaged in trafficking and that their arrest was necessary to protect women from exploitation.
But without concrete evidence—and with public scrutiny intensifying—the Durg case has become more than a legal matter. It has become a moral one.
At its core, this incident raises uncomfortable questions: What does it mean to be a religious minority in India today? Can peaceful acts of service, long considered a hallmark of Catholic religious life, now be construed as subversive? And who gets to define the boundaries between belief, work, and public life?
For now, two nuns sit in a cell awaiting justice. But in the larger court of public conscience, their story has already stirred a reckoning that India’s leaders—both political and religious—can no longer ignore.
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