Archbishop Andrew Thazhath of Kerala has drawn criticism from lay groups in Kerala for claiming in an interview last week that a banned Islamist group was posing a threat to the Christian community by promoting sectarianism.
Thazhath, the outgoing president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told the church-run Deepika newspaper that the Popular Front of India had “planned to break up” the Catholic’ church’s Syro-Malabar section.
His remarks have drawn the ire of lay groups, which maintain that it is Hindutva that poses the main threat not just to Christians but also to India’s multireligious character.
Almaaya Munnettam , Catholic group in Kerala, has demanded evidence for Thazhath’s claims, warning that such contentions would foster communal discord ahead of the Kerala assembly elections expected to he held in April.
The archbishop’s statements echo a pattern where sections of the church have adopted narratives aligned with the rhetoric of the Bharatiya Janata Party, framing Muslims as threats.
From a national perspective, Muslims and Christians face parallel persecution from Hindutva groups. There are almost no documented cases of organised Muslim violence against Christians.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom confirms this.
In its 2025 annual report, the commission documented persistent attacks on minorities in India: over 98% of the 1,165 recorded incidents in early 2024 targeted Muslims. Christians, comprising 2.3% of the population, accounted for about 10% of cases.
Last year, 1,318 hate speech events were recorded by India Hate Lab, up 13% from 2024. Muslims were the primary target.
Still, anti-Christian incidents were up 41% from 115 in 2024 to 162 in 2025. In the decade from 2014, there was a 500% increase in reported violence against Christians, rising from 139 in 2014 to 834 in 2024. Most occurred in states ruled by the BJP.
National Crimes Record Bureau data and independent trackers show that communal violence disproportionately affects Muslims through cow vigilantism, demolitions and anti-conversion laws.
Christians are targeted via accusations of forced conversions. In 2024 and 2025, there were more than 700 attacks on Christians each year.
The US religious freedom panels February 2026 update highlighted escalating mob attacks on Christians in January alone, including the assault of a pastor in Odisha who was forced to eat cow dung. In July 2025, Hindu mobs attacked clergy in several states.
Despite Thazhath’s anxieties, statements of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India have repeatedly condemn these Hindutva attacks, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to denounce violence and uphold constitutional values.
For instance, in July 2025, the bishops expressed alarm over the remarks of the BJP’s Gopichand Padalkar, an MLA from Maharashtra, offering rewards to those who attacked Christian priests.
Muslim violence against Christians remains negligible. Isolated incidents have been reported in Jammu and Kashmir but no national pattern exists comparable to Hindutva-led assaults.
However, this writer has documented church leaders who have echoed Hindutva language on matters such as “love jihad”. Love jihad is a conspiracy theory claiming that Muslim men court women of other faiths merely to force them to convert to Islam. This sort of rhetoric causes the church to lose secular and Muslim partners while gaining none from Hindutva supporters.
Both Muslims and Christians suffer economic and social marginalisation. Prison Statistics India 2023 shows that Muslims constitute 16.5% of inmates despite being 14.2% of the country’s total population. Dalits, who form 16.6% of India’s population, constitute 22% of prisoners. Thirteen per cent of prisoners are Adivasi though they are only 8.6% of the national population. In some states, Christians appear overrepresented in undertrials.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-’24 records Muslim unemployment at 3.2% (up from 2.4% the previous year) and Christians at 4.7% (up from 4.5%). The national rate was 3.2.
Supreme Court petitions by Christian groups have been seeking minority status extensions for Dalit Christians, denied since 1950 despite Sikh and Buddhist Dalits receiving Scheduled Caste benefits in 1956 and 1990.
The All India Catholic Union statements echo these demands for equity, linking internal caste bias to broader external exclusion.
Hindutva policies such as the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens, cow slaughter bans and Uniform Civil Code pushes in Uttarakhand target Muslims first but ensnare Christians via anti-conversion laws in 12 states.
Uttar Pradesh’s 2025 bill proposes life imprisonment for conversions. While bulldozer demolitions hit Muslim homes, church attacks follow conversion accusations. The Manipur 2023 violence, though ethnic, displaced 60,000 mostly Christian Kukis amid Meitei Hindu dominance. No equivalent Muslim-led campaigns exist against Christians.
Press releases of the Catholic bishops have repeatedly call for unity. In February, the bishops urged condemnation of attacks. The All India Catholic Union has criticised the BJP’s Kerala outreach exploiting Islamophobia.
There have been rare inter-minority tensions, but data shows these to be insignificant compared to Hindutva violence. Economic anxieties fuel some Christian fears of Muslim demographic growth, yet census data shows that India’s Muslim population, which stands at 14.2% of the total population, has grown only modestly since Independence. Global factors like Christian Zionism play a minor role in driving Christian fears about Muslims in India, but Hindutva is the primary threat.
Thazhath’s claims about a Muslim threat to Indian Christians are an attempt to distract from the real problem.
