Many wonder why is there so much noise, so much rage, against a community that makes up less than two percent of India’s massive population? Christians, by demographic size, are a minuscule minority. Yet, the kind of fear and opposition they invoke is disproportionate, almost obsessive. Clearly, the fear isn’t about numbers. It’s about something far more powerful: education, awareness, and empowerment.
Christian missionaries in India have, for centuries, done more than preach faith. They built institutions schools in remote tribal areas, hospitals in neglected regions, orphanages for the abandoned, and care homes for the destitute. They educated the poorest, healed the sick, and fed the hungry often with no expectation of conversion. And that’s what threatens the establishment. Because knowledge, once awakened, cannot be silenced.
In the deep interiors of North India, where caste still dictates life and access to education is limited, Christian institutions have become islands of dignity and hope. A tribal girl studying in a hostel run by nuns is no longer available to be pushed into early marriage or field labour. A Dalit boy learning computers in a mission school is no longer a passive recipient of generational humiliation. The old social structures, rooted in inequality, begin to collapse.
This is precisely what many fear: not the religion itself, but the disruption of a rigid social order. When the poor begin to think, question, and demand their rights, it becomes harder to manipulate them with the politics of hate and division. An educated mind is a dangerous thing for those who thrive on ignorance.
The charge of "conversion by compassion" is often hurled at Christian missionaries. The irony? Those leveling the charge rarely offer any alternatives. They didn’t build schools, didn’t offer scholarships, didn’t heal the sick. But when someone else does, their motive is questioned. What they truly resent is that someone stepped into the vacuum they left and filled it with love, learning, and light.
They fear that once the marginalized realize their worth, they won’t bow to caste supremacy. They fear that communities united by learning will not fall for communal propaganda. They fear that dignity, once tasted, will make people reject servitude in all its forms whether religious, social, or economic.
So no, the fear is not of Christians converting by force. The fear is of a silent revolution led by nuns, priests, and lay volunteers armed not with weapons, but with books, food, medicine, and truth. In a system that survives by keeping the poor powerless, anyone who empowers the poor is seen as an enemy.
Perhaps, instead of asking, “Why do people convert?” we should ask, “What made them feel they had to?” Because often, it wasn’t the lure of heaven but the denial of dignity on earth. And that, above all, is what needs to be confronted.