A deeper state? Anti-Christian violence in contemporary Chhattisgarh
Kaiser, N. Bo Nielsen, K.
Kaiser, N.
Bo Nielsen, K.
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2025
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© 2025 The Authors. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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Abstract
This article analyses the violence directed towards Adivasi Christians in Chhattisgarh in India between 2018 and 2023, under the governance of the Indian National Congress (INC). With Chhattisgarh as a case study, this article pursues a two-fold agenda. First, it maps the anti-Christian violence in the state perpetrated by Hindutva groups. Second, it analyses the persistence of such violence under an INC state government. The INC is a supposedly secular party competing electorally with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Engaging with Jaffrelot’s concept of a deeper state, this article demonstrates how Chhattisgarh’s ‘deeper state’ exists even when the BJP is not in power. The interaction between the INC’s ‘soft’ Hindutva and anti-Christian violence at a local level in Bastar district is assessed, foregrounding the interplay of governance, vigilante groups and community members.
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Kaiser N, Bo Nielsen K, Selvaraj S (2025) A deeper state? Anti-Christian violence in contemporary Chhattisgarh. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. 63(1): 33–51.
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