World Watch Lists, Western Lenses and the Myth of Persecuted Christianity in India

Open Doors’ World Watch List 2026, which ranks India at 12th position among the so-called “15 most dangerous countries for Christians,” is not a report rooted in reality. It is a document driven by ideology, filtered through a Western evangelical lens, and powered by a deep discomfort with India’s civilisational self-assertion. It pretends to speak for Indian Christians while, in reality, it speaks about India, over Indians, and against the truth.

The problem with the Open Doors World Watch List 2026 is not merely its conclusions; it is its starting point. The report begins with an assumption that India must be hostile to Christianity because Hindu society is supposedly exclusionary. Once that prejudice is locked in, every fact is selectively curated, exaggerated, or distorted to fit the narrative. This is not human rights analysis. This is confirmation bias dressed up as concern.

Let us begin with the most basic empirical fact: Christianity in India is neither shrinking nor underground. According to the Census of India, Christians number over 27 million people - around 2.3% of the population - making India home to one of the largest Christian populations in Asia. This community is not confined to secrecy or ghettos. Christianity is openly practised across states like Kerala, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur, where Christians form substantial or even majority populations. In several of these states, Christians freely run state-funded institutions, hold political power, and shape public life. A country that is allegedly among the “most dangerous” for Christians somehow allows entire Christian-majority states to function democratically and peacefully. That contradiction alone exposes the report’s exaggeration.

The report’s most provocative claim - that “according to religious nationalists, being Indian means being Hindu and there is no place for Christianity” - is a gross misrepresentation of Indian nationalism. Indian nationalism is not theocratic. It never has been. It is civilisational, plural, and civic in nature. The Indian Constitution does not privilege Hinduism. The Indian state does not declare any religion as its own. What India asserts today is not Hindu supremacy, but cultural self-respect after centuries of colonisation, exploitation, and missionary paternalism.

To reduce this complex civilisational awakening into a crude binary of “Hindu oppressors versus Christian victims” is not only intellectually dishonest, it is insulting to Indian Christians themselves. Many Indian Christians do not see themselves as victims. They see themselves as Indians first - sons and daughters of the same soil - who practise their faith without seeking Western validation or international victimhood certificates.

Another deliberate distortion in the report concerns conversion laws. India does not ban religious conversion. What it questions - rightly and legitimately - are conversions induced by fraud, coercion, allurement, or exploitation of vulnerability. This is not persecution; it is regulation. Every sovereign nation regulates religious, financial, and social activities when they intersect with public order and social harmony. To frame such regulation as “systematic discrimination” is either ignorance or wilful deceit.

What is actually under scrutiny in India is aggressive proselytisation - particularly models imported from Western evangelical movements that treat India not as a civilisation to be respected but as a “mission field” to be conquered. When evangelism disrespects local culture, demonises indigenous traditions, or targets economically and socially vulnerable communities with inducements, resistance is not persecution. It is a society defending its dignity.

The report’s attempt to blame social media for “intensifying discrimination” is equally hollow. Social media has not invented hostility; it has dismantled monopolies of narrative. For decades, uncomfortable questions about missionary funding, conversion rackets, and cultural denigration were silenced by elite consensus. Social media has allowed ordinary Indians - including Christians - to question, debate, and expose practices that were earlier immune from scrutiny. Transparency is now being mislabelled as hatred because it disrupts carefully curated victim narratives.

What makes reports like these particularly dangerous is not their criticism of India, but their impact on social cohesion. By portraying Indian Christians as perpetual victims of a hostile Hindu society, they infantilise an entire community. They deny Christians agency, strength, and rootedness. They encourage grievance politics over national integration. They also feed international lobbying efforts that seek to pressure India diplomatically by weaponising religion.

Ironically, these reports do more harm to Christians in India than any imagined persecution. They deepen suspicion, fuel polarisation, and create fault lines where none need exist. They convert faith into a geopolitical tool and believers into data points for fundraising brochures in Western capitals.

India does not need lectures from organisations that approach the country with prejudice and leave with propaganda. India needs honest engagement, cultural sensitivity, and respect for its plural civilisational ethos. The Christian faith has survived and grown in India for nearly two thousand years not because India is intolerant, but because India is uniquely accommodating.

The real danger to Christianity in India is not Hindu society. It is the persistence of external narratives that refuse to see Indian Christians as equal stakeholders in the Indian nation. It is the insistence on viewing India through a colonial prism where the West judges and India defends.

India is not a “danger zone” for Christians. It is their home. And no biased report, however glossy or globally circulated, can change that fundamental truth.

ALSO READ: IMF Flags Resilient 2026 Outlook Despite Trade Headwinds, Bets on AI Boom