Dhamtari churches put up notices restricting entry to Christians

More than ten churches in Chhattisgarh's Dhamtari district have displayed notices stating that only Christians are permitted to enter for prayers, with non-Christians doing so at their own responsibility. The banners have appeared over the past month, including outside the 125-year-old Sunderganj Mennonite Church, a brick-red building where the Hindi notice has drawn the attention of passers-by.

The Dhamtari District Christian Forum said the step was precautionary. Its general secretary, Dr Diamond Filus, said community members were asked to put up banners not only at churches but also outside homes where prayer meetings are held. He said the move followed a steady stream of applications from non-Christians to the district administration, stating that they were attending prayers voluntarily. Over a thousand such self-declaration forms were submitted, he said.

The applications come after a stringent anti-conversion law took effect in Chhattisgarh last month. One of its provisions requires a person wishing to change faith to submit a declaration to the competent authority. The law does not address casual visits to churches, but the community decided against taking any chance.

Filus said the measure began to be enforced more vigorously after a September 15 peace meeting called by Dhamtari police at the Collectorate. He said right-wing groups, including the Bajrang Dal and the tribal organisation Sarva Adivasi Samaj, objected at the meeting to non-Christians attending prayers and told the community not to allow them. The community, he said, had not been told that such groups would participate. It considered boycotting the meeting but stayed after police requested it to remain.

Filus said the community wanted to avoid engagement with such groups, alleging they had used abusive language in the past and disrupted prayer meetings, and that police were unable to act strictly. He questioned how non-Christians could be stopped from attending church by choice, and said the constitutional value of freedom of religion was not upheld at the meeting.

Shivnarayan Pandey, a spokesperson for the ruling BJP in the state, rejected the framing of the issue as one of right versus left. He said the state government had enacted a law that is being opposed by groups carrying out conversions, and described the matter as social rather than political. The tribal community, he said, is against conversion because it divides people, leads tribals to give up their culture, and creates infighting that disturbs a peaceful society.

Dhamtari, like other districts in the neighbouring Bastar region, has seen communal friction over allegations of religious conversion at prayer meetings and disputes over the last rites of converted persons.