INDIA

'The Season of the Witch': Minorities Attacked and Workers Abandoned as 2025 Draws to a Close

Anand K. Sahay
THE WIRE


The Christians this year took the hit on their holiest day, though off and on their churches have been attacked over the years, and their priests and nuns too. The Muslims have borne the brunt of unremitting all-round violence in the past ten years.

Christian devotees offer prayers during the Christmas morning service at Santhome Cathedral Basilica church in Chennai. Photo: PTI//R SenthilKumar.

In India, hypocrisy and violence walked arm in arm as the year 2025 was closing. In New Delhi, the spokesman of the external affairs ministry declared quite rightly, after the lynching of the second Hindu man by frenzied extremist mobs within days of the first, that Bangladesh had shown “unremitting hostility” toward its minorities – Hindu, Christian and Buddhist.

This may have carried weight- and gravitas- if in India we had shown ourselves to be exemplars of communal rectitude, at the level of society or at least at the level of government which tolerates no transgressions of the law in such matters.

of hatred, shockingly in many states across the country, particularly Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) ones, celebrations by Christians were attacked by rough goons who tore down Santa Claus decorations in schools, public grounds, in church precincts and even in little streets where hawkers sold little Christmas adornments and toys.

In Assam, they were identified as members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal. But in Jubblepore in Madhya Pradesh, it was the local BJP vice-president who tore off the Santa mask off a blind girl’s face in a widely reported incident.

In Jhabua, in Madhya Pradesh, Catholic Connect reported that on Christmas day a phalanx of Bajrang Dal men armed with swords and pistols marched through a Christian locality screaming slogans against the Christian community, their priests and their religion. The authorities had been informed earlier, and yet the armed procession was allowed, although the Hindutva volunteers resorted to no physical violence. Another time…who knows?

There are wounds that never heal even when the pain fades. The one man in India a swish of whose hand could have frozen the evil doers in their tracks, just looks into the far distance. Is he unaware? Can he be? This man stoically “celebrated” Christmas (see the visual for confirmation) at the Sacred Hearts Cathedral in the national capital, the media reported, as the worshippers sang “O, come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!” The man was not at ease. But he did not omit to intone the right words- harmony, brotherhood, peace. Part of the job.



We cannot know what was going through the leader’s mind. But we do know that in India, since Narendra Modi became prime minister, December 25 is observed as “Good Governance Day” to mark the anniversary of the birth of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vjapayee. In Modi’s India Christmas is not on the official calendar.

Assembly elections are due in Kerala in a few months and many Christians are native to the state. Europe and America are also Christian lands and they should not be ruffled. In a practised game, when it’s bad news, those at its centre are called “fringe elements”. The implied message is that the core is clean, pristine. The media, typically, asks no questions. The usual script is some men are arrested, and then let off when the buzz dies down.

The Christians this year took the hit on their holiest day, though off and on their churches have been attacked over the years, and their priests and nuns too. The Muslims have borne the brunt of unremitting all-round violence in the past ten years.

Also read: The Denial of a Christmas Holiday Exposes a Deeper Crisis of Religious Freedom in India

On the Prophet Mohammed’s day of birth, in 2025, not so long ago, properties were bulldozed in Uttar Pradesh for showing “I Love Mohammed” signs with a red heart emblem. On December 5, a Muslim cloth-seller was lynched and killed in Nawada, Bihar, for no particular reason. Probably just for sport. But it’s a blood sport when the hounds are out.

In Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar himself tore off the veil of a Muslim doctor’s face as he handed her a job letter at one of those functions held to show off governmental munificence at the expense of the state exchequer.

More recently, a Kashmiri Muslim trader was beaten up in Kashipur, Uttarakhand, and duly warned not to show up in those parts. In none of these episodes has the majesty of the law been unfurled. Political actors have a field day, state actors just look on.


The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) century celebrations kicked off on October 1, with Prime Minister Modi as the chief guest at a New Delhi function. A commemorative coin was struck and a postal stamp issued under the aegis of state power for an organisation that the prime minister had praised in his Independence Day speech in 2025, although the outfit had been banned after Gandhi’s assassination by then home minister Sardar Patel.



In Kolkata, on December 21, Mohan Bhagwat, the current RSS chief, asserted that India was already a Hindu Rashtra, stressing that this was a self-evident truth like the sun rising in the east- clean overlooking that the constitution is explicit that India is a “secular” state, not partial to any religion.

Bhagwat went further. He urged the audience not to try to understand the RSS through the BJP, although he noted that the RSS did a wide variety of things and some of its members were indeed in politics and engaged in the enjoyment of power. But he also urged that the RSS not be viewed as a “paramilitary organisation”, or as a service organisation for that matter.

It’s obviously a many-splendoured thing- and intended to be all things to all people. But are members of the Bajrang Dal and VHP ever to be found in the RSS uniform? Or, do they become paramilitary only when they fly their own banner?

Do they share the generic philosophy of the RSS as they march through Jhabua carrying weapons whose display in public is prohibited? Is the wearing of military-style uniform and practising morning marches with the “danda” or stave, not a “paramilitary” attribute?

These issues need to be squarely faced. Of course we have home minister Amit Shah’s word for it that he and Prime Minister Modi “subscribe” to “the RSS ideology”. Clearly, this was intended to legitimise the RSS through placing the matter on the record of Parliament After he flaunted this declaration in the just-concluded Winter session of parliament, the prime minister called the speech “outstanding”, lending his endorsement and the imprimatur of his office.

In India, it’s truly the “Season of The Witch”. This is exemplified by the 1966 pop song of that name by Donovan, whose “language and trippy contents,” according to the reviewer Lindsay Planer, “project a dark foreboding atmosphere”.

Other than the religious minorities, it is the working classes that are under a sustained governmental onslaught. The livelihoods of millions have been thrown into question. The last parliament session of 2025 saw the termination of the world’s most admired, demand-based, rural jobs guarantee programme, started in 2005 by the Manmohan Singh government. According to estimates, around 12.16 crore workers are currently associated with Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). The data for 2023-24 suggests that 23.04 crore households received work under the scheme, 90% of whose costs were underwritten by the Centre so as not to put financially weak states under strain. Women’s participation in the scheme is as high as about 60%.

It is clear the idea is to throw the vast agricultural working class to the wolves and compel it to swell the ranks of what Marx called the “reserve army of the unemployed”. This would eventually have the effect of bringing down urban wage rates as the rural unemployed now march to cities desperately in search of work of any kind. The most to be affected is likely the unorganised sector which accounts for some 95 per cent of the urban work force in India. This may be expected to be the first port of call for the released rural proletariat.

With the MNREGA programme being history, the name of Mahatma Gandhi, associated with the internationally-acclaimed scheme, which came to the rescue of the country and the national economy in the Covid years, has also been deleted. For the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and the Jana Sangh-BJP, Gandhi is anathema.

The regime has killed two birds with one stone- a modicum of self-reliance for the poorest of the poor- Gandhi’s “last man”- and of course the removal of the association of Gandhi from arguably the most consequential pro-poor government scheme, whatever its limitations.

And MNREGA has been inadequately- and derisively- substituted with a scheme with a strange appellation which starts with the usual Viksit Bharat (Developed India) propaganda ploy of the regime, and ends with “G Ram G”, phonetically meaning “Yes, Lord Ram ji” It is hard to imagine a greater absurdity in the service of the regime’s (religious) propaganda, likely dreamt up in the darkest Mephistophelean corners of government.

The other open assault is on the urban working classes through the so-called labour codes which have now been notified. These prejudice workers’ earnings, including PF and gratuity, and could render workers partially unemployed. Practically every trade union organisation in the country is up in arms.

On the other side of the balance, the insurance sector has been opened one hundred per cent for foreign companies, giving them open entry, without limits, into the Indian finance sector and in an area where the lifelong savings of the working classes and the middle classes are typically invested. Any upheaval there has the potential to play havoc with, say, pension funds that may lie in such a sector.

With the election system in its total control on account of a unilaterally nominated Election Commission, leading to a tight grip on national political affairs, the RSS-BJP- inspired ‘G Ram G’ regime feels free to assault the religious minorities and the living conditions of the working classes as well as substantial elements of the middle classes. The sun is unlikely to rise on a bright note in 2026 for India.


Anand K. Sahay is a veteran journalist.