Odisha's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government paid tribute to a hardline Hindu leader long associated with campaigns against the Christian community on July 28, renaming a state medical college in his name and unveiling his biography at an event where, according to a local news report, speakers called for the state to be made "church-free" and demanded curbs on the activities of vidharmis, a Sanskrit-derived term literally meaning one of another faith or one opposed to dharma, traditionally translated and commonly used derogatorily as infidel, heretic or irreligious, and used at the event to describe followers of other religions.
The ceremony, held at the Railway Auditorium in Bhubaneswar, was attended by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Sarkaryavah (general secretary) Dattatreya Hosabale as chief guest, and former Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
It released a biography, "Vedanta Kesari Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati: Kruti O Byaktitwa," (Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, Champion of Hindu Philosophy: His Work and Personality) written by Bipin Bihari Nanda and Banchhanidhi Panda, of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a leader of the Vishva Hindu Parishad who was shot dead along with four associates at his ashram in Odisha's Kandhamal district on August 23, 2008.
Maoist rebels later claimed responsibility for the killing. Hindu groups at the time blamed local Christians instead, and the accusation set off weeks of anti-Christian violence in which mobs attacked Christian communities across Kandhamal.
Contemporary accounts put the death toll at around 100, with more than 56,000 people displaced and close to 6,000 houses destroyed, along with hundreds of churches. Rights groups and church records still count it among the deadliest campaigns of anti-Christian violence in India's history.
The National People's Tribunal, a civil-society panel headed by former Delhi High Court chief justice A.P. Shah, later concluded the events were a "national shame."
Majhi announced that the Government Medical College and Hospital in Phulbani, Kandhamal's district headquarters, will now bear Saraswati's name, and sanctioned ₹13 crore (roughly $1.5 million) for the upkeep of Saraswati's Jalespatta Ashram, including a girls' hostel. He said Saraswati's birth centenary year, beginning August 21, would carry his message to villages across Odisha and to universities nationwide.
On the unresolved 2008 murder case, Majhi said the inquiry report of a one-man commission led by retired judge A.S. Naidu had disappeared from the state secretariat, blamed the previous government, and ordered the Crime Branch to investigate, promising the government would not spare "the real culprits behind this murder."
Church leaders have greeted such assurances with caution. Bishop Pallab Lima, who has separately raised alarm over the report's disappearance, has called the episode "a billion-dollar question."
Hosabale told the gathering that no force could silence those who defend dharma, a Sanskrit term for religious duty, and predicted more people would emerge to carry forward Saraswati's mission.
He placed Saraswati in a lineage of dharma martyrs, citing Guru Tegh Bahadur, the Sikh Guru executed in 1675 by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for refusing to convert to Islam and for defending Kashmiri Hindus against forced conversion, and Swami Shraddhanand, the Arya Samaj reformer who led the Shuddhi movement to reconvert Muslims to Hinduism in the 1920s and was assassinated by a Muslim man in 1926. Such figures, Hosabale said, had "laid down their lives for the protection of dharma and society."
He described Saraswati as not merely an individual but an idea and a philosophy that would keep inspiring people for decades. Speaking on the eve of Guru Purnima, the Hindu festival honouring spiritual teachers, Hosabale urged the gathering to pledge to carry forward such figures’ unfinished work, calling it a form of Guru Dakshina, the traditional offering a student makes to a teacher.
Pradhan, the BJP member of Parliament for Sambalpur, called Saraswati a freedom fighter and pioneer of the pre-independence Garjat movement in Odisha's former princely states. He called on saints, spiritual leaders and society at large to dedicate themselves to shaping Odisha and India according to Saraswati's ideals over the decade from 2026 to 2036, building toward the centenary of India's independence in 2047.
According to the Indo Asian Times report, speakers at the event described Kandhamal as a laboratory for the nation, saying its experience and model should be replicated across the country. The gathering resolved that saints should visit every village in Kandhamal to spread awareness of religion and culture, and asked attendees to contribute one rupee and one hour of their time for the cause. The report cited Swami Jeevan Muktananda Puri, president of the trust that organised the event, as telling those present it was society's shared duty to complete Saraswati's unfinished mission.
The medical college renaming drew criticism from Left parties, which warned it could reopen communal wounds in the district. The CPI(M), CPI, CPI(ML)-Liberation and the All India Forward Bloc issued a joint statement arguing that a public hospital should carry a name accepted across communities, not one tied to a legacy that still divides them.
Christian groups say the tribute comes amid a documented rise in attacks since the BJP took power in Odisha in 2024. The United Christian Forum recorded "40 major attacks on Christians in 2024," per its national coordinator A C Michael, while the Rashtriya Christian Morcha has documented about 87 attacks in the past year, with police acting in only a handful.
In November 2025, a Pentecostal church in Malkangiri district was demolished overnight, allegedly by a Hindu mob. In January 2026, a mob in Dhenkanal district beat a pastor, force-fed him cow dung and paraded him wearing a garland of footwear, and in the same month a mob of about 400 people locked a church in Nabarangpur district and warned some 30 Christian families they would be expelled from the village unless they returned to Hinduism, according to UCA News.
In April, seven Christian families fled a village in Keonjhar district after a mob stormed their church on Good Friday and told them to return to their original tribal religion. A separate investigation by the outlet Article-14 documented cases of Christian families being denied burial grounds in Kandhamal and elsewhere in the state, and reported that a mob assaulted two Catholic priests and two nuns from a Jaleswar parish returning from Mass in August 2025, shouting, "This is BJP rule in Odisha now, not BJD rule."
Rights groups have also pointed to a campaign known as the Sanskriti Bachao Abhiyan, or Save the Culture campaign, which they say pressures tribal Christians to revert to Hinduism.
Kandhamal remains a hilly, forested district with a large tribal population. More than fifteen years after the 2008 violence, human rights groups and church leaders say Christian communities in the district and elsewhere in Odisha continue to face social boycotts, pressure to reconvert, and in some cases expulsion from their villages.
Of Odisha's roughly 42 million residents, close to 90 percent are Hindu or from indigenous communities, with Christians making up about 2.77 percent. The BJP swept the state's 2024 assembly elections, ending 24 years of rule by the Biju Janata Dal, with Majhi becoming Odisha's first chief minister from the Santhal tribal community.
