Why a Christian pastor was denied a burial in his own village by India’s Supreme Court

Can a person be denied a burial in his own village on the basis of his faith?

Yes.

That is essentially the conclusion the Supreme Court reached on Monday as it rejected Ramesh Baghel’s plea to bury his father in their native village of Chhindwada in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district. The village’s Hindu residents had opposed this because Baghel’s father is Christian.

The Supreme Court was hearing an appeal to the Chhattisgarh High Court’s order which had held that Baghel’s father could not be buried in the village. While the two-judge bench reached a split verdict, with one judge strongly upholding Baghel’s rights on the grounds of secularism, in the end, the court arrived at a compromise that favoured the status quo.

Baghel was ordered to bury his father in a different village, as had been demanded by the Hindu residents of Chhindwada.

A family tradition

Baghel, a third-generation Christian belonging to the New Apostolic Church, lives in his ancestral village of Chhindwada. He is from the the Mahra caste. Chhindwada, according to court records, has a population of 6,450, of which 6,000 are Adivasi and 450 belong to the Mahra community. About 100 members of the Mahra community are Christian while the rest are Hindu.

Baghel’s father, a pastor at the…

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