By Matters India Reporter
Raipur, 28 June 2026: After seven days and 1,300 kilometres across Chhattisgarh’s former Naxal heartland, investigative journalist Mathew Samuel returned with a conclusion that challenges the official script: the Bible, he says, did what bullets and schemes could not.
Speaking to Matters India after his journey through Kanker, Sukma, Dantewada and Bastar, Samuel said the transformation he witnessed was “not the story the government tells, but the story the villages themselves are living.”
He recalled how different the landscape was in 2007, when he first entered these zones of conflict. Roads were broken, fear was absolute, and Naxal control was so tight that even the police hesitated to enter.
During that visit, he met the family of slain dalam leader Prabhakar Juru. His daughter had joined the militia and died in an encounter. But her younger brother had just returned from Bible study in Mumbai and was preparing to become a pastor.
“That moment stayed with me,” Samuel said. “I told my team then: If Christian missionaries ever break through into these villages, the Naxal movement is finished. I didn’t realise how true that would become.”
Two decades later, he found a region transformed. Roads are open, villagers speak without fear, and the once‑feared militia has thinned out dramatically. But what struck him most was not the infrastructure—it was the people.
“Where are the cadres who once planted bombs and ambushed convoys?” he asked. “Many didn’t die in encounters. They walked away from the gun after encountering the Bible.”
Samuel met several former fighters who are now pastors leading house churches in the same forests where they once laid landmines. One ex‑militia member told him, “The gun promised justice through blood; the Bible gave us dignity without death.”
Local journalists, senior police officers and bureaucrats echoed this assessment. While operations and development weakened Naxal dominance, they said the decisive shift came when Christian faith entered Adivasi villages. As leaders and their families converted, Naxal support networks collapsed and recruitment dried up.
Samuel explained why Christian workers succeeded where others could not. “Naxal leaders, many of them Adivasis, allowed prayer meetings and Bible teaching. They blocked RSS groups but let Christian workers in. That made all the difference.”
Missionaries brought literacy, hygiene training, and community support—practical solutions to daily hardships that ideology never addressed. The Bible’s stories of liberation resonated with tribal communities who maintain distinct traditions, diets and festivals outside mainstream Hindu practices.
“Christianity didn’t ask them to stop being Adivasi,” Samuel said. “It gave them hope without demanding cultural surrender.”
By 2017, when Sangh groups finally entered these areas expecting “Hindu tribals,” they instead found villages filled with house churches. “The shock was visible,” Samuel recalled. “That’s when the pushback began.”
He is careful to note that the story is not simplistic. Security operations created space for change, development improved access, and many cadres surrendered out of fatigue or loss.
Not every village converted, and syncretic practices persist. Allegations of inducement surface on all sides. Christianity remains a minority.
“But the impact in these pockets is outsized,” he said. “You cannot understand the decline of Naxalism without acknowledging the role of faith.”
Samuel believes policymakers risk misunderstanding the real drivers of peace if they ignore this dimension.
“Sustainable peace comes from transformed hearts, not just cleared forests,” he said. “The Bible filled a spiritual and social vacuum that violence and state schemes could not.”
His final reflection is stark: “In Bastar’s villages, the Cross has done what bullets struggled to achieve. The guns are falling silent because lives have changed from within. India must recognise this if it truly wants to close the chapter on Naxalism.”
His journey, he insists, revealed not just new roads but a revolution of the soul—one that official reports have yet to acknowledge.
(Photo supplied)