India’s Pagan Violence vs Christ’s Personhood Revolution

In a viral video from Gujarat, India, we see Indian police, dressed in civilian clothing, and armed with canes, savagely beating a man on a sunlit street whilst surrounded by onlookers and cameras. In reaction to this video, shared by Jayant Bhandari on X, some have decried the absence of rule of law in India. Still, others continue to justify the brutality, saying that mob beatings are preferable because they deliver instantly as opposed to due process in corrupt courts.

Beatings like these in India aren’t rare. The sight of submissive men and women enduring the onslaught of lathis (canes) is commonplace. Many such beatings were recorded and circulated on the internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. People from the West were stunned to see such levels of violence. Sure, they may have seen police brutality in their own countries, but police brutality in the West is rare and universally condemned. Who can forget what happened after George Floyd died during his arrest in Minneapolis? In India, however, police brutality is repeated a thousand times over and they receive wide public support.

Why is there such a huge gap between India and the West when it comes to mob violence? Secular observers often point to India’s religiosity and communalism as the core reasons, but anyone who is familiar with the work of French anthropologist Rene Girard will understand the real reason for such mass acceptance of violence.

The beating in that video is not merely an act of individual cruelty or a failure of law enforcement—it is a ritual, a reenactment of the scapegoat mechanism described by Girard. Pagan societies are preserved through the sacrifice of an outsider, whose suffering restores order to the fragile community. The man in the video, likely from a marginalized caste, becomes the scapegoat—his pain assuages the anxieties of a society fractured by corruption, inequality, and division. The police, far from upholding justice, become priests of this pagan rite, wielding sticks as if they were sacred implements, while onlookers record the spectacle, complicit in its dehumanization.

Some might argue that only India’s brand of justice, or a Taliban-style order as Mr. Bhandari provocatively suggests, could address rampant crime and chaos. However, such solutions, as is often the case with scapegoat resolutions, only deepen the problem. Compare the Taliban’s government to any other country in the West and we are left with no doubt as to which system is the most effective in terms of influence, technological progress, and GDP. Violence-based societies simply cannot advance in areas such as science and arts; they cannot do so because for them violence is always the answer and might make right.

India’s secular bureaucracy, void of ethics and riddled with corruption, perpetuates violence under the guise of law. Hindu nationalism, as I’ve discussed with Jason Jones and David Gornoski, often cloaks violence in mythic garb, inciting hatred against minorities or lower castes to unify a fractured society. Neither can heal the wound, for both remain tethered to the pagan impulse to dominate and exclude.

In today’s West, we are now seeing the ascension of the New Right—a movement that prefers authoritarianism to liberal democracy and is all too eager to align with institutional power rather than the radical non-violent monarchy of Christ. Would these new right-wingers be willing to live in a society like India’s, where the definition of “degenerate” is carved out by the whims of a lynch mob? Would they be willing to do away with the presumption of innocence and appoint a Grand Inquisitor from the comfort of liberalism’s chair?

The New Right’s fascination with dictatorial methods is a symptom of half-baked Christianity preached from pulpits that are fixated on shibboleths and the afterlife. The anthropological effect of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross paves the way for concepts such as the presumption of innocence before the Law and the preservation of basic human rights for minority groups. Christ’s sacrifice destroys the notion that problems can be solved via scapegoating; a Christ-haunted society is, therefore, forced to look to alternatives, such as the scientific method, for solutions to societal problems. These are basic facts that churches all too often fail to recognize let alone preach. After all, one can sing to the high heavens about reaching theosis and still be a complete moron in their treatment of fellow human beings.

True Christianity is the imitation of Jesus. What does it mean to imitate Christ in the face of pagan brutality? It means rejecting the urge to scapegoat, to dominate, or to justify violence as “necessary.” The pagan method, in all practicality, simply doesn’t work. All it does is kick the can of societal chaos down the road. Jesus, on the other hand, absorbed the violence of the crowd without returning it, and in doing so He provided us the method of allowing evil to fall on its face. Let us not forget that it was Jesus’ non-violence, channeled through Tolstoy and down to Gandhi, that played a big part in India’s liberation from Britain.

Jesus stands as the one figure who blocks every road of political and economic exploitation, troubling exploiters everywhere. Christ stands with the outcast, the sinner, the marginalized—the very ones society seeks to sacrifice. On the cross, He became the ultimate scapegoat, exposing the lie of collective violence and breaking its cycle forever.

To the West, I say: Do not look at India’s streets with smug superiority but rather look at it as a warning of what a return to paganism entails. To India, I say: The answers do not lie in nationalism, secularism, or pagan retributive justice. They lie in the person of Jesus, whose love transcends culture, caste, and creed. In a world where police brutality, caste oppression, and bureaucratic corruption persist, the imitation of Jesus is the only impetus for progress toward a prosperous culture. It is the only solution that does not perpetuate the cycle of pain but heals it at its source and readies it for a culture of abundance.