After the boycott, the flood: Bastar Christians lose homes and crops.

Between September 24 and 27, 2026, cyclone rains and the release of water from a dam in neighboring Odisha made the Indravati River overflow in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh. According to official figures cited by International Christian Concern (ICC) on October 6, 8 people died, about 16,000 were rescued, more than 22,000 were moved to relief camps and 571 villages were affected.

What Bastar's Christians are facing

The flood fell on families who were already boycotted for their faith, and the isolation followed them into the shelters.

• A boycott before the flood: village councils had already cut tribal Christians off from wells and local shops, and denied them burial in ancestral land, to force them back to the tribal religion.
• Crops lost: many were already barred from planting rice this monsoon. Now the fields are covered in sand and stones.
• A church became a shelter: near Jagdalpur, a pastor's mud house collapsed, but the small church, which seats about 20, still stands. He, his family and five other homeless families sleep and cook there under tarpaulins.
• Suspicion in the camps: in shared shelters, Christians live alongside neighbors who were hostile to them weeks earlier.

Local Christian networks such as Esai Ekta Manch (Christian Unity Forum) handed out dry rations, tarpaulins, clean water and medical kits to families stranded along the Indravati.

Why it matters

When disaster strikes, those who were already isolated become even more exposed, and homes and fields will be rebuilt in a hostile setting. It is also the moment when the local church shows, in practice, the love it preaches, even to those who rejected it.