Jomon Devasia has a problem of plenty. That of people’s mortal remains.

The priest at the main Catholic church in Narayanpur district, Devasia’s job also entails burial of the dead — in a common cemetery, less than an acre in size, for all Christian groups.

That wasn’t much of a challenge in a district with a population of less than 1.4 lakh (in the 2011 census), of whom 0.43 per cent were Christians. A small fraction lived in the district headquarters; the rest buried their dead in their own villages.

This changed on January 2 when a mob vandalised the Sacred Heart Church that Devasia serves, after tensions between tribal communities of indigenous and Hindu faiths on one side and those who have converted to Christianity on the other.

“Since January, we have received 40 bodies, several of them from villages where people have opposed burials with Christian rites even on private land,” Devasia told The Telegraph as he supervised the replacement of broken stained glasses with those from his home state of Kerala.

“As the placement of graves has not been properly done in our cemetery so far, the remaining space will get filled up in a year or two if this problem continues.”

Discomfort within the Gond community over their brethren shunning traditional forms of worship and accepting Christianity has prevailed since the 1950s, when the RSS-backed Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram was set up in Jashpur with the blessings of the then Congress government of undivided Madhya Pradesh.

The unrest peaked during the Ghar Wapsi (reconversion) campaigns of late BJP parliamentarian Dilip Singh Judeo in the 1990s.

This year, the Ashram’s Janjati Suraksha Manch has held rallies across India demanding the denial of Scheduled Tribe status to tribal converts to Christianity or Islam. The campaign has received support from BJP leaders in Chhattisgarh and Gujarat while being opposed by their party colleagues in Christian and tribal-majority Meghalaya.

The activism of the Manch and the BJP has muddied the waters for the Congress in Narayanpur and neighbouring Kondagaon, which will vote on November 7. Both seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribes.

“These people have turned brother against brother,” Congress sarpanch Nawal Kishore Kashyap told this newspaper, pointing at a BJP bike rally passing in front of the Congress office at Bhanpuri in the Narayanpur Assembly constituency.

The Congress now holds all the 12 seats in Bastar — a region of the state seen as an election bellwether.

“There are repeated provocations by them to violence. Our strict instruction to all workers is to avoid confrontation at all costs,” Kashyap said.

“This conversion thing is nonsense. Not a single new church has come up here in the last five years. After the clashes in December-January, peace has returned to the villages.”

Kashyap — who practises traditional Gond worship -– said that what matters in these heavily agriculture-reliant districts is that Bhupesh Baghel’s Congress government has hiked the minimum support price of rice from Rs 1,750 a quintal in 2018. Currently, the total procurement price (which includes the MSP and a bonus to cover input costs) is more than Rs 2,600.

On Saturday, the BJP announced that it would increase this to Rs 3,100 if it won the election, and on Sunday Baghel said this would be hiked to Rs 3,200 if Congress was re-elected.

“People like this boy were giving up agriculture before the Baghel government hiked the MSP,” bicycle mechanic Gangaram Netam said, pointing at Bhima Markam, who nodded along with the rest of the men gathered in Deogaon village, Kondagaon Assembly constituency.

Bhima worked as a labourer in Chennai. The only thing he liked there was the sea. He returned to agriculture a couple of years ago because the MSP was now higher. He and others let Gangaram speak for them as his Hindi was better than theirs, and this reporter doesn’t know Gondi.

“We believe in our traditions, and if people leave them then who will do seva (Gond religious practices)? Some of our brothers have become Christians but they also want reservation. I disagree with this, but it is not a political issue for us. It is a dispute within the family,” Gangaram said.

He pointed to a poster of Congress minister Mohan Markam, candidate from Kondagaon, and said: “I think that some of us who voted BJP the last time will vote for him this time because we are unhappy with the BJP for interfering in our family disputes.”

At Garhbangla village in Narayanpur constituency, trainee teacher Vinu Potai was unhappy with the incumbent Congress MLA, Chandan Kashyap.

“Even we educated youths don’t get jobs easily. The MLA is ineffective in getting us government jobs like other MLAs do,” he said.

Basket weaver B.R. Mathra too complained of the meagre travel allowance of Rs 500 a day he receives from a state government scheme to go and exhibit his work in Delhi.

Both hinted at voting for the BJP’s firebrand Kedar Kashyap, who has supported the agitation against religious conversions. But both of them underscored that conversion wasn’t an issue for them.

The village was covered with flags of the BJP and the CPI. Christians here said the CPI is seen as a party that represents their community. This could upset the Congress’s calculations.

“If they had helped us when things were bad, none would have left the Congress. Neither Chandan nor Kedar bothered to reassure the community,” pastor Paul Gawde, a Gond Christian, told this newspaper.

“Phulsingh Kachlam (the CPI candidate) held several meetings in our villages and tried to convince people that tribal should not fight tribal. The Left sent fact-finding teams (after the December-January clashes).”