Members of the Bajrang Dal on Wednesday barged into a school in Assam’s Nalbari district, destroying Christmas decorations and smashing posters on the premises, the police said.
The alleged members of the Hindutva group carried out the vandalism at St Mary’s School in Nalbari’s Panigaon village. A video by India Today NE showed them setting fire to Christmas decorations and shouting “Jai Shri Ram”.
In another incident in Nalbari, about 15-20 members of the Bajrang Dal also burned Christmas decorations at a shop and forced the establishment to close, Asom Live reported.
“I didn’t know that I can’t sell Christmas decoration goods,'“ the channel quoted the shopkeeper as saying. “The members of the Bajrang Dal came, threw the items in the drain and torched some of them.”
This comes amid several incidents of attacks on Christians or disruptions to Christmas celebrations being reported in the past week.
In Kerala, a worker of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was arrested after a Christmas carol group of children was attacked while visiting homes in Pudussery village in Palakkad district on Monday.
The RSS is the parent organisation of the ruling BJP at the Centre.
In Uttarakhand’s Haridwar, a hotel run by the state tourism department cancelled a Christmas celebration on the banks of the river Ganga after protests called by the Ganga Sabha, which administers the Har-ki-Pauri ghat.
On Monday, Aam Aadmi Party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj shared a video purportedly recorded in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar showing men threatening women and children wearing Santa Claus caps. However, the police claimed that the incident was a “minor and momentary verbal disagreement" between some individuals which did not escalate into a confrontation or law and order situation, PTI reported.
On Tuesday, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India raised concerns about the “alarming rise in attacks” on Christians in several states ahead of Christmas and said that the incidents undermine India’s constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and the right to worship without fear.
The bishops’ association said that it was “particularly shocked” by an incident in Jabalpur, where a visually impaired woman attending a Christmas programme was assaulted by a BJP leader.
The assault took place on Saturday at a church, where the BJP’s Jabalpur Vice President Anju Bhargava accused the woman of carrying out religious conversions. The incident took place in the presence of a police officer.
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