In the recent days, there are many cases in which Hindu extremists have been attacking Christian schools and their congregations, hospitals and churches for converting the youth related to these places. Most of them who are found guilty in these places for conversion are being arrested, but still it continues in the recent days.
One of the recent cases is at St. Joseph School in Ganj Basoda, city in Madhya Pradesh on December 6th, 2021. This school was established in 2008 by the Malabar Missionary Brothers (MMB) which is a religious trust for Christianity and presently there are 1,500 and more students studying in the school with less than 1% of them being Christians.
Workers of the right-wing group Bajrang Dal and the locals in hundreds attacked the school on December 6th, 2021 in the afternoon. The mob was triggered by a YouTube channel named “Aayudh” which is supposedly the channel which revealed about the school. The workers got to know that 8 Hindu students were converted in St. Joseph’s parish church in the month of October. Later in the month December hundreds of people with the encouragement of the Hindu right-wing workers, attacked the school.
At that time the school was conducting Mathematics exams for Class 12th and there were 14 students inside the building. The principal of the school, Brother Pynumkal said that they had assumed the day before itself that mob might attack the school on that particular day as they received information from the local news channels and had requested for protection from the Police but they arrived only after all the blunder and did not take their insights about the attack seriously and also did not take action at the right time.
The mob was armed with iron rods and stones. They threw stones on the glass windows of the school and screamed the slogans – “Jai Shri Ram” the whole time they were in the school premises. The principal also mentioned that the students and the teachers were in the rooms nearing those glass windows and as soon as the mob started throwing stones, everyone were shifted to the other side of the building to a safer place and hence no one was harmed due to the attack.
When the local news channels spoke to the principal regarding the attack and the reason for which they attacked the school, he denied the reasons and said that their school is not involved in conversion of students into Christianity and even the names of the 8 students who are said to be converted are not from their school.
The leader of that district has now ordered for a detailed inspection of the case and to see to it that if the school is really involved in conversion of students. If so the school will be closed and demolished.
The YouTube channel which was the first to reveal about the school still believes that the content they had released is true and the school is lying to hide its truth. They say that no school can conduct exams for only 14 students on a particular day of any exam and also that the school first let the students talk to the news channel and then they spoke about the event. Hence the channel is still against the school and is pleading for justice to those children.
Madhya Pradesh is one of those 8 states in India where the law prohibits religious conversion by force and if anybody violates the law will be jailed for 10 years. The state consists of less than 1% of Christians against the whole population and they have accused the right-wing Hindu groups of instigating anti-Christian violence for many years.
