The Bajrang Dal continued to target Christian establishments in Mangalore despite prohibitory orders and deployment of additional police contingents. Two Catholic churches were attacked on Monday and violence spilled over to the neighbouring Kasaragod district in Kerala where a Catholic-run school was attacked.

Protestors were beaten up by the police in several parts of the city and an uneasy calm prevailed as shops were shut and public transport vehicles kept off the roads. Mangalore Bishop Aloysius D’Souza said his diocese had lost faith in the administration.

Activists defied curfew to protest against the attack on a Catholic chapel, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration Monastery, on Sunday. “The nuns here never mingle with the world outside. They do not meet laymen. How could they be targeted on charges of conversion,” asked a priest of the Mangalore diocese.

The other Bajrang Dal targets on Sunday included a chapel of the Church of South India in Mangalore and prayer halls run by a Bangalore-based protestant sect, New Life.

In fact, New Life has been the Hindutva outfit’s prime target. The Bajrang Dal has said that they had targeted New Life because it has been converting Hindus to Christianity.

Ironically, the Catholic Church, too, has a similar problem with New Life which it thinks is poaching its faithful belonging to the lower income group. Bishop D’Souza reiterated today at a press conference that Catholics have been against conversion.

A priest in Mangalore diocese, who preferred anonymity, said the clergy has been warning people against joining New Life. “We have told them that those who join New Life would be excommunicated. In fact, a section in the diocese feels that New Life should be blamed for the attacks. The diocese is facing a piquant situation. We are facing the music for the wrongs committed by New Life. We have decided to organise agitations considering the larger interests of the entire Christian community,” he said.

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