The Rev. Shaju Devassy was quietly attending to his work as director of a Catholic graduate college in central India on Dec. 30 when police showed up and told him a mob of angry Hindu protestors was on its way.
Police in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh state held the 70-strong mob outside the gate of St. Mary’s Post Graduate College as long as they could, but the protestors managed to jump a boundary wall, and soon they surrounded Devassy at his church presbytery.
Threatening and reviling him, they accused him of being anti-national for refusing to let them worship the Mother India goddess (Aarti of Bharat Mata) at the Catholic institution.
“In menacing tones, they warned him that should he refuse to do the Aarti, they would garland him with the ‘garland of shoes [juthe ki mala],’” Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, told Morning Star News.
Another protestor questioned Devassy as to whether he knew Indian culture, the bishop said. “He asked the director, ‘Who is the goddess of education? Why is Saraswati Vandana [worship of goddess Saraswati] not being done in the college?’”
The mob told him that the worship of the Mother India goddess was to be performed as a sign of patriotism, the bishop said.
“As Indians, the activists claimed that they did not require permission…
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