By Alishan Jafri
New Delhi: Local opposition to a Christian man’s burial at a Chhattisgarh village reached a violent crescendo in which a mob set a Christian man’s home on fire, vandalised churches and torched a prayer hall. Stone pelting by the mob injured 20 police personnel.
The Badetevda village in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker district had been on edge for the past four days over a dispute between a Christian family, local villagers and Hindutva groups. The dispute had to do with the burial of a Christian man’s father.
Footage accessed by The Wire shows a home being set on fire and a vigilante vandalising the property with a bamboo stick. Angry mobs armed with bows and arrows were seen rampaging through prayer halls in the presence of police.
On December 15, Rajman Salam, 36, took his 70-year-old ailing father, Chamra Ram Salam, to the district hospital in Kanker. His father passed away within hours. Rajman, who was elected as the sarpanch last year and had converted to Christianity many years ago, initially wanted to cremate his father as per local Hindu traditions. “However, I was told that I can’t have the rituals because of my Christian faith,” he told The Wire.
The next day, December 16, the Salam family decided to bury Chamra Ram as per Christian rituals on their private land. “Soon,” Rajman told The Wire, “locals objected to the burial [following Christian rituals] and a verbal fight began.” He alleged that once Hindutva groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bajrang Dal got involved, the burial ceremony was stopped, after the quarrel rose to a physical skirmish. Rajman said that his friends and family were injured in the skirmish.
Rajman said that the police did not stop the Hindutva rabble-rousers but began pressuring his family to back off.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.