What began as an annual Christmas programme featuring schoolchildren, skits and a science exhibition in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly ended with slogans outside a church and demands for an FIR.
A student performance, filmed and clipped, was circulated online as evidence of an “anti-Hindu” plot – setting off one of the earliest Christmas-season protests targeting Christians this year. A video that later went viral showed Bajrang Dal workers chanting the Hanuman Chalisa outside the St Alphonsus Church Cathedral as six policemen stood nearby.
The protestors now claim their demonstration was directed at skits staged during a two-day Christmas programme at Bishop Conrad Senior Secondary School, which is run by the church within its premises. They claim student performances portrayed Hindus in a negative light and misrepresented religious conversion. They say they wanted the police to register an FIR against the church authorities and school management.
Though videos of the skits – some of which were circulated online by Hindutva activists themselves – do not support the claims that they were “anti-Hindu”. Full recordings of the performances, which were originally broadcast live on the school’s official YouTube channel, have been taken down.
Bishop Ignatius D’Souza, a member of the managing committee of Bishop Conrad Senior Secondary School, said there was a copyright issue. “All the performances were being broadcast live on YouTube, but due to copyright issues over video clips related to a series called The Chosen One, based on the life of Jesus Christ, the video was withheld.”
The skits were performed by students at a two-day Christmas event on December 21 and 22.
An alum of the school, who didn’t want to be named and was among the attendants, said the local gala has been an annual affair since the late 1980s. “I have seen the complete play. The play’s theme was around girl child and all that she has to face, and in order to establish incidents, clippings of news reports were displayed,” he told Newslaundry.
The protest and the complaint
A video of the protest, now gone viral, showed Bajrang Dal members chanting verses from the Hanuman Chalisa near the church gate. Bajrang Dal members left the spot after issuing a 24-hour ultimatum to the police and submitting a complaint to Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam alleging that religious sentiments of Hindus were hurt.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here.