After Madhya Pradesh Catholic Diocesan Schools' Association moved the Jabalpur High Court on Monday seeking protection from right-wing extremist organisations, police on Tuesday arrested several activists including Updesh Rana, chief of Vishwa Sanatan Sangh.
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and some right wing organisations were allegedly pressuring a Christian missionary college in Vidisha to hold Bharata Mata Aarti programme. After the petition of Catholic Diocesan School Association, the state government had promised security to the institution. On Tuesday, special security arrangements were made outside all Christian missionary schools and colleges in Vidisha. Incidentally, Vidisha is the home town of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Top functionaries of RSS including its chief Mohan Bhagwat were recently in Vidisha to hold a state level meeting. The ABVP is alleged to have forcibly preformed Bharat Mata Arti in many schools and colleges in the district. But they were not allowed inside the St Mary's college campus by the management on grounds that communal tension was being incited in the garb of performing the Aarti program.
Later ABVP and the Vishwa Sanatan Sangh activists forcibly entered the St Mary's campus and vandalised properties.
The activists had threatened to enter the campus again on Tuesday after calling support from other colleges in the district. However, only around two dozen activists came near the campus and they were arrested under preventive sections, said a police officer posted in Vidisha. Police also arrested Updesh Rana, the self-proclaimed chief of Vishwa Sanatan Sangh.
There has been a sudden spurt in violence against Christian missionaries and their institutions in the state. Earlier on December 14, thirty carol singers and two priests from the Saint Ephrem's Theological College in Satna in eastern Madhya Pradesh were arrested by police on charges of conversion while their car was burnt by Bajrang Dal activists.
Members of Christian community were singing Christmas carols in a poor locality when activists of Bajrang Dal objected to their religious activity and complained to police that they were involved in conversion. The police later detained 42 people and kept thirty of them in police station.
In April last year, the police entered a church in Satna and stopped a wedding ceremony following a complaint by the Bajrang Dal that the bride and the groom had been unlawfully converted to Christianity.
In another incident last week, ABVP had charged a mission school in Ratlam with suspending students for shouting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' slogans.'
