The attack began around 6 p.m. at the church in Jalalkhali village. The parish priest, Father Jithin Muthukattil, said the attackers arrived in vehicles carrying bricks and bamboo sticks, pelted stones, tore down makeshift gates and smashed the glass covers protecting statues, including a statue of Jesus. Men and women who tried to resist were beaten. Police arrived at about 7 p.m. and brought the scene under control.
The church was hosting a Santali Bible convention at its Divine Love Retreat Centre, a gathering announced in advance and scheduled to close on October 11. Church officials said the violence broke out after accusations of forced conversion were broadcast over loudspeakers. Church representatives denied the charge, and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India called the claims false and meant to stir up hostility. A regional secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a Hindu nationalist group, separately alleged that conversions were taking place in several parts of the state. Church officials said they believe the mob was linked to that group.
Bishop Nirmol Vincent Gomes called it the worst violence his diocese has experienced. A police official said a complaint had been received and an investigation was under way. A diocesan official said no one had been arrested as of the latest coverage, on October 14.
What a mob cannot take from a church
Think about who was in that compound. Farm families, many of them from the Santali people, had come to sit under the Word of God for a few days. They brought no bricks and no bamboo. They brought Bibles and hymn books. And a crowd came for them in the dusk.
The charge shouted over the loudspeakers was a familiar one, and it is the oldest trick there is. Call a gathering of worshippers a crime, and the mob feels righteous. The Lord's own people have been treated that way since Stephen. The Pharisees did not hold stones in their hands for sport. They believed they were defending something. That is what makes a mob so dangerous: it is sure of itself.
A man can break a statue in a minute. He cannot break what the gospel puts in a believing heart. The faith those worshippers carried in was not in the plaster. It was in a living Savior who was himself beaten by a crowd that had been told a lie about him.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:10)
Notice what our Lord says. He does not say, blessed are those who have an easy time. He says the kingdom belongs to those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. The injured men and women in Nadia are not forgotten by heaven. They are named in it.
And here is a hard word for the rest of us. Freedom to worship is not a small thing, and it is not safe by nature. Where it is protected by law and enforced by honest officers, it is a gift. Where the mob finds the police arriving an hour late and no arrests made, it is a gift withdrawn. Those who hold authority are charged with protecting the peaceable, and they will answer for how they did it. A nation that lets worshippers be beaten without consequence invites the next crowd.
Yet the believer does not answer a brick with a brick. The apostle writes to the Romans:
"Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not." (Romans 12:14)
That is not weakness, my friend. It takes more strength to forgive the man who struck you than to strike him back. The men who came with bamboo sticks are sinners for whom Christ died, just as you are and I am. The gospel that they tried to silence on Friday evening is the very gospel that can turn a persecutor into a preacher. It happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road.
So Christians here at home ought to remember our brothers and sisters in Bengal. Remember the injured, and remember the pastor and the priest who must now go back to a damaged church and keep shepherding. Speak up where you can, and give where you are able. Above all, hold fast to the One who said that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church. Not bricks, not bamboo, not loudspeakers full of lies.