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NEW DELHI — Abhishek Donald was at church last month, playing the drums as usual, when he and fellow parishioners were attacked by a right-wing Hindu mob.
During the assault, a man wielding an iron rod broke the knuckles on Abhishek’s right hand and struck him on the back at least twice, turning his skin blue. His pinkie remains twisted, rendering him unable to play the drums properly.
That hasn’t stopped Abhishek, 16, from going back to church.
He was one of the few people at the Prarthana Bhawan Church in India’s capital region on Sunday, two weeks after the mob barged in.
The group of about 30 people attacked dozens of churchgoers, including women and children, the church’s pastor, Satpal Bhati, said. The Aug. 20 assault on the Protestant church in northeastern Delhi took place less than 10 miles from where world leaders including President Joe Biden will meet this week for the annual summit of the Group of 20 economies.
“They came straight inside and started beating up people. They broke a chair, tore our Bible, busted the drums, and beat the kid’s hand with a rod,” Bhati said.
“They said, ‘This can’t go on, you can’t do this, this is a Hindu nation,’” he added.
Communal violence is nothing new in India, a Hindu-majority country of 1.4 billion where periodic clashes have broken out since its departing British colonial rulers partitioned the Indian subcontinent in 1947. But in recent years there has been a surge in attacks on Muslims, who make up about 14% of the population, as well as Christians, who are India’s second-largest religious minority at less than 3% of the population.
Critics say religious polarization has intensified under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist government, and that it is now reaching deep into the capital, which had largely managed to keep the violence at bay.
This story was originally published in nbcnews.com. Read the full story here