NEW DELHI — Abhishek Donald was at church final month, taking part in the drums as traditional, when he and fellow parishioners have been attacked by a right-wing Hindu mob.

During the assault, a person wielding an iron rod broke the knuckles on Abhishek’s proper hand and struck him on the again at the very least twice, turning the pores and skin blue. His pinkie finger stays twisted, rendering him unable to play the drums correctly.

That hasn’t stopped Abhishek, 16, from going again to church.

He was one of many few folks on the Prarthana Bhawan Church in India’s capital area on Sunday, two weeks after the mob barged in.

The group of about 30 folks attacked dozens of churchgoers, together with girls and youngsters, Pastor Satpal Bhati mentioned. The assault on the Protestant church in northeastern Delhi passed off lower than 10 miles from the place world leaders together with 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 mentioned.

“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 nation of 1.4 billion the place periodic clashes have damaged out ever since its departing British colonial rulers partitioned the Indian subcontinent in 1947. But in recent times there was a surge in assaults on Muslims, who make up about 14% of the inhabitants, in addition to Christians, who’re India’s second-largest non secular minority at lower than 3% of the inhabitants.

Critics say non secular polarization has intensified below Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu-nationalist authorities, and that it’s now reaching deep into the capital, which had largely managed to maintain the violence at bay. 

A couple of weeks earlier than the church assault in Delhi, hundreds of Muslims within the neighboring state of Haryana fled violence-stricken neighborhoods after seven folks have been killed throughout a non secular Hindu procession organized by teams ideologically aligned with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Muslim retailers and houses have been focused because the communal clashes unfold from the district of Nuh to the town of Gurugram, a tech hub the place multinational corporations similar to Google, Ernst & Young and Deloitte have workplaces.

New Delhi was additionally engulfed by sectarian riots for a number of days in 2020, leaving greater than 30 folks lifeless.

The United Christian Forum, a human rights group primarily based in New Delhi, mentioned in July that for the reason that begin of the 12 months there had been at the very least 400 acts of violence in opposition to Christians throughout 23 states in India, Indian information outlet The Wire reported, up from 274 within the first half of 2022.

Experts say non secular violence in India is pushed by a want to ascertain a Hindu state, trumping the secularism enshrined within the nation’s structure and instilling worry in those that stand opposed.

“What we are witnessing in India is majoritarianism couched as democracy,” mentioned M. Sudhir Selvaraj, a lecturer on the University of Bradford in Britain who research anti-Christian violence in India. “There is a sense that people feel emboldened by Modi as the leader. They feel that this is ‘our’ time and ‘our’ place.”

During a visit to the White House in June, Modi denied that India had an issue with non secular discrimination, saying there was “absolutely no space for discrimination” in his authorities. Since then, he has come below fireplace for his dealing with of lethal clashes between Hindu and Christian ethnic teams within the northeastern state of Manipur, which he mentioned nothing about publicly for greater than two months till a video unfold on-line of two women being paraded naked by a mob.

On Sunday, solely a few dozen folks sat on the carpeted flooring on the Prarthana Bhawan Church, which earlier than the assault had typically been full of greater than 100 churchgoers. A framed portray of the Last Supper was lacking its glass.

“They trashed it,” Bhati mentioned, “but then we tried to fix it up and put it back on the wall.”

Local police, who’ve been offering the church with guards for the reason that assault, mentioned Tuesday that one man had been arrested in reference to it.

Rock Robinson was not within the church through the Aug. 20 assault, however it didn’t deter him from attending the service on Sunday.

“I’m never, ever scared,” mentioned Robinson, 73, who has been coming to the church for nearly a decade. 

He expressed willpower within the face of the assault, which he mentioned was inevitable given the nationalistic Hindu fervor that has gripped the nation. 

“Even Jesus’s disciples were put behind bars, but then they had an opportunity to preach, preach, preach,” he mentioned.

The pastor’s 13-year-old son, Amosh, although a bit shaken by the assault, continued taking part in the drums undeterred. Some of the church’s drums have been held collectively by black tape after the mob punched holes in them. 

His father learn out verses from the nook of the stage, slightly than his traditional spot within the heart. The heart mic had been stolen by the mob.

“Usually 50 people stand amid us,” Bhati informed his parishioners. 

“Even in a time of anger, we’re still praying,” he mentioned.

Abhishek, the injured teenager, sometimes hit a drum along with his left hand.

“They’re scared,” he mentioned of the parishioners who weren’t there.

But the church is like residence for Abhishek, who has been going there along with his household for so long as he can keep in mind.

“We live here,” he mentioned. “We have nowhere to go.”