Was a church in Mangalore attacked by BJP anti social elements?

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Soumadip Dey

Claim: A church was attacked in Mangalore by RSS and BJP workers to celebrate the party's victory as the single-largest party in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections.

What Happened: A video has been widely shared on social media that claimed that BJP/RSS workers attacked a church in Mangalore after the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the 2018 Karnataka Assembly elections. A video captioned "BJP and Sanghi cadres attacked church in Mangalore to install Bhagwa and BJP flags. Police arrested all of them" was posted on a Facebook Page named "Muslim - Pro" on Thursday, the 17th of May, 2018. The video has been watched around sixty seven thousand times, and has been shared close to three thousand times. Smaller snippets of the video have also been shared across other social media platforms like Whatsapp and Twitter.

Fact: The church attack that takes place in the video was actually on the Saint Sebastian Church in Permannur, a locality in Mangalore, and took place on the 5th of October, 2008. It was part of a broader wave of anti-Christian attacks in Karnataka that year. The same video being shared now was in fact originally posted by the Al Jazeera English YouTube Channel. Al Jazeera correspondent, Matt McClure, reported from Mangalore, where the police were accused of allegedly siding with Hindu attackers against the Christian community.

Conclusion: On every side of the political and religious spectrum, we are witnessing an increasingly adept usage of the real event/false narrative ploy. In this case, it attempts to falsely depict BJP and RSS workers as disruptive antisocial elements. Since they have been associated with such attacks before, the reasoning clearly goes, it would be easy for people to believe that they would be responsible for them again.


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