Vendors selling Santa Claus hats and pictures in Puri, including an elderly couple, were harassed, humiliated and told to leave by a group manning the road near the Shree Jagannath Temple in an SUV on Monday.
A video showed four people, one of them clad in yellow, getting off the car near Jail Road, the entry point to the city that is 1.5km from the temple and 3km from the beach, and threatening the vendors. They asked the vendors about their religious identity and which state they came from.
One of the youths told the vendors: “Yeh Hindu rashtra hai, yahan Christian ka chalega nahin (This is a Hindu country, here Christians don’t have any say).”
The group asked the vendors to pack up their wares and leave the city.
The Bajrang Dal and the VHP have denied any link with the troublemakers. However, the Bajrang Dal said it did not appreciate the sale of products connected with other religions near a prominent Hindu shrine.
The man in yellow, who appeared to be the leader of the group, demanded to see permits issued by local authorities to the vendors and threatened to hand them over to
the police.
When one of the vendors told the man that he was a Hindu and was selling Santa hats to make ends meet, he got furious and asked him to sell items related to Lord Jagannath or leave the city.
“Garib aadmi hai toh Jagannath ka bech, yeh sab Christian ka nahin chalega (If you are poor, sell items related to Lord Jagannath. These items related to Christianity will not be allowed to be sold here),” the man told the vendor.
When the old vendor couple told the group that they were Hindus, the man yelled: “Hindu hoke yeh sab kaise bech sakte ho? Nahin chalega (How can you sell these things being a Hindu? This won’t be allowed.)”
The group also harassed a young vendor who told them he was a Hindu from Rajasthan. The man in yellow asked his aides to drive away the vendors as they could not furnish Aadhaar cards.
Sarat Kumar Patra, a local photojournalist who wanted to click pictures of the vendors, said they had left by the time he reached there. “I don’t know where they went,” he told this paper.
Commenting on the issue, Bajrang Dal’s Puri co-ordinator Shantanu Pandey said: “The youths who threatened the vendors are not from Puri. They are neither from the Bajrang Dal nor from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. We are not opposing the sale of Santa hats and products relating to Christmas in Puri. They can sell it on the Puri beach and at other marketplaces. But they should not be allowed to sell such items near the Puri Shree Jagannath Temple or other Hindu shrines.”
Former state VHP vice-president Satyanaryan Dash said: “I need to know whether these people are coming to Puri to sell such products on their own or someone is operating from behind to propagate Christianity.”
He added: “I don’t agree that after the BJP came to power, attacks on minorities have increased. Rather, I want to say that the activities of minorities have been exposed more and more.”
The Opposition BJD condemned the attacks. Party spokesperson Lenin Mohanty said: “Such things should not happen. We celebrate Christmas in the same way we celebrate Durga Puja. Such incidents spoil the image of Odisha.”
Ramakrushna Dasmohapatra, servitor and secretary of the Daitapai Niyog, an association of servitors at the Shree Jagananth Temple, said: “In Puri, there are churches and mosques. The Jagannath culture is different. We need to understand it. No such attacks should be encouraged.”
Kumbharpada police station inspector Susant Kumar Sahu said no case had been registered with regard to any harassment of vendors. “We are trying to identify the miscreants from the video on social media,” he said.
Attacks on minorities have increased since the Mohan Majhi-led BJP government assumed power in Odisha in June 2024. In November, Rahul Islam, 24, a hawker from Murshidabad in Bengal was branded a Bangladeshi and brutally assaulted by a mob in Ganjam district after he refused to chant “Jai Sri Ram”.
As the mob threatened to douse him with petrol and set him on fire, Rahul gave in to the demand. The police did not take any action, saying no FIR had been registered.
In October, two Muslim youths were allegedly beaten up and paraded in public with saffron flags emblazoned with Lord Hanuman’s images in Khuntuni, 26km from Cuttack city, by Rightwing activists who demanded they chant “Jai Sri Ram”. Theyclaimed nobody would be able to stop them as the “Mohan Majhi government is in power”.
