Church leaders and Catholic rights activists in the western Indian state of Goa said a temple forcefully built inside church property threatens peaceful relations between Catholics and Hindus.

In August, a 100-strong mob completed building a 20-square-meter temple inside property owned by the Salesians of Don Bosco at Nerul village in North Goa district.

The temple was built under police presence, defying an order blocking the construction by the district collector, the most senior local official.

"This amplifies the proximity of the perpetrators of the violence to the power centers," said social activist Antonio Fernandes.

Trouble began after the "communidade" — Goa's indigenous system of collective landholding — allotted 9.3 hectares of land to the Salesians in 2002 to build an educational hub.

But the project could not take off because of objections from some villagers who alleged the priests demolished a 200-year-old Kalimatadevi Hindu temple that existed in the center of that property.

They campaigned and moved the court to rebuild the allegedly demolished temple, even though the Salesians obtained a separate order from the state's deputy director of villages directing local authorities to allow construction of the educational hub.

Nonetheless, the mob, led by the village leader, entered the property in August, beat up security guards and began construction of the temple.

Salesian Father Wilfred Fernandes, the manager of Don Bosco College who is overseeing the project, said the mob threatened to assault "our people" if they went ahead with developing the property.

But Sashikala Govekar, the village head who led the mob, is unrelenting. "How can they demolish the temple? Are we supposed to sit quiet and watch all this? We will not allow the priests to come here," Govekar told ucanews.com.

C.S. Radhakrishanan, a senior analyst, warned that the controversy could "flare up" into a sectarian issue if not carefully handled.

Goa, considered a Catholic stronghold, was a Portuguese colony for 451 years from 1510 and served as a springboard for missionary activities in Asia.

Centuries of evangelization efforts have converted thousands of local people but both Hindus and Christians share a common ancestry.

Christians, mostly Catholics, form 25 percent of the state's 1.8 million people.

Pilar Brother Eusebio Miranda, deputy editor of the Konkani-language Catholic weekly newspaper "Vauraddeancho Ixtt" (Worker's Friend), said sectarian violence in Goa began only after the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, seen as the political wing of Hindu hardliners working to create a Hindu theocratic state, came to power.

"The entire episode against the Salesians is stage managed," Brother Miranda, said. "We had predicted before the elections that if the BJP comes to power, this will be the fate" of religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims, he said.

The first sectarian violence was in 2006 when Hindu hardliners launched an aggressive three-day campaign against Muslim-owned properties, forcing Muslim families to flee their homes.

The Bharatiya Janata Party first came to power in Goa in 2000 and after an interval, was re-elected in 2012.