(i)
Indian Express January 06, 2008
ATTACK ON CHRISTIANS
by Soli Sorabjee
The claim to civilisation of any state should be measured by the treatment meted out to its minorities. The recent spate of attacks on Christians in Gujarat and Orissa in particular is shameful. The pretext for these attacks is that missionaries are effecting conversions with the aim of making India a Christian state. This is ludicrous. Statistics establish that against Orissa’s 3.47 crore Hindus, there are only 8,97,861 Christians. There has been no steep increase in the number of converted Christians.
Right of conversion is implicit in the guarantee of freedom of religion in our Constitution. No doubt this right is not absolute, but can be reasonably restricted on the heads specified in the Constitution. There is a law in Orissa that prohibits and punishes conversions made by force or allurement. If any person violates the law, prosecute him or her by all means. But remember that conversions do take place because of the degrading treatment meted out to the ‘untouchables’ and the prospect of a life of dignity by embracing Christianity. Besides, the law cannot be selectively applied and must be enforced also against Hindus who reconvert Christians by force and intimidation.
Indiscriminate attacks on peaceable Christians, disrupting their church services and burning their churches, especially during Christmas, is barbarous. It is hoped that Orissa Governor Murli Bhandare will put in place initiatives to restore the confidence of the Christians and to ensure adequate protection to them.
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(ii)
The Hindu Jan 18, 2008
“ATTACK ON CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS PRE-PLANNED”
Special Correspondent
Finds Orissa government’s response to violence inadequate
No attention paid to complaints by Christian organisations
“Situation in Orissa more complex than made out to be”
NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has found the Orissa government wanting in its response to the violence targeting Christians and their institutions across four districts of the State around Christmas.
Describing the attacks as “organised and pre-planned,” the Commission on Thursday said the compensation announced was “meagre” and asked the Orissa government to bring it on a par with the amount given to victims of similar violence in other States.
According to the two-member NCM team which visited the affected areas between January 6 and 8, the Christian organisations had approached the administration expressing fear of attacks on their institutions around Christmas but no attention was paid to the complaints. And, after the attacks, the road blockades were used as an “excuse” by the administration for the delay in police response.
Briefing mediapersons here, the members – Dileep Padgaonkar and Zoya Hasan – said what happened in Phulbani, Daringbadi, Bamunigaon and Baliguda was an “organised, pre-planned” attack on the Christian community and its institutions.
Asked who was behind these attacks, Prof. Hasan said: “What we gathered from the people we met is that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad was involved in vitiating the political atmosphere of the area.” Mr. Padgaonkar pointed out that in a matter of a couple of hours in the dead of night, huge trees were felled and roads blocked. “This is an indication of organisation on a massive scale. Besides, how could there be simultaneous attacks across the districts soon after Swami Lakshmananda of the VHP was attacked.”
Stating that the situation in Orissa was “far more complex and serious than it is made out to be,” the members said they got the impression that the State wanted to see it as an ethnic conflict between two social groups and not a communal issue.
While conceding the existence of a “long simmering” Koi-Pana conflict over extending Scheduled Tribe status to the Christian Pana community, the NCM team said an equally important component of “the communal disturbance was the anti-conversion campaign conducted by the VHP and Sangh Parivar organisations for the last few years.”
Of the view that the administration could have taken more effective steps to prevent the two bandh calls given by different groups or ensure peace during the protest action, the NCM also questioned the anti-conversion movement carried out by Swami Lakshmananda .
Pointing out that Orissa has had a stringent anti-conversion law since 1969, they said the administration had not received a single complaint of conversion by inducement or force.
To improve the situation in the area, the Commission has suggested that the government examine the entire issue of classification of people and inclusion/exclusion of disadvantaged groups from official categories of Scheduled Castes and STs.
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(iii)
Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 2, January 19, 2008
RE-CONVERT OR DIE
What’s happening in Orissa is a brute reconversion of Dalit and Adivasi converts by the Sangh. Biswamoy Pati explains the history
Most reports on the communal violence in Kandhamal highlight the obvious: that the Hindutva outfits have targeted the Christians. Nevertheless, the history of caste formation over the last two centuries in Orissa could provide insights into some complexities.
It might sound strange but a major effort to Hinduise the Kandhamala-Phulbani tract was made by the colonial and “internal” Oriya exploiters in the 19th century. This was the logical fallout of a drive that was aimed to tap the natural resources of this tract and harness it to the machinery of colonial and feudal exploitation. It was closely linked to the enterprise of building Siva temples in this tract and can be traced back to 1855. Thus, colonial officials like Dinabandhu Patnaik (tahsildar – headquarters, Bisipara) recruited forced labour from the Kandhamal region for the purpose. This drive ensured the conversion of tribals into Hinduism.
The colonial context meant a suspicion of Christianity. Consequently, in some cases this prevented conversions to Christianity. However, by 1950 we find a large section of the tribal Kandhas of the region accepting Christianity as a means to get protection from exploitation by the Hindus. Interestingly, the Kandhas who had got Hinduised through the land settlements over the 19th century began to assert their majoritarian identity.
Thus, by 1994 we come across some of them preventing the Panas —– outcastes from entering a Siva temple at Phulbani. This had led to clashes between the Kandha converts to Hinduism and the outcaste Panas. In this sense it is clear that the “Hindus” of today or even those of 1994 need to be located as tribal converts to Hinduism.
The other side of the story relates to the Panas, classified by the colonialist, in close collaboration with Orissa’s brahminical order, as a “criminal caste”. The colonialists negotiated the hill people of Orissa through terror strikes in the first half of the 19th century. Working alongside was the classification strategy that hierarchised and incorporated tribal people to generate a workforce in agriculture. A mass of humanity comprising hill (pahariah) people were clubbed under categories like Panas, with systematic efforts to obliterate their history. Unlike the sections of the affluent Kandhas and other tribal groups who could get integrated into the caste formation, the poorer sections were “integrated” through terror as outcastes.
Over the 1950s and later, sections of Panas have converted to Christianity. In fact, such conversions need to be seen as a form of protest against brahminical Hinduism’s oppressive features and as a part of a survival strategy, as has been noted earlier in the case of the Kandhas.
It is this problem that causes insecurity and fears of the fascist Hindu forces and explains their ire against Pana converts to Christianity in Orissa, Hindu fascism’s post-Gujarat laboratory. What is being witnessed in the name of re-conversion in Orissa is the attempt by fascist forces to convert tribals to Hinduism. The attack on Pana converts to Christianity is aimed at terrorising them into submission.
Pati is the author of Identity, Hegemony, Resistance: Towards a Social History of Conversions in Orissa, 1800–2000
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(iv)
Kashmir Times
January 2, 2008
Editorial
FASCISTS STRIKE IN ORISSA Secular political parties must expose their designs
The persistence of trouble in Western Orissa after the shameful incidents that started on Christmas eve with the damage to churches and attacks on the Christian minority by Hindu fascists, that continued despite the curfew, is not only a cause for concern but is also an eye opener, revealing how deep the sectarian and communal divide is being deliberately allowed to flourish in this country. This is especially so in pockets where the Hindutava organizations have been able to spread hate soaked ideology based on prejudices and myths, and left un-countered by the secular forces on the scale that these should be opposed. Barring a handful of groups working on the ground against the hatred and violence perpetrated in the name of caste and religion, this evil of communalism and sectarianism, threatened more by majoritarian fascism, is allowed to persist. The secular parties in this country fail to go beyond the lip sympathy or the electoral battles in trying to defeat the fascist forces, and often miserably fail, allowing the fundamentalists to gradually infiltrate into positions of power - be in assemblies, civic bodies or other grassroots institutions. The malaise obviously exists because it is not being treated on a war footing in any part of the country. The Orissa case merits special attention. Human rights activists and grassroots organisations working on harmonious relations between different communities and ethnicities have already warned that after Gujarat, Orissa may be the next laboratory for the propagators of Hindutava. In 1999, Australian misisionary Graham Staines and his two sons were brutally murdered by the Hindutava followers. And that may not be the only incident in the recent past. Western Orissa, dominated by upper caste Hindu landholders and traders, has been a deliberately chosen area for preaching of communal ideology and promulgation of Hindu militancy. Coupled with this, its tribal areas are bogged by aggressive Hinduisation through conversions in the last one decade. There are about 30 dominant Sangh Parivar organisations in Orissa that are targeting Christians, Adivasis, Muslims, Dalits and other marginalised sections, mostly by rhetoric based on propaganda but sometimes these tirades also assume violent forms. The followers of Hindutava, like fundamentalists from any groups or religions, do not hesitate in perverting and defaming history with concoted lies and injecting several myths that seek to brand the Muslims or Christians as ’other’, ’foreigner’ and ’terrorists’, Dalits as ’filthy’ and tribals as people who were once Hindus and need to be re-converted. So when on Christmas eve, the Hindutava forces chose to attack the Christian minorities in Western Orissa’s Kandhamal district, it should have come as no surprise even as the scale of violence was shocking. However, shock and condemnation alone cannot amend things or reverse the trends that this pernicious ideology has unleashed, whether it is Orissa or anywhere else. The malaise is too deep to be treated superficially or simply leave it to electoral politics, that has only contributed in creating further polarization between communities and castes. In fact, electoral politics, as of Gujarat, has had larger ramifications, not only in that state but elsewhere in the country where the fabric of communal harmony is too fragile. This problems that has dangerous repercussions needs a consistent strategy and a grassroots networking to be countered. The Hindutava ideology, or any other fascist propaganda, can be competed only if the secular forces are willing to beat the fascists at their own game. The Sangh Parivar has been working for decades, capitalizing and flourishing on the social insecurities and panic in a land of inequalities. It has woven a solidarity network on basis of myths propagated about glorious past of Hindus, essentially upper caste Hindus, and lies about the other castes and communities. Much of this is done in the name of social work, promotion of culture and often through perverting the school curriculum and books introduced in the large number of schools run by the Hindutava organizations. Though human rights groups have been working very successfully in certain pockets of the country to counter this trend, these groups do not have the kind of grassroots networking as the secular political parties do, and this is what has been left un-utilised. Cue can be taken from the past. After Mahatama Gandhi’s assassination in January 1948, it was Congress led by Jawahar Lal Nehru who sought to use the political machinery of the party to counter the threat of communalism. Nehru mobilized Congress committees that were virtually converted into anti-communal fronts to make people aware about the dangers of the pernicious ideology of the RSS and its other sister organizations. Other secular fronts and individuals were also involved. Govind Sahai of the Congress took on the task of monitoring this awareness campaign and toured throughout the length and breadth of the country, distributing pamphlets and holding rallies to educate people and warn them against the devious designs of fascists. Amidst xenophobic tendencies of a growing number of groups, we need to adopt a similar strategy and follow it with the conviction and consistency that it demands.
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