State impunity that combines science across the political spectrum and police complicity underpin targeted hate crimes; Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh top the list
In a statement made on March 17, 2015, Cardinal Mar Baselios Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) and the National United Christian Forum (NUCF), of which the Evangelical Fellowship of India(EFI) is a member together with the CBCI and the National Council of Churches, said: “The cultural DNA of India of pluralism and diversity is being threatened. We are anxious about the implications of the fundamentalist political thesis that India is “one nation, one people and one culture”.
A year later, Cardinal Cleemis, at the end of the CBCI general body meeting in Bangalore, told the media “ “narrow, unitary cultural nationalism… widespread intolerance… a systematic concerted effort to manipulate the education system’’ are the main challenges facing the Church in India.”
The Christian community’s sense of foreboding, and pain, has been reflected in the persecution data released this month by the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the main source of authentic data of violence against India’s 27 million Christians. The EFI report for 2015 said as many as 177 cases were documented in 2015. The report can be read here.
Topping the list are the states of Madhya Pradesh with 36 cases, followed by its neighbours, Chhattisgarh, 20 cases, and Uttar Pradesh, with 22 cases. The actual volume of violent persecution is not known. State agencies are reluctant to speak on this matter and governments do not keep records unless local police register formal cases under the Indian Penal and Criminal Procedure codes. While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in control, of the national government for 22 months only (it earlier ruled from 1998 to 2004), the party has been in control of these states for three terms.
Physical violence, including assaults by mobs, beatings and torture, were the most common with 68 cases, followed by stopping of worship in churches (18 cases) and attacks on churches (18 cases). Arrests of pastors and their companions was a major issue with 18 cases, which does not include those who are rounded up by the police and let off after some time, and others who were in the custody of mobs for various lengths of time.
A frightening aspect of this violence is an increasing number of rapes, particularly of Catholic Nuns, and other kinds of gender violence. Recent months have seen an increasing trend to polarise the people in villages, leading to social exclusion, ostracisation and denial of employment and social services.
At least three cases of rape were recorded, including on Nuns.
Protests by Christian groups against persecution, especially in New Delhi have been brutally crushed. Agitators, including Nuns and other women, Clergy and professions have been cane-charged, dragged to police vans and detained in cases last year.
The population of the Christian community has remained stagnant at 2.3 per cent (2011 census) of the country’s 1.02 billion population for decades, though both the Hindus, at 80.05 per cent and Muslims at 13.4 per cent have shown a continuing growth.
Throughout the year, Federal and State ministers, Members of Parliament and other politicians of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) targetted the community in terms that have been described as amounting to hate.
Towards the end of the year, government spokespersons said the administration will oppose in the Supreme Court any move to grant Christians of Dalit origin the Scheduled Castes designation that would enable them to access jobs in the government and political representation at federal Parliament and local legislature levels.
Christians not only continue to live under the threat of physical violence, but also are at the receiving end of state harassment and repressive laws that severely curb Freedom of Religion and Belief though the country is a signatory to United Nations and other international declarations, covenants, and treaties on this most fundamental of human rights.
They have, in fact, been further disempowered with the National Sample Survey Office reporting that unemployment among Christians nearly doubled in 2010-2011 compared to the previous two years. The report, Employment and Unemployment Situation among Major Religious Groups in India, was released early this month based on data collected during the same period. It showed Christians who lived in villages were unemployed at a rate of 4.5 percent, while Christians in cities were at 5.9 percent, both substantial increases from the previous survey that showed a 3.9 rate for villages and 2.9 for cities. This increases the vulnerability of the smaller groups, and is a severe handicap in their access to justice.
A 48-year-old nun from Kerala of the Salesian Missionaries of Mary Immaculate order was allegedly gang-raped at a nursing home in Pandari area Raipur city, the capital of Chhattisgarh state on June 20, 2015. The victim, who worked at the nursing centre run by the missionaries, was sleeping when two masked men entered the building at around 1.30 am. The nun was tied up and raped by the two men. She was found gagged and tied to the bed by other nursing centre staff in the morning. Some reports claimed that the nun was found bleeding profusely and was in an unconscious state. The incident sparked protests across the city as local Christian community took out a rally to express their anguish. The police investigations into the gang rape have been criticized for shoddiness.
In West Bengal, a 71-year-old nun of a convent school was gang-raped on March 20, 2015 in Ranaghat town, some 80 kilometres from Kolkata. She was injured so badly that she had to undergo a surgery. Police blamed a gang of robbers and ruled out any motive behind the rape, which triggered protests and angry reactions from Christian leaders in a state that worships Mother Teresa as a saint.
In the neighbouring state of Odisha (Orissa) the district Kandhamal which had seen two major attacks on Christians in 2007-08 by armed groups of Hindu extremists, saw coercive violence on Christmas 2015. Gangs of religious extremists blocked the road with stones in major towns. A special target was Barakhama village, which is 13 kilometres from Balliguda sub divisional headquarters and scene of large scale violence in 2007 Christmas and August 2008.
The terror-stricken Christian leaders immediately informed to the police personnel as well as Special Forces deputed for Christmas celebration. They cleared the road and did not allow them to come to Church.
State impunity, political arrogance of the ruling groups in various States of the Union, and increasing complicity of local police and sometimes the media, aggravate the pressure on terrorized communities in remote villages and small towns.
A frightening aspect of this violence (against Christians) is an increasing number of rapes, particularly of Catholic Nuns, and other kinds of gender violence. Recent months have seen an increasing trend to polarise the people in villages, leading to social exclusion, ostracisation and denial of employment and social services.
In many cases, justice has been denied to those arrested on trumped-up charges – mostly pastors or their associates – and detained in police stations or their liberty curtailed in other manners.
Government organisations, including the National Commission of Minorities, have expressed their helplessness in the matter. Many government structures and functionaries, including in the State Minority and human rights organisations, are enmeshed in bureaucratic red tape. Most such organisations consist of political appointees reluctant to take affirmative action.
Human rights and Freedom of Faith organisations, including the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Alliance Defending Freedom India and Christian Legal Association, have had to mobilise legal assistance to ensure the freedom of the people, and the security of the pastors and members of churches. A National Helpline by the United Christian Forum backed my members of the EFI, ADF, CLA and others are an immediate channel of communication and assistance.
The persecution of Christians is also seen within the larger context of sustained violence and persecution of India’s very large Muslim community – at more than 14 per cent of the population, the second largest in the world after Indonesia. The sustained hate campaign against Muslims by several Union Ministers and cadres of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with its myriad specialised organizations known as the “Sangh Parivar”, radicalizes people at all levels, and more so in rural areas.
The cadres are a ready base for violence against Christians. Both Muslims and Christians have in recent months been also branded as “anti nationals”, adding another layer of targetted hate.
Christians and Muslims have been named as “enemies of the nation” in the foundation documents of the RSS and the phrase is common in the public discourse in social media. Christian activists and others have been targetted and coerced on social media, some of them receiving death threats in 2015.
The persecution of Christians in India is also rooted in highly bigoted laws that have invited international scrutiny, including by the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion and Belief of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The prime among them is Article 341 Part 3, which effectively criminalises conversion of Indian citizens of Christianity and Islam, its punitive measures denying the country’s 180 million Dalit population (once described as untouchables till the term was outlawed) all affirmative action including reservations in legislatures, government employment and institutions of higher learning.
Laws against conversions in six of the largest States of the Union not only rob Tribals and Dalits of their rights to Freedom of Faith, some of them have punitive measures against pastors connected with the people. Most dangerously, the anti conversion laws seem to provide a 'carte blanche', or licence to non-state actors such as members of the larger "Sangh Parivar" and some other ideologically-aligned groups of the RSS but also the police and local governments to target Christians and their institutions.
The continuing and adverse government focus on National and International Civil Society and Human Rights organisations also nurtures the environment of hate against minority groups, specially the Christian community which has a large number of institutions at the grassroots in areas of health, education and the welfare of women and children. The Persecution list does not cover such laws being use against Christian not for profit and voluntary groups whose funds have been stopped, international funding curtailed or licenses cancelled. Licenses for accepting foreign donations under the Foreign Contribution regulation act are due for revalidation in March 2016.
Churches, specially villages, and prayer houses continue to invite adverse attention from neighbours, as well as civil and police authorities. Even prayers in houses have come in for attack, specially in central India, but also in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. For instance, in Satyamangalam in Erode district of Tamil Nadu that a Sub-Inspector of Police had questioned the occupants of a home where prayers were going on whether they had obtained requisite permissions to conduct such prayers. When they replied that they had no knowledge of the need for any such permission, they were told by the police officer that they cannot conduct such prayers again without obtaining permission from the District Collector. In several districts across the country, groups that meet in homes for worship and prayer are facing similar problems.
Although it does not strictly fit into the definition of “persecution”, the community is concerned at the persistent attempt by the RSS to put an end to Minority Rights and to “Saffronise Education”, as it is called in political discourse in the country. Even as the Government is gearing up to introduce a new “National Education Policy”, the education scenario remains much the same as what it was, when the previous “NEP” (1968, 1986, 1992) were drawn up. In the meantime, RSS is demanding education based on Indian (Hindu) thoughts, introducing books/syllabus on Hindutva, getting key posts in Higher Education, Indianising science, and asking church authorities to install statues of Hindi deities in their schools and other institutions, specially in Chhattisgarh.
(The author is a journalist, occasional documentary film maker and social activist)