Mr. Satyapal Singh, the BJP MP, while speaking in Lok Sabha on amendments to FCRA, had gone on to support the forthcoming restrictions to the foreign contributions. While making his arguments, to buttress his point, he put forward the case of Pastor Graham Stewart Staines. In the process, he poured venom on the late pastor by saying that he had raped 30 Tribal women and was involved in the work of conversion to Christianity with the help of funds from abroad!

This blatant lie should have been countered in the Parliament. The brutal murder of Pastor Staines was described by the then President of India, Dr. K.R. Narayanan by saying “It belonged to the world’s inventory of black deeds”. The pastor, who came from Australia to work among Leprosy patients in Orissa, was sleeping in an open jeep in the village on the night of January 22-23, 1999. He was working in Keonjhar, Manoharpur, in Odisha. On that fateful night he was burnt alive with his two minor sons, Timothy and Philip. The whole country was aghast with the brutal nature of the crime. The brutality was committed by Rajendra Singh Pal aka Dara Singh, a worker of Bajrang Dal.

LK Advani was the home minister at that time. He stated that Bajrang Dal has nothing to do with this act; he knows this organisation well. As the immediate measure he sent a three-member ministerial team comprising Murli Manohar Joshi, Navin Patnayak and George Fernandez to Odisha. In a single day, the team concluded that this grave crime is an international conspiracy to destabilise the ruling NDA government. Then the Wadhwa Commission was appointed. The commission concluded that Dara Singh, who was working with Bajrang Dal with the help of organisations like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, VHP etc. propagated that the pastor is doing the work of conversion and is a threat to Hinduism. He did mobilise people, poured Kerosene on the vehicle and set fire.

The Commission in its report further stated that Pastor had not been doing the work of conversion; he was involved in serving the leprosy patients. Dara Singh was awarded death penalty by Courts, which was later reduced to life imprisonment; currently he is undergoing the jail sentence. What is remarkable is that as per the report there was no substantial increase in the percentage of Christians in the area. The report states, “Keonjar district had a total population of 15.30 lakh. Out of them, 14.93 lakh were Hindus. Christians, mostly tribals, were 4,707. According to the 1991 census, there were already 4,112 Christians in the district. Thus, there was an increase of only 595 in the Christian population.” One can say that this is not due to conversion but is due to the natural biological process. Propaganda of Dara Singh and the organisations was purely guided by their political agenda.

The propaganda that Christian missionaries have been converting is the dominant social perception all around, and it is the ground for ‘Hatred against the Christians’, who have been facing the violence for over two decades. We witnessed violence against Christians, mainly in Adivasi areas, Dangs, Jhabua, and large parts of Odisha. After this gruesome murder, there was regular violence against Christian community, the peak of which was seen in the Kandhamal violence (August 2008) in which nearly hundred Christians were killed, close to four hundred women raped and many Churches attacked and destroyed.

That was not the end. The violence against this community is going on in a regular manner. It is mostly in remote areas, in a scattered manner and many-a-times below the radar. The prayer meetings are attacked and missionaries distributing religious literature are apprehended. The organisation ‘Persecution Relief’, in its recent report points out, “Hate crimes against Christians in India have risen by an alarming 40.87 percent. That increase came despite a complete nationwide lockdown that lasted three months to stem the spread of Covid-19 infections.”

While the attacks on Muslim minority have been glaring, those against Christians are scattered and low intensity, the murder of Pastor Staines and Kandhamal violence stand out. The core ideology behind this violence which has been spread is that Islam and Christianity are ‘foreign religions’ and are a threat to Hinduism. This is so much in contrast to what Indian nationalists like Gandhi and Nehru, who regarded that religion is no basis of nationality; Christianity is as much a religion of this land as any other.

As a matter of fact, as per one version Christianity entered this land in AD 52, With St Thomas setting up a Church in Malabar area. For the last nearly 19 centuries, many missionaries have been coming and working in the remote areas, setting up health and education facilities in particular. They have also set up the schools and colleges, and hospitals in urban areas, which are known for their good standards, and people in these areas do vie to avail of these facilities with gay abandon.

Today the percentage of Christians, as per census figures is 2.30 (2011 census), this is again a climb down from 1971 when it was 2.60 percent. In the last six decades it has shown a constant decline, 2.60 (1971), 2.44 (1981) 2.34 (1991), 2.30 (2001) and 2.30 again in 2011. The organisations like Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, VHP and Bajrang dal are active more in remote places to spread the misconception of the conversion. This is an assault on ‘Freedom of Religion’ and the repressive laws against freedom of religion have been coming up in state after state. While Indian Constitution stands for an individual’s right to practice and preach one’s religion, the anti-Christian violence on the pretext of religion is becoming endemic as sectarianism is growing in a frightening manner.

Recently on August 25, it was 12 years since Kandhamal violence had shaken the country. The need is to restore peace, amity and harmony. By speaking unsubstantiated charges Mr. Satyapal Singh has just gone on to add to the anti Christian propaganda, which dents our values of fraternity.

* The writer is a human rights defender and a former professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay). 

Other pieces by Dr. Puniyani:

Was Mughal Rule the period of India’s Slavery?
Kashi- Mathura: Will temple politics be revived?
Scapegoats and Holy Cows
Freedom of Religion: Indian Scenario

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Interview with Prabir Purkayastha
Interviewed by Pranjal

Satyapal Singh, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, issued a statement claiming evolution never happened since no one saw an ape converting into a human. Such statements by our highest ranking ministers show the lack of rationality in BJP’s core ideologies. What can be the future of India’s science and technological development when our government doesn’t want the country’s children to be able to think?

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Image: India Today

So we have the likes of Satyapal Singh, a former Mumbai  Police Commissioner a IPS officer from Maharashtra cadre now a Union minister.

His tenure as Pune Police Commissioner witnessed the 2010 German Bakery bombing in Pune that killed 17 people and injured at least 60 more. His so-called action resulted in a big embarrassment to the then Government when it turned out that he apprehended wrong persons for that blast solely on his intuition since they happened to be Muslims. He however earned kudos for defeating the formidable Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh in his home territory Baghpat and become a member of the 16^th Lok Sabha.

So let us examine the past record of Satyapal Singh. Before he quit as Mumbai Police Commissioner, hardly anyone outside Maharashtra and many even within Maharashtra had heard of this Jat from Meerut who joined the IPS in 1980.

His opportunity to head the high profile Mumbai Police also came as sheer godsend, following the riotous demonstration by Muslims in Azad Maidan over the killings of Rohingyas in Maynamar for which the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik was blamed by the communal Shiv Sena and BJP for handling the rioting Muslims with kid gloves and unceremoniously bundled out. And so a wimp of a Home Minister in Maharashtra  belonging to the NCP R R Patil chose  a supposed tough cop with proven record of targeting Muslims and Maoists, Satyapal Singh.
The Wikipedia tells us that on 31 January 2014 Singh tendered his resignation and applied for Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) and sought to be relieved immediately to contest the upcoming the general elections on BJP ticket. That Patil, post haste accepted Singh’s request and hurriedly granted him VRS to facilitate his joining the BJP, to enable him to attend a rally in Meerut for joining that party in the presence of Narendra Modi and the then BJP chief Rajnath Singh.

On quitting the Police service and joining the BJP, Singh announced grandly, “My inner voice is telling me that it’s time to change profession. As a police officer, I have worked for the people of Mumbai and Maharashtra for many years, but now it’s time to work for the entire country with a renewed energy.”

Less than six months of quitting and within a month of being elected the MP from Baghpat on June 2, 2014, the Mumbai Police busted a prostitution racket running from a flat in the fashionable Versova in Andheri west facing seaside owned by Singh and arrested two women and a man we were told was the caretaker of that flat. Singh first avoided any reaction to the news report and later claimed he had rented it out to IndiaBulls (his close proximity to IndiaBulls is another story, reflecting on his financial integrity but that for another day) and had no idea who all were using his flat and for what purpose. This coming from a former Police Commissioner of the Metropolis showed how efficient and competent this man was even if he was really ignorant of the goings on his own flat. And Modi has rewarded Singh for his supposed “integrity and efficiency.”

As for the prostitution racket and the IndiaBulls connection, the company claimed with documentary evidence that it had vacated that flat quite sometime back and returned it to its owner,  that is Singh. Nothing was heard of that disgraceful racket run from the Police Commissioner’s home. And why would it, he was the chosen one. The embedded media buried that story and we never ever heard of it after the first news broke.

Singh was a first time MP and so had difficulty in securing government accommodation for a couple of months. In that situation new MPs are either made to stay in their respective state guest houses in Delhi or in government owned Ashoka Hotel. Singh being the MP from UP was naturally entitled to a room in UP Niwas. But then who would pay this first time MP any special VIP attention in UP. So he decided to park himself in the newly constructed and tastefully furnished Maharashtra Sadan at Kasturba Gandhi Marg and occupy not one but a couple of adjoining rooms there for the staff knew him as a former Police Commissioner of Mumbai.

This in turn caused considerable heartburning among other first time MPs from Maharashtra and one of them Ravindra Gaikwad of Shiv Sena took it out on a Muslim caretaker on August 4, force feeding him while the poor man was fasting during the month of Ramzan. The Sena later went public explaining the anger and annoyance of its MP over the VIP treatment being given to Singh.

Singh was spotted by the Sanghis when as Nagpur Police Commissioner, he started forming Mritunjay clubs mainly of ABVP students from college and university campuses ostensibly to aid the Police hunt for terrorists (read Muslims) and in effect spy on Muslims neighbours  and acquaintances. He formed 386 such clubs in Nagpur from 122 senior colleges and 86 junior colleges. The state’s minority commission then questioned its legitimacy and intent.

But what endeared him to Modi and helped his decision to join the BJP as a better career prospect was his role as a member of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the Gujarat High Court to probe the Ishrat Jehan fake encounter case which implicated Modi and his Gujarat government  In June 2011, within weeks of being appointed as chairman of that team comprising also of two other members Mohan Jha and Satish Verma, he quit citing his differences with the other two members who as it turned out later, came to the conclusion that it was a fake encounter.

So it is neither financial nor personal integrity which has been rewarded in the case of Singh. Grapevine has it that Sanjeev Balyan who quit paving way for Singh and other entrants in Modi’s ministry had become a bit of an embarrassment for Modi all the time harping on corruption. But then he had to keep the communal cauldron boiling among the western UP Jats which he and Amit Shah had ignited in Muzaffarnagar and adjoining western UP Jat belt  in 2013 and that’s where Singh came in handy.

Courtesy: faraz1951.wordpress.com
 

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