​Orissa: The sangh parivar’s reach for a Hindu state

"We are waiting for the next riot. We know that Kandhamal was a warning, not the end."
– Christian labour organiser, Kandhamal, January 2008

"Orissa to Kashmir, we are one."
– Dalit RSS worker, Bhubaneswar, June 2008

August 2008

Following the murder of Orissa’s Hindu nationalist icon, Lakshmanananda Saraswati, together with four disciples, in Jalespatta in Kandhamal district on August 23, 2008, Gouri Prasad Rath, general secretary, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, VHP-Orissa, rallied: "Christians have killed swamiji. We will give a befitting reply," continuing, "We would be forced to opt for violent protests if action is not taken against the killers."
 

Reportedly, the shooting was carried out by a group of armed men. Immediately, without investigation, state authorities alleged the attackers to be Maoists. Condemning the spiral of violence, the All India Christian Council stated that "The Christian community in India abhors violence, condemns all acts of terrorism and opposes groups of people taking the law into their own hands." The sangh parivar held the Christian community responsible even as there is no evidence or history to suggest the armed mobilisation of Christian groups in Kandhamal or any other region in Orissa.
 

The sangh parivar called for a 12-hour bandh on August 24. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as a member of the governing coalition, supported the sangh parivar’s call to strike and the government of Orissa ordered that educational institutions across Orissa remain closed. Praveen Togadia, international general secretary of the VHP, returned yet again to Orissa to attend Saraswati’s funeral and charged Orissa chief minister, Naveen Patnaik’s government with responsibility for Sarawasti’s death. Subash Chouhan, recently rewarded through his appointment as national convener of the Bajrang Dal, returned to Orissa as well, stating that ‘Christian militants’ were responsible for Saraswati’s death. Hindutva affiliates asked the BJP to sever its alliance with the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and contest the forthcoming elections from an immoderate Hindutva platform.
 

As in the Kandhamal riots of December 2007, yet again the sangh parivar and its allies prioritised extralegal intervention in August 2008, authorising its militias to mob violence in Kandhamal. On August 24, 2008 Hindutva workers staged demonstrations across Kandhamal – at Balliguda, G. Udaigiri and Nuagaon and elsewhere across Orissa, including Bhubaneswar, Balangir, Cuttack, Gajapati, Kalahandi, Kendrapada, Koraput, Sonepur and Talcher. Churches, homes, businesses and Christian organisations, such as Jana Vikash, were attacked in Kandhamal, including in Balliguda, Chakapad, Dangsoroda, Kalingia, Muniguda, Narayanipatara, Padampur, Sambalpur, Talsera, Tangrapada, Tummiibandh, Sarsananda, Kanjamendi Nuagaon, Padangiri, Tiangia, Tikabali and Phulbani.
 

They targeted the Christian community and churches, businesses and organisations across 200 villages, torching 4,000 homes. A Catholic nun from Nuagaon was reportedly raped. A 19-year-old Hindu woman cook was burnt alive at a church-operated orphanage in Bargarh district. More than 12,539 people sought shelter in 10 relief camps. Despite ‘shoot at sight’ orders, the deployment of 12 paramilitary units, 24 platoons of armed police and other units, including the Special Operations Group, state forces were inefficient in curbing Hindutva’s sadism. Following the death of Saraswati and his associates, officials record the death toll at 13; local leaders at 20 while the Asian Centre for Human Rights noted 50. On August 27, Christian organisations filed a writ petition in the Orissa High Court asking for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry.
 

Reportedly, a Maoist group claimed responsibility for the killing of Saraswati and his associates. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) disclaimed liability. While this might be proven the work of a Maoist group, Maoists are largely not operational in the area while Hindu communalist groups have witnessed an upsurge in recent years. Hindu activists charged Maoists with the December violence as well. Ideologically, Maoist groups do not have reason to target Christians. While deplorable gendered, violent tactics are used by some Maoist cadre, disproportionate state/majoritarian repression, such as Salwa Judum, fosters insurgent violence-producing cycles of repression. State response to instances of group militancy lacks self-reflection on the ferocity of structural injustices fostered by state institutions.

The Kandhamal riots of December 2007 and August 2008 drew upon tactics used in Gujarat 2002. Crowds carried rods, trishuls, swords, kerosene, crude bombs and guns, a first in Orissa. Predominantly middle-class caste Hindus participated in looting, destroying and torching property. The breakage was systematic, thorough. Police action was delayed, permitting the sangh parivar to continue rioting

In June 2006 the government of Orissa banned the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and seven affiliated groups, naming their activities as facilitative of terrorism, inciting Adivasis and ‘weaker sections’ into ‘violence’ and ‘disobedience’. The government identified a wide variety of peoples and groups as ‘Maoist’ and Maoism as uniform and violent, omitting to make distinctions based on politics, ideology and practices.

Hindutva’s entrenchment

Hindutva’s violence continues to target Christians, Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis in Orissa. Lakshmanananda Saraswati pioneered the Hinduisation of Kandhamal since 1969. Kandhamal first witnessed Hindutva violence in 1986. The district remains socio-economically vulnerable, a large percentage of its population living in poverty. The Christian community too is economically disenfranchised in Kandhamal. Hindutva ideologues say Dalits have acquired economic benefits, augmented by Christianisation. This is not borne out in reality. A majority of the Christian population, local Christian leaders state, is landless or marginal landholders, with an average holding of half an acre per family. Christian leaders said that the church does not convert under duress or offer money in lieu of conversions.
 

In the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a thrust in conversions, Adivasis benefited through accessing health care, education and employment offered by Christian missionaries. The politicisation of Adivasis and Dalits leads them to claim that Hinduism is distant to them, ‘outside’ to them. This is dangerous to the sangh parivar’s ideology which uses the notion of ‘Adivasis as Hindus’ to connect Hinduism across time and space and ‘Dalits as Hindus’ to maintain its numeric dominance. Politicised Adivasis and Dalits are named ‘terrorist’, ‘Maoist’, ‘militant’.
 

Hindutva rumours that Dalits are exploiting Adivasis and that land is a major contention between them. Dalits are posed as ‘dangerous’, as the claiming of the identity of ‘Dalit’ is a politicisation debilitating to the sangh parivar. Hindutva rumours that Dalits have acquired economic benefits, augmented by their Christianisation. This is not borne out in reality, as Dalits remain landless – in Kandhamal, approximately 90 per cent of Dalits are landless. Hindutva rumours that the ‘success’ of the Dalit community is causing economic rift in the area and the success of Christian Dalits is causing communalisation.
 

In reality it is the Hindu casted business community that maintains economic privilege/dominance in the area. Their economic power is however justified in the interest of maintaining and growing the (‘shining’ Hindu/Indian) nation. In Hinduising Adivasis and polarising relations between them and Dalits in the area, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams (VKAs), instated in 1987, reportedly engineered rivalries between Kondh and Kui Adivasis and Pana Dalit Christians in Kandhamal, instigating against the latter’s campaign for scheduled tribe status. Dalit Christians, under current law, forfeit their right to affirmative action.
 

After Kandhamal 2008 Hindutva’s discourse labelled Christians as ‘conversion terrorists’. Conversions to Christianity are inflated by the Hindu Right, circulating in retaliatory capacity even within progressive communities. Hindutva leaders rumour: "Phulbani-Kandhamal is a most important Christian area in Orissa with rampant and forced conversions." The Christian population in Kandhamal is 1,17,950 while Hindus number 5,27,757. Orissa Christians numbered 8,97,861 in the 2001 census, only 2.4 per cent of the state’s population. Christian conversions are storied as debilitating to the majority status of Hindus while Muslims are seen as ‘infiltrating’ from Bangladesh, dislocating the ‘Oriya (and Indian) nation’.

The Kandhamal riots raise fundamental questions about state accountability in preventing violence and administering justice in instances of majoritarian attacks. How might we hold the state accountable for acts of omission that enable or continue communal violence? How might we impose checks and balances on the state and its police and security forces, whose inertia and majoritarianist complicity in communal collisions have been consistent?

The right of individuals to undergo religious conversion is constitutionally authorised unless under duress. Historically, conversions from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam have occurred for multiple reasons, such as being a form of resistance among the elite and as a way to escape caste oppression and social stigma for Adivasis and Dalits. Societal or Hindu ‘feelings’ about conversions to Christianity or Islam does not render these conversions inappropriate, invalid or illegal. It is only in circumstances where conversions occur coercively or are undertaken with the intent of mobilising a culture of hate as, for example, undertaken by Hindutva activists, that conversions must be disallowed.
 

Conversion strategies of the sangh appear to be shifting in Orissa. The sangh assumes all Dalits and Adivasis to be ‘originally’ Hindu and forcible conversion is understood to be a ‘patriotic’ ‘return’/‘reconversion’ to Hinduism. Hindutva activists reportedly determined to ‘reconvert’ 10,000 Christians in 2007. But fewer public conversion ceremonies were held in 2007 than in 2004-2006. Converting politicised Adivasi and Dalit Christians to Hinduism is proving difficult. The sangh has instead increased its emphasis on the Hinduisation of Adivasis through their participation in Hindu rituals which in effect ‘convert’ Adivasis by assuming that they are Hindu. Such ‘conversion’ tactics are diffused and need not negotiate certain legalities which public and stated conversion ceremonies must.

Accountability?

The BJD-BJP government has repeatedly failed to adhere to the constitutional mandate of a secular state. Hindutva organisations remain entrenched in 25 of Orissa’s 30 districts, with a cadre of a few million. Led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, there are over 25 Hindutva-affiliated organisations operational in the state. The sangh parivar’s formidable presence in Orissa is aided by the BJP in coalition government with the BJD since 2000. Following the Gujarat genocide of March 2002, 300-500 VHP and Bajrang Dal activists burst into the state assembly and ransacked the complex, demanding construction of the Ayodhya temple, with no legal and political consequences.
 

In 2005-2006 Advocate Mihir Desai and I convened the Indian People’s Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa, organised by the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights and led by Justice KK Usha, retired chief justice, Kerala. The tribunal’s findings strongly warned about the formidable extent of mobilisation by the majoritarian communalist group of organisations in Orissa, including in Kandhamal district. This did not invoke any reflection or determination on part of the government of Orissa or the central government.
 

The CBI must expeditiously investigate the activities of the Bajrang Dal, VHP, RSS and VKA and apply, as appropriate, relevant provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. The status, actions and finances of communal groups and their affiliates and cadre, and the actions of their membership, must be identified and investigated. These groups must be investigated and monitored and, as appropriate, requisite action must be taken and sanctions be imposed on their activities and reparations be made retroactively to the affected communities and individuals.
 

The draconian Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA) 1967 must be repealed. There are enough provisions under the Indian Penal Code to prevent and prohibit conversions under duress. But consenting converts to Christianity are repeatedly charged under OFRA while Hindutva perpetrators of forcible conversions are not. The sangh contends that ‘reconversion’ to Hinduism through its ‘Ghar Vapasi’ (homecoming) campaign is not conversion but return to Hinduism, the ‘original’ faith. This allows Hindutva activists to dispense with the procedures for conversion under OFRA.
 

In 2003 Subash Chouhan, then Bajrang Dal state convener, had stated: "In the country, Orissa is the second Hindu Rajya. We in the VHP believe that this country belongs to the Hindus. It is not a dharamshala [guesthouse] and people cannot just come here and settle down and do whatever they want. That is not going to happen. We will not let that happen. Whatever happens here will happen with the consent of the Hindus. Whatever happens here, say politics happens, it will have to be Hindutva politics with Hindutva’s consent. India is a world power, what is in India is nowhere else, and we want to create India nicely in the image of Ram Rajya."
 

The Kandhamal riots of December 2007 and August 2008 drew upon tactics used in Gujarat, including the utilisation of Hindutvaised Adivasis – against Dalit Christians – in December. Crowds carried rods, trishuls, swords, kerosene and crude bombs. They used guns, a first in Orissa, weapons available in the market and makeshift local fabrications. Predominantly middle-class caste Hindus participated in looting, destroying and torching property. They threw bombs to start fires. The breakage was systematic, thorough. Police action was delayed, permitting the sangh parivar to continue rioting.
 

The state government of Orissa has been unconcerned with and incapable of dealing with these issues and the serious concerns they pose to democratic governance in the state, and of ensuring the security and sanctity of peoples and groups made vulnerable through majoritarian communalism. Political parties, focused on politicking the issue, are ill equipped to respond to immediate and long-term needs of people. The communal situation in the state remains at par with an emergency.
 

The Kandhamal riots raise fundamental questions about state accountability in preventing violence and administering justice in instances of majoritarian attacks. The delay in enacting the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill 2005 attests to this. The bill, advocated by citizen-motivated efforts for the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity, as introduced by the Congress government, remains deficient in defining procedures for state answerability. How might we hold the state accountable for acts of omission that enable or continue communal violence, and incorporate adequate measures for bringing justice and accountability with regard to gender and sex-based crimes in the event of communal violence? How might we impose checks and balances on the state and its police and security forces, whose inertia and majoritarianist complicity in communal collisions have been consistent?
 

Unchecked cruelty instigated by Hindu supremacists enables Hindutva’s brutalisation of minority and marginalised peoples in securing a Hindu state. Systematic disregard for the rights of minority and disenfranchised peoples by the government of Orissa and the central government have gratuitously escalated people’s experience of dispossession and disenfranchisement.

(Angana Chatterji, associate professor of anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, is author of the forthcoming book, Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present, Narratives from Orissa. A segment of this article appeared in the Tehelka news magazine.)

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Special Report 1, Orissa

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A first-person account of the anti-Christian attacks in Kandhamal: Father Thomas Chellan stresses the need for central command in Orissa

He is a man in his fifties who has been serving as director at the Dibyajyoti Pastoral Centre at Kanjamendi in the Kandhamal district of Orissa for the past seven years. He oversaw the pastoral centre with care. The gardens bore fruit and flowers. Today most of the trees have in all likelihood been uprooted, slashed or burnt.
 

Today he is in convalescence, recovering from a series of brutal attacks by a mob, attacks that were ably aided and abetted by the Orissa State Armed Police (OSAP) who stood watching, attacks moreover that lasted for a period of 72 hours from 4.30 p.m. on August 24 to 2 a.m. on August 26. To flee the mob Fr Chellan and two colleagues spent a few hours hiding in a nearby forest before they were attacked and humiliated again. He spoke to Teesta Setalvad at a hospital where he is recovering from his injuries.
 

Even as we speak, the breakdown in the administration continues. Yesterday and today hundreds of poor, tribal Christians are being forced, through threats of violence, to sign false affidavits by paid hirelings of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to say they were forced through false inducements to convert to Christianity. With all of us, priests and nuns, having to flee due to the failure of the Orissa administration to protect us, these defenceless persons are being coerced into making false statements. Normalcy will only return if these three districts are kept permanently under central command and CRP (Central Reserve Police) posts are positioned in several places. The poor of Kandhamal, Phulbani and Gajapati districts have completely lost faith in the state government. In addition, the cadres of these organisations are being fed false propaganda about Christians and missionary activity.

The sequence of events

Several men of the OSAP were camping at the UGCC school in front of the pastoral centre where I have served for the past seven years. The OSAP camp had been there for a month after an earlier incident of alleged cow slaughter at Tumbudibandha. Apprehending trouble the moment news of the gruesome killing of Swami Saraswati appeared on television, we approached the OSAP for protection. They assured us that ‘there was nothing to worry’.

But the attack did take place…

At around 4.30 p.m. on August 24, when despite this assurance a huge crowd arrived at the gate of the pastoral centre shouting slogans, my companion priest, the sister and I ran for our lives, jumping over the boundary wall at the rear of the property. We could hear sounds of the centre being vandalised, breaking glass, and then in a short while saw smoke and flames. Fearing for our lives, we spent a few hours in a nearby forest before we took shelter in the house of Prahlad Pradhan of K. Nuagaon.

And continued…

The next morning I could see a crowd of people from my room, breaking down a small church. Sensing danger, Prahlad shifted me to an outhouse and locked me in. At around 1.30 p.m. a group of 40-50 persons came, broke down the door and pulled me out of that room. Sister Meena, whom they had already got hold of, had been hauled into the midst of the mob. They started hitting me all over and forcibly removed my shirt and banyan. "Why did you kill the swamiji? How much money have you given to the killers? What meetings are you conducting at the pastoral centre?"
 

They dragged us to the Jana Vikash building on the other side of the road. They were armed with lathis, axes, spades, crowbars, iron rods, sickles, etc. They continued their assault inside the building. They tore off the sister’s blouse and began assaulting her. When I objected they hit me with an iron rod on my right shoulder, pulled me out, poured kerosene all over me and pulled out a box of matches. They were debating how and where to burn us, some suggesting we should be burnt alive in the middle of the road. I was made to kneel down on the road. The sister was brought out and some persons were searching for a rope with which to tie us up before setting us alight. Then they decided to parade us in that state for half a kilometre up to Nuagaon. We walked with folded hands as they kept up the assault, attempting to pull off the rest of our clothes.
 

As we neared Nuagaon, a dozen or so men of the OSAP stood by as the assault continued. I pleaded, "Sir, please help us." We suffered greater blows for attempting to get help. The police were silent onlookers. I was kicked in the face, where I have been stitched up now. A nearby shopkeeper was collecting discarded tyres on which to burn us.

Then suddenly some people in the crowd asked us to go to the K. Nuagaon block building and one of the officers there took us to the police outpost. There I was given some first aid and at around 9.30 p.m. the inspector in-charge and his team took us to Balliguda. Throughout our wait at the outpost one of the mobsters was inside, watching our exchanges with the police.
 

At Balliguda we were provided accommodation at the inspection bungalow. The next morning when we were taken to the Balliguda police station the inspector who was making arrangements to send us to Bhubaneswar (about 280 kilometres of difficult terrain away from Nuagaon) asked us whether we were ‘really interested’ in registering a first information report (FIR)!
 

We lodged three separate FIRs but we still have to be given copies of these. The FIRs relate to the attack on Dibyajyoti, the attack on me and the assault of Sr Meena. The police dropped us off at Nayagarh and we reached Bhubaneswar in a private vehicle at 2 a.m. on August 27.

Postscript: The attack on poor, tribal Christians and Christian institutions in Orissa is an outcome of the sangh parivar’s view of the world, using intimidation, mob frenzy and violence. The excuse this time is that the violence was ‘retaliatory’ (in law this is not justified) when all indicators are that the assassins of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati had nothing to do with the innocents killed and brutalised ‘in revenge’. Since Sunday, August 24, the day after Saraswati was killed, reportedly by Maoists (who have even claimed credit for the murder), over 40 innocent Christians have been killed, many burnt alive, about 13,000 persons live in several relief camps and 4,000 homes have been destroyed. A majority of priests and nuns in the area are locals.
 

No political leaders were allowed entry into the disturbed areas, not even the union minister of state for home, Sriprakash Jaiswal. Only the chief minister, Naveen Patnaik, visited and his administration also allowed the international general secretary of the VHP, Praveen Togadia, into the ravaged districts, who added fuel to the flames by making more inciteful speeches. In the past (2003-2004) Togadia has been jailed by the Rajasthan government and also banned from entry into a district in Karnataka when the district magistrate felt that his entry would do more harm than good. Serious questions on the role of the state, its administration and police in failing to protect life and property and being agents if not provocateurs in mob violence, remain unanswered.

Archived from Communalism Combat, September 2008. Year 15, No.134, Special Report 2, Orissa

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