The deep wounds of Kandhamal

A Report to the Nation on the Second Anniversary of the Pogrom

By John Dayal

This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two regions.]

But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.

In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed, apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered, and we will never know the real figure because the government does not want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention. Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested in what is politely called gender violence.

For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in his own house.

The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the fires and the killings under control.

And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further. Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!

The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to sign.

It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.

The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa, or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and the trauma to their graves.

Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any account.”

He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about 25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch, what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”

Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.

I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists, and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on. Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa. But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and police actually assisting the cause of justice.

We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the district.
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Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794

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Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.

This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour. There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions, are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists, there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the family members by job offers.

Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence. According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.


Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second least developed on overall human development index while it is least on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.

There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.

Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make transportation of critical ill difficult.

The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30 thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way, unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no provision to help people rebuild their lives.

But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes – the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may take years before they are healed, if ever.

For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.

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With main Kandhamal Report

The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been presented to the Central and State governments by the National Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.

DEMANDS:

The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation



[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]