John Dayal

THE CHURCH AS A SERVICE PROVIDER

2012-01-24T06:42:00.001-08:00

‘Pick our hot chestnuts from the fire, teach our children, and heal our sick, but no Evangelisation please,’ says the government. And, of course, nothing doing on Dalit Christians’ rightsJOHN DAYALThe dapper Union minister, Jairam Ramesh, is a very nice person, a gentleman. He deserves a reply. And since the princes of the Church have not been voluble for reasons they know best, let us venture a response.The Times Now TV Satellite channel headlined its report on Ramesh speaking at the Golden jubilee of Caritas India at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, New Delhi, on Friday 20th January 2012, saying pithily “Help us in Naxal areas but no religious mobilisation: Ramesh.”Despite the paraphrasing, the headline does catch the sense and the mood of what Ramesh told his audience of Cardinals and ordinary Bishops and clergy. It also makes clear that like most people in India, and specially politicians ranging from the Marxists at one end and the Sangh Parivar at the far right, Ramesh too has not been able to differentiate between the Church as a mission obeying the commandment of Jesus Christ to serve the poor, the deprived, the sick and the marginalised, and any service-provider running educational and health institutions for commercial gain, and occasionally, for political advantage.That the government thinks of the Church not only as just a mere service provider but a particularly naïve one at that, is clear from the rest of what Ramesh said. It is important, therefore, to quote the Times Now report in full: “Union Minister Jairam Ramesh made a strong pitch for roping in organisations like those run by Catholic Church to bring development in Maoist-hit areas but asked them to respect the 'Lakshman Rekha' and not engage in "religious mobilisation". "I expect Caritas to respect the sentiment of not getting involved in religious mobilisation. That is not the objective. The objective is to use the powers of the organisation like yours to help us breakdown the deficit of trust between the Government and the tribal communities. That is our objective," he said. The Minister said he does not talk about Caritas as a Catholic organisation but as a social organisation run by Catholics. Focusing on the issue of Maoist influence, Ramesh said the challenge is "how we deal with the whole issue of Maoist violence which is spreading across large parts of tribal areas. Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh. All central Indian tribal belt today is in the grip of what our Prime Minister has described as the most serious internal security challenge of our country." The Minister said that people in these areas are unable to carry out their very existence in peace, normalcy and harmony because of the growing incidents of an ideology that is dedicated to the overthrowing all democratic institutions. he said that organisations like Caritas and Ramakrishna Mission have a very important role to play in such areas, "provided social organisations respect certain 'Lakshman Rekha'". Foreseeing a possible opposition from BJP-ruled Jharkhand for involving Caritas India in Maoist-hit areas, Ramesh said "you must be prepared for this" and said "the ultimate objective of course is to create an environment in which peace returns." Three important issues arise here. What is the nature of service the Catholic – and Protestant -- Churches provide to the country, and where. Does this service and these institutions instantly become focal points of evangelisation, and thereby of proselytising. And finally, if only as a comparative study, what is the nature of service that institutions of the Hindu faith, such as Ramakrishna Mission, and the Ekal and other schools run by the Sangh Parivar, provide, and do they spread their faith in the areas they work: in affect what is the end prod duct of their very well financed and administered educational projects.Looking at the Christian [I use this better term to include all those who follow Christ. I find the terms “Catholics and Christians” a bit of an anathema and not in keeping with the unity sought in Christ] effort in education and health. It can be easily said that the Church effort, or the work of the missionaries to be precise, laid the foundations of modern medicine and modern health services in the country, including the birthing of the institution of the Indian nurse who is so ubiquitous across the globe today. This is with due respect to the traditional systems of medicine practiced by the itinerant Vaids and Hakims and Dais in rural India. Hospitals, dispensaries and medical, dental and nursing colleges now dot the landscape, especially in forest and village areas not easily accessible from metropolitan and capital cities. In the mega cities and state capitals, it needs be admitted, the Christian presence is outnumbered by commercial and glossy hospitals and colleges set up by charitable trusts, governmetns, and most of all, businessmen who charge huge capitation fees, give a long berth to meritocracy and teach anyone whose family has the money, producing doctors of great greed but little training and talent.Despite commercialization, in areas of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, even Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Orissa, the Christian hospitals and training centres often remain the only one, specially the only ones not charging sky high fees.As Fr Kuriala, head of the Education Commission of the Catholic Bishops Conference recounts, the Catholic Church has been a true pioneer in promoting modern education in the country. In fact, the first formal Christian educational enterprise anywhere outside Europe was the Santa Fe School in Goa, started in 1540. Soon more Christian Schools appeared in other parts of India: at Bassein (Vasi- 1546), at Cochin (1549), at Punnakayil (1567), in Madurai (1595). The first ever Girls’ School in India was opened by the missionaries in 1819 in Kottayam. The Church also pioneered technical education in the country, with the first trade schools coming up as early as 1842. It may also be mentioned that a Sanskrit School was opened by the Catholic Church in 1846 at Mannanam, Kerala. Though constituting only 1.6% of the population, the Catholic Church in India today runs 13,004 Schools (Lower Primary to XII), 243 Specialized schools, 450 Colleges, 2 Universities, 534 Formal Technical Institutions, 310 Non- Formal Educational Institutions. Of these nearly 60 % are in the rural areas and 40 % in the urban areas. The total number of students attending our institutions is 69, 05,566, of whom 31,76, 466 are boys and 37,29,100 girls. For the record, of the children coming to catholic schools, 53% are Hindus, 28% Christians, 8.6% Muslims and 10.1% others. The numbers of the institutions run by the Protestant Churches may be smaller, but the best of them compete well with the Catholics. For every Loyola and Xavier college, there is a St Stephens. In medical education, the Protestant college outnumber those of the Catholics.Many of these institutions, and the smaller unnamed dispensaries are deep in the forests. I have seen many of them, some in Kandhamal in Orissa where they provide the only place for a healthy birthing by a tribal woman, or assistance to a delirious patient wafting to be taken to distant Behrampur as the district hospitals in this district are an abomination.Have they become focii of conversions? They have indeed converted Indian women to give up their apprehensions on caste and creed, and come to learn the useful and glorious profession of nursing. Once when most of the nurses were Christians, and mostly from Kerala or the Maharashtra area, today nursing students come from all over the country, and most of them are Hindus. The only difference is while once the Christian nursing schools were giving a stipend to the women students, the private sector nursing colleges of today charge a hefty fees. But jobs are plenty, salaries are good and the Indian woman has shed her inhibition and defied taboos.. Bu there is no conversion to Christianity, of course. The fact that most of the alumni in Christians schools are Hindus – Christians almost never form the majority other than in religious seminaries is testimony to the fact that while the Christian schools are preferred for the value-loaded education they important, they have never been accused to inducing thier students to become Christians.Let me give contrasting examples from Ramakrishna Mission Schools in Tribal areas and the Ekal Vidyalayas. The second first. The Ekal Vidyalayas, whose scholarship, books and pedagogy has not been audited by any government agency, make no bones showing the sort of education they give. A mix of mythology and history, a harking to a Hindu golden age and heroism, the education is a hagiographic introduction to an India that cannot be articulated as history, or even as political geography because it speaks of a greater Hindu India which has never existed. It belittles Buddhism and Jainism, keeps Sikhism’s as a arm of the Hindus and cold-bloodedly converts the tribal into aggressive Hindu believer. RK Mission’s forest schools in Chhatisgarh, which I have visited, are more gentle, and do give some sort of a liberal education different from the Sangh Parivar. But thier end product is child who is no longer a tribal, but a Hindu Bengali Bhadralok! Where is the conversion, and where indeed the hiatus from the Sarna religion, the tribal Santhal or Oran culture?Why does the government and Jairam see the Church as a mere service provider? Possibly it is because Church leadership and institutional administrators have, of late, been diffident, on the back foot. In the face of persecution, they have fought shy of facing that they have been attacked because they have helped empower the poor. They are not crying out for the poor in the voice of the agitated masses.In the mouth of the Sangh Parivar, thier mute anger against empowerment of the poor becomes an argument against conversions. The two terms are seem the same.Somewhere hidden behind Jairam’s invitation of working in Naxal prone areas is also a reference to the insinuation, if not accusation by the BJP and BJD governments that Christians are working with Maoists. The Maoists have no religion, if they are rally a ideologically extremist Left. In the Mao belt, they are mostly Hindus, their leadership Brahminical. But in Andhra and Bihar and even in Karnataka, many are Muslims, even Christians and Buddhists. They swear by ideology, not by faith. But in Orissa, the government seems to be tying itself into knots trying to establish linkages between Christians and Maoists. Many innocents have been arrested and kept in jail without trial.How then does the government ask the Church to work in specified Naxal dominated areas. If it is just the states in this corridor, the Church is already present in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Orissa and Andhra, working in villages and districts, running schools. They are not too involved in social action. Some are lawyers and fighting for a just wage for labourer and teacher, other work on gender issues for the women, and against trafficking and infant mortality. There is no major work in trade unions, unlike in Kerala and Tamil Nadu's fisher folk’s movement. .In the North east, the Church has also been a victim of local terrorism and insurrection. Many priests were killed in Manipur, many abducted in Assam and elsewhere where they were released in private arrangements involving large sums of money. The Church, under the dynamic leadership of Archbishop of Guwahati Thomas Menaparampil, done a lot for the peace process. So also for the Naga peace process where the Baptist Church is almost single handed responsible for a return from arms.It is a moot question if the increased presence of missionaries will close the deficit of confidence in the government. The Church cannot afford to be seen as an agent or front of the government. It will lose all legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The government, on the other hand, cannot shirk its responsibility. It must get its officers and its doctors to go to the villages. It must provide the teachers and ensure that they are available to teach. It is not the soldier alone they can send to the forest .And it must change its response to the Christian community and the Church. The government has been ungrateful, to say the least. The time has now come when we need to ask the government and the political parties if they are willing to show in word and deed their respect for us. It is not just their dastardly betrayal of the Dalit Christian. The government response is yet to be given in the Supreme court where the Dalit Christen rights is the subject of writ for half a decade. It is also seen in the government response to the issue of justice for victims of persecution in Orissa and the rest of the country. And above all, it is seen in the defence of the so called freedom of religion Acts which are possibly the greatest assault, on individual freedom and defiance of international result ions and global norms, other than in fundamentalist and totalitarian countries.The Church, finally, needs to tell the government and tell Mr Jairam Ganesh that it does not do its social work for money. It does not do it for influence. It does certainly not do it for buying converts. It does so in absolute obedience to the teachings of Jesus Christians to serve the poorest of the poor, of which there are plenty in India.

2012-01-16T05:51:00.001-08:00

Rediff.com » News » 'There is nothing illegal in evangelisation'Last updated on: January 16, 2012 14:54 ISTVicky Nanjappa in BengaluruThe Evangelical Fellowship of India's annual report, identifying Karnataka as the most unsafe place for Christians, has set the cat among the pigeons. Amidst intense debate on the controversial report titled Battered and Bruised... came reports about incrimination of pastors Jim Borst and C M Khanna by a Islamic Shariat court in Srinagar for their alleged involvement in luring Kashmiri Muslims to convert to Christianity.The All India Christian Council has cried foul and states that such orders are only provocative and affects the safety of Christians.In an interview with rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa, Dr John Dayal, member of the national monitoring committee for minority education, government of India, and secretary general of the All India Christian Council, says that the Constitution gives the community the right to practice, profess and propagate its faith. So there is nothing illegal in evangelisation, he says.Vicky Nanjappa: How do you view the living conditions of Christians in India today?John Dayal: We have demanded that the government set up a commission on the pattern of the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee that went into the condition of Indian Muslims. There is a myth that Christians are better off and highly educated. This may be true in the case Delhi or Mumbai only. Over 60 per cent of all Christians are of Dalit origin. Many are poor tribals. Very few are highly educated (graduate or post graduate). Most are under employed. This is from our analysis of the data from the National Sample Survey. It is true that in national statistics, Christians are just above the national average in education, but in the rural areas, the story is different. Please remember that even apart from the Dalits, there are Christians who are small farmers, landless peasantry, and even manual labour. There is some evidence that in some states like Gujarat and Punjab even manual scavengers include those professing the Christian faith. Let there be a formal study so that the church and the government can both devise appropriate policies.Vicky Nanjappa: Attacks against Christians and churches were reported in Orissa and Karnataka. What are your views on this?John Dayal: In 2007-08, there were attacks in 14 different states, including New Delhi. Orissa and Karnataka led the list, with Kandhamal in Orissa being the worst. Over 5,600 houses were burnt, 400 villages were purged of all Christians, at least a hundred were killed, about 300 churches were destroyed, over 56,000 were forced to flee to the forests for safety and over 30,000 stayed up to a year in government refugee camps and shanty towns. Rehabilitation and relief has been tardy, and justice a far thing. The National Peoples' Tribunal held in 2010 has just published its full report on the situation.The political party in power does not matter. Orissa was jointly ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Biju Janata Dal. Karnataka is a BJP-ruled state as is Chhattisgarh. They top the list of guilty states in the matter of Christian persecution. It also happens in Congress-ruled states. Perhaps the few Marxist states in the past did not have violence of this nature. In fact, the Congress has also been guilty of passing the so called freedom of religion laws, which are directed against the Christian faith. But the aggressors are the same. They belong to the many branches of the Hindutva Parivar. Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Ram Sene, Vanvasi Kalian Ashram and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -- all are guilty.Vicky Nanjappa: Why do you think the attacks against Christians have increased in the recent past?John Dayal: The attacks on Christians started increasing after 1995-96, which also marks the time that the RSS-BJP launched its movement to get to power in New Delhi and major states. The Sangh policy of India for Hindus finds all other religions as aliens. It has a Hitlerian solution for aliens, as it defines us.Vicky Nanjappa: Conversions are often the reason cited for attacks against Christians. This has often been denied by the Christians. John Dayal: Let us make it clear that there cannot be forced conversion in India where every policeman and judge, as also the vigilante groups, are all staunch Hindus. They will stop it even if it were to take place. And regarding fraudulent or money induced conversion, it just cannot take place. With neighbours watching over each other, it remains impossible. For the record, I must say it is the Constitutional right of every Indian to choose the faith he want to profess. The Constitution also guarantees him the right to change his faith. The Constitution also gives us the right to practice, profess and propagate our faith. So there is nothing illegal in evangelisation.Vicky Nanjappa: Would you say that conversions are not a reality?John Dayal: Conversions are a reality. Tibet became Buddhist as did Sri Lanka and Japan by conversion. Manipur became Hindu. All of us became Christians by conversion -- two thousand years ago. New Christians happen every year all over the globe, and they do so in every state in India of their own free will, without coercion and without being tempted. Conversion is an act of God. Baptism is just a physical manifestation of the spiritual experience, and it is also a rite of admission to a Christian society. It is perfectly legal and constitutional. But there is no largescale Christian baptism. That is why we remain so much less than 3 per cent, perhaps around 2.3 per cent or so, which we will see when the detailed religious data is available from the 2011 census. In the Kashmir Valley, there are just about 400 Christians -- a little more than one hundred families and most of them are not of Kashmiri ethnic origin.Vicky Nanjappa: What is the issue between Muslims and Christians in Srinagar?John Dayal: There is no issue. There are so few Christians. But the hardliners among the Muslim clergy, for their own political ends, are making an issue of it. The clerics have no right to impose the Shariat laws on us. I don't understand why the government allows these Shariat courts to run in Kashmir. Are they part of the legal process? The government should clarify.Vicky Nanjappa: You say that the indictment of the two pastors would encourage violence in Jammu and Kashmir. Why has this tussle broken out in the Valley?John Dayal: It is a part of the power struggle between local extreme political groups. We are just victims. The so called indictment gives the signal to terror groups to become violet against Christians too.Vicky Nanjappa: Are Christians threatened more by Muslims or Hindus?John Dayal: All over the country, Christians work closely with Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus on issues of development, communal harmony, peace and human rights. We are not threatened by people of any religion. We are threatened by extremists of every religion. There is gross intolerance among sections of Hindus and Muslims. Vicky Nanjappa: The church says that conversions by force or fraud are not permitted. Is this followed everywhere in India and the rest of the world?John Dayal: We have repeatedly said there is no conversion by force or fraud. That is the law of the church. Theologically such conversions, if ever they take place, are illegal and abhorrent in the sight of God.

Sharia cannot indict Christian pastors

2012-01-12T22:56:00.001-08:00

All India Christian Council concern at Srinagar Sharia Court statement against Christian pastorsNew Delhi, 13 January 2012The All India Christian Council is deeply disturbed at the Srinagar based Sharia Court issuing a statement against Christian pastors Jim Borst and C M Khanna Srinagar, Jan 11: Supreme Court of Islamic Sharia Wednesday indicted Christian Pastor C M Khanna and Dutch national, Jim Borst for their involvement in luring people to convert their religion. The Sharia court has threatened it will issue a sentence shortly. Such statements can encourage extremist elements to indulge in violence, the Council fears.Christian Council secretary general Dr John Dayal said the church in India displayed remarkable sobriety and a sense of responsibility in their response to the arrest in Srinagar of Reverend Chander Mani Khanna, pastor of the All Saints Church late last year on charges of conversion on the demand of a local Mufti. It was hoped that religious and secular authorities, and the state government, would show maturity and responsibility keeping in view the delicately poised public peace situation and the hardship the common people have faced at the hands of terrorists of various hues and other agencies.The Church does not accept as genuine any conversion brought about by fraud or force. Dr John Dayal pointed out that a fact finding team which went to Srinagar in the wake of the arrest of Rev Khanna, and interviewed Church personnel, Ulema, school, authorities and the police, found no evidence of force or fraud in baptisms that have been carried out over a period of time. Each baptism has been proved to be voluntary. The Christian community in the entire valley does not number more than 400, and has lived in peace with its neighbours for the last century and a halfThe Council said the Christian community does not accept the jurisdiction on the Sharia courts or similar instruments of other religions anywhere in India. The vital issues of the rights of minorities, and freedom faith are also involved.Dr John Dayal said it devolves on the Jammu and Kashmir Governmnt, religious leaders and people of goodwill in the Kashmir valley to ensure that the nights of minorities are respected, thier welfare assured, and communal harmony strengthened in the region which so desperately requires and environment of peace for its development and wellbeing.

Why is church supporting the UID card?

2011-12-26T09:50:00.001-08:00

JOHN DAYALI live in what is called a Cooperative Housing Society flat in East Delhi, among the fortunate few among the middle classes who could get to own a flat in Delhi thanks to the cooperative movement and a cooperative Delhi government in the late Seventies. Unlike DDA flats, life in such a society, even if one lives on the sixth floor, has a sense of community about it. Residents of all 57 flats in our case, former journalists and media employees from all parts of India, get quite animated about social issues, national crises and above all, on municipal issues much as members of any Residents Welfare Association would do. This week, our RWA and its members had their moment of excitement when a private sector group came to make the government Aadhar cards, or Unique Identification cards.Although I have been writing and campaigning against this UIDAI [Unique Identification Authority of India] scheme for a long time – for reasons which I will explain in a short while – my wife, like me a senior citizen, thought it would be good for us if we too got ourselves a card, in addition to the driving license, the ration card, the Income tax number, the several passports, and multiple Identity papers that we carry. As a loyal wife, she eventually did not go to get herself photographed, her iris measured, her thumb prints taken and her bio data punched in by a man who cannot spell Mary [not my wife’s name]. But she does harbour a feeling that we are going to miss this card at some future date. Patently, I am a bad campaigner where my family is concerned.I was, however, really surprised when a neighbour, a senior journalist, a former member of the Communist Party and a scholar of some reckoning met me in the lift. He was going to get his UID card made. I knew him to be a campaigner against such government floppies. “I am opposed to the UID”, he told me. ”I am getting this card made just in case the government denies us some privileges if we do not have such a card.” An ID card, meant to be a beneficial thing, had quite clearly evolved a tinge of the coercive.My neighbour is an individual and took his own decision, without the prompting of the Communist party or anyone else. But why is the church canvassing for the UIDAI? In my travels across the length and breadth of this country, I have fund Bishops and Parish priests, Pastors and their administrators pumping for the card, without really understanding or being able to explain why they think the cards are important. The only conclusion one reaches is that the Christian leadership has an innate trust in the government of the day, and honestly believes that the government cannot do any wrong. It sides with a few popular movements – such as the middle class angst of Hazare and his team, but of course not the peasantry anger which results in Maoists or the Dalit Panthers of yore. Actually, the UID card is a costly joke, possibly even dangerous in the long run. The United Kingdom has it for a brief period, and expeditiously gave it up when the populace objected to breach of privacy and security of data issues. Inaugurating Aadhar on 29, September 2009 in Tembhli Village in Maharashtra, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the project the ‘face of modern India’. To Nandan Nilekani, the billionaire co-founder of IT giant Infosys and Chairman of UIDAI with the rank of a Union minister, the project is the foundation for future development of the nation.Almost immediately, critics called it ominous. “The fact that, a project of this magnitude was implemented without even the basic formalities needed and an enabling law is a matter of utmost concern. How can a government approve a sum over Rs. 3000 crores for a dubious project, without a benefit analysis study and the approval of the parliament? The only possible reason behind the undue haste in implementing the project is the business interests involved,” a critic said. “The social, economic, political and ethical impacts of the project are of frightening scale. And well mark the beginning of the end of democracy in India.”Time therefore to bring the Church face to face with the UID reality, because the issues are important, valid and will impact on the church and the community in the long run. Experts, and the Standing Committee of Parliament on Finance, which examined this scheme have said so. Citing “contradictions and ambiguities within the government” over the implementation of the UID, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance rejected the National Identification Authority Bill and asked the government to bring a fresh legislation. The panel also suggested to the government to “reconsider and review the UID scheme”. The committee headed by senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said the scheme “is riddled with serious lacunae.” It said the scheme had been “conceptualised with no clarity of purpose” and was “being implemented in a directionless way with a lot of confusion”. The committee pointed out that initially meant for BPL families, the scheme had been extended to all residents of India and certain other persons.The Empowered Group of Ministers set up for collating the UID and National Population Register (NPR) had “failed to take concrete decision on important issues”. These include “(a) identifying the focussed purpose of the resident identity database; (b) methodology of data collection; (c) removing the overlapping between the UID scheme and NPR; (d) conferring of statutory authority to the UIDAI since its inception; (e) structure and functioning of the UIDAI; (f) entrusting data collection and issue of unique identity number and national identification number to a single authority instead of the present UIDAI and its reconciliation with National Registration Authority”, the committee said.It noted the possibility of misuse of information in the huge data base. “It would be difficult to deal with the issues of access and misuse of personal information, surveillance, profiling, linking and matching of data bases and security confidentiality of information” in the absence of a data protection legislation.Sure enough, the scheme soon got its first data misuse. The Press trust of India reported on 3 October 2011 a complaint regarding misuse of address proof, admitted by the authorities in reply to an RTI query. However, it did not give details of the complaint, received this year, and the complainant. Writing in the Hindu on December 16, 2011 analyst R Ramkumar said the government should pay heed to the parliamentary standing committee's views and suspend the Aadhar project. It would be a travesty to push the project in through the backdoor. He explained that the parliamentary committee does not just reject the Bill; it also raises serious questions about the idea of Aadhar itself. In fact, the report so comprehensively questions the idea that any effort to introduce fresh legislation would require, as a prerequisite, a re-look at the foundational principles on which the project was conceived.Ramkumar listed five important arguments in the parliamentary report. First, it contains scathing criticism of the government for beginning Aadhar enrolment without Parliament's approval. Secondly, it questioned about the enrolment process followed for Aadhar numbers which, it said was “riddled with serious lacunae, with no clarity of purpose.” The report concludes that the enrolment process “compromises the security and confidentiality of information of Aadhar number holders,” and has “far reaching consequences for national security.” The reason: “the possibility of possession of Aadhar numbers by illegal residents through false affidavits/introducer system. “Thirdly, the government had not enacted a “national data protection law,” which is a “pre-requisite for any law that deals with large-scale collection of information from individuals and its linkages across separate databases. Fourthly, the report strongly disapproves of “the hasty manner” in which the project was cleared. isting ID documents are also not available.” And last, the report tears apart the faith placed on biometrics to prove the unique identity of individuals. The report concludes that, given the limitations of biometrics, “it is unlikely that the proposed objectives of the UID scheme could be achieved.”Law researcher and civil society activist Dr. Usha Ramanathan, the nation’s top expert on the subject, says the UID project is an experiment – not a solution.She said while recognizing that biometrics is "sensitive information", the agency has washed its hands of responsibility for the safety, security and confidentiality of the data during enrolment and passed the buck to the registrars. In Mumbai women were unable to enroll because of blisters and calluses and the effect of abrasive detergents on their hands. In Bangalore and Delhi that senior citizens were unable to get enrolled because their fingerprints did not work. The credibility roadblocks that these reports were setting up were sought to be removed by the UIDAI by threatening enrollers with "action" if they turned any person away. Questions have arisen about persons with disabilities, some of whom may not have fingerprints or irises that meet the biometric standards required by the UIDAI for enrolment. In Pune, a man received his UID with his wife's photograph appended to it. The US magazine The New Yorker describes how this embarrassment is sought to be averted: a computer operator sits in an office running through enrolment forms to make a cursory judgment whether the image matches the demographic information. "That day," the journalist reports, "he had already inspected more than 5,000 photographs, and he had clicked "incorrect" 300 times: men listed as women, children as adults, photographs with two heads in them." It seems there are infinite variations to the theme of error.In May, "unidentified persons" walked away with two laptops and a pen drive which held data pertaining to 140 persons from an enrolment centre in a school in Hadaspur, Maharashtra. The back-up information was also on the same laptop. The data included "sensitive details" relating to passports, voter ID cards, bank accounts, photographs and a range of other information. In July, five persons were arrested in Bangalore for issuing fake UID. The UIDAI heard about the racket when they were approached with complaints that "Global ID Solutions" was selling franchises to customers to take up Aadhar enrolment for a non-refundable fee of Rs. 2.5 lakh an enrolment kit. This episode exposed the perils of indiscriminate outsourcing. In October, a software error resulted in hundreds of residents of Colaba in south Mumbai having their addresses recorded as Kolaba, Raigarh district. The enrollers claimed that this was a software glitch and that enrolees would just have to return another day to re-enrol. Only, the guidelines of the UIDAI do not have a provision for re-enrolling any resident.Dr. Ramanathan says “This is no innocent data collection in a vacuum. Set amidst NATGRID and UID, it conjures Orwellian images of Big Brother. The relationship between the state and the people is set to change dramatically, and irretrievably, and it appears to be happening without even a discussion about what it means. The National Population Register has been launched countrywide, after an initial foray in the coastal belt. All persons in India aged over 15 years are to be loaded on to a database. This will hold not just their names and the names of their parents, sex, date of birth, place of birth, present and permanent address, marital status – and “if ever married, name of spouse” – but also their biometric identification, which would include a photograph and all eight fingers and two thumbs imprinted on it. This is being spoken of with awe, as the ‘biggest-ever' census exercise in history. 1.2 billion people are to be brought on to this database before the exercise is done. This could well be a marvel without parallel. But what will this exercise really do?Dr. Ramanathan cautions it is wise not to forget that this is not data collection in a vacuum. It is set amidst NATGRID (National Intelligence Grid), the UID and a still-hazy-but-waiting-in-the-wings DNA Bank. Each of these has been given spurs by the Union Home Ministry, with security as the logic for surveillance and tracking by the state and its agencies. The benign promise of targeted welfare services is held out to legitimise this exercise.She says if the Home Ministry were to have its way, NATGRID will enable 11 security and intelligence agencies, including RAW, the IB, the Enforcement Directorate, the National Investigation Agency, the CBI, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and the Narcotics Control Bureau and other secret services, to access consolidated data from 21 categories of databases. These would include railway and air travel, income tax, phone calls, bank account details, credit card transactions, visa and immigration records, property records, and the driving licences of citizens. It is the admitted position that the information gathered in the house-to-house survey, and the biometrics collected during the exercise, will feed into the UID database. The UID document says the information that data base will hold will only serve to identify if the person is who the person says he, or she, is. It will not hold any personal details about anybody. What the document does not say is that it will provide the bridge between the ‘silos' of data that are already in existence, and which the NPR will also bring into being. So with the UID as the key the profile of any person resident in India can be built up.Why is a problem? Dr. Ramanathan answers “Because privacy will be breached. Because it gives room for abuse of the power that the holder of this information acquires. Because the information never goes away, even when life moves on. So if a person is dyslexic some time in life, is a troubled adolescent, has taken psychiatric help at some stage in life, was married but is now divorced and wants to leave that behind in the past, was insolvent till luck and hard work produced different results, donated to a cause that is to be kept private — all of this is an open book, forever, to the agency that has access to the data base. And, there are some like me who would consider it demeaning to have this relationship with the state. For the poor, who often live on the margins of life and legality, it could provide the badge of potential criminality in a polity where ostensible poverty has been considered a sign of dangerousness. (This is not hyperbole; read the beggary laws, and the attitude of some courts reflected in the comment that `giving land for resettlement to an encroacher is like rewarding a pickpocket.')”“Also, the Citizenship Rules cast every ‘individual' and every ‘head of family' in the role of an ‘informant' who may be subjected to penalties if he does not ensure that every person gets on to the NPR, and keeps information about themselves and their ‘dependents' updated. There isn't even an attempt at speaking in the language of democracy!” Dr. Ramanathan points out.Concerned with these issues, eminent persons led by former Kerala Law minister and retired Supreme Court justice VR Krishna Iyer demanded in a joint statement, that the UID project be halted, a feasibility study be done covering all aspects of this issue, experts be tasked with studying its constitutionality, the law on privacy be urgently worked on, a cost- benefit analysis be done and a public, informed debate be conducted before any such major change be brought in.We should await such an exercise before so enthusiastically encouraging innocent parishioners to get their fingerprints and eyes scanned.

A KANDHAMAL UPDATE ON CHRISTMAS EVE

2011-12-21T23:56:00.001-08:00

GOVERNMENT DOES NOT CARE JUST HOW MANY WILL SLEEP UNDER THE STARS ON CHRISTMAS IN KANDHAMAL, BUT HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?BY JOHN DAYAL22 December 2011This is the fourth Christmas that many people of Kandhamal in Orissa will “celebrate” in terror, a few thousand of them without a real roof over their head, scores of widows and orphans remembering the denial of justice which has seen the killers of the head of the family walk away merrily after being set free by the sop called Fast Track CourtsJustice still remains an overwhelming issue for about everyone of the 56,000 people who had to run for their lives first on 24th December 2007 and then again from 24th August 2008. They need not have had to flee if they had obeyed their attackers, changed their faith to Hinduism and burnt a Bible as a token of their leaving Christianity. They did not. Four hundred villages were purged of all Christians, more than 5600 houses and about 295 or so churches burnt, a hundred or more killed -- the exact number will never be known -- some women, including at least one nun raped.The tension remains, exacerbated this season with the murder of a law assistant who was uninvolved in protecting witnesses. In another tribal district, Keonjhar, twelve houses were burnt in a scenario eerily, and frighteningly, similar to the one in 2007 and 2008. Adding to the apprehension is the call by a local group for an agitation, a Bandh, during Christmas week.A few days ago, in Bujlimendi village, Arabbakka gram panchayat, Tikkabali block of G Udayagiri Tehsil, the house of Kaleswar Digal, 45, was sleeping with his family which includes three children, when his house was set on fire just after midnight. The family escaped, but the house, including their animals, were destroyed. There are 25 Christian families in this village of 100 houses, now living in palpable fear.The murder was of Rabindra Parichha, a legal activist who had been working with the Evangelical Fellowship of India for justice in Kandhamal. He was killed on 15th December evening at Bhanjanagar, Ganjam District, which adjoins Kandhamal. A former village chief and a local leader, Rabindra was a popular figure in the region. His family lives in their home in Bhaliapara, in Raikia block of Kandhamal. The police have not been able to say why he was killed. His body bore multiple injuries. Cause of his murder is not known.Rabindra Parichha is the third Christian leader to be killed during this year. Pastor Saul Pradhan of Banjamaha (Raikia) was the first Christian killed during 2011. The police version is that he died of too much liquor and the cold. Pastor Minoketan Nayak of Midiakia (Baliguda) was killed on 26 July. Police say that he died in a bike accident.The police have not acted on reports that Manoj Pradhan, member of the state legislative assembly and prime accused in several cases of murder has been moving from village to village instigating anti-social elements and allegedly urging them to “finish off” all Christian leaders of Kandhamal.The police are also deaf to reports of hate speech. On 23 July, a large rally at Phulbani saw a lot of hate speech, and slogans such as "Hindu-Hindu: bhai-bhai _ Anya sab desh-drohi" [Hindus are brothers. Everyone else is a traitor]. The police was present, but took no action.The "Kui Samaj", a front organisation of the right wing hyper nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party which was once in an alliance in the State government, has called for Kandhamal bandh for five days from 23 to 27 December, throwing the Christians into a state of panic. They have memories of the 2007 violence which also took place in the backdrop of another such strike, or bandh. Bipra Charan Nayak, convener of the Survivors’ Associations of Communal Violence, has demanded that the district and state authorities take note of the latest strike call and act swiftly and sternly. The memorandum, to the government said “We remind you that every year, Kui Samanyaya Samittee in nexus with extreme element of Sangh Parivar gives Bandh Call creating mental trauma among the peace loving Christians of Kandhamal. We demand that such practice be stopped.”The All India Christian Council, one of the several groups working in rehab and justice issues said “Although we are for the freedom of expression and do not wish to curb demonstrations and political activity by any group, even by those who are against Christianity and the Christian people, it is the duty of the government to ensure that there is no excuse for confrontation or violence. In Kandhamal, we have had bitter experience. Out community has been deeply wounded, specially in the aftermath of bundh calls during and around Christmas. We are therefore apprehensive of such bandh calls. The Orissa government and the Kandhamal administration must restrain all mischievous and fundamentalist elements and ensure the Christmas is peaceful.”Not that the region outside Kandhamal is peaceful. On 8th December 2011, a Hindu group attacked 3 tribal Christian families at Chandikhole, a suburb in Jajpur district close to Keonjhar district. When the people went to the police station, they were detained on charges of “conversion” of Hindus.The saddest commentary on the governance in Orissa is in the narrative of the dispensation of justice, specially in the fast track courts where not a single person has so far been convicted of murder – mostly because the witnesses have been coerced into silence and the police has made sure there is precious little forensic evidence from their shoddy investigationsThe following is the current Status of communal violence cases of 2008-2009 of Kandhamal district. Do remember that more than 3,500 persons filed complaints to the authorities.:1. CASES REGISTERED BY THE POLICE : 8272. NO. OF CHARGE SHEETS : 5123. NO. OF FINAL REPORTS SUBMITTED : 3154. NO. OF CASES ENDED IN CONVICTION : 685. NO. OF PERSONS CONVICTED : 4126. NO. OF CASES ENDED IN ACQUITTAL : 1409. NO. OF PERSONS ACQUITTED : 190010. NO. OF CASES PENDING TRIAL : 30411. NO. OF ACCUSED PERSONS ARRESTED : 1607 [Acknowledgments: Fr Ajay Singh, Fr Dibya Parichha, Br Marcose, Pastor Harish Arshaliya, Rev Vijayesh Lal]

Government must bring Bill against Communal and Targetted viiolence

2011-12-17T07:17:00.001-08:00

National advocacy and prayer campaign for Communal Violence Prevention Bill JOHN DAYALMr Hazare and many of the middle class who have joined him in his national camoaign against corruption do not seem to take the threat of communalism as seriously. No national campaign has yet been launched against the sort of hate violence that leaves hundreds dead every year in various parts of the country, and periodically peaks in the massacre especially of the religious minorities, particularly Muslims, and occasionally Christians and Sikhs.It has therefore fallen, so to speak, on the church in all its denominational diversity to launch a united campaign of advocacy and prayer to urge that Government of India urgently bring before Parliament and pass the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill 2011 after suitable amendments that take care of continuing concerns of minorities, and some concerns of state governments.The Bill, commonly called the CV Prevention Bill, was drafted earlier this year by the National Advisory Council and is now with the Union government. The All India Christian Council , an apex Human Rights and Freedom of Faith forum, and several other groups recently inaugurated the prayer campaign with large meetings of priests, pastors and laity in Bangalore, Mysore, Pune and Panchkula in Haryana. Meetings are planned nationwide. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the National Council of Churches, Diocesan Bishops and heads of various church groups and NGOs are also being requested to take the prayer and advocacy campaign to the grassroots in every state. The Bill, with some proposed amendments, has been strongly supported by religious minorities as well as by most members of civil society as an effective means to curb communal violence which has plagued this country after Independence in 1947, and bring justice to the victims. In the last ten years there have been more than 6,000 incidents of communal violence, according to information provided by the government to Parliament.Among the most heinous mass crimes against religious communities in India have been the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 in New Delhi and other cities, the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat of 2002 and the anti-Christian massacre and mass arson in Kandhamal in Orissa in which 56,000 persons were forced to flee to forests when over 5,600 houses in 400 villages were burnt down by Hindutva mobs. Over 100 persons were killed, Nuns and other women were raped and over 290 churches destroyed. In all cases, the police and officials stood by without acting. Many police and civil officers were guilty of involvement in all these acts of mass violence, and others were guilty of inaction and impunity. In the first week of December 2011 again in Orissa, 12 families of Christians were attacked in a will planned manner in Keonjhar district. In Kashmir, Pundits in a major way and local Christians have also been subject of targeted violence and threats by fundamentalist elements.. All these have been in reported in Indian Currents.Justice, rehabilitation and resettlement in all cases has been tardy. The worst is the issue of justice. Most victims, including of murder, have been denied justice. In Kandhamal, for instance, not a single person has been convicted for murder.The proposed Bill seeks to secure justice for victims and end the climate of impunity by bringing the guilty officials to book. The proposed law maintains that minorities are denied justice because of the communal behaviour of a section of religious and political extremists and the apathy or involvement of the administration.The Bill will also curb hate speech and similar actions. In recent months, VHP leader Dr Praveen Togadia has called for the beheading of missionaries in issues of conversion. Janata party leader Subramaniam Swamy has launched a slander campaign against the Christian and Muslim communities.The Christian groups have denounced conspiracies to scuttle the Bill. The last meeting of the National Integration Council was an example of how the government failed to intervene effectively in support of the bill which, expectedly, came under severe attack from Chief Ministers of BJP Ruled stares as also some allies of the Congress who had issues with the powers of the states on matters of law and order. The government seems reluctant to take immediate steps and discuss the Bill with political parties to end the attempt of Hindutva groups to raise false alarms against the proposed law.Christian leaders in Mumbai had earlier filed a formal complaint demanding legal action against Dr Subramaniam Swamy for spreading hate and violating the Constitution when he wrote an article in a Mumbai newspaper advocating that Muslims should not be given voting rights. Complaints were also filed in New Delhi.Communalism is as evil as corruption. The minority communities have repeatedly called for strong laws to curb hate campaigns and similar activity which leads to the targeting of minorities and marginalised communities, including Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribals. It remains to be seen if gthe government will wake up to its duty in this matter.Box itemAll that you wanted to know about the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 is intended to enhance State accountability and correct discriminatory exercise of State powers in the context of identity-based violence, and to thus restore equal access to the law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and religious and linguistic minorities. It is the Constitutional right of every citizen, no matter how numerically weak or disadvantaged, to expect equal protection from an impartial and just State. Evidence from state records and several of Commissions of Enquiry has confirmed institutional bias and prejudicial functioning of the State administration, law enforcement and criminal justice machinery when a non- dominant group in the unit of a State, based either on language or religion, or a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, is attacked because of their identity. This prevents such non-dominant groups from getting full and fair protection of the laws of the land or equal access to justice. The Bill does not give additional powers to the State. This administration already has adequate powers to prevent and control communal violence when it chooses to do so. Communal and targeted violence spreads mainly because the public officials charged with protecting and preventing, either fail to act or act in a biased manner. Existing laws of the land and the machinery of the State are found to work relatively impartially when targeted identity-based offences are committed against dominant groups in a State, but not similarly for non-dominant groups. This Bill will provide correction of institutional bias against groups particularly vulnerable in any State. All citizens, no matter how small their numbers or where they choose to be domiciled, get an equal playing field, in enjoying their full measure of rights as citizens. This is a special provision Bill, for the non-dominant groups, being the linguistic and religious minorities in the unit of the State, and the Dalits and Tribals across the country. KEY PROVISIONS OF THE BILL 1. Defining communal & targeted violence: The provisions of this Bill will apply only when it is first established that the offence was ‘targeted’ in nature i.e. it was knowingly committed against members of a non-dominant group because of their membership of that group, and not for any other reason. Offences under the Indian Penal Code shall be considered offences under this Bill when they meet the definition of ‘targeted’ above. The Bill also specifically defines ‘organized’communal and targeted violence as mass violence that consists of multiple or mass commission of crimes that is widespread or systematic in nature. 2. Dereliction of duty by Public Servants: This Bill recognizes offences of both omission and commission. Often the greatest cause for communal and targeted violence against non-dominant groups occurring, spreading and persisting, is that public officials do not act. Public servants who act or omit to exercise authority vested in them under law and thereby fail to protect or prevent offences, breach of public order, or cause an offence, screen any offender, or fail to act as per law, or act with malafide and prejudice shall be guilty of dereliction of duty with penal consequences. This is the heart of the legislation, for such accountability shall serve as a deterrent to biased action. 3. Breach of Command Responsibility: This Bill seeks to ensure that the power of holding command over the actions of others is indeed upheld as a sacred duty, and that there is culpability for those who are ‘effectively in-charge’. Given the hierarchical nature of administrative systems, the reality is that too often it is those higher up in a chain of administrative or political command that are responsible for failure to perform their duties. Yet, it is only the junior officer on the ground whose dereliction is visible. The tendency for accountability to be fixed only at the most powerless levels of the official hierarchy is being prevented through the offence of breach of command responsibility. The chain of command responsibility may extend to any level where effective decisions to act or not act are taken. 4. Sanction for prosecution of public servants: This Bill proposes that if there is no response to a request for sanction for prosecution within 30 days from the date of the application to the concerned government, sanction to prosecute will be deemed granted. In relation to certain offences under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, when committed by a public servant, the requirement of obtaining sanction is being dispensed with. This is because these are offences against public justice. Judges shall be the most competent persons to assess the situation and proceed without sanction when satisfied that public justice has been obstructed. 5. Monitoring and Accountability -: This Bill seeks to put in place mechanisms such as a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation and State Authorities that can make the administrative and criminal justice system work as it should, free from favour or bias or malafide intent. Monitoring and grievance redressal shall be the responsibility of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (NACHJR) and corresponding State Authorities for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparations (SACHJR). Their mandate is to ensure that public functionaries act to prevent and control communal & targeted violence and also that public servants ensure victims have access to justice and reparation when violence occurs. The functions of the NACHJR/SACHJR are to watch, advise, remind, recommend and warn of consequences if public servants fail to act as per law. The NACHJR or the SACHJRs do not, in any instance, take over any existing powers of any public official or institution, nor supersede the existing law enforcement machinery. They merely monitor to ensure that the system works impartially. The NACHJR/SACHJRs will thus monitor, inquire into complaints, receive or suo moto seek information, and issue advisories and recommendations only when there is alleged inaction or malafide action by public officials and governments. The monitoring mechanism of the National and State Authorities will also provide the ‘paper trail’ to ensure robust accountability of public officials in a court of law. The NACHJR and the SACHJR shall monitor the implementation of the law and prevention of communal and targeted violence. Almost all modern legislations enacted in the last 5 years like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and the Right to Education Act, 2009 have built-in provisions for monitoring and grievance redressal. 6. Bi-partisan selection of members of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation (NACHJR): The Bill proposes a bi-partisan Selection Committee for members (including Chairperson) of the NACHJR consisting of the Prime Minister (Chairperson), Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, Leader of Opposition in the Upper House, Minister for Home Affairs, and the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission. 7. Composition of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation: The Bill proposes a total of 7 members of the NACHJR, of which 4 shall belong to the non-dominant ‘group’ i.e. 4 members must belong either to a linguistic minority in any State in the Union of India, or to a religious minority in any State in the Union of India, or to SCs or STs. Further, no more than 2 members of the NACHJR may be retired public servants. 8. Offences of communal and targeted violence: The Indian Penal Code (IPC) contains most offences committed during episodes of communal and targeted violence. These have been appended in a Schedule to this Bill, and shall be considered offences under this Bill when they meet the threshold of being ‘knowingly directed against any person by virtue of membership of a group’. These offences shall attract the same penalties as laid down in the IPC. Government is currently considering two other forms of violence for inclusion as offences in our statute books, either in the form of amendment bills or new bills. These include brutal forms of Sexual Assault (beyond the limited IPC definition of Rape in S. 375) and Torture. Both these offences have therefore been included in this Bill. Additionally, this Bill defines an offence of Hate Propaganda, because if hate propaganda can be effectively stopped it will enhance the chances of preventing violence. 9. Victims Rights : This Bill seeks to strengthen the rights of the victim in the criminal justice system, through certain provisions in their struggle for justice – from the simple right to information at all stages, the right to get copies of all their statements, to the right to be heard in a court of law, right to protection, right to appeal, and the right to file a complaint with the NACHJR/SACHJR if and when they are aggrieved by failure of the system to protect and secure for them justice and reparations. These provisions are based on the documented experience of the denial of basic rights to victims of non-dominant groups in a State. Indian criminal law is based on the assumption that the State is always on the side of the victim, against the accused, and therefore primarily the rights of the accused need to be protected. The State investigates, prosecutes, and also adduces evidence and appeals. The victim has limited rights in this process. The reality of targeted violence against non- dominant groups is that a biased State may in these cases, be on the side of accused and actively hostile to the victim. This Bill seeks to correct this bias. 10. Relief and Reparation including Compensation for all affected persons whether or not they belong to a non-dominant ‘group: This Bill recognizes that there are no statutory norms and rights for any Indian citizen under present law, for relief, reparation, and compensation. Thus, all affected persons, whether or not they belong to non-dominant groups in a State have been given justiciable rights to immediate relief, and comprehensive reparations, including compensation if they suffer any harm. The Bill casts legal duties on the State to provide rescue, relief, rehabilitation, compensation and restitution, to ensure that all affected persons are restored to a situation better than which prevailed before they were affected by violence. This is based on the experience that some state governments fail to provide even elementary humanitarian services, by refusing to establish relief camps or forcefully disbanding these prematurely. The Bill also recognizes and protects the rights of Internally Displaced Persons, who are temporarily or permanently dislocated because of targeted violence. 11. Compensation – a national standard for all ‘affected persons’: This Bill requires that when there is violence, and citizens lose their lives, livelihoods, and homes, then each devastation must be recognized in the same manner. Each life lost must be compensated for justly and uniformly. Regrettably this has not been the case, and governments have been both arbitrary and selective in awarding compensation to different groups of citizens with different standards of generosity. Compensation must not be a matter of charity or largesse, but a justiciable right with a single uniform standard for every Indian citizen. This Bill provides that compensation shall be paid within 30 days from the date of the incident, and in accordance with a Schedule, which shall be revised every 3 years. No compensation for death shall be less than Rs. 15 lakhs. No compensation for rape shall be less than Rs. 5 lakhs. 12. The Federal Principle: This Bill takes care not to violate in any way the federal nature of our polity. All powers and duties of investigation, prosecution, and trial remain with the State Governments. WHO ARE THE NON-DOMINANT GROUPS IN ANY STATE? The Bill defines non-dominant ‘groups’ as religious or linguistic minorities in any State in the Union of India, and SCs and STs. Examples of non-dominant groups who have, in recent years, come under attack because of their identity in different States and where the State machinery has acted prejudicially, would include Tamils (as a linguistic minority) in Karnataka, Biharis (as a linguistic minority) in Maharashtra, Sikhs (as a religious minority) in Delhi, Muslims (as a religious minority) in Gujarat, Christians (as a religious minority) in Orissa, and Dalits and Tribals in several places in the country. The salient principle is that each of these non-dominant groups in a State may be vulnerable to institutional bias, and thus need special support to restore equality in the way the law works at the local level. ‘Minority’ which refers to both linguistic groups and religious groups, is a shifting category at the level of the States. Thus Biharis, of all religions, constitute a linguistic minority in Maharashtra or in Assam – where they have been vulnerable to attack based on their regional/linguistic identity, but they are dominant in Bihar. Tamil speakers are similarly a linguistic minority in Karnataka, but not in Tamil Nadu. In several states in the Northeast, in Punjab, in the Union territory of Lakshadweep, and in Jammu & Kashmir, Hindus, belonging to any region, are numerically a religious minority. Constitutional arrangements in this regard require that the State of Jammu & Kashmir may suitably domesticate relevant aspects of this legislation, keeping in mind the unique situation prevailing in that State. IS ANY PARTICULAR GROUP THE PERPETRATOR OF COMMUNAL & TARGETED VIOLENCE? The Bill does not classify or assume any particular group to be the perpetrator of communal & targeted violence. The perpetrator of violence could be any person, belonging to any region, language, caste or religion. The Bill is only concerned with ensuring that when the group under attack is non- dominant in that State, then the officers of the State machinery must not be allowed to let bias to breach their impartiality or colour the performance of their sworn legal duty. THE CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE : There exists a clear mandate to legislate on the issue of prevention and control of communal and targeted violence. Positive and rational legislative measures to correct discriminatory exercise of State power draw their strength from the Constitution of India. Article 14 states that ‘the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India’. Article 21 guarantees right to life and personal liberty, thus State is under duty to protect all its citizens from any kind of violence against them. Article 15 (1) lays down that ‘the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them’. The Constitution thus recognizes that vulnerable groups, defined in Article 15(1), may require protection from discrimination by the State. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are examples in the Indian legal system of special legislative provisions for vulnerable groups in response to social reality and experience. Entry 2A and 97 under List 1 of the seventh schedule empower the Central Government to enact laws for the protection of life and liberty.

Still waiting for justice in Kandhamal

2011-12-02T21:01:00.001-08:00

WAITI NG FOR JUSTICE: A REPORT OF THE NATIONAL PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL ON KANDHAMALEXECUTIVE SUMMARYA National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on Kandhamal was held in New Delhi on 22-24 August 2010, organized by the National Solidarity Forum - a countrywide solidarity platform of concerned persons from various walks of life. The NPT aimed at assisting the victims and survivors of the Kandhamal violence 2008 to seek justice, accountability and peace and to restore the victim-survivors’ right to a dignified life. The twelve-member jury of the NPT was headed by Justice A.P. Shah (retd.). The Tribunal’s final report was released in Bhubaneswar on 2nd December 2011. The report is based on the testimonies of 45 victims, survivors and their representatives. Additionally, it incorporates and draws upon the contents of studies, field surveys, research, fact-finding reports and statements to the Tribunal that were presented by 15 experts. The 197-paged report is divided into four parts. The first part provides the background and context of the violence in Kandhamal in 2008, and highlights the fundamental aspects of the violence. The second part focuses on the impact of the violence. In separate chapters, this part examines aspects such as freedom of religion, the gendered impact of the violence, impact on children, and the impact on socio-economic and cultural rights. The third part compiles and analyzes the responses to the violence. It encompasses role of the state and democratic institutions, processes of justice and accountability and the aspect of reparations. The fourth and concluding part of the report lays down the concluding observations and the recommendations of the jury. Annexures to the report include details of victim-survivors who deposed before the Tribunal, details of reports / statements presented to the Tribunal and details of members of the Organizing Committee for the Tribunal. MAJOR OBSERVATIONS:• Communal Violence in Orissa: The targeted violence against the adivasi and dalit Christian community in Orissa violates the fundamental right to life, liberty and equality guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and affirmed by the ICCPR, ICESCR, CERD and other international covenants. The brutality of the violence also falls within the definition of ‘torture’ under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Communal forces have used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and incited horrific forms of violence and discrimination against adivasi and dalit Christians. • Violence in Kandhamal: The 2008 attacks in Kandhamal were widespread, and were executed with substantial planning and preparation. The violence meets all the elements of ‘crimes against humanity’ as defined in applicable international law. Christians who refused to abandon their faith and convert to Hinduism were brutally killed or injured. Burning and destruction of property (residential, official and religious / charitable institutions) was also a predominant form of violence. Human rights defenders have been deliberately targeted for their role in assisting victim-survivors. Moveable property, valuable documents and certificates were looted / destroyed to economically impoverish and lower the socio-economic status of the victim-survivors. Evidence of the attacks was systematically and meticulously destroyed in order to scuttle the processes of justice and accountability. • Gendered Impact: The jury observes, with deep concern, the silence that prevails in matters of sexual assault, at various levels including documenting, reporting, investigating, charging and prosecuting cases. The threats of sexual violence against women and their daughters continue, heightening women’s sense of vulnerability. The attacks on women violate constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination on the ground of sex, and other international standards, including the CEDAW. The relief measures undertaken by the government have been marked by gender blindness and did not address women’s special needs for privacy, nutrition, medical and psychological support. There is no implementation of government schemes by which widows, single women and women survivors of violence can be restored to a life with dignity. • Impact on Children: The impoverishment of the victim-survivor community after the violence has had an adverse impact on the children jeopardizing their physical, psychological and intellectual development. Many children have witnessed horrific violence to their close family members and suffer from acute trauma with no access to services of socio – psycho support and healing. Many children have dropped out of school due to the financial inability of the families to bear the expenses, due to fear or discrimination by the school authority. Children having been forced into the labour force, in hazardous conditions, in order to supplement the family income, and have also been trafficked for the purposes of forced labour, sexual exploitation and abuse. • Impact on Socio-economic and Cultural Rights: The violence against Christians has caused large-scale displacement, leaving the victim-survivors with a sense of rootlessness. The destruction of many churches and prayer halls, and the failure to reconstruct them has deprived the victim-survivors of their right to religious practice. The victim-survivor community is unable to freely practise its faith and is thereby reduced to a state of secondary citizenship – an anathema in a democracy like India with a constitution that guarantees fundamental rights. The violence has had an adverse impact on the livelihood and economic well-being of the affected people. Socio-economic boycott of the Christian community continues to be implemented in a variety of ways. The provisions of NREGA too do not benefit them as it is implemented in manner that discriminates against persons on grounds of religion, caste and gender.• Role of State Administration and Public Officials: The jury members observe, with grave concern, the deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties by public officials, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence and a deliberate scuttling of processes of justice through acts of commission and omission. The state agencies have blatantly failed to extend much-needed institutional support to victim-survivors and protect them from attacks to their persons and properties, ostracism, socio-economic boycott and subjugation by non-state actors. The state government has also failed in its responsibility to prevent the violence in Kandhamal in August 2008. • The Justice Process: The jury observes, with deep concern, that the criminal justice system has been rendered ineffective in protecting victim-survivors and witnesses, providing justice and ensuring accountability for the crimes perpetrated. The complicity of the police and their collusion with the perpetrators during the phase of investigation and prosecution, indicate an institutional bias against the targeted Christian adivasi and dalit community. Victims and witnesses engaged in the justice process have been threatened and intimidated, as there is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. Guidelines on witness protection, issued by the Supreme Court and various High Courts, are not followed by the Fast Track courts. Women and child witnesses face extreme vulnerability. The jury further observes that clear gaps exist in substantive, procedural and evidentiary law to prosecute and punish those responsible for targeted mass violence, and that international jurisprudence in this regard has potential relevance for filling the gaps in Indian criminal law. • Reparations: Through the issuance of a notification prohibiting non-profit organizations from conducting rescue and relief work in Kandhamal, the state government abdicated its constitutionally-mandated duty to protect the lives and human rights of vulnerable populations. The dismal conditions in the government-run relief camps are clearly indicative of the indifference of the State government to the plight of victim-survivors. They are violative of the right of victim-survivors to a life with dignity and equality, as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution; and the right of all IDPs to an adequate standard of living, as recognized UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998. The award of meagre compensation to some victim-survivors and its denial to many, defeat the very purpose of awarding compensation - to repair the harm and loss caused to the victim-survivors. The lack of uniform criteria in damage assessment has led to an arbitrary determination of compensation amounts by State authorities whose acts are coloured by institutional bias against the Christian community. The absence of a comprehensive rehabilitation package has prevented the victim-survivors from being restored to a life of dignity. The negative role of public officials in the peace committees and the infiltration of perpetrators in such committees indicate that the state government’s peace initiatives have been a dismal failure. The jury reiterates that while confidence-building measures are of prime importance, these cannot be undertaken in the absence of or as a substitute for processes of justice and accountability, which are the tool for long-lasting peace in the region.MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS:A. Socio-economic and Cultural RightsApply National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and other livelihood schemes of the state and central government to the affected community, without any discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. Act against those engaging in such discrimination. Implement widow pension schemes; provide government jobs to individuals from families of deceased victims, on compassionate grounds; reinstate/reappoint victim-survivors engaged in government jobs prior to the violence and transfer them to areas that they perceive to be safe and secure; provide soft loans for commencement of small businesses. Ensure that relief camps meet the minimum international standards of health, hygiene and privacy for IDPs; they should have facilities to meet the educational and nutritional needs of children, lactating mothers and pregnant women; provide medical and psychological, particularly trauma counselling to the victims/ survivors, with a special attention to the needs of women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Incorporate a separate section in the State policy on relief and rehabilitation that conforms to Article 3 of the Child Rights Convention, as the guiding principle for all relief and rehabilitation work. Recommend that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and the National Commission on Scheduled Tribes assess the needs of children, dalits and adivasis respectively from the affected Christian community in Kandhamal, and make recommendations to appropriate agencies at the state and central levels for ensuring their rehabilitation at the earliest. Address educational needs of the children who have suffered displacement as a result of the violence. Address the long-standing problem of landlessness and land alienation of the dalits and adivasis in a comprehensive manner through land reform and redistribution. B. Legal and Judicial ProcessesIdentify unreported cases of sexual and gender-based violence and include the offence of sexual assault in First Information Reports (FIRs), in cases where it has been ignored and ensure that they are effectively investigated and prosecuted. Enquire into the acts of all public officials named in this Report, and pursue stringent disciplinary, administrative and other legal action against them for grave dereliction of duty, and for collusion and complicity in the crimes committed by the perpetrators. Strictly enforce Sections 153 A and B of the Indian Penal Code (promoting enmity between different groups and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) in order to proactively prevent programmes that are divisive, propagate hate and incite violence against religious minorities.Constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to re-examine the already registered FIRs for accuracy, examine registrations of fresh FIRs, the trials that resulted in acquittals due to intimidation and/or lack of evidence and recommend the trials that need be transferred or fresh trials be conducted outside Kandhamal. Appoint Special Public Prosecutors who discharge their duties with professional competence and integrity. At the appellate stage in the Orissa High Court a special panel of lawyers to represent the victims of Kandhamal violence should be constituted. Recommend that State Legal Services Authorities set up a legal cell to assist victims in their legal cases and interactions with the police and courts. Provide protection to victims and witnesses before, during and after the trial process according to the guidelines provided in the judgments of the Delhi and Punjab and Haryana High Courts. Take pro-active measures to prevent threat of sexual and gender-based violence to women survivors and their daughters and pay attention to the needs of the child witnesses involved in various proceedings related to the Kandhamal violence. The State Legal Services Authority lawyers to also ensure, that witnesses depose freely and without fear in the fast Track Courts and to bring any incident of intimidation to the notice of the concerned authorities including the Court. State Legal Service Authority to assist the victim- witnesses to initiate appropriate legal action in this regard. Accord special protection to human rights defenders and adequately compensated the damage to their residential and organizational properties so that there are no impediments to their work in assisting victim-survivors with processes of justice and reparations. C. ReparationsAdopt, at the very minimum, the 1984 anti Sikh and 2002 anti Muslim Gujarat compensation package to enhance the compensation already announced. In addition, victims of sexual and gender-based violence should be included as a ground eligible for compensation and employment. Recognize the right of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to return home and create enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return in accordance with the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement, 2007 and UN Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Persons. Facilitate the return and reintegration of the affected families back in their villages of habitual residence, or resettle them in safe and secure alternative places of residence that is near to agro-based or other livelihood possibilities. Formulate and implement policies to provide victim-survivors full reparations, which include compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, guarantees that the crimes committed will not be repeated, and forms of satisfaction such as restoration of their dignity and a public acknowledgement of the harm that they have suffered; meeting national and international human rights standards. Include movable properties into the scheme of compensation, and adequately compensate loss of valuables, cash, agricultural produce and cattle, essential documents, household articles and vehicles towards restoring the victim-survivors and their families to the standard of living that they enjoyed prior to the violence.Focus on revival of dignified livelihood options for the affected families, and facilitate a resumption of the livelihood they had pursued prior to the violence. Make a concerted effort at recovery and return of lands that the victim-survivor families had abandoned at the time of the violence, in order that they may pursue agro-based forms of livelihood. Include members of the affected community, particularly women, in all confidence-building and peace-building initiatives by the state and district administration. Substantive participation of women in village level peace committees should be facilitated, rather than a token representation. D. Minority RightsProtect the right to religious freedom and clarify that this freedom means and includes the right to remain animist, areligious and/or atheist, and make any form of forced conversion or reconversion illegal. Formulate a policy / programme to urgently address the issue of institutional bias against the minority Christian community in Kandhamal and other parts of Orissa, through a combination of perspective-building and stringent action that is intended at upholding the rule of law. Review OFRA to ensure that it does not violate the right to religious freedom as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and international law. Review the definition of the Scheduled Castes in The Presidential Order of 1950, on the basis of the discrimination experienced by members of schedule castes even after conversion. Implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities, issued in their reports of January, April and September 2008 with immediate effect. **********

Implications of interrogation of Pastor by Shariah Mullahs in Srinagar, Kashmir

2011-11-26T07:20:00.001-08:00

Conversions, Shariah kangaroo courts, the law of the land and fragile unity of minoritiesJOHN DAYALIn retrospect, the church in India has displayed remarkable sobriety and a sense of responsibility in their response to the arrest in Srinagar of Reverend Chander Mani Khanna, pastor of the All Saints Church. The Muslim Ulema of the rest of India have been reluctant to condemn the arrest, precipitated by the demand of a local Mufti. The vital issues of the rights of minorities, and freedom faith are however involved, which impinge on all minorities even in states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Orissa and remain relevant in Kashmir. I suppose one can understand their reluctance in the backdrop of the complexities and sensitivities involved in anything that is concerned with the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The same is the reason perhaps for the silence of civil society in India and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Only journalists and activists Seema Mustafa in New Delhi and Javed Anand in Mumbai have dared spoken, pleading for caution but articulating the voice of sanity and freedom.Before anything else, it is important to recall the political geography of Jammu and Kashmir. It is, of course, an inseparable member state of the Union of India, as patriotic voices constantly remind us. It was once ruled by a Hindu King, the late Hari Singh, not much liked by the large Muslim population of the Valley of Srinagar, which is one of the three district entities that make up the state. The other two are the areas of Jammu, with a huge Hindu population and a record number of temples, and Ladakh, an almost entirely Buddhist region with just a handful of Muslims, Hindus and Christians. The tiny Christian minority in the State lives largely in the Jammu region, mostly of Dalit origin, with about 500 in the valley and a much smaller population in Ladakh. For some time after Independence and the ascension of the state to the Union of India, J and K, as it is known popularly, had its own prime minister and sadr-e-riyasat, [head of state] Karan Singh, before they were designated chief minister and Governor respectively. Special status is accorded to the State under Article 370, many Indian institutions have no jurisdiction in the state and many laws have to be extended to the region through the state legislature.India and Pakistan have fought four wars over the State, the last being the infamous Kargil glacier encounter which cost both countries precious human lives with tension still prevailing in the uninhabitable heights. In the habitable valley, there is another confrontation. Half a million Indian soldiers, by some counts, are in the valley tackling both the border situation and a continuing confrontation with terrorists as well as with the civilian population, The confrontation has been violent most of the time. Many innocents have been killed, entirely illegally. Women and children have been victims. A major victim of the communalised situation in the valley has been the exodus of the Hindu Pundit population to Jammu, Delhi and refugee camps elsewhere. A sad aftermath has been the rise of fundamentalism and the supremacy of a doctrinaire kind of politico-religious Islamic clergy.The seeds of the confrontation with the Christian community lies in the powerful segment of this clergy which is carving out its space in challenge to the established state government, the other political groups, the military and the political parties. As Seema Mustafa points out, the vast majority of Kashmiris in the valley, all Muslim, are peaceful people adhering to a soft and melodious Sufi Islam, far removed from the stridency of Wahabism espoused by the extremist groups. But there do not seem to be any routes of approaches to the aggressive clergy,Apart from the confrontation with the state forces, and the occasional violence on the small number of Pundits who remain in Srinagar and some rural areas of the valley, there has been violence against Christians in the past too. On 26 February 2011 , the school run by a Christian family was burnt. The government helped with the reconstruction. Before this the Tyndale Biscoe School Tangmarg was burnt , The Good Shepherd School of the Roman Catholic church at Pulwama was burnt. The community as a whole has suffered much, in silence. The people, who speak with us on conditions of anonymity, and the family of Rev Khanna, say the situation is very volatile and bad, stressing they do not want to add fire to the situation there at present “but try to apply some political pressure from outside the state in an silent manner so that we get what we want and the lives of people are safe also”.This is a sentiment shared by Seema Mustafa who says “We must take into account the sensitivity of Kashmir as it is different from Madhya Pradesh and UP. That is imperative or anything you say will create more trouble than the initial trouble itself. Unlike the popular perception created here, Kashmiris are secular people and we can reach out to many there to ensure that sane voices emerge. The state government has created additional trouble with the arrest, and that needs to be countered as well. The separatists can be persuaded to give a statement for secular harmony, I am sure, as can civil society, and for the release of the pastor. But it has to be worked out properly.’Pastor Khanna is a well known personality in Srinagar. Dr Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and outgoing secretary of the National United Christian Forum, says “I have known Rev. Khanna for many years. He in fact was involved in reconciliation work in Kashmir valley. He confidently went to Srinagar from Jammu, much against the advice of all. I am sure that he has done no wrong. We need to move soon on some sort of a dialogue to stop rumours, the latest being; now it is the turn of Christians to leave the valley. There are about 400 Christians working in schools and hospitals, a few in government service.” The events leading up to Khanna’s formal arrest at the behest of a Mullah, the Grand Mufti, have opened up serious questions that need to be addressed. Pastor Khanna had baptised some people in the church during the regular baptism ceremonies. A few of those were former Muslims who had been coming to the church for a long time. All were adults. A video was made of this event and put on YouTube on the Internet. The pastor was summoned, not by the police, but by the Mufti, He was questioned for seven hours, harangued, threatened. The government became scared, or possibly wanted to divert attention from other on-going crises in the state, not the least of which is an accusation against chief minister Omar Abdullah of involvement in the murder of a member of his own party who had become a criminal.The police told Khanna they were protecting him, then raided his church, and finally arrested him on charges of fomenting communal strife. The church feels cornered. It took days for the local church to make statement. The NHRC, National Commission for Minorities and he National Advisory Council and others are silent though they have been informed by many. The political parties are mute. Civil society is dead in Srinagar, and silent in India. No group of activists has yet denounced the arrest or the kangaroo court. Right wing Hindutva groups agree with the mullahs. Political action is patently required and people have call upon the President of India, the prime minister, the governor of the state of J and K and the leaders of various political groups to take steps to get the priest out of the police lockupAbove all, the frail relationship between Muslims and Christians -- both minorities in India – is under great stress. Remember, Christians had made common cause with Muslims in their hour of crisis in Gujarat 2002 and elsewhere.The media, as usual, seems barking up the wrong tree, giving tendentious stories, not questioning how religious groups over-rule or act on behalf of the police. This is how a local newspaper reported the episode: Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Central Kashmir Range, A G Mir told ‘Kashmir Images’ that Khanna has been arrested by Police Station Ram Munshi Bagh and FIR 186 of 2011 under section 153A and 295A registered against him. Police have also registered a case against six unidentified Kashmiri youngsters who were allegedly baptized by the Christian priest. Kashmir’s Grand Mufti, Mufti Bashir-ud-din last month summoned the priest to his court to explain about the alleged attempts of conversion. The Pastor, however, was out of station and had sought time to appear before the Grand Mufti, who heads Court of Islamic Jurisprudence in Kashmir. And finally when Khanna presented himself before a group of 15 Islamic scholars and representatives of various religious groups headed by the Grand Mufti, he denied his involvement first, but later on confessed his complicity. Initially he did not accept that he was doing this,” Mufti Bashiruddin said. The Pastor reportedly said he was on a “peace mission promoting communal harmony between Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians. But when confronted by some boys, he had no option but to accept,” the Grand Mufti said, adding that they had a CD containing evidence about how the Pastor was performing conversions. The Pastor has confessed to having converted 15 boys so far and promised to give their list to the Grand Mufti, reports said. “The Pastor said some NGOs and intellectuals were with him in this mission and some of them had accompanied him to South Africa to preach Christianity,” said the Grand Mufti. Terming the issue a “grave” one, he said Muslim ‘Ulema’ (scholars) from various organizations including the Jamat-e-Islami, the Jamiat-e-Ahle Hadees, the Islamic Study Circle and the Nadwatul Ulema would meet again to take a final decision.As of now I have reserved my judgment. The Ulema council was scheduled to meet on November 19, but it has been postponed,” the Grand Mufti said.”The Church of North India and the local Christian community deny any wrong doing by the pastor. They have also reaffirmed their resolve to continue with their mission of service in the valley and the state.The most incisive comment has come from Javed Anand, general secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy of Mumbai. ” Addressing the media, Kashmir’s grand mufti, Mohammed Bashiruddin warned that such activities “warrant action as per Islamic law” and will not be tolerated. “There will be serious consequences of this. We will implement our part and the government should implement its," the mufti thundered. What’s Islamic law and a shariah court doing in a secular democratic polity? ... For what crime has Khanna been booked? Unlike states like Gujarat, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, J&K does not have a law against conversions. But where there is a will there’s a way. The pastor has been charged under sections 153A and 295A of the Ranbir Penal Code, the J&K equivalent of the Indian Penal Code. Section 153A pertains to the offense of “Promoting enmity between different groups…” and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”. Section 295A has to do with “Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”.“Why should conversion of a few Muslims to Christianity be deemed a malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings? Why should it be tantamount to promoting enmity between different groups? These might be questions for you and me. But Omar Abdullah and his police may well be wondering whether the FIR and the arrest are enough to douse the flames. The worse quite possibly is yet to come. A Dharma Sansad comprising of leaders of different Muslim sects in Kashmir is to meet soon to deliberate over the “grave issue” and decide on further course of action. The responses to the video-clip have apparently been venomous. "We promise to kill all Christian missionaries and burn their buildings, schools and churches!" pronounces one of them while another proclaims, "We should burn this priest to death!" Echoes of Pakistan’s obnoxious blasphemy laws?“It is far from clear whether the priest is in fact guilty of a cash-for-conversion deal. Only a thorough and impartial investigation could establish if there’s any truth in the charge. But in the brand of Islam the grand mufti and most mainstream Muslim organizations espouse, the issue of inducement is irrelevant. The theology is simple: for conversion into Islam, there’s Divine reward aplenty for both the converter and the converted; but conversion out of Islam is gunaah-e-azeem(mahapaap), treason of the highest order, deserving of the harshest punishment.” Human rights groups and Muslim bodies from the Valley and elsewhere especially, must denounce the hounding of the pastor and the ‘Islamisers’ reminded that Article 25 of the Indian Constitution guarantees to all citizens “the right freely to profess, practice and propagate (their) religion”.The last word, of course has not been said. Even as efforts continue to get the pastor out of prison on bail, or to get him transferred to the Jammu jail for safety reasons, National Commission for Minorities vice chairman Dr. Hmar T Sang liana was paying a visit to Srinagar to meet with various groups and the government. Efforts were also on to open a dialogue with various national and Kashmir Muslim groups for a long term peace with a broad basic agreement that the dialogue must continue in an environment of mutual understanding, and not in short term grandstanding. The government, meanwhile, is being encouraged to stick to the points in law and not to exacerbate the situation in the guise of buying peace.- - -[First published in Indian Currents, New Delhi]

Politics of the murder of an Indian Nun

2011-11-20T01:45:00.001-08:00

A NUN’S MURDER POSES QUESTIONS FOR STATE AND CHURCHActivist and Whistle-blower Sr Valsa John pays with her life for defending the Tribals’ ownership of their land, minerals and forests JOHN DAYAL It was proper that the candlelight vigil in memory of Sister Valsa John of Dumka, Jharkhand, on Friday 18th November 2011 at New Delhi’s Sacred Heart Cathedral became a celebration of her life, the work of Christian activists in defence of the rights and dignity of the poor, tribals, dalits and marginalised.It also posed a challenge to the Church in general if it would retreat in fear at the brutality of Valsa’s sacrifice, or get courage from the luminescence of her sacrifice and go deeper into territories of human rights still uncharted -- obeying the demands of Caritas in Veritate, love and the Truth underpinning the social teachings of the church. It also had a message for the State, the government and the political, bureaucratic and criminal justice system – will they wake up to the threat posed to society in general and to whistle blowers and rights defenders in particular from the unholy regime of impunity and the conspiracy between vested interests in governance and the corporate sector for whom profits are God.Valsa John’s fellow activists in Jharkhand, New Delhi and elsewhere, mourned a comrade. The gathered Archbishops, Bishops, Nuns, Priests and Laity felt the loss of a person who heard the call of God when she was already working as a teacher. Valsa had responded to that call with an alacrity and sincerity that surely will remain a lesson for many more than just her congregation, the illustrious Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. To the common people, Sr. Valsa John is a Martyr whose blood would not go in vain. But they also wanted to find out why she was murdered, calling for a high level enquiry, possibly by the Central Bureau of Investigations, into the criminal conspiracy behind her dastardly murder because Jharkhand State’s police investigation and justice system are rickety at best, and often part of the corporate and mafia conspiracies.Sr Valsa John, 52, is the fourth social activist killed in unexplained circumstances in India this year. Like many other activists, trade union leaders and Right To Information crusaders, she had a premonition of her death, and had warned friends and relative, and perhaps even the police, that she feared a brutal end. Valsa was brutally murdered in her room in a rented house in Pachaura, In Pakur in Dumka district of Jharkhand late at night on Tuesday, 15th November 2011. The bloodstained floor of Sister Valsa’s room bore testimony to the violence. She had been attacked by a group, said to number anywhere from two dozen to forty men armed with swords, axes and other weapons. Her head was nearly severed from her body. Some Maoist literature and a spade were left behind, possibly as a ruse. Many immediate theories were floated to account for the attack. One was that Valsa may have incurred the wrath of a group of local criminals for seeking justice for a raped tribal girl and that may have been the immediate provocation . Valsa had sought an appointment with Pakur deputy commissioner S K Singh after the Amrapara police refused to lodge an FIR against the alleged rapists. Singh did not deny that an appointment had been sought, newspapers reported, quoting him as saying “She may have contacted my office for an appointment.” Amrapara police maintained no FIR about a rape had been lodged at the police station, although they detained two persons for questioning today in connection with the murder. A deathly silence remains in Pachaura, the village where Valsa was butchered. The local media too has taken sides, some imputing motives. The local reporters of the large media such as the Times of India have particularly come in for scrutiny for their apparently biased reporting.Valsa was laid to rest at the Christian cemetery at Dudhani in Dumka on 17th November after the Mass in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Her eldest brother, Baby Malamel, and two of her nephews, from Kochi were present for the funeral. About 600 to 700 people were present for the funeral, 200 of whom were from the village Pachaura where she lived.Even as her body as buried in the Jharkhand she had come to love, Valsa has been espoused by national and international organisations working in Human Rights. Amnesty International asked for an enquiry at the highest level, suspecting the hand of mining mafia. Cardinal Telesphore Toppo called it a shame for the state. Officials of almost every church organisation – from the Catholic and Syrian Churches to the Evangelical and Pentecost denominations, made common cause, calling her a martyr in the cause of serving the poor, as mandated by Jesus Christ who she loved so dearly.Sr Mary Scaria, an Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and also an activist, recalled Sr Valsa as a member of her own congregation, the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary known for their work in education and activists in various parts of the country. The Congregation was founded on the 4th November in 1803, in a little village of Lovendegem in the diocese of Gent, Belgium by the parish priest, Fr. Peter Joseph Triest, in the aftermath of the French Revolution which left so much poverty and misery, specially that of the children. On 4 November 2003 the Congregation celebrated 200 hundred years of living out the charism of the Sisters of Charity. Following the footsteps of the founder, no challenge was too great, no request too trivial and no one too precious. This has been a sacred history during which every milestone has seen the deepening of the threefold dimension of the SCJM life of love - Love for God her father, love for one another and love for all peoples especially the poor, the abandoned and those who are deprived of love and dignity in the world. The sisters are active in England, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Israel, Rwanda, Mali, Congo, South Africa, Venezuela, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Republic of Central Africa and Rome. The Mother house of the Congregation is in Ghent, Belgium.This was the congregation Valsa chose to be her destiny.Valsa was born on 19 March 1958 at Vazhakala village of Idappally in Ernakulam District of Kerala, the second child of her parents. A good student, she went on to become a teacher in her home town’s St. Pius UP School,. Her life still felt unfulfilled, and one day Valsa decided she would live and work for the poor and exploited people of our country. The Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary had a convent in her village and she approached them and told them about her wish. They told her that the SCJM sisters work in the rural areas, mainly among the marginalized people and through this congregation; she would be able to fulfil her desire. She did not hesitate. After her religious training she was assigned to Palamu district. In 1993 she came to Sahibganj district and worked with the Jesuit Fathers at Kodma. She was transferred to Jiapani Mission in 1995.Jesuit priest and tribal intellectual-activist Dr Marianus Kujur says “If she wanted she could have had a cosy and comfortable life in ‘God’s own country’, where she started her career as a teacher more than 20 years ago. But she did not.She came to Pachaura in 1998 and the anti-mines movement in the area started in 2000, working for the people in coal mining areas of Jharkhand for 12 years and guided them in their struggles. She perhaps did not realise it then, but she was joining a distinguished band of people who had fought for the right of the tribals. Long ago in the 1880s, suffocated by injustice and oppression from all sides visionary leader Sido of Bognadih village near Barhait sent a clarion call to all the Santhals to get organized and rise up in arms. His brothers Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav and his sisters Phulo and Jhano too joined him to give his leadership shape and substance. This, historians recall, resulted in the legendary Santhal rebellion of 1855, which swept the British administrators off their feet.Valsa landed in the midst of important developments – the issue of rights over the coal in that mineral rich region. Kataldih village near Amrapara block in Pakur district has reserves of good quality of coal on a very large scale The main users are the Punjab State Electricity Board and the private sector Emta Group of companies – collectively called the Panem coal mines..Human Rights group Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, PUCL, investigated the issue back in 2003 and published a detailed report on the Pachaura coal mining project when the media began reporting resistance from local tribals to the Project. The PSEB is a ‘public utility service’ wholly owned by the Government of Punjab. By a letter of the Ministry of Coal and Mines (Department of Coal), letter No. 47011/1(4) 2000- CPAM dated 26th December, 2001, Pachaura Central Block was allotted to the PSEB for captive mining for supply of coal on an exclusive basis to its own power plants. The PSEB formed a Joint Venture Company, PANEM Coal Mines Limited, with Eastern Minerals and Trading Agency (EMTA) to produce, supply, transport and deliver coal from the coalmines of Pachaura Central Block, exclusively to PSEB thermal power stations. According to Gazette notification, by the Ministry of Coal and Mines (Department of Coal) F.no.38011/4/2002 CA, dated Feb.22, 2002, the Central Government specified “as an end use the supply of Coal from the Pachaura Central Block by PANEM Coal Mines Limited on an exclusive basis to the power plants of Punjab Electricity Board for generation of thermal power.PUCL noted that the Government surveyed and delineated the whole area covering 41 square kilometers with demarcated divisions such as North, South and Central Blocks. Pachaura Central Block is given to PSEB. This Block measures approximately 13 square kilometers covering nine revenue villages (mouzas) such as Singhdehri, Taljhari, Kathaldih, Chilgo, Bisunpur, Dangapara, Amjhari, Liberia and Pachaura. It is estimated that Pachaura Central Block holds 562 million ton of coal reserve. Out of this reserve it was proposed that in an area of approximately 13 square kilometers open cast mining will be done in 11 square kilometers. The Central Block envisaged 44 years of open cast mining to extract 289 million tons of coal. The Jharkhand Government is expected to get annual royalty at the rate of Rs. 100 crores.The Government claimed it was legally within its power to acquire land for specific purpose given the Land Acquisition Act. The PUCL team heard the local people who said “We have been living here for long. Our forefathers Sido and Kanhu and their followers sacrificed their lives and won for us freedom from oppression and gave us an identity. And all of a sudden, like a bolt from the blue, we hear that someone is coming to enter our premises and oust us as if we are encroachers and criminals.”The people knew that that elsewhere in Santhal Parganas, at Lalmatia and at Chitra, collieries have displaced and decimated tribals and most of the promises of rehabilitation remained only on paper. The PUCL report highlighted that the tribal community is a cohesive community with its communitarian mode of living, interaction and decision-making. It depends on a life close to nature with its rivers and forests, with agricultural fields and grazing lands, places of communitarian gatherings for festivals and village functions. It also has its ancestral abode right in its midst. It is in this socio-cultural phenomenon they live and conduct their affairs. Their homes may be mud walled and grass roofed but they have a beauty and functional practicality of their own. Land is their most important natural and valuable asset and imperishable endowment from which the tribals derive their sustenance, social status, economic and social equality, permanent place of abode and work and living. It is a security and source fr economic empowerment. Therefore, the tribes too have great emotional attachment to their lands.Civil servant and later Commissioner for Scheduled Tribes Dr. B. D. Sharma has noted this was the thesis behind Jawaharlal Nehru’s Panchsheel which enunciated that “ people would develop along the lines of their own genius and we should avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way their own traditional arts and culture. Tribal rights in land and forest should be respected. We should try to build up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development. Some technical personnel from outside will, no doubt, be needed, especially in the beginning. But we should avoid introducing too many outsiders into tribal territory. We should not over administer these areas or overwhelm them with a multiplicity of schemes. We should rather work through, and not in rivalry to, their own social and cultural institutions. We should judge results, not by statistics, or the amount of money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved.”This was codified in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution which is an integral scheme of the Constitution with direction, philosophy and anxiety to protect the tribes from expropriation. Its objective is ‘to preserve tribal autonomy, their culture and economic empowerment to ensure social, economic and political justice for preservation of peace and good government in the Scheduled Areas. B D Sharma said all actions of the State must be in furtherance of the above Constitutional objective and dignity of persons belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, preserving the integrity of the Scheduled Areas and ensuring distributive justice as an integral scheme thereof. The executive in the name of the Governor stands vested with all the necessary powers, perhaps more, for achieving the aforesaid objectives.”. Sr Valsa John believed in this thesis of justice for the tribals.The sustained resistance of the people forced the PSEB to work out a rehabilitation package which included monetary compensation, employment against land in exceptional circumstances only to fill vacancies, jobs for one member of a family which has lost three or more acres of land, Sr Valsa had been jailed in 2007 for protesting against the forced acquisition of adivasi lands for Panem. It was because of her role in negotiations with all the authorities that a more comprehensive agreement was worked out. The agreement with Panem paved the way for alternate land, employment, a health centre and free education for the children of the displaced families. Apart from economic rehabilitation and resettlement benefits, the company agreed to fill the pits of the open cast mines, level them, put good sand, make it cultivable and give back the land to the people. It agreed to a crop compensation for the land under mining at Rs. 6000 per acre per year, a share of the profit to the people (Rs. 10,000 per acre per year) till they fill the pits and give back the land to the people and undertaking to level the remaining land of the people and make it fit for better cultivation using lift irrigation facilities. The company also agreed to jobs for the affected people, free education, a hospital with all modern facilities, quarters with four rooms and a veranda and the standard facilities under existing government rules.As the local media now reports, there were some who were dissatisfied with the agreement Valsa had reached. No one knows if any of these disgruntled elements are a part of the conspiracy.For civil society, Sr Valsa’s murder is part of another chain too. Three other social activists have been killed this year after fighting on behalf of victims of human rights violations and marginalized communities, or using India’s Right to Information legislation to expose human rights violations and government corruption. In November 2011, Nadeem Sayed, a Gujarat-based activist, was stabbed to death after he testified on behalf of the victims of the Naroda Patiya massacre case in which 95 persons had been killed during the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots. In August, environmental activist Shehla Masood, 35, was shot dead in Bhopal city in August after trying to expose environmental violations of urban infrastructure projects and challenging mining plans in Madhya Pradesh. In March, Jharkhand social activist Niyamat Ansari was abducted and killed after he used the Right to Information legislation to expose local contractors and officials who had embezzled funds earmarked for the rural poor. Suspicions centre around armed Maoists because Ansari's exposes threatened their share of the embezzled funds in return for protecting the corrupt contractors and officials.India’s civil society has been demanding new legislation to protect activists who received threats after filing petitions demanding crucial information affecting the livelihoods of local communities. For the Church and the Christian community, the brutal murder of Sr Valsa has to be also seen in a different light. This certainly is not a question of persecution of a minority community. Sr Valsa was in Dumka not as a proselyser, as some in the print and electronic media make her seem, but as a human rights activist obeying her calling. But the murder does have a critical mission dimension. After being battered into some sort of submission to the will of the state during the seven year regime of the pro Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, and the last eight years of an insipid United Progressive Alliance, the church is at the cusp, or the precipice, of a great rethink.The State has betrayed the Church on the issue of rights to Dalit Christians. It has given no clear answer in the Supreme court which is hearing Writ petitions by various groups on restoring the rights of Dalit Muslims and Christians which they enjoyed before the passing of the 1950 Presidential Order. The State has also shown no signs of reversing the notorious Freedom of Faith laws enacted by many Congress and BJP ruled States. The government is also playing an insidious game in using the Right to Education Act to “tame” the church institutions. These are signals as much as the central government’s silence to the call of that great Hindutva leader, oncologist Dr Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who has called for the beheading of anyone who converts a single Hindu. Any other person would have been in jail for saying less.Will the church be cowed down before this building pressure. There are some murmurs saying that the church must focus on faith and leave social action to others. A section of the Church wants to focus on insinuation building. A small but influential section of the church wants to stress its “nationalistic” credentials to cosy up to the right wing Hindutva elements and evade their political wrath. But this is not the majority of the Church.One is happy to note a strong spine in all denominations of the Church. The recent mass movement, which the church supported in Tamil Nadu, is an indication of this. The Bishop and priests who participated in the movement against an ill planned nuclear power plant in Koodankulam where villagers of Idinthakarai staged relay hunger strikes to protest against the Koodankulam nuclear plant whose safety has been called into question. Right wing propagandists, politicians and a section of the media have joined hands to demonize the Church. It is heartening to see the brave response of the people and the religious who hold the public cause to be superior to their own well being. The situation in Orissa, Chhatisgarh and several other states may demand the same fortitude and courage from the church. The Nun working in a distant forest hamlet, or standing in challenge to the conspiracy of mafia, police and the corporate sector, is proof that the church actually practices its theoretical preferential commitment to the poor.

India puts lives ahead of nuclear energy

2011-09-28T22:20:00.001-07:00

People’s life and livelihood versus nuclear power for industry JOHN DAYAL It is the life and the livelihood of the poorest of the poor versus a nation’s ambitions in nuclear energy for industry and super-powerdom in Koodankulam in south India.A lakh of men, women and children demonstrated earlier this month at the, several of them launching a ten daylong hunger-strike, demanding a stop to the Russia-assisted construction of a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant which has triggered a nagging controversy both on its physical safety, following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and its impact on the environment affecting the livelihood of several million boatmen and fisher-folks along the Coromandel coast.It made international news was the presence of a large number of Catholic Priests and Nuns, many of them born in the area and umblically connected with the people whose cause they so openly espoused. Catholics and other Christian denominations form a significant part of the coastal population of Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and of neighbouring maritime states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, most of them subsisting on fishing and prawn farming, both sensitive to a warming of sea currents because of unchecked waste water discharge.According to a UCAN report , the people came from 20 Catholic villages and a dozen others around Koodankulam from the districts of Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli. The agency interviewed some of the demonstrators.“Russian nuclear technology has failed in Chernobyl. Why should we use it here to endanger our lives,” said Bishop Yuvon Ambroise of Tuticorin and chairperson of the Office for Justice, Peace and Development (JPD) at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. Bishop Ambroise said the country should look to Europe and Japan as an example.“India should follow Germany and Japan, who recently announced that they are giving up their nuclear facilities after the Fukushima disaster.” “Our lives are in danger because of the nuclear plant,” said Bishop Peter Remigius of Kottar. “We want the facilities to be used for useful purposes.” Medha Patkar, who mothered the Narbada Bachao movement against big damns said questions remained over why the government had approved the facility in an inhabited area despite environmental concerns. After more than a week, the agitation was called off when the Union government and the administrations of Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, the two affected States, called a temporary halt to work on the nuclear plant and promised talks with the local people. The Tamil Nadu Cabinet of chief minister J Jayalalitha is to pass a formal resolution and send it over to the Union Government. Prime minister Manmohan Singh will have to take a call on the issue after he returns from New York where is attending the General Assembly of the United nations. It remains a moot question if the government will indeed halt further work and eventually shut down the existing units of the plant. Fears are it will not.Nuclear energy, for war and for peace, remains locked in a fierce stranglehold of hyper nationalism and the needs of the growing economy in a country whose people aspire to be a global superpower in the not too distant future. This nationalism has made real debate on safety and security issues all but taboo in the country, with just a handful of activists and academics involved in any genuine debate. Years of nuclear isolation, when its only technological support was from the then Soviet Union, accentuated India’s paranoia that the world wanted to keep it away from cheap power for its growth. A clandestine nuclear military experiment exploded India into the Big Power club when the regime of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi carried out an underground blast in the early 1980s in the desert sands of Rajasthan. Two decades later, the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, leading a National Democratic alliance collation headed by his own Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, carried out a series of explosions in the same testing grounds. Pakistan, neighbour and traditional enemy, followed suit with its own nuclear experiments. Both countries today have an estimated more than two hundred strategic nuclear warheads mounted on ground and air-borne missiles, and possibly also on warships. This show of might, and an end of the soft military alliance with Russia, has helped India reach pacts in nuclear material with the US and Europe who look on the expanding Indian market with deep interest. Electricity for industry and homes remains a critical need for India, which does not have great reserves of oil, and only limited reserves of high grade coal for hydrocarbon-fuelled thermal power plants. With most of its northern rivers flowing through unstable seismic regions prone to earthquakes, the safety of existing hydel power plants has been called into question. The collapse of the tunnels in the Teesta river project in the north eastern state of Sikkim in the recent earthquake had revived the paranoia first evoked when a quake hit the Koyna dam in Maharashtra some years ago. Jawaharlal Nehru and his scientific advisers thought succour lay in clean nuclear energy. In 1962 Homi Bhabha, the father of atomic energy in India, projected 20,000 mw in nuclear generation capacity by 1987 based on imported reactors. The target, and future targets, could never rally be achieved. The Department of Atomic Energy which owns the largely indigenous nuclear power program now has a target of 20,000 MWe for 2020 and expects to have 63,000 MWe nuclear capacity on line by 2032. It aims to supply 25 per cent of electricity from nuclear power by 2050. Because India is outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due to its weapons program, it was for 34 years largely excluded from trade in nuclear plant or materials, which has hampered its development of civil nuclear energy until 2009. Due to these trade bans and lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium. Its current energy derived from nuclear plans is 5,000 mw.According to the government’s own assessments, quoted in the media, electricity demand in the country is increasing rapidly, and the 830 billion kilowatt hours produced in 2008 was triple the 1990 output, though still represented only some 700 kWh per capita for the year. Because of the massive transmission line losses, this resulted in only 591 billion kWh consumption. Coal provides 68 per cent of the electricity at present, natural gas 8 per cent, hydro-electric units giving 14 percent more The per capita electricity consumption figure is expected to double by 2020, with 6.3% annual growth, and reach 5000-6000 kWh by 2050. By the way, there are many who blame coal based units for pollution and question the security and safety, even the displacement potential, of dams meant for irrigation and power.The crippling of the Fukusima plant in Japan in the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 has for once brought the safety debate into the public domain. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s global expert fact-finding group has in its June report said “there were insufficient defence for tsunami hazards” the likes of which devastated the Coromandel coast of India, as also Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, some years ago. The Nuclear Power Corp. of India has undertaken safety evaluation of 20 operating power plants and nuclear power plants under construction, suggesting a series of safety procedures, specially for plants along the coastline.The nuclear power lobby says the Russian VVER reactors of 1000 MWe are considered to be quite safe, unlike the Chernobyl graphite RBMK reactors. They have many safety features built in to them, and have an operating life of 40 years. The reactors at Koodankulam have an added “passive cooling” system for additional safety. The more advanced VVER 1200 reactors, with more safety features, are being built in Russia, and would be available for the future expansion of Koodankulam. While 30 VVER-1000 reactors have been built, 19 more are planned or are under construction. China has built two such reactors at the Tainwan nuclear power plant and is constructing six more. The VVER 1000 built in China has 94 per cent of its systems automated, i.e. the plant can control itself under most situations. The IDEA has referred to the Tainwan station as the “safest nuclear power plant in the world”.The lobby says the Koodankulam reactors can be considered to be adequate from the safety standpoint. “There would be no rational reason for stopping the project at this stage, when it is over 95 per cent completed.” The plant is far from major seismic activity, it is said, and therefore the risks are manageable.This is challenged by anti Nuclear activists such as the pioneering journalist Praful Bidwai who has carried out a safety campaign for more than twenty years.The environment impact on the ocean is a more urgent issue. The Koodankulam thermal power plant will require large amounts of cooling water, an estimated 70 cubic metres per second, which will be heated up while going through the coils of the nuclear power plant and will be discharged into the sea. The impact of this warm water on the marine environment is said to be difficult to assess, and would depend on the sea depth, flow rates, and ecology. There have also been some allegations of the health effects of radiation on people living in the vicinity of nuclear power plants elsewhere in India.But India has clearly indicated it will not abandon the quest for nuclear energy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is emphatic about the future of India’s nuclear energy programme, saying “there would be no looking back on nuclear energy,: and in fact proposing expanding India’s civil nuclear energy with adequate safety measures. Indian civil society is not convinced if the measures will really be adequate to prevent a future disaster. Koodankulam and the fishermen in its neighbourhood remain apprehensive.

KILL BILL -- The turbulent course of the Communal Violence Prevention draft Bill in the National Integration Council meeting

2011-09-20T23:57:00.001-07:00

JOHN DAYALI must begin with a Disclaimer: I was a member of the Working Group of the Mrs Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council which drafted the Prevention of Communal Violence [Access to Justice and Reparations] Bill 2011. I am also a member of the National Integration Council. In the council’s belated meeting on 10th September 2011 in the magnificent Vigyan Bhawan, I was the solitary Christian Member – of the other two, St Stephens College principal Dr. Valson Thampu did not attend, and Delhi Archbishop Vincent Concessao was away in Rome – to speak and support the enactment of such a Bill, which otherwise came in for a brutal drubbing at the hands of Bharatiya Janata party’s parliamentary leaders Mrs Shushma Swaraj of the Lok Sabha and Mr Arun Jaitely of the Rajya Sabha, and the party’s chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, leaders of most major non Congress parties and even the bosses of some Satellite TV channels. My views in this article may, therefore, be somewhat biased, and if they are, it is despite my trying hard to be absolutely neutral. I may also point out that during the framing of this draft Bill, I, together with jurists Vrinda Grover and Usha Ramanathan and activist Shabnam Hashmi, have been a critic of many a provision relating to a feared erosion of the federal character of our governance and possible allusions to “disturbed areas” which are anathema to many of us in the civil liberties movement. The NAC accepted over 57 objections before publishing its draft Bill.Having said that, I fear that there has been a possible attempt in some official quarters to kill this Bill even before it has formally seen the light of the day by being send to the Cabinet, then introduced in Parliament, discussed in select committees and then debate openly on the floor of the Rajya Sabha [where an apparition of a 2005 Bill still lives] before being passed and signed into law. The manner in which it was allowed to be mauled in the open meeting of the National Integration Council – just four of us really supported it, three being social activists – put a huge question mark on why the Bill was so prematurely put before political opponents for their views, and why no one from the government or from the Congress Party spoke, or was allowed to speak, in defence of either the Bill or the rational for coming up with suitable legislation to save religious minorities of all sorts from targetted violence. The Bill came into being from the group experiences of the anti Muslim pogroms of Gujarat in 2002, the attempted annihilation of Christians in Kandhamal, Orissa in 2007-2008, the haunting memories of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and other cities, together with attacks on Dalits and Tribals over the past few decades. The government had come up with a Bill in 2005, but when it presented its version in the Rajya Sabha, it was clear that the administration was empowering governments and police rather than protecting and defending the victims. It took five years of hard labour by civil society and specially by the Muslim groups, led by the likes of former Chief Justice Ahmadi and several retired high court judges, before the government agreed there was need to revise the Bill thoroughly.The National Integration Council took upon itself the task of drafting the proposed new Bill, together with other social legislation it was working on including the Right to Food. It set up a working group with members Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi as coordinators and experts and activists representing the minorities, legal luminaries and others on the team. It took close to a year before the Bill took some share, seeing bitter and prolonged discussions between members to balance the needs of the minorities and reconciling it with constitutional provisions and the Indian penal Code. It was quite clear from the beginning that there was a felt need to identify and punish targetted violence, define who will be identified as victims and when, and how action would be taken to end impunity, enforce command responsibility, set up some mechanism to trigger state action. It was also clear that we did not want to repeat the experiments of the National Human Rights commission and the national Commission for Minorities which were either toothless, or as themselves as defenders of national honour by defending the government, or were toothless. It was also clear to us that the federal character of the state could not be trifled with. And above all, many of us were absolutely adamant that there be no reference to disturbed areas on the pattern of Jammu and Kashmir and the north eastern States which gave unfettered powers to the Armed Forces. Although most of the members had worked with the victims of communal violence, and therefore wanted some universal principles and equality to be introduced both in justice and in reparations and relief and rehabilitation, we did not want fears to be expressed about possible overthrow of state governmetns by the Centre and the introduction of President’s Rule. Therefore it was only the second part of Article 355 which was seen as an entry point for the Central government to encourage state governmetns to act swiftly when communal violence went out of hand, as had happed in Gujarat and Kandhamal. In defining groups, it was also clear to us that most groups could be in a minority in some state or the other, and in certain circumstances. Though Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians were the national minorities, even Hindus were a minority in as many as seven of the 35 States and Union territories of India. Other issues covered in the Bill in detail were Dereliction of Duty by public servants which was recognised both in omission and commission. The definition said public servants who act or omit to exercise authority vested in them and fail to prevent or offences or protect victims or act in a malafide or predicted manner will be guilty of punishable offences. They had of course first to identify the violence as targetted. The monitoring and grievance redressal, the bill said, shall be with the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (NACHJR) and corresponding State authorities (SACHJR). The monitoring mechanism of national and state authorities will also provide the “paper trail” to ensure robust accountability of public officials in a court of law.The critical clauses related to the identification of targetted and communal violence. The Indian Penal Code contains most offences committed during episodes of communal violence. These have been appended in a schedule to the Bill and shall be considered offences when they cross a threshold of being knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of a minority group. Brutal forms of sexual offence as seen in Gujarat and Kandhamal have also been included in the bill, as is hate campaign and propaganda leading to alienation and targetted violence. Just to make it doubly sure that the Bill passed muster, the draft said advisories and recommendations of the NACHJR were not binding on State governments. All powers and duties of investigation, prosecution and trial remained with the State governments.The draft Bill, after being put in a legislative format by Additional Solicitor General Indira Jai Singh [she did only the formatting, not the actual drafting, it must be made clear] the draft was put on the Internet by the National Advisory Council to garner public opinion which would be sent to the Central government together with the suggestions came. In due course, the ministries were supposed to clear it before the Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister adopted a final version for introducing in parliament.That is why the developments in the NIC meeting surprised us. The government had not formally intimated its position on the Bill nor had it formally sent it to the opposition parties and the state governmetns for their official opinion and suggestions other than the NAC putting it on its website. The agenda formulation too made it seem that those who were to speak had either to accept it or reject it, rather than to critique and analyse it. As the formal NIC note put it, the agenda of the meeting was “measures to curb communalism and communal violence, approach to the Communal Violence Bill, measures to promote communal harmony and measures to end discrimination, specially against minorities, and finally, how to prevent radicalisation of youth”.Unfortunately, barring the preliminary remarks of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the discussion, along political divides, focussed on just the Draft NAC Bill. The tone was set by Sushma Swaraj who slammed the Bill and said it did not consider people as Indian citizens but divided them on line of religion or ethnicity and language. Her party, she said, would formally oppose the Bill. Arun Jaitely followed suit, saying the federal structure would be hit. In saying so, they almost verbatim followed the propaganda that had been let loose for weeks earlier by the RSS and its wings, the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad whose leadership threatened a nationwide agitation to ensure that the bill, which they aid stigmatised the Hindu community, did not bring law. It was mostly the BJP chief ministers who were present in force barring Narendra Modi of Gujarat. They all opposed the Bill in the language similar to the Bajrang Dal and RSS. Nitish Kumar, Jayalalitha and Mayawati had stayed away, but the text they circulated criticised the Bill for infringing on the rights of the states. The CPM – and both Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury spoke, also had grave apprehensions about the federal motives of the NAC. BJP’s allies at one time or the other, the Akali Dal and the Biju Janata Dal, also toed the line. What surprised observers was the stance of the UPA ally Trinamul Congress of Mamta Bannerjee which made common cause with other state governments in the issue of the rights of the states. Scholar Zoya Hasan and some media stalwarts also spoke against the Bill for a verity of reasons, but essentially implying that existing laws were more than sufficient. There were very few supporters. Ministers do not speak at NIC meetings as a matter of form. But other Congressmen do. They refrained this time from supporting a draft emerging out of a council headed by party president Sonia Gandhi.. The support came from Muslim members Navid Hamid and Asghar Ali Engineer and a few others. The Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, Wajahat Habibullah, repeatedly asked for permission to speak, but in the end could not. In an interview later, he said he wanted to stress issues of Rehabilitation, Accountability and the plight of Internally Displaced persons, which in fact was added on NCM’s recommendation following Kandhamal, Ahmedabad and the situation in Tribal areas of Tripura. He also referred to the agenda item on youth, mentioning the victimisation of Muslim youth arrested In the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case and the governmetns” arresting them under laws on criminal conspiracy and sedition and so on.The matter of course is not over. The debate continues even among those of us who were members of the NAC Working group. Many have called for an urgent meeting of the Working group to revisit the issues of federalism and possible encroachment of the powers of the States. There is a feeling that even if the objections have been political, there is need to make the Bill go through parliament with consensus and dialogue, and therefore there is a need to engage with the states governmetns and with various political parties. There is a definite agreement, articulated by eminent law teacher Upendra Buxi that there is need for a law to prevent targetted and communal violence. Vrinda Grover said “we must also pay heed that criticism or anxiety is being expressed from across the board and not just the usual suspects.” Vrinda and Usha Ramanathan were among the first in the Working group to flag problematic provisions. “There is some merit in reconsidering some legal propositions presented in the final NAC draft of the CV Bill, 2011,” she says. “I am afraid the apprehension that this law is a device for the Union to usurp the power and role of the States and intrude at will, lingers on. The ill advised Clause 20 of the penultimate NAC Bill, still haunts public memory, with some reason. Despite Clause 20 having been dropped no corresponding change has been made the powers and functions of the National Authority. It is this that has invited the wrath of many regional, Left, 'secular' parties who would have otherwise been our allies and advocates of this Bill.Most of us agree with Vrinda when she says “tampering with the federal structure will not yield anything for those constituencies who need the protection of the CV law. It will however alienate critical allies, without whose support, it is unlikely that this Bill will ever translate into law, as the numbers will simply not add up.”All eyes are now on the NAC and the Union Government, though the hopethat the Bill would be placed before Parliament, possibly as government amendments to the Bill of 2005, are fading fast.

Justice issues of Kandhamal, Dalit Christian demands raised at meeting of National Integration Council

2011-09-10T08:12:00.001-07:00

[The following is an abridged version of the points raised by Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, at the meeting of the National Integration Council at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on Saturday, 10th September 2011. The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, chaired the meeting moderated by Union Home Minister Mr. P Chidambaram. Mr. L K Advani, BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitely, Defence minister A K Anthony, chief ministers of Orissa and other States, leaders of the Congress and other parties, leading industrialists were among the Members of the NIC present.]

“Mr. Prime Minister, Honourable Union Ministers, Honourable Chief Ministers, distinguished Members

I bring you greetings from the Christian community in India, proud to be Indians, and proud of the fact that our country has rule of law under a Constitution that guarantees us Freedom of Faith as a vital component of our Secular, Socialist Democracy.

At the outset, may I express our community’s strong condemnation of the recent bomb blast outside the Delhi High court, and express our solidarity with the victims and our fellow citizens. Terror has no place in Indian society. There is no cause big enough to merit mindless violence that targets innocent men, women and children. As people of Peace, we pray for the dead as we also pray for the speedy recovery of the injured. Above all, we pray eternal peace and prosperity for India, our motherland.

We ourselves are victims of a different sort of socio-political terror, the terror of communalism. Our data shows we are targetted across the country with at least one incident a day of hate-motivated violence at some town or village, in one state or the other. Some states are worse than others. Among the worst are Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, and districts such as Udaipur in Rajasthan. In many states, the local police and administration are complicit. Often their actions and impunity blatantly encourage local violent elements. In Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh for instance, local police and administrative coercion and threatening of prayer services in homes, or house churches as they are called, almost immediately leads to acts of physical violence. Not every church has to be a large Cathedral. Jesus said “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there”. That is the basis of house churches, small Christian communities and Basic Christian Communities as they are called in the Evangelical, Episcopal and Catholic denominations respectively.

Such targetting, intolerance and officially conducted so-called “surveys” and demands for “registration” of churches must end forthwith. It does not happen with believers of other faiths, and it must Not happen with Christians.
Hate campaigns must also end. We have identified, as I am sure the governmetns' intelligence agencies must also have identified, the origin of such hate from the headquarters of certain political groups who want India to be rid of its religious minorities, or wants them to live as second rate citizens. We are first class citizens, much as everyone else, and seek our rights, the first of which is security so that we can enjoy that other right – freedom of faith and worship. Government must take urgent steps to train its police and administrative personnel in the principles of secularism, and sensitize them on the needs of all minorities, and the Christian minority in particular.

The Targetted and Communal violence [prevention, reparation and justice] Bill 2011 drafted by the National Advisory Council seeks to ensure this. We still feel the Bill needs some fine-tuning on issues of protecting India’s federalism and the autonomy of States.. We also specifically seek Christian representation in the structures it envisages. We commend its early adoption by government and its enactment as law after checking the Constitutionality of every clause and sub clause.

It may come as a surprise to some, but our community also has its share and more of the poor and the deprived. The Dalit Christians are one such group. They must be restored their constitutional rights at the earliest as recommended by the Justice Rangnath Misra Commission. Other poor, specially among the tribals and the rural landless and fishermen, must be identified and receive the assistance of the Government’s many schemes. For this it is important they first be identified. We have repeatedly demanded a Prime Minister’s Committee, on the pattern of the Justice Sachchar Committee set up for the Muslims, to look into the socio economic and developmental status of the Christian community across the country. Such a survey will help the Church generate its own development strategies. And it will help the government implement its secular agenda of development.
There must also not be any confrontation and conflict between the educational rights guarantees for minorities in the Constitution, and the new Right to Education Act. Across the country, our educational sector is facing harassment in recent months with local authorities trying to intimidate school managements.

In the drafting of the 12th plan, we have suggested several measures for the uplift of those of my brothers and sisters who are deprived, in education, hostel facilities, employment and self employment. I commend those recommendations made to the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Planning Commission. They must form part of government policy and must be implemented.

I close with reflecting on the many lapses that have taken place in ensuring justice, rehabilitation and reparation to the Christians of Kandhamal district in Orissa. Kandhamal saw an anti Christian pogrom in August, September and October 2008 and it seemed that the Connotation of India was not operative in that distant plateau in the centre of Odisha. Over 56,000 people were rendered homeless, over 5,600 housed destroyed, almost 300 churches torched, nuns raped. There was other and significant gender violence. According to our count, and the government differs, more than 90 persons lost their lives. Men and women lost livelihood and homes, jobs and fields. Children lost opportunities of education. Many villages banned the entry of Christians if they did not convert to Hinduism. Three years on, justice in the real terms remains a dream despite two Fast Track Courts which are known for witnessing the terrorizing of witnesses. Government aid for reconstruction was timid and small. The church helped out. But even then more than 2,000 houses remain unbuilt. It is shocking but many people have not been able to return home. Education, jobs, agriculture opportunities are missing. Even in the cases of murder, there has been no punishment in over 20 cases because the witnesses were scared or paid off. Sometimes their terrorizing took place in court, as I have witnessed personally.

Justice must be done, Dear Prime Minister and Dear Chief minister of Odisha. We look to you for justice.
I thank you for this opportunity to address the National Integration Council.”

Justice K T Thomas must know the truth of the RSS

2011-08-14T03:01:00.000-07:00

Open your eyes, your Lordship (retired)
JOHN DAYAL

As a Malayalee who was also a judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Kallupurackal Thomas Thomas occupies an enviable place in the Kerala Christian social pantheon. No one in his right mind will dare say he is turning senile. Far from it. That man of justice, and of peace, remains as sharp as when he was on the highest Bench in the land. It therefore remains a mystery why Justice Thomas, invited often by right wing forums in his twin identity as jurist and Christian, always ends up praising the Hindutva lunatic fringe and denouncing the conversions of new people turning to Christ.

In an address in Kochi on 1 august 2011, Justice Thomas praised the RSS for its discipline and said the propaganda that the organisation was anti-minority was "baseless". The Press Trust of India reported that speaking at a function here, attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, he also said the ''smear campaign'' against RSS that it was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi must end. “There is a smear campaign that RSS was responsible for Gandhi’s assassination just because the assassin was once an RSS worker," he said, adding that the organisation had been ''completely exonerated'' by the court. This smear campaign must end against RSS," he said.

Gratuitously, Justice Thomas sought to expand his personal views to make them seem he spoke for the entire Christian community, including you and me. “I am a Christian. I was born as a Christian and practise that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also learnt many things about RSS," he said. He said he became an admirer of the RSS in 1979 when he was posted as district judge of Kozhikode, adding simple living and high thinking was its hallmark. During the Emergency, RSS was the only non-political organisation which fought against it. "We owe very much to RSS for sacrificing many lives for regaining our fundamental rights ...". "The propaganda that RSS was anti minority was also baseless," he said, adding he is a great admirer of the organisation as discipline is given importance.

This writer share some qualifications with the venerable justice. Like him, “I too am a Christian, a Catholic as a matter of fact. I was born as Christian and practice that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also leant many things about the RSS.”

One may in fact have learnt many more things about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for when he was rapidly going the ladder of jurisprudence, Reporting on the RSS forty years ago, visiting their shakhas, recording what their leaders said, and documenting their written statements and literature, one saw the training of youngsters and college students, and the excesses of fat pot bellied middle agenda traders in khaki shorts and white shirts, an hour before they went back to their shops in Chandni chowk and Chawri bazaar, the wholesale market of old Delhi.

It was perhaps too early in the day,, because one did not see what crowds in Jhansi saw decades later -- the frightening scene of RSS cadres practicing with mock and real rifle and double barrelled guns down the main thoroughfares of town, or of RSS chief ministers themselves firing military hardware while posing for photographs. But one did see how RSS cadres were trained in meetings early morning in public parks as much as in closed door vyayamshalas, their “boudhiki” intellectual brain washing, and their war games. “Exercises” no less frightening –elaborate handwork with thick lathis, or staves, the sort policemen carry at night. One also saw “children’s games” in which boys formed a string holding hands, and then swopped down on a rival group, trying to “abduct” or capture persons, presumably women. The “boudhikis” were given to reading the editorials and main articles in those poison-pen official mouthpieces of the Sangh, the Organiser in English, not read at the Shakhas, and the Hindi language Panchjanya, the mainstay of the morning discourses. They would then discuss what damage the Muslims had done to India. It would all conclude with another salute not to India, but to a mythical “Mother India”, more goddess than a symbol of the land which they shared with practitioners of all other religions.

And therefore it is quite obvious that Justice Thomas, as is his right, looked only at the pretty saffron flowers, and forgot to look at the blood which sullies the earth on which the RSS flag is hoist.

First things first. Let us get the Gandhi murder out of the way, so to say. And I am indebted to Professor Shamsul Islam, the global authority of the Sangh Parivar, for once again going me this documentary evidence. He remains, with Communalism Combat, Anhad, Sahmat and the All India Christian Council, the national libraries on this fascist organisation.

After the murder of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 30, 1948 the RSS was banned on February 4, 1948. It was banned for anti-national activities and the government communiqué banning the RSS was self-explanatory: “In their resolution of February 2, 1948 the Government of India declared their determination to root out the forces of hate and violence that are at work in our country and imperil the freedom of the Nation and darken her fair name. In pursuance of this policy the Government of India have decided to declare unlawful the RSS.” [Cited in Justice on Trial, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, p. 64.]

The communiqué went on to disclose that the ban on the RSS was imposed because,” undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh. It has been found that in several parts of the country individual members of the RSS have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoit, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military.” [Ibid, pp. 65-66.]

Prof Islam points out that the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel, reputedly had a soft-corner for the RSS. Patel continues to be a favourite with the RSS. However even Sardar Patel found it difficult to defend the RSS in the aftermath of Gandhiji’s assassination. In a letter written to the head of the RSS, Golwalkar, dated 11 September 1948, Sardar Patel stated: “Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…Apart from this, their opposition to the Congress, that too of such virulence, disregarding all considerations of personality, decency or decorum, created a kind of unrest among the people. All their speeches were full of communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. In fact opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS…Since then, over six months have elapsed. We had hoped that after this lapse of time, with full and proper consideration the RSS persons would come to the right path. But from the reports that come to me, it is evident that attempts to put fresh life into their same old activities are afoot.” [Ibid, pp.26-28.]

Hindu Mahasabha and RSS were jointly responsible for the murder of Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, this fact was further corroborated by Sardar Patel in a letter to a prominent leader of Hindu Mahasabha, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee on July 18, 1948. Sardar wrote: "As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhiji’s murder is sub judice and I should not like to say anything about the participation of the two organizations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy.

The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.” [Letter 64 in Sardar Patel: Select Correspondence19450-1950, Volume 2, Navjiwan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1977, pp. 276-277.]

Congress secretary general Digvijay Singh, who was for ten years chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and Union Home ministered P Chidambaram are supported by historical data when they called a focus on right-wing terror groups, specially the progeny of the RSS. Chidambaram recently has favoured a proper research and study of the phenomenon, asking the security forces to deal with the right-wing terror groups "sternly and fearlessly". He said that these groups were also radicalising the youth in the same manner as was done by banned SIMI or Indian Mujahideen. There was no difference between Indian Mujahideen and Hindu terror groups and both were enemies of the country."..so actually, we do not have one enemy within today, we have two enemies within and hope there will not be a third or a fourth or fifth," Chidambaram said.

Digvijay Singh has repeatedly said “I do not rule out anything. If they want evidence about Sangh’s involvement in terror activity, I have got evidence”.

Just in case Justice Thomas, and his friends such as Karnataka Minority commission member P N Benjamin, whose organisation BIRD provides occasional platform for the former judge’s fulminations and homilies, require judicial evidence, here is a brief summary of extracts from a series of judicial commissions that have investigated the role of the RSS in anti-Muslim violence since the Ahmedabad riots of 1969. That is over forty years of history.

"Here was not only a failure of intelligence and culpable failure to suppress the outbreak of violence but (also) deliberate attempts to suppress the truth from the Commission, especially the active participation in the riots of some RSS and Jana Sangh leaders." — Report of the Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots of 1969

“The organisation responsible for bringing communal tension in Bhiwandi to a pitch is the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal. The majority of the leaders and workers of the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal belonged to the Jan Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) or were pro–Jan Sangh and the rest, apart from a few exceptions, belonged to the Shiv Sena.” — Report of the Justice D.P. Madon Commission on the Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad of 1970

“In Tellicherry the Hindus and Muslims were living as brothers for centuries. The ‘Mopla riots’ did not affect the cordial relationship that existed between the two communities in Tellicherry. It was only after the RSS and the Jana Sangh set up their units and began activities in Tellicherry that there came a change in the situation. Their anti-Muslim propaganda, its reaction on the Muslims who rallied round their communal organisation, the Muslim League which championed their cause, and the communal tension that followed prepared the background for their disturbances....That is what the rioters who attacked the house of Muhammad asked him to do. “If you want to save your life you should go round the house three times repeating the words, ‘Rama, Rama’. Muhammad did that. But you cannot expect the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for maintaining communal harmony in the country. This attitude of the of the RSS can only help to compel the Muslims to take shelter under their own communal organisation.” — Report of the Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission on the Tellicherry riots, 1971

"The RSS adopts a militant and aggressive attitude and sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson. The RSS methodology for provoking communal violence is: a) rousing communal feelings in the majority community by the propaganda that Christians are not loyal citizens of this country; b) deepening the fear in the majority community by a clever propaganda that the population of the minorities is increasing and that of the Hindus is decreasing; c) infiltrating into the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes; d) training young people of the majority community in the use of weapons like daggers, swords and spears; e) spreading rumours to widen the communal cleavage and deepen communal feelings by giving a communal colour to any trivial incident."— Report of the Justice Venugopal Commission on the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 between Hindus and Christians

"The dispute on the route of the procession became sharp and agitated reactions from a group of persons calling themselves the Sanyukt Bajrang Bali Akhara Samiti who systematically distributed pamphlets to heighten communal feelings and had organisational links with the RSS. A call for the defiance of the authority and the administration when it refused permission for one of the routes led to a violent mob protesting and raising anti–Muslim slogans and thereafter an incendiary leaflet doing the rounds of Jamshedpur that is nothing short of an attempt to rouse the sentiments of Hindus to a high pitch and to distort events and show some actions as attacks on Hindus that appear to be part of a design. A survey had already established that all policemen, havaldars, home guards etc. were at heart ready to give support to them (Hindu communalist organisations)." — Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Jamshedpur, April 1979

“Even after it became apparent that the leaders of the Shiv Sena were active in stoking the fire of the communal riots, the police dragged their feet on the facile and exaggerated assumption that if such leaders were arrested the communal situation would further flare up, or to put it in the words of then Chief Minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, “Bombay would burn”; not that Bombay did not even burn otherwise.” — Report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission on the Mumbai riots of 1992–1993

Justice Thomas is invited to look up the full reports ,if he wishes too.

It would help the Church leadership, too, if it were to read those reports.

[ends]

Just a moment, Mr Narayan Murthy

2011-08-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

Not suggesting a coup, Infosys Murthy?

Billionaire Narayana Murthy owes an explanation for his slur against Sonia

JOHN DAYAL

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, of course had the backing of the billionaires of his time, the Ghanshyamdas Birlas and the Jamnalal Bajaj families, if not of the Tatas who could be presumed to be leaning just a trifle towards the British with whom their community identified so strongly. Jawaharlal Nehru, with his perceived socialist political ideology, was all but an anathema to India’s industrial, corporate and business classes, and the landlords, who inevitably drifted towards the Swatantra party and eventually found a safe haven in the bosom of the Jana Sangh which is now the Bharatiya Janata party. So was Nehru’s daughter, Indira whose sweeping nationalisations of vital sectors such as banking and finance left the rich seething with suppressed anger.

Analysts understand this angst. This is a global phenomenon, as much as corruption and nepotism. Money bags in India or in the US want governments under their control. Historically, in India from the times perhaps of Dhhana Seth and Jagat Seths, Marwari money princes who financed caravans and armies going past their strategic locations in the Rajputana, money has also meant political clout. In the recent corporate history of India since Rajiv Gandhi, India’s corporate sector has sought liberation from the “Permit Raj” or stifling government regulations made in the public interest to prevent profiteering. But the same industrialists, including such giants as the Ambanis, have sought protection from western monopoly capital. That would seem strange to anyone with reason, but such is the logic of high competition.
While the middle and small traders continued with the BJP, it was being presumed that big industry had developed a soft corner for Rajiv Gandhi with his modernistic views and futuristic vision, and because of the thrust to technology that he gave during his short five year term in government.

The drift towards the Congress became a flood, again in perception, when Prime Minister Narsimha Rao brought in as Union Finance Minister the International Monetary Fund former economist Dr Manmohan Singh [and with him such luminaries as Planning Commission deputy chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia] and launched the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Despite a BJP interlude in power as the National Democratic Alliance for six years or so, with Dr Manmohan Singh’s advent into power as Prime Minister in United Progressive Alliance One and Two, one would have thought the Corporate sector, better known by its euphemism “India Inc.” were now firmly fixed in the Congress corner.

This of course did not happen.

Dr Manmohan Singh’s coalition regime’s fast-paced liberation in UPA-I has understandably sought time to consolidate in UPA-II. The rise in poverty, the land acquisition tension are all signs that the government is working for big business and not for the poor man in the parched fields. But this so called delay has created suspicion among India Inc.

It is not surprising that the biggest boys in industry support the BJP, and go as far on the limb as to support Narendra Modi, that icon of Hindutva and that persecutor of those who oppose him, specially Muslims. His role in the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 is well documented, and is now before the courts at various levels of investigation by a multitude of central and state agencies.
Two years ago, in an infamous statement, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani endorsed Narendra Modi as the “Next Prime Minister”

Fortunately, there was a popular uproar, and the troika was condemned in no uncertain terms. Political elements also took on big business and questioned its morality and short-sightedness, as much as its collective amnesia in forgetting what bloodletting had taken place in Gujarat. Ratan Tata got his small car project in Gujarat, but stopped carrying his love for Modi on his sleeve. His involvement in the Radia Tapes, which he has challenged in court, further silenced him as far as political indiscretions were concerned. The 2- G Scam has also made the Ambanis and the Mittals beat a hasty retreat from the public microscope.

It seems to have, however, taught no lessons to Infosys founder and chairman N R Narayan Murthy. Unless of course one were to argue that Murthy’s recent statement is part of an elaborate strategy to sow seeds of dissent and de-stabilisation in the UPA and the Congress with a much deeper conspiracy or agenda which could include a split in the Congress, the formulation of a new ruling alliance which marginalises the Nehru-Gandhi family. These have been tried before, the most recently during the Narsimha Rao era.

In an interview with the New Delhi Television channel 24x7, Murthy said UPA-II had failed to move ahead with reforms despite being in office for over two years. He put a part of the blame on the dual leadership structure with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heading the government while Sonia Gandhi controlled the party. "You know, I mean, I understand that he (Singh) leads a coalition. I understand that we have two leaders in the whole set-up. There is a leader of the party (Sonia), there is a leader of the government. So, all these things do slow down the decision-making; but I think that's precisely why the reason that the prime minister must, in fact, take acute note of that and perhaps accelerate decisions," Murthy told NDTV.

As news reports said, the Infosys founder, who is due to step down, was highly critical of the slowdown in decision-making. In the past too, he had expressed concern over corruption but his remarks coincide with those made by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, which is headed by C Rangarajan, a close aide of Singh. The panel of economists had blamed the government's preoccupation with corruption-related controversies for going slow on decision-making. "Well, you know we have a culture of taking slow decisions, we have a culture of dithering. This is not just at Delhi, it happens in every state. It happens in corporations, it happens in educational institutions. Therefore, the need of the day is for all of us to realise that nothing is gained by dithering. Nothing is gained by postponing decisions. You have to take decisions quickly, no matter that they appear unpalatable in the short term. Well, if I look at the facts and data, then it is true that we haven't had, or you know, taken any decisions ever since this government came back to power in 2009. Which means it is already two years and about three months old. So, to that extent, I think we should all be concerned," Murthy said.

Incidentally, Murthy also spoke out against corruption saying economists have argued that graft shaved off 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points from economic growth. By controlling inflation, India could have growth at double-digit rates. And he had some advice for politicians too. "It's a good idea to have politicians retire at 60."

He did not speak against business dynasties, though his own son has not succeeded him at Infosys but will, of course, inherit much of his wealth regardless.
It is not that Murthy alone is concerned at the slowdown in the economy which robs them of some profit taking, specially for service sector tycoons who do not have much stakes in the long term vision of brick and mortar companies. Newspapers have carried warnings by various corporate leaders on the “policy paralysis” . One such outburst was at a meeting tycoons had with Union Finance Minister and trouble shooter Pranab Mukherjee . The minster brushed aside suggestions of policy paralysis, saying it was perception,

Those who keep a keen eye on India Inc have said they are not surprised at all that Murthy said what he said, and how he said it.” With success comes hubris. This seems to have hit Narayana Murthy too. One tends to believe that I am successful, so I must be right. Whatever I think, say and do must be right. Because if I was wrong, I couldn't be successful, my company couldn't be successful. So I am right. Since I am right, I have a right to lecture the world on what is right,” blogged one critic.
He was commenting on Narayana Murthy's writing in a recent issue of Smart Manager, reproduced by Rediff.com on its website. The article starts off with describing and defining leadership, mostly quoted from Robert F Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. “Sadly, Murthy has started off on a wrong note. Many of the quotes in his article apply equally well to leaders of the wrong sort, which Narayana Murthy has in mind. "Leadership is about raising the aspirations of followers and enthusing people with a desire to reach for the stars. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi created a vision for Independence in India and raised the aspirations of our people." So did Hitler, said the blogger. Or Chairman Mao. “It is good to use Mahatma's name to justify your statement. Only, when you take Mahatma's name, be careful that what is attributed to Mahatma or Martin Luther King does not apply equally well to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. But it does. Good leaders need not always be impeccable men. While trying to describe leadership, Narayana Murthy unknowingly puts leaders of all kinds into the same box. He fails to distinguish the ideal leadership strain that he has in mind, thereby putting great names to disrepute.”

There is nothing theoretical when Murthy talks so directly of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.
There is no doubt that Murthy is critical of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership, and of her place as the chairman of the UPA, a position to which she wad democratically elected. Murthy also tends to forget that Sonia could well have been UPA chairman as also Prime minister if she so desired, but chose deliberately to enounce that option and chose a more democratic form of governance with a distinction between party and governance. The RSS would never understand this difference, for whenever the BJP was in power, so too was the RSS.

It is this duality in governance that has provided the correctives and kept a check on runaway liberalisation. The economic meltdown in the west is evidence that unchecked liberalisation is a recipe for disaster. The number of poor has grown in the USA in the last decade. In India, some tribals at least have been spared their land because the Congress party and its leadership cried a halt to the government’s plans. Ministers rooted in the party showed a human and political instinct. Rahul Gandhi’s recent sojourns in rural and Dalit and Tribal India could not have been done by mere economists of UPA-II. If the Congress returns to power next time, it will be in spite of India Inc, and because of the political will displayed by Rahul Gandhi, and by Pranab Mukherjee, come to think of it.

Murthy’s is, unfortunately, a direct call for a coup within the Congress. More so when it comes at a time that Sonia Gandhi is in a hospital, un-named, in an undisclosed country, presumably the US, where she has been operated upon for an unknown abdominal condition. In any other country including the US and the UK, this would be a reason for much political gossip and considerable political uncertainty. It speaks for the maturity of Indian politics that the country has taken this in its stride, respecting the Gandhi family’s privacy and allowing Sonia to convalesce without politics chasing her.

It also speaks for the dual system of political governance she has put in place. The party’s day to day affairs have been left to a small committee consisting of family and senior untainted advisers who have no agenda other than the welfare of the party. A K Anthony, the Defence Minister, loyal political trouble shooter Ahmad Patel, and Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi have been appointed together with Rahul Gandhi. This is a core group that cannot be denied. Government has been left to Dr Manmohan Singh, with Pranab Mukherjee standing by with him. Manmohan Singh’s health itself is cause for concern, but there is no threat to the government.

The opposition seems to feel this is an opportune time to mount the most vicious attack it has done in the past seven years. The criss in Parliament on the 2-G scam and Commonwealth Games scams and the crisis on the roads on the Lok Pal Bill are signs of the BJP and the RSS flexing their collective muscles.

It is, therefore, a pity that there has been no major denunciation of Murthy’s statement by the party official spokesmen. Mukherjee has dismissed such talk. Even Manmohan Singh ahs chosen not to give it any credence. They must point out that the twin leadership is the best course for the country for the present times, when the UK burns and the US melts down in fires of their own making, fires fuelled by the greed of their own corporate sectors.

Too early to seeka second freedom struggle

2011-08-06T22:43:00.000-07:00

Enough! said the People

But caution before one gets carried away with the rhetoric of a second freedom movement"

John Dayal

The problem with revolutions is that no one can predict how they will end up. That is as true of Cromwell’s in England’s hoary history as of Jose Marti and Bolivar in South America, and not forgetting Napoleon Bonaparte and Lenin in Europe. The jury is still out in the Indian subcontinent which saw “revolutions” in 1857 and 1942. The last one, a so-called “peaceful” one, led to Independence five years later in 1947 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest unclassified religious civil wars in the history of the world, with at least a million dead, and tens of millions displaced in what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

And if you are of a religious bend of mind, the revolution started by Martin Luther. Not many would dare write about moral revolutions started by Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Nanak, which today face charges of paedophilia and prosperity doctrines, terrorism and xenophobia. Hinduism escaped a study because of its unforgiving allegiance to Brahminical exclusivity, and the Manu code, both proof against mere social, political and religious revolutions and analysis.

Retired Havildar Kisan Baburao Hazare, better known to TV news-channel audiences as “Gandhian Anna Hazare”, yoga teacher and tele-evangelist Ramdev, and for that matter Arya Samaj breakaway sect leader and former Haryana Minister Agnivesh, each promise India a new revolution which will cure “Bharat Mata”, the mythological icon common to their rhetoric, of such ills as corruption, hunger, mal-governance and homosexuality. Millions of middle class innocent and lumpens have sought instant nirvana in their arguments, “satyagrahas” and fasts unto death. No one has died for the cause so far, barring perhaps the death of credibility and a diminishing of a faith in parliamentary democracy and its instruments.

Faced with food shortages and corruption, rising prices in uncured inflation, a shortage of jobs and a rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, it is not spurring that in both the poor and the middle classes – who are not starving, but do feel the pinch of rising prices of fruit and television sets -- there is a desire to see the system change. For want of any other argument, they mistakenly also see the omen of systemic failure as a failure of democracy itself, and then seek solutions and instant cures outside the perimeter of Parliament and its structures. They lose faith in judicial institutions which, as wheels of justice are wont to, grind exceedingly slow, even if they occasionally grind exceedingly fine and do deliver justice. It remains to be seen if justice delivered in the rare judgments of the Supreme Court has the inertia to change systems of governance and of democracy in a permanent manner. Because such judgments are rare, as are the infrequent piece of legislation, they remain tantalizing in their hope. But they do not have the strength to reassure the masses, and stop them from pursuing mirages of permanent revolutions, and “new independence struggles.”

Early in the 1960s, a mere 15 years after the dawn of Independence, one of the grandsons of Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, launched the Moral Rearmament Movement. Raj Mohan Gandhi, one of the three celebrity siblings – the others were his elder brother and philosopher Ramu Gandhi and the younger Gopal Gandhi who last was Governor of West Bengal – had reinvented for India a version of the MRA birthed as a moral and spiritual movement in 1938 from the Reverend Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. This was a response to the first indications of the second world war and the militarisation of Europe. The slogan was that moral recovery was critical to economic recovery. MRA was, in Europe at least as well as in emerging free nations after the second world war, important in bringing unity between groups in conflict, and helping ease the transition into independence.

In its initial phases, Rajmohan Gandhi’s MRA attracted the youth, and as a student of Delhi University, this correspondent participated in some of the meetings together with hundreds of others. MRA however failed to take off as a major social movement in India, fast losing even its youthful participants. But it did leave an impact on the discourse on politics and critiquing the state apparatus in a non violent way.

Ram Manohar Lohia, lifelong critic of Jawaharlal Nehru’s eliticism, and articulating a socialism of his own away from the Gandhi-Nehru brand of Congress politics after 1947, had even earlier attracted the young, together with the socialist elements in the Congress such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Aruna Asaf Ali and others who flirted with democracy, socialism and Marxism of the Russian variety through the early years of Independent and democratic India.

It was perhaps left to Jaiprakash Narayan, working in the economic and political crisis after the euphoria of the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 and India’s transient victory over Pakistan -- remember the 90,000 Prisoners of War from the Pakistani army captured by India – had ended, to launch another, and the most powerful, movement in contemporary history. His version of a “sampoorna kranti”, or total revolution, based on morality, rebelling against all forms of corruption and dynastic rule, would perhaps have taken another route if it were not for Indira Gandhi losing a court case against her election to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Instead of accepting defeat and bowing to the judicial ruling, Indira chose a drastic way out. Believing that the people would eventually back her up, she suspended the Constitution, and imposed a state of internal emergency. Narayan, in hindsight, played into her hands, calling upon the army to revolt. That was the last straw. Opposition leaders were arrested overnight, the media shackled and democratic discourse banished. With no checks and balances, power, as it is wont to, soon passed into the hands of a apolitical coterie led by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi.

This was an extra-constitutional centre of authority. A vicious governance became the norm.. More people filled jails. Bulldozers cleared off slums an millions were banished to far off resettlement camps. Muslims rebelled in town after town in Uttar Pradesh, seeing a design to disperse them and disenfranchise them. Forcible sterilisations were the norm, but Muslims again saw themselves as the main targets. There was much violence. Obviously, a police state of this sort could not last long and Indira Gandhi had to lift emergency after 22 months and call for elections. A grand coalition in which the RSS was partners with the Marxists and all sorts of middle parties, many of them break way groups of the Congress, came to power as the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. But JP's movement was quite dead in that government.

By the way, two major evils of today have roots in that rule of the Janata Party. One is the legitimisation of the Sangh Parivar [and what was then the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and is today the Bharatiya Janata Party], in its members’ shared incarceration in several jails with Marxists and rebel Congressmen. The second is the infiltration by RSS cadres into Media, the Police and other administrative and judicial structures which came under the control of this motley bunch in their brief “raj” or governance between mid 1977 and 1980 when Indira Gandhi swamped Parliament once again in a powerful resurgence.

It is always, therefore, good to remember a bit of history as one sees, or imagines, seeds of a revolution in the Hazares and the Ramdevs, Kiran Bedis and sundry self appointed leaders of civil society.

The people are today correctly and legitimately questioning the dispensation of the day. The IMF-ordered liberalisation and globalisation that the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh unsheathed in India has not brought about the desired impact on the economy as it is visible at the grassroots. It has created thousands of Dollar Billionaires in India. It has sired a 200 million and expanding middle class, estimates say. But it has had a terribly negative impact on the poor in the villages and the small towns, and in the slums of the metropolitan cities.

Writing in a rent edition of the Tehelka magazine, that bright young journalist Revati Laul – who defied the trend by switching from satellite news channels to the print media – wrote “The Indian growth story has been written with the blood of famers and tribals” She is referring to sell-outs to big land mafias and multinationals such as Posco and Mittals, but also to home grown giants such as Reliance and Tatas.

India’s education, food and employment records – the so called quality of life index – make it shrink from a economic powerhouse to a pigmy not too far ahead of new Africa.

India’s record as presented in its UPR – the Universal Periodic Review that nations have now to face in the United Nations once every five years – makes for dismal nod tragic reading in just about every segment – from gender and dalits, farmers and landless peasantry, all the way to police atrocities, custodial deaths, miscarriage of justice, and the xenophobic treatment meted out to religions memories, specially to the Muslims and Christians.

At a recent hearing in Geneva, NGOs spoke at length of the “exclusion of the most vulnerable – Dalits, adivasi communities, the rural poor – being perpetuated by the current economic growth model”. The vast majority of India’s working population are employed in the informal sector as “flexible labour”. As a result of this, the vast majority of India’s working population has been reduced to further poverty – about 77% (850 million) of the working people of India subsist on Rs. 20 per day. With no social protection, their rights are totally denied to them. The “social cost” of India’s growth was also discussed, particularly the mass displacement of millions of families due to purported “development” projects. With the displacement, traditional livelihoods are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.[Data from the NGOs document for the UPR]

Although the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Parliament of 6,000 communal riots [mostly attacks on Muslims, but also the Kandhamal atrocities against Christians] in the last decade, the Indian state has failed to acknowledge this. Or to address human rights violations, including: large-scale displacements resulting from development projects and communal violence; enforced disappearances in conflict areas, deaths through encounters. widespread use of torture and increasing attacks against human rights defenders. The curtailing of human rights in the state’s response to terrorism, and the need to interrogate this response and its impact on human rights, was also discussed in the UPR.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the international associate of the All India Christian Council, specialising in religiousfreedom, told international for a of the widespread abuses in India, and the infringements of religious freedom, particularly that of the most oppressed castes, the Dalit Christians, “which are symptomatic of the extremist nationalist agenda of Hindutva.” It noted that the issue of caste lies at the heart of many of India’s human rights problems, including prejudicial violence, discrimination, labour exploitation and religious freedom infringements. “It should be considered as the main prism through which to view and interpret these problems; and the means of addressing these problems should involve reference to caste. The hierarchical caste system continues to dominate and shape Indian society to a considerable extent, detrimentally affecting the social status, treatment and socio-economic prospects of the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who comprise the ‘lowest’ layer of the caste system and represent 16% of the total population (at least 167 million), according to official 2001 census data. Dalits often bear the brunt of religious freedom violations in India, owing largely to proponents of Hindutva.

It is not just international agencies that have noted the extremist nationalist manifestation of Hindutva, which encompasses a vision of India as a Hindu nation in which minorities must assimilate to and revere the Hindu religion, race and culture and which, in practice, seeks to preserve and defend the cultural hegemony of Hinduism at the expense of minority religions.

CSW and others note that the chief victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, sexual slavery and other forms of labour exploitation, are Dalits or members of ‘low’ castes. The implementation of laws to prevent such exploitation is extremely poor.

Freedom of religion is infringed by legislative means: specially through religious discrimination in reservation policy and through state-level ‘anti-conversion’ laws. It is also threatened by religiously-motivated violence against the minority Christian and Muslim communities, which is typically committed with impunity.

Former Delhi high court chief justice Rajindar Sachhar, author of the eponymous report on the social and economic status of India’s Muslim community, recently noted “The cynicism of political parties is shown by the facts that inspire of warning in recent state elections which show another trend to criminal nexus in elections, thus of 824 newly elected MLAs of recent elections in the States a total of 257 have criminal cases pending against them. As is well known the politicalization of criminal is a stark and dangerous reality. Even in Parliament there are nearly over 100 MPs having criminal cases pending against them. There has been demand that tainted persons should not be allowed to contest elections. I feel that the law of Lok Pal should provide that the legislator has to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour, he should be deemed to be ineligible to continue as legislator till he is proved innocent.” Justice Sachhar was commenting on the controversy raised in the formulation of the Lok Pal, or Ombudsman Bill, with government keeping the Prime Minister, the senior judiciary and Members of Parliament out of its purview while the Hazare led group not only wanted all these groups to be coved by the Bill, but also demanded that government have no say in the choice of the ombudsman.

The furore over the Bill is an indication of the rot that has sent in. But the debate also shows that the voice of the pretty well off middle class – the same group that does not want affirmative action for Dalits in education -- has swamped the voice of the men and women in the village, the bonded labour, the homeless.

What sort of a second Freedom Struggle can we envisage for the poor. Not a freedom from Direct taxes, and certainly not the freedom to profiteer in the guise of free market economy.

Aruna Roy, perhaps one of the more sober human rights activists in the country – like many others, she too was a member of the elite Indian Administrative service, but resigned long before she would have become entitled to a pension – came up with some telling comments in recent reflection. “We have warned that in its current form, the Lokpal could become a Frankenstein Monster, concentrating power in a few, new, hands. Our key argument is over democracy itself. You know how easily one can become almost fascist in this country under its democratic overlay. To prevent that, one has to make sure he parliamentary process is strengthened, cleansed. But if you bypass the institution, you create very serious worries. Tomorrow, if three lakh RSS workers want a joint committee to look at changing the Constitution to make India into a theocratic state, will there be space for the/”

There is absolutely no question but that India needs reforms. Sensible economic reforms that put food into the mouth of babes and ensure cash transfers to the poor and the marginalised for all sorts of things, from education to clothing and a roof.

There must me a multiple pronged attack on corruption – the institutionalised payolas of the ministries and the nexus between the tycoon and the minister as exposed in the 2G scam have to be stopped. So also the corruption in the educational sector, and even in the private sector. It is common knowledge that in the entire private sector, including schools and colleges run by famous groups, the employees including teachers sign one certain amount as salary and get a substantially lesser one. There must be an end to the corruption which sends a soldier to the Siachin Glacier clad in ill suited uniform, and an end to the racket in coffins in which some of these soldiers return home.

Above all there must en end to the corruption – the bribe giving and the bribe taking – which impinges on the common man back in the village, in the small town, over every facet of life – from the making of a ration card to the money that comes from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme.

It needs a commitment and a political will to contain this corruption. It can surely be done. That is the sort of revolution that can bring a second Independence. Independence from the tyranny of corruption and the moral and physical poverty it breeds.
[end]

Hinduttva poisoning young minds globally

2011-07-31T04:17:00.001-07:00

Any lessons from Norway on internal threat from xenophobic fanaticism of the Majority?

JOHN DAYAL

‎"The primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamo-fascism" -- that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning -- but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority,” Prof Dilip Simeon wrote to me in a message on my Facebook profile. This was after I wrote that zealots and terrorists of all sorts live in a zone where it becomes difficult to tell them apart. Dilip is a younger contemporary from our days at St Stephen’s college. He faced a murderous assault in Ramjas College, Delhi, where he taught, and emerged as a major human rights voice after the anti Sikh violence in Delhi in 1984.

The Norway massacre of July 2011 is indeed Fascism with thick overlays of Racism and Xenophobia.
Islamophobia was common on the World Wide Web. So was Islamic intolerance of Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist and Sikh minorities in West and South Asia.

Islamic terror is well documented, more so since the bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York and the rise of Al Qaida. Despite Osama bin Laden’s assassination, it remains under the hawks-eye of the US and West Europe intelligence, who share their information on a real-time basis. It is also well documented in India where not only government agencies but also the common people – driven by the ceaseless propaganda by the Bharatiya Janata party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, lapped up eagerly by our Hindi and English language TV Channels -- keep track of all things “suspicious” in their neighborhood.

Analysis of majority terrorism have, for now, overwhelmed WWW portals in the wake of the Norway bombing-and-massacre by Christian gunman and bomber Anders Behring Breivik who singlehandedly killed 76 youth in his twin acts of violence. There is some emerging evidence that the killer, a drug user, may have himself largely used the Internet to keep abreast of, if not actually in personal touch with, political allies as far away as in the United Kingdom. He was also in touch with the WebPages, if not some webmasters, of the Sangh Parivar in India. In another chilling parallel, he too used large quantities of phosphorous and nitrogenous fertilizers in his car bomb, the same ingredients used by the perpetrators on the recent serial bombings in Mumbai, and in earlier bombings traced both to Islamic and Sangh groups.

This reporter has some experience of Xenophobia, both at the academic level and at personal level when he was living abroad as a journalist in the late 1980s, and saw Britani’s skinheads wreck havoc on lonely passers on the underground railways late at night both in London and in Germany, or desecrate Jewish graveyards. Recent visits show that neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism remains an issue in West Europe. Even in Poland, a devout Catholic country, the authorities are looking deeply at signs of emerging anti-Semitism and fascist youth groups who in a unified Europe can travel across borders with ease. The fact that Poland is where the Nazi Germans set up the notorious mass murder camps of Auschwitz makes the task of containing these groups so much more urgent. Poland, current President of the European Union, is however, taking transparent measures to check this political trend.

However, some other countries have apparently started going the xenophobic way in the wake of the economic meltdown, particularly in Germany, Ireland, even Greece, Spain and Portugal. At a recent international seminar in Holland, this correspondent came face to face with how governmetns can take wrong decisions when pressured by populist moves from opposition or ruling political groups and their cohorts in the masses. Holland itself has a not very clean image on racial issues despite the large number of descendants of migrants from former African and Indonesian Dutch colonies. But it is now monitoring, in a scientific way, hate speeches and hate documents. The lawmakers are also waking up to face right wing politicians who work on the people’s insecurities, economic or personal. Demanding cultural assimilation, specially from Muslim migrants, but also for instance from Sikhs, is the tip of the iceberg. Majoritarian xenophobia is dangerous, and Europe has long been Islamophobic, one can all the way back to the first Crusades to wrest Christian Holy Lands from Muslim control.

The examples that were cited from Ireland however took the xenophobic cake. Ireland – south or Republic of Ireland – has had good relations with India for more than a century, sharing an anti-colonial and anti imperialist history opposing British domination. Ireland also has a wonderful history of trade Unions. Former Indian President VV Giri was a respected trade unionist in Ireland before he came back to Indian politics. Irish freedom fighters borrowed the weapon of the peaceful hunger strike from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and many Irish youth dies in jail while on fasts-unto-death. Irish men and women themselves suffered anti-Celtic racism when they came down to England looking for work.

And yet, Ireland is now in the midst of installing a system to stop “birthing tourism”. Ireland has a policy like some other countries, which grant automatic citizenship to a child born in the land. Apparently, leveraging this law, many pregnant women from poorer countries would take a flight to Ireland in the last month of their pregnancy, deliver a child in Ireland, and then stay back as a family of the newborn “citizen of Ireland”. Efforts are now on to plug this “loophole”. Birth Tourism will be soon a memory. {For Indian Catholics, it may be salutary to remember that Ireland has hit out sharply at the Vatican, attacking the Pope on issues of protecting children from sexual violence.

What should ring alarm bells in New Delhi, indeed in the whole of India, is the real or make-believe environment in which the Norwegian young man of the unpronounceable name reached his delusional but fatal conclusions. His personal manifesto hails Hindutva, noting that the goals of the Sanatana Dharma nationalists were identical to Justiciar Knights, a future group, and therefore it could be key ally in a global struggle to bring down democratic regimes across the world. That future campaign would wage a campaign that will graduate from acts of terrorism to a global war involving weapons of mass destruction — aimed at bringing down the “cultural Marxist” order. Breivik acquired some 8,000 e-mail addresses of “cultural conservatives” not just across Europe but North America, Australia, South Africa, Armenia, Israel, and India – ensuring scrutiny of anti-Muslim groups far beyond Europe.

Western media noted that India figured in a “remarkable” 102 pages of the 1,518-page manifesto. “Hindu nationalists are suffering from the same persecution by the Indian cultural Marxists as their European cousins,” he noted, condemning the Dr Manmohan Singh government of “appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low caste Hindus with lies and fear, alongside Communists who want total destruction of the Hindu faith and culture.”

An interesting sweep, as he goes on to applaud groups who “do not tolerate the current injustice and often riot and attack Muslims when things get out of control.” His advice is that the Indian groups “instead of attacking the Muslims, should target the category A and B traitors in India and consolidate military cells and actively seek the overthrow of the cultural Marxist government. It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical.” Organisations figuring in that deadly manifesto include the BJP, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They will have some explaining to do as the manifesto pledges military support “to the nationalists in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India.”

Americans newspaper Christian Science Monitor’s Delhi based columnist Anders Behring notes that in the case of India, “there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims.” Behrings records that Human rights activists have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, “and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue.”

The Hindu’s correspondent Praveen Swami, derided often for his apparent toeing of the line of the Indian Intelligence Bureau in his reportage, strikes a similar note saying “Like Europe’s mainstream right-wing parties, the BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right – but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful. Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism,” he adds.

Human rights activists second the view that there are important lessons for India in the murderous violence in Norway: lessons it can ignore only at risk to its own survival.

It was left not to an Indian newspaper but to the Christian Science Monitor to recall that former East Delhi‘s BJP Member of Parliament Baikunth Lal Sharma ‘Prem' held a secret meeting with key members of a terrorist group responsible for a nationwide bombing campaign targeting Muslims. He has been quoted as saying “It has been a year since I sent some three lakh letters, distributed 20,000 maps of Akhand Bharat but these Brahmins and Banias have not done anything and neither will they do anything. It is not that physical power is the only way to make a difference, but to awaken people mentally, I believe that you have to set fire to society.”

In recent weeks, we have seen a sharp rhetoric coming from the BJP opposing the drat Communal and Targetted Violence Prevention Bill written by the civil society members of the National Advisory Council of the government of India. The BJP rhetoric seeks to rouse the common Hindu population by falsely trying to create ear among them from religious minorities. The BJP and RSS leadership, which targets individual activists as much as the NAC as a body, says the Bill crimeless the Hindu community while empowering the Muslims and Christians. This is a blatant lie. The draft bill – which has not yet been presented to the Union Cabinet and is still far away from the final shape that will be visible when it comes up before the Rajya Sabha -- merely ensures that a government response is triggered at the first indication of communal violence, and that the authorities are held responsible because it is their lethargy and complicity that has aggravated riots in the past.

Not surprisingly, mainstream political parties, among them the Congress, the Marxists and the socialist or Dravidian parties, have so far not challenged the BJP rhetoric. No senior leader has come before the media to denounce this blatant effort to whip up passions.

It has been left to the two persons outside the official power structure – Mani Shankar Aiyar and former Madhya Pradesh Chief minister Digvijay Singh – to come down to brass tacks and identify the Sangh Parivar for threatening Indian secularism and unity, and for itself being a purveyor of terror, including terror bombings.
Digvijay Singh is on record for saying repeatedly that bombings take place when the BJP is “politically cornered over something or the other. The timing of the bomb blasts is quite uncanny. Why does it always happen when the BJP is in trouble? That needs investigation”

Digvijay, an archetypal politician, speaks of the coincidences. “When the Tehelka issue was to be discussed in Parliament, the House was adjourned for three days. Then when the expose was to be discussed, the Parliament attack took place. When the Godhra incident took place, Congress was doing exceedingly well in the local body elections and Narendra Modi had won by only 6,000 votes as a chief minister and that too with great difficulty. During the recent Karnataka election, there was a bomb blast in Hubli on the very first day of polling. Similarly, two days before the polling in the second phase in Karnataka elections, there was a bomb blast in Jaipur. It really needs an investigation.”

Whatever investigations have taken place have unearthed a pretty large and well oiled ring whose nodes and modules involve Army officers, Sadhus and Sadhvi and men at the top of the RSS, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and other groups. The national Intelligence Agency’s charge sheets in court make for chilling reading.
Digvijay Singh adds to the charge sheets by way of background, ”In 1992 there was a bomb blast in the VHP office in Madhya Pradesh, where one VHP member died and two were injured while making bombs. Then in 2002, there was a bomb blast in a temple in Mhow. When the police arrested the VHP activists after investigation, they confessed that they were even given training to manufacture bombs. I have a videocassette of that confession. Again, in 2006, in Nanded, there was a bomb blast in the house of a RSS activist where two RSS activists died. After that in March 2008, there were bomb blasts at two places in Tamil Nadu. Then too VHP activists were arrested by the Tamil Nadu police who confessed that they were involved. And how did the Gujarat police suddenly find eighteen bombs planted on trees in Surat. RSS, VHP activists have been caught making bombs, material for preparing bombs have been found at their office and there are three-four clear cases where they have been arrested and a case has been registered. Why is not anyone looking into this?

It remains a moot question why there has not been a real investigation into rightwing majority extremism in India. Intelligence agencies are looking to the political leadership to show some willpower in decision-making. The central government is so beset with its own problems of shrugging off charges of corruption against half the Union cabinet –a crisis that also afflicts the BJP in Karnataka and other states – it has little energy and less time to devote to deeper threats to the Indian Union.

As far as the Church is concerned, it may support media-driven anti corruption campaigns, but is far too timid to either research or speak about issues as grave as racism, xenophobia, religious fundamentalism, and majority communalism.

Enemies and Friends -- sometimes hard to tell them apart

2011-07-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

Political myopia, fascist bigotry and lunacy
Or, How Christians can be hurt as much by shortsighted friends as by daft enemies
JOHN DAYAL
An absolutely hate-filled and lunatic analysis of terrorism by Janata Dal leader and lawyer Subramanian Swamy, and a well meaning but myopic policy paper by the redoubtable former IAS officer and National Advisory Council member Harsh Mander show how minorities in general, and micro minorities in particular, can face political and developmental disenfranchisement at the hands of foes and friends.
Writing a column on Terrorism in the Mumbai edition of the DNA daily newspaper, Swami says Hindus cannot accept to be killed in a “halal fashion”, continuously bleeding every day till the nation finally collapses. Painting a scary scenario to hold readers’ attention, he says, “There will be no doubt about Islamic terror after 2012” when he expects a Taliban takeover in Pakistan and the Americans to flee Afghanistan. “Then, Islam will confront Hinduism to complete unfinished business.
The lawyer, who has so far made the Congress and Sonia Gandhi his main targets, says the Hindu leadership has not united the people against the victimisation of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram. “If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies. Muslims of India, he says, are being programmed by a” slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus.”
“Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated. If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat committed Hindu”, he says. Swamy forgets that in Kashmir, Mumbai and Gujarat, a very large number of people killed in terror actions have been Muslims, as also the occasional Sikhs and Christians.
For Swamy, what is required is a “collective mindset as Hindus.”If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan. Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors were Hindus. Others, who refuse to acknowledge this, or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration, can remain in India but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).”
Swamy’s arguments take the discourse back to Guru Golwalkar, Savarkar and the other founders of the RSS and thier theology of a Brihat Bharat in which there would be no place for followers of the so-called non-Indic religions, unless they agreed to a second class, vote-less position. Living in the dream world of a Larger India, Swami says “however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively.”
His other remedies are ones repeated by the RSS every week in the Organiser and the Panchjanya, their official organs: “remove article 370 on Kashmir,”, “clear the mosques adjacent to Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites, device a Uniform Civil Code, rename India as a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus, name the land as Hindustan, stop attempts to “change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning,” and of course, “enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion , re-conversion will not be banned.”. [ http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/comment_analysis-how-to-wipe-out-islamic-terror_1566203-all]
Swamy’s last sentence gives away his game again. It is not just Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism he is against. Many a Muslim, and most Indian Muslim organisations, has denounced terrorism and fundamtnlaism. Swamy is against all non-Hindu minorities. He is against Churches and pastors preaching there, he confesses, as much as he opposes the Constitutional freedom to convert to another religion. All conversions, he stresses more than once, can only be to Hinduism. Those who do not know Swamy’s mindset may feel surprised at the outburst of the former Union Commerce Minister, because he is married to a Parsi lawyer, and one of his daughters is married to a Muslim.
Unlike Swamy, Harsh Mander positively loves the religious minorities. The Indian Administrative Service officer was working for Action Aid on a sabbatical when he resigned from government service denouncing the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Since then, he has done wonderful work to ensure justice for the victims, himself rising to be made a member of the National Advisory Council headed by United Progressive Alliance chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi. In the NAC, Mander is in charge of issues concerning religious minorities, specially the Communal and Targetted Violence Prevention Bill, which is now nearing completion, and the Food Guarantee Bill, which has been completed. A major input in the Communal Violence prevention bill is the recognition that it is not just Muslims who are victims of such actions, but also Christians, and therefore the Bill has provisions to help Christian victims.
It is therefore frightening, no less, to read a long report written by Mander on why government’s affirmative action must be openly targetted only at Muslims. Christians would be right in presuming that Mander does not want the grants diluted by being passed on to the Christians or the Buddhists.
As reported in the Times of India of 21 July 2011, Mender’s Centre for Equity Studies prepared report dubs the Centre's minority welfare schemes and the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme as non-starters, blaming government's timidity in declaring the schemes as Muslim-oriented for fear of opposition campaign of minority appeasement. “The diffidence on the Muslim-word led to schemes being dubbed as "minority" or "area based", thereby diluting targeted community approach. “
He asks the government to openly resolve to improve the lot of Muslims by making a dedicated 14 per cent budgetary allocation for the Muslim community on the lines of sub-plans for SCs and STs. With the findings raising an alarm, NAC has sought a "detailed response" from the minority affairs ministry on the study.
Mander’s r report questions the efficacy of schemes launched with fanfare for amelioration of minorities — in education, self-employment and infrastructure among others. He dismisses UPA's minority outreach as tokenism. The Ministry for Minority Affairs is the target. Mander says it lacks institutional and political authority to ensure compliance of its objectives from other arms of government. He says the anxiety over appeasement charge led to Multi-Sector Development Programme for Muslims morph into one for "minorities" and ultimately to an "area-scheme" — aiming to improve infrastructure in 90 districts with over 25% Muslims.
Mander’s Centre for Equity Studies, which publishes his report, terms the allocations for minorities as small — 19 per cent of population got 5 per cent budgetary allocation, with per capita allocation of a mere Rs 797. It recommended that the PM’s 15-point programme implemented by various ministries be turned into an independent minority sub-plan having earmarked funds in each ministry and monitors to check their use.
While Subramanian Swamy’s rantings are easily dismissed as the delusional outpourings of a demented Hindutva fundamentalist, Mander’s report seems to hit at the very basis of constitutional guarantees to “all” religious minorities, and may aggravate and empower the Hindutva forces.
Not many know that the very formation of the Ministry of Minority affairs by the UPA in 2006 two years after it came to power after the rule of the BJP-dominated NDA has been challenged by anti-minority forces.
There have been several court cases against the ministry, challenging its very existence. One argument, facile as it may be, is of course that why are separate ministries, Plan and budget components and other affirmative action required at all when the Constitution guarantees every citizen equal rights and equal protection. Why then, it is argued, should we have special provisions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, for instance, or for women in terms of reservations, and certainly whey for religious minorities when the nation is secular and the movement holds all religions in equal respect. This argument flies in the face of the fact that three thousand years of a religion-sponsored hierarchy has created situations which have kept Dalits and Tribals, even women, and certainly several religious groups outside the pail of development, denying them equity in national progress.
It, perhaps, is not widely known that that Ministry has been made party in Writ Petition no. SCANO No. 2245/2008 of Vijay Harish Chandra Patel in the High Court of Gujarat, Writ Petition (PIL) 84 of 2008 of S. G. Punalekar in the High Court of Bombay and Writ Petition no. (298/08 and WPC No. 9569 of 207) in Delhi High Court.
One Vijay Harish Chandra Patel challenged the Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme and filed a public interest litigation challenging the steps taken by the Union of India and the Planning Commission to utilize the national resources in favour of a particular minority community, which according to the petitioner is discriminatory, arbitrary and violative of various constitutional provisions.
Chief Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan ruled that “funds used to minimize inequalities among minority Communities by adopting various social and welfare activities like public safety, health, slum development, improving the deficiencies in civic amenities, economic opportunities, improving standard of education, skills and entrepreneurship development, employment opportunities, eradication of poverty etc., would no way violate the constitutional principles of equality or affect any of the fundamental rights guaranteed to the members of other communities.”
S. G. Punalekar in the High Court of Bombay also challenged the scholarship schemes of the Ministry of Minority Affairs including PM’s New 15 Point Programme for the welfare of minorities in the public interest as violative of Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India. The High court recently dismissed this PIL.
In Delhi, the petitioners said that Muslims of India could not be treated as minority community that the treatment of Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and Muslims as a “minority” is irrational from a constitutional point of view. The High court is yet to pass a judgment on this PIL.
Sources in the Union government say the Ministry of Minority Affairs has been able to win some cases and sustain their argument because of the approach adopted of not focusing on any particular minority but on all the identified minorities and that the disadvantaged and economically deprived amongst them.
Harsh Mander’s report denies this well settled and sound government policy.
The All India Christian Council and the All India Catholic Union have been struggling with the Union government to set up a Justice Sachchar Commission to assess the economic and development infirmity in the Christian community, especially among the Tribals and the Dalits, the boatmen, fishermen, landless labour and other deprived communities. This campaign started when the government first set up the Justice Sachchar committee after decades of campaigning and advocacy by Muslims groups. The data in the Sachhar committee report has greatly strengthened the Muslim cause and has given a tool to NGOs and community leaderships to strengthen the struggle for their rights in the development pie.
Unfortunately, the government has not given heed to the Christian demand, partly because the Church leadership has not been as vocal in its interaction with the government, remaining satisfied with minor crumbs.
If the government were to listen to the Mander report, it would entirely undo whatever little headway has been made towards the empowerment of the poor in the Christian community through the advocacy in the Working Group on Minorities of the Planning Commission now involved with the 12th Five Year Plan Document. A minority sub plan, which Mander suggests, will be feasible only if it covers all minorities and is not confined just to the Muslim community. Our argument in the working committee has been that the major budgetary and plan allocations for minorities have not percolated to the Christian community, whatever be the reason, and whether the fault lies with the government or with the church leadership.
Another danger if the government were to accept the Mander recommendations is the threat to secular unity, and giving additional ammunition to people like Subramaniam Swamy. At present, the dialogue between Christians and other minorities is very little. The formal dialogue is limited to casual and occasional contact by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and its equivalent federations in the protestant churches meeting once or twice a year with sundry Maulanas and Granthis, RK Mission, the Bahais and the Brahmkumaris for some lip service to common issues of peace and brotherly love. There never has been a serious political dialogue between minorities on issues of development and demands to the Union and State governmetns.
The result has been that Christians have had to chalk their own destiny or accept whatever little may come out of, on a pro rata basis, from government’s plans for the major minority community, the Muslims. Christians have therefore felt discriminated and isolated, feeling that Muslims have taken away all the development booty earmarked in the Budgets. This in a way creates a distance between Muslims and Christians and shatters whatever element o unity could be created.
The government would do extreme damage to micro minorities such as Christians if it goes by the Mander thesis, without making adequate provisions on a pro rata basis for the uplift of the Christian community. The government must acknowledged that islands of gross underdevelopment occur in all religious minorities, and specially in Christianity where the Dalit Christians and other groups are not even officially acknowledged, and millions of believers are not even counted in the Census as Christians. Their needs have to be addressed. Therefore an “inclusive” thesis, which will ultimately save the government from the charge of “appeasement” or “vote bank politics”

A crore of Christian youth may get good education at government expense if the Church wakes up

2011-07-19T01:12:00.000-07:00

More than Rupees 3,500 crores to be had in scholarships and assistance

JOHN DAYAL

More than Rupees 3,500 crore has to be had from the government just for the education of Christian children from primary to doctorate and foreign studies in the next six years – if only the Church and laity wake up and help. Ballpark estimates say almost a crore of boys and girls of economically disadvantaged rural and urban families from the pre-primary to PhDs, engineering, medical and professional courses students could be assisted.

The money is in the government’s Plan budgets. And this is apart from the money that is spent on minority-concentrated districts – and hopefully block level units in the future – by various ministries such as those of Social Welfare, rural development and even of water supply for the befit of the minorities after the Justice Rajender Sachchar committee excavated the bitter fact that these areas continued to suffer from lack of development even when compared to “general” districts in the backwards group.

According to the data available with the Planning Commission’s Working group on Minorities, the Budget provisions under the ongoing Five year Plan for the period 2010 is Rupees 2,600 crores, making a total of Rs 7,000 crores for the 11th Plan. For the 12th Plan now under preparation, a massive sum of Rs 15,000 crore is envisaged for scholarship and other schemes under the Ministry of Minorities Affairs. This is for all minorities to be distributed on a pro rata basis. The Christian community is about a fifth the size of the Muslim community according to official records. Their share of the entire amount is 20 per cent, a whopping figure. Rule of thumb statistics put the number of Christian students at one crore, including Tribals who continue to get benefits under the Scheduled Tribes quotas.

This figure does not include Dalit Christians who are neither counted a Scheduled Caste, nor as Christian unless they so register themselves. In starts such as Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Naidu, even in Kerala and Maharashtra, many want to be listed as Hindus so that they can get the Scheduled caste benefits denied to them so cruelly under the Presidential order of 1950. [The case has been before the Supreme Court for a number of years, and it is not clear when there will be a ruling on it.]

The government releases these funds under several schemes, including the Maulana Azad Foundation, free coaching and allied schemes, equity to the National Minorities Development Fund, Research and monitoring studies, grants in aid to state governmetns, schemes for leadership development among young women, interest free subsidy on academic bank loans for studies abroad in addition to separate funds for centrally sponsored scholarship schemes.

The leadership of the Muslim community ahs woken up this fact. Deeply focused and committed NGOs have been set up to ensure that every student who qualifies for the merit cum means and other scholarships gets the benefit and is not left to the mercy of fate. Muslim NGOs and religious leadership, according to their statements, may have been successful in ensuring that over 80 lakh students have scholarships this year, specially in states such as Andhra, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh with large Muslim populations, because of the initiative taken by the community leadership.

There is unfortunately a hiatus in the mass communication of such scholarships despite the claims of the central and state governments. An additional problem is the red tape, an uncaring state bureaucracy, and the lack of cooperation from both private second and public sector banking institutions. The forms have to be taken from local education officers, or downloaded from the internet website of the government, not an easy task in rural areas or where the 2G and 3G networks do not exist, and internet cafes are continuously harried by the police looking for “suspects”. Once the forms are procured and distributed, they have to be correctly filled up, the signatures of uncooperative principals appended to them, income certificates wrested out of empowers of the parents – and difficult if the family in unemployed – various other certificates received, and then the entire bunch uploaded to the department’s website, with the papers submitted to the appropriate authority.

Muslim grassroots experience has shown that this is an impossible task for a child or a parent to do unless expert assistance is available. This is where the special NGOs and volunteers have entered the scene to help the students. The results have been miraculous.

The same NGOs are now pressing on the Governmnt through the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Planning commission that at least 6 crore Muslim students be given scholarships in the 12th Five year Plan. They have assured the government that they would be able to assist as many students of the community across India to avail of the scholarships. The NGOs have also urged the authorities to streamline the scholarship process, specially as the students rise to higher classes in their institutions to ensure that scholarships are available for the entire course and not just for one year. This, they feel, will encourage the students to complete their studies instead of dropping out if the scholarship is terminated because they do not get a 50 per cent score in some year.

Compare this with the Christian situation. It to the best of this writer’s knowledge, no catholic or protestant church group, nor any lay association, has set up such a extensive and committed support infrastructure to assist its student community. The catholic Bishops Conference or its constituents in the Latin, Syro Malabar and Syro Malankara Rites, the National Council of Churches in India representing almost 30 Protestant churches and the Evangelical Fellowship of India do not have the institutions to do this work. This has been left to the Dioceses or individual regional churches. But even in their sectarian – denominational – way, they are almost entirely ineffective.

In almost every state, when the Bishops of the dioceses are informed of the availability of the scholarships, all that they do is to ask Parish priests to announce it after Mass one day. School principals put the scholarship details on the notice board.

The lay organisations, wherever they exist have not even done this, though some of them offer pitifully small scholarships for the poor of the parish by way of charity.

The result of course is that most students are out of the coverage of these schemes, both for the pre Matric classes and in higher education.

A large chunk of the money has lapsed. And there is pitifully little database for advocacy groups to work with the Planning Commission’s Working Group of Minorities drafting the Minorities component of the Plan. Christian leadership has done almost no research on how much of the government’s scholarships have been actually used countrywide. The Muslim monitoring of the government schemes has to be seen to be believed. After the Sachchar commission report, the country’s largest minority has understood that information is power, and an important tool in influencing the making of government policy. The church leadership is yet to understand this.

The minorities are of course demanding that their quota be built into all schemes as a special component, much on the lines of the Scheduled caste ad Scheduled Tribes quotas that are constitutionally built into all government plan spending. It is a moot question that the government will accept this demand, beset as it is by charges from the Bharatiya Janata party that it is appeasing minorities in general and the Muslim community in particular. The phrase “vote bank politics” has become a stick in the hands of the Hindutva forces to beat the government and force it to withdraw from pr-active measures for the amelioration of the poor of the minorities, who are doubly disadvantaged. Their women and the Dalit components have thier future blinded three-fold.

The situation will be corrected once the community becomes pro-active, and its leadership assumes

Christian reponse to draft bill on preventing communal violence

2011-06-11T23:23:00.000-07:00

Christian community issues with National Advisory Council Draft Bill on ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011

The following note was endorsed at a National Consultations of Christian Leaders on Saturday, 11th June 2011, presided over by the Archbishop of Delhi, His Grace Vincent M Concessao, and attended by Bishops, Church leaders from the CBCI, NCCI, CNI, EFI, aicc, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, NGOs and lawyers and Scholars from across India endorsed the following response and commentary on the National Advisory Council Draft Bill on ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011. Supreme Court advocate and Human Rights activist Ms Vrinda Grover facilitated the Consultations, held at the India International Centre, and hosted by the All India Christian Council.

This note articulates major issues of agreement with the NAC draft, which is a great improvement on the 2005 Bill now in the Rajya Sabha, but also some points of serious disagreement. It also answers the questioned in some political quarters as to why the law on Communal Violence must specifically address protection of religious minorities.

Dr John Dayal, Advocate Sister Mary Scaria and Advocate P I Jose were members of the NAC working group. Of them, Adv P I José was on the drafting committee and Dr Dayal and Sister Mary on the advisory Committee. At all stages of the year long discussions we had filed our points of view, suggestions and objections in writing to the NAC. We worked in the backdrop of the anti Christian violence ion Kandhamal in 2007-2008, in Gujarat and Karnataka and in 12 other states in the last ten years. These states were ruled by the BJP, the Congress and by various regional parties.

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The need for a new legislative mechanism, to deal with communal violence targeting religious minorities, was confirmed by the experience of the 1983 Nellie killings in Assam, anti Sikh massacre of 1984, the genocidal pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 among others. The abdication of all preventive measures, absence of protection for the lives and properties of the religious minorities and the absolute impunity thereafter for these crimes characterised each violent assault.

State records, such as Commission of Inquiry reports, of the 1961 Jabalpur riots, the Madon Commission report of Bhiwandi riots in 1970, the report into the Bhagalpore riots of 1989 and the Srikrishna Commission report on Bombay riots of 1992-1993, all documented that, prior to, during and post the violent attacks on religious minorities, state complicity and institutional bias was evident among different public authorities and state officials. Time after time the protection of minorities was highlighted as an issue of concern and this placed centre stage the need for legal and other measures to be taken to ensure protection of religious minorities.

Some of the issues that emerged from the narratives of these experiences reveal acts of omission and commission by officers of the state and others, who wield the power of the state. It was found time and again that violence could have been controlled or stopped if there had been willingness to act on behalf of the state. The problem of state complicity and impunity are recurring themes in all these episodes.

People impacted by communal violence do span all communities. However studies and data clearly indicate, that religious minorities suffer greater harm and loss, and find less protection from the law, due to institutional bias in the performance of statutory duties. This has been a serious lacunae that has for some decades required to be addressed.

The Constitutional promise of equality before the law, as embodied in Article 14, requires us to make rational discrimination in our treatment of problems that come before us. The mounting evidence in the decades past, show that the legal protection secured for religious minorities has declined, gravely infringing their enjoyment of the right to life and other fundamental rights, as citizens. This calls for a corrective measure in the exercise of state power and actions of state agencies, to restore equality in the working of the law. This explains why a special legislation for religious minorities is being proposed. The outcry by the BJP against a law for protecting the rights of religious minorities is neither legally nor factually tenable. In so far as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are concerned the State under Article 15(4) Constitution can make laws for their protection.

Campaign for a CV law initiated by civil society activists
The campaign, for a law to protect religious minorities and punish the sponsors, abettors and perpetrators of communal and targeted violence, was initiated by civil society groups and activists. (This legislation is commonly referred to as the CV Bill). The CV Bill placed before Parliament by the UPA Government in 2005, was rejected outright by civil society. Through 2 National Consultations, the key elements and a draft outline of the law was prepared, drawing upon experience, insights and discussions with victim survivors, activists and legal and other experts.

There was unanimity that a new law was required to respect and protect the rights of religious minorities Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, cognizant of the contours of communal and targeted violence. The primary focus of such a law, it was agreed, would be making those exercising state authority and power accountable to the law; through the setting out of offences by public officials and those with the power to protect persons and communities affected by communal and targeted violence; hold the superior functionaries culpable; dilute the shield of impunity. Enabling provisions to allow the victim/ witness to access the criminal justice system would be incorporated, mindful that fair trial standards and rights of the accused are respected.

The new law would also introduce the rights of all affected persons to reparation from the State. From the analysis of communal and targeted violence, it was clear to the activists that the new legislation should not in any way enhance the arsenal of State power. A draft outline of the CV Bill was submitted by civil society activists to the Hon’ble Law Minister, in May 2010.

In July 2010 the NAC Working Group on the Communal Violence Bill set up an Advisory Group and Drafting Committee, to prepare a draft legislation on the subject. The Draft ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, prepared by NAC and on which comments are invited, has some disturbing features which we believe are contrary to the purpose and objectives of such a law. It is a cause of serious concern for all of us that a Bill which contains regressive and draconian principles, has been adopted by the NAC and proposed as its draft CV Bill.

The pernicious idea of “disturbed area” was proposed in the Government CV Bill of 2005. Well aware that the accumulation of extraordinary powers in the hands of state authorities leads to gross violations of human rights, as witnessed in Punjab, Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir, civil society contested any use of the mechanism of disturbed area on the pretext of providing protection to victims. The Key Elements of the CV Bill as enumerated on the NAC website also state that the “Basic framework of law must not rest on declaration of “disturbed areas””. This has been the consistent position through the discussions on the making of the law.

The NAC draft Bill however in Clause 20 reintroduces the idea of “internal disturbance” and states that organized communal and targeted violence shall constitute “internal disturbance” within the meaning of Article 355 of the Constitution, and empowers the Centre to take such measures as required. During the drafting process it was suggested to the NAC that reliance for Entry point of the law should be on the latter part of Article 355, “to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.

The inclusion of any form of “ disturbed areas” device to concentrate power in the hands of certain government functionaries is not acceptable. Clause 20 also attempts to reconfigure the federal equation between the Centre and State, a move that is ill advised and counterproductive. It would indeed be short sighted of civil society to support any provisions that further legitimise use of draconian measures by the state against the citizenry.

Central to the drafting of a new CV Bill is a definition that describes what constitutes ‘’communal and targeted violence”. Civil society groups had through public consultations arrived at a working definition in May 2010, and forwarded the same to the Law Minister. The NAC Draft CV Bill, proposes in Clause 3(c) “communal and targeted violence means and includes any act or series of acts, whether spontaneous or planned, resulting in injury or harm to the person and or property, knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of any group, which destroys the secular fabric of the nation.” This definition is central to the Bill, and all offences and rights of victims to justice and reparation will ensue only if the action warrants description as a communal and targeted violence. It is arguable, if any event of violence in post independent India, whether against religious minorities or Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, can be said have destroyed the secular fabric of India.

The aim of the civil society campaign for a CV Bill is to provide statutory protection against all and each act of communal and targeted violence. The NAC draft Bill has raised the threshold so high that no act of communal and targeted violence against Dalits, Scheduled Tribes or religious minorities would come within the ambit of the CV Bill. This preliminary definition, by shifting its focus away from affected people, whose security, equality and citizenship are jeopardized by communal and targeted violence or organized communal and targeted violence, has ousted the most vulnerable from its statutory protection, rendering this Bill toothless and meaningless.

One main thrust of this legislation is to counter impunity by securing accountability from all persons exercising State power, for acts of omission and commission, relating to communal and targeted violence. This requires the acknowledgment of certain offences in the CV Bill. At the same time since this Bill deals with offences it is important to define them sharply and clearly. The NAC Bill falters on both these counts. It fails to incorporate crimes such as disappearances, although India is already a signatory to the Convention Against Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances and has in its recent pledge before the Human Rights Council at the UN, stated that it would work towards ratification of the Convention.

The definition of Torture in Clause 12 of the NAC draft Bill falls short of the definition proposed by the Rajya Sabha Select Committee on the Prevention of Torture Bill. Definition of command or superior responsibility in Clauses 14-15 as well as offences by public servants in Clause 13, which extend criminal liability to those who mastermind, sponsor and allow communal and targeted violence, lack legal certainty and precision. Inclusion of phrases such as ‘impartial’, ‘fairness’, ‘respectful’ or ‘dignity’, do not secure any rights for the victims nor do they place any legal obligation on duty bearers. For impunity to be reined in, particularly at the top echelons of political and administrative authority, much more purposeful drafting is required.

The NAC draft Bill makes a half-hearted attempt to address the difficult circumstances in which victims of communal and targeted violence find themselves in the aftermath of an attack. Clause 61 of this Bill, recognizes the need to assist displaced victims to initiate legal proceedings. However it is baffling why the police officer visiting the relief camp, “will record statements and conduct an inquiry into the circumstances and cause of each individual being displaced and put in a relief camp”. Would the cause of justice not be better served if the police officer records statements of victims with respect to commission of cognizable offences, dispatch such statements to be registered as FIR and investigated by the Police Station of competent jurisdiction. Similarly Clause 64 (1) is misconceived, as it makes it compulsory for the statement of victim- informant to be recorded by a Magistrate on oath. This does not recognize the situation in which victims find themselves after a communal and targeted assault and will only heighten their vulnerability, particularly in light of the scant protection offered to witnesses by this Bill. Clause 64 (4), which permits a victim or witness to submit any statement or material directly to the Designated Court and the same shall form part of the chargesheet is contrary to all norms of fair trial standards and deserves deletion.

For victims and witnesses of communal and targeted violence to access justice, a few enabling provisions are required. The NAC Bill fails to draw upon the advances made in the jurisprudence and practices of victim and witness protection and restricts victim protection only to ‘the period of investigation and trial’ (refer to Clauses 86-87). The NAC draft Bill places no obligation on the State to protect witnesses after they depose against the socially and politically powerful. This Bill claims to offer protection during trial by keeping the identity of the witnesses confidential. However Clause 88 of the NAC draft Bill makes it mandatory for all court proceedings under this law to be video recorded and a copy of this recording to be given to the accused person among others. While apparently enhancing transparency, there is a serious apprehension that in the short term and long run, these video recorded proceedings may increase the vulnerability of the victim/witnesses.

Further to withstand legal scrutiny, the deviation from, the Criminal Procedure Code and the law of evidence in this legislation, must be minimal. It is extremely unfortunate that the NAC draft Bill draws upon provisions found in draconian laws such as MCOCA and earlier in TADA and POTA, to modify criminal procedure. Illustrative of this is Clause 82, which authorises attachment of property of the accused at the stage of charge, without the usual guidance that such property should be linked to the offence.

Again Clause 85, increases the period of detention of the accused and places a heavier burden on the accused for securing bail. Similarly Clause 67, of this Bill gives the state and central government the power to intercept telephonic communication, and censor and control the same. The draft Bill states that "any message or class of messages to or from any person or class of persons or relating to any particular subject, brought for transmission by or transmitted or received by any telegraph, shall not be transmitted, or shall be intercepted or detained, or shall be disclosed to the government ..." This could well be used to stop messages going out to, or from, victim groups. Why would we want to risk legalising this kind of power? It is regrettable that no lessons seem to have been learnt, that the whittling down of civil liberties in one sphere provides the state with an alibi to erode rights across the board. The very ‘group’ that this Bill seeks to protect could well become the target of such excessive measures.

Clause 78 of this Bill is based on a flawed understanding of the criminal justice system. The Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) in a criminal trial represents the state and not the victim/ informant or witness. The role of the SPP is to advance the interests of justice in a criminal trial and not the interests of a victim or witness. Accordingly the appointment or dismissal of a SPP cannot be decided through “general public comments” or to serve the interests of any party before the Court. Fair trial standards demand that the SPP discharges his duty without bias against any party.

With 178 human rights institutions already in existence, clearly any proposal to establish newer bodies must be approached with maturity and sobriety. The limited purpose why a National Authority is needed is only to ensure that the changes brought in through this CV law, particularly in relation to offences committed by public servants, superiors and commanders are operationalised. That is the specific purpose and it is to ensure this that that the latter part of Art. 355 is operationalised. This is an important function of the Union government at the Centre, not to be intrusive, not to be usurping of the power of the state, but to ensure that the laws are implemented and the State performs its functions in accordance with the constitution. If there is a state authority, as envisaged in the NAC draft Bill, the drafts persons may need to explain how an authority located within the state will keep itself aloof from the immediacy of the violations and not be open to use and abuse.

The most promising aspect of the relief and rehabilitation chapter of the NAC draft Bill, is that it recognizes that while the religious minority suffer a particular disadvantage in terms of impunity and complicity of the state, all victims of communal and targeted violence need to be recognized in law for purposes of compensation, relief, rehabilitation etc. That has been acknowledged in the law and this is an important acknowledgment. However due to tardy drafting, rights for all affected persons regardless of denomination, is not reflected in Clause 90.

The way relief and rehabilitation has been conceptualized in this Bill however is quite problematic, it is paternalistic and does not invest rights in the affected persons. The term reparation under international law encompasses within it aspects of rescue, relief, compensation, rehabilitation, public apology and guarantee of non-repetition. The term ‘reparation’ in the NAC draft Bill has been used alongside relief, compensation etc. which is confusing and misleading. A clear articulation of the right to reparation and what it encompasses is required in the law.

The idea that loss of earning capacity should be a criterion for determination of compensation for victims of communal and targeted violence is contrary to any notion of reparative justice. The draft Bill does not recognise that victims of targeted and communal violence are not akin to victims of natural disaster, or victims of industrial disaster, or victims of workplace accidents (Schedule IV). Introducing loss of income as the basis for determining compensation misses the distinctiveness of victims of targeted and communal violence, which often includes dislocation, exclusion, difficulties of return, the failure of responsibility of the state to protect. The present Schedule is a partial compilation of existing provisions, but it is difficult to see how these may be relevant in the context. More thinking needs to go into what would constitute compensation where communal and targeted violence occurs. The Bill sees State assessment committee and District Assessment committees as agencies that will identify victims, make lists, issue identity cards and certificates. There is an objectification of the victim that apart from other things is not in consonance with the way international law has developed to help us see the place occupied by victims. There is a token mention of agencies of victims with the full participation of the victims but the same is not actualised in the way the chapter is set out. Revamping of this chapter to recognise the rights of the victims, the responsibility and obligations of state actors, liabilities of the state and consequences when these obligations are not fulfilled, is necessary.

Clause 111 of the draft Bill seems to have strayed into this Bill. It is taken from the Bhopal Claims Act 1985, which was later introduced in Schedule to the National Environment Tribunals Act 1995 (which passed into oblivion without ever being notified). The Bhopal Claims Act dealt with a situation where a corporation, as an economic centre of power, may be required to pay for all costs, injuries and losses arising from an industrial disaster. The CV Bill does not share any aspect of the situation. The idea that administrative costs and litigation costs, for example, are to be recovered does not acknowledge the complicity of the state nor how the offender will be identified who should pay for the costs set out in the Schedule. This is inapposite, and adds to the confusion on compensation and reparation.

Among the disturbing equivalences made in the draft Bill is the use of the standard in the Land Acquisition Act 1894 in computing loss due to injury to property. It is widely known that `compensation’ in the 1894 Act is as contested as the power of the state to compulsorily acquire under that Act. Reference to compulsory acquisition as setting the standard, and relying on the highly contested 1894 Act to dictate compensation for injury to property, is inexplicable.

The retention of requirement of prior sanction for prosecution of public servants and the good faith clause for actions done in pursuance of the Bill, subvert the main objective of this Bill and is a contradiction in terms. Interestingly Clause 76 of this draft Bill excludes prior sanction for offences detailed in Schedule III, which are largely offences under the Indian Penal Code pertaining to the performance of official functions by public servant. However the requirement of prior sanction has been retained for graver offences enumerated in Schedule II and more significantly for all the crimes formulated in this draft Bill. Clause 130 of this draft Bill, retains the good faith clause for all acts done by public servants of the Central government, State government, National Authority and State Authority, sowing the seeds for lack of accountability and transparency in discharge of public functions.

We, cannot accept the present NAC Draft ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011. We continue our struggle for a meaningful and effective CV Bill, fully engaging government and civil society in the process.

2011-06-05T20:28:00.001-07:00

Would they count you if you said you were a Dalit Christian?

Pitfalls and questions on the Caste-religion-poverty census

John Dayal

When St. Stephen’s college this year did away with the “”Dalit Christian Quota” they had announced some years ago with such fanfare, it was not the college management, much maligned though it is, but the country’s legal dispensation which made the retrograde step inevitable. How does a Dalit Christian really prove his identity? The Bishop or pastor will give him a baptism certificate attesting to his membership to a church. But who will give him the “Dalit” certificate. Civil authorities will routinely deny the student a Scheduled Caste certificate because under existing law – the “black law” of Para Three of Article 341 of the Constitution of India – will recognise him worthy of affirmative action only if he is a Hindu, or at least a Buddhist or a Sikh. Christians, and Muslims, are just outside the law, much as their ancestors were outside Manu’s legal perimeter of caste.

It may be interest to note that the National Sample Survey Organisation, which conducts regular qualitative surveys in the country, in its report on the 61st round data for 2004-05 says only about 26 per cent of all Hindus are considered as the High Castes or socio-economically better offs; whereas, about 60 per cent of Muslims fall into the non-OBC and thus socio-economically better off category. This is because none from the Muslims, and Christians, are classified under the Scheduled Caste category. Many of them may well be listed as Hindus, as happens in Andhra all the time.

So what are the chances that the Caste census, controversial for a hundred other reasons, will count Dalit Christians? The chances seem Zero at the moment of writing, because the government has quite deliberately woven a cloud of confusion on just what is its intention.

And while the Muslims, and a section of civil society, have spoken out, the combined Church has kept quiet, possibly because it remains preoccupied with issues spiritual or in protecting institutions and text books from the vagaries of the State,. But also because historically, the church has sought not to be the first to intervene, or to cry foul, when civil and constitutional issues are being discussed. Little wonder that while the Muslim community is going into the preparation of the 12th Five Year Plan armed with thousands of pages of data and analysis, the best the Christian community journals and institutions have been able to do is to congratulate the handful of Christians nominated to various committees or commissions.

We should really have been the first to be awakened to the ramifications of a Census! Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem because Mary and Joseph were trudging to their hometown to be counted in a census ordered by Caesar.

But perhaps it is still not too late to stand up and be counted as others pose serious questions to the government on the caste census. The first question of course, should be whether this is within the laws which govern the work of the Registrar General of India, or the Census Commissioner as the office is popularly known, in preparing the. National Population Register (NPR).

This is an important issue because the laws specify that a citizen is free to spell out his identity as he sees it. The second is that the information that an individual gives to the enumerator is kept a secret. It is not the individual but the totals that are published in the final picture.

In fact the government goes much beyond the law when it comes to the Census. It releases the religious composition of the population of the country, and of individual states, much after it has released the general figures. And then, it refuses to announce the religious composition in units smaller than the district. There is no chance of anyone, including government departments, of ever finding out the religious composition of a “Block”, and there are eight to sixteen blocks in a district. The religious composition of any particular village within the block is of course never published. Even if every local politician and caste leader may know it by wrote, micro level religious (and caste,) breakdowns are deemed far too “sensitive” as data. Asked why is such data deemed to be sensitive, senior government officers told this writer that it may lead to religious profiling, and possibly violence if groups come to fear an unexpected growth in the number of a community they deem to be hostile, or at least estranged.

It was because of a political reluctance to face facts – the exact number and size of various caste groups in India – that the government never bothered to include Caste identity while enumerating censuses after the 1931 one, which was done at the height of the British Raj. After Independence in 1947, the only statutory enumeration was of the Scheduled caste (excluding those converted to Christianity and Islam) and Scheduled Tribes which was needed to fulfil Constitutional obligations by way of reservations in government jobs and educational institutions, and other affirmative action benefits and sops.

Even after the so called Mandal revolution which politically empowered the backward communities – catapulting into power such people as Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Lalloo Yadav in Bihar -- the Union government fought off all demands to count the castes. The issue figured repeatedly in Parliament eve decade, with the government refusing to budge.

It was only as a consequence of the reservation of up to 27 per cent for Other Backward Communities (OBCs) ordered last decade that the government at last said it would consider making a head count of caste populations specific to each state. This was because castes defined as OBCs in one state may not be so defined in another case. An example was that of Jats (Hindu Jats, not Jat Sikhs of Punjab) who are a powerful landowning group in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana but are a weaker OBC group in Rajasthan. A political consensus was reached in parliament on such a census last year.

There was a bit of a national shock, however, when government changed its mind in October 2010, when preparatory work had almost been completed for the 2011 household survey and the Census. It was official: Caste was not being counted in the formal Census.

In the face of an almighty howl of protest from across the country, government reluctantly announced it would have a separate counting of OBCs, even if cost the national exchequer another couple of thousands of cores of rupees.
But this is not a government that let things be as promised. Even as agitated OBC groups were coming to terms with a separate Caste count, not a formal census as understood in law, came the news that the government planned to “dovetail” caste census with a survey of the BPL, or below the poverty line, families. As the Hindu newspaper reported, the entire exercise should be completed by the end of this year. Governmnt officials who briefed the newspaper off the record said dovetailing the two exercises would ensure that the castes enumerated can be correlated with the socio-economic data, and facilitate a more focussed targeting of the government's welfare measures. “Correlating people's caste identities with their educational and economic status would help map the population better, thus ensuring a more accurate targeting of welfare schemes.”

As currently envisaged, the caste census cum BPL survey will be conducted by the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner India, and the Union Ministries of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) and Rural Development (RD), sources added. While the HUPA Ministry will focus on the urban areas, the RD Ministry will survey the rural areas. Those surveyed will be asked to name their caste, but this caste data will not be cross-checked. People will be free to say “no caste” as well. Dalit Christians and Pasmanda Muslims unfortunately, cannot get thimbles listed. But in Tamil Nadu for instance, and in some other states, Christians in certain traditional professions such as boatmen and fishermen can articulate their OBC or Most backward Community status.

The spotlight focussed on the Below Poverty Line families after a World Bank review – done at the behest of the Planning commission now drafting the 12th Five year Plan – which analysed centrally-sponsored social security schemes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Public Distribution System, the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, Indira Awas Yojana and Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme.

The World Bank is of course against programmes that are focussed on BPL groups. It finds serious problems with the scheme. According to its survey, a third of the poorest ten per cent of the people have been incorrectly identified as non-poor in the 2002 BPL census. The data becomes worse for slightly better off – but still BPL -- families.

The World Bank has a good word for “general” schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment scheme which covers the rural poor irrespective of caste, religion or other factors.
But we digress.

Dr Abu Sahel Sharief, the economist who actually wrote the celebrated Justice Rajindar Sachhar report on the socio-economic situation of Muslims in India, told this writer there are many controversies in terms of a methodology and variables which will be used to identify the poor.

“What is underplayed and not adequately highlighted is the fact that the Caste Census will be undertaken for the first time since the Independence. Such data are likely to be used in determining and revising the cast and class linked quotas in national and state government jobs, admissions in educational institutions such as in colleges and universities and access to targeted social services. The caste census is being conducted without adequate methodological and analytical preparedness and since caste, class and religious identities have complex inter-relationships there will be ramifications which will be difficult to resolve in future” he added in a written statement.
The Muslim community has done a detailed analysis of the situation.

They note that the collection of caste data is politically motivated and is expected to provide structured information so as to allocate or enhance respective shares in reservations for the SCs, the STs and the OBCs.
They feel the Indian Caste Census (ICC-2011) is likely to trigger a drive for Indian citizens of all castes and communities to get enrolled into deprived categorizations in what Abu Saleh Sharief calls Competitive Backwardness. Muslims converted from the former untouchable Hindu castes (now called Pasmanda Muslims as those who converted to Christianity from the same caste group are called Dalit Christians) will face census enumerators who will not recognize them because the ‘Census filtering procedures’ which only list officially recognised caste-religious groups. This entire issue is before the Supreme Court of India in a Public Interest Litigation writ filed by various Islamic and Christian groups.

The Census will also collect data on select economic and education indicators and asset ownership so as to categorize households into the ‘below poverty line’ or ‘above poverty line’ status. Such data long with religion and caste are expected to be used to compute the relative backwardness or forwardness of a caste group; which, the economist says, will have ramifications in determining the eligibility to jobs and higher level educational admissions under the quota system. In future, this may hinder efforts of the poorer sections of religious minorities from raising their economic and social status.

The government has not yet clarified if the caste-BPL census will be generally based on the Mandal Commission list of OBCs. The government at present does not really have any alternate lists to be used in the 30 States of the Union.

Muslim intelligentsia have suggested, a point I entirely endorse, that the caste Census should be undertaken only after the pending Supreme Court judgment in the matter of the recognition of the presence of ‘dalit’ identities amongst the Muslims and Christens in India is decided.

It is also suggested that enumerators be instructed to collect this information as reported, and not to filter out caste reporting linked to religion.

A civil society memorandum to the government, which this writer also signed, also demands that the caste-related data collected from June-December, 2011 reliably capture the castes’ educational status and their share in various job categories. This should show which castes have been left behind in education and employment in six decades of independence.

Secondly, the census should enumerate numeration socio-economic, educational, living standards, economic and employment profile, land holding and if the family has derived any benefits from Union and state development schemes.

The memorandum ahs again stressed the point raised by Dr Sharief, that data should be collected for all the castes and caste equivalents in non caste practicing communities or religious populations. No particular caste or caste group should be excluded from this. Any non-Hindu religious group that volunteers its caste identity -- Dalit Christians, for instance -- should be identified as such. But all this makes for data not legally sound, unless government bring it under the Census Act, 1948.

Christian Dalits will have to await the Supreme Court decision. And no one can say when that judgement will be delivered.

Battle over a Bill

2011-06-02T00:29:00.000-07:00

JD For Mainstream June 2011
Sangh strikes to pre-empt effective Prevent Communal Violence Prevention Bill
But civil society and minorities too have issues with components of the draft law
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John Dayal
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Victims have not forgotten these brutal tragedies in the life of Independent India, even if the State and political parties may pretend to have.
1984 Delhi: On October 31, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards in revenge for Operation Blue Star. For the next three days, as Doordarshan telecast the lying in state of her body, over 3,000 Sikhs men and boys were burnt alive while policemen, politicians and the world watched. A very few have been prosecuted for India’s biggest communal violence since the Partition riots of 1947. And twenty-five years later, the Government is still to tell the people if there was a mastermind. A small group of Sikh activists and lawyers have kept alive the pursuit of Justice for the widows of 1984. Needless to say, the aggressors were mainly from the majority community, allegedly owing allegiance to the Congress party though quite a few of them from radical right wing groups, including the Sangh Parivar who had done their share of the work in polarising Punjab in those traumatic years of the 1970s.
2002 Gujarat: On 27 February 2002, the Sabarmati Express stopped at the Godhra station, and its Coach Number six was set afire allegedly by a group of Muslims presumably as a continuing response to the demolition of the Babri Masjid by the Sangh Parivar almost ten years earlier on 6th December 1992. The bodies of the 59 Hindu pilgrims from Ajodhya who died in the fire were brought to Ahmedabad in a deliberate political decision. And for the next several days, the city and several other towns burned. In what the President and Prime minister called “a blot on the cultural traditions of India”, the Union government told Parliament that 790 Muslims were killed, 223 more people reported missing and another 2,500 injured. More than 100,000 people fled their homes. Human rights groups feared the toll to be as high as 2,000 Muslims killed. The National Human Rights Commission found evidence of premeditation in the killings by members the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal with a large doze of complicity by the State political and administrative apparatus headed by chief minister Narendra Modi. Many Police officers were named in subsequent enquiry commissions for their role in the violence which spread to 151 towns and 993 villages in fifteen of the state's 25 districts between February 28 and March 3. And after a drop, violence restarted on March 15, continuing sporadically till mid June. Once again, not many have been prosecuted and sentenced for the violence even as Muslims have been sentenced in the train fire. The Supreme Court and special teams are still investigating allegations of mass rape of women, including genital mutilation, and the tearing out of foetus from pregnant women’s bellies.
2008: Kandhamal district, Orissa: The violence in Orissa between 23 August and 1 October 2008 was comparatively on a much smaller scale, but was historically unique in being targeted against the micro-minority Christian community by communal mobs out to avenge the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati in his ashram by self confessed Maoists on 23 August. For almost a month, the district of Kandhamal, on a plateau in the midst of the state of Orissa, was out of bounds even the government’s troops while the killer gangs roamed the countryside, killing perhaps as many as a 100 people – the government acknowledges 37 deaths – burning down 5,600 houses in 300 villages, destroying 257 big and small Churches and forcing as many as 55,000 people to flee their houses. By May 2011, several thousand are still living in make shift huts. They have been barred from their villages by the Hindutva gangs who say quite openly that they will allow the Christians to return only if they convert to Hinduism. Orissa chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, who was in a coalition with the Bharatiya Janata party during the violence, and returned to power after severing relations with that party, told the state legislature that the attacks were mainly led by right-wing outfits such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its youth wing Bajrang Dal.
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The then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Maken, told Parliament there were at least 3,800 communal clashes reported in India between 2004 and 2008, marking a steady rise over the years. The highest incidence of such violence in 2008 was the one in Orissa, of course, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 131, Uttar Pradesh with 114 and Maharashtra with 109 and Karnataka in the south with 108, half of them against Christians and the rest against Muslims. As per the total number of communal incidents in each state during the last five years, Maharashtra is on the top with 681 clashes, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 654 and Uttar Pradesh with 613.
Data shows that barring the occasional incident of retaliation, the Muslims were the overwhelming target in the violence, and yet in the arrests, while 27,901 Hindus were arrested, so were as many as 7,651 Muslims. In firing by the police, again, 93 Muslims were killed as also about 75 Hindus.
Human Rights Watch criticized the administrations for engaging in a cover-up of the state's role in the massacres. .
The Union government finally brought forward a Bill to anticipate and prevent communal violence. The 2005 Bill, which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha – where it still lies – left civil society and specially the Human rights groups aghast. Human rights groups and Muslim intelligentsia – the Church was woefully absent in the exercise – pointed out two major flaws in the Bill. It empowered the state without empowering the victims and their communities. And it left unaddressed the entire question of impunity, how to hold politicians, police and bureaucrats responsible for their acts of commission and inaction before, during and after acts of communal violence. In passing, the Bill was also grossly inadequate in assuring reparations, compensation and rehabilitation of the victims of mass violence. For the Christian community, the 2005 Bill offered nothing. The community is subject to individual and sporadic violence almost every day of the year in some state or the other, and its smaller churches, house-churches and independent pastors, specially those working in small towns or villages in tribal and forest areas are particular targets. But this violence was not even acknowledged or accepted as being communally motivated.
The Bill was rejected out of hand. Though the government has not withdrawn the 2005 Bill, the National Advisory Council headed by United Progressive Alliance chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi set up a working group coordinated by two NAC members, journalist-activist Farah Naqvi and former bureaucrat and NGO activist Harsh Mander – with members from the various religious communities. Major activist-members included Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad, Teesta Setalvad of Mumbai, Vrinda Grover and Usha Ramanathan, and both jurists, from Delhi, and this writer. Advocate Sister Mary Scaria and Delhi lawyer P I Jose, senior advocate Muchhala, and leaders of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Hind and the Jamiat-e-Islami-e-Hind were represented. For some time, Solicitor General Subramaniam was also involved. The committee was also noted for several eminent jurists including Prof Upendra Buxi who could not attend a single meeting for personal or health reasons.
After sittings lasting more than a year, the working group came up with a draft. This was sent to Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh for re-formatting. The resultant draft, called the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 has been put on the NAC website and people’s reactions have been sought with a deadline of 10th June 2011. The draft is not the Bill which will be presented in either House of Parliament, presumably later this year in the Monsoon or winter sessions. It still has to be whetted by the Union Home Ministry, which has its own draft ready for which it has been canvassing, and by the Union Law Ministry, the final arbiter of its readiness for Parliament. Even if it clears these two major hurdles and becomes a Bill, chances are it will be subject to a minute examination in a select committee. One does not have to be a parliamentary expert to predict the Bill will have really very difficult passage indeed in the two houses of Parliament, even if the government seems willing to stake its political future in backing the bill.
But long before the processes take place for a sane debate, the Sangh Parivar has launched a pre-emptive offensive. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has held formal press conferences, and its spokespersons have dominated the TV channels in tailor-made debates. Sangh think tanks have called for consultations on the issue, and their most articulate champion, leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, advocate Arun Jaitely has gone to town saying, as a newspaper headlines screamed, that the “Draft Bill on communal violence [is] more draconian than TADA”. Arun Jaitely wrote an extraordinary public note clearly indicating that not only would the BJP not support it in Parliament but that it would “fall foul of the Constitution as the Centre would have usurped the jurisdiction of the States on law and order, a subject clearly and entirely within their domain.”
Understandably, as the leader of a party repeatedly indicted for spreading hate, Jaitely would be critical of any law that made hate propaganda as an offence and an outbreak of communal violence attracting President's rule in a state, presumably where the party was in power. Jaitely also said the draft Bill was discriminatory as it exclusively dealt with violence targeted against a minority and did not deal with the possibility of minority violence against a majority community. The proposed law was to “fix senior leaders,” the BJP felt. Other aspects he faulted were the presence of four members of the minorities on the proposed 7-member national authority for communal harmony - and similar state authorities.
The Union government fielded HRD minister Kapil Sibal, more eminent a lawyer than perhaps even Jaitely, to counter the BJP. Sibal said the Centre was determined to make State governments and individuals responsible for law and order “accountable” in cases of communal violence. “A polity which is just, fair and equitable needs to protect the weaker sections, minorities, SCs and STs,” Sibal said. The Congress, he said agreed the State governments would have to be on board if the draft Bill was ever to become law. Sibal’s party colleague Manu Singhvi said a special law was needed because the normal provisions were tardy, there were no special courts, and the offense was not described and defined clearly.
National Commission for Minorities chairman Wajahat Habibullah, who had taken over just this year said the existing laws are sufficient because of the fact that they don't deal with prevention. “The Bill is not an Act only to handle communal violence but it is also to prevent it and then to rehabilitate those who are victims.” Habibullah made a critical observation, noting that the important elements, repatriation and rehabilitation, have so far met with a mental block in society. “In our country, it is something that we can be ashamed of, the anti-Sikh riots that took place, what happened in Kandhamal, what happened in 2002. We do need to address these with a sense of urgency and also with an essence of importance,” he said.
Outside of the political posturing of the BJP leadership, many in the NAC and most in civil society the draft is not a perfect one. Its formulation has not been without acrimony and controversy.
Ms Shabnam Hashmi, jurists Vrinda Grover and Usha Ramanathan and this writer issued a press statement resigning from the working group, expressing their own reservations to several aspects of the Bill, especially in areas of Centre-State relations, impunity, and trigger mechanisms to make operative central intervention. We had reservations also about the powers and structures of the Central and State authorities sought to be created to oversee the control of violence and issues of reparation and so on and finally to ensure the empowerment of the victims and ending impunity. There was a sense of shock that the draft as it was finally put on the internet introduced `internal disturbance' as one of the entry points, a matter which in previous consultations had been firmly rejected. “It has a constitutional history, and does things to the nature of state power that we ought never to be endorsing.” The second part of Article 355, which reads "and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution", was to be the entry point for the law.
Several Muslim members have also wanted the draft law to be tweaked in several areas to meet the challenge of hate campaigns, violence, rehabilitation and reparations.
Understandably, again, the NAC is defensive about criticism of the Bill, emanating from within or from political opponents. For one, Mrs Sonia Gandhi ahs identified this issue as one of the major ones the NAC must get the government to act upon, together with issues such as food guarantee, and a life of dignity for domestic workers.
NAC members say the Bill made provision for all minorities — not just religious, but linguistic and regional as well. Seven States — Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Mizoram, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Lakshadweep Island –have Hindus as a religious minority. The NAC has also made a specific recommendation that the Bill should be extended to Jammu and Kashmir, so that Kashmiri Pandits would also be covered; it also points out that migrants from east Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Maharashtra — most of who are Hindus — would also be covered by the Bill. I must add that several of us have issues with extending the law to Jammu and Kashmir valley which is beset with so many other issues, including terrorism, the heavy military presence, massive human rights violations, to name the maor ones.
The focus of the Bill is those particularly vulnerable groups of citizens, who are routinely subjected to violence or threats of violence in different forms because of ‘who they are’. The existing provisions of law fail because of a similar systemic bias in the administrative and criminal justice machinery against these most disadvantaged groups. Their vulnerability stands twice enhanced.
An important clause is the Accountability of Public Officials. This is being secured through reiterating the duties of public officials, and defining offences by public officials as the failure to perform those duties. Offences by public officials shall attract penal consequences under this Bill as often the greatest cause for communal and targeted violence is that police and bureaucrats simply do not act. The Bill recognizes the offences of both commission and omission.
Similarly, hate campaigns are sought to be checked in recognizing the creation of a ‘hostile environment against a group’ and the Bill specifically defines a series of acts that amount to creating a intimidating or hostile environment against members of groups, including economic boycott, denial of public services, and forced migration. It defines as the duty of public servants to identify the creation of such a ‘hostile environment’ and to prevent any communal and targeted violence against such members of groups.
Perhaps the one of the most controversial issue is of Command Responsibility. The NAC feels that given the hierarchical nature of administrative systems, the reality is that too often it is those higher up in a chain of administrative or political command that are responsible for failure to perform their duties. Yet, it is only the officer on the ground whose dereliction is visible. This Bill identifies culpability for those who are ‘effectively in-charge,’ through the doctrine of command responsibility. In cases of widespread, mass violence, the command responsibility shall reasonably be presumed to extend to the immediate superior officer who shall be held guilty of such offence. However, the chain of command responsibility may extend to any level where effective decisions to act or not act are taken. This also extends to Non State Actors and any association.
But absolutely the most controversial is the attempt to create a: National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation and State Authorities for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation more powerful than any other institution created after the Constitution was promulgated in 1950. NAC defends itself saying the principle behind this Bill is not to supersede the existing law enforcement machinery, nor to disempower or paralyze the existing administrative and justice mechanisms, but rather to strengthen them and make them work by making them more accountable.
The primary monitoring and grievance redressal mechanism laid out in this Bill in the form of the National Authority and State Authorities (NA/SA) do not, in any instance, take over any existing powers of any public official or institution. NAC says their only mandate is to ensure that public functionaries act to prevent and control communal and targeted violence, and to ensure justice and reparation when violence occurs. The National and State authorities will monitor, inquire into complaints, receive or suo moto seek information, and issue advisories and recommendations only when there is alleged inaction or malafide action by public officials and governments.: NAC says through the NA/SA this Bill is seeking to create a mechanism that can make the administrative and criminal justice system work as it should, free from favour or bias or malafide intent. The monitoring mechanism of the National and State Authorities will also provide the ‘paper trail’ to ensure robust accountability of public officials in a court of law. The panels are to be chosen by a Selection Committee for members consisting of the Prime Minister, Chairperson, Leader of the Opposition in the House of the People, Union Minister for Home Affairs, Leader of each recognized national political party in the House of the People. The Selection Committee for members (including Chairperson). In the States, the Chief Minister shall be the Chairperson.
The new Offences of communal and targeted violence, including ‘organized’ communal and targeted violence and mass violence that is widespread or systematic in nature is also defined specifically as ‘organized’ communal and targeted violence.
This Bill recognizes that for rights to relief, reparation, restitution and compensation, there are no statutory norms and provisions for any Indian citizen under present law. Thus, all affected persons (whether or not they belong to a religious or linguistic minority or are SCs or STs) have been given justiciable rights to comprehensive reparations and compensation if they suffer any harm as a result of an incident of communal and targeted violence. So far, governments have been both arbitrary and selective in awarding compensation to different groups of citizens with different standards of generosity. Compensation must not be a matter of charity or largesse, but a justiciable right with a single uniform standard for every Indian citizen. This Bill provides that compensation shall be paid within 30 days from the date of the incident, and in accordance with a schedule, which shall be revised every 3 years. No compensation for death shall be less than Rs. 15 lakhs. No compensation for rape shall be less than 5 lakhs.
Addressing the Arun Jaitely charge of violating the sacred nature of federalism, NAC says the advisories and recommendations of the National Authority are not binding on any State Government, nor does the Bill create any new powers as they are already extant in law.
On our part, working group members have repeatedly reminder the NAC that Communal violence is not inevitable; it is not the norm in a maturing democracy, an economic and political superpower, and a caring multi-cultural society such as India wants to be in the 21st Century. Communal violence can be prevented if pre-emptive action by a non-partisan administration [Intelligence, magistracy and police, as also political leadership from Panchayat head to the Chief Minister of the State] is taken at any stage before it explodes as a full-blown mass murder and arson.
Most of us are sure a democracy needs be vigilant against virulent political processes and entities, penetration of educational systems and politicisation of civil, police and military structures and must take pre-emptive measures. In Europe, Country Laws show they are aware of the menace of Neo Nazism and Anti Semitism and have taken precautions. The CV Bill must articulate this awareness.
Demonising and constructing images of the “Other”, specially of the Christian and Muslim communities, in gossip and political activity in the public domain, in general and political Media including the electronic media and Internet are now routine. Care has to be taken that it is not the victim-survivor who is punished anew by police and administrative action in imposition of curfew, search and arrest operations. Peace with Justice remains the core issue.

JUSTICE STILL ELUDES THE CHRISTIAN VICTIMS, AND MANY ARE TO BLAME FOR IT

2011-05-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

KANDHAMAL UPDATE 1 MAY 20 2011

JOHN DAYAL

There has been just one conviction for murder in 20 cases of the brutal killing of Christians of Kandhamal, Orissa, at the hands of Hindutva fanatics, and mobs led by them, during August--October 2008. More than two years and 9 months later the course of justice in the two special Fast Track Courts continues to be a travesty – with aberrations at all stages, from the presentation of the production case and examination of witnesses, to the coercive presence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh goons in the court premises, often in the court room, and the role of both judges and defence lawyers.

Lawyers for the victims have no role in court other than occasionally feebly protesting to the judges – in vain – those relatives and other eye witnesses who deposed they saw the men and women being killed are being threatened blatantly. The response of the judges has been, “we have sent the orders to the police.” The police have no response at all. The single biggest beneficiary of the miscarriage of justice has been Mr. Manoj Pradhan, the local Member of the State Legislature and a leader of the Bharatiya Janata party which was then a coalition partner in the government of Chief Minister Mr. Naveen Pattnaik. Mr. Pradhan is accused in over half a dozen cases, and is currently free on bail.

Investigation no doubt has been tardy and superficial – one junior gazetted officer and two inspectors head the small team trying to probe the vast number of cases with primitive forensic equipment and almost no training in probing cases of mass violence. No attempt was made to use video and mobile phone camera images that are widely available both with the victims and with the accused. In some cases, the two Fast Track Court judges have indeed passed strictures against the police investigation, and in most cases, they have found the testimony of witnesses --- victims and their relatives – either not trustworthy or insufficient to prove the offence against the accused, a review of the judgments shows.

There has been no attempt by the Directorate of Prosecutions or by the police to upgrade cases where victims died of their injuries not on the spot, but in hospital, refugee camps or other places. Under Indian legal practice, cases of attempted murder or murderous assault would automatically be upgraded to murder if the victim died of his injuries. This has prevented a large number of cases from being recorded as murder.

It may be recalled that the violence which began 24th August 2008 took a heavy toll. Over 14 of the 30 districts in the state were impacted. 6,000 houses were burnt in 400 villages, including 296 churches and smaller places of Christian worship. Over 56,000 became internally displaced persons, about 30,000 living from three months to a year in government refugee camps. Over 20,000 men, women and children spent days hiding in forests. Over 10,000 are yet to return home. About 1,000 have been warned or threatened by their neighbours they can return home if they become Hindus. Some are living in what can be called “Christian ghettos”, one of which is on land provide by the district authorities who find themselves impotent in rehabilitating the Christians in their villages. The rest have left Kandhamal in fear, or in search of jobs, as they do not have any livelihood now in Kandhamal where they also face an economic blockade.]

Cutting through the fog created around the legal data, the following is the current situation of the criminal investigation of cases of arson and murder, abduction and violence. Complaints were made at the local police posts, at the regional police stations, and often directly to the offices of the Superintendent of Police in the district capital of Phulbani by registered post. In some cases, complaints were sent to the Director General of Police in Bhubaneswar when the Police stations returned complaints sent by registered post.

3,232 criminal complaints were filed when the dust settled on the Second Phase violence that began on 24th August 2008 and after peaking by about 30 August, continued sporadically through most of September and October that year.

1541 complaints are acknowledged by the Kandhamal district police, but they did not file them as the First Information Reports required under Indian Criminal law.

828 complaints were actually converted to First Information Reports [FIRs} which mark the beginning of further investigation and the case being brought before a court for trial after a charge-sheet is filed.

327 Cases have actually seen a completion of the investigation process with the cases committed to the two Fast Track Courts headed by two ad hoc Additional District Judges for day to day hearings.

169 Cases have seen the acquittal of all accused,
86 cases have ended up in convictions -- not for the heinous crimes mentioned in the FIRs as the main ones, but for comparatively minor offenses meriting only prison terms of two or three years.

90 cases still are in the process of being tried.

1597 suspects have been acquitted. This does not include the thousands who could not be arrested in the cases, and therefore could not be brought to trial.

[The Orissa State government acknowledges and admits to 52 deaths in Kandhamal in the violence of 2007 and 2008. Of them 38 are of Christians, four deaths of Hindus include those of Vishwa Hindu Parishad Vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati and three inmates of his Ashram attacked by Maoists on 23 August 2008, 4 were killed in police firing in Kotagarh of Tumlibanda Police station and G Udayagiri police station, three were policemen killed by mobs, and 3 are said to be other deaths in other Maoist attacks. Data collected by church activists lists 91 murder cases. Of them, murders with death on the spot number 38, another 41 died of injuries sustained in the violence, but at places other than the place of violence and at various times after the attacks, and 12 died in police action. These figures do not include suicides and deaths that could be medically labelled as due to post trauma syndrome among the young and aged who saw the violence at close quarters and then spent much time in refugee camps or slums.]

[Larger issues of criminal law and justice have been recorded – till mid 2010 – by Supreme Court of India Advocate Vrinda Grover in her research book “The Law must change its course’, published by MARG, a Delhi-based NGO. Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik has admitted in a written answer in the State Legislative Assembly that of the arrested persons, over 600 were members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, and the Bajrang Dal, the militant wings of the Bharatiya Janata party, a national political party which was his coalition partner at the time of the anti Christian pogrom.]

[Jurists who have seen the records have said “There have been grave lapses on the part of each of the three, viz., the Investigating Officer, the Public Prosecutor (PP) and the Trial Judge. The Investigating Officer has failed to get the Statements of the Eye Witnesses, especially the injured witnesses recorded u/s 164 Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). The PP has failed to properly cross-examine the Eye witnesses who were turning hostile in the court. The PP also failed to get exhibited the confronted portions of the statements of the Hostile Eye Witnesses recorded prior in time u/s 161 CrPC. The Trial Judge has failed in his duty u/s 280 CrPC inasmuch as the Trial Judge has failed to record remarks regarding the demeanour of each of those eye Witnesses who were resiling from their previous statement recorded u/s 161 CrPC and who were become hostile to the prosecution. The Trial Judge has also failed to play his role to discover the truth and the Trial Judge has failed to put any court question to the hostile eye witnesses in order to discover the truth. Finally, the Trial Judge has wholly misapplied his mind and has failed to appreciate the evidence in terms of the guidelines laid down by this Hon’ble Court in several judgements. The Trial Judge has sufficient material available before him to hold that the persons facing trial were part of an unlawful assembly, the object of which was to cause inter alia homicidal death of the victims. There was also sufficient material to show participation of the accused persons in such an unlawful assembly. There was also sufficient material available to the Trial Judge to discover that the accused persons had acted in furtherance of the common object. The Trial Judge had sufficient available material before him to examine that the accused persons had been properly identified in the court and that specific roles had been ascribed to the accused persons and the Post mortem Report was corroborating the role ascribed to such accused persons in their assault with the weapons described by the witnesses.”]

Indian State of Madhya Pradesh pofiling histian community

2011-04-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh cops pull back Christian profiling plan

Naveen and Firoz Mirza , Hindustan Times
Bhopal, April 15, 2011

A police circular in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh seeking detailed profiles of Christians and churches in the state has been withdrawn after protests from members of the minority community.

State chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday sought a report on the circular issued on March 23. This is the first time such a circular was issued in Madhya Pradesh.

The controversy caused by the circular surfaced at Ashtra town in Sehore district when a police official allegedly threatened a Christian priest who declined to give information sought through the circular. “The officer threatened to take me to the police station when I refused to provide details,” said Father Francis Scaria of the Ashtra parish.

The police top brass claimed ignorance about the circular even though the state police headquarters issued it to all police stations, seeking information on the financial status, political leanings and sources of funding of churches and their staff.

Director general of police SK Rout reportedly did not know about the circular till Wednesday when a delegation of Christians brought it to his notice.

Rout told HT, “All district police units have been directed not to collect any such information.” The circular had triggered alarm and anger among Christians, who viewed the order as a prelude to unleashing organised violence on the community.

Bhopal’s Archbishop Leo Cornelio, who heads the Catholic Church in the state, said, “It is a conspiracy against Christians in Madhya Pradesh.” He said similar profiling was done in Gujarat, where Christians were targeted in religious violence in some districts between 1999-2000.

Father Anand Muttungal, spokesperson of Catholic Church, Madhya Pradesh, said the circular violated the community’s fundamental rights. It betrayed the anti-Christian bias of the state government, he said.

LEST WE FORGET

2011-03-06T18:30:00.001-08:00

TOGADIA WANTS VOTING RIGHTS IN INDIA ONLY FOR HINDUS

Bharat has seen how viciously many governments are going after Hindus, creating NIA and giving simple cases to NIA so that they get Muslim votes…
Solution? There should be voting rights only to the Hindus. Those whose forefathers opted out for Pakistan and those who do not follow 2 kids norm have no right to vote in Bharat. The political parties who loot national coffer on Muslims in the name of minority should be banned from elections. There must be a common civil code - if it is not now then there will sure be a common civil code but that will be Sharia in Bharat. [Dr Pravin Togadia, International Secretary General of VHP. Contact: drtogadia@gmail.com] [From the column TogadiaSpeak, the Organiser, published from New Delhi, edition dated 13 March 2011. http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=388&page=34 ]

OMINOUS PORTENDS IN ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO DALIT CHRISTIAN PLAINT

2011-02-28T05:02:00.000-08:00

John Dayal
It was the Nineteenth time since 2004 that the Public Interest Litigation on the issue of Dalit Christians did not come up for a real hearing in the Supreme Court of India though it was listed on the judicial agenda. But the Bench headed by the Chief Justice of India was not really to blame. They were busy the entire day, 24th February 2011, and would remain so for many other days, hearing a challenge by minority and private schools to the Government’s new law of Right to Education. The private and minority sector is arguing that its member schools are not obliged to give a quarter of their new admissions to children of the poor.
The poor and marginalised Dalit Christians will have to wait for another time, and so will the Dalit Muslims who have joined them in recent years challenging through several Writ petitions -- now being heard together -- Constitution’s Article 341’s Clause [iii], which was inserted surreptitiously through a Presidential Order in 1950 to restrict just to Hindus all the affirmative action, including reservations in jobs, education and legislatures, that the new Government of a new India wanted to give to an entire population described as “untouchables” and kept in subjugation since the law giver Manu wrote his infamous Code.
The issue may come back in the Supreme Court next month or perhaps after the summer vacations – it is not clear at the moment of writing this article.
But there are ominous developments which portend that Dalits of the so called “non-Indic” or Semitic origin religions may never wrest their rights from the Government and its institutions. The latest has come from the learned Mr. G. E. Vahanvati, Advocate General of India, the Government’s highest Law officer who has told the Union Cabinet, in effect, that they just need to play cool and do not have to respond to the otherwise heart-rending cries of the Dalits as the issue is “too complicated. About Mr. Vahanvati, later.
The issue of course is very complicated, and very embarrassing for India’s secularism, if truth be told.
The British, like the Romans way back before them in Biblical Times, liked to count populations, if only to assess how many people they were ruling over, and just which group was in their fiefdom. In their Nineteenth century Census of India, they counted what Manu had just thrown out of his mind – the lower castes, the untouchables. In due time after the Munity of 1857, they sought to win over the poor who already thought of the Empress Victoria Government as Mai-Baap, or mother and father. The result was not just some plums for their “own” people, the Anglo-Indians with a White paternal ancestry, who got jobs in the Armed Forces, the Railways and the Postal Services, and to the “native Christians”, but also to the Depressed classes, the untouchables. Thus was born the affirmative action reservations for the Scheduled castes, so named because they figure in a list appended to the Constitution. The untouchables after abolishment of untouchability, rejected the term Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi coined for them-- Harijan, Children of God – sarcastically asking if the rest were children of the Devil. It would some decades before they coined for themselves the name they go under now, Dalits, or the Broken People.
Officially, the Dalits are about 15 per cent or so of the entire Indian population. The fact is that many of them converted first to Islam, from the 13th to the 19th centuries, and then to Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The Dalit Muslims may number perhaps as many as 50 to 70 million, or at least a third of the Islamic population in India, the rest coming mainly from the Other Backward Classes and a minority from the upper castes and migrants from West and Central Asia.
The Christian Dalits consist of perhaps up to two thirds – or at least 60 per cent -- of the entire Christian population in India, with most of them concentrated in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Most Christians in Andhra, Punjab and Gujarat are of Dalit origin, whether they accept it today or not. The Christians among the tribals of the North East and the tribal-Adivasis of the Chhota-Nagpur region and contiguous areas of central India constitute between 15 to 20 per cent of the community, and are exclusive in that they enjoy all rights and privileges given to their brothers and sisters professing Hinduism or their own particular faiths such as Sarna, Shamaic, nature or ancestor worship.
The transfer of power and the rise of Independent India saw an India-British covenant which gave Anglo Indians two seats in the Lok Sabha, and also reserved seats in the legislatures of Bengal, Andhra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and many other states despite their ever decreasing numbers because of migration to the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in succeeding decades.
The issue of separate quotas for Dalit Christians did not arise at the time of the birth of the new Republic because the Constitution, imagined by Jawaharlal Nehru and written by a committee headed by the great Dalit leader Babasaheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar, correctly understood that the caste system impacted all of India, irrespective of region, ethnicity and religion. The affirmative action contained in the slew of guarantees for the Scheduled castes, including reservations in legislatures, in Government jobs and educational institutions, were meant for all Dalits irrespective of religion. Religions such as Sikhism, Buddhism and course Islam and Christianity do not have caste in their theological construct, but the people professing these religions live together, even as they do to this date, and suffer the same infirmities as their Hindu counterparts.
This law did continue for some months. There is very little documentation, but knowing the caste structure of the Congress and other parties even in the Opposition at the time the Constitution was promulgated – 26th January 1950 – it was clear that this treatment of all Dalits in a single basket – would grossly displease the upper crust and the upper caste among all parties. We know how the landed gentry flummoxed land reforms and the right wing parties sought to dictate to Nehru. [I need hardly say the upper class former Rajas and Maharajas, the landlords, and the Mahants, have made reappearance in Parliament and on Page-3 of newspapers in recent years]. Their fears were obvious. A large group of people, their de facto slaves and bonded labour, were not only being let free and emancipated, they were being educated and would pose a challenge in time. Dalit Christians and Muslims also had the added advantage of claiming spiritual uplift despite their poverty.
Presidential Order of 1950, later forming part three of the Constitution’s Article 341 was the result. The order said in no uncertain terms that privileges such as reservations would be given to just Hindus. Anyone converting to Christianity and Islam, Sikhism or Buddhism, would lose them. And later orders from administration and courts said Dalits who converted to Hinduism from Islam or Christianity would regain the reservations and other advantages. In effect, Dalits had no freedom of faith enjoyed by other citizens of India unless they converted to Hinduism. In one stroke of the pen, their fundamental human rights were taken away from them.
The All India Catholic Union was among the first to protest and challenge this order. Sikhs Dalits – called Mazbhis – and Neo Buddhists joined the movement later. The most recent entrants to the now massive movement are the Pasmanda Muslims.
The Sikhs were powerful. They had regiments in the army, and Punjab is close to Delhi, the national Capital, in more ways than one. Their agitation led to the restoration of their rights by 1956. The Buddhists were really Ambedkarites and the so called neo-Buddhists of Maharashtra. They too had the Mahar regiment in the Army, but it was sheer numbers and the support in Parliament that prompted the then Union Welfare Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, himself a Dalit, to grant them the Scheduled Caste rights. The Christians despite a massive rally in Delhi were denied the privileges, Mr. Paswan and others telling them they would bring forth a law soon thereafter. It as many years later, in the Government of P V Narsimha Rao, a Brahmin, that his Welfare minister Sitaram Kesari persuaded the crafting of a Cabinet resolution on granting the SC rights to Christians. The Cabinet paper was not without loopholes. It mentioned all the pros and cons, carrying the day for the Christians by a thin margin. The Government drafted a Bill, but inadvertently or by design, the Bill was not admitted by the Speaker, Mr. Shivraj Patil who would later earn further notoriety for his silence while Christians in Orissa were massacred in 2008.
The agitation and advocacy has continued unabatedly since them. Rallies have been held all over India, and religiously when Parliament is in session, Dalit Christians come in numbers large and small to Jantar Mantar on Parliament Street in New Delhi to register their protest, to make their cry. Christian organizers give dinners in honour of Christian MPs and went in delegations to party presidents and Government ministers pleading the cause. All of it has been in vain so far.
Things have started moving since a Public Interest Litigation was filed in 2004 by the PIL Centre headed by former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan and his son Prashant, the human rights lawyer. The PIL asked the Government whether the fact that Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims are deprived of the benefits of reservation did not amount to hostile discrimination under Article 14.

The Government now has to either justify upholding the 1950 Presidential Order or accept the Rangnath Misra Commission recommendation of reservation for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. Many other writs have been filed since then, some my Pasmanda Muslims and even a few by the Hindutva groups opposing the Christian and Muslim demands. All the writs have been clubbed together for hearing in Courtroom Number One, presided over by the Chief Justice of India. One positive result has been the support that has finally come from Government’s own statutory and other commissions and organisations.

I recall in the ‘Nineties, the then Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha Suraj Bhan, telling me and CBCI secretary Father John Vallamattam, who later founded Indian Currents, how it was in the Fifties when he was member of a Parliamentary team which was assessing this issue. They travelled to many states and cities, including Mumbai, Goa and Kerala. In each halt, they asked the Church hierarchy to explain to them the existence of Dalit Christians. As I recall Mr. Bhan telling the story, “despite the existence of walls dividing upper and lower castes in life in the Church and in death in the cemetery, all of them said they had no Dalits in the Church.”
Many a Church maintains this position, perhaps out of a wrong understanding of faith, sociology, history and Constitutional rights.
Once the matter came to the Supreme Court, it asked the Government to respond. For the first time in fifty years, it could not hide, nor ignore the issue hoping it would vanish like a bad dream. Typically, the first response of the Government was to buy time. It was to repeat this trick more than once. It told the Supreme Court it had set up a commission to examine the issue – the National Commission for religious and Linguistic Minorities headed by former Supreme Court judge and then Congress Member of Parliament, Mr. Rangnath Misra. Even as the Advocate General of the day, the late Mr. Milon Bannerjee was telling the Supreme Court this, some of us who were in the court drove over to Justice Misra who said he had no knowledge of this. It would be many days before he would be finally asked to examine the issue. Dalit Christians and Muslims gave him kilograms of data, scores of historical records including some dating back to the Nineteenth century law courts of Madras presidency.
Justice Misra’s commission, which had the redoubtable jurist Tahir Mahmood on it together with St. Stephen’s College Principal, the late Dr. Anil Wilson, wrote a monumental report. The commission held that the stigma of being a Dalit, that caste itself, crossed the boundaries of religion. It ruled that Christian and Muslim Dalit deserved all the privileges of being Scheduled castes. However the ruling was not without some baggage. The member secretary, Indian Administrative Service officer Asha Das, wrote a vitriolic dissent note, repeating every argument given by every Brahminical officer and minister since 1950. Also refusing the Dalit Christian request was the Department of Welfare, and then headed by the Dalit leader and former Foreign Service officer Meira Kumar. In several signed notes, her department said the Christians did not qualify.
But the sustained pressure – the issue was taken to the United Nations conference on race and racial discrimination held in Durban, South Africa, by office bearers of the All India Christian Council and the All India Catholic Union – and the many rallies of the Christians in New Delhi, Madurai and Chennai, among other places, did have an impact. Political parties including the DMK allied to their support. In time, several State legislatures, including Tamil Naidu and Andhra Pradesh, passed resolutions in support. Chief ministers such as Nitish Kumar, Mayawati and M K Karunanidhi, all from non-Congress spectrum, wrote to the Union Government saying that Dalit Christians, and Muslims, must be given their nights. The BJP was the dissenter. The Congress has remained mum.
The Government, however, has been active in a negative way. After Justice Misra said “Yes”, the Government sent his report to the national Commission for Scheduled castes, headed by former Union Home Minister and once Governor Buta Singh. Many delegations met Buta, who told them he agreed with their demand. He said so in his written report, but added a mischievous footnote, saying that Christians and Muslims be given their reservations without touching the 15 per cent reservations given to Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh Scheduled castes . He did not explain why the commission had not put this rider when the SC status was bestowed on Dalit Sikhs, the community to which he himself belonged, and then to Buddhists.
This is a critical issue. Other than in Tamil Naidu, the maximum reservations which can be made under a Supreme Court ruling is a total of 50 per cent. Government can, possibly justly, say that even if it were to agree to such reservations, it would violate the Supreme Court orders, or say advocates against the Dalit Christians. They also, of course, maintain that there cannot be a Dalit amongst Christianity and Islam, both Semitic religions as there is no untoucbability amongst them. True. But they of course forget that untoucbability has been banned in Hinduism by law, and that Dalits get the privileges of SC Status because of the infirmity of suppression three thousand year old.
The Government was sleeping well till the Supreme Court disturbed its siesta last year, asking it to make up its mind soon, and respond in the hearings scheduled for 24th February 2011.
The Political Affairs Committee of the Union Cabinet, charged with formulating the Government position, asked Advocate General Vahanvati to brief it. It was in this briefing that Vahanvati dropped his bombshell. Vahanvati said “many complicated legal issues are involved” but currently “no decision was called for.” The complication from the Buta Singh suggestion -- if reservation is given to these two groups, it should not be from the 15 per cent meant for Dalits. It should be a separate quota. The existing position on reservation at the national level is: 27 per cent for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 15 per cent for the SC (or Dalits) and 7.5 per cent for the Scheduled Tribes. The three categories together account for 49.5 per cent, and till now, the Supreme Court has ruled that reservation should not exceed 50 per cent.” Clearly, therefore, a decision one way or the other will open a can of worms, “a newspaper said. The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs is headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and includes Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Defence Minister A.K. Antony. A special invitee at the meeting was Minorities Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed.
Newspapers are pointing that elections in Tamil Naidu, Bengal and Kerala put pressure on the Government on act, as these three states have Christians and Muslims in sizable numbers. The CPM recently organised a major convention at Kottayam, a major Christian centre in Kerala, to woo the Dalit Christians. Christians form 19% of the state's 31.8 million people while Dalit Christians are around 4%. DMK boss and chief minister M Karunanidhi has maintained that the demand for granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians "is not only just but also indisputable" and if necessary the party would even lead an agitation, the Hindustan Times said. The Congress however fears what Hindustan Times described as a “political backlash which would cost dearly for the party.”
The Vahanvati briefing and the adjournment of the case has not gone down well with Christian organisations. The All India Christian Council termed the statement of Attorney-General Vahanvati as “ominous”.

“In the many years the case has been in the Apex court, proceedings have been delayed because of the Government’s inability to make up its mind on the matter despite repeated prodding by the court. This speaks of a debilitating indecisiveness which is born of political perfidy and bureaucratic obduracy. Sections of the officialdom, belonging to the upper castes, and sections of the same power groups in the ruling and the major opposition party are opposing the assertion of the religious minority groups to regain their constitutional rights, the aicc feels. We do not see why these groups feel so threatened. Our brothers and sisters in the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits know that most Government jobs go unfilled, and there is enough for everyone to share without restricting each others’ privileges and rights, “the council said

“It is a mystery why the Government yet demurs.” When the Constitution was signed, the affirmative action of reservations in jobs, legislatures, schools, and on such issues as rural development was given to all Dalits who were struggling to regain human dignity after 3,000 years of oppression at the hands of the ruling upper caste-led social system, the Christian council added. “This era of prevarication and political indecisiveness must now end, Dalit Christians and Muslims must be given their rights now,” it said

Hate poisons the Narmada

2011-02-05T05:09:00.000-08:00

FACT FINDING REPORT ON THE EVENTS ON THE EVE OF THE PROPOSED NARMADA SAMAJIK KUMBH AT MANDLA, MADHYA PRADESH

JABALPUR, 1 FEBRUARY 2011

A fact finding team which toured the Narmada Valley areas in Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh on the eve of the so-called Narmada Samajik Kumbh scheduled to be held from 10th to 12th February 2011 has found that the Christian community not just of the district but of the entire region encompassing Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring state of Chhatisgarh, have solid reasons to fear an outbreak of violence against them during or after the event from cadres of the Sangh Parivar.

The Sangh Parivar has left no one in any doubt that the main reason for organising the Kumbh, or holy river bank gathering, at which they expect two million people and the entire leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, its daughter organisations and the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to attend, is to purge the region of “Christian missionaries” they accuse of carrying on large scale conversions of tribals, mostly Gonds in this part of the country.

The church leadership in turn has sent urgent representations to the Governor and chief minister of Madhya Pradesh apprising them of the sinister developments and calling on the State to ensure that they are not persecuted and that there is no outbreak of violence. “Our sources tell us there will be a major ghar wapsi or conversion to Hinduism of local Christians. We urge the administration to take timely action and appropriate steps to protect the citizens and particularly the minorities, their places of worship and institutions and religious personnel. The administration would be entirely and wholly responsible in case of any undesirable eventuality,” a memorandum signed by priests and representatives of the Christian community to the State Governor, with copies to the Chief Minister and the divisional and district authorities said. The memorandum also listed samples of newspaper clippings and the offensive posters targetting minorities.

The Fact Finding Team: the fact finding team consisted of Dr John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council of the Government of India, and secretary general of the All India Christian Council, and Mr Vijayesh Lal, Human rights activist and Secretary of Religious Liberty Commission - EFI. The team spent three days in the Mandla-Jabalpur region, and met with the Catholic bishop of Jabalpur, Right Reverend Gerald Almeida as well as over 200 Catholic, Protestant and evangelic priests, pastors and church workers of the region in two groups in Jabalpur, where one group had come as they were afraid to meet the team in their village areas, and in the Mandla Catholic parish church hall.

The team visited the banks of the Narmada River, particularly the left bank, where some houses and fields had been levelled to make housing, toilet and other arrangements of the crowds expected to attend. The team spoke with the contractors building the “shamianas” and tents, roads and a new barrage, to local policemen, and others. The team could not, for want of time, go to Bhopal to meet with the Chief Minister, the Home Minister, the State Minorities Commission and the Governor, all of whom have been apprised of the situation by the local church authorities.

The fact finding team also collected, or photographed, pamphlets, posers, hoardings, and were given copies of other printed material.

Background: The district lies in the Mahakoshal region of Madhya Pradesh state. Most of the district lies in the basin of the Narmada River whose origins are in streams perhaps a hundred kilometres upstream from the town. Mandla district is part of the Administrative commissioner’s division of Jabalpur, with an area of 8,771 square kilometres, an official Census population of 779,414, a literacy rate of 59.85. Politically, it sends a member to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament and as many as 12 members to the State Assembly, making it politically a very important region. Government statistics say much of the population are Adivasis (tribals, who the RSS wants to describe as Vanvasis, or forest-dwellers, a term abhorred by the people). The State government admits that despite 60 years of Independence, 11 Five year Plans and millions of rupees spent in Union and State projects, the Mandla district “consistently” ranks among the 20 most backward districts in India. It is rugged terrain, and barring the state highway, inner roads continue to be in a terrible condition. Even within sight of from the highway, housing ranges from brick and cement houses to mud and thatch huts.

The Church is active in the region in education, health and development projects, many begun in recent years. The Catholic Church runs a hospital, a girl’s school and a boy’s school, apart from work done by the fathers and Sisters. The Church also has a home for its retired clergy in the region. The catholic population is thinly spread over the region, barring two villages which have a sizable number of Gond Catholics. The Church of North India has a century old church in the town, near the offices and residences of the Collector and Police chief. The CNI church has some historical and architectural importance. About 400 protestant and evangelical Pastors

Backgrounder to Kumbh Melas: The Kumbh, as the encyclopaedia says, is a mass Hindu pilgrimage, usually on the banks of a holy river and with a fixed periodicity. The minor Kumbhs are held every 3 years, the Ardh or half Kumbhs every six years at on the Ganges at Haridwar in Uttarakhand and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh on the junction of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and the main or 12 yearly Kumbh at river banks at four places --Allahabad, Haridwar, and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh and Nasik in Maharashtra. The government spends billions of rupees in the periodic preparations, largely on crowd management, sanitation and habitation, but the religious rituals are carried out by well known Akharas, or congregations which have traditional rights of bathing and prayers in a sharply contested hierarchy and priority. The government has little role in it, and political parties even less. Political parties however to register their presence, and it not just Bharatiya Janata party leaders but such Congress top brass as Mrs Sonia Gandhi who make their presence felt at these religious fetes together with the other millions of the faithful. [By the way, the Supreme Court has recently upheld the official expenditure at Kumbhs, the Muslim Haj and the Hindu pilgrimage to Mansarover in Chinese-held Tibet as legitimate.]

What distinguished the “”Narmada Samajik Kumbh” from the others is that is part of a very recent series of religious festivals invented by the Sangh Parivar as part of an ideological campaign to animate tribal populations in western and central India, specially the Chhotanagpur region inhabited by some of the oldest tribes in the world, anthropologically older than the Dravidian and the Aryan groups that now constitute much of the Indian population. While the people call themselves Adivasis, or original people, the Sangh Parivar calls them Vanvasis or forest dwellers as it is loath to admit that they pre-date the Aryans in the subcontinent. This region is also heavily forested, and has vast reserves of rare earths, minerals, coal and much of the country’s bio diversity. While the late Lakshmananda Saraswati was evangelising the Kondh tribals of Kandhamal in Orissa – later scene of much violence against Christians – with similar heavily Sanskritised ritual, his colleague in the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram Swami Aseemanand, invented the “Shabari Kumbh” in the Dangs district of Gujarat to create a political and ritual campaign against local Christians and church workers. Aseemanand, born in Bengal and with a master’s degree in science, had become a terror in south Gujarat, which first saw serial violence against Christians on Christmas Eve in 1998 in which over three dozen village churches were torched. Aseemanand is currently in police custody and is being investigated for his part in “Hindutva terror” targetting religious minorities and involving the3 bombing of Muslim shrines and mosques as well as the India-Pakistan peace train, called the Samjhauta express, in 2007. In fact the Shabari event launched by Aseemanand was planned in Madhya Pradesh, according to media reports.

The India Abroad News Service in a despatch from Ahmedabad in January 17 reported that Aseemanand, the chief organiser of the 'shabari mahakumbh', first held in February 2006 to reconvert Christian tribals as Hindus in the tribal Dangs district of Gujarat, had earlier announced that the second edition would be held this year at the same venue, but the venue was shifted later. IANS quoted Hindu Jagran Manch and other co-sponsors based in Surat saying the decision to shift the congregation away from Dangs has been taken in view of the heightened surveillance by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It was first christened 'Maa Narmada Kumbh'. The name was changed to Narmada Samajik Kumbh when some tribal groups objected and threatened to hold their own festivities to challenge the Kumbh. The Fact Finding team was told that the Tribals possibly would go ahead with their alternative celebrations.

The Kumbh venue is spread over 14 square km area to accommodate about 20 lakh people that are expected to attend. The government has allotted Rs 140 crore [Rupees 1,400 million] for the civil works, tentage, roads and other arrangements.

Already, a barrage has been built across the nascent Narmada River to hold back water for the people to bathe in, as normally at this time of the year, there is not much water in the river. The fact finding team could not ascertain if environmental clearances had been got from the Central authorities for this barrage which itself may have repercussions on wildlife and irrigation downstream. Several kilometres of roads have been built on the riverbed and fields, while tens of kilometres of roads leading up to the river from Jabalpur are being hurriedly given a fresh black-top after removing the old asphalt coating. In normal times, a small temple and a natural island host the several ritual bathing ceremonies held every year, and attended only by local people. The fact finding tram witnessed one such bathing festival, which was supervised by a handful of policemen.
We understand that for the coming Kumbh, not only police from the division but other parts of the State is being deployed, as prominent Hindu religious leaders as well as activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and other Hindu organisations, besides prominent Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, are expected to attend. We were given to understand that Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states, including Mr. Narendra Modi of Gujarat, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh and Mr. Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh, were also expected to attend.

We were told that even before the New year, groups of Sadhus and Sangh activists had been roaming about the villages in Mandla, as well as villages and town in the rest of state, going home to home to tell about the Kumbh and to collect money for food and arrangements for the devotees. We were told that such teams of fund collectors were even active in Jabalpur, the second major town in Madhya Pradesh and seat of its High court.

It was in this context that the Pastors and social leaders in Mandla told us of the threatening nature of the Sangh propaganda. They said much of the treat was oral, and conveyed as the groups moved across the villages briefing the people about the activities of the “missionaries” or Christian pastors. The group leaders were openly saying they would wipe out Christianity from the region and covert the region’s Christians to Hinduism in Ghar wapsi through ritual cleansing.

We came across software used to print various sizes of banners and flex-boards. One such set of slogans on the posters charged the Christian missionaries of fooling the local people through their educational and medical services. The main slogan was that the “Church will do anything for conversions” Some of this software bears the signatures of the “Dharma Jagran Samiti, Maharashtra”.
Interestingly, the State administration is going out of its way to patronise the Kumbh The police superintendent on 6 December 2010 issued orders telling Churches , and others, that they needed to close down their schools and other institutions which would used to house the visiting dignitaries, women police and other officials. The school officials told the police it would be impossible to close down the schools for such a long period. After this, the police superintendent claimed he had not signed such an order. The fact Finding team could procure a copy of the order.

The Mandla police have always kept close tabs on the local Christian leadership. The police issued a notice to Sister Olga Lucas of the Deenbandhudham Convent that they were investigating complaints and wanted the Convent to give a list of the nuns serving in the convent with details, further details of their bank accounts, the details of other inmates, numbers of landline and mobile telephones in the convent and the names of those who owned these instruments. Going to ridiculous lengths, the police also asked for full details of patients undergoing treatment in the hospital and clinics, and the details of the administrative structure of the congregation of the nuns, together growth names, addresses and phone numbers of the office bearers and superiors.

Similar notices were also issued to other catholic priests and protestant pastors. The Fact Finding committee could get hold of copies of many of these handwritten notices and orders

The collective fears of the community and church leaders are evident in the text of the Memorandum submitted to the Governor, which inter alia says [English translation, as the original is in Hindi] “It is a matter of great happiness for the Mahishmati Nagar Mandla that the Narmada Kumbh is organized at Mandla on 10,11 and 12th February 2011. As per the information received about 20 lacs [two million] people are expected to arrive for this program. The Kumbh is supposed to be a time of blessings for all. But many fears too are expressed about the purpose of organizing this Mela.

1. As per one of the Paper reports, one of the aims of the Mela is to save the tribals from the persecution of the Christian missionaries. To persecute somebody is against the principles and teachings of Christianity. Moreover the Christian Community in Mandla District have been giving generous support for the development of this District through its educational, medical and social works. Therefore we request the Govt. take care and stop the black propaganda going on against the Christians so that the religious good will prevailing here may not be lost.

2. It is informed by various sources that during the Kumbh in large number, Christians will be reconverted to Hinduism through “Ghar wapasi” (Home Coming) program. Joining any religion or returning to any religion is a fundamental right of every citizen of this country. But we request the Govt. to see that no one is allured or forced to go back to any religion and thus violate their fundamental rights.

3. Another fear about Kumbh is that large number of people from outside M.P. are involved in the preparations and conducting the Kumbh. Since the work is allotted to people who do not know well the language and culture of this place, it can create unwanted situations and problems. In that situation if anything unwanted like stampede etc happens we wish that any antisocial elements should not put the blame on the minorities and take advantage of the situation. To face such situation we request the Government to insure all the buildings, shops, institutions and other movable and immovable properties of the minorities at the expense of the Govt. itself and save the minorities from any risk.

4. Some of the political groups have expressed their doubt that the Kumbh is organized to lease out terrorism here. If the Govt. has some doubt of such thing, to save the innocent people from such situation, in time Govt. may deploy necessary police and Para military forces.

5. From the information received it is learnt that in order to spoil the religious harmony and social peace, a lot of leaflets and flexes are printed and they are being distributed. In time if the Govt. does not take precautionary measures on it and stops it, there is a possibility of losing religious harmony and cause social unrest.

6. Mandla is a peaceful and healthy area. But the coming of such a large number of people may pollute this area and this may lead to some kind of epidemic.

7. We request the Govt to introspect on the above points and take necessary steps in time. Give total protection for the people, institutions and worshipping places of the minorities. If needed kindly arrange sufficient paramilitary force for the same. If through the negligence of the Govt. if anything unwanted happens the Govt. will be held responsible for the same. We wish a peaceful Kumbh and all the success for it and promise our full support and cooperation.”

The Church leadership has reserved its right to consult legal opinion and, if necessary, move the courts for protection.

After its visit, the Fact Finding team fears that even if there is no violence and no forcible conversions of Christians to Hinduism during the duration of the Kumbh, the Hindutva campaign had vitiated the atmosphere and seriously impacted on human relationships between Christian and other tribals in the hamlets, villages and townships of the region. The penetration of hard core Sangh activists and their cells in this area may have long term repercussions for the freedom of religion in this region and may seriously impact on the continuing social work of the Church, including the running of schools and medical centres.

The Fact finding tram hopes the Madhya Pradesh government will take whatever administrative steps are required to prevent any coercive moves against the Christian minority community, that the government will take cognisance of the massive hate campaign that has been unleashed, that it will monitor the security of the minorities during the Kumbh and that it will take long term measures to see that constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith continue to be implemented in the Mandla region.

A copy of this report is being sent to the Governor of Madhya Pradesh, to the Chief Minister, to the National Commission for Minorities, to the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and to the office of the Prime Minister of India for their information.

Enclosures:
Soft copies of posters
Photocopies of police notices to Convents and churches
Text of the Church memorandum to the Governor

2011-01-29T01:42:00.000-08:00

A bit of the Cancer remains in Supreme court’s Judgment on Dara Singh

John Dayal

Oncologists, cancer surgeons, take extra care when excising a malignant tumor from the human body. They make sure not an iota, not one cell remains of the tumor, lest it blow up in full bloom some years later and send the patient to his or her death.

The Supreme Court of India, the last bulwark of justice and secularism from the point of view of micro minorities such as the Christians, seems not to have take such due diligence when in a rare suo moto action this week it modified its remarks in a judgement denying the investigating agency’s demand for the death penalty for Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh who led a mob that burnt alive Australian mission and health worker Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons Timothy and Philips in Orissa on the night of 22 January 1999. The court upheld the High court judgement which had given Dara Singh a life term holding that the crime was not the rarest of the rare, and the trial court in Khurda had erred in giving Dara Singh and some of his associates the death penalty in the first place.

The Christian community is still divided on its support or opposition to the death penalty, but most in the Catholic and Protestant churches say capital punishment is an anathema in this age and time. I am myself a staunch opponent of the death penalty.

When the Supreme Court delivered its judgement, the community was slow to respond. I was on satellite television to welcome the life term, but to express my strong apprehensions to the implication of the Supreme Court judgment which made it seem that Dara Singh was justified in “punishing” Stainless for his Christiana activities including alleged conversions of the tribals I Orissa.

The Supreme Court through most of its judgement text dwelt on the circumstances of the case and held that Dara had been indirectly identified through slogans and identification through photographs. It did bold that the triple murder was horrendous. But in its concluding paragraphs, the court said the following: In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity. All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the High Court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur." The Court had also said, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of 'use of force', provocation, conversion, and incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."

The All India Christian Council issued an immediate press statement, which expressed concern about affect of Judges’ comments about conversion on cases of communal violence. Dr. Joseph D’souza, President of the Council said, “We are satisfied with the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the 2005 Orissa High Court’s verdict which commuted a death sentence for Dara Singh to life imprisonment for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1999. In dismissing Dara Singh’s petition for dropping of the case against him, the Apex Court clearly denounced the heinous hate crime perpetrated by communal forces.”

Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, “Most Indian Christians oppose the death penalty both on moral and theological grounds, as much as we oppose abortion and taking away life at any stage. Of course, as Citizens, we want the State and Central government to uphold the rule of law.” In the conclusion of the ruling on Criminal Appeal No 1366 of 2005, “Rabindra Kumar Pal @ Dara Singh Vs. Republic of India”, the judges wrote, “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.” Some media reports insinuated this meant ‘conversions’ are illegal or the root cause of the violent attack. Dayal said, “Although we are yet to analyse the full judgment of the Supreme Court, we are disturbed by the parts carried by the media, mentioning terms like fraud and forcible and conversion. The Court must comment on Hindu conversions, termed Ghar Wapsi. But more than anything, we fear such remarks may negatively impact trials in Kandhamal, Orissa and future challenges to so-called ‘freedom of religion laws’ in various states.”

The aicc said inquiries by the National Commission for Minorities, Right To Information (RTI) requests, and other investigations have proven repeatedly there have been no fraudulent or forceful conversions by Christians in India anywhere, anytime. After analyzing the Supreme Court reference to conversions, the aicc might move Supreme Court to revise the reference at an appropriate time. “We do not want any court to pre-judge the matter of conversions and violence. The real root cause of strife in which Staines lost his life with his two kids was a misunderstanding of conversion. We have seen communal violence not only against Christians, but also on Muslims and Sikhs since India’s Independence. It is unfortunate that Hindutva forces look for an excuse to attack Christians and others because they believe that India is for Hindus only. This goes against India’s spirit of secularism.”

A day later, civil society activists, among them Navaid Hamid, Shabnam Hashmi, Seema Mustafa, Harsh Mander, H S Hardenia, and former MP Shahid Sidiqi, and Christian activists John Dayal, Dominic Emmanuel, and Mary Scaria also issued an angry press note, widely covered on the internet and controversially covered by the Hindu on Page One -- leading to a hilarious editorial development, of which some other time – calling the comments gratuitous. The statement noted A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B. S. Chauhan went on to add: “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other. It strikes at the very root of the orderly society, which the founding fathers of our Constitution dreamt of. ”

“This statement patently is unconstitutional as it goes against guarantees of freedom of faith on the one hand and seems to acknowledge vigilante action of criminals like Dara Singh who take upon themselves ‘to teach lessons’ to persons serving lepers and the poor. Did the SC ever take into consideration the report of the Wadhwa Commission which was set up to probe the murder of Graham Staines and which had observed, “There has been no extraordinary increase in the Christian population in Koenjhar district between 1991 and 1998. The population had increased by 595 during this period and could have been caused by natural growth”. The SC ruling may in fact send the wrong signals to courts trying cases of religious violence in Kandhamal, for instance, and in other places. It also tends to preempt possible challenges to the black laws enacted by many states in the guise of Freedom of Religion Bills.

“The secular India looks at SC and other judicial forums as its last hope to preserve Constitutional guarantees given to religious minorities and other marginalized groups. It is therefore understand disturbed when judgments such as this one and the Allahabad-Lucknow Bench, ruling on Ayodhya are made and interpreted as supporting the bigoted point of view of right wing fundamentalists such as the Sangh Parivar. The state cannot abrogate its responsibilities to ensure the secular fabric of the country. We expect the government to ask the SC to expunge the unnecessary, uncalled for and unconstitutional remarks..”

The uproar had its impact. The Supreme Court did not wait for us to file an application. In a salutary rare revision of its own order, the two judges expunged most of the offending words.
The suo moto changes made by the court are:

"In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity."

has been replaced with:

“However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the High Court need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paragraphs," said the bench in its one of such replacement.”

And
We hope Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of religion playing a positive development integrating into a prosperous nation will be realized. "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."

has been replaced with:

"There is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means."

On the face of it, it is satisfactory. But senior Supreme court advocates I have consulted have told me there is enoiugh cause to go back to the Supreme court to seek clarifications on what it means by the term “interference” in someone else’s religion. Is talking about your own religion “interference”, or is evangelization interference. This suddenly gains in importance in view of the Somaekharan Commission report on the Karnataka attacks on churches in which it calls for drastic measures to regulate church activity, including registration of churches.

The bench of justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan, while dismissing the agency’s plea for death penalty, said the punishment can be imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases depending upon the facts and situation of each case. Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembrom were found guilty of burning to death Staines and his sons, who were sleeping inside a van outside a church, at Manoharpur village in Koenjhar district of Orissa on January 22, 1999. The bench had on December 15 last year reserved its judgement after hearing at length the arguments of CBI’s counsel and Additional Solicitor General Vivek Tankha and counsel for the convicts.

Senior counsel KTS Tulsi and Ratnakar Dash, besides Counsel Sibo Shankara Mishra, appeared for the 12 convicts. Appearing for CBI, Tankha had told the bench that Dara Singh deserves death sentence as the murders were committed in a most “diabolic and dastardly manner” which warranted exemplary punishment. Dara had filed an appeal challenging his conviction and the life sentence awarded to him. The appeals were admitted by the apex court in October 2005. On May 19, 2005, the Orissa High Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty imposed by the sessions court on Dara Singh for the murder of Staines and his two minor sons, 10 y3ear old Philip,6 year old Timothy. Mahendra Hembram, a tribal, was convicted but the High Court acquitted 11 others who were awarded life terms by the trial court in the case. The trial court in Khurda had in September 2003 convicted all the 13 accused. While Dara Singh was awarded death sentence, others were given life terms.

While the Christian Council has reserved its right to move the Supreme Court again, there seems to be a division in the church on what to do next. High level meetings in the Delhi archdiocese have not arched a unanimous decision on the course of action, but it is clear that senior counsel and even the National Commission of Minorities has to be consulted.

CBCI law panel secretary Sr Mary Scaria said; the freedom of religion is a Constitutional Right under Article 25 of the Constitution of India and it is accepted and respected both in the national and International laws. The right to freedom of religion allows Indian citizens to choose any religion that he / she wants to choose. This fundamental right was chosen after lot of thought regarding the process of person choosing his / her own religion. The right to freedom of religion is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution of India. Article 25 reads as follows:-The judgment will give impetus and be used as a precedent to justify the "Freedom or Anti-Conversion" Acts and Bills in many states, besides emboldening religious fundamentalists and moral policing. As the Supreme Court itself have realized that they have made a mistake and expunged those portions which according to them were unconstitutional, the community after having gone through the judgment before and after expunging feel the urgency to go before the APEX COURT with another petition perhaps as it is a larger Constitutional issue pray for a proper dealing of the issue. Or referring to a larger bench?

One of the messages tome said “”The modified version of the Supreme Court judgement in the Graham Staines case may be less offensive, but it is in no way less dangerous. In some ways it is even more dangerous to liberty than the earlier offensive wording. While deleting references to "teaching the victim a lesson" etc, and direct use of the word "conversion", the Court still maintains that "There is no justification to interfere in someone's belief by any means", implying thereby, that propagating one’s beliefs is tantamount to interference in another’s beliefs. This judgement needs to be challenged – not under criminal law, but under Constitutional law.

Advocate P I Jose said: Rules of statutory interpretation are not applicable to reading of a Judgment. But there are well accepted judicial norms for this too. Keeping that in mind the basic question that scares every one, particularly Christians in India, is- what is the larger social evil that disturbed and prompted the two judges while dealing with the subject case to pen paragraph 47 as a post script to the Judgment? References to Shri K.R. Narayanan and Mahatma Gandhi in the same Para 47, which was retained even after suo-moto ‘clarification’ make it clear, the evil that disturbed them is “intolerance and disrespect for another’s religion The issue is whose intolerance or disrespect- the convict’s or the victims’? The replaced sentence answers it without any doubt as the words used are “religious belief” because Dara Singh did not interfere with helpless Stains and two innocent children’s “religious belief” but with their “right to life”. This takes us to the conclusion that the judges were disturbed by the victims’ way of life.
On the first place making a comment on the victims’ is out of place and against the basic principles of judicial thinking because a victim is not given an opportunity to explain their conduct in a criminal trial. Secondly, but more important, applying the yardstick of victims’ conduct while judging a criminal act not committed on a sudden provocation, rather in a case of cold blooded murder. Sadly the feeling of scare and deep hurt the comments made to the Christian community in India is because it fell from the highest court of the land. A comment deviating from the ordinary norms of judicial thinking from the Supreme Court has the potential not only to propel the conduct of a billion people but also determines the performance of a policeman’s lati in this country. “
This is still a story which is developing.

Church, Civil Society and Human Rights

2011-01-09T02:49:00.001-08:00

Is it too hard to follow Christ’s examples of justice for the underdog?

John Dayal

6 January 2011
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“Let justice roll like a river (Amos 5:24-27). Prior to Vatican II, no Roman Catholic treatise would have begun with scripture. It would start with the definition of justice – Suu, cuique tradere – to render to each one’s due. Specially with the 1971 Synod, justice became a call to the Christians from the God of the two Testaments. [From The New Dictionary of theology, edited by Joseph Komonhak and others]

“As one of the first Christian voices against slavery, St. Patrick, himself a former slave, has a special relationship to the modern quest for human rights. [Philip S. Johnson]

“Christians for Justice – Stop Targetting Binayak Sen and Teesta Setalvad” {A banner at the Christian candle light demonstration on 4th January 2011 in support of the human rights defenders organised in the national capital by activists of Catholic, protestant and Evangelical Churches.]
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I think I met my first Catholic Religious human rights activist sometime in 1976 in the rural areas of the “steel belt” that runs through what was then undivided Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand where all the big steel plants, coal mines, and the steel trade is located.

Those were turbulent times. Indira Gandhi had declared a state of national Emergency [1975-77], almost suspended the Constitution, got the Supreme Court to rule that that there could be no cause for habeas corpus and that normal human rights as we understand them, the right to life and liberty and the rule of law, would not be available to the common man. Indira Gandhi was a Prime Minister fighting to save her regime after the Allahabad High Court overturned her election to the Lok Sabha. But it was his younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, aided and abetted by a coterie of self-serving senior officers and a gang of Youth Congress leaders, who had emerged as the real, albeit extra-constitutional, centre of authority.

Their actions saw forcible sterilisations of men as old as sixty, and as young as sixteen, and demolitions of Muslim qasbas, and about 1,400 clusters, scattered across the city of Delhi, which were bulldozed out of existence. Close to 200,000 families were hastily given barren and tiny plots of land in about 40 so called resettlement colonies, and lived or months without adequate water and toilets, and with tarpaulin sheets to save them from the heat, the cold and the rains that are always so excessive in Delhi. By the way, barring a muted voice or two, I did not find the Church in India, Cardinals, archbishops or their organisations in any denomination; pass a resolution against the Emergency. Safety first, for sure, and always be on the right side of the ruling party. Nothing much has changed.

But I digress. This is not about the Emergency, though one is sore tempted to write more on the because of the recent Congress party autobiography in which it admits the excesses, and even puts a bit of the blame on Sanjay Gandhi, whose wife Maneka Gandhi and son Varun are now leading lights of the opposition Bharatiya Janata parity. Another leading light of the BJP and a former Union minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, Jagmohan who was once a Sanjay Gandhi acolyte, has risen to the defence of his old chum and master, writing a fiery piece in the editorial page of the Hindustan Times. I know something of the Emergency excesses and had written about them in a book For Reasons of State, Delhi under the Emergency which I authorised with my then colleague in the Patriot newspaper, Ajoy Bose, later of the Guardian, UK.

I was in the central Indian badlands researching the major technology step by Indira Gandhi after the later “implosion” of a successful nuclear bomb. This was the SITE, or Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, which brought TV to remote villages with promises of new agro techniques and doles given by the government. The messages were subtle, meant to bring the rural masses to the government’s fold. Hundreds of psychologists monitored the popular response. Their findings have since been used successfully “to fool most of the people most of the time,” as someone once said. On a positive side, the current saturation of dish and cable TV has its roots in that experiment.

But the difference between promise and actual benefits given by the government also brought about distrust of the government, and sometimes unrest. Trade unions, curbed under the Emergency, had gone underground, for labour unrest was frequent where ever employers, including big government and private sector bosses, sought to short change the working class.

It was in this context that I saw young scholastics moving around with the workers, expressing solidarity, extending moral support. I am not sure if they were Jesuits or Divine Word missionaries, possibly both. But I was happy to see they were involved in the struggles of the common man, at the grassroots, far away from the publicity and the glare of the media which now sometimes motivated some human rights activists.

I regret to say that barring rare exceptions through the decades and the last half of the 20th Century, and some personal experience in the new decade involving Kandhamal and Orissa, I have not seen the Church in a leadership role as a human rights defender, or motivator.

It is time that the Church itself, and others who want it to grow in strength, subject it to a close examination as to why it has not only failed itself but has prevented its common members from seeing themselves as major constituents of the nation’s civil society.

The few times the Church has been active has been when its own vested interests were involved. Cardinals and bishops, quite correctly, exhorted the parishioners to take to the streets, albeit in peaceful processions, to challenge the government of the State of Kerala which sought to control the managements of private colleges, many of which were owned by the Church, or when it meddled in text books. Back in 1998, 4th December to be precise, the Church called for a nation wide closure of its schools and mass rallies protesting the sudden violence unleashed on the community by elements of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and others closely allied with the Bharatiya Janata party which was then ruling in New Delhi and several other states.

And last year, the Religious for Justice, the Conference of Religious and individual activists, especially lawyers, from men and women Congregations, took up the imitative to see that justice was done to the victims of Kandhamal because the Fast Track Courts were letting off one murderer after another. The initiative will hopefully bring the Supreme Court to bring its weight to bear on the situation so that the miscarriage of justice is brought to a speedy end, and justice is done.

Another community issue, the cause of the Christian of Dalit origin demanding a reversal of the 1950 Presidential order which robbed them of the rights to be called Scheduled castes with concomitant loss of benefits of reservations in employment and education, has also seen the Church go about at tortoise speed. Although the Catholic and Protestant Churches collaborated in the 1991 massive Dalit Christian rally at India Gate – the biggest ever by the community -- they have not been able to repeat it. It cannot be for want of resources. The Church has a-plenty. It must then be attributed to a lack of desire. The movement is now being carried forward by a few men – among them Jesuit Fr Bosco, the CBCI secretary Fr Cosmon, the activist Franklin Caesar and some others from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The rallies have taken on appearances of tokenism with barely 500 – three hundred of them brought from the southern states – ever present, and Bishops making a “photo opportunity” attendance. Barely any laity or clerical group joins from Delhi.

Dalit activists will argue that they are doing their best under the circumstances. They have to be praised for regularly going to the Supreme Court where their writs are pending before the Bench of the Chief Justice of India. Fate, government apathy and political opposition have all contributed to a situation where the writ does not come up any more for hearing, and only the most committed feel there will be any justice done in the near future.

Arguably, if the entire Church had backed the Dalit Christian demand – and they could have taken lessons in agitation advocacy from the Gurjars, the Sikhs and others who bring Union and state governments to their knees within a few days of jamming rail and road traffic on major routes - the issue would have possibly been long resolved. It remains a controversial argument within Church circles and the poor Dalits continue to agitate at Jantar Mantar on Parliament Street four times a year when Parliament meets for its sessions. The efforts by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and the National Council of Churches in India to feed Christian MPs at official dinners during the sessions, as a short cut in advocacy -- had borne no fruit, as the MPs too keep a low profile on the Dalit rights issue. Anyway, the major Church support for the Dalit Christian issue is not more than ten years old.

In the same light, the Church support for the cause of the domestic workers, most of them Catholic girls from Ranchi, Chhatisgarh and Orissa tribal areas employed in homes in metropolitan areas of Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, can be traced to their religious affinity, rather that their ethnic origins. The Church is not very visible in the agitations of tribals against monopolists and foreign interests denuding forests in Orissa, or stealing the mines in the tribal lands in other states.

If this is the situation where Christian communities are concerned, and if this is how the Church behaves towards it own, is there any one surprised if we look in vain for major Church advocacy in favour of other religious minorities, or the marginalised. Agreed there is a CBCI document committing itself to the marginalised. Agreed that in recent years, the CBCI has seminars on the Right to Food, and agreed that Caritas and CASA and Eficor are among the first to go whenever there is an earthquake or a tsunami – physically challenging and dangerous even, but political not just safe but productive – they remain far behind the firing line in mass movements where the people are asserting for their rights, sometimes for their right to life itself.

No wonder that the Church was invisible when the Sikhs were being burnt alive in Delhi and other cities, when Kashmir Hindus were pushed out of the valley by a combination of Islamic fundaments elements and the political strategy of the governor of that time, or when the Muslims were brutalised repeatedly from Nellie, Meerut, Moradabad all the way to Gujarat 2002. A few convents may have opened their doors to refugees and victims, but the Church metaphorically kept its doors closed, its conscience shut. All it did was way of charity. Not open protest, as Jesus perhaps would have wanted it to.

The argument that this will be political activity and will bring the Church or the Christian community in direct conflict with the government and the law and order machinery has to be debated, and the Church fears have to be confronted and defeated.

As a practising Catholic, I do not want the Church to suffer the consequences of some foolhardy action, or some thoughtless agitation. I certainly do not want to see bishops or priests in jail even though it is my dream that Cardinals lead some pro-people movement against corruption, for food, for a living wage, and above all, for human dignity. What a grand sight that would be.

But I do want the Church in India – Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, Pentecost, and Independent – to understand that it must support human dignity and human aspirations, specially of the poor, beyond lip service. Human dignity cannot be brought about by acts of charity. No among of building houses by Caritas, or medical relief couriered from the West to an Indian site of a natural disaster, will add an iota to the sum total of human rights in India.

What is required is for the Church to understand what it takes to be to be a part of Civil society, not just a part but the very super structure of a national nervous system that responds to the pain of the people.

What are issues agitating civil society at the moment? One has to merely read the daily newspapers, apathetic as they are and guided as they are to their urban middle class markets, to find out. The rapine in Delhi and unsolved murders in Delhi are the tip of the iceberg. India is shot through and through with a jungle law of might is right which aggravates the more one moves away from the city. Dalits in village sleep the night in terror. Their women are easy targets. The tribals are being robbed of their birthright. Dissent is met with murder by hired goons, caste thugs, or by the police. Custodial death is rampant.

Corruption in high cost construction or information technology contracts like the 2 G scandal many make the headlines, but the common man has to face corruption in the lower courts which make a total mockery of the justice dispensation system. Policemen who have to give a bribe to their superiors to get a job or a new posting need to make that money somewhere. Corruption in the money market, the food market and in the job market leads to farmer’s suicides and mass pauperisation of the hinterland. Landless peasantry sells its soul, and its body, for the privilege of being able to live the day. But surely the Church knows it first hand – for do not many of them pay a bribe to keep their FCRA permit alive.

How many remain uneducated and how many remain sick under the shadow of our 50,000 educational and medical institutions? No one knows, because no one cares. The parish system would have enabled to Church to develop an information system which even the government could not beat. But there has never been the effort. The Church does not know how many Christians are below the poverty line.

Needless to say, it is time the situation changed. It is time remedial measures were taken.

You have to look nowhere but at the life and message of Jesus Christ to understand our role in upholding human rights and becoming the foundation of a genuine civil society. Once this is understood, and finds it way into seminaries and formation schools, the situation will change – for the better. I will not have o listen to the senior Religious, heading a major institute, who told me and a group of my colleagues, that if he investigated human rights violations, he was afraid his institution – with its huge stone-walled buildings – would be pelted by stones by angry right wing groups! Surely the buildings would have survived.

It was Christ, in his parables and in his own deeds, who spelled out the common minimum of civil society – to love the neighbour not just as ourselves, but to go a step forward and love him as Christ has loved us – at the cost of his life.

It is this vision which triggered the movement after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, of a new jurisprudence concerned with the defence of human rights, culminating in the Charter of the United nations on Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950.

I am not a theologian, not by a long stretch. But I was struck by a note in my email referring to John Warwick Montgomery, a human rights specialist who served as Director of Studies at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg from 1979-81. The webpage said Montgomery has written extensively in the field tackling such subjects as the Marxist approach to human rights, the philosophical justification for human rights, and right-to-life issues. Montgomery was in Beijing at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and has written about the problem of human rights in China.

He pointed out Christians had been subjected to persecution and torture at the hands of the Roman Imperial legal system. In the fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote against the use of torture in obtaining confessions. Pope Gregory the Great echoed his stance in the sixth century and Pope Nicholas I did the same in the ninth century. In 928 AD 'good King Wenceslas' of Bohemia destroyed instruments of torture. In the twelfth century Decretum of Gratian likewise repudiated torture.

The English common law tradition developed out of Biblical principles of law, such as the Ten Commandments, and Jesus' Golden Rule that you do to others as you would be done by them. The Magna Carta, which also reflected Biblical truths, originated from the work of Cardinal Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Incidentally, common law tradition prohibited secret trials and the extraction of confessions by torture.

“God's perspective on human rights can be grounded in Biblical revelation. Both the theology of the creation and the incarnation of Christ provide the grounds for justifying rights. The rights are entitlements given to us by God. “

If that be so, than it is the duty of the Church to expresses solidarity with human rights, and with those who defend human rights.

The small candle light procession at the historic India gate by the Christian community of Delhi – led by activist of the Federation of Catholic Associations of Delhi, the National Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of India and the all India Christian Council, brightened not just the darkness surrounding the extraordinary punishment meted out to popular doctor Binayak Sen working with the tribals of Chhatisgarh and lawyer Teesta Setalvad fighting for the victims of the Gujarat government and RSS pogrom against Muslims, but also lit a spark in the hearts of many in the Church that bitter cold evening.

I would like to hope that it ignites a major revolution in the Church which sees it move away from cheque-based charity to become the cornerstone of a vibrant civil society which alone can monitor powerful governments and dangerous extremist groups to ensure that dignity, freedom, liberty and life is assured to the poorest of the poor, the helpless and the hapless. Once it reaches that stage, its own properties, its own institutions, schools and colleges will also be automatically safe from predation and persecution.

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2011-01-01T02:27:00.003-08:00

PRESS STATEMENT
For Immediate Release
For more information, contact Dr. John Dayal

CHRISTIAN COUNCIL CONCERN AT TARGETING OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS BINAYAK SEN, TEESTA SETALVAD, AND OTHERS

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY SAYS FREEDOM OF FAITH AND HUMAN DIGNITY CORNERSTONES OF INDIAN SECULAR DEMOCRACY

NEW DELHI: 1 January 2011 -- The All India Christian Council (aicc) today expressed deep distress at the systematic targeting and persecution of human rights defenders by government agencies as well as by organised groups. Christian Council leaders said India’s future as a vibrant secular democracy requires an abiding commitment to the civil liberties and human dignity of its citizens.

In a New Year Statement to the Nation, the aicc President and leadership also listed erosion of freedom of faith and disregard of special rights for vulnerable sections such as Tribals and Dalits as major issues facing India -- not just in the New Year 2011 -- but the second decade of the 21st Century. The Christian Council wished all fellow citizens peace, security, and a share in the national prosperity.

“Freedom of faith and human rights were special victims in the last year and the last decade. We recall the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 and the pre-planned mass violence against Christians in Kandhamal and other districts of Orissa as well as Karnataka,” said Dr. Joseph D’souza, aicc President. D’souza urged the Union Government to proactively resolve the unprecedented prison term for humanist doctor Mr. Binayak Sen and bring to an end the harassment of brave activist Ms. Teesta Setalvad who is currently targeted by both state and rightwing fundamentalist organisations.

Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, “It is tragic that a great republic such as India doesn’t have a sufficiently strong civil society and civil liberty mass movements which are required to monitor fault lines and lacunae in the administration of justice. A few daring individuals -- at great risk to their own lives -- and a handful of human rights groups have kept alive the spirit of the Constitution and taken up the cause of the common man victimized by extremist groups or a power-crazed governance system. People such as Binayak Sen and Teesta kept alive the pursuit of justice for the victims.” The Christian Council paid tributes to several activists who passed away last year – including Dr. Bhagwan Das of the Dalit movement, socialist leader Surendra Mohan, and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties Advocate Kannabiran.

Dr. Dayal said, “We call upon the government to ensure that a bill against communal violence is brought before Parliament which fully addresses the fears of micro-minorities such as the Christians in India. The Christian Council fully supports the demands of Dalit Christians and Muslims, and we hope the government and Supreme Court grant them justice in 2011.”

“It is high time that the government makes three structural changes to strengthen justice mechanisms in India. It should bring forth legislation establishing an Equal Opportunities Commission, set up a study group along the lines of the Sachar Commission to study the economic and social conditions of all strata of the Christian community in every part of the country, and strengthen the Nation Commission for Minorities. The 12th Five Year Plan must also reflect our needs, aspirations and hopes,” said Dr. Dayal.

The All India Christian Council plans to organise a series of seminars and consultations on these issues to educate the community and to keep the Union Government, Planning Commission, and state authorities abreast of issues crucial to the 26 million Christians in India.

The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.

# # #

2011-01-01T02:27:00.001-08:00

2010-12-26T03:59:00.001-08:00

A CHRISTMAS UPDATE FROM KANDHAMAL

From John Dayal

Christmas celebrated in Kandhamal villages in Orissa after three years

26 December 2010

Bodimunda village in Kandhamal, Orissa, celebrated Christmas for the first time in three years. And in Barakhama village several kilometres away, a strong police posse kept watch as 2,000 Christians prayed a little distance from where a 500 strong group was “observing” events that led to death and mass destruction in December 2007, and then again for seven weeks from 23 August 2008.

Christmas will never be the same ever again in this part of Orissa which at the peak of the violence saw 54,000 internally displaced Christians – over 30,000 of them in government refugee camps and the rest in forests or far away from home. But the people would not be denied celebrating the birth of Christ – many of them had faced death when asked to leave thier faith, drink some cow urine and become Hindus if they wanted to live in their villages.

Midnight Mass had become a memory, but this time two Catholic priests, a religious brother, the head of the Mother Teresa Sisters in Orissa and their friends decided to challenge the fear and the “Kui” group of the dreaded Lambodhar Kahar and celebrated the Christian festival as it should be.

Fr Ajay Singh, himself born in a hamlet near Brahmanigaon village which bore the brunt of the 2007 Christians violence, told me on the phone that there was absolute fear on the Eve of Christmas. There had been posters and repeated announcements by the Kui Samaj that they would go ahead with their programme, recalling the Kui programme on 24 December 2007 that was the trigger to the mass violence, and had been surprisingly allowed by the government authorities. The District government allowed the programme once again, but this time ensured there were some policemen to keep guard.

In Delhi, I had been receiving frantic and repeated calls from contacts in Barakhama and Tikabali who said about the same thing, urging with me to get the federal government in the national capital and state authorities in Orissa’s capital Bhubaneswar to ensure that Christmas passed off peacefully.

On Sunday, Lambodhar Kahar, leader of Kandhamal Kui Samaj, had told reporters that his group would hold the rallies to honour Mallick, a tribal villager who had died under mysterious circumstances in December 2007. Kahar and local Hindu leaders blamed Christians for his death and wanted to “honour him as a Hindu martyr. “ Mallik had earlier been accused of pulling down a church. Villagers said Hindu radicals held secret meetings and distributed leaflets asking people to congregate in large numbers in every area to observe the “memorial day.”

St Gabriel Brother Markose, an advocate who from Jharkhand who has made Kandhamal his temporary home, told me on the phone that in Bodimunda village, the most tense this week, the Catholic catechist who was forced to become a Hindu, came back and animated prayers at the local church. The Catholic community celebrated with a night mass. The Believers Church repaired their church and celebrated on 25th during day. Baptists and Pentecostals were still afraid to openly celebrate Christmas in the hinterland areas.

Br Markose said armed police personnel were deployed and subordinate officers and senior officials kept on visiting. Towards end of the mass The Collector and the SP too reached the village.

Fathers Ajay Singh and Nicholas Barla, another priest-lawyer who ahs been working on human rights and legal issues in the district for some time, volunteered to say night mass at the sensitive village. Sr Suma along with other Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa was also present.

Br Markose narrated: “Before the Mass as we moved around the village, we stopped at the only tea shop for tea. All of us from outside took our cups of tea and the last cup of tea was taken by a person from the village. Just as he was about to sip the tea, the shop keeper told him in the local Kui language ‘if you took tea, I will have to pay fine of Rs. 1000. Hearing this, the villager was returning the cup of tea. I understood, and told the shop keeper that I would reimburse if he had to pay fine and I gave him my phone number. If he is fined by fanatics, he can call me and I will reimburse his expense, of course it will give me a chance to expose the social boycott of Christians in that village.”

According to Br Markose, about 10 days ago a Christian woman purchased 'muri' -- puffed rice -- from an old lady. That old lady was imposed a fine of Rupees 500 for selling muri to a Christian. Since she was too poor to pay the fine, she pleaded and her fine was reduced to Rs. 100.

Maoists attack kills Kandhamal family

2010-12-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

Kandhamal Update One in the Season of Advent 9dec10

Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air

John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010

Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.

Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.

In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.

In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.

In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.

The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.

The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.

It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.

Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.

Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.

In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.

… …

Batticola – The Parish that vanished

Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.

Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.

Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.

The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.

But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.

Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.

KANDHAMAL UPDATE NOVEMBER 2010

2010-11-09T01:16:00.001-08:00

Economic boycott of Christians in Kandhamal; rampant insecurity as villagers forced to live as Hindus

From John Dayal
9 November 2010-11-09

[Based on the Report of a Fact Finding group of Activists on the Social and Economical Boycott of Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa:]

The Collector: of Kandhamal, Orissa, Dr. Krishan Kumar who headed the district during the anti Christian violence of August-October 2008 which left 100 dead, 5,600 houses burnt and about 56,000 persons displaced, seems now to be presiding over a well thought out economic boycott of the minority community. Confronted with the stark reality, Krishan has taken to blaming the Church and its leadership for being a hindrance in restoring peace – possibly because they have petitioned the High Court and the Supreme court of India on issues of justice in the region.

The economic boyctott of Kondh and Panos Christians in Kandhamal, which first came to light in the People’s National Tribunal headed by former Delhi chief justice Shah, held in New Delhi in August this year, continues to be a source of major harassment of the community, a fact finding team of social activist and lawyers has discovered in a field study of the region earlier this month. The preliminary report was released yesterday.

The fact finding team consisted of four well-known activists led by Advocate Nicholas Barla, a tribal activist leader, with Advocate Brother Marcus, a social worker, Jugal Kishore Ranjit, a dalit human right activist and Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist. They visited Kandhamal on 5th of November 2010 to verify the allegations of social and economical boycotts of Kandhamal Christians. The team visited four villages of four police stations of three blocks in violent hit district of Kandhamal in Orissa.

The following is the operative part of the Fact Finding Report and Update:

Despite the state administration claims of normalcy, what has been found by the Fact-finding group report reveals a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity of the persecuted Christians.

The team first visited Gadaguda village under G. Udayagiri police station under Tikabali that witnessed violence as late as 30th of October 2008, almost two months after violence was unleashed against Christian. An elderly couple in their late 70s were axed and then burnt alive here. Scores of people were injured. One of them, an army man, has bullets in his hands and thighs. Some are still in tents. The team interacted with the people of Dakanaju village and nearby villagers. They included the postman, Sarapanch and a group of affected Christians. The team was told the Christians of Dakanaju village were barred from taking water from the government dug well. The team then met Gadaguda Sarapanch, Sachindra Pradhan and asked whether he was aware of such instance. Mr. Pradhan told that he was not aware and would look into the matter and sort out at the earliest.

The team then headed for Bodimunda village under Tikabali police station in Tikabali block. They parked the vehicle on the roadside and headed towards the broken buildings and houses, a sure sign of wrath of anti-Christian violence. Upon reaching the village, the team members headed for a pastor’s house as there were hardly anybody seen on the street amidst the ruins. The pastor, Binod Pradhan (name changed), welcomed the group to his house and a definite anxiety reflected on his face. The team found that his house was intact. The pastor told the group that he has been forced to become a Hindu to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk even.

Within minutes of the team’s coming, a person later identified as a RSS cadre came to the house to enquire about the group. The pastor informed him that the guests are bank officials as his relative works in a bank. It was a sign that the team should leave the house soon.

Meanwhile, the team was informed of social and economical boycott imposed on the Christians by the right wing group RSS, the parent group of the Bharatiya Janata party, and there would be fines if any vehicle ferry any Christian be he healthy or sick, or their belongings from the village to outside or from outside into village. The team wanted to verify the allegations and went to a house of certain Bamadev Pradhan, a tribal Christian. Bamadev was lying on the muddy floor and could not get up as he was struck with paralysis. The family members told the group that being paralysis man and was suffering from fever, they looked for a hired auto to take him to a nearby hospital, Tikabali, 8 kilometres away from the village.

Nobody was ready to come to village and finally a Christian who owned an auto-rickshaw was almost forced to pick up the paralytic person. When the hired auto was returning after the drop, it was stopped and taken away by the RSS elements. The owner took the help of the auto union, which negotiated for the release of the auto paying fine of one thousand fifty one rupees (Rs 1,051) and with the assurance that the auto owner would not ferry any Christian from the village.

The team has started interacting with the paralysed family members for five minutes, when a Christian villager; Jesaya Nayak entered the house and informed the team members that it should leave the place as the situation was volatile.

The team went to another house. A fearful group of Christians had assembled there and interacted with them. The fearful Christians said, “We are in a state of shock. Those who have something have moved out the village and we poor people are left behind. What haunts us and saddens us is the administration, the BDO and police, who are hand in glove with RSS. Instead of becoming sensitive to our plight, the administration wants to deprive us of our basic amenities. They have banned the local auto-rickshaws, the only means of transportation in the area from taking Christians passengers. “We are not allowed to bring housing materials nor food provisions or medicines nor allowed to buy anything from the local shops. We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human being”, the victims said. The team enquired whether they had complained it before the police, the people replied positively and explained the statement of Inspector in charge, IIC, Tikabali, who said “being a Christian you have to suffer and there is no option’

The team wanted to meet the auto-rickshaw owner and others who have been fined. A villager volunteered to join to meet the auto owner, who has to pay the fine for ferrying the paralytic to the hospital. The auto-rickshaw owner, a pastor, told the team that he had to pay the fine one thousand fifty one rupees despite he had to complain to the police. The team then met Birendra Nayak (name changed and a Hindu himself), who told the team members that he had to pay Rs 5000 to get his tractor released as it was transporting the housing materials for the construction of the house of a Boarder Security Force soldier, which was destroyed during anti-Christian violence. Birendra Nayak went on to add, “It is because the local police takes percentage, (a bribe) and protects the anti-social elements who rule the roost. I informed the local police, but nothing happened”.

Pushpanjali Nayak, the soldier’s mother said who could be contacted over the telephone, told the group, “this incident shocked her army son, who became ill and left the village in disgust. We are presently living under polythene like a cowshed without roof and floor and proper wall with little money that we have had managed to collect, yet we cannot build our houses. We had brought sand for the house and were taken away by RSS. Our life is hell here”. She continued sobbing as she narrated. The former pastor, who says that he would openly practise the faith if situations become normal adds, “The sand that the tractor brought for the house was taken away to build the temple in the village”.

Incidentally, there are a group of 15 police persons stationed in the village and they are mute spectators to these incidents.

The team then headed for Keredi village under Phulbani block and went to a Christian household. The team found a huge photo of Lord Krishna. Naresh Digal, an ex-army man (name changed) explained that he had to” live like a Hindu as they are four households in the locality. The environment is quite hostile and there is no support from the administration. He went on to further state that his neighbour, an ex-army man, had to bear the brunt of RSS people and his house was destroyed. He filed the complaints and after eight days police came to see and left the place even without entering the broken house. The life time earnings of his neighbour are gone. What will he invest on the family’s future? What is the use of this way of life if there is no support from anywhere?” The woman, who shared that her cousin has become a nun, said”we are waiting for the day when we could be free to practise the religion of our choice. "Not sure when the day would dawn.”

The team then went to Gandapadar village in Minia gram panchayat in Phiringia block. It was deep in the interior. It was not difficult to identify the Christians’ houses. The woman of the house welcomed into the repaired house. The team saw a huge framed photo of Lord Shiva on the wall. When asked about the photo, she changed her face and struggled to explain,” The RSS has given us the photo and a “Tulsi” plant for worship. We have kept as often they come to check whether we reconverted to Christianity. We know we can never leave our faith.” The villagers also stated that almost all the houses in the village have two photos; that of Jesus and Shiva. Tarabati Digal explained that there are 10 families still living outside the village.

Signed by Peoples’ Fact Finding Report Team:

Advocate Nicholas Barla, tribal activist leader,
Advocate Marcus, social worker,
Jugal Kishore Ranjit, dalit human right activist
Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist

8th November 2010, Phulbani, Kandhamal, Orissa

An Open Letter to President Obama

2010-10-12T04:59:00.001-07:00

Dr. John Dayal

Member, National Integration Council
Government of India

Secretary General, All India Christian Council

505 Link Apartments, 18 IP Extn. Delhi 1100092 INDIA
Mobile +91 9811021072 Land +91 11 22722262
Email: john.dayal@gmail.com; www.johndayal.com

12 October 2010
His Excellency President Barack Obama
The White House, Washington DC, USA

A letter from India: After homage to the Liberator, Mahatma Gandhi, time to salute the Emancipator, Ambedkar.

Dear President Obama,

Greetings, and welcome to India. We assure you a people’s reception unprecedented in its warmth, and perhaps never seen before by a visiting head of state.

This is because we see in your ascension to the Presidency of the United States of America the story of the struggles of our own people, who call themselves Dalits and are described as Scheduled Castes in the Indian Constitution, but have been known for three thousand years as “untouchables’. Once their shadow was thought to pollute “superior” human beings. The Colonial English regime, which initiated many reforms including a ban on sati, the burning alive of young widows, could do little to end this traumatic social practice. Sixty years after Independence, it bursts forth with repeated fury not just in our villages, where occasionally families are still burnt alive, but even in our finest universities where the caste divide pits student against fellow student. It can be, and often is, a life of indignity which, if challenged, can end up in violence and extreme discrimination despite the laws on the rule books.

Two men in our long history challenged this unholy tradition. The first was the Lord Buddha who rejected all that was anti-human in the Codes or the Shashtras, India’s ancient texts. That was 500 years before Christ. The second was Babasaheb B. R. Ambedkar, building on the work of two other savants, the Saint-Poet Kabir and the path-breaking thinker Mahatma Phule. Each one of them articulated Christ’s message, enshrined in your own statutes and your life experience, that all people are born equal, equipped by their Maker with all that is noble and pure.

Ambedkar, born an untouchable, defied the fate that was destined for him by his society. He studied in London, and your own Columbia University, and returned to fight India’s struggle for freedom. His finest hour was in writing free India’s Constitution, making it a modern document of freedom and liberation far removed from the documents of tradition and culture. The Constitution liberated the Untouchables. Much has to be done, but the yoke is broken.

But you, as scholar of world history and the struggles of the people, know all this.

I write to you to support the continuing struggle against caste in India, the yearning of the Dalits-Bahujans to fully realise the guarantees Ambedkar has assured them in the Constitution of India.

You will, as protocol dictates, pay homage at the Samadhi, the shrine, of Mahatma Gandhi. That is as is proper. He led a peaceful struggle for Independence.

We request you to also take some time to record your acknowledgement of the peaceful contribution to world civilization by Ambedkar. He follows the tradition of Abraham Lincoln in emancipating an entire race. He is worthy of the homage of Heads of State, and the adulation of all people of goodwill.

A flower from you at the statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar at Parliament House in New Delhi will further encourage the civilizational and emancipation movement.

Thank you,

And God Bless.

John Dayal

Reply Reply to all Forwar

Peripheral people?

2010-10-05T08:51:00.000-07:00

John Dayal, September 2010

I am just back home from Manipur, where 40 kilometres on the National Highway (the old Burma Road) from the international border, near the Meitei village of. Kakching, a police party stopped my car, poked around, saw my several credentials and then grimly reminded me "they kill non-Manipuris here, you know". I continued, my Manipuri colleague handling the car, all the way to Imphal airport another 40 km away without incident. The Air India flight was an hour late.

I had come to Kakching to see the village, now a small town of 20,000, which had rebelled against a King’s dictate, then suffered its consequences, later fought a legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court so that the people could enjoy the affirmative action fruits of being defined as a Scheduled caste. Manipuris, or the Meitei to be precise, were not always, and are still not all, Hindus. King Charai Rongba in the 15th century first heard of Hinduism from Guru Aribom, a mendicant missionary. A Meitei scholar told me Vaishnavaism was made the state religion in 18th Century by King "Pamheiba" and it Puya (Meitei Religious Script) Meithaba (Burning) is known as the day on which Meitei were converted to Hinduism from Sanamahi, their original faith. “It was on 23rd Wakhching (January) 1729. It is being observed every year,” says my friend. Manipur also has local Muslims, and in recent centuries, many Christians, from Catholics to the Good Shepherd Community Church, the latest evangelical denomination.

But we were taking of the village Kakching and its rebellious people who defied the dynasties, and refused to accept Vaishnavism. They were, of course summarily excommunicated. The Kakching populace is also known as Lois, which means the “expelled community” for not obeying the royal command. The village had thriving local industry in iron mining and smelting, so it could defy His Majesty. After Independence, they wanted legal recognition, but it was not easy – it was decades before they were classified as Scheduled castes, and could seek government jobs and education as a right. Today the village boasts of schools, a people’s library and a people’s Eco Park, created not through government grants but by local genius.
Planting a tree in the Park, the fault lines of Manipur seem far away. Just the Vaishnav and Sanamahi Meitei who live in the central valley – about a third of the land for two thirds of the concentrated population – think of themselves as an independent kingdom whose former king was bamboozled into joining India. Irom, the iron lady, is on a ten year hunger strike, and women old enough to be her mothers, paraded naked before TV camera protesting the Armed Forces Special powers Act, yes, the same law operational in Kashmir valley.

The Meitei youth, with few jobs and ill educated for the most, have evolved a dozen and a half underground militant groups, most fully armed with the latest in military technology. In the hills surrounding the valley, the Imphal Valley that is, till the borders of Nagaland and Burma are tribes of the Nagas and Kuki. They too seek an independent identity. A Naga group is currently in Delhi asking for liberation from the Meitei. And between them, the Nagas and Kukis have another dozen or so underground groups.
All these militias make their money from extortion, and occasional abduction. No one really complains in Imphal, for politicians and bureaucrats and middle men are making their own money by pilfering from the massive central grants. Very little percolates to the people. Sons and daughters of impoverished families are seeking jobs in Delhi and Mumbai as waitresses and shop assistants. A data of the North East Centre and Helpline shows, many of these youth are racially profiled in Delhi by our own boors, and some of the girls come face to face with gender violence, often rape.

The focus may for the moment be on the Kashmir valley, but New Delhi seems not to bother about any of its more distant citizens on the 24 X 7 basis that it should, be it Manipur and Tripura in the far north-east, or the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Andhra, or for that matter, the deep villages of Kandhamal in Orissa and Udaipur in Rajasthan. Out of sight is out of mind for the bureaucrats of North and South Block, and nothing more than “objects” for the “joint command”, the euphemism for the Army acting in conjunction with local armed police sand the political elite.

All we hear is Central and Planning Commission sops. And sometimes they use the term “the peripheral peoples”. That is a dangerous, feudal word which ought to have no place in the vocabulary and thought process of a civilised modern democracy where everyone is equal and central. They forget something very seminal about India. We are not a melting pot, and “they” in Kashmir and Manipur, are not “peripheral people”. If we actually believe in the Idea of India, we with our imperial myopia in the political-financial twin capitals New Delhi and Mumbai, would have to come to terms with the fact that the “heartland” remains but an island which could become very isolated very fast in the larger ocean of the assertions of a diversified, polyglot, multi-racial, multi-hued, multi cultural, multi-ideological India.

KANDHAMAL FACT SHEET SEPTEMBER 2010

2010-09-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

LEST WE FORGET

[Based on Archbishop Raphael Cheenath’s latest Memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik AT THEIR MEETING IN Bhubaneswar on 13 September 2010]

1. EXISTENCE OF REFUGEE CAMPS: In spite of the fact that the relief camps were officially closed by the Orissa Government in the fist week of September, 2009, there are large numbers of victims living in more than a dozen make-shift shelters in Kandhamal. When the relief camps were closed in Sept, 2009, about 3500 refugees were sent out who had no other choice except live in temporary shelters. They live in the following villages even today ( Beheragaon, Tukangia, Phirigada, Godoguda, Penala, Dondingia, Tudubadi, Anandnagar, Telingia, Dagapadar, Sartaguda, Hatpada, Tatamaha and Badabanga).

2 TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: There are reports in the papers that large scale trafficking in women and girls are going on in Orissa. Communal violence has, perhaps, given an opportunity to the miscreants to prey on the hapless victims. Unless this is effectively stopped by the Government, Orissa too would be soon an established flesh trade centre.

3. DISPLACEMENT, REHABILITATION: Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards see in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Developments based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.

4. RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN HOMES: The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return accordance with the above standards. Today the refugees return with fear and after their return they still live in fear of further attacks.

5. COMPENSATION PACKAGE: In order to estimate and determine compensation for the losses which the people have suffered an independent committee should be set up. The committee should take into account the opinion of the victims otherwise it would be only a one-sided calculation. Therefore, it is important to consult the victims to know how much property they have lost and how many lost their lives. In the case of Kandhamal communal valence the victims were never consulted. The compensation given to them has been, arbitrary and grossly inadequate, and possibly vindictive.

Compensation should be a package which should include not only houses, but the household things that normally should belong to a family and some financial assistance for the families who had no employment for nearly two years. Such package should take care of the needs of a family who has been displaced during violence.

6. THE INJURED AND THE WIDOWS: Adequate compensation should be given to those injured during violence, widows whose husbands were killed or missing, the families of those who were killed, or missing.

7. The victims of communal violence should be approached with sympathy
From a humanitarian point of view compensation given to the victims should have been a sign of compassion and sympathy to the poor victims. In many cases, the rules and regulations were absolutely strictly imposed on the victims that even the compensating allotted to them was very slow in coming and in some cases not at all given to them. In communal violence where victims lose everything and suffer so much, the help should be given with a sense of urgency.

8. WAIVE OFF LOANS: During the communal violence and its aftermath people had taken loan since they did not have any employment. Even now they are without any job since a large number of them are still displaced. Such loans could be waved off so that the victims could live without anxiety and earn something for their day to day living.

9. SETTLEMENT OF LAND: Some of the victims do not have land patta [land allotment letter], others have no land, some have disputed land. Unless these are settled the construction of houses can not proceed. On 25th July 2009, 58 cases for land settlements have been given to the Distinct Magistrate; unless these are settled , house construction slows down.

10. FORCIBLE CONVERSION TO HINDUISM: It is reported that the refugees live in 27 villages in make-shift shelter. In more than ten (10) villages Christians are forced to live as Hindus. For instances, Betticola, Beheragaon, Kutulumba, Mundarigon, Kalingia, Santikia, Bindugan, Rotingia, Bodimunda and Dodopanka. This is totally contrary to the freedom of Religion Act which the Orissa Government upholds with great vigour. The Administration which claims secular credentials should not condone such violence.

11. COMPENSATION TO CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES: The RTI has recorded 233 churches and prayer halls, but it is estimated that there are 21 churches more which are not included in this list. During the communal violence in 2007 too about 200 churches and payer halls were destroyed. No consultation was made with the victims when compensation was fixed which is only a pittance and is not at all proportionate to the colossal destruction of property. In fact the compensation given to the churches amounts to about one tenth of the total cost.

12. HATE CAMPAIGN: The Government machinery should be alert to prevent hate-campaign that brews hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities. The communal carnage in Kandhamal is the result of such hate-campaign that was going on in the State for decades, unfortunately unhindered by the State authorities.

13. MOB RULE: It is a very dangerous development in the country and also in Orissa that the mob is taking over the responsibility of controlling the Law and Order situation. If two or three hundred hooligan can control the situation what is the use of police, courts and civil administration? If one or two hard core criminals can take the whole administration, even the courts, for a ride, the very foundation of democracy is at stake. Daily shows on all the TV. channels prove amply what we have said. Often the victims are victimized by the administration.