India cracks down on foreign funded NGOs; grassroots work may suffer

India chokes NGOs dependent on Western charity

JOHN DAYAL

After trying to bludgeon the Catholic church in Tamil Nadu into submission and withdrawing its support to the protest against the Russian-aided nuclear power plant in Koodmakulam, the Indian government now seems bent upon choking civil society voices seen as challenging it on issues such as torture, religious freedom, and the life and death powers the military exercises over citizens in the country’s north eastern states.

The weapon of choice is the threat to cancel licenses under the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act that allows non-government organization, especially religious groups of all faiths, and Human Rights advocacy activists, to carry on their work with foreign financial help in an impoverished country where corporate and individual philanthropy is virtually unknown. 

While a large number of Hindu God men and women are also major recipients of donations from international charities, including church agencies in Europe and the United States, Indian Catholic and Protestant groups, with slim local resources, are to a large extent dependent on foreign funds to carry on their charitable and development work among India’s poor and marginalized communities. The Christian institutions working in education and health sectors among the Tribals and the Dalits, once branded, as untouchables in the iron Caste system, are particularly vulnerable. As it is, the meltdown in the west has severely impacted on their work.

After arbitrarily cancelling as many as 4,300 FCRA permits – on specious arguments that their addresses could not be verified -- the Union government is now issuing orders virtually banning some European and US funding agencies from the country. Indian groups have been told they need to take prior permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs, which also controls the intelligence agencies and some central police forces, before they can submit their projects to funding agencies named in the government’s prohibitory list.

Prime among them is Cordaid, a Dutch Catholic charity that is accused of having given funds to some Indian NGOs who are working for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that is responsible for many human rights abuses in Kashmir valley and the North Eastern States. The Reserve Bank of India has circulated an order to all banks in India that they have to inform it if they notice any transfer of funds from Cordaid to local NGOs. Cordaid is also held responsible for partly funding the India Against Corruption trust headed by social activist Anna Hazare and his erstwhile colleague Arvind Kejriwal whose newly formed political party is challenging the ruling Congress and main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

Authoritative sources in the government say several other European charities, specially from the Scandinavian countries, are also on the government’s radar, as are many Indian NGOs with whom they have had relationship in the past.

The NGOs affected by the government withdrawing their FCRA permits have protested, but only a few of them have had the precious license restored. In a few other cases including some high profile advocacy groups, permission has been given for them to operate their bank accounts for payment of essential services, but they cannot withdraw any money in cash.

This has, understandably, created a panic among organisations working in development and training at the grassroots. Among those who risk going bankrupt for want of funds are several groups working among victims of violence against the Christian community in Kandhamal district of Orissa state.

Mr. Sanjay Patra, a highly respected transparency expert heading the Financial Management Services Foundation, there is no reason for the government’s paranoia, as there are several other laws on the books to check any misuse of funds, or diversion of money to terrorism on insurrectionist activities. Mr. Patra is also a leading light of the Voluntary Associations Network of India [VANI], which provides an interface with the government. VANI is now engaging with the government to get the FCRA licenses restored for the NGOs that have fallen foul of the authorities.  VANI is also urging the government to change provisions in the FCRA rules that make it mandatory for all NGOs to seek a renewal of their permissions every five years instead of the earlier permanent ones. Anyway, money received from foreign charities under FCRA rules can be used only in designated activities and cannot be diverted to other areas.

Of the more than two million NGOs registered in the country those registered under FCRA are 38436. Of them, 21508 Associations reported a total receipt of an amount of Rs. 10,337.59 crore [about US Dollars 195 million] as foreign contribution. Many have FCRA permits but actually do not get any funds from abroad.

The government says the NGO sector in India is vulnerable to the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, and therefore requires some form of policing of their funds and activities. But it has not been able to adduce any real evidence indicting the NGOs or linking them with terrorist or other unlawful groups other than in political rhetoric. According to government data, list of donor countries is headed by the USA (Rs. 3105.73 crore) followed by Germany (Rs. 1046.30 crore) and UK (Rs. 1038.68 crore).

The FCRA law is a reflection of India’s paranoia on what is euphemistically called the “foreign hand”, or fears that the West is intervening in Indian politics and culture. India’s right wing has accused the West of financing conversions to Christianity and supporting “Christian” insurrectionist groups in states such as Mizoram, Manipur and Meghalaya in the North East. No evidence has ever been adduced for this, other than political gossip and innuendo.

The law was drafted by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government in 1975 when she declared a State of Internal Emergency, all but suspended the Constitution and imposed censorship on the Media, arresting thousands of political dissidents and leaders of political parties. The government then said that Socialist leader Mr. Jaiprakash Narain, leading a movement against corruption and for democratic reforms, and several Gandhian groups supporting him were funded by western agencies and were trying to induce the Indian army to mutiny. Subsequent governments overturned many of Mrs. Gandhi’s laws, but retained the FCRA as a useful instrument to tame civil society.

India Church Response to Corruption -- in Nation and within

Corruption and the Church response to malaise within, and in the nation

JOHN DAYAL

The butler of the Pope says his own indiscretions were to get some sunlight into the murky goings on in a section of the Vatican. With at least two Church of North India bishops in jail, some senior Pentecostal and Evangelical Pastors and a few Catholic Bishops and Archbishops accused by their laity and priests of various shenanigans in matters of finance and properties, it is difficult to pretend corruption is not an issue with the various denominations of the Indian church. Institutional structures of Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and even Buddhism at the highest levels are also grappling with the debilitating impact of moral turpitude in general and financial misadventures in particular.

Collectively, corruption in all religions and their institutional structures does not begin to approach the massive corruption in the political, administrative and corporate sectors, but it can hardly be tolerated as religious institutions and personnel claim to represent the moral edifice of the nation, and strive to be accepted as the conscience of the country. The people therefore look askance at, and are deeply disturbed by, occasional media exposures linking god men including self styled God-men, Shankaracharyas, Lamas who head important Sanghas, members of Gurudwara committees and Christian clergy caught with their fingers in the till.

If people in the West abhor corruption as something alien to their civilization, the anger is even more in India, a country of 200 million rich and a full billion poor. Corruption has different meaning among the faithful in India who see it as a betrayal of their trust, apart from corruption being a crime in the eyes of the law and a sin under religious codes. This is where the magnitude of corruption within the church is so different from its ethical counterpart in the corporate private sector and the public domain, which means in the government sector. Metaphorically, if the salt has lost its salinity, how would it regain that taste of the pure stuff?

There is a ray of hope. A debate is beginning within Catholic and Protestant churches on how to respond to internal corruption and, externally, how to relate to the several civil society movements, now virtual crusades in their intensity, that are now posing a challenge to the political and corporate establishment.

The elephantine structure that it is, the Catholic Church in India has been the slow one in this matter. The relationship between sovereign dioceses, the overlay of Rites and their relationship with the Catholic Bishops Conference, now severely restricted in its scope after the reforms of the last decade with no mandatory powers over anyone, makes nuanced decision making a very slow process, even if the will is present.

Very little exercise is done in studying ideological and political overtones in issues of national important. Theological studies defining moral responses to other issues are also no more than an occasional phenomenon, and then borrowing copiously from the Vatican’s Social teachings of the Church without too much modification to suit local social, economic and political environmental conditions. It would be a futile search if one were to look for official documents presenting the Church position on the subject of corruption other than the official spokespersons’ assertions in the media that the church is opposed to all forms of corruption in the nation’s body politic.

Therefore, individual bishops have responded in the light of their own wisdom to the Anna Hazare movement and, after the split in the India Against Corruption, to the breakaway faction of former Income tax official Arvind Kejriwal who now heads his own political party.

The most visible has been the action of the Delhi Archdiocese and its Archbishop, Monseigneur Vincent Michael Concessao, nationally one of the most respected Catholic figures in India. Kejriwal has been calling on the Archbishop for ten years or so, in fact from the time that he launched himself into the very successful Right to Information Movement with Aruna Roy and others and had started dreaming of a campaign against corruption in the government.

It was not surprising that when the India Against Corruption [IAC] movement-cum-NGO was formed, Abp Concessao found himself co-opted into the core committee, together with a few of his priests, convinced of the motives of the man. As a matter of fact, many of the early meetings of the Core committee were held in Catholic offices.

At that stage, perhaps, there was no need to examine or even suspect Kejriwal’s motives, intentions and ambitions. The national mood of euphoria had been set by the media, particularly the 24x7 telecast by the national English and Hindi satellite channels in metropolitan cities exhorting people to come to the rallies of the IAC. In those heady days of make-believe, it almost seemed the battle had been won against corruption and it was only a matter of days when the government collapsed, the prime minister capitulated to Hazare-Kejriwal-Kiran Bedi, corrupt politicians were arrested, officials sacked and the hundreds of billions of rupees in black money stacked away in Swiss banks was brought home to dispel gloom and poverty overnight. 

Those pleading caution and an ideological understanding were pushed to the margins. A few Jesuits who had seen through Kejriwal, people such as Fr. Ambrose Pinto of St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore, put their opinion into books, but without making a real impact on the church.

The first jolt was not far coming. The Hazare’s first rally at Delhi’s sprawling Ram Lila Grounds, even as the Archbishop and some of us sat on the stage, it was noticed that the backdrop had little to do with the battle against corruption and more to do with the sort of hyper nationalistic patriotism associated with the Sangh Parivar. The slogans matched the backdrop. The stage itself was monopolized by political ideologues who espoused that theology.

The Archbishop continued in the core committee but did not attend any more of similar public rallies. After some months, once the true colours of the Kejriwal gang became apparent, the Archbishop politely withdrew. There never was a question that his presence in the core committee would persuade Kejriwal to change strategies or even his acrid language. It is a moot question if IAC missed the presence of the major religious groups in it leadership in Delhi or in the few states where they were active.

Unlike Archbishop Vincent and some top leaders of the Federation of Catholic Associations of the Archdiocese, other Catholic and Protestant Bishops and Lay leaders were not on the scene at all. In hindsight, perhaps it was for the good, though at one time, the Catholic community in the city was being persuaded to be seen at Kejriwal’s and Hazare’s meetings and rallies at Jantar Mantar crossing on Parliament street in the national capital and other places.

This writer may be wrong, but Protestant Bishops were not members of the core committee, and neither did they exhort their communities to join the movement. The Evangelical and Pentecost church has not been a part of civil society action on most issues, and makes its presence felt specially in protests against the persecution of Christians in various parts of the country, or on issues relevant to their denominations.

Perhaps there is need even now for all church groups to come together and debate a response to the corruption that is sapping the nation’s strength and putting a strain on its economy. The Christian community and the church at large does indeed have a role as an important member of the national civil society and should contribute in some creative way to further the debate on the tackling of corruption in the nation.

If the Catholic Church leadership has been somewhat visible in the issue of national corruption, it is almost absolutely invisible in the debate on corruption within the church where the evangelical church has taken a collective lead.

It is not that there is no corruption within the Catholic church where the preoccupation with retaining the FCRA permits of various religious congregations, and the need to protect the interests of educational institutions have made the church vulnerable, and religious personnel vulnerable to demands of illegal gratification by officials of local and state governments.

There is also the matter of properties and financial administration in parishes and dioceses. There are issues both of Indian civil law and the Catholic Churches’ own Canon Law and Code of Canon [for the two Syrian churches] in terms of financial transparency. The life style of some in the clergy does invite comment, and large dioceses such as Mumbai, there have been open allegations against some priests of defalcation of parish funds, or their refusal to be answerable to anyone on the disposal of church collections. A canonical stipulation of lay and expert participation in financial committees is not observed in letter and spirit in many dioceses and within them, in many parishes. And though the Catholic Church is till buying properties to set up institutions, in some of the major dioceses, where there have been donations on land in the past two centuries, there are now allegations that the properties have been alienated in procedures that lack transparency.

In recent weeks, there have been important developments in the Catholic Church indicating a willingness to engage with the issue. The most important of these was the symposium organized by the Theological Association of India at Jullundur in Punjab in October this year, held at Bishop’s house with Bishop Anil Couto formally inaugurating the deliberations of 50 very eminent scholars from congregations, colleges and seminaries across the country. Participating in it were philosophers of the stature of Jesuit Fr. TK John. The symposium has seen a honest and sincere effort at understanding all facets of corruption, including the moral one relating to the Dalit issue in church and society on which Prof Fr. Ambrose Pinto held forth with some force.

The formal statement of the ITA symposium succinctly said the Catholic Church was aware of the impact of corruption on national life, and particularly the marginalised and the poor, Tribals and Dalits. The church recognised corruption both as a crime under the Indian laws, and a sin in the eyes of God. Religious communities of all faiths must come together to raise their voice against it. The ITA cautioned against politicisation and fragmentation of the struggle against corruption lest it dilute the impact. Corruption was also linked to the process of globalisation of the national economy. Women and children were the worst impacted.

The scholars are considering an action plan for the Church in India to spot and remove whatever corrupt practices may have entered institutions so that the Church can become an example to others in eliminating all forms of corruption.

Of great importance is the Operation Nehemiah exercise initiated by a section of the Evangelical churches under the   Lausanne Movement which has also seen remarkable participation by some catholic leaders and officials of the National Council of Churches and the Evangelical Fellowship of India. Some Bishops of the Syrian Churches also participated. The Catholic hierarchy was represented, in their personal capacity, in the thinking activity over the last year and a half.

The three cardinal principals of this exercise were a theological understanding of assets as being creation of God, vulnerability and temptation of church personnel and therefore the need for creating and putting in place systems of management and auditing. An important argument underpinning the exercise was the understanding that unlike criminal law, intention is not to merely punish but to offer an opportunity to the guilty to redeem themselves, most importantly through the promise of making good the loss, or what is called the principle of reparations. It was, of course, understood that at all times, the Church has a critical role in civil society as a part of the same society and it must have the courage to speak out and lead, and therefore like Caesar’s wife, it had to be clean itself.

The discussions were wide-ranging, and from all points of view – philosophical, technical, legal, spiritual. In fact at one stage, there was a serious if slightly hilarious debate if a confession of collective guilt in a Christian sort of way opened the person or institution to prosecution by law agencies of the government.

The end product of the exercise is the Operation Nehemiah Declaration against corruption, ONDAC, which is now in the public domain and is being presented to mainline and independent churches as a working paper to spark off a debater in various for a.

It remains to be seen if churches will unanimously adopt it, or will modify it to suit their own genius.

But it is an exercise that is well begun.

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Box item with John Dayal’s article on corruption

Operation Nehemiah Declaration against Corruption (ONDAC)

Bengaluru, September 2011

Introduction:

A gathering of concerned Christians in leadership in the Church in India in all its glorious diversity, took place on the 2^nd of September 2011, at Bengaluru, as a part of the Operation Nehemiah Movement, to be “salt and light of society.” The gathering recalled the remarkable contribution that the Church and her institutions have made to the development of India, besides discussing issues of financial corruption in the country and the Church, while grieving with its victims on the margins. 

Affirmation

Giving praise to God the creator, redeemer and sustainer, we, in faith, affirm that:

1.     God invites us as the Church in India to participate in the building of our nation and calling her to be true to the national motto of Satyamev Jayate (truth alone triumphs).

2.     God is the rightful owner of all land and natural resources. Every man and woman, individually and collectively has been appointed as the steward, finally accountable to God. 

3.     We acknowledge that God gives all positions of leadership and authority for the purpose of service and governance. We believe that God has created men and women in his image and likeness, so they have life and fullness of life.

4.     The mission of the Church includes being witnesses to the Good News, freeing the oppressed and creating a just and corruption-free society, so that all will enjoy abundant life. The Church, in theology and practice should transform the lives of people, so that everyone experiences the will and purposes of God on earth.

5.     Domains of power, position and authority expressed through structure and systems in society and the Church, are particularly susceptible to the temptation of corruption, leading to inequality, injustice, manipulation and oppression.

6.     Financial corruption in all its forms is not acceptable to the Church and society under any circumstances.

Confession

Christians have always recognized that confession and repentance of our sins is an integral part of our reconciliation with God and with one another. In accordance with that belief and in faithfulness to the teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that we should first remove the “plank in our own eyes,” we repent and confess the sin of corruption in our personal lives, Church and nation, which has tainted our love for God.

Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servants are praying before you. Almighty and most merciful Father we lower our heads before you and we confess that we have sinned in thought word and deed. We confess that we have not always been good financial stewards. Instead, we have often exploited and appropriated God’s assets for our own selfish advantage. We have failed to consistently demonstrate a sense of responsibility and accountability. Honesty, truth and integrity have tended to become negotiable values. We have not always acted justly towards each other and have sinned against God the provider. We have left undone those things, which we ought to have done; and we have done those things, which we ought not to have done. For these things we ask your forgiveness and we also ask for your strength.

Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed to always live with honesty, truth and integrity. Grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

Commitment

With God as our helper

1.     We desire to overcome the sin of financial corruption by submitting to the supreme authority of Christ and follow His example of justice, righteousness, humility and sacrificial service.

2.     We will continually examine and radically change our lives in response to God’s indignation at the state-of-affairs and His redemptive desire for all creation.

3.     We resolve to be honest stewards of God-given resources, willingly submitting to appropriate scrutiny and correction, adopting good governance, and conducting self-critical review of our practices, to encourage responsible behavior for financial integrity.

4.     We are committed to upholding the highest levels of integrity in all our financial interactions with society at large.

5.     We do not encourage any irregular financial transaction with any organization or body - governmental or otherwise.

6.     We commit to making and working with institutions that uphold the highest standards of financial accountability and transparency.

7.     We commit to encouraging awareness and vigilance regarding bribery and unethical financial practices. 

8.     We commit to working towards an India that is transparent and without corruption.

9.     We will work with other movements at every level to respond to the issues of Financial Corruption, to express God’s presence with, and love for the victims of financial corruption.

10.  As a community that lives under the grace, forgiveness and redemptive power of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are committed to enabling healing and reconciliation for those who repent of acts of financial corruption.

In obedience to God we, individually and collectively, strive to remove corruption from Church and society, thus providing avenues of healing, reparation and redemption, which leads to restoration of the body of Christ, our nation and all of creation. 

India must honour its international commitments on Freedom of Faith

India must  honour its international obligations on real Freedom of Religion

JOHN DAYAL

Barring  a  Jesuit here or a Religious Sister there,  all  individuals, the Church in India seems rapidly withrawing from social action in the country, specially action which smacks of anything political.  As seen in the aftermath of the Koodamkulam anti-nuclear plant movement, the Government of India has beaten the church into submission by unleashing the full horror of itss power to suspend the Foreign Contribution permit of the diocese and several non government organisations in the district and the state.

Such action not only silences the voice of the people and restricts constitutional gurantees of freedom of speech and of association, it also allows the goveernment to get away with murder  -- the mruder of civil liberties in the country – knowing there will be little or no protest.  This gives a pungent edge to the government’s refusal to acknowledge that there is something seriously wrong with the implementation of human rights and civil liberties, including the freedom of faith, in the Indian landmass, cutting across the political divide.

This perhaps was the reason that the Church, incluiding the Catholic Church, was not active during the process of India’s Universal Peridoic Review at Geneva under thed aegis of the United nations Human Rights Council from March to September end this year. India’s living in a state of denial was the most evident in this UPR. Every member country of the United Nations undergoes this process once every four years, opening itself up to scrutiny of the world on its human rights record, specially with respect to rights it has pledged to implement by signing the international treaties and protocols, such as Freedom of Religion and Faith, gender rights  and such like.

Away from the glare of India Shining and the so called high growth – now more honestly at less than 7 per cent annually, far away from the fabled 9 per cent it had been speaking of for the last five years -- India does abysmally on the rights of women and children, even on freedom of speech. Its worst records are on racism, as the Dalit issue is seen  internationally, on issues of freedom of religion, and on torture. India, indeed, has not signed  the international  protocols on torture.

These were pointed out to India by ambassasors of various countries that cross examined it in Geneva. The Indian government delegation, led no less than by Attorney General Vahanvati, acccepted a few suggestions, but out of hand rejected or remained silent on most others. As some international agencies pointed out after the UPR process was over, India deliberately ignored urgent international and entreaties for an early enactment of laws against communal and targetted violence, an abrogation of the so called Freedom of Religion legislation several states, and accepting the long-pending demand of Dalit Christians for their Constitutional rights.

The Government of India’s  response to the 169 recommendations of the UNHRC reflected a pattern of only accepting recommendations that were generalized and broadly worded, lacking a targeted course of action directed to tackle discrimination and specific human rights challenges. Recommendations pertaining to specific as well as serious human rights issues were rejected, despite the Council’s expressed concern.

India has not accepted recommendations asking to create a comprehensive framework to deal effectively with the particular circumstances of communal or targeted violence.  The government says communal violence is only a sporadic problem. The religious minorities contest this argument as they continue to be violently attacked in a number of states. As we have seen in Kandhamal and Karnataka specially, victims  are also not able to access justice. And this situation, the Christian community specially fears, will continue to be repeated in future unless some immediate steps are taken by the government to prevent and pre-empt acts of communal violence.

Church groups in India have  urged  the government to bring forth the Bill  on prevention of Communal and Targetted Violence, including issues of compensation rehabilitation, and reparation, at the earliest. Such a Bill was drafted by the National Advisory Council in 2011 and given to the government. This Bill has been put in cold storage specially after Hindu groups and political groups such as Bharatiya Janata Party mounted a well orchestrated campaign, reviling the proposed law as specifically targetting the Hindu community in the country, despite explanations that it would protect Hindus in states such as Jammu and Kashmir and Mizoram where they too were a demographic minority. Christian and Muslim groups are pressing the draft legislation should be taken out, refined in consonance with principles of federalism, and enacted as law to effectively bring an end to communal strife which has ravaged this country in the last six decades.  Arguably, the situation in Kandhamal, both the violence, the shoddy rehabilitation programme and the lack of justice, could have been avoided if such a law was in place.

The Christian community, cutting across denominational lines, has also been pressing for a long time that the federal Government take necessary legislative and  legal steps to recall the so called Freedom of Religion Acts promulgated in several states. These Acts are being used to harass and intimidate religious minorities, and in particular the Christian Community and their  pastors, house churches and community gatherings. The law is strongly backed by the BJP and what is called the Sangh Parivar, the motley group consisting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s right wing hyper nationalist, organisations. But it also has the backing of a section of the Congress – specially in the Indo-Gangetic plains of northern and Central India which are politically important.

It does seem an uphill task on these two, but Christian activists remain hopeful that a well thought out national and international advocacy programme can get them the  support of a very large segment of India’s secular population which  has been repelled by the many acts of violence targetting the Sikhs, in 1984, and the Muslims and Christians over many decades.

Birthday measure of India at 65

The State of the nation -- Stocktaking on Independence Day
Is being best among the brothers good enough for India at  65?

John Dayal

[Member, national Integration Council, and  National Monitoring Committee on Minority Education]

India is a miracle.

Born in a veritable bloodbath of Partition after a peaceful freedom struggle, it has survived as a strong democracy. It survived the Cold War without having to take sides, and therefore with having either Soviet troops or those of NATO or the US agencies stationed on its soil, or even the US Indian Ocean fleets such as the 8th Fleet really every brining their nuclear weapons into its deep waters. It has survived four  wars with its neighbor, one of which decisively partitioned Pakistan and gave birth to Bangladesh, without allowing it to escalate beyond a limit, showing magnanimity with its adversaries and charity of a rare order in taking care of  the ten million refugees from Bangladesh which would have broken the back of any other social, political and economic dispensation.

It has developed nuclear weaponry in the teeth of opposition from the nuclear powers, but also announced a “no first strike” policy, ensuring that a nuclear South Asian subcontinent does not sit on the brink of an immediate nuclear holocaust. Civil society would maintain, arguably, that India ought never have gone on the nuclear path at all. And above all, it has survived the economic meltdown of the west, though not without some grievous wounds in its rate of growth and its balance of payments account. Perhaps the  lows and highs of the monsoon have been the one thing the country has not been able to control, its agriculture economy and the  life of much of its population remains at the mercy of the rainfall, a shortfall spelling abject misery, an access perhaps even more.

The credit for much of this goes to some basic  foundation work and ideological intervention done by Jawaharlal Nehru and then by Indira Gandhi, India’s first and third prime minister – not counting the two very short interim terms of Gulzarilal Nanda. Nehru’s commitment to secularism, codified together with Dalit rights by Constitution committee chairman Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar --  ensured a cohesive and forward looking country. Nehru's focus on scientific temper and industrialization resulted in the massive engineering powerhouses of the Public sector, and the institutions of higher science and technology which today see India on the verge of manned space flights and self sufficiency in nuclear technology.

Nehru’s, and then Indira Gandhi’s land reforms in abolishing landlordism and the old ruling order, laid the foundations of an egalitarian society. India’s nationalization of  bank and insurance ensured an end to fly by night operators and assured a certain stability which even the post liberalization financial sector has not been able to match. These ensured that the fruits of democracy reached the grassroots, and made  this participatory system the established norm, despite hiccups, corruption, caste politics and other issues that finally ended with the electoral reforms of  the last quarter of a century.  Rajiv Gandhi years later added the Panchayati raj institutions as a logical extension of those reforms, giving sa voice  and local power to rural communities.

Above all, Nehru ensured an apolitical and secular Armed Forces overcoming the inherent disabilities arising from the fact that these services too were partitioned on religious lines and essentially what remained in India was a Hindu-Sikh Army with just a sprinkling of other communities.

India is therefore so different from Pakistan where the massive presence of a landlord community,  and its nexus with a radicalized Army led by scions of the same classes, have ensured a continuous alternating of military and civilian rule which both look alike in their basic policies and preferences. This fatal alliance spells the death or at least incapacitation of genuine democracy. Pakistan has seen more than 40,000 deaths in various forms of violence rooted in communal and class distinctions and in the last decade, in terrorism. The regimes are at the mercy of fundamentalist armed groups within its borders whose pressures on the regime make it incapable of encouraging human rights, for one, and freedom of faith. The Christian and Hindu communities in Pakistan are in a life and death struggle with no  light showing an end to their continuing nightmare.

Another neighbor Bangladesh is less militarist perhaps than Pakistan, though its major party is founded by a  general. The brittleness of democracy in Bangladesh too remains a lesson. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism has kept apace with Pakistan. Sri Lanka perhaps is the worst of the neighbors which has seen a full fled civil war ending in the vanquishing of the Tamil minority which can now see only a second class citizenship in a  country government by a racist regime which is also susceptible to the influence of a militant Buddhism led by a  supremist monastic order. In many ways, all these are failed states. And rogues.

India shines in contrast.

And yet there are raging  contractions in India’s social indices impacting on the life of its religious and social minorities who remain victims of communalism, caste, marginalization,  displacement and State violence. The intricate combination of failed monsoons, usurious money lenders which include banking agencies and seed merchants, have seen unimaginable desperation in the countryside, leading to perhaps as many as 250,000 –a  quarter of a million – farmers committing suicide in 17 years such states as Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Recent times have seen the State often at near war with its own people, specially the Tribals, who constitute about ten percent of the population, but live on perhaps twenty percent of forest land under which  lies valuable iron and aluminum ore, and rare earths which the corporate sector in the country and major multinationals from Japan, Koreas, the UK, Europe such as Vedanta and Posco and our own home grown India Incorporated, covet with a vicious licentiousness . This greed ends in the deaths of many innocent men, women and children deep in the forests of Orissa, Andhra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, which are euphemistically called the Red Corridor, or the centres of Maoists activity over the last ten years.

No less critical has been the virus of communalism. Hindutva elements seeking inspiration from a Hitler-Mussolini Europe of the 20th Century have sought to wreak havoc on Muslims, Sikhs, and finally Christians. The communal criminality is mostly rooted in the wounds of Partition, special in a deep divide between Hindus, specially the upper and middle classes and those who migrated from West Punjab, Multan, and Sindh and the Muslims, now perhaps a full 15 per cent of the population, who chose not to migrate to Pakistan.  As many as 50,000 communal riots against these religious minorities over the last 65 years have seen an officially admitted 17,000 dead, and several tens of thousands wounded.  [This does not include the bleeding in Jammu and Kashmir, victim of mal-governance and ill thought out policies which result in over 500,000 military and paramilitary forces being deployed to keep the piece in what is vigorously asserted as an Indian state and a people our own citizens. These two factors also result in that huge aberration in the northeast which like Kashmir sees the Army and security forces ruling the people under the protection of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which gives them powers to shoot at sight, and legalizes impunity.]

Muslims will perhaps never forget the violence against them in Gujarat 1969 and 2002 in which gender violence and trial by fire were key components. 1984 saw perhaps more than 5,000 Sikhs burnt alive, most of them in the national Capital of New Delhi, and for Christians, Kandhamal in Orissa in 2007 and 2008 will become part of community memory as the worst violence since Tipu Sultan took the Catholics of the Konkan belt into captivity and a force marched that killed so many.

The wounds may have healed, but  the scars have been kept fresh by an utter miscarriage of justice, rampant impunity and an often bigoted, often corrupt and almost always inefficient criminal justice delivery system.  Reforms in the judicial and police systems  have progressed at snail’s pace despite several commissions of enquiry, the most significant of them the Dharam  Vira commission on Police Reforms and the Justice Sri Krishna Commission on the riots against Muslims in Mumbai in 2002-3, a report whose seminal findings and recommendations  could go far in inducing reforms in the police structure.

A growing middle class has not been able to generate a viable, acceptable and strong civil society that could intervene with the government and which could be bulwark against excesses of the State as seen during the Emergency of  1975-76 in which human rights and civil liberties were suspended. It was, indeed, an attack on the very Constitution of the country and its parliamentary democracy which remained suspended for much of 18 months. In fact, it sometimes seems that the middle class, now as large as 200 million in a population of 1.20 billion, often sides with the state and sometimes goads it into turning against the poor and the angry who perceives it as a threat to its own security and cosy existence. The media, now vastly expanded into corporate owned national satellite television channels and chain newspapers, also sees itself as the voice of this middle class. The result is paid news, imbedded journalism, an utter lack of investigation and no effort to voice the trauma and travails of the poor. This is why there has been no

More severe, social indices remain among the worst in the world – in terms of juvenile mortality, gender rights, untouchability and even manual scavenging, possibly the only incident of this practice in the entire world, an infamy it shares with Pakistan. Hunger and rural poverty coexist with repeated bumper crops and food reserves  which are so huge that there is no place to keep them, and a tenth or more is lost to rats and other pests every year. Food delivery systems remain faulty, specially in deep urban and forest areas, as soon in the data generated by the Planning Commission. Malnutrition is rampant, especially among the very young of rural and marginalized communities. The Right to Food Act remains a matter of protracted debate and political positioning. Despite perhaps the biggest scheme in the world to transfer cash to increase the purchasing power of the most poor, now called the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment  Guarantee programme, a real dent has not been made in rural poverty.

India need not fear an army coup, or indeed an armed rebellion by the rural poor and hungry. Despite the occasional political skirmish, and the current Maoist phenomenon, democratically elected regimes remain safe. This should give them the strength to negotiate with the people directly, without having to take recourse to armed might. The Maoist problem is not without a solution, if there is a political will. Instead of using the Maoist violence as an excuse to deny development while using armed  police to displace Tribals before handing over their sacred groves to developers and mining companies, there is need for a comprehensive policy of resettlement and compensation. Tribal rights have to be protected as any other Constitutional right of the rest of the countrymen.

Hunger, thirst, health, housing ,  and education are to be addressed. The Right to Food Bill has to be passed. It is now clear that Operation Blackboard has not been the success if was designed to be. The RSS has infiltrated areas where government schools did not work, setting up more than 60,000 "Ekal vidyalayas" or forest and village primary schools  where young minds are being poisoned in a highly systemized way. The green revolution too has failed to reach where it should have. Rural disparities have increased. While food grain rots, millions go hungry. Food prices soar, and yet farmers do not get a fair price for their labour. The production-supply-retail line has to be looked at keeping both farmer and consumer as the focus of the policy. Is Foreign Direct Investment the answer? Many think not. Wallmart mega-stores and malls  can hardly bring grains to areas of want. Credit policies for agriculture need urgent reforms to end the sinful deaths in suicides by farmers. The government needs to take a fresh look at village development, integrating all systems in a comprehensive policy which is monitored dispassionately at the block, district, state and central levels on a  real-time basis.

Financial reforms and an industrial policy in the liberalization that was launched by the Narasimha Rao government back in the early 1990s patently needs updating. No one is harking back to the days of licence raj, nor does anyone really wants to cripple the private sector, specially the national and global multinationals. But barring a few, there also would be no one urging a system which spells death of the small scale sector, the weavers, the  village  store and the kirana shops in the neighbourhood. BT Cotton tomato and brinjal cannot be at the cost of the health of the farmers and the consumers. While government designs mechanism to end corruption in the allocation, or auction, of 3 and $ G Spectrums in the communications sector, it must show political will to enunciate policies in business and trade that do not cause misery to large sections of the population.

India also needs a safety net for the vulnerable sections of the population – workers in the private section who do not get a pension like government servants do, for the destitute, the unemployed, and the elderly. Even the capitalist west has such safety nets. President Obama’s Insurance policy is controversial not because the poorer segments will benefit, but because the rich feel they may ah veto pay a bit more. Many feel the government does not show the same concern for the poor as thirty years ago where the slogan “Garibi hatao” though not implemented even in half, still articulated a certain political will and conveyed this message to the villages of the poor.

A safety net of a different sort is needed for India’s many minorities, specially its religious minorities. The 12th Five year plan and the Prime Minister’s Revised 15 Point Programme offer a ray of hope in the distant future. But till they are implemented on the ground, they will be of little solace. The worst case is in terms of law and order, the violence against religious minorities. The government has all but aborted the  anti communal violence bill devised by the National Advisory Council headed by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. The massive campaign mounted by the BJP and the political right ensured its instant death. It was not a perfect Bill. But it had seeds of reform which gave hope to religious minorities that the regime of impunity would end,. And that the government would be able to curb hate campaigns, profiling, non judicial deaths and torture, and finally communal riots. That would have brought peace to the land. It is not too late. The government must reach into the reservoirs of the goodwill it has with large sections of people and in political courage, enact such a  law

The people of India will thank the government for this.
Published in New Leader, CVhannei in the 15th August 2012 special issue as cover story]

4th anniversary of Kandhamal anti Christian violence

At last, a token of hope amid injustice
But Christians still face an uphill struggle

By John Dayal
New Delhi:
In the continuing gloom of injustice, broken promises and misadministration in Kandhamal, the birth of the new parish of Pakari has come as a token of hope and light for a Christian community still living with the memory of brutal attacks in December 2007 and August 2008 and with the ensuing “structural violence”.

The two young priests in charge of the parish, Fr. Bimal Nayak and Fr. Cassian Pradhan, a Panos Dalit and a Kondh tribal, are hopeful that it will invigorate the almost 5,000-member local church. They hope that in a few years, they will see the birth of another parish in the remote region of Orissa.

The church building is still just a design on a piece of paper, broadly resembling the church in Brahminigaon, which is getting the finishing touches on reconstruction after its destruction on Christmas Eve, 2007. The new parish will have a hostel and perhaps even a school, as well as the presbytery for the parish priest and his assistant, and a few rooms for visiting bishops and clergy.

One school may not be enough to challenge the success of the Sangh Parivar in spreading its hate ideology to the young.

Surveys by several groups, including mine, the All India Christian Council, reveal a massive effort by the Hindu nationalists to penetrate every village in the region. By this summer, the Sangh had set up an estimated 500 “Shishu mandirs,” or formal schools, and as many as 500 additional “Ekal vidyalayas,” or one-teacher schools, in remote villages.

Neither the government nor the church comes anywhere close to these numbers.

Observers have also noted changes in the tactics of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the main cadre of the Hindutva Parivar in the villages. The presence of Maoists in Darringbadi and other blocks has made the Sangh focus on areas where the Maoists are absent, or present only in small numbers. No major attacks have been reported this summer against Christians.

But the absence of violence brings little joy for much of the Christian community. In interviews and affidavits, residents speak of extreme economic hardship, particularly in remote areas, because of a lack of employment and ongoing economic boycotts of Christians.

In the villages of Tikabali, Adasapanda and Mujhlimandi, Christians are not being employed as labor in the fields or in the local markets.

Worse, many Christian men and women have been kept out of the government-run Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which is supposed to provide 100 days a year of paid employment on official projects such as roads, bridges and water conservation works.

Government agencies are still harassing tribal Christians, forcing them to get a recommendation from the political outfit Kui Samaj when they come to get their “caste certificates” which are needed for scholarships, jobs and other “benefits” from the state and union governments. This is of course illegal, but the practice goes on despite Christian activists and lawyers notifying the District Collector.

There is also no government initiative as yet to give land to the landless tribals.

The cumulative impact of these situations is the migration of tribals and Dalits first to Phulbani, the district capital, and Baliguda, the only two major towns in the district, and then out of Kandhamal and even out of Orissa.

Recent surveys have confirmed that as many as 10,000 of the 56,000 people impacted by the violence have not returned to their homes in the villages.

With the justice process in the two fast-track courts showing no progress, Christian groups have once again petitioned the Supreme Court for re-investigation of the murders committed during the August 2008 violence. There have been just two convictions in more than 30 cases accepted by the government, after a death toll of more than 90. The Supreme Court is expected to take up the writ soon.

In another major initiative, the National Human Rights Commission is being approached by victims and their representatives who are seeking a comprehensive justice and rehabilitation package such as the ones victims of the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 and anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 won after interventions by the Supreme Court and the National Human Rights Commission.

The comprehensive application points out that thousands of children continue to be without education, and men and women without jobs. Both individuals and the church have been denied adequate compensation for the destruction of property during the riots, because of deficiencies in government surveys and irrational systems of calculating the loss.

Christian activists have taken great heart from the recent Supreme Court judgment holding two BJP politicians guilty of murders in Gujarat’s Naroda Patiya area, and NHRC decisions in similar cases.

This has been reflected in the mass rallies that have been held in Phulbani and Bhubaneswar on August 25. Police gave permission at the last moment for Christians to mark the fourth anniversary of the violence. Berhampur Bishop Sarath spoke to about 4,000 people about the need for justice and rehabilitation.

The RSS held its own rally on August 23 to commemorate the murder, by Maoists, of Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Several hundred RSS activists shouted slogans asking for the arrest of the “real” murderers of Saraswati. Seven Kandhamal Christians have been rotting in jail for four years as suspects, their bail applications routinely denied by the courts.
[First published in Ucan News, 12 September 2012, New Delhi]

Rebuilding the Dalit Christian Movement for Rights

Church and the Dalit conundrum

John Dayal

Two unrelated but symptomatic incidents marked  the rain-soaked protest march and “dharna”, a sit-in, in New Delhi on 1 August 2012 by Dalit Christians who trace their origins to India’s former “untouchable” castes and constitute arguably 60 per cent of the Christian community in India, concentrated in its southern and western States. The first  incident was of a Hindu, possibly inebriated and equally possibly  a Hindutva extremist, who come to participate in the anti corruption fast by campaigner Anna Hazare and his team which was underway nearby. He took the mike, shouted a Hazare slogan before breaking into a chant praising the Hindu god Hanumama. After a few minutes, he nonchalantly walked away, his mostly south Indian audience not able to follow any of his slogans which were in Hindi, a language unfamiliar to many of them. The second incident was “all Christian.”  As a dozen Catholic and Protestant  Archbishops, Bishops and church leaders looked on, a little known group calling itself  the “All India Federation of Christians of SC Origin” distributed a handbill charging the same Bishops and upper caste Hindus of opposing the struggle of the Dalit Christians.

The Hindu community has always, and fiercely, opposed any sops to the religious minorities who they see as a demographic and political threat. This is not confined to just the right wing outfits such as the Sangh Parivar, but extends to the membership of even the Indian National Congress, ruling India intermittently  since Independence. The Dalits among them see Christians as competition, contenders for their share of the economic and political crumbs that the government gives them.

The movement historically has also caused a deep schisms in the Christian community. The converts from the upper castes, specially in States such as Kerala where the Syrian Catholic and Protestant churches wield great political and economic power, do not have an intuitive sympathy for the Dalits. In Kerala, the Latin Catholic Church represents the Dalits who include fishermen and others. The tribal Christians of the North East and the Chhotanagpur belt of Central and east India, are protected constitutionally and therefore do not feel the economic pinch of the Dalits.  The clergy and  particularly the Laity, along the Konkan Coast encompassing such Christian-dominated areas as Mumbai and Goa, not only have nothing in common with the Dalits but see them as a contradiction to the theological basis of their faith, and an affront to their reputation as sophisticated citizens. Since Christ taught equality, there can be no place for caste in the church and therefore no raison d etre for the Dalit movement. Several churches, specially in place as such as Gujarat where the community has assimilated well, live in a sort of a denial of their past. Even though almost all of them – barring the migrants from Kerala and Goa – are of Dalit origin, they refuse to be so identified.

This lack of popular and mass support,  historically, is why the movement has failed since the Dalits first protested in 1950 when President Rajendra Prasad, a votary of upper caste Hinduism, and the upper caste ministers of the Congress passed the infamous Presidential Order which says  affirmative action including  a 15 per cent reservation in government jobs, can be given to the Dalits as long as they remain in Hinduism.  The issue is now in the Supreme Court in a  Public Interest Litigation, with the government deliberately delaying the judicial process by not filing its response. The fear in 1950, as now, was that the entire Dalit community, now more than 200 million, would convert to Christianity of  the “gates” were not closed and some sort of “punishment” not  put in for conversions.

The Dalits have struggled almost entirely on their own. The support of the Hierarchy is not more than 20 years old, and has become visible only in the last five years. But the movement itself has petered  down to nothingness  -- its last major meeting was almost a quarter of a century ago when a 100,000 people marched to Parliament. The National Coordination Committee for Dalit Christians, which saw some of the major churches coming together, now exists only in name. New groups have taken over, but essentially based in Tamil Naidu, Andhra and Kerala, they have not succeeded in mobilising an all India campaign – the people now limited to those who can come by train to Delhi, never more than a couple of thousands if that. Delhi’s own Christians never join, barring a token presence. The pitifully small demonstrations in Delhi give an impression to the government that the movement is losing steam, if not dying out entirely.

If the movement has to survive, it has to reinvent itself at the grassroots. It must learn from political parties – better a thousand  visible agitations at every rural and urban government offices than one bi-annual invisible one in the national capital.  It also has to reach out to Civil Society, and specially to the Hindu Dalits who need to be educated  that the struggle is not just for government jobs, which anyway remain unfilled to a large extent, but for political rights and economic rights in the villages, where the cake, so to say, is limitless. They may dilute the apprehensions and the antagonism to a large extent. To be able to do this, it must, patently, once again become a peoples movement, not one led NGOS s and by bishops and pastors who go away after the “photo opportunity” for the minimal media presence.

The fissiparous Indian Church establishment –  hundreds of fragments based on denominations, regional, ethnic, linguistic and cultural groups -- just cannot take care of about 16 to 18 million members from the Dalit community. There are not enough institutional or industrial jobs in a  community that is itself either in the service sector or in marginal agriculture, barring a few plantation owners in Kerala and Karnataka. The Dalits, barring their “creamy layer” of the highly educated, are largely landless labour, a  few of them even bonded labour and manual scavengers in areas such as Punjab. The relief has to come through government legislation. The Presidential Order of 1950, now Article 341 of the Constitution  has to be purged of its bias against Christians and  Muslims. The Dalit Christians have no option but to carry on their struggle, for at the end of the day, it remains a matter of equality under the law, Human rights and dignity.