NON GOVERNMENT WHITE PAPER
ON THE VIOLENCE IN THE KANDHAMALA DISTRICT
PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE FACT FINDING TEAM
LED BY DR JOHN DAYAL WHICH VISITED THE KANDHAMALA DISTRICT, ORISSA ON 29TH DECEMBER – 3RD JANUARY AND FROM 1ST JANUARY TO 3RD JANUARY 2008
RELEASED AT BHUBANESWAR 5TH JANUARY 2008
Index:
1. Introduction: A tragedy that was waiting to happen and a tragedy that could repeat itself. Conclusions from the facts as the Fact Finding Team found them.
2. Significance to Orissa state, Nation, and Church in India -- issues of grave concern
3. Fact Finding Team Composition
4. Tour programme; Phulbani aborted visit 29-30 December 2007, and the second visit and 1st to 3rd January 2008
5. Narrative
6. Main Findings of simultaneous violence
7. Suggestions to Union and Orissa Government and Church;
8. Annexure : Illustrative case histories
1. A tragedy that was waiting to happen and a tragedy that could repeat itself. The following are urgent conclusions from the facts as the Fact finding team found them.
1.1 The Events in the Kandhamala hill district of Orissa in the Christmas Week from 22nd December to 1st January 2008 are a story of a tragedy foretold, of political and official condoning, if not actual support to the activities criminals and political activists spreading bigotry, the ideology of hate and violence. It is also a painful narrative of police and administrative indifference, repeated complicity and consistent incompetence. And finally it is the documentation of an utter collapse of the law and order machinery on 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th December 2007. So much in a state where Christians number about 2 per cent, less than the national average.
1.2 There is an urgent Caution, and a Warning in the Kandhamala developments: Unless everyone – Union Government, Orissa Government and its agencies, and religious, social and development agencies wake up and act in concert, there is more tragedy waiting to happen. Like a coalfield fire, passions and tensions are simmering, wounds are suppurating. Only a Judicial Enquiry by a Supreme Court Judge, assisted with the findings of a criminal investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigations, meets the ends of justice.
1.3 It is beyond doubt that the violence was premeditated, pre-planned and the work of a well disciplined group to ensure simultaneous eruption across the Kandhamala district within hours of the first incident, and to sustain it for five days despite the presence of the highest Police officers in the region. It is clear that the attackers were, in the main, upper castes non-tribals and non-Dalits, migrated from other districts of Orissa and other states, though some youth of the suppressed communities had been persuaded to join the mobs. The role of the Rasthriya Swayam Sewak Sangh, Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and their extension organisations must be subject of an intensive investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigations.
1.4 The sequence of events is quite clear. The Christian community and its institutions were targeted for more than 48 hours with the police looking on, and being physically present at the spot in many cases. The anti Christian violence continued till 27th December 007. The anti Hindu violence in Brahminigaon took place more than 60 hours after the first Church was burnt down.
1.5 There are unique, unprecedented and possibly dangerous elements to the Kandhamala violence of Christmas Week 2007, although the state has an unhappy history of recorded and unrecorded persecution of Christians, including the burning alive of Australian leprosy mission worker Graham Stuart Staines and his sons Philip and Timothy, and Fr Arul in 1999, attacks in Rakia block of the Kandhamala and other parts of the hill tracts of Orissa.
1.6 This is the first time at least one Hindu Oriya non-tribal house cluster has been destroyed by arsonists, affecting perhaps a total of 97 families in the villages of Brahminigaon and Godapur.
1.7 This is the first time that there has been reported incident of an exchange of fire between the police and a mixed group of tribals, non tribals and outsiders in Bamunigaon on 27th December 2007. It is in fact a dubious first for India in which Christians’ involvement is alleged. This by itself must be subjected to close study by academics and state organisations, as also by the Christian leadership.
1.8 This is the biggest recorded case of such a allege number of Christian houses burnt, in Brahminigaon and Barakhama, other than Churches, convents and Hostels which have been targets of violence in other states, most notably in Gujarat 2002, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, and occasionally even in New Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Kashmir. We have recorded over 200 cases of violence across the country before the outbreak in Kandhamala in Orissa.
1.9 The burning of medical centres and hostels speaks of a criminal disregard for humanity and the welfare of the people. We were told of several instances where nuns said they and their patients were in need of food and medicines.
1.10 This is the first time in history since Independence that may be 3,000 Christian men, women and children are forced to live in two refugee camps, eating boiled rice not fit for human consumption because of the quantity of sand and grit, and living in the cold wit no toilets, precious little medical care and no woolens. In the camp in Brahminigaon, they share this misery with their Hindu brothers and sisters. The irony is not lost. In the Super Cyclone and other natural disasters that devastated the state of Orissa in the past, Christian NGOs and Church groups were almost always among the first to set up relief camps and rehabilitation projects for the common people irrespective of the consideration of religion and ethnic identity.
1.11 The quality of violence against the Christian faith must be recorded so that lessons can be learnt. It has to be seen to be believed. Hate so deep and pungent does not augur well for the country, and of course, poses an immediate threat to the ideals of secularism and freedom of faith the right to life and the right to dignity enshrined in the Constitution of India. Church buildings are broken, nuns manhandled, priests chased away, convent cows killed as their straw is set afire. These are heinous crimes. The ravishing of statues of Mary, grinding her face under foot till nothing remains but shreds, desecrating the Host which Catholics hold to be the Body of Christ, and vandalizing of ritual holy material before setting everything on fire speaks of a ideologically cultivated venom that has percolated deep and will need deep political and social activism to quell, defeat and eliminate.
1.12 The police force of the district failed on all counts. Government must ensure that in future police action is not thwarted by roadblocks, however big the tree that has been felled, communication failure and lack of mobility. It is a matter of regret for the people of the state, and shame for the Orissa Police authorities, that several incidents of grave violence and heinous crime were committed while the police look on. This happened in more than one block headquarters
1.13 It is a matter of regret that till 3rd January when we spoke to the last police officer before leaving the district, we recorded an extremely partisan, even bigoted, behavior in senior field police officers of the rank if Circle Inspector and Sub Divisional Police officer. Senior development officers of the rank of Commissioner in their language to the victims, and to us, displayed a condemnable cynicism and bias towards a minority community. We are happy to record that junior and young tehsildars rushed in the last days show a more humane nature.
1.14 There is a continuing reign of terror. Many villages are now villages of women. The men are in hiding. Elsewhere, entire villages are deserted. Steps must be taken to create a situation in which the people can return to their homes and not live in terror.
1.15 Despite four days of extensive investigation, we have not been able to speak authoritatively of the number of dead killed by arsonists, in clashes, in police firings, or of injuries. Two dead in Brahminigaon and two dead in Balliguda are confirmed by the police -- the one killed in police firing remains unidentified. Any one dead body just confirms a single death, but does not tell how many others may have died whose bodies have not been recovered by the authorities.
1.16 Similarly, only major Church buildings, particularly of the Catholic Church and the Church of North India and the Baptist church can be easily counted because they are along the roadside in major crossroads and towns. Independent Evangelical churches and mission stations of major denominations exist in villages which have still not been reached.
1.17 The State Government’s claims of an overlay of the issues of Maoist activities in the region, the agitation of the Kuis, and the Christmas Week violence is not tenable. The presence of Maoist or Naxalite and the Kui movement are real in some blocks, but the nature of the violence against Christians is in a group by itself. Whatever overlay does exist could have been overcome and much violence prevented if the authorities had not given permission to the hartal, or closures, on Christmas Day, a date with which they are, and ought to be, familiar as educated persons.
1.18 Attempts are also being made to present the incidents as a Tribal versus Christian conflict. The evidence is to the contrary. The relations between Christian tribals and Christian Non tribals, Christian Dalits and Dalits of other faiths, as well as between Christians belonging to the tribal and Dalit communities remain cordial as they have been historically. The issue that remains pertinent is the targeting of Dalit and Tribal Christians by political-religious fundamanentalists.
1.19 It is clear that Christians, both Tribals and Panos, and Dalits of various religious persuasions, are particular victims of violence. Persons opposed to the demand by a section of the community to seek Scheduled status have mobilised and hijacked some of the youth of their followers to join the mobs in various hamlets and town. The issue of Scheduled Tribe status must be amicably resolved with the help of a judicial or similar commission, and through appropriate enquiry without delay.
1.20 The government must, also, sympathetically consider the classification of a group of people who are being discriminated twice over because of their religion. This is a group which was listed as a Scheduled tribe under the British government, and then listed as a Scheduled caste by the State administration. Those of them professing the Christian faith are denied protection of the law, and access to affirmative action programmes of the government, on both counts. They do not get Scheduled Caste Reservation and other privileges because hey are now Dalits. And they do not get the privileges their Dalit brothers and sisters get because as Christians, they are no longer supposed to be even Dalits. They remain in an inhuman, un-Constitutional limbo, discriminated against just for their religious beliefs. This discrimination must end forthwith if the guarantees under the United Nations Charter and the Indian Constitution of Freedom of Faith are to have any meaning.
1.21 The Government of India, the Supreme Court of India and other State agencies must take notice, and learn their lesson. Peace committees as being constituted are not the answer. They have lost credibility. Victims have lost faith in committees constituted of their persecutors. Truth and Reconciliation and an entirely unbiased State are the answer. Every one has a role to play in this.
1.22 Keeping in view the deep distrust that victim communities have of the local police officers, Central Police Forces must remain in the area will confidence is restored.
1.23 Peace and reconciliation will be possible only with justice and truth. The guilty must be identified, prosecuted with all the might of the State. Biased officials, as much as corrupt officials, are responsible for the lack of development in the Kandhamala region. They must be identified so that they are never again in command positions where they can join with communal political elements pursing their agenda of hate. There are many wise suggestions contained in the Justice Wadhwa Commission report that enquired into the murders of the Staines family, as also in other commissions set up in the aftermath of communal incidents in other states. They need to be implemented, specially those relating to the police and the administration, and fundamentalist organisations, if Orissa is to remain peaceful.
1.24 Orissa does not have forums such as a State Minorities Commission which can move fast to restore confidence. The State Minorities Commission, as recommended by the national Minorities commission, must be set up soon with statutory powers.
1.25 Relief too must consist of materials and compensation according to national standards set in states which see communal violence and persecution, and it must also contain compassion, fairness and transparency.
1.26 Irrespective of the slogan Swami Lokhanananda Saraswati, who has made Kandhamala his home in recent years with an avowed objective of purging the region of every Christian presence, Christians are not Enemies of the people of India, or of the State. To say that, as he says repeatedly even in the presence of the police, “Whosoever converts to Christianity becomes an enemy” is a crime under the law of the land. To say “Christians will not be tolerated.’ And to say it on National satellite channels is equally a crime. Action must be taken in the interests of justice and protecting the Constitution. This saintly gentleman is obviously not just above the law, but is the Law in the area, judging by the attitude of the Police and local administrative officers towards him.
1.27 National TV channels and segments of the local media need to do some introspection if in their reportage of the Kandhamala developments, they have observed the Code of Ethics of the Editors Guild of India, and practices observed in their reporting. Secularism, fairness and truth must remain part of the training of your media persons in Media insitutions as week as in Print, Television and Cyber-media Organisations as an on-going process. It is interesting to note that Video interviews of Lokhanananda Saraswati were made by a private videographer, a known activist of the RSS, within the premises of a medical centre of another RSS activist, the tape then telecast without further corroboration. In the tape Lokhanananda Saraswati repeatedly said, “When people become Christians, they become enemies, they become enemies of the nation. I will NOT tolerate this” [translated from the Hindi/Oriya]. This statement, assiduously propagated, went a long way in fanning the fires.
1.28 THE STATISTICS OF THE VIOLENCE:
1. Deaths – Police confirm three deaths – One in the police firing [Unidentified, but unofficially listed as Christian by the police] and two [one Hindu, One Christian] Two each in Barakhama and Brahminigaon. Human Rights activists understand that six persons have died in the police firing in Brahminigaon. The bodies have not been found, presumed taken away by the mob. There have been no deaths reported in the arson though several priests and nuns had a close encounter with death.
2. Missing: There are persons reported missing from almost every hamlet. This is the subject of long term investigations. Many have fled out of fear of the police. Some are in safety with relatives. Others are in police custody with the police not admitting or confirming this. It will take many weeks before a count becomes possible.
3. ARSON: FIRE WAS THE INSTRUMENT OF CHOICE. The arsonist mob was well motivated, well armed and had come prepared with weapons and iron cutting instruments. The following is a preliminary list of the properties/places destroyed and desecrated:
CHURCH INSTITUTIONS DESTROYED [Total - 71]
PARISH CHURCHES [Total - Five]
Balliguda
Brahminigaon
Sankharakhole
Pobingia
Paddangi
VILLAGE CHURCHES [Total - 48 ]
Bodagan-Balliguda
Balliguda town
Kamapada – Balliguda
Mandipanka- Godapur
Jhinjirguda- Bamunigam
Ulipadaro – Bamunigam
Goborkutty-Kattingia
Kulpakia- Nuagam
Dohapanga-Balliguda
7 [Seven] churches, Sirtiguda, Balliguda
4 [Four] churches in Phiringia
7 [Seven] churches in Phulbani
4 [Four] churches in Ruthungia
4 [Four] churches in Kalingia
2 [Two]churches in Tikabali
4 [Four] village Churches – Nuagam
3 [Three] more village church
Boriguda (Padangi)
Bakingia (Raikia)
Dalagam
Iripiguda
This list of village churches is not exhaustive for reasons of topography and accessibility
CONVENTS [Total - 5]
Balliguda
Pobingia
Phulbani
Brahminigaon
Sankharakhole
PRESBYTERY [Total – 4]
Balliguda
Pobingia
Brahminigaon
Padangi
HOSTELS [Total - 7]
Pobingia 2 [Two]
Balliguda 2 [Two]
Brahminigaon 2 [Two]
Minor Seminary (Balliguda)
3.1.6 OTHERS: [Total – 2]
3.1.6.1 Vocational Training Centre (Balliguda)
3.1.6.2 Sarshnanda, leprosy centre (Pobingia)
3.2 HOUSES DESTROYED / BURNT AND LOOTED [Total – Over 500]
3.2.1 400 Houses destroyed and looted in Barakhama, Tractors, cycles, motorcycles / shop goods burnt
3.2.2 31 Christian Houses burnt in Brahminigaon
3.2.3 67 Hindu Houses Burnt in Brahminigaon Oriyasahi
3.2.4 30 Christian houses burnt in Ullipadar [Brahminigaon]
[Arson in Phirignia, which continues, is political involving supporters and opponents of former Orissa minister Padmanabha Behera and the Caste issue]
3.3 SHOPS /OTHER PROPERTIES DESTROYED [Total - 126]
3.3.1 Brahminigaon 81
3.3.2 Godapur [25]
3.3.3 Barakhama [20]
3.4 Vehicles and Other properties destroyed : Survey not yet done
3.5 Animals Killed:
3.5.1 One Cow, Black Jersey milch cattle, Balliguda Convent consequent to arson
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[TOTAL PROPERTIES DESTROYED IN ARSON AND MOB VIOLENCE – 697]
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RELIEF CAMPS: Government of Orissa has set up two relief camps in Barakhama and in Brahminigaon in school buildings. The conditions in both camps are inhuman and shameful, particularly the utter lack of regard for the needs of women, children and the ill. Despite its experience of natural calamities, the government has not learnt lessons in immediate succor and assistance to the distressed and needy. We find incomprehensible that the Union Home Minister and the Orissa Chief Minister came in a helicopter to Barakhama, came to the Relief camp, and chose to sit under a shamiana or tent and talk to the people across a rope. They did not walk down a few meters to the class rooms where injured and sick people were lying down. Nor did they even bother to look at the cooked rice, full of grit, which the people had to eat for want of anything else.
2. SETTING UP OF THE FACT FINDING COMMITTEE:
The first act of violence [see narrative and sequence of events, below] violence took place on the morning of 24th December 2007 in the small town of Brahminigaon, which has a Police Station, the office or the Revenue Office and other institutions. This is a major entry point to the entire Kandhamala hills region and an important market place. Some Christians own shops and are comparatively better off than others. They have mobile phones, as does the parish priest whose Church was the first to be burnt down. They informed Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and his office, and they in turn informed others including Dr John Dayal in New Delhi. Dr John Dayal and others immediately informed the national media in New Delhi and Mumbai. But it was Christmas Eve and News Planners were focussed on the celebratory and commercial aspects of the Holiday season. The event did not get the coverage it deserved.
Church and Civil Society groups however were alerted, in swift order, the offices of the Prime Minister, President and Union Minister were informed as was the office of the Chief Minister of Orissa. The Prime Minister was not initially available, but a delegation called on Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil on 27th December 2007. President Mrs. Pratibha Patil was met with by the Bishop of the Andamans and Nicobar Islands, and eventually Archbishops Cheenath and Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi met with the Prime Minister. Two public rallies and candle light vigils were taken out in New Delhi as also in Mumbai, Bhubaneswar and other cities.
At those rallies, it was decided that the facts of the Kandhamala had t be ascertained in detail and without bias.
At a meeting of Christian and other activist groups in Bhubaneswar, the fact finding group was set up
The fact finding team consisted of
1. Dr John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council, Government of India, Senior Editor and Political Columnist, and well known national Human Rights activist with experience of many People’s Tribunals and fact finding Missions.
2. Advocate Nicholas Barla, Lawyer and Human Rights expert from Rourkela with experience in Police and social conflicts in the State.
3. Mr Hemant Nayak, social scientist and Human Rights and Development activist, Bhubaneswar.
The team was facilitated by many persons at various stages.
The team made two visits to the district. The first visit was aborted at the Phulbani offices of the Police superintendent on 29th December 2007 after having visited affected churches and Convents in some of the area. The second visit was from 1st January to the night of 3rd January 2008 and covered almost every affected area barring one.
It is important to record the circumstances of the first visit. We believe that Truth must prevail, and that facts, if unearthed early, naturally quench doubts and ensure that rumours are not given currency. W noted in our Press statement in Bhubaneswar on 30th December 2007: I report with deep sorrow and anguish that I and a five member Fact Finding Team that had gone to the Phulbani area of Kandhamala district on Saturday, 29th December 2007, was forcibly expelled by Inspector General of Police Pradeep Kapoor who ordered the Phulbani Town Police Inspector to ensure that I left the district that night. The Town Police Inspector then made us follow an armed police escort for a one and a half hour drive through the night darkness till we reached the border of Ganjam district, where he left us. We could return to Bhubaneswar by 4 am today, 30th December 2007, deeply distressed and feeling very frustrated with the experience. The fact finding team was set up at a meeting of activists in the Swosti Hotel in Bhubaneswar on 28th December 2007 to get an authentic first hand account of the developments and the violence in the Kandhamala district because rumours, absence of authentic media reports and often inaccurate government accounts of the casualties, had left the people confused. There were also fears that lack of authentic information would impact on the confidence building measures and the peace process. I was requested to lead the Fact Finding Team in view of my experience in Gujarat, Nandigram, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan the Northeast. As a matter of abundant precaution, I wrote to the Director General of Police, Orissa, on 28th December 2007. I, inter alia, said “I am a Member of the National Integration Council, Government of India, and the National President of the All India Catholic Union. I am part of a Fact Finding team set up by civil society and Human Rights groups to assess the situation in the violence affected areas of Orissa for us to be able to formulate People’s initiative for confidence building and peace. The team, consisting of six persons including me, intends to leave Bhubaneswar on the morning of 29th December 2007 and return in the evening of 31 December 2007. We will have a night halt in Phulbani. We will appreciate any assistance and facilitation we can get from the Orissa Police and in particular from the Police forces of the District. I am sure your office will take the necessary steps, and inform the District Police of the area.” We drove to Phulbani on 29th December; reaching safely and without any problems, by about 5 p.m. En route we were able to assess the damage done to the NISSWAS School of Social Work set up by Dr. R K Nayak, IAS retired and currently a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. We also saw the damage done to the Carmelite Convent and the Carmel English School. Nuns we interviewed told us how attempts were made to set the convent on fire even as the Nuns were cowering in a room where they had locked themselves in. Two sisters who could escape injured themselves in the process. Later, we went to the Offices of the Police Superintendent to discuss with them our onward journey to Balliguda that evening or early next morning, and to see if there was need for Curfew Passes, which are normally given to Media and other groups. The Inspector General of Police, Mr Kapoor, the Divisional Commissioner and the Deputy Inspector General of Police were present in the room. I was questioned in some detail, always very politely, by Mr Kapoor who wanted to know about my membership of the NIC, my credentials as a journalist and the books I had authored. He also photographed my colleagues and me with his Mobile Telephone camera. I gave a patent reply to every single question. I also pointed out that this was not a government enquiry, but that I would prepare a report I would submit to the authorities and which would also help facilitate the National Minority Commission members who are scheduled to visit the spot on 6th January 2008. I reminded the police were a peaceful group, and our team included an Advocate, apart from interpreters and with expertise in ethnic studies. Mr Kapoor was ever polite, but remained adamant. My colleagues felt they were being interrogated in a police station. Mr Kapoor said he would not allow me to proceed, or even to remain in Phulbani. He said it would not be safe for me, or for the persons with whom I would stay. He said the Rapid Action Force had been deployed in Phulbani town and I had to draw my inference from this fact about the situation and tension in the place. I told him there was no way we would be crashing police barriers. It was not for fear of our lives but in deference to the rule of law that we would go. He was apparently not satisfied. He called the Phulbani police officers and ordered them to escort me out. The Kandhamala region needs not just media coverage and government relief operations. The rescue, relief and rehabilitation programme has to be done in a transparent manner. Already there have been too many complaints of police and administrative apathy, complicity and even aggressive force against one community, the victim community. Independent fact finding teams and the information they give help in maintaining transparency and positively contribute to the peace process. I hope we will be able to visit and record the situation in every affected village as an important part of building long term peace, harmony and in ensuring relief, compensation and rehabilitation. -- John Dayal.”
I am very happy the fact Finding team could visit the Kandhamala region again from 1st January 2008 without police escort, without police protection, without official cooperation and with no help other than the goodwill of all people – Christians and Hindus alike.
3. CALENDAR, CHRONICLE AND NARRATIVES OF VIOLENCE:
3.1 SEQUENCE OF ERUPTION OF VIOLENCE BY DATE - dateline --
Church youth and Ambedkar Banika Sangh take permission for Christmas Celebrations. Officials approve. Police C-Inspector and SDO inspect site and approve. Promise protection from 23rd December
23rd December 2007 – Hindu youth tell Church women and youth not to put up Christmas decorations. Christians show government permission.
24th December 2007 – 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. – Mob forces shops and haat weekly traditional market to close. Police intervenes to get shops opened. Mob attacks market-goers. Christmas pandal on road is destroyed. Two Christians [Sillu and Avinash] are shot and injured
2 p.m. Rumours of attack on Lokhanananda Saraswati attacked in Dasingbadi
6.30 p.m. Evening Church attacked in Balliguda, Convent [cow killed in convent in arson], Seminary, CNI Church, Pentecostal church and burnt. No police action. No curfew.
25th December 2007 – Attacks take place in Brahminigaon, Pobingia, Srasananda, Barakhama, Budaguda, Nuagaon, Tikkawali
26h December 2007 --
28th December 2007 --
VIOLENCE AFFECTED REVENUE BLOCKS, KANDHAMALA DISTRICT:
3.2.1 Daringbari Block
3.2.2 Balliguda Block
3.2.3 Phiringia Block
3.2.4 Phulbani Block
3.2.5 Tikabali Block
3.2.6 Khajuripoda Block
3.2.7 Nuagaon Block
3.2.8 Gumsar Udaigiri Block
3.2.9 Tumudibandha Block
3.2.10 Kothaghar Block
3.2 CHRONICLE OF THE KANDHAMALA VIOLENCE Dec 2007
Sl no. Name of the place Date Time Narration
1. Brahminigaon 9.12.2007 Swami Lokhanananda Saraswati commonly referred to as Swamiji, had come to Brahminigaon and had a secret meeting with the Bighneswaro Banika Sangh who are the members of RSS and VHP. The situation was tensed in and around Brahminigaon on that onwards.
2 Brahminigaon 19.12.2007 Permission for Christmas Celebration was obtained from the Sub Collector and CI Office Balliguda.
3. Brahminigaon 21.12.2007 SDPO visited Brahminigaon. The Christian elders met the SDPO and apprised him of the situation., he also assured his participation in the celebration. He also had called the leaders of both the parties, the Hindus and Christians, but the Hindus did not come for the meeting.
4. Bhubaneswar 21.12.2007- 23.12.2007 The Arya Samaj of Bhubaneswar organized a three days YOGA PROGRAMME of Baba Ram Dev at Capital High School, Unit III of Bhubaneswar. In 25 to 30 buses of people were brought from Kandhamala for the purpose.
On 22nd December all the presidents of RSS from each Panchayat of Kandhamala District had a secrete meeting from 11.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. to an unknown place.
On 23rd evening the yoga class was over and all of them back to their respective places. And on 24th morning onwards the attacked begun in the different Church communities.
5. Kandhamala Dist. Headquarter 22.12.2007 The Christian Jana Kalyan Samaj of Kandhamala met the collector and S.P. and handed over written statement against the BANDH called on 25th and 26th December at Kandhamala, but to allow the Christians to Observe the Christmas.
6. Brahminigaon 22.12.2007 The S.P. had come to Brahminigaon to enquire about the situation, learnt the matter but did not put any force there.
7. Brahminigaon 23.12.2007 1.30 p.m. Dr. B.R Ambedkar Banika Sangh of Brahminigaon together with six Sarpanches of the area have appraised the situation and have sent fax message to S.P , Phulbani. And met him at Brahminigaon.
Dr. Ambedkar Banika Sangh of Brahminigaon went to the police station and discussed about the tensed situation in the area. They also discussed about the secret plan of performing Yagyan (puja) by Swami Lokhanananda Saraswati and VHP leaders in front of the church.
8. Brahminigaon 23.12.2007 6.30 p.m. One of the members of the Vanika Sangha of Brahminigaon phoned Superintendent of Police Mr. Narasingh Bhol and requested for police force in the village.
9. Brahmunigaon 24.12.2007 6.00 a.m. The Sarpanches of six Gram Panchayats together with Village heads went to the police station and requested to allow the market to be opened, which the RSS and Bajrang Dal people were opposing.
10. Brahmunigaon 24.12.2007 7.00 a.m. The ASI came to the market and told the people to open the market.
11. Brahmunigaon 24.12.2007 8.30 a.m. The weekly market was going on. Suddenly the RSS leader Mr. Bikram Rout, Dhanu Pradhani and others came and threatened the sellers and buyers to stop marketing. They also ordered the shopkeepers to close down their shops and there were already tussled between them. One of the buyers was beaten up by the Bikram and group. The Christian People were in need of buying some of the important articles as 25th was Christmas day.
Some of the Christian members were making Christmas decoration, big pandal for worship, crib, sound system etc for the night worship. The same miscreants came there and asked the community to close down and they threatened not to have any celebration. Here also some tussle between both the groups took place
Bikram and others RSS, VHP, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram Bajrang Dal members came with guns, swords, iron rods and other lethal weapons and attacked on the Christians around 10 a.m. The Christians were unarmed and ran away to the forest to save their lives. On the process two were injured by bullet shot. Some are injured by other weapons.
The police was inactive, did not take prompt action on the miscreants and all this took place in the present of the police. The police station is just 400 yards from the Church.
All the Christians ran away to the forest including the priest and nuns leaving theirs all belongings.
12. Dasingbadi 24.12.2007 10.45 a.m. Swami Lokhanananda Saraswati who is known as SWAMI at Jalespatta of Tumudibandha P.S., Dist Kandhamala was going to Brahmunigaon by his vehicle. One private bus was going ahead of his vehicle. Due to narrow road and due to technical fault of the bus it stood on the road at Dasingbadi near upper primary school Dasingbadi.
There is a small village Church in Dasingbadi a little distance on the road side and the Christian youth were busy in decorating their village church for the Christmas. Christmas music was going on.
Lokhmananda hearing the sound apparently asked his bodyguards and his driver to go and have it stopped. The security guards and the driver (who are govt. security men) went to the spot, got into an argument with the Christian youth, and at some time pulled down the decorations and the sound boxes etc even as the Christian youth confronted them.
There is no evidence of a physical assault on Lakhmananda Saraswati. Because of the controversy surrounding this incident, there is need for a Central Bureau of Enquiry specifically into this as part of a general probe.
Then with his vehicle he went to Daringbari and showed his security men to medical officer Dr. Pradhan at Daringbadi Community Health Center. There he stayed for two days in the family planning office looked after by Dr. Pradhan (who is also a Bajrang Dal member ) There the I. I.C. of Daringbari Mr. Pradhan provided 8 to 10 police man guarding him. The IIC has advised Mr. Laxamananda not to go to Brahmunigaon.
Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan and Mr. Surendra Sahoo who both are of Daringbari went to meet Lokhanananda. Lokhanananda, hearing the incident, that there was tussle between his security men and the Christian youths at Dasingbadi. They also felt sad about the incident and proposed to have peace meeting and resolved the issue. But Lokhanananda said “KRANTI NO THILE SHANTI NAHI , Mote kichhi mado hoi nahi” (in English “without revolution no peace, I am not hurt”) in the present of the I.I.C. and other local leaders.
On 25th December at about 1 p.m. he left Daringbari community hospital by block jeep through Soroda road.
One RSS boy Muna Sahoo who is having video camera he took the interview and statement of Lokhmananda which was telecast on satellite television channels in the media.
13. Balliguda 24.12.2007 7.30 p.m. At About 7.30 p.m. more than 400 miscreants, kumkum on their foreheads, chanting “Jay Sri Ram” most likely the Bajrang Dal and RSS members with guns, Swords, axes, Pharsa and other lethal weapons in their hands broke opened the main gate of the church, abusing the few Christian youths who were busy in decorating and giving the last touches for the worship on the birthday of their Lord Jesus. There was stoning.
They came running towards the youths shouting “SALLE CHRISTIAN MANONKU JEEVAN RE MARI DIYO, GIRJA DHANSA KORO” means “kill the Christians, destroy the church.” The youths together with priest, nuns, hostel boys, seminarians seeing the barbarous nature of the crowd ran to the jungle to save their lives.
Then they collected all the furniture, worship materials, hostel godowns, furniture and all the belongings and set them fire that became assess within few minutes.
The schools, hostels, the sisters residence which is in another compound was also ransacked and put in to fire. The sisters and the hostel girls had very difficult time to save themselves.
One of the sisters was caught and man handled very badly.
A cows died as a consequence of the arson.
All this took place in the presence of the police officials’ right from the Tahsildar, BDO, Sub Collector, IIC etc.
14. Barakhama 24.12.2007 4.00 p.m. 1. The Christian community already knew that some incident would take place, they started their worship at 4 p.m. itself.
2. A group of hoodlums about 2000 people having red marks on their foreheads, armed with swords, axes, pharsa etc. chanting “Jay Sri Ram, Christian manonku mari diyo( Kill the Christians), Girija dhanso koro (Destroy the churches) etc. destroyed the Pentecostal church, which is in the eastern part of the village.
3. Seeing the mob and the flames the Christians of the village started running towards forest to save themselves.
4. The people whose houses are burnt mostly of the Christian community and now are sheltered in the Barakhama high school.
5. The male members of the family are staying in the jungle and officials demanding their females to bring their husband else they would not receive relief materials. On the other hand when the male members are coming to the camp from the jungle, the police are booking them on the falls cases and arresting them. The FIRs are not accepted by the OICs.
15. Brahmunigaon 25.12.2007 10.00a.m.
11.45 a.m. 1. First the mob entered the village Church of Ulipodor and destroyed and burnt 30 Christian houses and also beat them very badly.
2. The mob entered the main gate of the church breaking the grills, houses, Church, the priest residents and other places and put fire and thus irreparable damage was done to the Christian community as a whole.
16. Pobingia 25.12.2007 9.00 am The mob entered the Church of Pobingia and instantly burnt the Church, Presbytery, Boys Hostel, Convent and girls Hostel .
17. Brahmunigaon 25.12.2007 2.00 p.m. 1. The miscreants once again gathered and entered in to the market and burned the shops and houses of the Christian community.
18. Bodagan 25.12.2007 Night Church was attacked
19. Kamapada 25.12.2007 Night Church was attacked
20. Kulpakia 25.12.2007 Night Church was attacked
21. Sirtiguda 25.12.2007 Night 7 Churches were burnt .
22. Phirignia 25.12.2007 Night Church was attacked
23. Srasa Nanda 25.12.2007 10.00 p.m In the presence of Magistrate and 22 police personnel the church was attacked and burnt.
24. Ruthungia 25.12.2007 Night 8 village churches were burnt.
25. Kalingia 25.12.2007 day Village Church was burnt.
26. Tikapali 25.12.2007 day Village Church was burnt.
27. Nuagaon 25.12.2007 Night 9 Village Churches were burnt.
28. Dalagaon 25.12.2007 Night Village Church was burnt.
29. Iripiguda 25.12.2007 Night Village church was burnt.
30. Krutumgarh 26.12.2007 1. The non Christian tribals of Krutumgarh collected Rs. 50/- from each family. They had the YAGYAN (puja) in the village. After the puja they were dancing with weapons like swords, sickle, pharsa etc.
31. Padangi 26.12.2007 Night 1. Boriguda Village Church was burnt.
32. Sankharakhole 26-12-2007 Night 1. The mob entered the Church of Sankharakhole and attacked the Church, Convent, Priest residence
33. Brahmunigaon 27.12.2007 12.15 p.m 1. There are differing accounts even by the victims as to how the Oriya-sahi houses were burnt. Some say villagers of local area burnt houses in Paikosahi Others say it was outsiders, even from outside the district.
The police are not giving still a coherent account as to which direction the mob came to the walled where civilians had taken shelter, or were being kept, and the premises of the police station nearby. This is not an open area, and involved rough ground, a narrow road and many houses. Because this is in the nature of an encounter between a mob and the police, with an exchange of fire, this needs a separate enquiry under the law.
There is also need for a through probe as to what happened to civilians injured in the police firing as many rounds were fired. The police admit to one uniformed person injured.
There was police force and it opened fire on them and two were killed and the crowed was dispersed.
THANKS: This Fact Finding Team’s work would not have been possible but for the assistance provided all through by many individuals, organisations and institutions. Institutions and organisations we wish to thank in particular are the Catholic Bishops Conference, the Archdioceses of Delhi and Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, Dioceses of Rourkela and Berhampur, the All India Christian Council, the All India Catholic Union, the United Christian Forum New Delhi. Individuals include Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, SVD of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi, Catholic Fathers Dominic Emmanuel, Madhu Chandra and Advocate Mary Scaria in Delhi and Bernard Bhubaneswar in, Mrityunjay and Madan in Bhubaneswar, Dr Pran Parichha for his motivation and his assistance with the media. Special thanks are due to Mumbai Film Director Mahesh Bhatt and Maharashtra State Minorities Commission Vice Chairman Dr. Abraham Mathai for making it possible to meet with the Chief Minister and facilitating the Team’s interactions with government functionaries. Many Christians and Hindus, tribals and non tribals, government servants and others, who were of help, wish to remain anonymous, and we honour tier sentiments as we thank them. Thanks must also be expressed to two brave drivers who did not care for rumours and drove our SUV with care on the terrible roads. And most of all, we wish to thank the Press -- the Print and the Electronic Media -- in new Delhi an Bhubaneswar whose interaction, assistance and coverage brought focus on the violence, n hopefully, will also help in the healing of the wounds of the Kandhamala hills.
4. ANNEXURE:
4.1 Illustrative Testimonies of key witnesses / victims
4.1.1 Text of the oral testimony of Catholic Father Rabi Sabhasundar, Parish Priest, Bamunigam, and a born in the district, who saw his parish church attacked, vandalized and then set on fire in the Brahminigaon:
“The Church of Our Lady of Lourd, Bamunigam, Kandhamala District, Orissa consists of around 1630 of 217 families. Like any other year this year 2007, the people of Bamunigam were preparing and getting ready to celebrate Christmas. So they had put up Christmas Crib (Pandal) in front of Christian shops where they used to do usually in every year. The Christmas Crib (Pandal) was decorated with all light and sound and with all the necessary decorative articles. For the Pandal making and celebration, a committee (Ambedkar Banika Sango) had already got the permission from the Collector, Sub-Collector and SP. With the prior permission as they were proceeding with all the preparation, on the eve of Christmas celebration, in order to disrupt the celebration the committee of Banika Sango of Hindu group along with the president of RSS Mr. Bigram Rautho 40 year of age son of Kishore Rautho, Nuagam, Ps. Bamunigam, and Mr. Dhanu Pradhani s/o Bainath, Jhinjiriguda, Bamunigam went to the police station and complained repeately to SI not to have weekly market in Bamunigam. On Monday 24th December, 2007 at 10 am, the RSS president Mr. Bikram along with his RSS members and Hindu business people went to market place and forcibly stopped the people not to have market on that day. Meanwhile the SI of Bamunigam Police Station along with 5 Sarapanch of the locality and majority of the village customers came to the market place and convinced the Mr. Bikram and his team to carry out the market. However, soon after the departure of the SI, Mr. Bikram and his team physically harassed many villages people those who had come to the market. Some were thoroughly beaten with sticks and iron bars. They also showed the weapons to attack them. With the short period of time nearly 200 people came running to the Crib with guns, spears, axe, and many other tradition weapons and they completely destroyed the well decorated Crib. Along with this they also broke, looted and burnt all the shops of Christian people. At the same time some people pour the petrol and burnt three motor bikes of Christian people. Angry mob also burnt one generator, light and sound system and other decoration articles of people of Digapainy, Gajapati district, who were hired and employed by their owner for the Christmas celebration. In the process of destroying the Crib one boy of 15 years of age was shot with a gun. Whereas another boy of 12 years of age was very badly attacked and hurt on the head with a sharp edged sword. Seeing the pitiful condition of this boy when his parents were coming to rescue him, both of them were beaten and hurt with iron bar and by tradition weapons. Seeing this fearful attack, many Christians of the locality and many village customers those who had come from near by villages run for their lives. Taking the advantage and disperse of the helpless people, all the more Mr. Bikram together with his RSS members, Hindu business people and many other Hindu people destroyed the shops of Christian people one after the another. On 24th December, 2007, instead of celebrating the Midnight Mass, most of the Christians with their small children and babies went to the near by forest and had a sleepless night and took shelter on that sever cold dark night. On 25th December, 2007, many people those who took shelter in the forest came to their houses thinking that the atrocity will be stopped. But the atrocity still continued on that day too. At 10 am. around four to five hundred RSS people, Hindu business people of the locality and many other Hindu people those who came from near by Hindu villages marched towards the Christian Street with a slogan “Jai Sri Ram”, Jai Hanuman and they were also shouting and abusing with all kinds of bulgur and threatening words like ‘Magyasala’, ‘Padry Manongku Jalidio, ‘Semango Church ebang Anustano Pudidio, Christian manongu Hatao’, and burnt most of the houses and looted their properties. After having completely destroyed the houses and properties they forcibly entered the Church campus with the guns, petrol, diesel, kerosene, bombs, and many other traditional weapons and broke and burnt the doors, windows, statues, altar, and many other musical instruments, lights and sound, furniture and many other church and religious articles including Bible and completely desecrated the church. Meantime some of them entered the presbytery and burnt the Father’s residence including their two motor bikes, one generator, steel and wooden almirhars and all the documents and furniture and looted several lakhs of properties. After the complete destruction of the church and the presbytery the angry mob went around in search of priests and nuns to harass and burn them alive. Hearing and seeing the destructive behavior of the RSS people, three priests, one deacon, one regent, two brothers, five sisters of Holy Cross Convent, Bamunigam and four domestic workers run to the near by jungle together with many Christian people to save their lives. It is a matter of great sadness that all these atrocities, and destruction was done in the presence of police force. Till today priests, nuns and people are in forests and other near by villages with great fear and anxiety. Though the government has lunched to give relief to the people of both the communities, unfortunately one community of Hindu people are given relief and Christians are neglected. When Christian mothers go to ask for the relief, government relief officials harass them and telling them to bring their husbands. After having experienced the atrocities and harassment from both Hindu community and the government officials, the Christian people continue to live with fear and anxiety. We don’t know how long this atrocity and violence will persist.”
4.1.2 Statement of Sr. Zerina, CSST, eye-witness, Principal, Carmel School, Phulbani:
“The School is situated just about two kilometers away from the Superintendent of Police and Collector’s offices in Phulbani. There are 550 students in our school. The school was started in 1989. There are 98% Hindu students and only 2% Christians in the school. There are 4 Sisters, 4 Christian’s teachers, 13 Hindu teachers 2 Christian staff and one Hindu accountant in the school. Sister Zerina is principal since last two years after completing her M.A. B.A. Bed in 2006. I got news on 23rd December that something would happen and she also leant about the Bandh 25th and 26th December. I wanted to go to Bhopal for a meeting the same evening but one of the shopkeepers told her not to go the next day or at night. The sisters decided not to go to Bhopal for meting. On 24th some local people came and greeted us at 6.30 pm. They also reported that there automobile tyres were being set on fire at Madiguda chowk, just 200 meters away from the school. The same time The Parish priest Fr. Mathew phoned and up said there would be no Holy Mass in the Christ Jyoti parish church. Sr. Zerina also received a phone call from Sr. Christa from Balliguda, saying the problem was escalating. The deputy collector, Shri Arun Parichha, rang up to tell us that there was some problem in Brahminigaon. He said the vehicle of the RSS leader has been attacked and there will be more problem and he has seen the law and order. At about 8 p.m. Sr. Christa from the Convent in Balliguda rang up Sr. Zerina saying the convent of Balliguda had been set on fire. She asked us for our prayers. Te sisters and I panicked. At about 8.30 pm we got the news from Sr. Christa from Balliguda saying they were safe, but feeling suffocated because the premises were filled with smoke. That was the last connection we had with our sisters from Balliguda. On 25th around 9.30 a.m. one Hindu teacher Mr. Sarangdhar came to the school about my travel plans. Fr. Bijya Nayak from Krotamgarh also rang up and warned us of a possible attack on school, convent and parish. We rang up a neighbour, Mr. Paul Raj from Sadhan to ask for help from police. Meanwhile Sr. Christa also rang up and advised as to leave the place taking all the important document. At 11.00 a.m. I went for prayer, there were total of four Sisters, 2 maid servants and 2 girl hostlers who were also with us the convent. At this moment Sr. Rohine shouted “They have come inside.” The mob was shouting “Jay Sriram” and “Kill the Christian”. They all carried swords and other weapons. On seeing the crowd Sr. Rohine and Sr. Hemanti jumped over the convent wall and ran for their lives. One of them sprained her leg in the process. After 15 minutes of the attacked some policemen are came to our school. There has been damage the school, and the school bus.”
4.1.3 Statement of Fr. Laxmikanta Pradhan , Catholic Church Balliguda
“On 24th evening around 7.30 p.m. a huge group of Hindu fundamentalist/ Rahudise with kumkum on their foreheads and carrying lethal weapons like sword, guns, iron rods, axes in their hand rushed to our church abusing the priest and sisters in very filthy language. They broke the main gate and entered the church compound, started breaking all the Christmas decorations, pandal and worship materials. Then they wanted to kill some of the Christian who were busy in preparing the Christmas celebrations. We ran for our life, and took refuge in the jungle. From the hill we could see the flames rising from our Church, residence and hostels. Later we found the church and all the worship materials were burn down. In the residence and hostels also we found that everything was burned down.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A card from Kandhamala, Orissa
A postcard from the Kandhamala, Orissa 10th January 2008
Dear Friends
Thank you very much for your support.
I returned home to New Delhi a couple of hours ago after spending fourteen days in Orissa – six days in two phases in the hills of the Kandhamala district of Orissa in the week of the Christmas 2007 violence against Christians, and unfortunately four days in an Intensive Care Unit of a Bhubaneswar hospital after a diabetic ketoacidosis collapse. I am grateful to Doctor Neeraj Misra of Kar Hospital, and Father Bernard and his brother priests at Bishops House in Bhubaneswar who nursed me back so I could travel home. I had gone to Orissa on 289th morning, after meeting Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and his officers in North Block, New Delhi.
Kandhamala still shivers under a mist laden with a foreboding – that something dark and violent may happen on what is called Makar Sankrati, a pleasant and happy occasion that should mark the beginning of spring, but which, in this part of Orissa, marks the season when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad maverick resident abbot Lokhmananda Saraswati, the man at the root of all trouble, who reserves his most vituperative fulminations against Christians for this occasion. The gentleman is currently in Cuttack-Bhubaneswar but threatens to go back in the next three four days to his forest ashram.
The Orissa Government’s own blanket of darkness over Kandhamala does not help. No one really knows the full plight of the Christians in the refugees’ camp at Barakhama village-town. Relief groups and civil society are still barred from the area, despite repeated pleases by organizations of the stature of CARITAS, EFICOR and the like, and personal appeals by Archbishop Raphael Cheenath.
There has been an unreported death – the death of civil society in Orissa. There is no Digant Oza, no Teesta Setalvad, and Javed Anand, no Harsh Mander and Harsh Sethi, no Shamsul Islam-Neelima Sharma and their street theatre Nishant, no ANHAD and SAHMAT equivalents in Orissa, and the above name too are yet to come to the State and to the national Press. In their absence, mischief and white lies have a field day. Television News anchors quote Lokhmananda and speak of debates on conversion. Not one paper calls for relief and assistance and legal aid.
I intend to go back to Orissa after about a week or so after regaining health and writing out the White Paper. I released the preliminary report in Bhubaneswar, just before I took ill.
The following needs to be urgently done in Kandhamala, other than the work of relief and rehabilitation.
Re-building civil society. We need to, and I hope to be able to, organize at least four national seminars – one each in Calcutta and Hyderabad, which have had an organic relationship with Orissa in the past, and one each in Delhi and Mumbai to focus attention on the growth of fascism in hidden parts of India and how to meet the challenge as collective civil society, and not as a response only from the victim communities.
Organizing legal assistance: This has to be on a par with the organized legal assistance that helped put the trauma of the Gujarat victims in the lap of the legal system. This has to be multi tiered. We need par algal activist to help villagers file FIRs for their burnt houses and shops and their displaced families. We need legal assistance to trace out culprits. We need legal assistance to defend innocents that are being trapped by the police in the guise of `parity’ between communities. We need this before evidence is lost or false `evidence’ manufactured by a governance system that has totally sold itself out to its Coalition Dharma with the Bharatiya Janata Party. And we need to investigate issues of impunity in the matter of the mysterious police firing in Braminigaon.
We need to tell Civil Society in India and abroad that the attack on Christians in Orissa is at par with the repeated mauling of Muslims in Gujarat and other states, and an integral part of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology.
I hope to be able to analyze some of threes issues in larger essays soon.
I am sorry to record that till the film maker Mahesh Bhatt came to Bhubaneswar and addressed a press conference with Maharashtra Minorities Commission vice chairman Abraham Mathai to denounce the Sangh Parivar and warn of its designs, no other worthy had dared do so.
And till All India Christian Council president Dr Joseph D Souza and New Methodist Bishop Joab Lohara shared the stage with Dalit leader Udit Raj, there had been no visible protest of any magnitude in the capital of Orissa.
I regret that Union Home Minister Patil did not visit more places even more than I regret that the National Minorities Commission did not visit any place other than the town of Phulbani.
In a way, I thank the handsome and smug Inspector General of Police Kapoor, who had me escorted out of Phulbani on 29-30 December 2007 and the sarcastic Divisional commissioner, the subdivision police office and the circle inspect tor of Braminigaon whose language and behaviour, in a flash, made me understand that the apparatus of governance stood firmly on the side of a particular ideology.
I wish to close with my thanks, and those of my family, once again to the Catholic Fathers of Orissa, in particular Fr Bernard, Fr Nicholas Barla, Fr Mrtiyunjay and Fr Madan, Rev Pran Patrichha, Dr Anna and the MC Sisters for their love and care.
I salute the brave Nuns, Pastors and Priests of the Kandhamala, tribal, Dalit and always rooted in the soil of their mother hills.
And I wish to salute Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, SVD, who defies his 73 years, to provide Orissa the sort of leadership the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic provided us all in 1998 and later.
Happy New Year
John Dayal
New Delhi
Dear Friends
Thank you very much for your support.
I returned home to New Delhi a couple of hours ago after spending fourteen days in Orissa – six days in two phases in the hills of the Kandhamala district of Orissa in the week of the Christmas 2007 violence against Christians, and unfortunately four days in an Intensive Care Unit of a Bhubaneswar hospital after a diabetic ketoacidosis collapse. I am grateful to Doctor Neeraj Misra of Kar Hospital, and Father Bernard and his brother priests at Bishops House in Bhubaneswar who nursed me back so I could travel home. I had gone to Orissa on 289th morning, after meeting Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and his officers in North Block, New Delhi.
Kandhamala still shivers under a mist laden with a foreboding – that something dark and violent may happen on what is called Makar Sankrati, a pleasant and happy occasion that should mark the beginning of spring, but which, in this part of Orissa, marks the season when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad maverick resident abbot Lokhmananda Saraswati, the man at the root of all trouble, who reserves his most vituperative fulminations against Christians for this occasion. The gentleman is currently in Cuttack-Bhubaneswar but threatens to go back in the next three four days to his forest ashram.
The Orissa Government’s own blanket of darkness over Kandhamala does not help. No one really knows the full plight of the Christians in the refugees’ camp at Barakhama village-town. Relief groups and civil society are still barred from the area, despite repeated pleases by organizations of the stature of CARITAS, EFICOR and the like, and personal appeals by Archbishop Raphael Cheenath.
There has been an unreported death – the death of civil society in Orissa. There is no Digant Oza, no Teesta Setalvad, and Javed Anand, no Harsh Mander and Harsh Sethi, no Shamsul Islam-Neelima Sharma and their street theatre Nishant, no ANHAD and SAHMAT equivalents in Orissa, and the above name too are yet to come to the State and to the national Press. In their absence, mischief and white lies have a field day. Television News anchors quote Lokhmananda and speak of debates on conversion. Not one paper calls for relief and assistance and legal aid.
I intend to go back to Orissa after about a week or so after regaining health and writing out the White Paper. I released the preliminary report in Bhubaneswar, just before I took ill.
The following needs to be urgently done in Kandhamala, other than the work of relief and rehabilitation.
Re-building civil society. We need to, and I hope to be able to, organize at least four national seminars – one each in Calcutta and Hyderabad, which have had an organic relationship with Orissa in the past, and one each in Delhi and Mumbai to focus attention on the growth of fascism in hidden parts of India and how to meet the challenge as collective civil society, and not as a response only from the victim communities.
Organizing legal assistance: This has to be on a par with the organized legal assistance that helped put the trauma of the Gujarat victims in the lap of the legal system. This has to be multi tiered. We need par algal activist to help villagers file FIRs for their burnt houses and shops and their displaced families. We need legal assistance to trace out culprits. We need legal assistance to defend innocents that are being trapped by the police in the guise of `parity’ between communities. We need this before evidence is lost or false `evidence’ manufactured by a governance system that has totally sold itself out to its Coalition Dharma with the Bharatiya Janata Party. And we need to investigate issues of impunity in the matter of the mysterious police firing in Braminigaon.
We need to tell Civil Society in India and abroad that the attack on Christians in Orissa is at par with the repeated mauling of Muslims in Gujarat and other states, and an integral part of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology.
I hope to be able to analyze some of threes issues in larger essays soon.
I am sorry to record that till the film maker Mahesh Bhatt came to Bhubaneswar and addressed a press conference with Maharashtra Minorities Commission vice chairman Abraham Mathai to denounce the Sangh Parivar and warn of its designs, no other worthy had dared do so.
And till All India Christian Council president Dr Joseph D Souza and New Methodist Bishop Joab Lohara shared the stage with Dalit leader Udit Raj, there had been no visible protest of any magnitude in the capital of Orissa.
I regret that Union Home Minister Patil did not visit more places even more than I regret that the National Minorities Commission did not visit any place other than the town of Phulbani.
In a way, I thank the handsome and smug Inspector General of Police Kapoor, who had me escorted out of Phulbani on 29-30 December 2007 and the sarcastic Divisional commissioner, the subdivision police office and the circle inspect tor of Braminigaon whose language and behaviour, in a flash, made me understand that the apparatus of governance stood firmly on the side of a particular ideology.
I wish to close with my thanks, and those of my family, once again to the Catholic Fathers of Orissa, in particular Fr Bernard, Fr Nicholas Barla, Fr Mrtiyunjay and Fr Madan, Rev Pran Patrichha, Dr Anna and the MC Sisters for their love and care.
I salute the brave Nuns, Pastors and Priests of the Kandhamala, tribal, Dalit and always rooted in the soil of their mother hills.
And I wish to salute Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, SVD, who defies his 73 years, to provide Orissa the sort of leadership the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic provided us all in 1998 and later.
Happy New Year
John Dayal
New Delhi
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
ISSUES BEFORE THE COMMUNITY
Dr. John Dayal’s speech at 2 December 2007 meeting of the CATHOLIC COUNCIL OF INDIA at Ranchi, Jharkhand
Puny they may seem in the face of the overwhelming and flagrant violation of Human right in India, but issues of Persecution, anti Conversion Laws and full Constitutional Rights for Dalit Christians remain critical for the Church and the Community as erosion of Constitutional Guarantees
A million human beings were reportedly butchered in the Partition riots of 1947, almost an equal number of Hindus and Muslims. No one kept a count. There was no effort at determining the truth, and feeble efforts at reconciliation. That was then. More accurate counts have been kept since then. Over 3,500 Sikhs were killed, most of them torched alive, in 2004. Over 1,000 Muslims died in Ahmedabad in the early seventies and over 2,000 more in Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat 2002. Mr. L K Advani’s Rath Yatra and it inevitable finale of Bari demolition, the Mumbai blasts which followed and the Mumbai riots thereafter in 1992-93 remain as known for their intensity as for the fact, like other acts of hate, the perpetrators remain unpunished. As they indeed also remain unpunished in cases of violence against Dalits, the situation only theoretically better than it must have been in the Dark ages.
The State, which should mean means the Government and Civil society, also remains culpable, by what it has done and what it has failed to do. We cannot even begin talking of recent revelations of the scale of suicide by farmers in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh, every death that could have been avoided by State intervention in the processes of agricultural loans. There has never been a discussion of any strength in Parliament on matters of Military and Police impunity in the killings in Kashmir, the North East, and the Punjab. Fake encounters, mysterious disappearances of activists, custodial deaths.
I participated in a recent exercise to prepare the Civil Society document on India’s Human Rights situation to be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Council, which will report directly to the UN General Assembly, recently replaced the old and tooth-less UN Human Rights Commission. India is in the first batch of country’s whose records will be examined by fellow UN members in what is called a Universal Periodic Review to be held in April 2007. Indian will come up for review again in 2012.
The Civil Society report to the UPR meeting makes a depressing document. Gender, labour, Tribals, Religious minorities, displacement, Impunity – you name the issue and India has much of which it needs to be ashamed. Marginalised people have not been given the protection they deserve. The State and its brutal agencies have gone scot free, not just in Gujarat and Nandigram-SEZ, Kashmir and Nagaland, Punjab and Orissa.
India’s 10 per cent growth is not reflected on the ground. The growth of its middle class apparently has been at the cost of the hidden multitudes below the poverty line. The ideological inclinations of parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political label of the hyper nationalist Hindutva group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which ruled the nation for six years and continues to rule a third of the country’s states, in fact, have taken state impunity and hostility to new depths.
I leave it to the Church to introspect and realize if they have stood up to be counted in the struggle for human dignity and Constitutional rights, or if they have been satisfied with whatever development efforts they have contributed to in FCRA-assisted programmes. Articulation and empowerment remain matters on which the Church can be interrogated. This begins with the empowerment of the Catholic Laity in the three Catholic Churches, conscientising them to act as individuals and as a community.
We could begin with home, so to speak, in raising the bar to protest the denial of human rights on three issues that remain contemporary.
The first is the matter of Rights for Dalit Christians.
The second is the proliferation of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills in both BJP and Congress rules states.
The third is the matter of economic and development deprivation of Christians, especially rural landless, tribals without ST rights, and Dalits.
THE DALIT CHRISTIAN ISSUE:
The established Church and its hierarchy and institutions are not direct participants in the legal, or court, struggle of the Dalit Christians, though the Church is an active litigant in protecting Article 30 Minority rights of Schools and colleges, particularly in the management of the high-end sector. The Dalit Christian matter is in the Supreme Court because of the action of a Civil Society group, called the Public Interest Litigation Centre which was set up by the Janata party [1977-79] Government’s Union Law minister Shanti Bhushan and his son, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan who have challenged the 1950 presidential order which reduced affirmative action programmes for the former untouchable castes to only those who wanted to remain in the Hindu faith. The PIL by the Bhushans has subsequently been supported by similar PILs by individuals and various groups. Not surprisingly, the RSS and its activists have also filed PILs in the court. The CBCI and its SC-ST-BC Commission has been in the forefront, however, of mobilizing mass support in collaboration with other Church groups. Small but persistent demonstrations have been held in New Delhi, larger ones in Tamil Nadu and Andhra, and petitions have been taken to the Prime Minister, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and various chief ministers. The delegations are often led by Bishops, I am happy to note. I must also put on record, here, the pioneering role of the All India Catholic Union in this struggle, a role AICU continues to play.
But Church unity on the Dalit Christian issue still remains a matter of doubt. It does seem often that Dalit Christians have been left to their own devices, and that it is a matter of concern only to a section of the Latin Church, specially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Punjab. Congregations of the so called Indian National Churches, and the leaders and congregations of the tribal groups from the North east and Central India, and the middle class groups along the East and West coasts seem not to relate to this matter As much as they would relate to an assault on their Article 30 rights.
For their own reasons, many of which relate to the conditions of their funding and some to their ideological or religious biases, the so called Secular Dalit movements have distanced themselves from the struggle of Dalit Christians. Dalit Christians were not allowed a voice even in the UN Conference in Durban in the beginning of this Century, and major Dalit movements, national and international, Hindu, Neo-Buddhist or even Church-led, do not focus as much on Freedom of Faith as a Dalit right and Dalit Christians as a part of the crisis on which they are focusing.
I am not saying that the lack of universal Christian unity on the Dalit issue is singularly responsible for the delay in persuading the Government to amend the law, as it did to benefit Sikh and Buddhist communities. But a more united Christian community and more concerted effort would have been useful. We need to answer a simple question – Even when the Archbishop of Delhi personally calls upon the clergy and congregation to come to a rally, only a handful do so, and very few of them are priests. In the Nineteen Nineties, the Church could bring a lakh of people to Delhi from Punjab and other areas. Even today, in Madurai or Trichi or Hyderabad, it is possible for Church to mobilise lakhs. Nowhere else -- for this cause, though lakhs can still collect for pious or other political and commercial matters. I deeply regret that controversies and dissensions, tension and an acrid environment created in the wake of the Rites issue in various parts of North India including Delhi, has not helped the Dalit Christian campaign.
[For the record, I must say that the rally organised by the CBCI and National Council of churches in New Delhi on 29th November 2007 did see about 10 Catholic Bishops and an equal number of protestant Hierarchy, about 200 priests and nuns and another 200 activists from Tamil Nadu and other states staged a three hour protest in New Delhi. As current president of the All India Catholic Union, which has always played an active role in the Dalit struggle, was not taken to a part of the organisation of the rally. If it is just to be church leaders, then the pitch will have to be higher, for Bishops cannot create large numbers. People in Parliament and government have often told me that if a single Dalit Christian Member of Parliament and some church leaders were to go on an indefinite hunger strike near the Gandhi statue in Parliament house, the matter would be settled in short order. It is not that Christian members of Parliament have not agitated in front of the rally. Women MPs have done so for gender rights. And several men MPs have been enthusiastic participants in sit-in protests for coconut and rubber prices. These are of course important and concern large number of plantation workers and workers, but so is the Dalit Christian issue, and it has no takers beyond lip service.]
The tortuous course of the Dalit Christian struggle has exposed political parties and Government even more. They support the cause when they are not in power. Even current chief ministers such as those of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, who have supported the cause, do not say it with the same vigour as they do other local matters when negotiating with the Central Government which depends on them for its survival.
The Congress Government in New Delhi has failed to give any cheer to the disempowered community. The BJP could perhaps have been excused for not helping us. It says rights to Dalit Christians will lead to an exodus from Hinduism, and by supporting the existing rule, it is preventing mass conversions. That is the plea its leaders have taken in the Supreme Court. Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda, even before his alliance with the BJP in Karnataka, and Inder Kumar Gujral, long before he sought BJP support in Punjab, perhaps did not have the ideological or political will to act.
But surely the Congress has the numbers and the stability. Its allies, the Marxists and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, have written their support in letters to the Prime Minister. Even Miss Mayawati has written such a letter. What then is the explanation or the hidden reason for this pathetic lack of political will? I understand that the Congress, despite its pretensions of inner party unity and ideological commitment, has not been able to prevent a large chuck of the Hindu leadership of the party, especially of the Dalit segment, from being swayed by the Hindutva argument. They have made it into a Hindu Dalit Versus Christian Dalit confrontation. These leaders argue that Christian Dalits, because their marginally better standards of education, will take away the benefits given to scheduled castes. They say their cake of jobs and vacancies in professional colleges is too small and they cannot share it with Dalit Christians.
They of course make the mistake, perhaps deliberately, of confusing Dalit rights with just Government jobs. Dalit rights are for dignity, for political empowerment, for self employment and for participation in Panchayati raj. Here the cake is very large. Everyone can share. The Congress party and the United Progressive Front Government which it heads has so far made mo effort ton educate its cadres and MPs etc. Instead, it has left advocacy with MPs to members of the Church. The Church, really speaking, is in no way outfitted or trained to lobby with politicians. If it could have done, it would have done right in 1950, and this crisis would not have happened in the front place. Nor, for that matter, would it have come into conflict with the Marxist Governments in Kerala, for instance. Politics is not Church business!
The Government continues in its refusal to act. When it comes to speaking in the Supreme Court, high Government lawyers waffle, and pass the buck. First the Government passed the buck to the National Commission under former Chief Justice Rangnath Mishra Commission which was looking at the development issues of religious and linguistic minorities.
The Mishra Commission long completed its report [though its surveys were loaded in favour of the Hindutva argument]. Its full report is not published, but it has published the recommendations in favour of giving Dalit Christians, and Dalit Muslims. The Commission has since then been wound up, and its full documentation, which we all contributed rare documents, is now lying in some Government godown.
Since the Union Government had been telling the Supreme Court that it was waiting for Justice Misra to submit his report, it should rightfully immediately given the court its decision – speaking out whether it was accepting the report, the best course, or rejecting it, the worst case scenario from the Christian point of view. It did neither. Using an obscure provision in the revised National Commission for Scheduled Castes [which is a statutory Commission] the Government said it was mandatory for it to refer the matter to the SC Commission now headed by former Union Home minister, and late Bihar governor, Dr Buta Singh. The Government has still not said it will respect the recommendations of its own Commissions. It merely refers the matter to them. It forgot that even when the pro-Hindutva PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, and Mr. Sitaram Kesri the Welfare Minister, they introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha to grant Dalit Christian their well deserved rights. The cabinet had agreed. That the Bill was not taken up because the Lok Sabah was dissolved, is another matter altogether.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes has a terrible record. Under past Congress and BJP chairpersons and members, the Commission has taken a very Hindu attitude to most matters. It has not been true even to its charter relating to Dalits of the Hindu faith. The last few chairmen have been very hostile to the Christian cause and have publicly announced their rejection of the rights.
Dr Buta Singh is a Dalit himself, of course, but as a Dalit from Punjab, he has lived in close proximity with Christians, and even has a few Christians in his near and extended family. In my meetings with him, he has assured me he is very sympathetic to the Dalit Christian cause and his report will be very positive. But he has also made it clear that rights for Dalit Christians will be available only once the Government changes the rules and gives additional quotas for Muslims and Christians in the SC list. This reservation now stands at 15 per cent. Unless the Supreme Court Okays it and the Government shows the political will, there is no Constitutional method through which the additional 2 per cent or so reservation for Christians and maybe more then 7 per cent additional quota for Dalit Muslims can be created. This affectively means another stalling for many more years, and for us, a grim future of continued struggle.
The matter came up once again before the Supreme Court on 28 November 2007, and as predicted, Government once again sought two months time before it came up with the response. Senior counsel and former Law Minister, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, questioned the government as to what was stopping it from hurrying up with its report. And an annoyed Chief Justice of India, Mr. Justice Balakrishnan, told the government’s additional Solicitor General Mr. Gopal Subramaniam that he would have to hurry up and tell the court in four weeks time.
But even if the Government were to tell the Supreme Court that it has decided to give the quota, there are only two ways it can become a reality. The Government has to issue a Presidential proclamation by way of an Ordinance adding the word Christians in the law where it covers Hindus, Buddhist, and Sikhs. The second option is all but mandated. We will have to continue with proceedings in the Supreme Court. Senior advocates tell me that even if the Supreme Court admits the Writ Petitions, the actual hearings and legal calisthenics may take months, if not years. National and international advocacy will also have to continue, as also mass mobilisation in the national capital, state, and district headquarters and everywhere elsewhere possible.
The matter of course is also before God. Everything is possible when the Holy Spirit moves. Together with advocacy in Government and with political parties and their leaders, we also must continue united with prayers and supplications before God. Perhaps this will also unite the community for larger gains in the future.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BILLS AND THE POLITICS OF HATE AND MAJORITY APPEASEMENT
The second issue, of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills, also speaks of political perfidy, lack of political will among those who rule us, and an assertion that though the Constitution may speak of a Secular state with equal distance from, and equal respect for, all religions, in actual fact Hinduism is the default religion of India, and the State and Government follow it with diligence and enthusiasm. I am not referring to the obvious heavy public exchequer financing of religious festivals, the media abuse in favour of one religion and so on. I speak of issues of Constitution.
As we all know, despite the caution of the first, and best, Prime Minister, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Madhya Pradesh Chief minister, Pandit Ravi Shankar set up the notorious Niyogi committee to investigate Christian work in his then undivided state. Ravi Shankar and Niyogi where both pathologically hostile to Christianity. Their target was the Catholic Church, working among tribals who they and their group had been exploiting for decades. The All India Catholic Union’s associations in the state, really active Catholic Associations gave extensive documentation. As did the Church. But the report was a forgone conclusion. Acting on it Madhya Pradesh passed the Religious Freedom Act affectively banning all conversions, and as effectively coercing the Tribals to espouse the Hindu faith, a practice the Sangh Parivar codified in its criminal Ghar Wapsi programme. Ravi Shankar was a Congressman. Later SVD and other Governments in various states followed suit. In short order, Orissa and Arunachal joined the fray; Arunachal after a violent suppression of whatever Christianity then existed in that remote state. Since then Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal have passed the law. Tamil Nadu passed the law, but the chief minister, Jayalalitha who had first bowed to her Hindutva allies, leant her lesson and quickly rescinded the ugly act.
The shenanigans in Himachal Pradesh are the ones I find the most obnoxious, and the most inexplicable.
When the Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly had become the latest State to pass such an Act, I was among those who approached the noted Constitutional lawyer Dr Rajeev Dhawan to study the Constitutional validity of such legislation. You would recall that many decades ago, Rev Fr Stanislaus had challenged these laws in the court, as also others who moved the courts on the Orissa laws. The Supreme Court in a strange decision, upheld both the Christian faith’s right to profess and propagate the faith, but said they did not have the right to convert. The absurdity inherent in, and the contradictions between, various court pronouncements on religious faith as a fundamental right has been subject of much debate, but no one has yet gone to court to challenge the Stanislaus judgement in its entirety and in a coherent holistic manner.
Dr Rajeev Dhawan, senior advocate Indira Jaisingh and even the Solicitor General of India, in his own legal opinion to a State Governor, have held that this law is ultra vires of the Constitution for a long list of reasons.
The then Governor of Rajasthan, and today President of India, Advocate Pratibha Patil, agreed with the logic of our protest, and withheld her consent to the Bill, sending it to the then President Dr Abul Kalam in New Delhi. He too withheld his signature. In Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jhakkar has also refused to sign certain amendments to the Act into law.
When this was taking place, I wrote to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party. President. She replied in a signed letter. She said she and her party were against any restrictions to freedom of expression and faith, a and they would stand against it both inside legislatures and outside, if required.
And yet, the Congress Chief Minister of Himachal, Vir Bhadra Singh, one of an anachronistic group of princelings, who is facing a serious Hindutva challenge in the State Legislative Assembly elections, brought such a law into being, and the State Governor promptly signed it into law. Singh told media he was trying to prevent threat to local religion and culture. No one asked him just how many Christians there were in the state – barely measurable in census operations – and how many fraudulent conversions – none in reality.
I went to the National Commission of Minorities, headed then by the scholar-diplomat, Mr. Ansari, now Vice President of the Indian republic. Mr. Ansari, former ambassador to West Asia and a former vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University wrote to many states to find out how many fraudulent conversions to Christianity and taken place to merit such laws. The reply he got was startling to him, but not to me. Every state that responded had to admit there were no cases of forcible and fraudulent conversions to Christianity or Islam.
There have been large scale conversions to Buddhism, and people join the Sikh Panth in Punjab and Delhi almost on a daily basis. But the law never takes notice because for some peculiar reason never fully explained the official system agrees with the Sangh Parivar that these are not individual religions but parts of Hinduism. In effect, the Indian legal system, denies these religions, which they call Indic religions the right to an independent identity.
But I digress.
I, the All India Christian Council and the Christian Legal Association are challenging the Himachal law in the Shimla High Court. The preliminary work has been done. An application ahs also been filed under the Right to Information to force the Government to disclose just how many Christians exist in the state, and what provoked it to go in for such a barbaric law.
And the law is really barbaric. As we all know, these laws are directed only against Christianity, and to a lesser extent, against Islam. Even if the police do not arrest Priest and pastors, the existence of the law on the Statute books, encourages widespread and well organised hate campaigns, and criminalization of genuine religious activity. They also mislead even senior police officers to believe they can move against religious personnel of the Christian Church and even against the laity. The acts create a tinder box situation which leads eventually to widespread persecution of Christians on the one hand and a coercion of Dalits, Tribals and marginalised who are terrorized by provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act to remain silent in the face of great exploitation.
For the record, the salient parts of the Himachal Religious Freedom Act are:
1) A person intending to convert from one religion to another shall give prior notice of at least thirty days to the District Magistrate of the district concerned of his intention to do so and the District Magistrate shall get the matter enquired into all by such agency as he may deem fit: Provided that no notice shall be required if a person reverts back to his original religion.
(2) Any person who fails to give prior notice, as required under sub-section (1) shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees.
Section 5. Punishment for contravention of the provision of section 3 : Any person contravening the provisions contained in section 3 shall, without prejudice to any civil liability, be punishable with imprisonment of either description which may extend to two years or with fine may extend to twenty five thousand rupees or with both: Provided that in case the offence is committed in respect of a minor, a woman or a person belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribes, the punishment of imprisonment may extend to three years and fine may extend to fifty thousand rupees.
Section 6. Offence to be cognizable: An offence under this Act shall be cognizable and shall not be investigated by an officer below the rank of an Inspector of Police.”
It is obvious that the district civil and police authorities are now arbiters of fundamental rights, including freedom of faith!!
Many in the Catholic Church believe that the law will not impact on them, and that radical Church groups have brought it upon themselves because their wild ways in evangelization. There maybe a problem of ultra evangelical groups failing to evolve an appropriate vocabulary to articulate the teachings of Christ, bur the law eventually is directed against social work and social action, the empowerment programme of the Church in which the Catholic Church is the ;leader. This patently calls for a wide spectrum unity among Church groups. People from Madhya Pradesh have told Open Court hearings organised by human rights groups that in the Jhabua region for instance, it has now become difficult for pastors, nuns and clergy to even move about after sunset, reducing the faith to a “Daylight” reality.
The last major issue that radically impacts on the everyday life and the very future of the Christians is the delay in economic empowerment of the large number of tribals, Dalits, and landless peasants who constitute the bulk of this minority community in most of the states. Most Tribals working outside the state of their birth do not get Scheduled status and therefore do not have any educational and employment privileges. For the same reason, they are also denied benefits under the area plans and the special component plans under the Five Year plan system. The Christians among them also lose out on traditional sharing of forest produce and cultivation. The vast landless peasantry and Dalits of Andhra ands Tamil Nadu seem to be entirely outside the development pail if they do not live in metropolitan cities and Stare capitals.
The Justice Mishra Commission, now dissolved, had to speak on this issue when it was also saddles with the matter of determining the legitimacy of the demand of Dalit Christians and Muslims to Scheduled status. No details have been made public of the main report of the Mishra Commission.
The Government has systematically refused many requests from representative organisations, including the Catholic Union that the economic and development matters of the community should also be enumerate so that Government aid is properly channeled to such micro communities instead of being focussed only on the numerically largest of the minorities.
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up a high powered committee under former Delhi Chief Justice Rajinder Sachchar to define Muslim development parameters. I wrote to him and others that Christian could also fruitfully be studied for their needs by the same committee. The Government refused. It also ahs not bothered to set up a panel just for Christians.
The result is that after Sachchar committee gave its report, the Government has announced a slew of development measures and special emphasis on thud Muslim community. But these measures do not focus on Christians at all. Also, when it comes to discussions, the Government even denies there are marginalised sections in the Christian community, and farcically enough, cites the fact that there are no reports and studies to prove the Christian need for special development efforts. It does not see the viciousness of the argument – there is no study, therefore no data, on Christian deprivation, and since there is no data there can be no relief, and because the Christians are apparently not deprived, there is no need for a fact finding committee!
For the sake of every hotel waiter who can never dream to own a hotel, every mechanic who will never own even a small tin-shed garage, every ayah and tribal maid working as a hugely exploited domestic servant, and every starving landless peasant, it is time for all of us to unitedly raise our voice.
In face, new islands of underdevelopment are being created. A development wedge is being driven between Christians and the minorities which are either developed already, or will receive the bounty of the Government. Such a mutually suspicious minority conglomeration can hardly be expected to unitedly fight the force of majoritarianism in the country.
The threat, therefore, is the democratic state and the republican way of life in India.
It is time we acted.
The hierarchy and clergy of the established Church must join this struggle.
Before it is too late.
Puny they may seem in the face of the overwhelming and flagrant violation of Human right in India, but issues of Persecution, anti Conversion Laws and full Constitutional Rights for Dalit Christians remain critical for the Church and the Community as erosion of Constitutional Guarantees
A million human beings were reportedly butchered in the Partition riots of 1947, almost an equal number of Hindus and Muslims. No one kept a count. There was no effort at determining the truth, and feeble efforts at reconciliation. That was then. More accurate counts have been kept since then. Over 3,500 Sikhs were killed, most of them torched alive, in 2004. Over 1,000 Muslims died in Ahmedabad in the early seventies and over 2,000 more in Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat 2002. Mr. L K Advani’s Rath Yatra and it inevitable finale of Bari demolition, the Mumbai blasts which followed and the Mumbai riots thereafter in 1992-93 remain as known for their intensity as for the fact, like other acts of hate, the perpetrators remain unpunished. As they indeed also remain unpunished in cases of violence against Dalits, the situation only theoretically better than it must have been in the Dark ages.
The State, which should mean means the Government and Civil society, also remains culpable, by what it has done and what it has failed to do. We cannot even begin talking of recent revelations of the scale of suicide by farmers in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh, every death that could have been avoided by State intervention in the processes of agricultural loans. There has never been a discussion of any strength in Parliament on matters of Military and Police impunity in the killings in Kashmir, the North East, and the Punjab. Fake encounters, mysterious disappearances of activists, custodial deaths.
I participated in a recent exercise to prepare the Civil Society document on India’s Human Rights situation to be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Council, which will report directly to the UN General Assembly, recently replaced the old and tooth-less UN Human Rights Commission. India is in the first batch of country’s whose records will be examined by fellow UN members in what is called a Universal Periodic Review to be held in April 2007. Indian will come up for review again in 2012.
The Civil Society report to the UPR meeting makes a depressing document. Gender, labour, Tribals, Religious minorities, displacement, Impunity – you name the issue and India has much of which it needs to be ashamed. Marginalised people have not been given the protection they deserve. The State and its brutal agencies have gone scot free, not just in Gujarat and Nandigram-SEZ, Kashmir and Nagaland, Punjab and Orissa.
India’s 10 per cent growth is not reflected on the ground. The growth of its middle class apparently has been at the cost of the hidden multitudes below the poverty line. The ideological inclinations of parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political label of the hyper nationalist Hindutva group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which ruled the nation for six years and continues to rule a third of the country’s states, in fact, have taken state impunity and hostility to new depths.
I leave it to the Church to introspect and realize if they have stood up to be counted in the struggle for human dignity and Constitutional rights, or if they have been satisfied with whatever development efforts they have contributed to in FCRA-assisted programmes. Articulation and empowerment remain matters on which the Church can be interrogated. This begins with the empowerment of the Catholic Laity in the three Catholic Churches, conscientising them to act as individuals and as a community.
We could begin with home, so to speak, in raising the bar to protest the denial of human rights on three issues that remain contemporary.
The first is the matter of Rights for Dalit Christians.
The second is the proliferation of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills in both BJP and Congress rules states.
The third is the matter of economic and development deprivation of Christians, especially rural landless, tribals without ST rights, and Dalits.
THE DALIT CHRISTIAN ISSUE:
The established Church and its hierarchy and institutions are not direct participants in the legal, or court, struggle of the Dalit Christians, though the Church is an active litigant in protecting Article 30 Minority rights of Schools and colleges, particularly in the management of the high-end sector. The Dalit Christian matter is in the Supreme Court because of the action of a Civil Society group, called the Public Interest Litigation Centre which was set up by the Janata party [1977-79] Government’s Union Law minister Shanti Bhushan and his son, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan who have challenged the 1950 presidential order which reduced affirmative action programmes for the former untouchable castes to only those who wanted to remain in the Hindu faith. The PIL by the Bhushans has subsequently been supported by similar PILs by individuals and various groups. Not surprisingly, the RSS and its activists have also filed PILs in the court. The CBCI and its SC-ST-BC Commission has been in the forefront, however, of mobilizing mass support in collaboration with other Church groups. Small but persistent demonstrations have been held in New Delhi, larger ones in Tamil Nadu and Andhra, and petitions have been taken to the Prime Minister, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and various chief ministers. The delegations are often led by Bishops, I am happy to note. I must also put on record, here, the pioneering role of the All India Catholic Union in this struggle, a role AICU continues to play.
But Church unity on the Dalit Christian issue still remains a matter of doubt. It does seem often that Dalit Christians have been left to their own devices, and that it is a matter of concern only to a section of the Latin Church, specially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Punjab. Congregations of the so called Indian National Churches, and the leaders and congregations of the tribal groups from the North east and Central India, and the middle class groups along the East and West coasts seem not to relate to this matter As much as they would relate to an assault on their Article 30 rights.
For their own reasons, many of which relate to the conditions of their funding and some to their ideological or religious biases, the so called Secular Dalit movements have distanced themselves from the struggle of Dalit Christians. Dalit Christians were not allowed a voice even in the UN Conference in Durban in the beginning of this Century, and major Dalit movements, national and international, Hindu, Neo-Buddhist or even Church-led, do not focus as much on Freedom of Faith as a Dalit right and Dalit Christians as a part of the crisis on which they are focusing.
I am not saying that the lack of universal Christian unity on the Dalit issue is singularly responsible for the delay in persuading the Government to amend the law, as it did to benefit Sikh and Buddhist communities. But a more united Christian community and more concerted effort would have been useful. We need to answer a simple question – Even when the Archbishop of Delhi personally calls upon the clergy and congregation to come to a rally, only a handful do so, and very few of them are priests. In the Nineteen Nineties, the Church could bring a lakh of people to Delhi from Punjab and other areas. Even today, in Madurai or Trichi or Hyderabad, it is possible for Church to mobilise lakhs. Nowhere else -- for this cause, though lakhs can still collect for pious or other political and commercial matters. I deeply regret that controversies and dissensions, tension and an acrid environment created in the wake of the Rites issue in various parts of North India including Delhi, has not helped the Dalit Christian campaign.
[For the record, I must say that the rally organised by the CBCI and National Council of churches in New Delhi on 29th November 2007 did see about 10 Catholic Bishops and an equal number of protestant Hierarchy, about 200 priests and nuns and another 200 activists from Tamil Nadu and other states staged a three hour protest in New Delhi. As current president of the All India Catholic Union, which has always played an active role in the Dalit struggle, was not taken to a part of the organisation of the rally. If it is just to be church leaders, then the pitch will have to be higher, for Bishops cannot create large numbers. People in Parliament and government have often told me that if a single Dalit Christian Member of Parliament and some church leaders were to go on an indefinite hunger strike near the Gandhi statue in Parliament house, the matter would be settled in short order. It is not that Christian members of Parliament have not agitated in front of the rally. Women MPs have done so for gender rights. And several men MPs have been enthusiastic participants in sit-in protests for coconut and rubber prices. These are of course important and concern large number of plantation workers and workers, but so is the Dalit Christian issue, and it has no takers beyond lip service.]
The tortuous course of the Dalit Christian struggle has exposed political parties and Government even more. They support the cause when they are not in power. Even current chief ministers such as those of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, who have supported the cause, do not say it with the same vigour as they do other local matters when negotiating with the Central Government which depends on them for its survival.
The Congress Government in New Delhi has failed to give any cheer to the disempowered community. The BJP could perhaps have been excused for not helping us. It says rights to Dalit Christians will lead to an exodus from Hinduism, and by supporting the existing rule, it is preventing mass conversions. That is the plea its leaders have taken in the Supreme Court. Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda, even before his alliance with the BJP in Karnataka, and Inder Kumar Gujral, long before he sought BJP support in Punjab, perhaps did not have the ideological or political will to act.
But surely the Congress has the numbers and the stability. Its allies, the Marxists and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, have written their support in letters to the Prime Minister. Even Miss Mayawati has written such a letter. What then is the explanation or the hidden reason for this pathetic lack of political will? I understand that the Congress, despite its pretensions of inner party unity and ideological commitment, has not been able to prevent a large chuck of the Hindu leadership of the party, especially of the Dalit segment, from being swayed by the Hindutva argument. They have made it into a Hindu Dalit Versus Christian Dalit confrontation. These leaders argue that Christian Dalits, because their marginally better standards of education, will take away the benefits given to scheduled castes. They say their cake of jobs and vacancies in professional colleges is too small and they cannot share it with Dalit Christians.
They of course make the mistake, perhaps deliberately, of confusing Dalit rights with just Government jobs. Dalit rights are for dignity, for political empowerment, for self employment and for participation in Panchayati raj. Here the cake is very large. Everyone can share. The Congress party and the United Progressive Front Government which it heads has so far made mo effort ton educate its cadres and MPs etc. Instead, it has left advocacy with MPs to members of the Church. The Church, really speaking, is in no way outfitted or trained to lobby with politicians. If it could have done, it would have done right in 1950, and this crisis would not have happened in the front place. Nor, for that matter, would it have come into conflict with the Marxist Governments in Kerala, for instance. Politics is not Church business!
The Government continues in its refusal to act. When it comes to speaking in the Supreme Court, high Government lawyers waffle, and pass the buck. First the Government passed the buck to the National Commission under former Chief Justice Rangnath Mishra Commission which was looking at the development issues of religious and linguistic minorities.
The Mishra Commission long completed its report [though its surveys were loaded in favour of the Hindutva argument]. Its full report is not published, but it has published the recommendations in favour of giving Dalit Christians, and Dalit Muslims. The Commission has since then been wound up, and its full documentation, which we all contributed rare documents, is now lying in some Government godown.
Since the Union Government had been telling the Supreme Court that it was waiting for Justice Misra to submit his report, it should rightfully immediately given the court its decision – speaking out whether it was accepting the report, the best course, or rejecting it, the worst case scenario from the Christian point of view. It did neither. Using an obscure provision in the revised National Commission for Scheduled Castes [which is a statutory Commission] the Government said it was mandatory for it to refer the matter to the SC Commission now headed by former Union Home minister, and late Bihar governor, Dr Buta Singh. The Government has still not said it will respect the recommendations of its own Commissions. It merely refers the matter to them. It forgot that even when the pro-Hindutva PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, and Mr. Sitaram Kesri the Welfare Minister, they introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha to grant Dalit Christian their well deserved rights. The cabinet had agreed. That the Bill was not taken up because the Lok Sabah was dissolved, is another matter altogether.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes has a terrible record. Under past Congress and BJP chairpersons and members, the Commission has taken a very Hindu attitude to most matters. It has not been true even to its charter relating to Dalits of the Hindu faith. The last few chairmen have been very hostile to the Christian cause and have publicly announced their rejection of the rights.
Dr Buta Singh is a Dalit himself, of course, but as a Dalit from Punjab, he has lived in close proximity with Christians, and even has a few Christians in his near and extended family. In my meetings with him, he has assured me he is very sympathetic to the Dalit Christian cause and his report will be very positive. But he has also made it clear that rights for Dalit Christians will be available only once the Government changes the rules and gives additional quotas for Muslims and Christians in the SC list. This reservation now stands at 15 per cent. Unless the Supreme Court Okays it and the Government shows the political will, there is no Constitutional method through which the additional 2 per cent or so reservation for Christians and maybe more then 7 per cent additional quota for Dalit Muslims can be created. This affectively means another stalling for many more years, and for us, a grim future of continued struggle.
The matter came up once again before the Supreme Court on 28 November 2007, and as predicted, Government once again sought two months time before it came up with the response. Senior counsel and former Law Minister, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, questioned the government as to what was stopping it from hurrying up with its report. And an annoyed Chief Justice of India, Mr. Justice Balakrishnan, told the government’s additional Solicitor General Mr. Gopal Subramaniam that he would have to hurry up and tell the court in four weeks time.
But even if the Government were to tell the Supreme Court that it has decided to give the quota, there are only two ways it can become a reality. The Government has to issue a Presidential proclamation by way of an Ordinance adding the word Christians in the law where it covers Hindus, Buddhist, and Sikhs. The second option is all but mandated. We will have to continue with proceedings in the Supreme Court. Senior advocates tell me that even if the Supreme Court admits the Writ Petitions, the actual hearings and legal calisthenics may take months, if not years. National and international advocacy will also have to continue, as also mass mobilisation in the national capital, state, and district headquarters and everywhere elsewhere possible.
The matter of course is also before God. Everything is possible when the Holy Spirit moves. Together with advocacy in Government and with political parties and their leaders, we also must continue united with prayers and supplications before God. Perhaps this will also unite the community for larger gains in the future.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BILLS AND THE POLITICS OF HATE AND MAJORITY APPEASEMENT
The second issue, of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills, also speaks of political perfidy, lack of political will among those who rule us, and an assertion that though the Constitution may speak of a Secular state with equal distance from, and equal respect for, all religions, in actual fact Hinduism is the default religion of India, and the State and Government follow it with diligence and enthusiasm. I am not referring to the obvious heavy public exchequer financing of religious festivals, the media abuse in favour of one religion and so on. I speak of issues of Constitution.
As we all know, despite the caution of the first, and best, Prime Minister, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Madhya Pradesh Chief minister, Pandit Ravi Shankar set up the notorious Niyogi committee to investigate Christian work in his then undivided state. Ravi Shankar and Niyogi where both pathologically hostile to Christianity. Their target was the Catholic Church, working among tribals who they and their group had been exploiting for decades. The All India Catholic Union’s associations in the state, really active Catholic Associations gave extensive documentation. As did the Church. But the report was a forgone conclusion. Acting on it Madhya Pradesh passed the Religious Freedom Act affectively banning all conversions, and as effectively coercing the Tribals to espouse the Hindu faith, a practice the Sangh Parivar codified in its criminal Ghar Wapsi programme. Ravi Shankar was a Congressman. Later SVD and other Governments in various states followed suit. In short order, Orissa and Arunachal joined the fray; Arunachal after a violent suppression of whatever Christianity then existed in that remote state. Since then Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal have passed the law. Tamil Nadu passed the law, but the chief minister, Jayalalitha who had first bowed to her Hindutva allies, leant her lesson and quickly rescinded the ugly act.
The shenanigans in Himachal Pradesh are the ones I find the most obnoxious, and the most inexplicable.
When the Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly had become the latest State to pass such an Act, I was among those who approached the noted Constitutional lawyer Dr Rajeev Dhawan to study the Constitutional validity of such legislation. You would recall that many decades ago, Rev Fr Stanislaus had challenged these laws in the court, as also others who moved the courts on the Orissa laws. The Supreme Court in a strange decision, upheld both the Christian faith’s right to profess and propagate the faith, but said they did not have the right to convert. The absurdity inherent in, and the contradictions between, various court pronouncements on religious faith as a fundamental right has been subject of much debate, but no one has yet gone to court to challenge the Stanislaus judgement in its entirety and in a coherent holistic manner.
Dr Rajeev Dhawan, senior advocate Indira Jaisingh and even the Solicitor General of India, in his own legal opinion to a State Governor, have held that this law is ultra vires of the Constitution for a long list of reasons.
The then Governor of Rajasthan, and today President of India, Advocate Pratibha Patil, agreed with the logic of our protest, and withheld her consent to the Bill, sending it to the then President Dr Abul Kalam in New Delhi. He too withheld his signature. In Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jhakkar has also refused to sign certain amendments to the Act into law.
When this was taking place, I wrote to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party. President. She replied in a signed letter. She said she and her party were against any restrictions to freedom of expression and faith, a and they would stand against it both inside legislatures and outside, if required.
And yet, the Congress Chief Minister of Himachal, Vir Bhadra Singh, one of an anachronistic group of princelings, who is facing a serious Hindutva challenge in the State Legislative Assembly elections, brought such a law into being, and the State Governor promptly signed it into law. Singh told media he was trying to prevent threat to local religion and culture. No one asked him just how many Christians there were in the state – barely measurable in census operations – and how many fraudulent conversions – none in reality.
I went to the National Commission of Minorities, headed then by the scholar-diplomat, Mr. Ansari, now Vice President of the Indian republic. Mr. Ansari, former ambassador to West Asia and a former vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University wrote to many states to find out how many fraudulent conversions to Christianity and taken place to merit such laws. The reply he got was startling to him, but not to me. Every state that responded had to admit there were no cases of forcible and fraudulent conversions to Christianity or Islam.
There have been large scale conversions to Buddhism, and people join the Sikh Panth in Punjab and Delhi almost on a daily basis. But the law never takes notice because for some peculiar reason never fully explained the official system agrees with the Sangh Parivar that these are not individual religions but parts of Hinduism. In effect, the Indian legal system, denies these religions, which they call Indic religions the right to an independent identity.
But I digress.
I, the All India Christian Council and the Christian Legal Association are challenging the Himachal law in the Shimla High Court. The preliminary work has been done. An application ahs also been filed under the Right to Information to force the Government to disclose just how many Christians exist in the state, and what provoked it to go in for such a barbaric law.
And the law is really barbaric. As we all know, these laws are directed only against Christianity, and to a lesser extent, against Islam. Even if the police do not arrest Priest and pastors, the existence of the law on the Statute books, encourages widespread and well organised hate campaigns, and criminalization of genuine religious activity. They also mislead even senior police officers to believe they can move against religious personnel of the Christian Church and even against the laity. The acts create a tinder box situation which leads eventually to widespread persecution of Christians on the one hand and a coercion of Dalits, Tribals and marginalised who are terrorized by provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act to remain silent in the face of great exploitation.
For the record, the salient parts of the Himachal Religious Freedom Act are:
1) A person intending to convert from one religion to another shall give prior notice of at least thirty days to the District Magistrate of the district concerned of his intention to do so and the District Magistrate shall get the matter enquired into all by such agency as he may deem fit: Provided that no notice shall be required if a person reverts back to his original religion.
(2) Any person who fails to give prior notice, as required under sub-section (1) shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees.
Section 5. Punishment for contravention of the provision of section 3 : Any person contravening the provisions contained in section 3 shall, without prejudice to any civil liability, be punishable with imprisonment of either description which may extend to two years or with fine may extend to twenty five thousand rupees or with both: Provided that in case the offence is committed in respect of a minor, a woman or a person belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribes, the punishment of imprisonment may extend to three years and fine may extend to fifty thousand rupees.
Section 6. Offence to be cognizable: An offence under this Act shall be cognizable and shall not be investigated by an officer below the rank of an Inspector of Police.”
It is obvious that the district civil and police authorities are now arbiters of fundamental rights, including freedom of faith!!
Many in the Catholic Church believe that the law will not impact on them, and that radical Church groups have brought it upon themselves because their wild ways in evangelization. There maybe a problem of ultra evangelical groups failing to evolve an appropriate vocabulary to articulate the teachings of Christ, bur the law eventually is directed against social work and social action, the empowerment programme of the Church in which the Catholic Church is the ;leader. This patently calls for a wide spectrum unity among Church groups. People from Madhya Pradesh have told Open Court hearings organised by human rights groups that in the Jhabua region for instance, it has now become difficult for pastors, nuns and clergy to even move about after sunset, reducing the faith to a “Daylight” reality.
The last major issue that radically impacts on the everyday life and the very future of the Christians is the delay in economic empowerment of the large number of tribals, Dalits, and landless peasants who constitute the bulk of this minority community in most of the states. Most Tribals working outside the state of their birth do not get Scheduled status and therefore do not have any educational and employment privileges. For the same reason, they are also denied benefits under the area plans and the special component plans under the Five Year plan system. The Christians among them also lose out on traditional sharing of forest produce and cultivation. The vast landless peasantry and Dalits of Andhra ands Tamil Nadu seem to be entirely outside the development pail if they do not live in metropolitan cities and Stare capitals.
The Justice Mishra Commission, now dissolved, had to speak on this issue when it was also saddles with the matter of determining the legitimacy of the demand of Dalit Christians and Muslims to Scheduled status. No details have been made public of the main report of the Mishra Commission.
The Government has systematically refused many requests from representative organisations, including the Catholic Union that the economic and development matters of the community should also be enumerate so that Government aid is properly channeled to such micro communities instead of being focussed only on the numerically largest of the minorities.
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up a high powered committee under former Delhi Chief Justice Rajinder Sachchar to define Muslim development parameters. I wrote to him and others that Christian could also fruitfully be studied for their needs by the same committee. The Government refused. It also ahs not bothered to set up a panel just for Christians.
The result is that after Sachchar committee gave its report, the Government has announced a slew of development measures and special emphasis on thud Muslim community. But these measures do not focus on Christians at all. Also, when it comes to discussions, the Government even denies there are marginalised sections in the Christian community, and farcically enough, cites the fact that there are no reports and studies to prove the Christian need for special development efforts. It does not see the viciousness of the argument – there is no study, therefore no data, on Christian deprivation, and since there is no data there can be no relief, and because the Christians are apparently not deprived, there is no need for a fact finding committee!
For the sake of every hotel waiter who can never dream to own a hotel, every mechanic who will never own even a small tin-shed garage, every ayah and tribal maid working as a hugely exploited domestic servant, and every starving landless peasant, it is time for all of us to unitedly raise our voice.
In face, new islands of underdevelopment are being created. A development wedge is being driven between Christians and the minorities which are either developed already, or will receive the bounty of the Government. Such a mutually suspicious minority conglomeration can hardly be expected to unitedly fight the force of majoritarianism in the country.
The threat, therefore, is the democratic state and the republican way of life in India.
It is time we acted.
The hierarchy and clergy of the established Church must join this struggle.
Before it is too late.
As 2007 ends, a brief report card of the nation
Fact sheet India human rights and development record
Ø Two lakh Delhi people earn more than Rs 1 lakh a month each, but
Ø 89,362 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has become one suicide every 30 minutes.
Ø India has slipped five ranks since last year to 105 on global education parameters; will miss millennium development goals for children
Ø Girls 66 per cent of out-of-the-school children
Ø India's gross enrollment ratio 95 per cent, but dropout rate is as high as 14.4 per cent for Class I. Among the dropouts, about 66 per cent are girls
Ø India will not be able to meet the target of Education for All by 2015.
Ø One-third of world's illiterates are in India.
Ø 21 out of 28 States have internal armed conflicts. Are heavily militarised and the use special laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 that provides the power to shoot to kill
Ø There were a total of 3, 32,112 prisoners against the total capacity of 2, and 38,855 prisoners in the 1315 jails of the country as on 31 December 2004. 70 % are under trials.
Ø As on 2 December 2006, as many as 237 SEZs approved primarily allotting prime agricultural lands.
Ø Despite 450,000 conflict-induced internally displaced persons in Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and Tripura and Gujarat. India has no policy on IDPs and the Kashmiri Pandits are provided better facilities than the other conflict induced IDPs.
Ø 1 crime against women in every 3 minutes, 1 rape in every 29 minutes, 1 molestation in every 15 minutes, 1 dowry death case in every 77 minute in the country during 2005. NCRB recorded a total of 1,55,553 cases of Violence Against Women including 18,359 cases of rape involving 18,376 victims, 34,175 cases of molestation, 15750 cases of kidnapping, 6,787 cases of dowry deaths and 58,319 cases of torture in 2005.
Ø Dalits: 2005 NCRB reports 26,127 cases - 8,497 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and 291 cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 - against the Scheduled Castes. Conviction rate was only 29.8%. A total of 46,936 persons (82.4%) out of 57,804 persons arrested for crimes committed against Scheduled Castes were charge-sheeted but only 28.3% trials
Ø A crime against the tribals was committed in every 29 minutes. In 2005, a total of 5,713 cases against Scheduled Tribes were reported in the country as compared to 5,535 cases in 2004 showing an increase of 3.2% in 2005 from 2004. These included 1,283 cases reported under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 and 162 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act. Average conviction rate was only 24.5%. A total of 8,273 persons (83.8%) out of 9,870 persons arrested for crimes committed against Scheduled Tribes were charge-sheeted but only 24.2% were convicted consisting of 1,934 persons out of 7,981 persons against whom trials were completed.
Ø Two lakh Delhi people earn more than Rs 1 lakh a month each, but
Ø 89,362 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2005. Since 2002, that has become one suicide every 30 minutes.
Ø India has slipped five ranks since last year to 105 on global education parameters; will miss millennium development goals for children
Ø Girls 66 per cent of out-of-the-school children
Ø India's gross enrollment ratio 95 per cent, but dropout rate is as high as 14.4 per cent for Class I. Among the dropouts, about 66 per cent are girls
Ø India will not be able to meet the target of Education for All by 2015.
Ø One-third of world's illiterates are in India.
Ø 21 out of 28 States have internal armed conflicts. Are heavily militarised and the use special laws such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 that provides the power to shoot to kill
Ø There were a total of 3, 32,112 prisoners against the total capacity of 2, and 38,855 prisoners in the 1315 jails of the country as on 31 December 2004. 70 % are under trials.
Ø As on 2 December 2006, as many as 237 SEZs approved primarily allotting prime agricultural lands.
Ø Despite 450,000 conflict-induced internally displaced persons in Chhattisgarh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram and Tripura and Gujarat. India has no policy on IDPs and the Kashmiri Pandits are provided better facilities than the other conflict induced IDPs.
Ø 1 crime against women in every 3 minutes, 1 rape in every 29 minutes, 1 molestation in every 15 minutes, 1 dowry death case in every 77 minute in the country during 2005. NCRB recorded a total of 1,55,553 cases of Violence Against Women including 18,359 cases of rape involving 18,376 victims, 34,175 cases of molestation, 15750 cases of kidnapping, 6,787 cases of dowry deaths and 58,319 cases of torture in 2005.
Ø Dalits: 2005 NCRB reports 26,127 cases - 8,497 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act and 291 cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 - against the Scheduled Castes. Conviction rate was only 29.8%. A total of 46,936 persons (82.4%) out of 57,804 persons arrested for crimes committed against Scheduled Castes were charge-sheeted but only 28.3% trials
Ø A crime against the tribals was committed in every 29 minutes. In 2005, a total of 5,713 cases against Scheduled Tribes were reported in the country as compared to 5,535 cases in 2004 showing an increase of 3.2% in 2005 from 2004. These included 1,283 cases reported under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 and 162 cases under the Protection of Civil Rights Act. Average conviction rate was only 24.5%. A total of 8,273 persons (83.8%) out of 9,870 persons arrested for crimes committed against Scheduled Tribes were charge-sheeted but only 24.2% were convicted consisting of 1,934 persons out of 7,981 persons against whom trials were completed.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Faith in face of Celluloid
NEW FILM ON CHRIST
Text of the news report today in the DNA newspaper of Mumbai and the full text of my emailed response to their questions earlier in the week. The DNA ignored the pith of the response, as possibly it did of the other Chuirch spokesmen it quotes, possibly because it did not suit newspapers seeking controversy with no reference to facts or truth.
New film may spark crisis of faith
DNA Mumbai, Sunday, November 25, 2007 09:45 [IST]
Clergy says Hollywood will confuse the faithful about what to believe: Bible or movie By Anjali Thomas
If Jesus had a grave, he’d be turning in it. Even though he was believed to have been born somewhere between 6 and 4 BC, controversy still dogs his footsteps. Even as the dust from the attacks on Shekhar Kapur’s movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age begins to settle, a new controversy is rearing its head.
The party in question is Hollywood, and the bone of contention is a $20 million movie, Aquarian Gospel, which will portray Jesus as a wandering sage who visited India, lived in Buddhist monasteries, and fought the evils of the caste system. And no, this is not the work of an overactive Hollywood scriptwriter’s imagination, but based on a book The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, written in 1908 by Levi H Dowling. Dowling claimed to have based his research on early manuscripts like the Akashic Records, which document the life of Jesus Christ between the ages of 13 and 30 - something the Bible only touches upon.
“It’s easy to exploit religious history for media purposes, and I’m sure that this movie is a potential box office hit,” says Father Myron Pereira, director of the Xavier Institute of Communications.
“There is lots of literature on Jesus, like the gospel of Thomas and Philip that are not part of the official canon. In the ancient world, the fact that something did take place took second place to the meaning of what took place. It was only later that fact was sifted from fiction, and canonised. The Gospels place their emphasis on Jesus’s message, not on the personal details of his life. Writings which have not been validated by the Church are called Apocryphal scrolls, and are concerned with the sensational elements of Jesus’s life, often fictitious,” he adds.
The movie will be shot using actors and computer animation in the style of Beowulf and 300. Director Drew Heriot has been quoted as saying the film would “follow Christ’s journey to the East, where he encounters other traditions”.
Hollywood is glamourising a theory that has been around for centuries. In 1894, Nicholas Notovitch authored The Unknown Life of Christ, where he wrote about Jesus recuperating from a broken leg in a monastery near Ladakh. German author, Holger Kersten’s book, Jesus Lived In India examines the evidence of Christ’s life in India and the Middle East.
“Aquarian Gospel is another in a long line of controversial books and movies, many of which have stirred up a storm, but have died down without affecting the Christian faith,” says Rev Babu Joseph, spokesperson, Catholics Bishop Conference of India. He adds that serious Biblical scholars claim no hard evidence to suggest that Jesus came to India.
When it comes to entertainment, it’s a question of creative licence. In response to the criticism that Elizabeth was an “anti-papal travesty”, director Shekhar Kapur told DNA, “I am a filmmaker, and what is the use of making films that do not evoke any kind of reaction.”
There has always been a clash between freedom of expression, the media and the arts, and traditions and beliefs that people hold sacred. Dr John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union says, “Hollywood is not the most pious institution in the US.” He adds: “I have always maintained that the Censor Board and government institutions have to take suo motu action if they wish to. They should not pass the buck to the Church, nor should the Church allow itself to be caught in a ‘damned if we say yes, and damned if we say no’, situation. The Indian law is clear - no one can hurt a community’s feelings, nor should anyone do or depict anything that can provoke tension between communities.”
According to both Rev Joseph and Father Myron, the film will come as a shock to the average Christian not properly initiated in Biblical literature. “They will begin to doubt what is true and what is not, which is never a good thing,” says Rev Joseph.
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DNA,. Mumbai, questions to and answers from Dr John Dayal
Member, National Integration Council, Govt of India and President, All India Catholic Union {Founded 1919, representing the 16 million Catholic Laity in India]
Question 1. This is the third or fourth movie which will in a way be 'attacking' or 'probing' into Christian beliefs. The others were Da Vinci Code, Last Temptation of Christ, and Elizabeth. What do you make of Hollywood's take on this? Do you think that Hollywood is taking too much of a creative license with the Bible?
Answer: Hollywood is not exactly the most pious institution in the US, and the American First Amendment on Freedom of Expression has nothing to do with it. Please remember that when Hollywood wants to, it can have its own policing and its own moral code. It was Hollywood that hounded Communists that once banned black men being shown in love with white women in support of prevailing codes against miscegenation and in support of the prevailing racist mood. Though it has made Old Testament films, it also has, as has Europe, made many films that apparently seem to portray Jesus in all too human a light, none of which can be supported by textual material from the New Testament.
Hollywood makes films which it hopes will make money. They range from the anti spiritual film called the Exorcist, on to many others. Films such as The Last Temptation of Christ have had some critical, but no financial success, though critics too, by the way, have been generous to such films as apparent expressions of the freedom of the media. Regarding Shekhar Kapoor and his film Elizabeth, the Christian community need hardly be bothered. When a few European churchmen speak of this matter, they do so in the backdrop of the Catholic Protestants schism of the past. The issues today are different – they relate to issues of combating racism, of gender justice, of relating to sexual preferences, and on getting rid of ghosts of the last two centuries or more. Queens and princesses, living or dead, are the stuff of entertainment now, not of strife.
By the way, there is a a long tradition in Hollywood for the Faith groups to have their own codes – not censorship – and their own rewards for films they approve so their followers are well guided. If you do not like the film, don’t go and see it, and certainly don’t buy a ticket to make the producer rich.
Question 2. How will the new movie, based on the Acquarian Gospel affect the church, and more importantly, the average Catholic? Will there be protests as we have seen in earlier movies?
Answer: As I said during the controversy on the Da Vinci Code, I have always maintained that the Censor Board and government institutions have to take Suo Moto action if they wish to. They made the rules, they have the powers. They should not pass the buck to the Church, nor should the Church allow itself to be painted into a corner in a “damned if we say yes, and damned if we say no” situation. The Indian law is very clear. No one can hurt people’s feelings, Christians, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, nor should anyone do or depict anything that can provoke enmity or tension between communities.
But there is no scope for anyone to do a private moral or theocratic policing. I am against any bigoted protests or moral policing, especially by the Church. And in our faith, of course, there is no place for violent protest at all.
I cannot – ands even if I could, I certainly would NOT -- issue a fatwa to anyone to have or not to have a protest, but I can all but guarantee that even if there is a protest somewhere, they will remain very peaceful.
Question 3. Is there any truth in the fact that Jesus came to India and used the knowledge that he got in his teachings?
Answer: There is nothing in the Bible about this. Or in any other book. There are no corroborative texts of that time to sustain any such thesis. Mahavira and Buddha were born five hundred years ago, stood against what we today call Brahmanism. Buddha’s influence must have spread along the Silk route and the road to Damascus and to Rome. Having travelled in those parts, I can tell you the curly locks of the Buddha and his flowing robes as depicted in a million statues are strikingly evidence of Hellenic influence on Buddha’s followers, at least the writers and artists of the time. The drapery came from the near West! Silk and thoughts traveled in both directions.
Unlike perhaps today when there has been such bigotry, those must have been times of great intellectual ferment and great intellectual democracy and communication. Aristotle, Plato, The giants of Egypt and Rome and China, and why not great men of India, breathing the same air, give or take a few centuries are part of the exchange of ideas and thoughts. If silk can travel across continents, why not thoughts. Paper certainly did.
But at the end of the day, one looks for tangible evidence -- and there is none.
By the way, may I also comment on other occasional stories in the media of the grave of Jesus in Kashmir. If there is indeed a grave remotely traceable to the first century AD, I hope it is empty. To me, Christ has risen to come again. The grave is empty, wherever it is.
My faith does not depend on such issues.
Hollywood of course specializes in fiction, and in fictionalizing truth. But if research proves an interaction between Christ and India in the years before his private ministry, the years that he spend wandering, it will only go to further strengthen my faith as it will be added evidence to prove the historicity of Jesus. Jesus is a historical figure. Of how many others can this be said?
Text of the news report today in the DNA newspaper of Mumbai and the full text of my emailed response to their questions earlier in the week. The DNA ignored the pith of the response, as possibly it did of the other Chuirch spokesmen it quotes, possibly because it did not suit newspapers seeking controversy with no reference to facts or truth.
New film may spark crisis of faith
DNA Mumbai, Sunday, November 25, 2007 09:45 [IST]
Clergy says Hollywood will confuse the faithful about what to believe: Bible or movie By Anjali Thomas
If Jesus had a grave, he’d be turning in it. Even though he was believed to have been born somewhere between 6 and 4 BC, controversy still dogs his footsteps. Even as the dust from the attacks on Shekhar Kapur’s movie Elizabeth: The Golden Age begins to settle, a new controversy is rearing its head.
The party in question is Hollywood, and the bone of contention is a $20 million movie, Aquarian Gospel, which will portray Jesus as a wandering sage who visited India, lived in Buddhist monasteries, and fought the evils of the caste system. And no, this is not the work of an overactive Hollywood scriptwriter’s imagination, but based on a book The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, written in 1908 by Levi H Dowling. Dowling claimed to have based his research on early manuscripts like the Akashic Records, which document the life of Jesus Christ between the ages of 13 and 30 - something the Bible only touches upon.
“It’s easy to exploit religious history for media purposes, and I’m sure that this movie is a potential box office hit,” says Father Myron Pereira, director of the Xavier Institute of Communications.
“There is lots of literature on Jesus, like the gospel of Thomas and Philip that are not part of the official canon. In the ancient world, the fact that something did take place took second place to the meaning of what took place. It was only later that fact was sifted from fiction, and canonised. The Gospels place their emphasis on Jesus’s message, not on the personal details of his life. Writings which have not been validated by the Church are called Apocryphal scrolls, and are concerned with the sensational elements of Jesus’s life, often fictitious,” he adds.
The movie will be shot using actors and computer animation in the style of Beowulf and 300. Director Drew Heriot has been quoted as saying the film would “follow Christ’s journey to the East, where he encounters other traditions”.
Hollywood is glamourising a theory that has been around for centuries. In 1894, Nicholas Notovitch authored The Unknown Life of Christ, where he wrote about Jesus recuperating from a broken leg in a monastery near Ladakh. German author, Holger Kersten’s book, Jesus Lived In India examines the evidence of Christ’s life in India and the Middle East.
“Aquarian Gospel is another in a long line of controversial books and movies, many of which have stirred up a storm, but have died down without affecting the Christian faith,” says Rev Babu Joseph, spokesperson, Catholics Bishop Conference of India. He adds that serious Biblical scholars claim no hard evidence to suggest that Jesus came to India.
When it comes to entertainment, it’s a question of creative licence. In response to the criticism that Elizabeth was an “anti-papal travesty”, director Shekhar Kapur told DNA, “I am a filmmaker, and what is the use of making films that do not evoke any kind of reaction.”
There has always been a clash between freedom of expression, the media and the arts, and traditions and beliefs that people hold sacred. Dr John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union says, “Hollywood is not the most pious institution in the US.” He adds: “I have always maintained that the Censor Board and government institutions have to take suo motu action if they wish to. They should not pass the buck to the Church, nor should the Church allow itself to be caught in a ‘damned if we say yes, and damned if we say no’, situation. The Indian law is clear - no one can hurt a community’s feelings, nor should anyone do or depict anything that can provoke tension between communities.”
According to both Rev Joseph and Father Myron, the film will come as a shock to the average Christian not properly initiated in Biblical literature. “They will begin to doubt what is true and what is not, which is never a good thing,” says Rev Joseph.
------------------
DNA,. Mumbai, questions to and answers from Dr John Dayal
Member, National Integration Council, Govt of India and President, All India Catholic Union {Founded 1919, representing the 16 million Catholic Laity in India]
Question 1. This is the third or fourth movie which will in a way be 'attacking' or 'probing' into Christian beliefs. The others were Da Vinci Code, Last Temptation of Christ, and Elizabeth. What do you make of Hollywood's take on this? Do you think that Hollywood is taking too much of a creative license with the Bible?
Answer: Hollywood is not exactly the most pious institution in the US, and the American First Amendment on Freedom of Expression has nothing to do with it. Please remember that when Hollywood wants to, it can have its own policing and its own moral code. It was Hollywood that hounded Communists that once banned black men being shown in love with white women in support of prevailing codes against miscegenation and in support of the prevailing racist mood. Though it has made Old Testament films, it also has, as has Europe, made many films that apparently seem to portray Jesus in all too human a light, none of which can be supported by textual material from the New Testament.
Hollywood makes films which it hopes will make money. They range from the anti spiritual film called the Exorcist, on to many others. Films such as The Last Temptation of Christ have had some critical, but no financial success, though critics too, by the way, have been generous to such films as apparent expressions of the freedom of the media. Regarding Shekhar Kapoor and his film Elizabeth, the Christian community need hardly be bothered. When a few European churchmen speak of this matter, they do so in the backdrop of the Catholic Protestants schism of the past. The issues today are different – they relate to issues of combating racism, of gender justice, of relating to sexual preferences, and on getting rid of ghosts of the last two centuries or more. Queens and princesses, living or dead, are the stuff of entertainment now, not of strife.
By the way, there is a a long tradition in Hollywood for the Faith groups to have their own codes – not censorship – and their own rewards for films they approve so their followers are well guided. If you do not like the film, don’t go and see it, and certainly don’t buy a ticket to make the producer rich.
Question 2. How will the new movie, based on the Acquarian Gospel affect the church, and more importantly, the average Catholic? Will there be protests as we have seen in earlier movies?
Answer: As I said during the controversy on the Da Vinci Code, I have always maintained that the Censor Board and government institutions have to take Suo Moto action if they wish to. They made the rules, they have the powers. They should not pass the buck to the Church, nor should the Church allow itself to be painted into a corner in a “damned if we say yes, and damned if we say no” situation. The Indian law is very clear. No one can hurt people’s feelings, Christians, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, nor should anyone do or depict anything that can provoke enmity or tension between communities.
But there is no scope for anyone to do a private moral or theocratic policing. I am against any bigoted protests or moral policing, especially by the Church. And in our faith, of course, there is no place for violent protest at all.
I cannot – ands even if I could, I certainly would NOT -- issue a fatwa to anyone to have or not to have a protest, but I can all but guarantee that even if there is a protest somewhere, they will remain very peaceful.
Question 3. Is there any truth in the fact that Jesus came to India and used the knowledge that he got in his teachings?
Answer: There is nothing in the Bible about this. Or in any other book. There are no corroborative texts of that time to sustain any such thesis. Mahavira and Buddha were born five hundred years ago, stood against what we today call Brahmanism. Buddha’s influence must have spread along the Silk route and the road to Damascus and to Rome. Having travelled in those parts, I can tell you the curly locks of the Buddha and his flowing robes as depicted in a million statues are strikingly evidence of Hellenic influence on Buddha’s followers, at least the writers and artists of the time. The drapery came from the near West! Silk and thoughts traveled in both directions.
Unlike perhaps today when there has been such bigotry, those must have been times of great intellectual ferment and great intellectual democracy and communication. Aristotle, Plato, The giants of Egypt and Rome and China, and why not great men of India, breathing the same air, give or take a few centuries are part of the exchange of ideas and thoughts. If silk can travel across continents, why not thoughts. Paper certainly did.
But at the end of the day, one looks for tangible evidence -- and there is none.
By the way, may I also comment on other occasional stories in the media of the grave of Jesus in Kashmir. If there is indeed a grave remotely traceable to the first century AD, I hope it is empty. To me, Christ has risen to come again. The grave is empty, wherever it is.
My faith does not depend on such issues.
Hollywood of course specializes in fiction, and in fictionalizing truth. But if research proves an interaction between Christ and India in the years before his private ministry, the years that he spend wandering, it will only go to further strengthen my faith as it will be added evidence to prove the historicity of Jesus. Jesus is a historical figure. Of how many others can this be said?
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
THE CHURCH AND THE PATH TO A COMMISSION FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA
JOHN DAYAL
One of these days, the Indian Government will present the Indian Church with a surprise. It depends on the Christian community and its religious and secular leadership if it is to be a pleasant surprise. Or, at its worst, very unpleasant; like many other decisions in the past in Parliament or by the Union and State Governments which have often presented the 25 million strong Christian community in the country with a pungent fait accompli. There are myriad laws, institutions and structures in whose making the community has had no intervention and less say, and which, therefore, ignore, in cold blood or by default, issues and matters which are peculiar to Indian Christians because of the nature of their faith and religious practices, and their demographic dispersal.
I say this with some anguish in what I observe to be a singular Christian absence in three or four or five major discourses recently in the secular space in India.
These discourses have to do with the Civil Society opposition to the Communal Violence prevention Bill moved in Parliament by the Government earlier this year, the setting up of the Prime Minister’s High-powered Committee under former Delhi Chief Justice Rajinder Sachchar, the Plan process, and the drafting of the Civil Society response on Indian’s human rights record which has to be submitted to the newly set up United Nations Human Rights Council soon, and the moves that Government has initiated to set up an Equal Opportunities Commission in the country.
The Church remained silent when the Sachchar committee was set up to merely on the Muslim community instead of all religious minorities. Admittedly, Indian Muslims are highly discriminated against in the devolution of a just development process, and Justice Sachchar has been able to quantify that and prove it by quoting facts and figures.
But how do we know that Dalit Christians, a hefty 60 per cent of all Christians, and Tribal Christians, another 20 per cent or so, do not suffer from similar, or aggravated, development infirmities. There has been little effort even to assess, define and catalogue their crises since independence.
The Christian community has also not been served well by the several national commissions. The National Human Rights Commission correctly says its charter does not cover religious and linguistic minorities because there are separate commissions for them. It is of course not to be forgotten that one of its chairperson – and NHRC chairperson has to be a retired Chief Justice of India – had in his time on the Bench, upheld such a draconian law as POTA, the dreaded Prevention of Terrorism legislation in which scores of Muslims were arrested just because they were Muslims.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes had, till Dr Buta Singh became its chairman, adopted a very hostile attitude towards Dalit Christians – whether the chair was a Congress person or a Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stalwart.
The National Commission for Minorities, barring the brief interlude when Dr James Massey, a Dalit, was the Christian member, has almost always had time servers or political appointees whose interests were anything but relating to the community. Some have been hostile to the community, some have been corrupt, and some have been retired politicians or bureaucrats whose ignorance has been exceeded only by their unconcern. One went to the extent of saying he saw no persecution, because he had never been persecuted. Another was keen to bring the community to its knees before the RSS in the guise of a dialogue.
Little wonder, therefore, that when the Union Cabinet devised the so called Communal Violence prevention Bill, it just did not cover the issues of Christians, and hate crimes and persecution of the micro minority. The Muslims, after their Gujarat pogrom experience, and Sikhs with the 2004 massacres, rightly rejected the CV Bill out of hand because it strengthened the hands of the police without helping the victims of communal violence. The CV prevention Bill did not even understand the persecution of Christians in various parts of India, or the massive hate campaign against the community carried out in tribal belts, villages and even in cities. Sad to say, in the many seminars organised by Civil Society and by Muslim groups and intellectuals, there were hardly any Christians present, and almost no formal representation by Catholic and Protestant hierarchies.
I hope this will not be repeated in the path to the formation, some time in the future, of the Equal Opportunities Commission on the pattern of a similar Commission which has been set up in the United Kingdom by merging all existing Human Rights organisations and commissions which had been set up since the race issues came to the fore in the wake of the massive immigration from India and the Caribbean in the Nineteen Hundred and Sixties.
The chief executive of the British Commission, Dr Kay Hampton, took a series of seminars recently educating Indian Civil Society on the entire gamut of factors and issues relating to this new organisation. Needless to say, while there were Muslim intellectuals and representatives of organisations, there were hardly any Christians in the audience at the seminars. Dr Kay Hampton, by the way, traces her origins to Tamil Nadu though she was born in South Africa and went to London less than two decades ago.
The matter is of some urgency, and of great import to all minorities. The Justice Rajinder Sachchar Committee which studied the socio-economic condition of Muslims had suggested in his report the need for setting up a commission on the lines of the British Equal Opportunities Commission as a watchdog which should be effective in overseeing the implementation of the recommendations.
The Government of India is reportedly keen on implementing the Sachchar Committee report and is understood to have set up a three man committee to study such commissions abroad and look for ways and means to ensure its full implementation. Though a recommendation of a committee which was only looking at the Muslim issue, the Equal Opportunities Commission, if and when it becomes a reality, will of course look at the denial of opportunities to all others discriminated against, presumably ranging from Dalit Christians, Kashmiri Pandits, OBCs, women, the physically and mentally challenged, children and the old.
As Kay Hampton explained at her seminars, the UK Equality Act 2006 gained Royal Assent on February 16th, allowing for the establishment of the new CEHR from October 2007, which will bring together the work of the Disability Rights Commission and Equal Opportunities Commission from October 2007; and that of the Commission for Racial equality by 2009, putting expertise on equality, diversity and human rights in one place. The Act and the commission banning discrimination in service-provision on grounds of race, religion and sexuality. The CEHR will take on all of the powers of the existing Commissions as well as new ones to enforce legislation more effectively and promote equality for all.
The CEHR is required to produce a regular ‘equality health check’ for Britain and to work with individuals, communities, businesses and public services to find new, more effective ways to give everyone in society the chance to achieve their full potential.
The Act introduces a new ‘gender duty’ which will require public bodies to take account of the different needs of men and women to ensure equality of opportunity when preparing policies or providing services. It outlaws discrimination on grounds of religion or belief in providing goods, facilities or services, education or rented accommodation.
The commission -- and I quote Dr Hampton -- will encourage and support the development of a society in which:
• People’s ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination
• There is respect for and protection of each individual’s human rights
• There is respect for the dignity and worth of each individual
• Each individual has an equal opportunity to participate in society, and
• There is mutual respect between groups based on understanding and valuing of diversity and on shared respect for equality and human rights (Clause 3)
… as an independent and influential champion the Commission will seek to
• promote and celebrate a diverse Britain where - there are good relations between communities, and people are not discriminated against because of their race, gender, disability, religion or belief, age or sexual orientation
The Commission will also use its powers and functions to work to achieve equality and human rights for all and promote and encourage good practice and an awareness of rights about equality, diversity and human rights and work to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment, promote an understanding of the importance of good relations between different groups (especially between different racial and religious groups) and between members of groups and others, monitor the effectiveness of the equality and human rights enactments, identify changes that have taken place in society and the results Britain should aim for in order to achieve the Commission’s vision (Clauses 8 –12) The Equality Act 2006.
To this, the Commission will advise employers and service providers on good practice and the promotion of equality and good relations, conduct inquiries and carry out investigations, provide advice and information on rights and equality laws. campaign on issues affecting the diverse groups in society that can suffer discrimination, make arrangements for conciliation to assist with disputes, assist individuals who believe they have been the victim of unlawful discrimination, provide grants. It will in time work with stakeholders and partners to become a single cohesive force acting for positive change on equality and diversity issues, human rights and good relations and able to influence policy and practice.
An interesting aspect of the British exercise is also to set up standards in appointing leadership and executive staff devoid of political patronage and in a fully accountable manner. Quite unlike the Indian practice.
The talent hunt works on what is called the Nolan principle, a set of guidelines on just what sort of a person is required to head such a unique organisation.
Bishops and other heads of institutions may be interested in the list of seven underpinning Principals of Governance formulated by the Nolan Committee which should apply to all in the public service. These are:
Selflessness: Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other benefits for themselves, their family or their friends.
Integrity: Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.
Objectivity: In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make choices on merit.
Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.
Openness: Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.
Honesty: Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.
Leadership: Holders of public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.
Responsibility also devolves on us all.
We must take the initiative.
We must let our views, and creative suggestions, made known to the Government even if those in power choose not to invite us for consultations. If for nothing else, then to ensure that the Government of India too follows these seven principals when appointing people to the existing and future commissions meant for our welfare.
To be affective, we will have to have effective strategies of advocacy and political mobilisation, and a thoughtful laity and leadership formation programme. Above all, we must have accurate socio-economic and development data about our community, the sort of data that the Sachchar committee and its brilliant economist member secretary Dr Al-saleh Sharrief have b4en able to garner.
The government cannot be trusted to help us collect and anaylse such data. At one level, it is reluctant to collect data which can prove its own bigotry against religious minorities, or expose 60 years of sustained neglect of entire peoples groups.
The census data is insufficient. The National Sample Surveys seldom touch the Christian horizons. Because of our political marginilisation – made the worse because without Scheduled caste rights, we are also effectively out of the Panchayati Raj system barring a few places in the North East, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – political groups make no effort to even find out the ground reality. It does not matter to them, and does not impact on their political strategies. This is one reason why the struggle of the Dalit Christians has taken such a long time to be resolved. We just do not have the deprivation data that will convince courts and Parliament at a cinch. In fact, it is the other way around. There is all too much ill-informed printed opinion from high church signatories claiming there is no poverty in the Christian community that no Christian suffers from caste prejudice in the wider Indian society.
So if the government will not set up the equivalent of a Sachchar committee to assess the Christian community’s developmental health, the Church and community will have to do it by itself. The Church – and I use the phrase holistically to include Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Cardinals, Archbishops down to the itinerant Independent Pastors and the last sentient Lay person – will have to join forces and find energy and resources for carrying out this process. Such a SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, has never been done in the past. It can wait no longer.
I would like to propose that the Church sets up its own commission. It has the brain power. Out together a group of social and political scientists, demographers, development economists. Use the vast network of parishes, parish priests and mission stations and institutions, to collect data. Crunch that data and publish the report. It will put the government to shame, expose the Planning Commission, Public Sector Banks, even the gerrymandering by Election offices.
It will be a small price to pay if in the process the hierarchy and the Church establishment is also shamed. The last Census, in the very few insights it offered into the innards of the community, showed us the scale of illiteracy amongst women in Tribal areas where the Church ahs been working for a century or more. This study may also show how, despite the large number of institutions it runs, most of them with a shamefully small body of Christian students, faculty and staff, we are not only rapidly becoming redundant in the national development process but, at the same time, are also not being able to raise the group standards of own community, Dalit, tribal, landless labour and the large urban service sector employees in metropolitan towns and state capitals. We remain the waiters, seldom the hotel owners. We are the motor mechanics, seldom the garage owners, and of the group working in the Gulf and other places, just how many of us are engineers and doctors and cyberspace bosses. We remain a service class, not an entrepreneur or leadership group. Honest sweat has its rewards, but our people must have the opportunity to do better.
It is this poverty and disempowerment of the poor, and the shrinking role of the institutional church in development processes [the private sector and Hindu religious organizations are investing far more in education and health, for instance in comparative as well as absolute terms] that makes the Christian community in India now so vulnerable to attacks from right wing religious fundamentalist groups and bigotry in the government and political systems.
We must be able to quantify it and articulate it as and when the Equal Opportunities Commission comes into being, and while waiting for that, we must raise it before existing forums. It is not a matter of mere foresight or due diligence. We are in duty bound to do this for our coming generations who should be able to enjoy their rights as citizens of a free and fair country.
John Dayal
New Delhi, November 19, 2007
One of these days, the Indian Government will present the Indian Church with a surprise. It depends on the Christian community and its religious and secular leadership if it is to be a pleasant surprise. Or, at its worst, very unpleasant; like many other decisions in the past in Parliament or by the Union and State Governments which have often presented the 25 million strong Christian community in the country with a pungent fait accompli. There are myriad laws, institutions and structures in whose making the community has had no intervention and less say, and which, therefore, ignore, in cold blood or by default, issues and matters which are peculiar to Indian Christians because of the nature of their faith and religious practices, and their demographic dispersal.
I say this with some anguish in what I observe to be a singular Christian absence in three or four or five major discourses recently in the secular space in India.
These discourses have to do with the Civil Society opposition to the Communal Violence prevention Bill moved in Parliament by the Government earlier this year, the setting up of the Prime Minister’s High-powered Committee under former Delhi Chief Justice Rajinder Sachchar, the Plan process, and the drafting of the Civil Society response on Indian’s human rights record which has to be submitted to the newly set up United Nations Human Rights Council soon, and the moves that Government has initiated to set up an Equal Opportunities Commission in the country.
The Church remained silent when the Sachchar committee was set up to merely on the Muslim community instead of all religious minorities. Admittedly, Indian Muslims are highly discriminated against in the devolution of a just development process, and Justice Sachchar has been able to quantify that and prove it by quoting facts and figures.
But how do we know that Dalit Christians, a hefty 60 per cent of all Christians, and Tribal Christians, another 20 per cent or so, do not suffer from similar, or aggravated, development infirmities. There has been little effort even to assess, define and catalogue their crises since independence.
The Christian community has also not been served well by the several national commissions. The National Human Rights Commission correctly says its charter does not cover religious and linguistic minorities because there are separate commissions for them. It is of course not to be forgotten that one of its chairperson – and NHRC chairperson has to be a retired Chief Justice of India – had in his time on the Bench, upheld such a draconian law as POTA, the dreaded Prevention of Terrorism legislation in which scores of Muslims were arrested just because they were Muslims.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes had, till Dr Buta Singh became its chairman, adopted a very hostile attitude towards Dalit Christians – whether the chair was a Congress person or a Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stalwart.
The National Commission for Minorities, barring the brief interlude when Dr James Massey, a Dalit, was the Christian member, has almost always had time servers or political appointees whose interests were anything but relating to the community. Some have been hostile to the community, some have been corrupt, and some have been retired politicians or bureaucrats whose ignorance has been exceeded only by their unconcern. One went to the extent of saying he saw no persecution, because he had never been persecuted. Another was keen to bring the community to its knees before the RSS in the guise of a dialogue.
Little wonder, therefore, that when the Union Cabinet devised the so called Communal Violence prevention Bill, it just did not cover the issues of Christians, and hate crimes and persecution of the micro minority. The Muslims, after their Gujarat pogrom experience, and Sikhs with the 2004 massacres, rightly rejected the CV Bill out of hand because it strengthened the hands of the police without helping the victims of communal violence. The CV prevention Bill did not even understand the persecution of Christians in various parts of India, or the massive hate campaign against the community carried out in tribal belts, villages and even in cities. Sad to say, in the many seminars organised by Civil Society and by Muslim groups and intellectuals, there were hardly any Christians present, and almost no formal representation by Catholic and Protestant hierarchies.
I hope this will not be repeated in the path to the formation, some time in the future, of the Equal Opportunities Commission on the pattern of a similar Commission which has been set up in the United Kingdom by merging all existing Human Rights organisations and commissions which had been set up since the race issues came to the fore in the wake of the massive immigration from India and the Caribbean in the Nineteen Hundred and Sixties.
The chief executive of the British Commission, Dr Kay Hampton, took a series of seminars recently educating Indian Civil Society on the entire gamut of factors and issues relating to this new organisation. Needless to say, while there were Muslim intellectuals and representatives of organisations, there were hardly any Christians in the audience at the seminars. Dr Kay Hampton, by the way, traces her origins to Tamil Nadu though she was born in South Africa and went to London less than two decades ago.
The matter is of some urgency, and of great import to all minorities. The Justice Rajinder Sachchar Committee which studied the socio-economic condition of Muslims had suggested in his report the need for setting up a commission on the lines of the British Equal Opportunities Commission as a watchdog which should be effective in overseeing the implementation of the recommendations.
The Government of India is reportedly keen on implementing the Sachchar Committee report and is understood to have set up a three man committee to study such commissions abroad and look for ways and means to ensure its full implementation. Though a recommendation of a committee which was only looking at the Muslim issue, the Equal Opportunities Commission, if and when it becomes a reality, will of course look at the denial of opportunities to all others discriminated against, presumably ranging from Dalit Christians, Kashmiri Pandits, OBCs, women, the physically and mentally challenged, children and the old.
As Kay Hampton explained at her seminars, the UK Equality Act 2006 gained Royal Assent on February 16th, allowing for the establishment of the new CEHR from October 2007, which will bring together the work of the Disability Rights Commission and Equal Opportunities Commission from October 2007; and that of the Commission for Racial equality by 2009, putting expertise on equality, diversity and human rights in one place. The Act and the commission banning discrimination in service-provision on grounds of race, religion and sexuality. The CEHR will take on all of the powers of the existing Commissions as well as new ones to enforce legislation more effectively and promote equality for all.
The CEHR is required to produce a regular ‘equality health check’ for Britain and to work with individuals, communities, businesses and public services to find new, more effective ways to give everyone in society the chance to achieve their full potential.
The Act introduces a new ‘gender duty’ which will require public bodies to take account of the different needs of men and women to ensure equality of opportunity when preparing policies or providing services. It outlaws discrimination on grounds of religion or belief in providing goods, facilities or services, education or rented accommodation.
The commission -- and I quote Dr Hampton -- will encourage and support the development of a society in which:
• People’s ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination
• There is respect for and protection of each individual’s human rights
• There is respect for the dignity and worth of each individual
• Each individual has an equal opportunity to participate in society, and
• There is mutual respect between groups based on understanding and valuing of diversity and on shared respect for equality and human rights (Clause 3)
… as an independent and influential champion the Commission will seek to
• promote and celebrate a diverse Britain where - there are good relations between communities, and people are not discriminated against because of their race, gender, disability, religion or belief, age or sexual orientation
The Commission will also use its powers and functions to work to achieve equality and human rights for all and promote and encourage good practice and an awareness of rights about equality, diversity and human rights and work to eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment, promote an understanding of the importance of good relations between different groups (especially between different racial and religious groups) and between members of groups and others, monitor the effectiveness of the equality and human rights enactments, identify changes that have taken place in society and the results Britain should aim for in order to achieve the Commission’s vision (Clauses 8 –12) The Equality Act 2006.
To this, the Commission will advise employers and service providers on good practice and the promotion of equality and good relations, conduct inquiries and carry out investigations, provide advice and information on rights and equality laws. campaign on issues affecting the diverse groups in society that can suffer discrimination, make arrangements for conciliation to assist with disputes, assist individuals who believe they have been the victim of unlawful discrimination, provide grants. It will in time work with stakeholders and partners to become a single cohesive force acting for positive change on equality and diversity issues, human rights and good relations and able to influence policy and practice.
An interesting aspect of the British exercise is also to set up standards in appointing leadership and executive staff devoid of political patronage and in a fully accountable manner. Quite unlike the Indian practice.
The talent hunt works on what is called the Nolan principle, a set of guidelines on just what sort of a person is required to head such a unique organisation.
Bishops and other heads of institutions may be interested in the list of seven underpinning Principals of Governance formulated by the Nolan Committee which should apply to all in the public service. These are:
Selflessness: Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other benefits for themselves, their family or their friends.
Integrity: Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.
Objectivity: In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make choices on merit.
Accountability: Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.
Openness: Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.
Honesty: Holders of public office have a duty to declare any private interests relating to their public duties and to take steps to resolve any conflicts arising in a way that protects the public interest.
Leadership: Holders of public office should promote and support these principles by leadership and example.
Responsibility also devolves on us all.
We must take the initiative.
We must let our views, and creative suggestions, made known to the Government even if those in power choose not to invite us for consultations. If for nothing else, then to ensure that the Government of India too follows these seven principals when appointing people to the existing and future commissions meant for our welfare.
To be affective, we will have to have effective strategies of advocacy and political mobilisation, and a thoughtful laity and leadership formation programme. Above all, we must have accurate socio-economic and development data about our community, the sort of data that the Sachchar committee and its brilliant economist member secretary Dr Al-saleh Sharrief have b4en able to garner.
The government cannot be trusted to help us collect and anaylse such data. At one level, it is reluctant to collect data which can prove its own bigotry against religious minorities, or expose 60 years of sustained neglect of entire peoples groups.
The census data is insufficient. The National Sample Surveys seldom touch the Christian horizons. Because of our political marginilisation – made the worse because without Scheduled caste rights, we are also effectively out of the Panchayati Raj system barring a few places in the North East, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – political groups make no effort to even find out the ground reality. It does not matter to them, and does not impact on their political strategies. This is one reason why the struggle of the Dalit Christians has taken such a long time to be resolved. We just do not have the deprivation data that will convince courts and Parliament at a cinch. In fact, it is the other way around. There is all too much ill-informed printed opinion from high church signatories claiming there is no poverty in the Christian community that no Christian suffers from caste prejudice in the wider Indian society.
So if the government will not set up the equivalent of a Sachchar committee to assess the Christian community’s developmental health, the Church and community will have to do it by itself. The Church – and I use the phrase holistically to include Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Cardinals, Archbishops down to the itinerant Independent Pastors and the last sentient Lay person – will have to join forces and find energy and resources for carrying out this process. Such a SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, has never been done in the past. It can wait no longer.
I would like to propose that the Church sets up its own commission. It has the brain power. Out together a group of social and political scientists, demographers, development economists. Use the vast network of parishes, parish priests and mission stations and institutions, to collect data. Crunch that data and publish the report. It will put the government to shame, expose the Planning Commission, Public Sector Banks, even the gerrymandering by Election offices.
It will be a small price to pay if in the process the hierarchy and the Church establishment is also shamed. The last Census, in the very few insights it offered into the innards of the community, showed us the scale of illiteracy amongst women in Tribal areas where the Church ahs been working for a century or more. This study may also show how, despite the large number of institutions it runs, most of them with a shamefully small body of Christian students, faculty and staff, we are not only rapidly becoming redundant in the national development process but, at the same time, are also not being able to raise the group standards of own community, Dalit, tribal, landless labour and the large urban service sector employees in metropolitan towns and state capitals. We remain the waiters, seldom the hotel owners. We are the motor mechanics, seldom the garage owners, and of the group working in the Gulf and other places, just how many of us are engineers and doctors and cyberspace bosses. We remain a service class, not an entrepreneur or leadership group. Honest sweat has its rewards, but our people must have the opportunity to do better.
It is this poverty and disempowerment of the poor, and the shrinking role of the institutional church in development processes [the private sector and Hindu religious organizations are investing far more in education and health, for instance in comparative as well as absolute terms] that makes the Christian community in India now so vulnerable to attacks from right wing religious fundamentalist groups and bigotry in the government and political systems.
We must be able to quantify it and articulate it as and when the Equal Opportunities Commission comes into being, and while waiting for that, we must raise it before existing forums. It is not a matter of mere foresight or due diligence. We are in duty bound to do this for our coming generations who should be able to enjoy their rights as citizens of a free and fair country.
John Dayal
New Delhi, November 19, 2007
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