Christian Persecution India Articles

GCIC updates

2008-10-13T10:46:00.001-07:00

Radicals clean up burnt houses and churches to destroy the proof of attacks on Christians in Orissa.

Monday, 13 October 2008

ORISSA: GCIC sources found out that, another saddest act of Sangh parivar activists have come to notice that in Kandhamal, in the absence of the Christians when they are either in the forests, relief camps or out of Kandhamal now, these radicals have started cleaning up the Christian's burnt, destroyed and broken houses and Churches completely and even digging out the foundations of the same from the ground, filling the pits again and making it a plain surface probably with the following bad intentions.
It is also reported that they have even wiped out, removed the demarcation lines of the Christian farmers cultivated lands and distributed among themselves by now and they are actively still on that job even by forcibly collecting the harvests for which they had not sowed ever.

The intention behind this was;
To acquire those landed properties of Christians by fraudulent means.
ii) To show that there was neither any Church nor any Christian houses before which were attacked and burnt.
iii) To minimise, reduce density of their damages and nature of attack which are coming to the National and International knowledge.
iv) To destroy the proofs of their attacks which monuments certainly do testify now of their brutality, hatred only against the innocent Christians which establishes their motives of attack.
v) To grab the properties of Christians, and I am also worried and afraid that tomorrow they may construct Hindu temples on the lands where Churches or Christian houses were there which have been their regular practice throughout the Country and can not be ruled out.

Decomposed dead body recovered and two suicide deaths reported at Kandhmal, Orissa

Sunday October 12, 2008

ORISSA: A decomposed dead body was recovered by the Police at Simanbadi village under Daringbadi PS, in a well inside the PH Department Rest House on October 12.
The dead body was of a tribal namely Birupakhya Majhi. He was a daily labourer and staying in a village called Patangi under Birikuti Panchayat.

Two other suicide deaths are also reported from our GCIC sources in Kandhamal Yesterday. Both of them are women whose names are; Mrs. Rajni Digal (30) of Jarigipada village under Pabingia Panchayat and Phiringia PS/Block and Miss Manasi Mallik (16) of Khajuripada, Phulbani.
The CM of Orissa has gone to New Delhi for two days to attend the National Integration Council Meeting called by the PM of India to deliberate on security for minorities and communal amity. Few electronic Medias have taken bytes as GCIC's comment on this issue.

Protest rally verses peace rally in Kandhamal, Orissa

Monday, 13 October 2008

PHULBANI: Main opposition Congress on Sunday organised a peace rally in this district headquarters town of Kandhamal district and appealed to people belonging to all sections of society to restore peace in the region.
According to the News paper The Hindu, more than 2,000 party workers from different parts of Kandhamal and adjoining areas participated in the peace rally, which started from near the Mahatma Gandhi statue.
Holding placards with messages of non-violence and peace written on them, the men and women went round the town seeking restoration of communal harmony.

Pradesh Congress Committee president Jayadev Jena led the peace march. A number of senior leaders of the party including former Railway Minister K. C. Lenka, former Minister Jagannath Patnaik, and former Union Ministers Srikanta Jena and Bhakta Charan Das also participated.

Many leaders and workers of the party’s women and youth wings also participated in the peace march.

Meanwhile, former Minister and leader of Samruddha Odisha Panchanan Kanungo blamed the State government for not taking action against those converting Christians into Hinduism in the aftermath of the killing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati.

Mr. Kanungo, who participated in peace rallies organised by different opposition parties in Phulbani during the past two days, also demanded those who had put up flags on damaged churches should also be brought to book, he added.

In a statement, SUCI leader Sambhunath Naik said the situation in Kandhamal was yet to become normal as sporadic incidents of violence were continuing in the interior areas.

Pointing out that situation was not likely to improve in the near future, Mr. Naik suggested that peace committees should be formed at village-level and later similar committees could be constituted in block and district level.In another development, activists of Swami
Lakshmanananda Saraswati Shradhanjali Samiti staged a demonstration in Bhubaneswar demanding immediate action against those who allegedly hatched a conspiracy to eliminate the Swami.

On the same day, thousands of Hindu tribal women consisting a large number lodged a strong protest against indiscriminate arrests (which they call) by the Police at places called Sarangagada, Gochhapada, and Lubasingh of Phiringia block of Kandhamal demanding immediate release of their men who are Sangh Parivar activists. They blocked the Police station of Sarangagada. These tribal women conducted this rally against the State Government and District Administration. The protest rallies organized everyday by the Sangh
Parivar through their tribal lady wings is obviously spreading hatred and tension by delaying the process of Peace restoration works which are becoming futile for 268 times in the District.

Their men attacked the Christians and accordingly victims lodged FIR against them and when Police started arresting them after pressure from all corners, these women instigated by the Sangh Parivar Supremos and masterminds started to hinder in all the active, constructive works of the State Government and the District. Administration are creating tension and division in the society to damage the peace process, security system (they strongly demand withdrawal of CRPF through their tribal leader Lambodhar Kanhar and during these protest rallies).
It has been observed that anytime any attempt is made for uniting people from all sections of the society in Kandhamal through Peace process, Sangh Parivar spoils, shatters the same which is really a matter of concern now when everybody are craving for Peace and social harmony.

Please contact GCIC for details. www. persecution.in

Devil's advocate Interview of Naveen Patnaik by Karan Thapar

2008-10-13T09:24:00.001-07:00

Please click here to go to the IBN site to view the video and for the transcript

Has the Orissa government failed to protect the Christian community? Karan Thapar asked this to Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

Karan Thapar: Nearly 50 days have passed since the killing of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and yet Christians remain in fear for their lives. There are still reports of people being killed and houses being destroyed. Are you unable or unwilling to restore order?

Naveen Patnaik: As a matter of fact for the last eight or nine days there have been no violent incidents in Kandhamal district at all.

Karan Thapar: But they have moved to the next Boudh district. On Wednesday, 10 houses were destroyed and on October 3 a hundred houses were burnt down.

Naveen Patnaik: Well, it wasn’t as many numbers as that. Let me explain to you that in the forested area next to Kandhamal—this has just happened virtually on the border of the Kandhamal district (and) into the district of Boudh.

Kandhamal district is a hilly area, a heavily forested area and difficult to police at normal times because the villages are small, remote and far from each other.

There has also been a very long-standing problem between tribals of the area and scheduled castes and other persons.

Karan Thapar: Your critics say that you are using sociology as an excuse. No matter what the ethnic divisions maybe, the killing of Christians—some would call it a massacre—is simply not justified. You have not stopped it.

Naveen Patnaik: I can only tell you that it is most unfortunate that this communal violence has taken place. Of course, it has to condemned by all of us.

Karan Thapar: Can you say you have done everything you could to control the violence or will you concede that mistakes have been made and perhaps at times you have not been as tough as you should have been?

Naveen Patnaik: The communal violence began after the night of August 23 when the Swamiji was killed. Before that there has been a long-standing ethnic divide between two castes in that district.

Karan Thapar: Absolutely. Let’s take the events as they happened after the night of August 23.

Within 24 hours you permitted (Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader) Praveen Togadia to take a funeral procession of the Swamiji’s body through almost 150 km of your state, knowing that this would inflame passions and provoke. This is exactly what it did. Can you concede that was a mistake?

Naveen Patnaik: Firstly, Togadia was in no procession at all. The Swamiji and he are both members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. He (Togadia) went just to attend the funeral and as far as the procession is concerned, action has been taken at the district level. The Superintendent of Police has been suspended.

Karan Thapar: But the point is that procession was almost a replica of what happened in Gujarat in 2002. You knew that from experience that it would inflame passions and lead to violence. Why was that procession not stopped? Why was it permitted in the first place?

Naveen Patnaik: I repeat again that the Swamiji was killed on the night of August 23. The procession began—it was a very, very volatile situation. You do understand that we had asked the Centre for many more forces, which didn’t come till five days later.

But whatever mistakes were made as far as the procession is concerned, it could have turned much more violent and action was taken against certain people concerned.

Karan Thapar: Your Deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha speaking on the Network18 programme ‘War of Words’ said perhaps permitting that procession was a misjudgement. Would you concede as much?

Naveen Patnaik: Action has been taken against certain people for that procession to have taken place and let me tell you that as far as the violence is concerned more than a thousand people have been arrested—whether they are individuals, belonging to groups or even to fundamentalist organisations.

Karan Thapar: Many of those arrests have actually happened in the last week and not earlier.

Naveen Patnaik: I am sorry but you are wrong there. Arrests have been taking place from the very beginning of the violence.

Karan Thapar: You are also the Home Minister of the state, which means that you are doubly responsible for the police. How do you account for the fact that perhaps for the first three-four days police stood by, permitting the VHP to attack Christians.

Even when an Orissa bandh (shutdown) was declared, you may not have had sufficient force from outside the state but you didn’t even redeploy the force you had within Orissa.

Naveen Patnaik: The forces were redeployed as quickly as they could be. You must remember it was an all-state bandh for that particular bandh on August 25, but we did deploy the forces. As much (forces) as we could keep in Kandhamal district we did.

Karan Thapar: Did you move forces to Kandhamal?

Naveen Patnaik: Of course we did—very much so. As far as the state government is concerned we did move forces. If we had adequate forces why do you think we were requesting the Central Government, asking them to send forces. Which they did after five days.

Karan Thapar: Let me give you an example of what people consider the incompetence of the Orissa Police force. ‘The Hindu’ reports that handwritten eyewitness accounts of the killings naming the alleged killers were sent by registered post to Balguda police station and the envelopes were returned with the following messages written on them: ‘addressee refused, have returned back’.

What sort of police force hands back such evidence and such material?

Naveen Patnaik: Let me tell you as far as the violence is concerned, the Crime Branch of the Orissa Police is investigating all those matters and we have also called for a judicial enquiry. All those who are found guilty stringent action will be taken against them.

Karan Thapar: The point is that Sabyasachi Panda, head of the local Naxalite force, who has admitted that he was responsible for the killing of Swami Laxmananda, has also revealed that the People’s Liberation Army left behind two letters at the Swamiji’s ashram accepting responsibility and that your government suppressed the letters.

Those letters could have defused the situation. Why did you suppress them?

Naveen Patnaik: That is absolutely incorrect. Why should the police suppress the letters? There is a police investigation and there is a judicial enquiry. Three persons have been arrested for the killing of the Swamiji. The Crime Branch is investigating the matter; let them get to their finding. I am sure they will get to the truth.

Karan Thapar: You are laying a lot of stress on the process the police is going through. Let me then ask you a simple question about the nun who was raped in Nuagoan (village in Kandhamal). How do you account for the fact that for one month your police took no action? For 38 days they were incapable of collecting the medical report.

It seems to the world outside that your state acted when ‘The Hindu’ had broken the story.

Naveen Patnaik: As far as the crime against the nun is concerned, it is a shameful and barbaric crime. The moment we came to know about this the officer-in-charge (of the local police station) was suspended. Persons have been arrested for that crime.

Karan Thapar: You say the moment you came to know about it, but forgive me Chief Minister that is not true. The Superior General of the Missionaries wrote you a letter within 24 hours pointing out what had happened. The Archbishop of Cuttack says he personally met you and told you. (CPI-M leader) Brinda Karat has gone on record to say that she told you. You yourself, therefore, knew almost one or two days after the rape itself.

Naveen Patnaik: Let me clarify that the Archbishop has not spoken to me after the events began in Kandhamal after August 23.

Karan Thapar: What about Sister Nirmala (Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity), Brinda Karat?

Naveen Patnaik: Sister Nirmala’s letter is much later, and after that appropriate steps have been taken. Brinda Karat spoke to me about victims of the riots.

Karan Thapar: Are you saying to me that the claim made by these people in the Press is incorrect?

Naveen Patnaik: Let me be quite clear: the Archbishop has not met me at all. Brinda Karat did meet me and she told me of the problems of the victims in the violence-hit area.

Karan Thapar: But not about the raped nun?

Naveen Patnaik: Not about the raped nun. She spoke about the problems of the people there. I immediately, within half an hour, sent the local Collector to see to their problems.

Sister Nirmala’s letter came much later. In fact Sister Nirmala met me and she said she had faith in the government and in the steps she had taken. I have a letter from her but it came much later (after the rape).

Karan Thapar: Let me put to you what the church seems to have concluded about you. Two weeks ago, on this programme, the Archbishop of Delhi had this to say about you: Naveen Patnaik has not done even the minimum that is required to protect citizens.

In other words he is accusing you of almost dereliction of duty.

Naveen Patnaik: This is the first time I am hearing what you are saying about the Archbishop of Delhi. Let me make my point of view clear. From the very start of these horrible and shameful incidents of communal violence my government has taken whatever steps it possibly could to bring normalcy and peace back to that disturbed district. For the last week or more there has been normalcy and it has been brought under control.

Karan Thapar: You say you have taken every step to restore normalcy. In fact the truth is that reconversions to Hinduism, a flagrant violation of your own state laws, are openly happening in Orissa today and your government is doing nothing to stop them. Why?

Naveen Patnaik: We are against anything which is illegal.

Karan Thapar: But why are they not being stopped?

Naveen Patnaik: Registers are going to the victims—to sign whatever complains they may have.

Karan Thapar: Chief Minister, you are taking a very technical responsibility to a situation which requires urgent action. You are talking of registers—the newspapers are widely aware of the reconversions. You seem to be unaware of them.

Naveen Patnaik: Obviously, we have heard of that and we will do everything legal to stop all of this.

Karan Thapar: How quickly will you act?

Naveen Patnaik: We have taken steps. You do understand that there is lot of force in Kandhamal district to maintain law and order.

Karan Thapar: Do you know what they say in Delhi? They say Naveen Patnaik is taking sides, he seems to be siding with Bajrang Dal and VHP against the Christians which is why he is talking in technical terms. They say he talks of excuses and delays, he talks of conditions of roads which don't let him send the police force to Kandhamal, but he doesn't act.

Naveen Patnaik: When you say that, it’s completely incorrect because among the thousand people, roughly a thousand people who have been arrested, many of them belong to the organisations that you have just named.

Karan Thapar: You mean the Bajrang Dal and the VHP?

Naveen Patnaik: Yes.

Karan Thapar: The law of the land and Constitution continued to be violated in Orissa. If that violation continues in Orissa, and if you are not capable of stopping it, why shouldn't your government be dismissed?

Naveen Patnaik: We are making every effort to stop it. I don't want to make comparisons but there have been violent incidents and communal incidents in other parts of India. I don't see why the government of Orissa should be targeted.

Karan Thapar: Let me put it like this. You face perhaps the most serious challenge of the eight years and seven months you have been Chief Minister. Are you honestly up to it?

Naveen Patnaik: Let me tell you another thing. In the eight years and seven months you have mentioned, there have been two communal incidents in my state. One at the end of the last year in Kandhamal district and again to be repeated in Kandhamal now.

I told you earlier there are ethnic problems which took a communal turn after the killing of the Swami.

Karan Thapar: Before Kandhamal you were considered a modern, urbane and secular Chief Minister. After Kandhamal you are either considered incompetent or a puppet in the hands of the Bajrang Dal.

Naveen Patnaik: I would consider those points of view inaccurate. I have told you how the Government has tried to handle the situation, both strongly and with a great deal of sympathy and humanity as far as the victims are concerned.

Karan Thapar: You say you acted with sympathy. The Archbishop of Cuttack says the statement you issued after visiting Khandamal didn’t even mention a word about the Christians killed, the thousands of homes that have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people who have been rendered homeless and are living in refugee camps.

You didn’t have a word to say about them, he says.

Naveen Patnaik: Let me clarify that I went to Kandhamal for a very short while after these incidents began. I visited burnt homes, damaged churches and I went to refugee camps.

Karan Thapar: But why was there sympathy for them?

Naveen Patnaik: Of course there is sympathy for them, and I have made that clear from the very first day. Since August 23 I have been appealing for peace among the people. I have been as humane as one ought to be.

Karan Thapar: You know what the Christian community say about you. They say if there was one leader in the NDA who they thought would protect Christians it was Naveen Patnaik. They thought you have Western education and a broad Catholic outlook.

But in letting down the Christians you have actually betrayed your own values.

Naveen Patnaik: I feel I have not let down anyone in my state, whichever community they belong to. Every bone in my body is secular and I don’t think any of those bones have been damaged.

Karan Thapar: Your critics say you are scared of taking action against the Bajrang Dal and the VHP because he needs the Sangh Parivar’s support in the elections.

He has probably done a Faustian pact; he is deliberately turning a blind eye to what they are doing because he needs their support in the elections.

Naveen Patnaik: The BJD and the BJP have had an alliance for more than 10 years. In that period there have been a number of elections and we have remained the majority party by far.

Karan Thapar: But you do not have majority on your own.

Naveen Patnaik: You do understand the mathematics of seat sharing, but we are sanguine with our victories in any election.

Karan Thapar: Many people today are comparing you to Narendra Modi. Many people today are comparing Kandhamal to the Gujarat massacre of 2002, can you accept that?

Naveen Patnaik: I think that comparison cannot be made rationally by anyone.

Karan Thapar: Have you let yourself down? The world knows you as the modern, secular people. Today, as the Chief Minister, you are emerging as someone who is conniving with the Bajrang Dal to let the killings of Christians continue.

Have you let yourself down?

Naveen Patnaik: I have to repeat to you again that people, after these violent incidents, from that organisation have been arrested. My government is trying to bring peace and tranquillity back to the troubled area and will continue to work towards that. What some people may believe I cannot help that. My job is to see that peace, security and progress remain in the state.

Karan Thapar: Chief Minister, a pleasure talking to you.

Naveen Patnaik: Thank you.

Conversion Business - Excellent article by Khushwant Singh

2008-10-06T02:56:00.001-07:00

Recent incidents of violence and vandalism against Christians and their churches deserve to be condemned unreservedly. They have blackened the fair face of Mother India and ruined the reputation of Hindus being the most religiously tolerant people in the world. At the same time, we must take a closer look at people who convert from one faith to another.
To start with, let it be understood that these days there are no forced conversions anywhere in the world. India is no exception. Those who assert that the poor, innocent and ignorant of India are being forced to accept Christianity are blatant liars. A few, very few educated and well-to-do men and women convert to another faith when they do not find solace in the faith of their ancestors. Examples are to be found in America and Europe of men and women of substance turning from Judaism and Christianity to Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism.
There are also men and women who convert to the faith of those they wish to marry. We have plenty of cases of Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh inter-marriages. However, the largest number of converts come from communities discriminated against. The outstanding example was that of Dalit leader Bhimrao Ambedkar who led his Mahar community to embrace Buddhism because they were discriminated against by upper caste Hindus. This is also true of over 90 per cent of Indian Muslims whose ancestors being lower caste embraced Islam which gave them equal status. That gives lie to the often-repeated slander that Islam made converts by the sword.
An equally large number of people converted out of gratitude. They were neglected, ignorant and poor. When strangers came to look after them, opened schools and hospitals for them, taught them, healed them and helped them to stand on their own feet to hold their heads high, they felt grateful towards their benefactors. Most of them were Christian missionaries who worked in remote villages and brought hope to the lives of people who were deprived of hope.
To this day, Christian missionaries run the best schools, colleges and hospitals in our country. They are inexpensive and free of corruption. They get converts because of the sense of gratitude they generate. Can this be called forcible conversion? Why don’t the great champions of Hinduism look within their hearts and find out why so many are disenchanted by their pretensions of piety? Let them first set their own houses in order, purge the caste system out of Hindu society and welcome with open arms all those who wish to join them.
No one will then convert from Hinduism to another religion.

Vatican: The Persecution in Orissa, India

2008-05-28T14:53:00.001-07:00

By Giorgio Bernardelli
5/19/2008

Chiesa

"Why does no one in the West raise his voice about what is happening in Orissa?"

ROMA (Chiesa) - "In the village, the climate between us and the Hindus had always been good. We invited them to our celebrations, and we participated in theirs. But now we are all afraid." Fr. Santosh Kumar Singh, a young priest of the archdiocese of Chuttack and Bhubaneswar, is talking about his Baminigam.
He is talking about a village like so many others in this area of eastern India. A group of houses in the forest that, all of a sudden, has been turned into the epicenter of the strongest wave of anti-Christian violence in recent years.
It is the story of what happened here in Orissa at Christmas. With the raids by the Hindu fanatics of the RSS, who left behind seven dead and hundreds of homes, churches, schools, and clinics burned in the district of Kandhamal. And in a climate of intimidation that – several months later – is still palpable.
Again at Palm Sunday, for example, in the village of Tyiangia, a crowd incited by the usual characters gathered shouting anti-Christian slogans. Violence was avoided only because the pastor decided to cancel the procession.
Everything began in Baminigam on December 24, Christmas Eve. "Do you want to know how it really happened?" Fr. Santosh asks immediately. Telling the story is important to him, because there are several reconstructions of the events.
And the one that appeared in the Indian newspapers identifies the spark in the aggression against the swami Laxmananda Saraswati, a Hindu holy man linked to the RSS who travels around Orissa to " bring back to their origins" the tribals who have converted to Christianity.
"That's not what happened," rebuts Fr. Santosh. "It all started when, on the morning of December 24, our permission to celebrate Christmas in the town square was revoked. Our stallkeepers arrived and were told that they had to go back home. There must have been some tension as well. But two hundred men armed with clubs suddenly emerged from the forest, and began to destroy and burn everything."
The violence continued for four days. It was fostered by the inexplicable delay in the intervention of the security forces. The Christians were forced to flee into the forest in order to survive, while their homes continued to burn. There remained in the forest for days and nights, in the cold, eating what they were able to find. Until, finally, the local authorities set up tent encampments. And in the district of Kandhamal, a calm returned full of tension and of serious doubts.
"We had realized what was about to happen," recounts Raphael Cheenath, the archbishop of Chuttack-Bhubaneswar, whose territory includes the district of Kandhamal. " On December 22, we had clearly told the authorities that we were afraid of suffering violence at Christmas. They had promised us protection. Instead, they did absolutely nothing."
I met Archbishop Cheenath in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa. The district of Kandhamal is about five or six hours away by car, in the forest. And yet during those days, the violence had arrived all the way to the archbishop's residence, with a Molotov cocktail thrown against the entrance.
And it is no mystery to anyone that the meetings of the RSS in which Christians are identified as the enemy are also held in that city of 800,000 inhabitants. But, more than the clandestine secrets, it is the public decisions that worry the archbishop, and the ambiguous attitude of the local government, headed by prime minister Naveen Patnaik, an ally of the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party.
"In February," the archbishop continues, "right here in Orissa there was an attack on the part of Maoist guerrillas. They attacked a police barracks and killed some of the officers. A state of emergency was declared immediately: the military arrived en masse in a few hours. At Christmas, instead – when it was the Christians who were suffering violence in the district of Kandhamal – It took four days. Why this difference in the reaction? ".
But there is also the problem of assistance for the victims, which is still unresolved. "They do not allow our organizations to bring assistance," Archbishop Cheenath charges. "There are people there who have lost everything: their homes were burned, and they were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The government has promised to take care of them, but the help does not come. And the population continues to suffer."
Together with the houses, in the district of Kandhamal, the work of 30 years has been completely destroyed: schools, clinics, centers of assistance. Even the house of the Missionaries of Charity, the male branch of the order of Mother Teresa of Calcutta – which shelters lepers and tuberculosis patients – was attacked. Everything was left to burn for hours, while the Christians were fleeing into the forest. And now school is held under the tents.
"Misereor" – the international solidarity organization of the German Church – has come forward to help with reconstruction. But the government of Orissa is not giving them permission. For 42 days, the archbishop himself was refused permission to visit the stricken communities.
"Officially, " comments Archbishop Cheenath, "they tell us that this is for security reasons. But the truth is that they want to block the presence of Christian organizations. The Hindu extremists accuse us of carrying out conversions through aid operations. But this is a false accusation: everyone saw this in Orissa in 1999, when there was a tremendous cyclone. Two thousand of our volunteers were mobilized. And they helped everyone, without distinction." In order to resolve the situation, the Indian Supreme Court had to intervene on April 8, with a judgment that declared the ban illegitimate.
In looking at this big city, so much like so many others, it is difficult to believe that it is a haven for fanatics. "We know that many Hindus are against the violence, " the archbishop confirms." Privately, they have even expressed solidarity with us. But they are afraid of speaking out. And so this campaign of hatred conducted by the fanatics is producing results. They are depicting us as enemies, and saying openly that they want to destroy us."
"But where do you think that all this hatred against Christians comes from?", I ask him.
"I am convinced," the archbishop replies, "that there is a hidden cause behind the religious extremism, one of a social nature. The real problem is not the conversions, but the work that the Christians in Orissa have done over the past 140 years on behalf of the tribals and the Dalits, the lowest in the caste system. Before, there were like slaves. Now, at least some of them study in our schools, start enterprises in the villages, assert their rights. And those – even in the India of the economic boom – who want to keep intact the ancient caste divisions, are afraid that they will become too strong. The Orissa of today is a laboratory. At stake is the future of millions of Dalits and tribals living all over the country."
Orissa is like the new laboratory for the fundamentalists: so many say this over and over again in the Christian community. Because it is true that this is one of the poorest states in the subcontinent. But also here in Bhubaneswar, something is starting to happen. You leave the archbishop's residence and plunge into the Big Bazar, the brand new American-style shopping center. The airport – like all of the Indian airports – is in expansion. And in the city, office buildings are multiplying.
"It seems incredible, but when we opened twenty years ago, it was still jungle around here," recounts Fr. E. A. Augustine, director of the Xavier Institute of Management, one of the city's most respected institutions. It is an economics faculty with an interesting history: it is the result of an agreement between the government of Orissa and the local Jesuit province.
So even in a state like Orissa, where an anti- conversion law is in effect, there is no difficulty in naming a public entity after Saint Francis Xavier. Because in India, the Xavier School is synonymous with quality everywhere. "Everyone wants to imitate our structures, " continues Fr. Augustine, " they acknowledge their quality. Apart from some fanatics, they respect us. But we do not want to be a center for elites. For example, and we also organize courses in rural management, specifically designed for the development of villages."
And then – also here in Bhubaneswar – there is the other face of the Jesuit presence. It is that of the Human Life Center, with its popular courses in spoken English to help those who have emigrated to the city from rural areas. Or the courses in tailoring, typing, computers, to provide opportunities for those who otherwise would have none. And then there are the seven schools opened right in the slums of Bhubaneswar. Because change must arrive there as well.
The impression is that in the end, the real problem lies here. The violence in Orissa is not simply the inheritance of a past that India is struggling to leave behind it. The clash concerns the present, and above all the future of the country. It concerns a social situation in which those who for centuries have remained at the margins are beginning to come forward. And so those who – on the contrary – want to maintain the status quo are playing the card of the threat to identity.
There is an important electoral appointment in view: in May of 2009, general elections will be held in India. The BJP – the Hindu nationalist party, defeated in 2004 by the alliance of the Congress Party and the left – is aiming at a comeback. And – as the violence against the Muslims in Gujarat demonstrated in 2002 – inciting tension among religious groups is the most effective way to consolidate the ranks.
"It is no accident," maintains Fr. Jimmy Dhabby, director of the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, "that this violence against Christians erupted a few weeks after the reconfirmation of Narendra Modi, a leading member of the BJP, as head of the state of Gujarat. And that it happened in Orissa, a state where voting for the local government will be held in 2009."
It is a game that – despite the events of Christmas – is moving forward in Bhubaneswar. It's enough to open the local edition of the newspaper "The Indian Express" on any day of the week to find statements like this, from the leader of the RSS K.S Sudar-shan: "There are many threats hanging over the nation: the violence of the Maoists, the Islamic jihad, the conversions of the Christian missionaries. We must be united in order to react. Do not wait for someone else to do it for you."
Even the investigation opened by the government of Orissa to shed light on what happened at Christmas is proceeding according to rather questionable methods. "After months without any news whatsoever," John Dayal, secretary general of the All India Christian Council, charged on his blog, "the judge handling the case arrived without warning in the district of Kandhamal. He questioned the sisters and the priests. They were astounded when they were asked: Have you converted anyone here?" As if the object of the investigation were the activity of the Christians, and not the violence committed by the Hindu fanatics.
Another worrying chapter is that of compensation. "So far no official indications have been provided," Dayal continues, "but we have read in the newspapers that while schools, hostels, and clinics will be able to receive a contribution of 200 thousand rupees (about 5 thousand dollars), the churches and convents will be excluded from anycompensation. If this were true, it would be not only surprising, but also offensive. The main targets of the attacks were precisely the churches and convents. Excluding them makes no sense."
This is the atmosphere now in Orissa. "An explosive situation is lurking beneath the ashes," says Hemanl Naik, of the Orissa Dalit Adivasi Action Net. "For some time the Hindu nationalists have been campaigning to 'reconvert' the tribal Christians. Are these not violations of the anti-conversion laws? Why do they not apply to them?"
After so many people were killed, so many homes and Christian churches burned, one question must be asked. What is the difference with respect to the Islamic violence in other regions, for which – rightly – so much space is reserved in the media? And why does no one in the West raise his voice about what is happening in Orissa? The protest of the Christians in front of parliament in New Delhi at Easter did not appear in our newspapers.
The reply of Archbishop Cheenath is a bitter one: "The India of today is a market sought after by everyone," he explains. "There are strong economic interests, and everyone wants to have good relations with us. In this kind of situation, no one cares about what is happening to the minorities."
It is an unsettling cry of pain that is coming from the Christians of Orissa today.

A dangerous mix

2008-02-08T02:41:00.001-08:00

What does it take to create a communal flashpoint? Some answers are obvious: a precipitating incident, simmering tensions between two religious communities and initial administrative failure to cope with the flare-up. But records and documents relating to the disturbances in Orissa’s Kandhamal district show that, in addition to these, some venerable institutions of the country are also inadvertently responsible for creating tensions, which have been rising since 2002: the legislature, the judiciary and the executive have all contributed to aggravating the situation in Kandhamal at some stage or other, until mindless violence gripped the region in the last week of December and continued for days.

The communal clash was triggered on December 24 by a trivial event at Brahmanigaon. The Christians wanted to put up a Christmas tree and a few decorative gates on a public ground where Durga Puja is traditionally held. The Hindus refused to allow them, and a violent clash between the two communities occurred. Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, a revered Hindu religious leader of the area, hearing about the clash was rushing to the spot, when en route he was allegedly attacked. With that, communal fire engulfed the district.

The date of the first clashes, Christmas eve, is significant, but much more so is the fact that this was also the eve of a two-day bandh called by a section of the Kui community, the Kui Samaj Samanwaya Samiti. Why was the bandh called? The samiti, comprising Hindu tribals, was protesting against the granting of Scheduled Tribe status to Kui-speaking Pana Christians. And therein hangs a tale.

Until 2002, the Kuis were included in the list of Scheduled Castes of Orissa. But with the passing of a presidential order that year (which later became an act — the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Orders [Amendment] Act), their status was changed to that of a Scheduled Tribe. Referring to the Kuis, the official press release from the Ministry of Law and Justice said: “The act seeks to amend the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 and the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order 1950, made by the President in terms of the provisions of Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution, to effect transfer of communities from the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs) to that of the list of Scheduled Tribes (STs) as they had been wrongly included in the list of Scheduled Castes whereas they belong to Scheduled Tribes category.”

But the same presidential order, which classified the Kuis as STs, also referred to Panas, who also speak the Kui dialect, as a Scheduled Caste who should not be given ST status. Taradutt, then Orissa’s commissioner, in a clarifying note, wrote, “Pana, Pano, Buna Pana and Desua Pana, which have been specified as a Scheduled Caste, cannot be shown as Kui, a Scheduled Tribe.”

Despite this, the Panas, because they spoke Kui, preferred to believe that they too were now STs. What difference did it make? A good number of the Panas are Christians, all of them converts to Christianity. As SC Christians, they are not eligible for the benefits of affirmative action, reservation of jobs and seats in educational institutions being prime among them. But as ST Christians, they would be, since all tribals enjoy these benefits, irrespective of religion. But any such benefit extended to them is deeply resented by the Hindu Kuis, who fear that there will be more claimants for the limited benefits they enjoy.

A tussle in the Orissa High Court has also compounded the problem. The Kui Janakalyan Sangha moved court seeking ST status for all Kui speakers. In its judgment in July, 2007, the High Court directed the government to “look into the matter and make necessary correction of the Record of Rights in accordance with the presidential order of 2002”. This seemed to suggest that the court had upheld the organisation’s claim.

But soon after, two locals went to the High Court again, appealing to it to ‘recall’ the earlier order. In September, 2007, the court decreed that if the concerned authorities felt Panas should be categorised as SC and not ST, there was no need to make any changes in the Record of Rights!

It all hinges on that ‘if’ and tensions remain.

Soumyajit Pattnaik is Coordinating Editor, Hindustan Times, Bhubaneswar

www.hindustantimes.com

Christians under attack

2008-01-09T21:12:00.001-08:00

Thu, 2008-01-10 02:36

By Tukoji R. Pandit - Syndicate Features

For a country that swears by secularism attacks on the minority communities is a matter of deep concern. The outside world cares little if these attacks are sporadic or frequent. For the world it matters even less if the offence against the minorities comes from the state or a small organised section of fundamentalists among the majority community, even if that is true in most cases.

The history of Hindu-Muslim clashes is old and looks intractable. Though few and far between, there have been Hindu-Sikh clashes. And in recent years the Christian community has also been subjected to frequent attacks in a number of states. It hardly lessens the guilt that the clashes are more or less confined to small tribal belts in one or more states. The crimes against Christians have included murder, arson and rape with the law enforcing agencies unable to take preventive action despite intelligence warnings of impending trouble.

Christianity in India is nearly as old as the religion itself. The oppressive caste system in the majority community was one of the factors that led to its expansion in India over the centuries. The community has a high percentage of literacy and is known to be peaceful and docile with no history of enmity with other communities.

Orissa had shocked much of India and the outside world in 1999 when a 58-year old Australian missionary, who had worked among leprosy sufferers for 34 years, and his two sons aged 10 and 8 were burnt alive by a Bajrang Dal mob, led by Dara Singh who saw his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment even as he refuses to express any regrets for what he did.

More shocking was the effort of the BJP-led NDA government of the time ruling at the centre not to take a serious note of the crime because the perpetrators belonged to the Sangh Parivar to which the dominant party in the ruling coalition owed allegiance. One union minister in the coalition, a Christian to boot, appeared eager to dilute the allegations against the Bajrang Dal. The then prime minister tried to sidestep the issue by saying that the matter needed a national debate; a formula that he wanted applied to Gujarat too. He later went on to claim that reducing communal violence was one of the great achievements of his government!

The Orissa incident was condemned worldwide, much to the embarrassment of the country though not the Sangh Parivar. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the NDA government of failing to prevent violence against Christians and compounding that lapse by ‘exploiting’ communal tensions for ‘political ends’. In a 37-page report, it said that attacks on Christians had increased ‘significantly after the BJP came to power (at the centre) in 1998’.

The BJP-led government at the centre has since gone but that has apparently not reduced the tension between the Hindu fundamentalists and Christians in the tribal belts of Orissa as well as some nearby states in eastern and central India. With nearly 95 percent of its population Hindu, the minorities constitute a very small number of Orissa’s population. Even among the scheduled tribes in the state, over 88 percent are Hindus and only a little over 7 percent are Christians.

Attacks on such tiny population in one state cannot be justified on any ground. The entire tribal belt in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgrah and Gujarat, where Hindu-Muslim tensions have taken a dangerous turn in recent years, is equally afflicted by Hindu-Christian tensions. Rajasthan is another state to witness Christian bashing and not just in remote villages but also in some of the big towns.

If the Sangh Parivar is to be believed proselytiser priests are at the root of the clashes with the Christians. The Christians deny the charge that they offer inducements or force the largely illiterate but poor and neglected people in the tribal belts to convert. There is no justification for use of force or even any kind of inducement to convert a person. But by the same token ‘re-conversion’ can also be faulted. Several Indian states, Orissa among them, have laws that ban forcible conversions. How many times have acts of ‘forcible’ conversions been brought to the notice of police?

But assuming that even the police cannot altogether prevent conversions that result out of ‘force’ or some allurement, there is a more important related aspect to the proselytising controversy. Even the Sangh Parivar says that almost all the cases of ‘forcible’ conversion are reported from among the Adivasis who are among the most backward. The booming economy has not made much difference to their lot. They are not considered part of the mainstream and they hardly command any respect from the caste-ridden society.

If anyone or any group is really concerned about the Adivasis they should be really emulating the Christian missionaries in reaching out to them, spreading education and attending to their sick and hungry. It is only in the last few years that the Sangh Parivar has tried to reach out to the Adivasis but with a political agenda—wean them away from rivals and enlist them as supporters.

The Sangh Parivar may have opened schools in the tribal belt of a few states but it is yet to match the missionaries’ efforts in opening health care centres. No Sangh Parivar member has, for instance, rendered the kind of service to the lepers in Orissa’s Adivasi belt that Graham Staines, the Australian missionary killed in Orissa in 1999, did?

If Hindu fundamentalists are really concerned about forcible conversion they have to adopt a two-pronged strategy to stop it. Give the poor their self-respect and meet their needs for some of the basic facilities like schools and hospitals—and jobs.

Unprovoked attacks on the Christian community whether in a remote village or in towns will not serve any purpose other than defaming the country and weakening its roots.

- Syndicate Feature -

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Rally against Christians in Keshkal

2007-12-04T23:02:00.000-08:00

Anti–minority bias in the Indian Police

2007-10-30T03:21:00.001-07:00

“The response of police to appeals from desperate victims, particularly Muslims, was cynical and utterly indifferent. On occasions, the response was that they were unable to leave the appointed post; on others, the attitude was that one Muslim killed was one Muslim less...Police officers and men, particularly at the junior level, appeared to have an in–built bias against the Muslims which was evident in their treatment of the suspected Muslims and Muslim victims of riots. The treatment given was harsh and brutal and , on occasions, bordering on the inhuman...The bias of policemen was seen in the active connivance of police constables with the rioting Hindu mobs, on occasions, with their adopting the role of passive on–lookers on occasions, and, finally, their lack of enthusiasm in registering offenses against Hindus even when the accused was clearly identified and post-haste classifying the cases in ‘A’ (True but not detected) summary”.

— Report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission on the Mumbai riots of 1992–1993

“This commission of inquiry has cited more than half a dozen instances where Muslim religious places adjoining police lines or police stations were attacked or damaged. The argument advanced by the police officers that because they were busy quelling riots at various other places, these police stations were shorn of adequate strength and hence these attacks on religious places could not be punished, did not impress the Commission. It has made this observation because not a single case of damage to a Hindu place of worship near a police station was reported to the Commission.”

— Report of the Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots of 1969

“The working of the Special Investigation Squad is a study in communal discrimination. The officers of the squad systematically set about implicating as many Muslims and exculpating as many Hindus as possible irrespective of whether they were innocent or guilty. Cases of many Hindus belonging to the Shiv Sena, Rashtriya Utsav Mandal (an extension of the local branch of the Jana Sangh) were wrongly classified as ‘A’ category and investigations closed and no proper investigation was undertaken into several complaints of murders of Muslims and arson of their property. No investigation was conducted into the composition and activities of Hindu communal and allegedly communal organisations operating in Bhiwandi but only in respect of Muslim communal and allegedly communal organisations. Deputy superintendent of police S.P. Saraf held private conferences and discussions with several leaders of Hindu organisations including many who were implicated by Muslims in offences of arson and murder.”

— Report of the Justice D.P. Madon Commission on the Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad of 1970

“The evidence of the deputy SP says that while on patrol duty he had to curb many among his rank and file who could not restrain themselves when they met Muslims on the road. Similar evidence was given by the sub–collector and other witnesses who have testified saying that while chasing away some Muslims many policemen yelled at them to go to Pakistan. At Mattambaram one or two of them got into the mosque and besides beating Usmankutty Haji, a very respectable person, broke the tube–light and chandeliers in the mosque. There is nothing to show that there was any justification for this action...So far as the minorities are concerned, it is the feeling among them that they are nor getting justice, that they are discriminated against in the matter of appointments in the Public Services, that they do not get equal protection of the law and that their religion is in danger, that prompts them to rally around religious organisations of their own. It is of the greatest importance that appropriate steps are taken by the government to remove the cause for such feelings in the minorities. There is much truth in saying that if you want peace you must work justice.”

— Report of the Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission on the Tellicherry riots, 1971

“The riots occurred broadly on account of the total passivity, callousness and indifference of the police in the matter of controlling the situation and protecting the people of the Sikh community.…Several instances have come to be narrated where police personnel were found marching behind or mingled in the crowd. Since they did not make any attempt to stop the mob from indulging in criminal acts an inference has been drawn that they were part of the mob and had the common intention and purpose. ...The Commission was shocked to find that there were incidents where the police wanted clear and definite allegations against the anti-social elements in different localities to be dropped out while recording FIRs.”

— Report of the J. Ranganath Misra Commission on the 1984 anti–Sikh riots in Delhi

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The Ongoing Communalisation In Karnataka

2006-11-15T04:47:00.000-08:00

Nalini Taneja

THE recent communal violence in Mangalore is part of the larger process of communalisation that the Sangh Parivar is engaged in throughout the country, and more particularly in the states where it holds the government, on its own or in partnership. Karnataka has seen considerable amount of Sangh Parivar activism in the last decade. This activism is well thought out and well planned, and does not depend on chance happenings that can be utilised by the Hindutva forces. On the contrary, incidents that appear as spontaneous outbursts are a result of systematic propaganda on issues related to the larger political agenda of the Sangh Parivar, with the issues themselves being cleverly and very deliberately introduced. To say there is an ‘incident’ almost every day is not an exaggeration (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj, Communalism Combat, September 2006), small enough not to get reported in the national press or the parliament, but significant enough to raise temperatures and tensions in the area concerned.

In this context, not just Mangalore but almost any city of Karnataka can, given a small provocation, erupt in communal violence, provoked and organised by the Hindutva forces, which have mastered the art of provocation as well as shown considerable ingenuity in finding issues which are varied in their detail, but retain a unified core in purpose.

STEADY GROWTH

The Sangh Parivar has been steadily growing in strength in this state, a fact that has gone unnoticed in the national media, and which continues to be under estimated also by the mainstream political leadership of this country. It is only the focused citizens groups, which have recognised this reality. While the JD (S) continues to maintain that it remains secular (!), even as it partners the BJP, the Sangh Parivar has been carrying on as if it alone decides the political agenda in the state.

The Sangh Parivar’s ride to political strength has paralleled the rise of the Sangh Parivar in the rest of the country, with the LK Advani’s rath yatra and the subsequent campaign for the Ayodhya temple culminating in the demolition of the Babri masjid and communal killings as decisive markers in its growth. The BJP’s vote share in the state was just 4.7 per cent in 1984, and 2.55 per cent in 1989. In 1991 this rose to 28.78 per cent, and in the 2004 elections the BJP became the single largest party in Karnataka, winning 79 assembly seats and 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state. (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj). The result is there to see in the form of support that Hindutva forces receive from the state of course, but also from what is today neutrally called as civil society. The Sangh Parivar has managed, as elsewhere in the country, to infiltrate its people in the media and the governing institutions and also to communalise popular consciousness. While thousands of people may still respond to a call for a rally in support of secularism and for taking action against the criminal acts of the Sangh Parivar organisations, there is a pervasive acceptance of the myths constructed and proliferating as a consequence of the sustained campaigns of the Hindutva organisations.

FEEDING ON COMMUNAL ISSUES

Anything can be an excuse as long as it lends itself to the saffron agenda, and feeds into the main planks of the Hindutva campaigns: places of worship; cow slaughter; conversions; population myths; Pakistan and anti-nationalism of minorities.

In recent years, a place of common, syncretic worship has been transformed into a site for an Ayodhya like campaign. Every year since 1992 the Sangh Parivar has been invading Chikmagalur, a town in central Karnataka, with a view to “liberating” the cave shrine on Bababudangiri, named after a sufi saint revered across religions. They have constructed a new ‘tradition’, sectarian, and which claims the place only for Hindus. Much like in Ayodhya, the media, and the middle class intelligentsia has adopted the name given by the Sangh Parivar: just as the Babri masjid area is now referred to as Ramjanambhoomi, and the dispute as the Ramjanambhoomi dispute, so also the Bababudangiri site is being called “Dattareya Peeta”. Hate speeches abound in the region, the district administration turns a blind eye, and the government provides sanction by providing buses for darshan just as it does in the case of Ayodhya, and in another parallel, “the illegal and unconstitutional ritual called Datta Jayanti inside the cave shrine was blessed by none other than the then law minister of the Congress government who even participated in Brahminical rituals such as yagna and Homa.” Tension prevails every year as the days of the “jayanti” approach. In 2003, while secular activists were not allowed a peace rally, and were beaten up and arrested, the then Congress government allowed the sangh parivar activities to proceed unhindered around the site. (VS Sreedhara, Communalism Combat).

Conversions are attributed to Christian organisations as well. The Hindutva forces have used this plank in Udupi and other districts of Dakshin Kannada. Udupi has been not just a Hindu pilgrimage centre, but is also home to very old mosques and churches. Members of the Hindu Yuva Sena and the Bajrang Dal have been disrupting gatherings and meetings of Protestant sects here on grounds of ‘forced conversions’, and the local newspapers have been erroneously reporting in support of them. The RSS on its part has been trying out its reconversion and ‘purification’ programmes in these areas, and continuously intimidating dalit christians.

The law allowing for transportation of cows is being misused to accuse Muslims of large scale cow slaughter, and inciting violence against them, thus hitting out at the livelihood of Muslims, and further marginalising them. In Karnataka, beef is consumed not only by Muslims and Christians but also by Adivasis and dalits. Yet the BJP holds only the Muslims and Christians responsible for “offending Hindu religious sentiments” (G Rajashekhar and K Phaniraj). It also acts unconstitutionally because under Karnataka’s Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act any cow that is twelve years or older, does not yield milk or is infertile can be slaughtered with due permission from the gram panchayat or the city municipality. Any transportation of cows becomes an occasion for deliberate wild rumours and for taking away licences of Muslim butchers, not just with regard to cows, but for carrying out their livelihood occupation altogether. Communalism Combat, September 2006, has reported on how one such campaign resulted in communal tensions, some violence and denial of right to livelihood to Muslims in some villages in the Udupi district. Bajrang Dal members also killed a Hindu priest whose job was to mediate in a general sale of cows, not for slaughter at all.

There are numerous reports of Muslims being targeted, publicly stripped of their clothes, paraded naked, and assaulted for ‘offending the Hindu view of life’. The Bajrang Dal and the Hindu Yuva Sena function in some districts as a law unto themselves, unchallenged by the local administrative machinery. Offenders are in some cases nominated for local posts by the BJP. Some Kannada language newspapers in the state have been getting away with publishing false stories, baseless theories and imagined facts as scoop stories. Vijaya Karnataka, the largest selling Kannada daily actually carried a four column article on September 8, 2006, alleging links between the Mumbai underworld and the Muslims of coastal Karnataka, and concocting ‘facts’ on seizure of explosives and AK 47s from the Muslim areas. This paper was launched in 1999 by Vijay Sankeshwar Rao, who was then a sitting BJP MP. Udayavani is another paper known for its communalised news ‘reports’, presentation of engineered rumours as facts, editorials, and opinion pieces. (Gauri Lankesh, Communalism Combat, September 2006). On the Bababudangiri issue, the media has made considerable contribution in communalising it, and made grounds for controversy where there were none, in a manner similar to Babri masjid, which became a ‘disputed structure’ and finally Ramjanmbhoomi, almost entirely due to the media adopting the favoured Sangh Parivar nomenclature for the masjid.

TARGETING SECULAR STRONGHOLDS

Although Dakshin Karnataka and Udipi district, not to speak of the Mangalore where ‘riots’ were recently engineered, are strong bases of the Sangh Parivar, their activities are widely spread over the entire state. All the areas targeted by the Hindutva forces have historically been home to syncretic cultures. In terms of religions there is a history of interactions between Islam and the various cults broadly termed as Hinduism, and the influence of Christianity and even Buddhism and Jainism. Kannada language and literature have imbibed influences from Persian and Urdu traditions along with the strong component of the entire south Indian literary and language heritage. The same can be said of the architecture in the state, including that of the Vijayanagar Empire, ruled by Hindu kings. The Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic architectural patterns are found cheek by jowl all over the state. The Bible in Kannada is centuries old, the Christian missionaries have contributed significantly to the spread of literacy in the state, and there are old churches that are part of the architectural and religious tradition of Karnataka. Food flavours are varied and specific to regions, with caste and religious variations, and cannot be strictly demarcated only along religious lines though the Sangh Parivar would have us believe that only Muslims eat beef, or that Hindus are not naturally meat eaters etc.

The Sangh Parivar is out to deliberately subvert this entire composite cultural heritage, through the creation of a concocted Kannada tradition, which is sectarian, chauvinistic and Hindu in character. This it is doing not just through the textbooks in the schools run by the Parivar and through influencing changes in the books used in the state school system, but also through utilising all other public channels of communication, and taking advantage of the right to free speech and dissemination of ideas that a democracy entails. It is using democracy to subvert all democratic gains, not just in the cultural but also the political sphere of life. It is doing this through sharing political power in the state, and political clout in the administration and muscle power on the streets.

There is a need to challenge it on all these fronts. Allowing the Sangh Parivar to get away with much that is unconstitutional, not only gives it greater confidence and contributes to its muscle power on the streets, but is also gradually transforming the Indian State itself, by making much that constitutes unconstitutionality a part of our regular political life. The UPA government obviously has no problems with this.

Back to their basics

2006-10-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

Ram Punyani

September 22, 2006

The attempt to prevent conversions out of the Hindu fold is not a new phenomenon. It has, however, gained momentum during the last few years, more so in the BJP-ruled states. The excuse for introducing this ‘freedom’, through the Freedom of Religion Bill, is that millions are being converted to other religions in order to weaken the Hindu society.

In Gujarat, the issue has another dimension. This Bill grants Hindus the right to convert to Buddhism and Jainism, but not to ‘foreign’ religions, in which case permission has to be sought from the authorities. The implication is that all religions born in India — Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism — are mere sects of Hinduism, and not full-fledged religions by themselves. One may wonder why Sikhism has been left out of the Gujarat Bill. Perhaps the Bill’s drafters remembered the huge protests by a section of the Sikhs not too long ago when the RSS Sarsanghchalak had said that Sikhism was a sect of Hinduism.

Definitions apart, one also recalls that B.R. Ambedkar had converted to Buddhism. Having borne the humiliations imposed on his community by the Hindu caste system, he pointed out that Hinduism is essentially a Brahmanic theology, based on a rigid hierarchy of caste and gender. Untouchability is just one expression of the same. The Jains demanded and won the status of a minority, which was, however, vehemently opposed by the VHP. The RSS ideology also claims that the Adivasis are Hindus who went into the forests to escape forced conversion by Muslim kings. Thus, they got ‘isolated’ and became lower castes. So, the story goes, they are simply vanvasis (forest dwellers), not adivasis. It follows, then, that bringing them back into the Hindu fold is gharvapasi (homecoming), not conversion.

As such, there are many ‘Hinduisms’. Nathuram Godse followed one variety, and M.K. Gandhi another. ‘Godse Hinduism’, the Brahmanic one, which is the backbone of the RSS combine, is based on the purush sukta of the Vedas, which points out that Lord Brahma himself created castes from the body of the Virat Purush — Brahmins from the mouth, Kshatriyas from the arms, Vaishyas from the thighs and Shudras from the feet. Most of the other religions that are claimed as off-shoots of Hinduism reject this idea as well as the caste system.

The Adivasis worship nature. In Hinduism, polytheism, tritheism, monotheism and even atheism, all run as parallel streams. However, in Buddhism, the very concept of God does not exist. While Hinduism does not have a prophet, all the other faiths do, barring that of the Adivasis, who are animists.

The word ‘Hindu’ began as a geographical category, when those coming from the West identified the people living around the river Sindhu (which they pronounced as ‘Hindu’, since the use of the ‘s’ sound is restricted in Arabic), as Hindus. Brahmanical values prevalent here came to be projected as Hinduism.

The definition of Hinduism evolved over time. As there is no prophet, the religion itself is very amorphous, meaning different things to different people. With the rise of communal politics in the late 20th century, Muslim and Hindu communalists came up from among the feudal classes. The Muslim League propounded the concept of the Islamic nation, helped by the fact that Islam did not require a new definition. The Hindu communalists, however, had to first define what Hinduism was. At this point, V.D. Savarkar put forward the definition of a Hindu as being one who regards this land as the ‘holy land’ as well as the ‘father land’. This political definition of Hindus excludes only Christians and Muslims from the Hindu fold and tries to bring under its hegemony all other Indian religions.

Why is the Sangh parivar so paranoid about people converting to other religions? While it is being said that Buddhism is also part of Hinduism, every effort is being made by the saffron brigade to thwart the attempt of Dalits to convert to Buddhism. The Adivasis are being indoctrinated into worshipping Hindu gods such as Hanuman, and elaborate rituals have been designed for ‘Gharvapasi’, a major phenomenon in Adivasi areas.

The RSS Sarsanghchalak points out that the caste system saved Hinduism — read Brahmanism — as the hierarchy delineated in Brahmanical Hinduism gives the upper castes authority over lower castes. The fear that lower castes or Adivasis will convert to other religions is perceived as a threat because the prevalent system still helps the perpetuation of the social power of the upper caste elite. Similar efforts were made by communalists in the early 20th century when Muslim communalists wanted to swell their ranks by starting a campaign of tanzim (conversion). Hindu communalists then began their own conversion campaign, and started conducting shuddhi of those who had become ‘impure’ by accepting other religions, particularly Islam.

As things stand, the Christian population of India is declining. The poorer Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis have seen a slight rise in their population. The conversion issue is a veiled threat to the minorities. When foreign funds are already regulated by the Home Ministry, why scare people by screaming about the threat of foreign money funding conversions? It seems that for the BJP, with Ayodhya unable to rustle up past fervour, stoking the conversion issue is the best bet to return to the stage.

Ram Punyani is a former professor at IIT, Mumbai

Freedom to believe

2006-10-06T02:10:00.000-07:00

Freedom to believe

The debate on religious conversion in India has spiralled out of control

BY RAJEEV DHAVAN

Tolerating conversion

The debate on the people’s right to convert from one faith to another has simply gone out of hand. India is simply losing its sensitivities on this issue. India is a vast country with many faiths. It is the home of many religions. It has the second largest Muslim population in the world – after Bangladesh. It has more Christians than Australia. It is the home of Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and a myriad of other faiths as well as faiths within faiths. Hinduism is not a monolithic faith although the Supreme Court in its decision in the Swami Narayan Temple Entry case (1966) gave such an expanded assimilationist interpretation to the word ‘Hindu’ that it blurred over divisions within and beyond the Hindu faith. It repeated this exercise in the Hindutva cases (1996) by virtually helping to redefine a new political religion. In the Jain case (2005), the court clearly offended the Jains by an assimilationist approach to their religion. All this goes against common sense and the constitutional dispensation that a religion is drawn from the faith itself and not a judicial version of what judges think it is. It was not for the Supreme Court to construct a faith on the basis of what others think.

This takes us to the core of our present discontent about the present and past controversies about religious conversion in India. The entire conversion debate is dominated by the Hindu Right whose political agenda is: (a) to declare the country and Indian civilisation as primarily, if not solely, a Hindu civilisation, (b) to insist that all past conversions over the centuries were induced by fear, fraud and opportunism, (c) to regard all past conversion as essentially suspect and (d) to pursue an intimidating policy to try and ensure that future conversions from Hinduism should not take place, and in any event, be minimised. It is thus clear that the controversy about conversion is inextricably linked to the rise of the new religious faith of political ‘Hindutva’. Belligerent, apprehensive, uncompromising and vicious in its attitude, the new face of ‘political Hindutva’ has surfaced with plans, policies and programmes to attack and discipline all other faiths. The policy of attack is clear from the destruction of the Babri Masjid, the murder of Rev. Staines, the intimidation of Christians and Muslims and murders in Gujarat and elsewhere. The policy of disciplining other faiths includes both a programme to impose fear on others as well as a legal policy to intimidate non-Hindu minorities through the processes of the law. There is a vast trail of legal and illegal censorship imposed by the cohorts of the new political Hindutva. The illegal strategy is articulated in the attacks on Hussain’s paintings and on the Bhandarkar Institute which, ironically, has been home to a lot of learning and archives on Hinduism. The legal strategy has been to arrest and intimidate minorities for hurting Hindutva sensitivities. The sheer aggression of politicised Hindutva is self-evident from the various campaigns the Hindutva Right have followed.

Conversion, the Constitution and Hindutva

One of the areas of legal intimidation has been on the issue of ‘conversion’. A common sense approach would be to say that people are free to convert from one faith to another if they wish to. In fact, historically, India is a country of converts. There were conversions from Hinduism to Jainism, to Buddhism and to Islam and Christianity. Over time, all this had added a richness and uniqueness to India. Today a Muslim or a Christian is a Muslim or a Christian, not a past Hindu. If people want to convert, they have the right to do so – without requiring the permission of the state or setting up a system whereby police officials and magistrates will be watching conversions under a system of conversion by surveillance.

India’s Constitution has to be sensitively read so as to admit to the right to conversion being a constitutional right to pursue a faith and belief of one’s choice – including, perforce, the right not to have any faith. There are two aspects to this. The first is the right of the person to convert to another faith if they want to. This is clear from the text or Article 25 of the Constitution which says "all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion". Nothing could be clearer than this on the question of choice of faith. The second aspect also flows from Article 25. This is a right of adherents to a religion to propagate their faith. This entered the constitutional text because in the Constituent Assembly, M. Rathnaswamy suggested an amendment to the earlier draft of Article 25 to add the word ‘propagate’ to the text. This was done with the object of giving proselytising (and indeed, non-proselytising) faiths a chance to make their faith known to others. That the Supreme Court in Stanislaus’ Case (1977) said that the right to propagate does not necessarily mean the right to convert does not alter the basic approach of the Constitution that (a) people have a right to pursue a faith of their choice and (b) adherents of a faith have a right to propagate their faith.

The real question was whether this right to propagate should be monitored under a system of surveillance under a threat of prosecution for wrongful conversions. Unfortunately, there are too many Hindutva myths about present day conversions. I use the words ‘present day conversions’ advisedly. Something may be made of the conversions of ‘imperial’ Christianity through its priests. But that was all in the past. People rooted in the present, whose ancestors may have converted out of the Hindu (or any other) faith, have to be respected for the faiths they continue to choose to follow. The ‘Hindutva’ faith profiles all conversions as inherently suspect since it seems to hurt Hindutva pride. The idea that Hindus might prefer another faith is anathema. Babasaheb Ambedkar made it clear that he was leaving Hinduism for Buddhism because he found the former insensitive, cruel and corrupt. But proponents of ‘Hindutva’ get more annoyed if Hindus convert to Islam or Christianity. In ‘Hindutva’ minds, these are foreign faiths even though they have been practised and have had a following in India for centuries. This rancour that Hindus are deserting to a ‘foreign’ faith becomes a rallying cry to the Hindutva faithful. Willy-nilly, Muslims and Christians come to be targeted not just because they are different but they are impliedly accused in the Hindutva mind as stealing Hindus to their fold. But in fact there is no evidence of such stealing. A convert can easily decry the process of conversion after the conversion. But years pass by and converts remain happy with the faith they have converted to. Not satisfied with this, it is said that it is the poor that fall prey to conversion. This too seems highly doubtful. Professor Kalam’s excellent research in Tamil Nadu suggests the contrary. It is not the poor but the better off who convert. The Kalam research is dated by a couple of decades. He is going to follow it through with confirmatory explorations. But the myth of desperate conversions by the poor under inducement and fraud does not seem to have any foundation and seems illogical.

Conversion under surveillance

But since the forces of Hindutva cannot police the minorities they have decided to police the conversions. In 1954, the union Parliament refused to pass an Indian Conversion (Regulation and Registration) Bill or the Backward Communities (Religious Protection) Bill in 1960. But with the change in political power in the states in 1966, state governments began to pass legislation to monitor conversions. First came the Orissa Act of 1967, then the Madhya Pradesh Act of 1968 and then the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 1978. Acts were passed in Tamil Nadu, which were sought to be made stringent by Chief Minister Jayalalitha. Similar legislation exists in Gujarat (2003) and Chhattisgarh (2005). More recently, a bill was passed by the Rajasthan legislature which the governor seems to have reserved for presidential assent.
The Orissa and Madhya Pradesh bills were upheld by the Supreme Court in Stanislaus’ case (1977) where the court took the view that the right to propagate did not include the right to convert. But the judgement of the Supreme Court is wrong both in its interpretation of the right to propagate as well as on other counts. Two aspects need to be highlighted. The first is that the Supreme Court looked at the right to convert as part of the right to propagate one’s faith to others but not the right of a person to get converted to another faith. Those seeking to convert another may have the right to propagate but not convert, but this cannot eclipse the right of the converted to choose a religion or faith of their choice. Secondly, the court did not scrutinise the contents of the legislation and test it on the grounds of public order, health or morality, which are the sole grounds on which the rights of a person to choose their faith can be curtailed. In 2004 the Supreme Court used up an opportunity to consider the issue by blindly following the Stanislaus case and giving a short judgement without even issuing notice to the other side to hear the matter properly.

Anyway, the standard pattern of conversion bills is founded on the principles of policing and surveillance over conversion. There is a system of reporting conversion to the authorities, subjecting the conversion to scrutiny on the basis of fraud or inducement and filing criminal prosecutions on those who perform conversions or organise events to enable conversions to take place. One would have thought the Indian legal system has better things to do than policing conversions and subjecting them to surveillance. Unfortunately, the votaries of the new aggressive Hindutva rely on the Supreme Court’s judgement in 1977, made during the height of the Emergency when the Supreme Court’s juristic sensitivities eluded some of the judges. The Stanislaus case (1977) must be reassessed. In any event, the new legislations on conversions must be subject to scrutiny. Such legislation is not getting better. It is only getting worse.

The process is the punishment

With this we must turn to the effect of anti-conversion surveillance regimes on the minority communities who are targeted by this and other legislation. Such legislation immediately puts them on the defensive. They cannot praise their own faith. When people want to convert, they are subject to report back and policing. This is followed by criminal investigation and prosecution. Eventually, they may be acquitted. But in real terms, the process is the punishment.

The fact that the process can be the punishment is what concerns me in respect of a recent judgement of the Supreme Court in the Pastor Raju case (2006). India has created many offences which are aimed at preserving religious and communal harmony. The upshot of these offences is that they prohibit promoting enmity between groups (Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code), imputations and assertions which are a threat to national integrity (Section 153B) and the acts which deliberately outrage religious feelings or insult the religion or religious beliefs of a class (Section 295A). Such offences may be necessary. But there is a significant aspect to these offences that cannot be overlooked. Under the Indian legal system, any individual can simply file a First Information Report (FIR) for serious (cognisable) cases. The effect of this is that as soon as an FIR is filed, the police start investigating and there is an even chance that the perpetrator will be subject to pre-trial imprisonment. If the offence is not serious, the process can be triggered off by complaints to the magistrate to initiate the legal process with all its ensuing consequences. This means anyone can put a religious adversary into a position where they are investigated and jailed. The government was aware of the mischief that could emanate from these provisions. Such mischief could create antagonism between communities.

Wisely, Indian law has interposed a safeguard whereby these sensitive offences can only proceed if the government in question sanctions the prosecution. A similar safeguard is given in cases of corruption by civil servants and actions in defamation of government servants and some matrimonial offences (See Sections 195-199 of the Indian Penal Code). The purpose behind such a sanction procedure is to ensure that there is no frivolous prosecution and trial. In the cases that we are concerned with, if there was no sanction safeguard the forces of Hindutva would unleash prosecution after prosecution on minority communities on the basis of some or imagined hurt to the sensitivities of Hindutva. The question is how comprehensive and complete is the sanction safeguard so as to make sure that the offences to prevent religious strife are not used to create strife.

Pastor Raju lives in Karnataka. On January 14, 2005 there were great celebrations in Rampura, Channapatna. The occasion was the festival of Sakranti. Pastor Raju was also there. It is alleged that he spoke to various people to convert to Christianity in that the latter had more to offer than the Hindu faith. It is not entirely clear as to how and in what manner this speech was made – if indeed such a speech was made at all. This must have irritated a Shri Lokesha who then proceeded to file an FIR and an offence under Section 153B was made out. This section was introduced in 1972 and seeks to criminalise any imputation or assertion which is prejudicial to national integration. The purpose behind this section is to prevent a collective condemnation of any religious, racial, language, regional group, caste or community by asserting that they are not worthy citizens who believe in the integrity and sovereignty of India (Section 153B (a) and (b)). But Section 153B also criminalises assertions, pleas and appeals which cause disharmony, enmity or ill will between people (Section 153B (1)(c)). Where such offences are in (a) religious place or during a religious event, the punishment would increase from three years and/or a fine to five years and/or a fine (Section 153B (2)). Thus the offence is a serious offence subject to considerable penalties.

The police decided to arrest Pastor Raju. It is not clear why he was arrested. But there must have been some compulsions to do so. Pastor Raju was then taken to a magistrate and remanded to judicial custody. Later, a bail application was rejected. Pastor Raju moved the high court to say that the entire proceeding should be quashed because the safeguard of getting a sanction from the state government was not fulfilled. In common sense terms, it seemed fair to raise this plea. The very purpose of the sanction safeguard was to ensure that frivolous and vexatious proceedings should not be launched in cases of this nature. In Pastor Raju’s case the wheel seemed to have turned at least half circle. He was arrested and in jail. The high court took the view that this was clearly a case where sanction under Section 196 (1-A) of the Criminal Procedure Code was required. It seemed like vexatious victimisation where the accuser was creating strife through prosecutorial investigation and litigation. This may have influenced the high court’s decision.

But, in the Supreme Court, the decision of the high court was reversed. The judgement of the Supreme Court by Justice GP Mathur for himself and Justice Dalveer Bhandari concerned itself with the technical interpretation of the sanction requirement. Unfortunately, the court did not go into the intent of the sanction safeguard and why it was part of the criminal process. This might have helped both to interpret the sanction safeguard and apply it to the facts of the case. At this stage, it might be useful to reproduce the offences which contain the sanction safeguard in the Criminal Procedure Code.

"S. 196: Prosecution for offences against the state and for criminal conspiracy to commit such offence.-
(1) No Court shall take cognisance of –
(a) any offence punishable under Chapter VI or under Section 153A, Section 153B, Section 295A or Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code, (45 of 1860) or
(b) a criminal conspiracy to commit such offence, or
(c) any such abetment, as is described in Section 108A of the Indian Penal Code, (45 of 1860)
except with the previous sanction of the central government or of the state government.
(1A) No court shall take cognisance of –
(a) any offence punishable under Section 153B or subsection (2) or subsection (3) of Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code or
(b) a criminal conspiracy to commit such offence
except with the previous sanction of the central government or of the state government or of the district magistrate."

The entire controversy in this case rotates around the idea that cases concerning offences which deal with national integration and religious strife should proceed only with the previous sanction of the central government, state government or the district magistrate. The role of the government in this regard is a critical one. Religious leaders might be arrested out of spite to give rise to public disorder. In sanction cases, the government is expected to make a comprehensive decision and to examine the facts and evidence as well (See Jaswant Singh AIR 1958 SC 125 generally). It is obvious that without a sanction the criminal process must come to an end.

But there is an important distinction between the stage of investigation and the stage of trial. One view is that unless the sanction requirement specifically says so, an offence requiring sanction may be investigated but the trial cannot proceed unless and until government sanctions a prosecution. But in many cases it is the process of investigation under conditions of imprisonment that is onerous. So when does the safeguard of sanction begin to operate?

In dealing with the sanction safeguard, the Criminal Procedure Code does not use clear-cut language to distinguish between ‘investigation’ and trial. Had the code clearly said that an investigation in respect of such offences may continue but a trial may not there would have been no controversy. Whether that distinction may be implied is another matter. The code simply says that cognisance may not be taken of an offence without a sanction from the government. What does this mean? This cannot mean that no investigation of the offence can take place. But can we go to the other extreme and say that the arrest and judicial remand of Pastor Raju could take place and the sanction was only to prevent the trial from proceeding further? Where exactly does the protection of the accused from vexatious prosecution begin? Of course, the sanction safeguard is not just a protection for the accused but also a matter of public interest which necessarily recognises that random prosecutions in the area of potential religious strife are against the public interest.

If Parliament had intended the sanction safeguard to operate only to prevent trials until the government agrees, it would have said so. There are many recognised stages which could have been specifically mentioned including (a) the judicial remand stage or (b) the stage when the challan (police report) is filed or (c) the stage where the trial court draws up the charge sheet or (d) when the trial commences. But Parliament preferred to say that a ‘court’ shall not take cognisance of the offence unless sanction was given. Justice Mathur, in Pastor Raju’s case, accepts that "…(t)here was no special charm or any magical formula in the expression ‘taking cognisance’ which merely means judicial application of mind of the magistrate to the facts mentioned in the complaint and with a view to taking further action." He also admits that "...the word ‘cognisance’ has not been defined by the Criminal Procedure Code" and that the dictionary meaning is "judicial hearing of the matter". Matters of definition need not detain us. In RR Chari’s case (AIR 1951 SC 207), the Supreme Court laid down that "taking cognisance does not involve any formal action or indeed action of any kind but occurs as soon as the magistrate as such applies his mind to the case." This broad approach has been accepted in a large number of cases. Unfortunately, Justice Mathur does not quite tell us when cognisance is taken. He proceeds on the basis that since the sanctioning authority has to apply its mind to all the material collected during the investigation, cognisance must take place later. The real question then must be: When does the magistrate apply his judicial mind to a case? Perhaps when the magistrate simply orders an investigation he cannot be said to take cognisance of the offence (See Gopal Das AIR 1961 SC 986; Devarapally (1976) 3 SCC 252). There is some room for saying that in police cases based on FIRs the investigation takes place without an initial judicial application of mind. But there is considerable room for saying that when a person is remanded to judicial custody there has to be an application of the judicial mind and remand orders should not be "patently routine and appear to have been made mechanically" (Madhu Limaye’s case (1969) 1 SCC 292 at 299). The function of remanding a person to judicial custody is essentially a judicial function and not an administrative one. If we apply the "application of mind" test it would clearly be the case that when the magistrate decided that Pastor Raju should be kept in jail under judicial custody he applied his mind to whether an offence was committed and whether Pastor Raju should be remanded into custody during the investigation. If this was so, the decision to remand Pastor Raju was cognisance within the meaning of the sanction safeguard in Section 196 of the code.

I think we need to go one step further and assert that the term cognisance of an offence may mean different things in different contexts. Such a differentiated meaning has been accepted by the courts and on various occasions the court even took the view that the same word may have a different meaning in the same sentence of a statute (Printers (Mysore) Ltd (1994) 2 SCC 434; Ismail Faruqui (1994) 2 SCC 434). This might have been a better approach to take. Cognisance can mean cognisance for custody, cognisance of the challan, cognisance by way of the charge sheet, cognisance for the purpose of the trial. Ultimately, the purpose of the section must be looked at. The purpose of the sanction safeguard is to prevent the further harassment of a person in certain matters in the public interest. This purpose cannot be lost sight of. This is a matter of juristic policy. Justice Mathur observed; "on the view taken by the high court, no person accused of an offence which is of a nature which requires previous sanction of a specified authority before taking of cognisance by a court can ever be arrested nor can such an offence be investigated by the police." This summary is only partly correct. Investigation can take place. An arrest can be made. But the period for which a police arrest can be made is limited. As soon as this period is over, a judicial decision on custody cannot be made without a sanction. Justice Mathur seemed to have got lost in technical details and lost sight of the purpose of the section.

Arresting people is a serious invasion of civil liberties. That is the reason why so many judicial safeguards exist in matters of pre-trial imprisonment. The sanction safeguard was intended to prevent harassment other than starting a process of investigation. If the police think that they are right to effect an arrest and ask for judicial custody, the sanction safeguard must apply. We cannot forget or lose sight of the evocative phrase: the process is the punishment. Ever so often, it is only the process that is the punishment. Generally, in common law countries, the arrest takes place when the investigation is complete. In India, arrest and judicial custody are treated as routine affairs. This is precisely what should not happen. But if the police decide to combine arrest and investigation, in some classes of cases they must get sanction for the arrest from the government before the magistrate examines the case for custody. If this is not done, the punishment will be the process. In these religious and communal offences cases, Parliament wanted to be more careful than in respect of other offences.

Conversion and secularism

India is witnessing the rise of politically motivated communalism. For this purpose, an entirely new religion called ‘Hindutva’ has been invented. Hindutva lays claim to India as an exclusively Hindu nation. The tactics of Hindutva are unscrupulous. Buildings have been destroyed. Places of learning have been looted. Paintings have been destroyed. Books have been banned. All this in the name of a pseudo-religion which claims secular credentials. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has supported the case for an assimilative Hinduism (as in the Swami Narayan case; Yagnapurushdasji AIR 1966 SC 1119) and treated Hindutva as if it were a natural celebration of India’s culture (See election decision in Ramesh Prabhoo (1996) 1 SCC 130; textbooks decision in Aruna Roy (2002) 7 SCC 368). At the same time, the court has espoused the case for secularism being part of the basic structure of the Constitution. At some stage the judges must declare the inarticulate premises on which they have wandered in these lost directions.

But what we are also seeing is the harassment of minorities through killing and various kinds of actions and inaction. New legislations, like the conversion statutes, are being drawn up to harass the minorities. The campaign to intimidate the minorities is done both through legal and illegal means. Manipulating the law and using the police to arrest and detain people is yet another form of intimidation. This is what has happened in Pastor Raju’s case.

Unfortunately, India’s secular governance is allowing a large number of such instances of abuse and intimidation to occur.

(Rajeev Dhavan is a senior advocate, Supreme Court of India.)

CSW quarterly report on India: April - June 2006

2006-09-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

Click this link to go to the report. It is in PDF format.

The history and politics of Vande Mataram

2006-08-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

The history and politics of Vande Mataram

Anandmath
is replete with glorification of incidents of “cleansing” of Muslims
like the following one: "The rural people ran out to kill the
Muslims...they torched their houses and looted their everything.

By Shamsul Islam

The
song Vande Mataram is in news once again, though for wrong reasons. The
current controversy started with a meeting organized by the minority
cell of the BJP in the city of Taj Mahal, Agra on February 25. This
meeting, organized in order to mobilize Muslims for the forthcoming
parliamentary elections, ended up with about 50 of Muslim invitees
singing Vande Mataram. Interestingly, singing of Vande Mataram in this
meeting was an exception as the BJP meetings in general do not have
singing of this song on agenda. The controversy started when a local
Muslim cleric (see MG, 1-15 April 2004) came out with a “fatwa”
decreeing that all the Muslim singers of the Vande Mataram by singing
it indulged in polytheism and as a consequence ceased to be Muslims.
The mufti also decreed that their marriages stood annulled and they
should re-solemnise their marriages.

Vande Mataram

Translation by Aurobindo

Mother, I bow to thee!

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Cool with thy winds of delight, Dark fields waving, Mother of might,

Mother free.

Glory of moonlight dreams,

Over thy branches and lordly streams,

Clad in thy blossoming trees,

Mother, giver of ease,

Laughing low and sweet!

Mother I kiss thy feet,

Speaker sweet and low!

Mother to thee I bow.

Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands,

When the swords flash out in twice seventy million hands,

And seventy million voices roar,

Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?

With many strengths who are mighty and stored,

To thee I call, Mother and Lord!

Though who savest, arise and save!

To her I cry who ever her foemen drive,

Back from plain and sea,

And shook herself free.

Thou art wisdom, thou art law,

Thou our heart, our soul, our breath,

Thou the love divine, thou the awe,

In our hearts that conquer death.

Thine the strength that nerves the arm,

Thine the beauty, thine the charm,

Every image made divine,

In our temples is but thine.

Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,

With her hands that strike and her swords of sheen,

Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,

And the Muse a hundred-toned,

Pure and perfect without peer,

Mother, lend thine ear.

Rich with thy hurrying streams,

Bright with thy orchard gleams,

Dark of hue, O candid-fair,

In thy soul, with jeweled hair,

And thy glorious smile divine,

Loveliest of all earthly lands,

Showering wealth from well-stored hands!

Mother, mother mine!

Mother sweet, I bow to thee,

Mother great and free!

'Vande Mataram' translated by Sri Aurobindo. This note of his about
this translation is very significant: "It is difficult to translate the
National Anthem of Bengal into verse in another language owing to its
unique union of sweetness, simple directness and high poetic force."

[Quoted in Bhabatosh Chatterjee (ed.), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 1994, p. 601.]

Interestingly, the Hindutva gang has been raking up this issue
periodically as part of Muslim-bashing since Independence, especially
on the eve of elections. As part of anti-Muslim propaganda they coined
the slogan "Iss desh maen rehna hae to Vande Mataram kehna hoga" (If
you want to live in this country, you will have to sing Vande Mataram).

The fundamental problem with Indian
nationalist symbols like Vande Mataram is that by simply adding
Muslim/minority angle to these, one can thwart any serious scrutiny and
worthwhile debate about the pre-Independence controversies over these
symbols. The Hindutva gang, especially the RSS which played absolutely
no role in the anti-colonial freedom struggle, now wants to cover up
its betrayal by posing as the sole guardian of nationalist symbols like
Vande Mataram.

A thorough scanning (undertaken by this
author) of the pre-Independence literature/documents published by the
RSS shows that there is absolutely no reference there to Vande Mataram,
what to talk of singing it. Startlingly, Vande Mataram as a term does
not appear in the writings of KB Hedgewar and MS Golwalkar either. And
after Independence the same gang wants to use this song to beat Muslims
with.

The protagonists of a democratic-secular India have failed in exposing
the Hindutva stalwarts who have been pitting Vande Matram against the
National Anthem, Jana Gana Mana and denounce Muslim and Sikh
fundamentalists for their non-allegiance to the Tricolour and the
National Anthem, the two symbols of Indian nationalism. The secular
India has miserably failed to corner the Hindutva gang which itself
wants to replace the secular National Anthem by Vande Mataram and the
Tricolour by saffron flag. This is abundantly clear from the practice
of the RSS shakhas, and the RSS vision of replacing the Indian
democratic-secular state with a Hindu rashtra.

A section of the so-called Muslim
leadership, devoid of common sense and ignorant of nationalist
heritage, reacted to the Hindutva game plan along expected lines.
Playing into the hands of Hindutva brigade 'Muslim leaders' like the
Agra Mufti simply provided legitimacy to its strategy of
Muslim-bashing. Unfortunately, even a section of secular Muslims have
shown panic reaction by declaring that Muslims should not object to the
singing of this song. They innocently believe that Muslims by not
singing this song are inviting wrath of Hindutva. They overlook the
fact that even Dalits, Christians, Buddhists and other minorities, who
have not raised objections against Vande Mataram, have not been spared
by the Hindutva gang.

The need of the hour is that we should not run away from a serious
debate on the issue of the Vande Mataram under one pretext or the
other. In order to know the truth and understand the whole controversy
over Vande Mataram it is important to be familiar with the following
facts which have been gathered from wide pre-Independence sources.

Vande Mataram was dogged by one controversy or another from the day it
was first printed in Banga Darshan (edited by Bankimchandra Chatterjee)
in 1875. It was a strange composition in the sense that it was written
in two languages. The song consisted of 4 stanzas, the first two in
Sanskrit and the rest in Bengali. Poet Navin Chandra Sen, a close
friend, told Bankim after reading the song: "You see, it is all good,
but the whole thing is spoilt by your potpourri of half Bengali and
half Sanskrit. It reminds me of Govind Adhikari's Jatra songs. People
do not like it."1 In fact, this song was not known by many despite the
fact that Jadu Bhatt, a renowned singer of those days and a
contemporary of Bankim, liked the song and set it to an attractive
tune. The situation did not change even in 1882 when Bankim included
this song in his controversial novel Anandmath. Rabindranath Tagore
composed a new tune for this song in 1885 but despite its rendering by
a very popular Bengali poet it did not attract much attention.

Interestingly, Vande Mataram which came to be known as the “national
song” was composed by Bankim as a “Bengal anthem”, nothing more. The
imagery of the countryside and references to Durga were certainly
confined to Bengal. In this song he is seen concerned about Bengal only
aloof from any emotional attachment to India. Even Sri Aurobindo
(Aurobindo Ghose), propounder of Hindu nationalism in India, translated
it as the "National Anthem of Bengal".2

Bankim, as we will see in the translation done by Aurobindo, referred
to “seven crores” [70 million] of people worshipping motherland. This
was the population of the then Bengal Province (which, besides what is
now Bangladesh, included Bihar and Orissa too). So the crucial fact
should not be missed that Vande Mataram touted as symbolizing “Mother
India” was in fact meant to glorify Bengal only, a rather narrow and
regional perspective.

Many are not aware that this song was scantly known during the lifetime
of Bankim himself. In his lifetime it did not capture popular
imagination though it was sung at all Congress sessions by people who
identified Indian nationalism with Hindu ethos. It remained confined to
a fringe group.

In 1905 came Curzon's announcement of the partition of Bengal, and
suddenly Vande Mataram turned into a national mantra, renting the skies
with the protest against the partition of Bengal. Reacting quickly, the
British government banned the song or even raising it as a slogan.
People of Barisal in Bengal bore the brunt of police brutality for
singing this song. Peasant leader Abdul Rasul, was presiding over the
Bengal Congress provincial conference session of 1906 when hundreds
were struck down and grievously injured for singing Vande Mataram. This
brutality at Barisal popularized the song overnight. According to
Bengalee of May 23, 1906, "an unprecedented procession of Hindus and
Muslims singing national songs and crying Vande Mataram and
Allah-o-Akbar passed through all the principal streets of the town.
Both Hindus and Mussalmans carried Vande Mataram flags."3 It is
interesting to know that while Vande Mataram was banned in Bengal, the
British government allowed the Bengali Regiment to attack German
trenches during the first world war with Vande Mataram on their lips.

Soon Vande Mataram became the opening note of all the Congress
gatherings. And the two, Congress and Vande Mataram, became
inseparable, until the early 1930s, when a new controversy about the
song broke out within the ranks of the party. Sections of Muslims,
Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Christians, South Indians, secular groups and
even Arya Samajis, objected when the Congress decided to finalize it as
the “national song”. Vande Mataram glorified idol worship, they argued,
as it referred to only Hindu deities (it must be shocking for the
present-day Hindutva brigade that the song does not even once refer to
Ram), and that it expressed only a regional aspiration (it is partly in
Bengali and allegorically talks of “Bengal” as India).

Another objection raised by Muslims and secular Indians said that Vande
Mataram was part of the novel Anandmath, which glorified the
annihilation of Muslims and not the British rule in India. This
objection was very relevant, as even a cursory glance of the novel will
prove. The novel was replete with glorification of incidents of
“cleansing” of Muslims like the following one: "The rural people ran
out to kill the Muslims while coming across them. In the night, some
ones were organized in groups and going to the Muslim locality, they
torched their houses and looted their everything. Many Muslims were
killed; many of them shaved their beards, smeared their bodies with
soil and started singing the name of Hari. When asked, they said, we
were Hindus. The frightened Muslims rushed towards the town in group
after group. The Muslims said, Allah, Allah! Is the Kortn Sareef (sic)
(holy Koran) proved entirely wrong after so many days? We pray namaz
five times but couldn't finish the sandal-pasted Hindus. All the
universe is false."4

Bankim's novel simultaneously glorified the colonial British rule. It
portrayed the British masters as saviours of Hindus. This love for the
British masters and exploiters was clearly visible in the last few
lines of Anandmath. When the Hindu army (Santan rebels) was able to
defeat Muslim rulers and move on to fight the British too, a mystic
leader (Satyananda) appeared and told them: "Your mission has been
successful. You have performed the well-being of the Mother. The
English reign has been established. You give up the war and
enmity-mood. There is no more enemy. The Englishman is our ally King.
Moreover, none possesses such power who can win the war with the
Englishmen ultimately."5 Thus the great leader of Hindu rebellion was
finally able to convince Santans about the historic utility of the
British Raj for the resurrection of the Hindu kingdom and many of them
went to Himalayas renouncing this world. Anandmath, which heralded the
Hindu nationalist movement, is full of such perceptions.

The Congress, which under Jawaharlal Nehru's leadership wanted an
all-inclusive nationalism with special stress on Hindu-Muslim unity,
responded positively to these objections. The Congress Working
Committee (CWC) after long deliberations at Wardha and Bombay appointed
a committee consisting of Jawaharlal Nehru (president of the Congress),
MK Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad and Subhashchander Bose in its Calcutta
meeting (Oct 26-November 1, 1937).

This high profile committee on Vande Mataram issued a historic
statement on October 28, 1937 with the aim to resolve the controversy.
The statement made it clear at the outset that the first two stanzas of
the song had no religious allusions and only these were commonly sung
even in Bengal. It went on to observe that "the use of the first two
stanzas of the song [which] spread to other provinces and a certain
national significance began to attach to them. The rest of the song was
very seldom used and is even now known by few persons. These two
stanzas described in tender language the beauty of the motherland and
the abundance of her gifts. There was absolutely nothing in them to
which objection could be taken from the religious or any other point of
view."6

The CWC went on to emphasize that "the other stanzas of the song are
little known and hardly ever sung. They contain certain allusions and a
religious ideology which may not be in keeping with the ideology of
other religious groups in India. The Committee while recognizing the
validity of objections raised by Muslim friends to certain parts of the
song... recommend that “wherever the Bande Matraram is sung at national
gatherings only the first two stanzas should be sung, with perfect
freedom to the organizers to sing any other song of an unobjectionable
character, in addition to, or in the place of, the Bande Matraram
song."7

With this judgment the controversy should have been over. But it
didn't. It seems ironical that the present-day champions of Vande
Mataram did not figure anywhere in the struggle against the British.
They cannot name a single martyr for freedom, and their slogans for
Hindu Rashtra only helped the British masters’ divide-and-rule policy
and supplemented the services of persons like Jinnah. The propping up
of an old controversy thus seems to be only for playing the same old
game of dividing the Indian people. The truth of the matter is that
Vande Mataram is just another move in the dangerous game the
fundamentalists are involved in: confusing and dividing people.

NOTES:

1. Cited in P. Thankappan Nair, Indian National Songs and Symbols, Firma, Calcutta, 1987, p. 32.

2.Cited in Bhabatosh Chatterjee (ed.), Bankimchandra Chatterjee: Essays
in Perspective, Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, 1994, p. 601.

3. Cited in P. Thankappan Nair, p. 38.

4. Arabinda Das, Abbey of Delight (English translation of Bankimchander
Chatterjee's Anandmath in Bengali), Bandna Das, Kolkata, 2000, pp.
161-162.

5. Ibid, pp. 191-194.

6. AICC Papers on microfilms, Accession No. 8612 [Roll No. 51], Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, pp. 0852-0854.

7. Ibid.

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Should conversions be banned?

2006-08-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

M Jamil

August 5, 2006

Recently, the state legislature in Madhya Pradesh has approved a law aimed at making religious conversions harder there.

The law says a person wishing to convert and the priest conducting the ceremony will have to inform the authorities in advance. The new law provides for a year in prison and cash fines to the person who converts and the priest who conducts the ceremony without informing the authorities.

This is hardly India's first instance of such a law.

In 2005, the government in Rajasthan introduced a law banning religious conversion. Three years ago, politicians in Gujarat approved a controversial bill ostensibly designed to stop forced religious conversions.

In 2002, the state legislature in Tamil Nadu passed an ordinance banning religious conversions-though the new government led by DMK announced in May that the law would be annulled soon.

Evidently, these laws are the state governments' reaction to the depressed classes pointing to the lack of socio-economic development as their reason for quitting the Hindu fold.

But does India want to be compared to Islamic states that are imprisoned by an impoverished idea that apostasy should lead to death or death threats?

Mass conversions by the Dalits, whether to Islam or Christianity, have always projected a political message. Mostly, it is an effort by the weaker sections to draw the attention of the government to their development needs.

In many cases, there are "re-conversions" after governmental intervention and promises of corrective measures by the district administration.

A section of the media and political establishment would claim that mass conversions or threats of mass conversions create social tension in the affected area and the government is forced to act in the interests of those threatening conversion.

More importantly one must ask: is banning religious conversion constitutional?
From a layperson's perspective, Article 25 (1) of the Constitution states that "subject to public order, morality and health and other provisions of this part (Part III), all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion."

Under the freedom of speech which the Constitution guarantees, any religious community is free to persuade others to join their faith. Thus, conversion by free exercise of the conscience has to been recognised and cannot be banned under the constitution.

Arya Samajists, for example, should be free to carry on "Sudhi" ceremonies, open to Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Muslims, Sikhs, and every other religionist, so long as they follow public order, morality and other conditions that have to be observed in any civilised society.

One may argue that the Constitution explicitly grants one the right to transmit or spread one's religion by an exposition of its tenets, but not the right to convert through force or social and economic "bribes".

It has to be remembered that Article 25 (1) guarantees "freedom of conscience" to every citizen and not merely to the followers of one particular religion.

Thus, there is no fundamental right to convert another person to one's own religion because, if a person undertakes the conversion of a person to his religion as distinguished from his effort to transmit or spread the tenets of his religion, that would impinge on the freedom of conscience guaranteed to all the citizens.

This specious reasoning which proceeds on the premise that a person's freedom of conscience gives him the right to practice his own religion ignores that the same freedom of conscience gives him the right to choose another religion and to be converted to another religion.

Sometimes when a person learns about the virtues of another religion and the advantages of following it, he may be persuaded to be converted.

In other words, propagation of religion with a view to its being accepted by a person gives an opportunity to the latter to exercise his right to choose his religion. Hence, the prevention of conversion infringes the right to be converted or to choose another religion and thereby infringes his freedom of conscience.

What is meant by the "ban on conversions?'"

The Constitution clearly empowers each individual to preach his own religion and each to choose his own religion. Based on this, if one chooses to change his religion, there can be no law preventing him from doing so. Apart from the legality, it goes against history and human nature to impose a total ban on conversions.

In addition to Christians, Hare Krishna's and Muslims proselytising, Buddhist monks went to Cambodia, China, Japan, Sri Lanka and other places in the Far East spreading Buddhism.

Though on a small scale, the Arya Samajists are converting or reconverting people of others faiths to Hinduism. Often conversion is a result of marrying outside a person's faith. For instance, when a Hindu marries a Jew or a Christian.

Of course, all these conversions are made peacefully, by persuasion.

Instead of a fracas on preventing conversions, there should be a national debate on why people choose to be converted. If it is by force, fraud or undue influence, such conversions can be prevented by legislation.

But one of the strongest motivations for converting to another religion is low socio-economic status. These individuals feel that they can live with more dignity as members of the religion to which they are converting.

Though untouchability was abolished by the Constitution, it still persists throughout India. For example, in many hotels water is served in separate glasses to the Dalits (who make up 250 million of India's population).

Although the Constitution provides certain safeguards to protect persons who suffer from low socio-economic status, the past 56 years since the Constitution came into being has proved that they are not adequate.

Measures have to be taken immediately to improve their economic and social status to such an extent that they do not convert in order to enjoy a better life as members of a new religious group, but because they genuinely feel convinced of the tenets of that religion.

Hopefully, we will see a day when every person voluntarily chooses which religion he wishes to practice and the expression "conversion" loses its meaning.

India, which is known for its tolerance, has lived with Christianity for almost two thousand years, Zoroastrianism for 1,400 years and Islam for over a millennium.

Let us all remember the words of Mahatma Gandhi: "I do not expect India of my dreams to develop one religion, i.e., to be wholly Hindu or wholly Christian or wholly Mussalman, but I want it to be wholly tolerant, with its religions working side by side with one another."

Maqbool Jamil is based in United States and can be reached at drj8666@hotmail.com.

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A MEDIA FAQ on `House Churches' and `Conversions'

2006-07-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

By Dr. John Dayal

Answers to some frequently asked media questions on House Churches and the definition of Conversions in context of the laws on Religious Freedom in Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Arunachal [and Tamil Nadu]

HOUSE CHURCHES

The Constitution of India gives every citizen the right and freedom of Faith, including its practice, profession and propagation. This is clear in Article 25 which states that `subject to public order, health and morality', we have the right to freedom of conscience.

The only bar is, as for most other freedoms, that it should not create a public law and order situation, or be obnoxious in some other way. This rider is the one so often misused by governments and police who can claim that certain acts of one community can threaten the peace [for instance cow sacrifice at Eid, which is objected to by Hindutva groups]

The law as it exists in India recognizes places of religious worship as physical entities in public domain. The one mention that comes is with reference to the official and legal rulings which, in the aftermath of the violence during Partition of India in 1947, said places of worship which existed at the dawn of freedom could not have their identity or function changed. This was to prevent mosques being converted to temples or demolished or sold.. This was re-stated in Uttar Pradesh in the case of attempts to sell churches -- not all church property which could include schools or grounds, but church buildings which had functioned as churches

House churches, Small Christian Communities, Basic Christian Communities whether Catholic, Evangelical or Pentecost, and religious activity in a person's private home, which includes all property, is a private event protected by laws against trespass, criminal intimidation, breaking and forcible entry and similar criminal activity

The police have to take action as they would in case of attempted murder, assault, burglary or dacoity -- if assailants are armed, and there are more than five of them in number

They - the local police and magistracy -- have no excuse in not acting.

CONVERSIONS

The second question is of Conversions from one religion to another [giving up one's religion for joining irreligious or atheistic groups such as the Marxists, or lapsed believers do not find any mention in legal literature]

The Supreme Court judgment in the matter of earlier, and contradictory, High court judgments on the Orissa and MP Freedom of Religion Acts was clear that induced and forcible conversions at the hand hands of a religious functionary or priest were illegal, but it was NOT illegal - and therefore legitimate -- for a person to change his religion.

Therefore it is quite clear by analogy and deduction that the act of conversion theologically is different from the legal definition.

A person may have Christ experience through many ways or paths, and may consider him [or her] a follower or believer of Christ. He may have found Christ by personally reading the Bible which he bought by himself, saw in a library or his hotel room, or was given one by a friend, evangelist or priest. He may even have had the Bible read to him by his children, in case he himself was illiterate. He may have found Christ through the evangelical actions of others, either done actively as by missionaries, or passively as by watching Christian neighbours or friends. The person may surrender to Christ on his own; and to himself, he will deem to have become a Christian even if he has not undergone any rituals. Some even consider this the Amazing Grace and Work of the Holy Spirit.

For social purposes, however, and requirements of Civic life, which may include the need for passports or other diplomatic or government documents, however, marriage, or even burial of the dead, he may want to `belong to' or `to be admitted to' the larger Christian community, denomination, group or whatever else it is called. This process may involve ceremonies or rites of passage, which is also called baptism. This may vary with denominations. This is like membership of a club or organisation with its own entry and exit laws.

In fact in the knananite church, a part of the Kerala Catholic group, it admits only persons belonging to select families. No marriage outside the ethnic and linguistic sub-community is allowed or accepted, and of course no one can convert to this sect.

Pentecost and Evangelical groups and some mainline churches want full immersion of the adult.

The Catholic Church, especially in the Latin rite, accepts and encourages child or infant baptism -- I was baptized as a six day old, my daughter was a month old on her baptism -- with ceremonies of confirmation [or First Holy Communion] at an age when the child is able to understand what is happening

The Indian law, penal code or however, has no business entering this domain.

The Sikh faith has tasting of the amrit, or holy water consisting of water, sugar mixed together with a ceremonial sword in a groupware -- the Muslim faith has sunnat, circumcision as well as hearing and pronouncing the kalma -- god is but one god is one and Mohammed is his prophet

No one can convert to Zoroastrian. It can be by birth only. That is why they are a dying community. There are no half Parsees, so to say.

You can become a Jew by converting to Judaism but it is a long and tedious [process sand is discouraged if both or one parent is not a Jew.

Buddhism has a few simple rites.

I do not know the Jain rites.

By the way, the special position for Anglo Indians is not on religious grounds, but on genes and language. Their mother tongue has to be English and their descent from the father's side has to be European.

An Anglo-Indian woman's children by a non Anglo Indian man are not Anglo Indians

And, other than the civil powers of Christian priest in terms of Marriages [but not divorces], births and deaths [burial records]; there is no official administrative law or bureaucratic machinery to certify or license or otherwise formally recognize Christian clergy. Ordination and Consecration are strictly denominational activity. The State also does not recognize gradations in clergy and hierarchy. The titles of Father, Pastor, Bishop or Cardinal, are therefore not of legal consequence but are accepted because they are accepted by the concerned community or group. No denomination has monopoly on the titles and even Catholic priests can, and often do, call themselves Pastors. By the same argument, Episcopal and even Evangelical clergy no call themselves Bishops and Archbishops. They can.

John Dayal
New Delhi, July 2006

Why go for Conversion

2006-07-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

Why go for Conversion
In 1935 at Nasik district, Maharashtra, Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar had declared his firm resolve to change his religion. He had declared that he was born as a Hindu but will not die as Hindu. About a year later, a massive Mahar conference was held on May 30 and 31, 1936, in Mumbai, to access the impact of that declaration on Mahar masses. In his address to the conference, Dr.Ambedkar expressed his views on conversion in an elaborate, well- prepared and written speech in Marathi. Here is an English translation of that speech by Mr.Vasant Moon, OSD to the committee of Govt. of Maharashtra for publication of Writings & speeches of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar
Conversion is not a game of children. It is not a subject of entertainment. It deals with how to make man's life successful. Just as a boatman has to make all necessary preparations before he starts for voyage, so also we have to make preparations. Unless I get an idea as to how many persons are willing to leave the Hindu fold, I cannot start preparations for conversion.
For a common man this subject of conversion is very important but also very difficult to understand.
Class Struggle
There are two aspects of conversion; social as well as religious; material as well as spiritual. Whatever may be the aspect, or line of thinking, it is necessary to understand the beginning, the nature of Untouchability and how it is practiced. Without this understanding, you will not be able to realize the real meaning underlying my declaration of conversion. In order to have a clear understanding of untouchability and its practice in real life, I want you to recall the stories of the atrocities perpetrated against you. But very few of you might have realized as to why all this happens! What is at the root cause of their tyranny? To me it is very necessary, that we understand it.
This is not a feud between rival men. The problem of untouchability is a matter of class struggle. It is the struggle between caste Hindus and the Untouchables. That is not a matter of doing injustice against one man. This is a matter of injustice being done by one class against another. This "class struggle" has a relation with the social status. This struggle indicates, how one class should keep its relation with another class. This struggle starts as soon as you start claiming equal treatment with others...
Conversion not for slaves
The reason for their anger is very simple. Your behaving on par with them insults them. The untouchability is not a short or temporary feature; it is a permanent one .To put it straight, it can be said that the struggle between the Hindus and the Untouchables is a permanent phenomena. It is eternal, because the religion which has placed you at the lowest level of the society is itself eternal, according to the belief of the Hindu caste people. No change, according to time and circumstances is possible. You are at the lowest rung of the ladder today. You shall remain lowest forever. This means the struggle between Hindus and Untouchables shall continue forever. How will you survive through this struggle is the main question. And unless you think over it, there is no way out. Those who desire to live in obedience to the dictates of the Hindus, those who wish to remain their slaves, they do not need to think over this problem. But those who wish to live a life of self-respect, and equality, will have to think over this. How should we survive through this struggle? For me, it is not difficult to answer this question. Those who have assembled here will have to agree that in any struggle one who holds strength becomes the victor. One, who has no strength, need not expect success. This has been proved by experience, and I do not need to cite illustration to prove it.
Three types of Strength
The question that follows, which you must now consider, is whether you have enough strength to survive through this struggle? Three types of strength are known to man: (i) Manpower, (ii) Finance and (iii) Mental Strength. Which of these, you think that you possess? So far as manpower is concerned, it is clear, that you are in a minority. In Mumbai Presidency, the untouchables are only one-eighth of the total population. That too unorganized. The castes within themselves do not allow them to organize. They are not even compact. They are scattered through the villages. Under these circumstances, this small population is of no use as a fighting force to the untouchables at their critical moments. Financial strength is also just the same. It is an undisputed fact that you at least have a little bit of manpower, but finances you have none. You have no trade, no business, no service, no land. The piece of bread thrown out by the higher castes, are your means of livelihood. You have no food, no clothes. What financial strength can you have? You have no capacity to get redress from the law courts. Thousands of untouchables tolerate insult, tyranny and oppression at the hands of Hindus without a sigh of complaint, because they have no capacity to bear the expenses of the courts. As regards mental strength, the condition is still worst. The tolerance of insults and tyranny without grudge and complaint has killed the sense of retort and revolt. Confidence, vigour and ambition have been completely vanished from you. All of you have been become helpless, unenergetic and pale. Everywhere, there is an atmosphere of defeatism and pessimism. Even the slight idea, that you can do something does not enter your mind.
Muslim Example
If, whatever I have described above is correct then you will have to agree with the conclusion that follows. The conclusion is, if you depend only upon your own strength, you will never be able to face the tyranny of the Hindus. I have no doubt that you are oppressed because you have no strength. It is not that you alone are in minority. The Muslims are equally small in number. Like Mahar- Mangs, they too have few houses in the village. But no one dares to trouble the Muslims while you are always a victim of tyranny. Why is this so? Though there may be two houses of Muslims in the village, nobody dares to harm them, while the whole village practices tyranny against you though you have ten houses. Why does this happen? This is a very pertinent question and you will have to find out a suitable answer to this. In my opinion, there is only one answer to this question. The Hindus realize that the strength of the whole of the Muslim population in India stands behind those two houses of Muslims living in a village and, therefore, they do not dare to touch them. Those two houses also enjoy free and fearless life because they are aware that if any Hindu commits aggression against them, the whole Muslim community from Punjab to Madras will rush to their protection at any cost. On the other hand, the Hindus are sure that none will come to your rescue, nobody will help you, no financial help will reach you. Tahsildar and police belong to caste Hindus and in case of disputes between Hindus and Untouchables, they are more faithful to their caste than to their duty. The Hindus practice injustice and tyranny against you only because you are helpless.
Outside Support
From the above discussion, two facts are very clear. Firstly, you can not face tyranny without strength. And secondly, you do not possess enough strength to face the tyranny. With these two conclusions, a third one automatically follows. That is, the strength required to face this tyranny needs to be secured from outside. How are you to gain this strength is really an important question? And you will have to think over this with an unbiased mind.
From this, you will realize one thing, that unless you establish close relations with some other society, unless you join some other religion, you cannot get the strength from outside. It clearly means, you must leave your present religion and assimilate yourselves with some other society. Without that, you cannot gain the strength of that society. So long as you do not have strength, you and your future generations will have to lead your lives in the same pitiable condition.
Spiritual Aspect of Conversion
Uptil now, we have discussed why conversion is necessary for material gains. Now, I propose to put forth my thoughts as to why conversion is as much necessary for spiritual wellbeing. What is Religion? Why is it necessary? ... 'That which govern people is religion'. That is the true definition of Religion. There is no place for an individual in Hindu society. The Hindu religion is constituted on a class-concept. Hindu religion does not teach how an individual should behave with another individual. A religion, which does not recognize the individual, is not personally acceptable to me.
Three factors are required for the uplift of an individual. They are: Sympathy, Equality and Liberty. Can you say by experience that any of these factors exist for you in Hinduism?
No Equality in Hinduism
Such a living example of inequality is not to be found anywhere in the world. Not at anytime in the history of mankind can we find such inequality, which is more intense than untouchability... I think, you have been thrust into this condition because you have continued to be Hindus. Those of you who have become Muslims, are treated by the Hindus neither as Untouchables nor as unequals. The same can be said of those who have become Christians...
That God is all pervading is a principle of science and not of religion, because religion has a direct relation with the behaviour of man. Hindus can be ranked among those cruel people whose utterances and acts are two poles apart. They have this Ram on their tongues and a knife under their armpits. They speak like saints but act like butchers...
Thus we are not low in the eyes of the Hindus alone, but we are the lowest in the whole of India, because of the treatment given to us by the Hindus.
If you have to get rid of this same shameful condition, if you have to cleanse this filth and make use of this precious life; there is only one way and that is to throw off the shackles of Hindu religion and the Hindu society in which you are bound.
The taste of a thing can be changed. But the poison cannot be made amrit. To talk of annihilating castes is like talking of changing the poison into amrit. In short, so long as we remain in a religion, which teaches a man to treat another man like a leper, the sense of discrimination on account of caste, which is deeply rooted in our minds, can not go. For annihilating caste and untouchables, change of religion is the only antidote.
Untouchables are not Hindus
What is there in conversion, which can be called novel? Really speaking what sort of social relations have you with the caste Hindus at present? You are as separate from the Hindus as Muslims and Christians are. So is their relation with you. Your society and that of the Hindus are two distinct groups. By conversion, nobody can say or feel that one society has been split up. You will remain as separate from the Hindus as you are today. Nothing new will happen on account of this conversion. If this is true, then why should people be afraid of conversion? At least, I do not find any reason for such a fear...
Revolution - Not Reform
Changing a religion is like changing a name. Change of religion followed by the change of name will be more beneficial to you. To call oneself a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist or a Sikh is not merely a change of religion but also a change of name.. Since the beginning of this movement of conversion, various people have raised various objections to it. Let us now examine the truth, if any, in such objections...
A congenital idiot alone will say that one has to adhere to one's religion because it is that of our ancestors. No sane man will accept such a proposition. Those who advocate such an argument, seem not to have read the history at all. The ancient Aryan religion was called Vedic religion. It has three distinct characteristic (features). Beef-eating, drinking and merry-making was part of the religion of the day. Thousands of people followed it in India and even now some people dream of going back to it. If the ancient religion alone is to be adhered to why did the people of India leave Hinduism and accept Buddhism? Why did they divorce themselves from the Vedic religion?... Thus this Hindu religion is not the religion of our ancestors, but it was a slavery forced upon them...
To reform the Hindu society is neither our aim nor our field of action. Our aim is to gain freedom. We have nothing to do with anything else.
If we can gain freedom by conversion, why should we shoulder the responsibility of reforming the Hindu religion? And why should we sacrifice our strength and property for that? None should misunderstand the object of our movement as being Hindu social reform. The object of our movement is to achieve social freedom for the untouchables. It is equally true that this freedom cannot be secured without conversion.
Caste can't be destroyed
I do accept that the untouchables need equality as well. And to secure equality is also one of our objectives. But nobody can say that this equality can be achieved only by remaining as Hindu and not otherwise. There are two ways of achieving equality. One, by remaining in the Hindu fold and another by leaving it by conversion. If equality is to be achieved by remaining in the Hindu fold, mere removal of the sense of being a touchable or an untouchable will not serve the purpose. Equality can be achieved only when inter-caste dinners and marriages take place. This means that the Chaturvarnya must be abolished and the Brahminic religion must be uprooted. Is it possible? And if not, will it be wise to expect equality of treatment by remaining in the Hindu religion? And can you be successful in your efforts to bring equality? Of course not. The path of conversion is far simpler than this. The Hindu society does not give equality of treatment, but the same is easily achieved by conversion. If this is true, then why should you not adopt this simple path of conversion?
Conversion is a simplest path
According to me, this conversion of religion will bring happiness to both the Untouchables as well as the Hindus. So long as you remain Hindus, you will have to struggle for social intercourse, for food and water, and for inter-caste marriages. And so long as this quarrel continues, relations between you and the Hindus will be of perpetual enemies. By conversion, the roots of all the quarrels will vanish... thus by conversion, if equality of treatment can be achieved and the affinity between the Hindus and the Untouchables can be brought about then why should the Untouchables not adopt the simple and happy path of securing equality? Looking at this problem through this angle, it will be seen that this path of conversion is the only right path of freedom, which ultimately leads to equality. It is neither cowardice nor escapism.
Sanctified Racism
Although the castes exist in Muslims and the Christians alike, it will be meanness to liken it to that of the Hindus. There is a great distinction between the caste-system of the Hindus and that of the Muslims and Christians. Firstly, it must be noted that though the castes exist amongst the Christians and the Muslims, it is not the chief characteristic of their body social.
There is one more difference between the caste system of the Hindus and that of the Muslims and Christians. The caste system in the Hindus has the foundation of religion. The castes in other religions have no sanction in their religion ...Hindus cannot destroy their castes without destroying their religion. Muslims and Christians need not destroy their religions for eradication of their castes. Rather their religion will support such movements to a great extent.
Conversion alone liberates us
I am simply surprised by the question, which some Hindus ask us as to what can be achieved by conversion alone? Most of the present day Sikhs, Muslims and Christians were formerly Hindus, majority of them being from the Shudras and Untouchables. Do these critics mean to say that those, who left the Hindu fold and embraced Sikhism or Christianity, have made no progress at all? And if this is not true, and if it is admitted that the conversion has brought a distinct improvement in their condition, then to say that the untouchables will not be benefited by conversion, carries no meaning...
After giving deep thought to the problem, everybody will have to admit that conversion is necessary to the Untouchables as self-government is to India. The ultimate object of both is the same. There is not the slightest difference in their ultimate goal. This ultimate aim is to attain freedom. And if the freedom is necessary for the life of mankind, conversion of Untouchables which brings them complete freedom cannot be called worthless by any stretch of imagination...
Economic Progress or Social Changes?
I think it necessary here to discuss the question as to what should be initiated first, whether economic progress or conversion? I do not agree with the view that economic progress should precede...
Untouchability is a permanent handicap on your path of progress. And unless you remove it, your path cannot be safe. Without conversion, this hurdle cannot be removed...
So, if you sincerely desire that your qualifications should be valued, your education should be of some use to you, you must throw away the shackles of untouchability, which means that you must change your religion...
However, for those who need this Mahar Watan, I can assure them that their Mahar Watan will not be jeopardized by their conversion. In this regard, the Act of 1850 can be referred. Under the provisions of this Act, no rights of person or his successors with respect to his property are affected by virtue of his conversion...
Poona Pact
A second doubt is about political rights. Some people express fear as to what will happen to our political safeguards if we convert...
But I feel, it is not proper to depend solely on political rights. These political safeguards are not granted on the condition that they shall be ever lasting. They are bound to cease sometime. According to the communal Award of the British Government, our political safeguards were limited for 20 years. Although no such limitation has been fixed by the Poona Pact, nobody can say that they are everlasting. Those, who depend upon the political safeguards, must think as to what will happen after these safeguards are withdrawn on the day on which our rights cease to exist. We will have to depend on our social strength. I have already told you that this social strength is wanting in us. So also I have proved in the beginning that this strength cannot be achieved without conversion...
Political Rights
Under these circumstances, one must think of what is permanently beneficial.
In my opinion, conversion is the only way to eternal bliss. Nobody should hesitate even if the political rights are required to be sacrificed for this purpose. Conversion brings no harm to the political safeguards. I do not understand why the political safeguards should at all be jeopardized by conversion. Wherever you may go, your political rights and safeguards will accompany you. I have no doubt about it.
If you become Muslims, you will get the political rights as Muslims. If you become Christians, you will get the political rights as Christians, if you become Sikhs, you will have your political rights as Sikhs. In short, our political rights will accompany us.
So nobody should be afraid of it. On the other hand, if we remain Hindus and do not convert, will our rights be safe? You must think carefully on this. Suppose the Hindus pass a law whereby the untouchability is prohibited and its practice is made punishable, then they may ask you, 'We have abolished untouchability by law and you are no longer untouchables...
Looking through this perspective, conversion becomes a path for strengthening the political safeguards rather than becoming a hindrance. If you remain Hindus, you are sure to lose your political safeguards. If you want to save them, leave this religion. The political safeguards will be permanent only by conversion.
The Hindu religion does not appeal to my conscience. It does not appeal to my self-respect. However, your conversion will be for material as well as for spiritual gains. Some persons mock and laugh at the idea of conversion for material gains. I do not feel hesitant in calling such persons as stupid.
Conversion brings Happiness
I tell you all very specifically, religion is for man and not man for religion. To get human treatment, convert yourselves.
CONVERT -For getting organized.
CONVERT -For becoming strong.
CONVERT -For securing equality.
CONVERT -For getting liberty.
CONVERT -For that your domestic life may be happy.
I consider him as leader who without fear or favour tells the people what is good and what is bad for them. It is my duty to tell you, what is good for you, even if you don't like it, I must do my duty. And now I have done it.
It is now for you to decide and discharge your responsibility.
Reference: "Bhim Chakra 1996" published by Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. Tripura project, Agartala.

Why should we pray and act for the suffering church?

2006-07-12T03:11:00.000-07:00

Why should we pray and act for the suffering church? - ChristianAnswers.Net

Living in fear

2006-06-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI

in Bhopal

Attacks on the Christian community have registered a sharp increase in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh in recent times.

A.M. FARUQUI

BAJRANG DAL DISTRICT convener Devendra Rawat arguing with Madhya Pradesh State Minorities Commission member Indira Iyengar (left) at a press conference she held in Bhopal.

FEAR has gripped the Christian community in Madhya Pradesh as right-wing Hindu organisations have stepped up their attacks in the name of preventing religious conversion. Christians, who comprise 0.3 per cent of the State's population, are afraid to organise prayer meetings even at their homes or hold religious functions in the open as these could attract the ire of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh affiliates.

This was the experience of a group of Christians in Bhopal in April. Bajrang Dal activists stormed into the house of Rev. San Francis where a prayer meeting was on and beat up those present for "perpetuating conversion to Christianity". Eighteen of them were dragged to the police station. Although it became clear that no conversion had taken place, the authorities did not take immediate action against the assailants.

More recently, on June 5, when Indira Iyengar, who represents the Christian community on the State Minority Commission, addressed a press conference in Bhopal to highlight the plight of two tribal women from Khargone who were allegedly raped by some right-wing activists on May 28 for converting to Christianity three years ago, she was heckled. Bajrang Dal activists, led by district convener Devendra Rawat, warned her of dire consequences if she did not stop "maligning the RSS and other Hindu organisations".

If such blatant attacks, that too in full media glare, are possible in the State capital, the situation in the interior areas can only be imagined.

"The situation is bad in Jabalpur, Indore, Dhar, Jhabua and Ratlam. Attacks on Christians have gone up sharply in the past three years," says the Archbishop of Bhopal, Dr. Pascal Topno. Indira Iyengar says in Jabalpur more than 20 cases have been slapped on the Christians in the past two months for alleged conversion. "I have been writing to the government, highlighting the plight of the Christians, but nothing happens," she says. She said the press conference was organised to draw public attention to the plight of the two abused tribal women as no FIR had been registered.

What, however, is disconcerting, is that the Bharatiya Janata Party government does not appear to be taking the complaints seriously. How else can one explain the attitude of the Chief Minister or even senior government officials who dismiss the allegations?

"Things are being blown out of proportion by Indira Iyengar because she wants to project herself as the messiah of Indian Christians in order to be nominated to the National Commission for Minorities [NCM]," says Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, echoing what Devendra Rawat told this correspondent.

Even if the incident involving Indira Iyengar is set aside, how can the Jhabua riots of January 2004 be ignored? Not a single right-wing activist has been booked until now for rioting against Christians. Instead, 16 Christians were arrested. They were released only recently after the High Court declared them "not guilty". Not a single person has been booked for the assault on Fr. Stan Fareira, principal of Don Bosco School in Jhabua. Fr. Fareira's life has been saved but he is in no condition to continue as the principal of the school. The NCM had, in a letter dated March 12, 2004, to the Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, demanded "immediate action" against those responsible for the riots and against the officials concerned for dereliction of duty, an independent inquiry into the riots, and full security to members of the Christian community, missionaries and institutions including churches. The government is yet to act on it. "We had instituted an inquiry into the riots and its report has come only now. We are still studying the report. The report holds conversions responsible for those incidents," said the Chief Minister. The government's plan of action on the basis of this report is predictable.

The State government, he said, was greatly concerned about conversions, which he claimed were going on. "Even though we have a law in place to prevent this, conversions are happening in large numbers. We are determined to stop this and since the present law has not proved to be effective, we are considering either making suitable changes in the law or introducing a fresh law," he told Frontline. However, the Chief Minister's claims that his government is committed to providing freedom of religion to all, ensuring that no physical harm comes to anyone and preventing individuals from taking the law into his own hands, sound hollow.

"The Chief Minister may be a man of noble intentions, but his officials certainly lack in sympathy for Christians," said Archbishop Topno. According to him, Christians in far-flung areas feel insecure. "I keep getting reports from here and there. The number of complaints has certainly gone up," he says. According to him, if it is true that somebody resorts to forceful conversion, through either threats or allurements, there are provisions in the law to prevent this. But instead of "letting the law take its course, individuals are taking the law into their own hands and this is what we are protesting against," he says.

Surprisingly, the State Minority Commission, which is supposed to safeguard the rights of the minorities, speaks the same language as the Bajrang Dal or the Chief Minister. Instead of expressing concern at the attacks on Christians, Commission Chairman Anwar Mohammad Khan denied that the Christian community had come under any calamitous attack in the State. Also, instead of expressing solidarity with Indira Iyengar, he said he was planning action against her for "trespassing the propriety of her post as Commission member by addressing a press conference without bringing the matter to his notice first".

No wonder then that Hindu fundamentalist organisations feel emboldened to declare that "we will now run the campaign against conversions on our own, and will give and even take any sacrifice required for this". Rawat told Frontline that since the government had proved to be "ineffective" in stopping religious conversions, "the Bajrang Dal has decided to initiate direct action". Direct action, he said, would mean awareness campaigns and also action similar to the one witnessed at the recent Bhopal press conference. "We will not allow so-called intellectuals to continue indulging in unsubstantiated propaganda against Hindu organisations any more. We are committed to stopping religious conversions and the malicious campaign against us," he maintained.

Declarations such as this with a patronising government at the helm, make the Christian community tremble. "We can only protest peacefully and hope that the Chief Minister will ensure that we continue to get the rights enshrined in the Constitution."We only demand that the law should take its own course. Is that asking for too much?" wonders Bishop Topno.

Trial of faith

2006-06-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

With malice towards one and all...

Khushwant Singh

June 1, 2006

I am partly the product of a Christian Mission College: I did my intermediate for two years at St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Every morning we had a half-hour class on the Bible. Attendance was optional. I was a regular because I wanted to know what Christianity was all about. Although earlier at Modern School, both the Principal, Kamla Bose, and her niece, Nilima, who was our English teacher, were Christians, I was not aware of it. Like most other Indians, I use to look down on Indian Christians as karantas. I remain grateful to Christian missionaries for what I have learnt about their work. The Bible opened my eyes to the richness of the English language. Though an avowed agnostic, I continue to read a passage or two every day, as I do of scriptures of other languages. They have a rich vocabulary and noble sentiments.

What impressed me most was the Christian contribution to the development of our country. They run the best schools, colleges and hospitals. Whenever any catastrophe like an earthquake or flood occurs, they are the first to arrive on the scene to provide medical assistance, food, shelter and whatever else is needed. If people in distress are impressed by them and some convert to their faith, it should not surprise anyone. It is neither force nor allurement that make them do so; only the setting of a good example of social service.

I spent some days with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Although the institutions she set up to help the poor and the needy were headed by Christian nuns, almost all the men and women taken care of by them belonged to other faiths. She never asked anyone to convert to Christianity. The only words I heard her utter to people who were dying were in Bengali: "Bhoggoban aachhen."(There is God.)

I concede that conversions cause tensions in families. People either convert to another faith en masse when they think they will get a better deal or they do so when want to marry someone of another faith. Seldom, if ever, do people change their faith to save their lives. A lie perpetuated over the centuries is that Islam was spread by the sword. If that were true, all Indians would have been Muslims as Muslims ruled the country for several centuries. Islam spread in India through the influence of Sufi saints who preached equality and harmony. No Muslim army ever conquered Indonesia. Their forefathers accepted Islam on their own.

Why did Babasaheb Ambedkar ask his Dalit followers to convert to Buddhism? Did anyone force or bribe him to do so? No. He felt that upper-caste Hindus had treated them like dirt for too long and it was time to break. So what is this hoo haa about conversions now? Six states - Arunachal, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan - mostly governed by Hindu fundamentalists, the BJP or its allies, have passed legislation forbidding conversion on pain of imprisonment for two to five years and a fine of Rs 50,000. Attempt to "convert directly or otherwise" has been made a non-bailable offence. They call this draconian law 'Freedom of Religion Bill'. It is exactly the opposite, as it deprives citizens of the right to choose their religion. I hope if and when the matter comes up before the Supreme Court, it will be struck down.

Meanwhile, the Sangh parivar led by the RSS is busy with a re-conversion programme of its own brand. It is called ghar vaapsi (return home) to Hinduism. It is mostly aimed at adivasis. The very nomenclature proves that they were not Hindus but animists with deities and rituals of their own. However, to be fair to the parivar, there are positive aspects of this zeal to bring them back into the Hindu fold. They have opened schools in tribal belts. If they really mean business, apart from persuading them to celebrate Hindu festivals, they might also want to do something to break the stranglehold of caste panchayats which continue to ostracise people who break caste rules. They have no place in a modern society.

Why objections to Pope's remarks are baseless

2006-05-31T03:08:00.000-07:00

(IANS)
By Vishal Arora

The remarks of Pope Benedict XVI about India's anti-conversion law that New Delhi has protested neither constitute "interference" in a country's internal affairs nor suggest that Christian missionaries are converting Hindus "forcibly", as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has alleged.

The Pope had told India's new ambassador to the Vatican Amitava Tripathi that "the reprehensible attempt to legislate clearly discriminatory restrictions on the fundamental right of religious freedom must be firmly rejected not only as unconstitutional but also as contrary to the highest ideals of India's founding fathers who believed in a nation of peaceful coexistence and mutual tolerance between different religions and ethnic groups".

Today's international community accepts the principle that the way any state treats its citizens is in the public domain, and external criticism from other governments or foreign religious leaders does not constitute interference in the internal affairs of the country. The UN's International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which India has ratified, allow international accountability vis-à-vis human rights record of the countries.

As regards the constitutional validity of the legislation regulating conversion, the so-called Freedom of Religion Act is seen as an anti-conversion law by religious minorities, which say the law implicitly seeks to restrict conversion in general in the garb of prohibiting "forcible" or "fraudulent" conversions - a concern that has a legitimate ground.

The Freedom of Religion Acts in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa require that all conversions be reported to the state administration. Section 4 of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Rules, 1989, states that "any person intending to convert his religion shall give a declaration before a magistrate... prior to such conversion that he intends to convert his religion on his own will". Similarly, Section 5 makes it mandatory for the priest to intimate the details of the conversion to the government 15 days in advance.

If the priest and the prospective convert fail to inform the government of the conversion - even in case of a voluntary conversion - they can be prosecuted and, if found "guilty", punished like common criminals.

Besides, this provision overlooks the basic fact that conversion is not always tangible, as it has to do with a person's faith, which may change gradually over a period of time for various reasons and one may not be able to tell the exact time and place of his or her conversion. In fact, the provision reduces this mystic phenomenon to a time-and-place-bound ceremony.

This narrow, mistaken definition of conversion with the provision for mandatory reporting of conversions allows the state to interfere in the arena of a citizen's life that is extremely personal to him or her.

Christianity, in particular, faces the brunt of this provision, as the sacrament of baptism is deemed as a "conversion ceremony" and priests performing the ceremony are considered as those converting. Baptism, according to the Bible, is for those who have decided to follow the Christian faith and it is not a means to convert - this is why churches give baptism to all its registered members, whether they were born in a Christian family or have accepted Christianity from other backgrounds.

Further, these laws do not define the terms sufficiently, giving discretionary powers to the governments, which can be misused. For instance, "allurement" is defined as an "offer of any temptation in the form of any gift or gratification, either in cash or in kind or grant of any material benefit, either monetary or otherwise" that can both restrict religious and charitable activities and create ample opportunity for abuse and unjust prosecution. Such vague terms can leave a room for a government to indulge in religious policing like in Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the Rajasthan bill, which was passed by the state assembly on April 7 and endorsement to which was denied by the governor Thursday, violates the right to equality before law promised in Article 14 of the constitution. For the bill explicitly exempts "reconversion" to Hinduism from the purview of the law by defining conversion as adopting "a religion other than one's forefathers" along the same lines as the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 1978, according to which conversion means "renouncing an indigenous faith and adopting another faith or religion".

This restriction on citizens' conversion to minority religions with a blanket freedom for the likes of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) to organise "home-coming" ceremonies also implies that the laws seek to make it difficult for the majority community to practise their liberty to convert to other religions.

The allegation that Christian missionaries go to "gullible" poor, illiterate Dalits and tribals living in remote areas to convert them using fraudulent means sounds like a Churchill statement at the time of the British leaving India - that the country was not capable of ruling itself, as a majority of its people were poor and illiterate.

The BJP owes an explanation as to how Dalits and tribals, if they are so naïve, can be allowed the right to cast votes to choose their representatives but not the freedom to decide what religion they want to follow.

One wonders why it is always the "other" who objects to conversions, and never those who have accepted the religion. We are yet to see a "Forum of Converts against Conversion" kind of group joining the BJP - which may never happen.

One also fails to understand why the party needs anti-conversion laws when not even a single person has been convicted of forcible or fraudulent conversion by any court in the country in the last more than 37 years.

(Vishal Arora is a writer on religious issues. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vishalarora_in@hotmail.com)

Yet Another Challenge to the Constitution

2006-05-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

Yet Another Challenge to the Constitution

Dominic Emmanuel

Will Vasundhara Raje have to wait for a poll debacle to withdraw the recently passed "Freedom of Religion Bill 2006", as Jayalalitha did after the drubbing she and her party received during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections? Well! Since Rajasthan has less than 1 percent Christian population, at whom, according to Home Minister Gulab Singh Kataria, the architect of the Bill, is aimed, "it was needed to check the activities of Christian missionaries in certain parts of the State, especially in Kota", there is little chance that there will be any alteration to it.

Gujarat, also BJP governed, is another State which passed such an unconstitutional law earning Narender Modi among other things, the singular distinction of being 'a modern day Nero', from no less an institution than the Supreme Court. That the Gujarat government has not yet framed rules for the said Bill or that so far no case either in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa or Arunachal Pradesh of 'forceful conversion' or 'conversion by allurement or fraudulent means' has come to light, is not really the concern of BJP governments. It is enough that such Bills and Acts, come handy to terrorize the minorities in general and the Christian missionaries in particular, who are rendering selfless service to the most neglected people in remote areas. It is also a useful tool to justify the actions of the likes of Dara Singh. False allegations in the name of 'conversion' serve many purposes.

In Rajasthan the Freedom of Religion Bill was spoken of ever since the BJP government came to power in 2004 but it caught momentum after the President of a certain Emmanuel Mission International (EMI), Bishop Samuel Thomas was arrested from NOIDA last month along with an arrest warrant issued against his father Archbishop M. A. Thomas, the founder of EMI. Both of them are being held responsible for propagating a book called Haqueekat, which allegedly contains material denigrating the Hindu religion, though neither of them has either written or published the book. Though we have not seen or read the book, we have, including me as the spokesperson of the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, condemned in public, all such material containing insulting references to other religions or their believers.

There are also hundreds of booklets and pamphlets in circulation all over, particularly in North India, a bundle of which I have personally handed over both to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the then Home Minister Mr. L. K. Advani making highly derogatory remarks against the Bible and Christianity. But is anyone, especially those working overtime to introduce such Bills, bothered about their plight?

On the one hand, we have the Sensex and the Nifty scaling new heights, in the BJP ruled States, on the other hand, such retrograde laws are being passed, targeting openly one particular Community. The Bill is so ludicrous and contradictory, to say the least, that it allows people to go back to their 'original religion', without attracting any punitive action.

Even if no one wants to listen to the constant shrill of the Christian Community in despair that it is not involved in any 'mass conversion', people are urged to believe at least the official Census of India showing a clear decline of Christian population in the last four decades, down from 2.6% to being just 2.3% at the last count.

But how does one convince a completely biased lot which is not only totally closed to see the 'truth' but which keeps harping on the two constant refrains against minorities, that of 'minority appeasement' (now riding on Advani's Rath) and that of 'mass conversion' (on Rajnath's Rath). That the Hindu voter, however, has become much wiser than those hardliners who get such draconian bills passed, has been proved by the result of the last elections and the poor attendance right now at the two Rath Yatras.

It was in order to boost the attendance around the Raths that the new BJP President Rajnath Singh lashed out at the Christian missionaries in Chattisgarh boasting, "as soon as I became the BJP President, I told all my party chief ministers to enact laws to check conversions and foil the designs of Christian missionaries". He then went on to say that the Jharkhand government was ready with the draft bill and Chattisgarh will soon follow suit. He had no hesitation in spewing venom at the Christian missionaries in the area. Both for Rajnath and Advani, and of course the Sangh Parivar, this is what democracy is all about.

The Catholic Church has clarified its position on conversion time and again as well as in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, stating, "In spreading religious faith. everyone ought at all times to refrain from any manner of action which might seem to carry a hint of coercion or of a kind of persuasion that would be dishonourable or unworthy, especially when dealing with poor or uneducated people. Such a manner of action would have to be considered an abuse of one's own right and a violation of the right of others" (cf. Declaration on Religious Freedom: no. 4. Vatican: 1965).

Similarly Pope Benedict XVI in his recent and first encyclical Deus Caritas Est reiterates, "Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. It is not a means of changing the world ideologically. Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of achieving other ends" no. 31. b & c).

Such laws go against the very spirit of Article 25 of the Constitution which grants, "freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion" to every Indian citizen and Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which India is a signatory, stating, "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion: this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice and worship and observance".

Among the many painful experiences for Christians in the context of 'conversion' there are two important ones. One, that those who do not understand the commandment of Jesus to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 15: 12) and "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers (sisters) that you do unto me" (Mt. 25: 40) completely misunderstand their motive for acts of love. Two, that millions who have passed through the Christian educational as well as other institutions and who were never once given so much as a hint to convert to Christianity, never stand up in their defense. The Archbishop Vincent M. Concessao of Delhi, however, holds, "Nobody really believes their lies against Christians and everyone is actually tired of them. Most people know that it is only a political game to be played and contested in the political arena".

Charioting the course of hate

2006-04-22T00:18:00.000-07:00

By Kuldip Nayar

AN intelligence report says that L.K. Advani's rath yatra in 1990 caused the largest number of killings after the partition riots in 1947. Yet, he has the audacity to say before embarking on another yatra that the last one was peaceful. BJP chief Rajnath Singh, a new convert to yatras, wants to prove that his brand of Hindutva is more virulent than Advani's.

Such clamorous street rallies have a disturbing effect on the public. They are injurious to the health of a country which claims to be a true democracy. What happened at Aligarh may not be the direct result of rallies. But their preparation has fouled the atmosphere. Extremist Muslims are also joining the fray and making them take on the lax administration.

Whether Advani will damage India's plural society more than Rajnath Singh is difficult to predict at present. Both are determined to widen the chasm found between Hindus and Muslims in the urban India and deepen hatred the RSS parivar has spread in the BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with the set programme of destroying every bit of commonality. The Rajasthan Government has gone a step further and armed itself with an anti-conversion law to forcibly sideline the small minority of Christians from the mainstream.

I am told that at one stage Atal Behari Vajpayee was not happy over reviving yatras, probably realising that they have served their "purpose." Advani even made Vajpayee's skepticism public. But then Vajpayee is atal (firm) only in name. He changes his mind when he finds the RSS and its coterie in the BJP are opposed to his thinking. It is widely known that he wanted to remove Narendra Modi after what he as the chief minister did to Gujarat. Vajpayee dropped the idea when the RSS told him not to disturb Modi.

Instead, Vajpayee attacked the Islamic countries at his next stop in Goa.

That Vajpayee has blessed Advani and Rajnath Singh does not mean that yatras have come to acquire better credentials. It only confirms that Vajpayee is a chip of the old block. He or, for that matter, his party has given yet another proof, if it was needed, that they are bent upon destroying the secular ethos of India. Only in whipping up sentiments against Muslims does the BJP see its future in election. It feels it has a chance in the country if it can divide it on religious lines as the pre-partition Muslim League did.

The country has withstood attacks on its secular ethos in the past. It will do so again. What disappoints me is that at a time when India requires all attention to grapple with the ill-effects of development at the cost of social justice, the BJP is resurrecting the Frankenstein of communalism. It does not mind even if the country goes to pieces in the process. The BJP should realise that it is already losing its base. Advani and Rajnath Singh cannot retrieve a party which wants to take India back to the middle-ages.

When it came to power at the centre, it was not because people returned the party in election but because some regional secular parties jettisoned their ideology to join the BJP government for loaves of office.

The situation has changed now. State leaders like Mulayam Singh in UP and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh believe that they can capture power at New Delhi by amalgamating with other regional leaders. The BJP is ruled out on yet another count: the crucial Left will back only those regional parties which have no truck with the BJP. The next Parliament may be dominated by regional parties, some of which have seen the BJP in its true colours. As for yatras, the response has been poor because an average Hindu is not taken in by the propaganda that the minorities will swamp him. The BJP has played the mandir card too often, much to the exasperation of people. In the last general election what hit the party was the countryside's abhorrence over changes in the fields of education, culture and information. The worst was the distortion of history. The BJP does not realise how deep the roots of pluralism in the country are. The latest book, Blood Brothers, by M.J. Akbar, an eminent journalist and author, has pointed this out. His is a saga of an Indian Muslim family, a story of three generations. He brings out boldly and objectively the innate strength of the subcontinent's common heritage. It is not one culture, not one language but a myriad of cultures and languages. Their accommodative living has made what India is - open, tolerant and cohesive. Akbar's span is wide. He explores Islam and Hinduism which moulds lives in India and impress their image on the history of times. The book deals with religion as a living element in today's culture, not as a museum piece. Akbar's book tells us how Hindus and Muslims believe in one Creator and that the author's grandfather "had not travelled too far when he was converted" from Hinduism to Islam. Both religions have so much in common. "The supreme God of the Vedas is Brahma. Brahma has no form; Allah also has no form. The Hindu philosophy of mimansa says that idols are only a means to assist the mind towards Brahma. The Hindu seeks release from life in nirvana, I seek assimilation in Allah. Both sufi and sanyasin reach God through meditation. The Hindu's kravana is my sama, we both listen; his manana is my muraqaba, we both obey; his nididhyanasana is my tawajjuh, we both contemplate. The buddhi of the Brahmin is my ilm; we both learn; his jnana is my marafat, we both seek emancipation through knowledge. What you call maya (illusion), I call alam-i-khyal, the world of fancy.

Akbar underlines the spirit of tolerance that has woven Hindus and Muslims into a mosaic that mirrors different thoughts while keeping it one. Take a small passage from his book: "…Dinner was placed before the guests; biryani for Muslims and dishfuls of savouries for the Hindus purchased from a Hindu sweetmeat shop. It was the best available…" Akbar does not harangue or lecture to make the point about the sense of accommodation. He quietly tells us how solicitous the Muslims were about the Hindus' belief in caste. The former purchases "savouries for the Hindus" from a Hindu sweetmeat shop. An era of sensitivity, the book traces from times immemorial.

Can Advanis and Rajnath Singhs ever imbibe that spirit? If they do not and continue to chip away at the country's institutions like pluralism they would be responsible for the harm to the society. They should understand that there can be no democracy without secularism.

Saffron strike

2006-04-12T23:47:00.000-07:00

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in Kota and Jaipur

A Christian mission becomes the target of attack following a controversy over a book that allegedly insults Hindu deities.

GOPAL SUNGER

A rally in Jaipur on March 21 protesting against the attacks.

A BOOK by an obscure writer was all it took for a systematic targeting of the Emmanuel Mission International (EMI), a Christian organisation that runs a chain of schools in Rajasthan, in the third week of February. Minority organisations, political parties such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Congress, women's groups and the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) came together on a common platform in the third week of March to condemn the attacks and the hounding of minorities in general in the State, timing the protests to coincide with the Assembly session.

These organisations also expressed their apprehensions about the Rajasthan Dharma Swatantrya Bill, 2006; passed by the Assembly on April 7, the new piece of legislation bans religious conversion. Offences under the new law are non-bailable.

There have been attacks on minority communities before, but the attacks on the EMI drew, for the first time, Christian organisations out on the streets in protest. The Rajasthan Christian Fellowship, which represents all denominations of the Christian faith, participated in the rally.

The provocation for the attacks was that the book "insulted" Hindu deities and thereby hurt the majority community's religious sentiments. Bunch of Truths (Haqeeqat in the Hindi translation) is written by C.G. Mathew, a lawyer based in Kerala. It was a rejoinder to RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar's Bunch of Thoughts. Mathew got his book translated into several languages. A professional translator based in Madhya Pradesh did the Hindi translation.

The EMI runs 49 schools in the State and has many majority community children among its students. It had nothing to do with either the writing of the book or its translations. However, it found itself a target of hostile attention after one Prahlad Panwar spotted the book at a bookstall during an EMI convention back in October 2005 and bought a copy for Rs.200. He filed a first information report (FIR) at a police station in Kota on February 14 saying the EMI was selling and distributing the book whose contents were objectionable.

Panwar, described by informed sources as an RSS activist, runs the Matantaran Virodhi Manch (translated, it means `anti-conversion front') in Kota, a city where the EMI runs four schools, an orphanage and a hospital. He says he visited the EMI convention to check if there were any conversion activities going on. Kota also happens to be the stronghold of Madan Dilawar, Minister for Social Welfare and Cooperatives, known for his stand against alleged conversions in the district.

After Panwar spotted the book in October, it also came to the notice of top police officers, including the Additional Director-General of Police (Crime). The Superintendent of Police in Kota received a letter from his superiors asking him to make an inquiry. He directed the Station House Officer at Bhimgajmandi, where the EMI is headquartered, to conduct an inquiry. The latter got hold of a copy, "studied" it and concluded that it contained inflammatory material. So on February 14, he filed an FIR.

So the EMI had two FIRs filed against it on the same day at two different police stations in Kota, with identical charges of trying to spread disharmony, which is an offence under the Indian Penal Code. The EMI premises in Kota were raided on the same day. Copies of the book were seized from the organisation's library and arrest warrants were issued against Archbishop M.A. Thomas, founder of the EMI, and his son Samuel Thomas.

Rakesh Pal Singh, Chief Investigating Officer in the case, said receipts showing the purchase of copies of the book were found during the raid. "It was clear that the book was bought, distributed and sold," he said. He also found the contents objectionable.

A police inquiry was now on into the EMI's role in distributing the book, but the attacks, which came soon after the raid, did not wait for its outcome. A group of people, allegedly members of the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena, climbed the gate of the Emmanuel Mission School at Jhotwara and set fire to the cross on it. The buses of the mission's school in Kota were damaged. St. Paul's School in Kota was also attacked by some young men, who the police later said were Shiv Sainiks. On the night of February 26, they broke into the school and vandalised a statue of St. Paul. The police said that they were given a "good beating" before being released on bail, but the attacks continued. In Niwai in Tonk district, the manager of an EMI school and his wife were manhandled. In Taleda in adjoining Bundi district, a mission school was pelted with stones but the police prevented any further flare-ups; police sources in Bundi said the culprits were Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena members. Two men in Kota announced a reward on Archbishop Thomas' head. They were arrested, but the Chief Investigating Officer dismissed the incident as a "non-event", likening it to the declaration by a Muslim cleric in the context of the Danish cartoons controversy.

The book was banned and on February 21 the Ministry of Social Welfare cancelled the registration of five societies run by the EMI. Their bank accounts were frozen, putting the Mission in a financial crisis. Five people, including the Mission's accountant, Samuel Thomas and the translator of Mathew's book, were arrested. Archbishop Thomas, whose whereabouts were not known, was declared an absconder.

There were indirect fallouts of the affair. Food and medical supplies to the orphanage and the hospital were disrupted, affecting 1,200 people, including children. The supplies were restored after political parties put pressure on the government; a CPI(M) team even visited the State from Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

This is not the first time that the EMI has been targeted. The police in Kota have never been able to prove charges of forcible conversions against the EMI or any minority organisation, but there have been allegations nonetheless. The district secretary of the CPI(M), R.K. Swami, and the president of the Kota Press Club, Pradyumna Kumar, said that every time there was an allegation of forcible conversion, the EMI opened up its activities for scrutiny.

There seems to be a pattern in the way in which these allegations are made and pursued. Lower-rung cadre of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or the Shiv Sena, mostly unemployed men and belonging to the Scheduled Castes and backward castes, make the first noises. Then the Bajrang Dal picks up the issue. Ultimately, the Bharatiya Janata Party stands to gain as society gets polarised on communal lines.

Pradyumna Kumar thought vonversions of the kind alleged were unlikely in a prosperous place like Kota. Even the Sahariyas, the poorest community in the area, were dependent on the government, not on missionaries.

So what is it that the saffron brigade really has against the EMI? A lot of people in Kota think it could be the growing popularity and success of the Mission. Outfits owing allegiance to the Rashtriya Swyamsewak Sangh run some 30 schools in Kota and the success of the Mission's schools may not look like a good thing to them. So EMI-run schools, which are the most popular in Bundi, Kota and Jhalawar, become targets of attack.

Some people feel that the attacks were only a pretext to create a favourable atmosphere for the anti-conversion Bill. Legal experts of the PUCL say that the new piece of legislation will intimidate people who wish to convert as well as those who propagate the faith. Father Raymond Coelho, spokesperson of the Rajasthan Christian Fellowship, said that he had only noticed such attacks on the community in the past 10 years. In his mind, too, the recent attacks have a link with efforts to push the anti-conversion Bill through.

The Bill's Statement of Objects and Reasons says: "It has been observed by the State government that some religious and other institutions, bodies and individuals are found to be involved in unlawful conversion from one religion to another by allurement or by fraudulent means or forcibly.... In order to curb such illegal activities and to maintain harmony amongst persons of various religions, it has been considered expedient to enact a special law for the purpose." Clause (c ) defines conversion as the renouncing of one's "own" religion and adopting another; one's "own" religion is the religion of one's forefathers. Legal experts point to the partisan nature of the definition, which excludes re-conversions, significant in the context of the Ghar-Vaapsi programmes in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

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Adivasis: A Cultural Cooption

2006-04-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

By Ram Puniyani

06 April, 2006

Countercurrents.org

From 1987 Sangh (RSS) has activated its offshoot Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram (VKA) into higher gear of activity. Adivasis, the most neglected part of society are being wooed through newly devised cultural mechanisms.

To begin with Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram used the word Vanvasi, instead of the correct nomenclature, Adivasi. The claim put forward by Hindutva is that these are parts of Hindu society who went to jungles to escape the conversion by Muslim kings. Due to their long stay in jungles they became untouchables and drifted away from the fold of Hindu society. This assertion kills many birds in one stone. On one side it tries to project that despite Aryans coming here from outside, Arctic zone, are not foreigners like the Muslims and Christians. Then aggressiveness of Muslim Kings is restated and the inner cruelty of Brahminical Hinduism is hidden as Adivasi 'problem' is projected to be coming from outside. A shifting of the 'blame' of inner ills to outside forces! Another aim achieved through this formulation is to bring Adivasis to Hindu fold and claim that its not a conversion but mere Ghar Vapasi, returning home, of these wretched of the earth. At the same time for the political project of intimidating the Christian missionaries working in the villages a ground is prepared to attack them as foreigners.

The forays of Sangh in Adivasi areas intensified from mid eighties when it was realized that by directly attacking dalits, the way they were attacked in 1980 and 1986 in Gujarat through caste violence, will be counterproductive at electoral level. The strategy evolved was to 'use' them as foot soldiers against Muslim minorities. At the same time electoral arithmetic brought to their attention this substantial chunk of population of Adivasis trying to come up through modern education and thereby disturbing the status quo, prevalent in the far off villages. Its here that the Christian missionaries were perceived as a big threat to the project of Sangh, which wants to maintain status quo vis a vis Adivasis dalits and women. Through the network of schools spread in the far off areas these Missionaries, whatever be their own motives, were instrumental in getting a section of Adivasis empowered and in the process the upper caste affluent base of Sangh was getting jittery.

The posting of RSS volunteers into the forest work was very systematic. Apart from attacking the Christian missionaries as foreigners the Ghar vapasi was brought in at a big scale in all the Adiviasi areas scattered from Gujarat to MP to Orissa. Around this time many a swamis, descended in these areas, Lakkhanand in Phulbani area, Aseemanand in Dangs, Asaram disciples in Jhabau and many other such efforts were unleashed. In Adivasi areas they resorted to intimidation, you are Hindus, Hindu rituals are like this and so these have to part of your life. Dilip Singh Judeo, of the 'God is money' fame, of Chattisgarhg, had the record number of Adiviasis converted in to Hinduism by newly devised baptizing techniques.

At the same time Hanuman was popularized as the God in this area and lately Shabri, the destitute women who had the privilege of offering wild berries to Lord Ram is being projected as the Goddess of Adivasis. The cultural symbolism cannot be missed in the selection of these deities. Hanuman was the unquestioning devotee of Lord Ram, with muscular power as the main virtue. He is capable of flying while carrying a huge mountain. But all the more he is carrying the mountain because he cannot identify the herb needed for treatment of Laxman, Lord's younger brother. This is what is the signal to Adivisis, unquestioning loyalty to Lord Ram, no need to have education. So what are the Christian missionaries doing here? Why should they be trying to educate you? They are foreigners. So Pastor Stains is picked up for the treatment which they want to meted out to the white robed priests and nuns.

Shabri, the embodiment of poverty is being glorified on purpose. Your great ancestress had the privilege to offer wild berries to the Lord. She is your role model, poor, powerless and with blind reverence and devotion for the upper caste. The recently held festival in Subir, Dangs district of Gujarat, celebrated Shabri and lakhs of Advasis were brought from neighboring Adivasi areas for the festival. The local people were scared that Sangh's festival may create the trouble and they may try to forcibly do the conversions to Hinduism. It was declared that Christians and Muslim are foreigners and are a threat to Hindu religion. This Kumbh is meant to protect the Hindus from the foreigners. In the beginning it was announced that conversions are the aim of Kumbh and than silence was kept on this point once various groups questioned their motives. This was boldly stated in the CD produced by Shabri Kumbh organizers. By the time the court ruling came to ban this CD was given, lakhs of its copies were already circulated and had the desired effect of threatening the Christianity community.

The Shabri samiti distributed saffron flags to the villagers and spread the word that those who do not put the flag will be regarded as anti Hindu, those who do not visit the Kumbh will also be regarded as anti Hindu. In this intimidating atmosphere the intervention of Human rights groups resulted in the Central government sending its observers. Also the Adivasi leaders realized the game being played by Sangh and mercifully a large section of native adivasis kept away from the festival. But Sangh has succeeded in spreading the seeds of hate and intimidation far and wide.

During Kumbh the inflammatory speeches were delivered by different leaders of Sangh. It remains to be seen as to what will be the long term impact of this festival. One thing is sure that the whole Adivasi area at some level has been shaken by this festival in which the major organizers were the city based traders, contractors and other supporters of Sangh. The native Adivasi festivals and gods are being undermined in various ways. Adivasis never used to have the temple or place of prayer within the four walls, most of their Gods were in the open. The festivals, dancing and feasting also were held in the open. With the new influence things are changing. The rift between the 'Hindu' and 'Christian' Adivasis is widening which surely will have adverse impact on the life in the area. In pursuance of the same tactics, now summer festival and Anjani mahotsav (festival) are being planned. Anjani, mother of Hanuman was never the object of veneration. Now she will be occupying a place amongst the deities.

During the festival of Shabri (Feb 11-13) in Ghubadiya, a place near Subir, the graveyard was dug up, the crosses on the graves were burnt. Not much notice of this has been taken in the local media and administrative circles. The increasing influence of Sangh and the religiosity is taking deeper turns. One understands that from the villages young girls in the age groups of 14-15 are being picked up to be trained as Sadhvis who can give recitation of Ramayana and other Hindu scriptures. The whole emphasis is on the cultural manipulation and the basic issues of Adivasis like land, education and health are being cleverly sidetracked through this culturo-religious manipulation.

One can see the social engineering in practice. The positive experience is that it seems that intervention of Human rights groups can partly change the direction of events in a healthy direction. Just before the Kumbh, human rights teams had investigated and put out a reort, which was taken note of by the authorities and local leaders. This put the Gujarat Government and Hindutva forces on the defensive. THeexpected turn out did not materialize and even the Ghar Vapasi was muted. The scare amongst the minorities was a bit less and the event passed off relatively peacefully as Hindutva forces had to be restrained. Question is, are the human rights groups willing, do they want to bring the real Adivasi issues on the social focus? Can we ask for social auditing of the activities of the relgio-cultural groups working in these areas? Can we halt the process of spreading hate against the minorities in these areas?

Ruthless and regular persecution of Gujarat's Christians and Muslims

2006-03-30T01:51:00.000-08:00

Ahmedabad (AsiaNews) – The government of Gujarat “has conveniently forgotten that Article 25 of the Constitutions guarantees freedom of worship, and it does everything in its power to continue, and to justify, ruthless persecution against Christians and Muslims living in the state”. With these words, Fr Cedric Prakash – director of Prashant, a Jesuit-run centre for human rights, justice and peace – concluded an article he wrote about the “Carnage of Gujarat”: the massacre perpetrated three years ago by “unknown people” against the Muslim community.

Fr Prakash examines the anti-conversion law currently in force that was approved by the nationalist Hindu party, and poses a series of questions to which “the government simply gives no reply”. The Jesuit is well known for his work for human rights: the Indian president awarded him with the Kabir Puraskar prize “for his commitment to promote communal peace and harmony”.

We reproduce the article in full below:

The BJP government [Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s largest political party with nationalist, fundamentalist leanings] in Gujarat rode to a massive two-thirds majority victory in the Assembly Elections of December 2002. This was mainly due to a meticulously organized pogrom on the Muslim minority of the State which is infamously called the “Gujarat Carnage of 2002”.

There was another aspect in their Election Manifesto which they propagated far and wide prior to the elections, namely that an anti-Conversion Law would be in place after they came to power. This promise they did keep when on March 26 2003, three years ago, they rode rough-shod over a feeble opposition and unanimously passed “The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act”.

Very ironically, that same day, Haren Pandya, a former Home Minister of Gujarat and a vociferous opponent of Narendra Modi, a nationalist leader, was gunned down in the heart of the city in broad daylight. The truth of his assassination has still not yet emerged but if one listens to Vitthalbhai Pandya, his father, then one will easily be convinced that the murderers of his son are not the “Muslim terrorists” who are being accused.

Very strangely, although the Act was passed, until today, the Gujarat Government has not been able to frame the rules needed to govern the implementation of the Act. In its essence, the Act “provides for freedom of religion by prohibition of conversion from one religion to another by use of force or allurement or by fraudulent means”.

The key clauses of the Act are :

1. Anyone wanting to convert or wanting to convert someone else from one religion to another needs prior permission from the District Magistrate.

2. Whoever contravenes this Act will be punished for a period extending up to three years and also liable to a fine which may extend to 50,000 rupees

3. However, if the “guilty” happens to be a minor or woman or a tribal or an outcast, the imprisonment extends up to four years and the fine extends up to 100,000 rupees.

Once this Act was passed, the government was not able to answer simple questions. Are there any instances of forced conversion in Gujarat? Has anyone complained? What does allurement mean? If for example, a person is promised “a more peaceful life” or a technique in the “art of living”, in the acceptance of another religion or way of life, does that amount to allurement? And what happens if one would like to embrace Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism or even Buddhism? Does one need to have permission for that conversion?

Then there are certain draconian aspects of the law: Who is the District Magistrate to sit on judgment on matters related to faith and conscience? How does one decide if permission should be given or not? What happens if one decides to become an agnostic, an atheist? Does that amount to changing one’s religion? Why should there be more severe punishment for a women, dalit, adivasi or minor? Is it because these groups are lesser than the “brahminized males” who dominate our society?

On Christmas Day 2005, in a widely publicized debate on television, the Home Minister of Gujarat, Amit Shah was challenged as to why the rules which are necessary for implementing this law were not being framed. He had absolutely no answer.

Very obviously, the level of rhetoric and the ferocity of the demands were heightened at the Shabri Kumbh Mela [festival of Hindu purification] from 11 to 13 February 2006. At this time, anti-Christian venom and hate were spewed. One of the resolutions of this Mela was to ensure a national law to ban conversions. A couple of weeks later, in a much publicized meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS, paramilitary formation of extremist Hindus, considered to be the armed wing of the BJP] in Orissa, a similar resolution was adopted.

The question is: why wasn’t such a law approved when the nationalists were in power? Why do they call on the current national government to pass it?

Whilst it is true that the law, as it is, is toothless, it is also a fact that it is like a Damocles’ sword, with some officials misusing it to threaten and intimidate tribals and dalits.

Mrs Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu brought in a similar but less draconian legislation sometime ago, but she had to eat humble pie because of its impact, so very conveniently and strategically, she withdrew it. The Gujarat government is in a similar quandary: having passed the legislation, they are just afraid to frame the rules for this law. The fact is that when they do so, they know that it will be challenged. It is a political trap they have set for themselves.

Another question that needs to be asked is: “Is the government of Gujarat really afraid that hundreds and thousands of people will actually embrace Christianity?” If this is so, why don’t they ask themselves why people want to convert to another faith?”

In the meantime, the government continues to harass and intimidate Christians, Muslims and other minorities with a terrifying regularity. They are doing all in their power in order to justify this law and persecution. The government has conveniently forgotten that Article 25 of the Constitutions guarantees every single citizen, the freedom to practice, preach and propagate the religion of his/her choice.

26 March 2003 was indeed a bloody day in the history of Gujarat: civil society must speak out for justice, freedom and truth in order to guarantee that such days will never be repeated. And, we need to know…..Is the Gujarat government afraid of something?