[ Continues from Gendered violence and Hindu nationalism Part I
URL: http://communalism.blogspot.com/2005/10/orissa-gendered-violence-and-hindu_14.html ]
by Angana Chatterji
[Published earlier in Communalism Combat, August-September 2005]
[. . . ] In Kilipal, (non-Christian) women's bodies too were simultaneously recast as arsenals of betrayal against other (and subaltern) women, as they held down Dolly, Sanjukta, Shanti, Sumitra, Umitra, Nayana and Nisha, to protect the 'integrity' of religion and nation. Dalit (Hindu) women performed the tonsuring of (Christian) Dalits. Duplicity made obligatory by the dominant caste, as assimilation and acceptance required Hindu Dalit participation in executing violence on Christian Dalits. Activating and attaining the participation of marginalised peoples against each other is tactical, weakening possibilities of alliance between them. It strengthens the dominant. Upper caste members cheered, watched, incited, but strategically, mostly remained in the background. Women, removed from their homes, attempted to escape to them and were jerked back into the courtyard. The temporary refuge of the household was denied them as public spectacle solidified dominant culture through visible, corporeal punishment of those who had become a difference unacceptable to the purveyors of social norms. Gendered violence infused private (here, the physical space of the home) and public spheres, as evidenced through the event of tonsuring. Women, the 'other' as 'commodity', already burdened and brutalised by a system that intrinsically devalues them, were made subjects of multiple oppression. Women's militancy is not uniform, its agency and impact differs across ideology, power, class and caste, as seen in the tonsuring episode, in actions of women associated with the Durga Vahini and Rashtriya Sevika Samiti. Nationalism erodes and makes secondary women's self-determination, as they participate in the schema of nation. Women's consent to militant politics occurs within the conditions of dominance that produce their repression and reproduce conditions of subjugation, masquerading as empowerment. We are prompted to see women as exerting agency in electing militancy, not encouraged to examine its texture, mark how violence is sexualised, or admit its relationship to patriarchal structures of disempowerment. How is agency mediated by complex, overlapping systems of oppression?
In outside worlds, the event of February 10 circulates in the public imaginary through contested and often problematic storying. As the All India Christian Council stated that those tonsured had been coerced to accept Hinduism, certain media reportage misrepresented that the women and Pastor Samal had invited the tonsuring as a ritual that confirmed their voluntary return to the Hindu faith. The Hindu Jagaran Samukhya, a Sangh affiliate, claimed that Christian families influenced by missionaries, had tonsured themselves to slander Hindus. The acts of vengeance that preceded and led to the event of February 10 are interpreted to impersonate family feud, distracting attention from the calculated, organised malice of the sangh parivar.
On February 15, Pastor Samal was taken, under protest, to Oradha, a village near Tirtol, where he was made to participate in a yagna (rite) organised by the VHP and its associate, Dharma Raksha Samiti. In adherence to Brahmanic rituals of purification, Sangh activists sprinkled holy water, as Pastor Samal was made to wear a new dhoti and the consecrated thread marking his 'return' to Hinduism. This occurrence was reported in local papers as evidence of Pastor Samal's voluntary reacceptance of Hinduism. On February 16, Pastor Samal was retaken to the police station, confined, and released at 2 a.m. on the 17th. On February 19, apprehensive of facing the police again, Pastor Samal recorded a statement before the sub-divisional judicial magistrate of Jagatsinghpur.
Police inaction in Kilipal is an indictment of the way in which law and order ceases to function for the dispossessed. The police did not offer necessary protection or secure the well-being of the Christian community, protect their right to life and livelihood, to freedom of religion and assembly, or relieve their experience of vulnerability. After the incident, SK Mohapatra, Inspector in Charge, Tirtol police station stated: “Had they been forcibly tonsured there would have been injury marks on their head or body. But nobody has even a scratch mark on their body” (People's Union for Civil Liberties, 2004). On February 17, a police statement contradicted this, as reported in The Statesman newspaper, noting that the reconversion of February 10 had occurred forcibly, violating the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA) by not seeking prior permission to convert. The police misreported that: Christians were participating in a yagna in Bilipada and were asked to tonsure themselves, and when they resisted a few women tonsured seven Christian women, and that no men were involved. The police committed custodial violations in battering and intimidating Pastor Samal, and misrepresented to the press that he had voluntarily 'reconverted' to Hinduism. After the event, they refused to arrest the perpetrators even as the victims remained in Bhubaneswar.
In Kilipal, it is believed, that police refused to arrest upper caste people, foreseeing retaliatory violence. On May 3, six Dalit Hindus were arrested in conjunction with the tonsuring. In reaction, local Hindu villagers filed charges against Pastor Samal and Dhaneshwar Kandi for engaging in illegal conversions, harming religious sensitivities, obscene acts in a public place, and criminal intimidation. These charges were filed under OFRA, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, and the Indian Penal Code, Sections 298, 294 and 506. Charges were also filed against the women who had undergone tonsuring. Days later, an arrest warrant was issued for Pastor Samal and Dhaneshwar Kandi. Pastor Samal testified that he that he was not aware of OFRA, and that his own conversion had happened in Mumbai where OFRA has no jurisdiction. He stated that he and other Christians in Kilipal had not undertaken conversions without consent, and two persons offered affidavits supporting his claim. Pastor Samal and Dhaneshwar Kandi were charged under OFRA. The perpetrators of the forcible tonsuring, with the intent of converting Christians to Hinduism, were not.
OFRA, a law passed in 1967, is frequently utilised to oppose Christians. The law, open to draconian interpretations, was overturned in 1973 and returned in 1977. In 1999, Orissa amended OFRA to fortify it further, prohibiting religious conversions without governmental authorisation through prior permission of local police and district magistrates. The police were given power to recommend approval or act against the proposed conversion. Those solemnising a conversion without permission may be incarcerated up to two years and fined Rupees 5,000. The penalties are twofold if the convert is a minor, Adivasi, or of disenfranchised caste background.
Pastor Samal and Dhaneshwar Kandi were arrested on May 29, interned for six weeks, and released on bail on July 14. The high court of Orissa granted anticipatory bail to the Christian women, circumventing their arrest. These cases are pending. The six Hindu Dalits were imprisoned for one month. Charges were filed on behalf of the tonsured, naming 33 persons of Hindu descent for committing the crime. Thirteen cases have been registered, no women have been charged, and only three of those charged are from dominant castes. Summons are yet to be issued and charge sheets filed.
Amid this, the Reconversion Committee was renamed the 'Peace Committee', with the assistance of the police. Those who attacked on February 10 constitute part of its membership. Abhaya Sahu, a male member, denied the involvement of Hindutva organisations in Kilipal. Rajendra Bhoi, another male member of the 'Peace Committee' stated: “We have boycotted them [Christians] from taking water from the village tube well. This is Hindustan's pond. They have to accept our Dharma if they want to return.... they have to follow our customs and traditions. Then... we would accept them” (People's Union for Civil Liberties, 2004).
The state administration did not intervene or recompense. The secular Action-Aid and Human Rights Law Network, with Christian Legal Association, United Christian Forum of Orissa and Indian Christian Council are some of the organisations that extended support. Fiscal assistance offered to the community has been meagre. The government's State Level Coordination Committee for Communal Harmony, at that time without a serving Hindu member, did not meet with those affected. Neither did ruling party or opposition leaders meet with the women or Pastor Samal. The Bhubaneswar and Cuttack Units of the People's Union for Civil Liberties sent a fact-finding team in March 2004. The National Human Rights Commission asked for a judicial investigation. The Minority Commission and the National Commission for Women were criticised for responding inadequately.
The tonsured women, with family members and other Christians from Kilipal, spent months in Bhubaneswar. There, Lata Samal delivered a healthy baby. In early August of 2004, they returned to their village, under police 'protection'. On August 11, the day after their return, their Hindu neighbours again determined to punish and ostracise them. At a village meeting, they re-imposed a social and economic embargo, and agreed to deny Christians the right to work in Kilipal and Kanimul, and use public water facilities. The district office of the VHP demanded that the women be arrested for converting to Christianity.
Police guards were installed at the mouth of Kilipal and Bauri Sahi in August 2004, and have remained since. The police maintain that visitors, especially Christians, who come from concern for the endangered, are inferred as 'threatening' by upper caste members. The Christian community remains isolated and members are forbidden from having clergy visit or guests stay overnight. In August 2004, and January and June of 2005, I had to drive past Kilipal village and Bauri Sahi, and halt at Kanimul village in the church in Gouranga Mallick's home. In 2004, two of the tonsured women travelled surreptitiously from Bauri Sahi, as we spent a few hours talking in a locked room. In 2005, both times, all three women who were staying in Bauri Sahi at that time were able to meet with me, but their journey out of their hamlet remained cautious.
Sangh parivar activists continue to instigate against the Christian community in Kilipal, alleging the use of force in conversions and the employment of missionary funds. The People's Union of Civil Liberties in its report (2004) contradicted Sangh assertions, stating, “the absence of evidence of any coercion or material inducement in the process of conversion to Christianity of the few villagers of Kilipal. The Christians remained as poor as their Hindu neighbours and relatives.”
As we speak, she narrates an extraordinary journey with elegance. It is absent of acrimony, with profound courage, taking the high-road. That which maintains dignity in the face of fascism. 'How are you?' I ask, and she begins to cry. “They are not speaking to us,” she says. “The villagers who might are afraid to. We went looking for work in nearby villages and people from our village are telling them to not give us work. Where will we go?” (Personal communication, August 2004). The event of the tonsuring, its meanings, impact. The texture of grieving is irregular, haunted. The need for disclosure does not make the task of speech acceptable. Speech, as it might act in instances as curative, struggles with how memory reproduces violence. And my hope, here, as she desires, that speech may act to heal.
A collision of histories
Shanti Kandi became pregnant while in Bhubaneswar. In February of 2005 she gave birth. Her child died on the sixth day. “I had named him Jesop [Joseph]. We did not see a doctor after the birth. The baby was fine. In Bhubaneswar I had been to doctors. This baby was our blessing, I had thought, from all this.” Shanti stops, then asks: “And you? You are well?” (Personal communication, June 2005). Return to daily life demands some, always uneasy, reconciliation with violence. Women and men walk long distances in search of employment. Sarat Dash has been joined by four families who have offered work. Hindu labourers prevented Christians from securing daily wage labour in a state financed road construction project near the village, threatening a boycott. The police remain, insisting that they will leave after an amicable resolution occurs in the village. They refused to allow clergypersons from Bhubaneswar to enter Bauri Sahi to perform Jesop's last rites. At times, on request, they have intervened to procure access to water for Christian families. Sumitra Kandi, and her sister and Umitra, were married in mid-April of 2005. Prohibited by the restrictions placed on visitors by the police in the village, the ceremony was solemnised in Bhubaneswar. Hindu Nationalist organisations are progressively more antagonistic in the surrounding area, say Christian residents. Sarat Dash, who supported the Christian Dalits in Kilipal by offering them employment and water, the use of his fields, was targeted in June 2005. His poultry farm was burnt down. Led by the 'Peace Committee', Hindu villagers gherao Bauri Sahi at recurring intervals, threatening harm, even death. “They blame us for things that happen to them that they don't like,” she tells me, “they use language I cannot repeat and they say they will make sure we will never get water. They threaten us in front of the police.” Some that tonsured arrive inebriated, and scream obscenities. Sometimes they come when the women are alone. “A RSS worker said that they will beat us, and what happened to us will happen again. He said this time they will make sure it is worse,” she continues.
“We were tonsured because of our belief in our god,” the women of Bauri Sahi tell me. “Our beliefs cannot be bought or sold through this violence. We want our independence, the opportunity, to practise our truth. To know and experience god. We do not want to convert others. We want to be given the right to live in a way that has deep value for us. We do not want to be told that we do not understand” (Personal communication, January 2005).
“We did not convert because we are poor”, she continues. “If I am poor but accepted by my community, there is no [social] terror in that poverty. We did not convert for money. We converted because of the society that saw us as lesser, not worthy. We were 'lower caste', 'untouchable,' 'lowly'. Now we are Christian. Our god wants us. We can walk into his temple.” (Personal communication, January 2005). That conversion occurs hopeful of support from Christian organisations circulates widely in shaping essentialised fact/fiction of Dalit conversations to Christianity in Orissa. The re-articulation by the women of Bauri Sahi recites an important difference, in that, for them, conversion is figurative desire, not for assistance, but for dignity.
Who will mourn the present, the ignominy, the disfigurement? Who will say to the perpetrator that every act of violence, death, rape, brutalisation, every destitution, will not be forgotten? Beyond the instrumentality, why is it that we should act? What are the boundaries between forgetting and responsibility, justice/injustice, too much and too little? Between 'our life' and that of others? What is our life without others? Sometimes the only act that makes refusal possible is presence. I am of Hindu descent in India. Our lives, my father would say, are the very lived signs of violence. How does one perform figurative, structural defacement on privilege? How are lives lived in violation? What intervenes on community, self, pleasure, things we presuppose, to resonate different meanings in the imagined and future community of nation?
Beyond the conscience and intrusion of 'fact-finding', what ought to be our response? To suffering, pain and invisibility. What permits an interrogation of (our own) integrity in scholarship and activism that seeks to witness and interrupt violence? My understanding struggles to move from/between dominant and marginal culturescapes, through the imaginaries of difference. Elite-subalterns and marginal-subalterns, I know, 'know' from disparate, incommensurable spaces. They rarely speak to each other, or speak together. Still they form each other.
A story circulates of a ghost that haunts. Three deaths in quick succession in Hindu Kilipal led to the weaving of a malevolent tale about a Christian spirit seeking revenge. Unless Christians are contained, the phantom, Hindu villagers spin, will triumph. On the way from Kanimul, I notice signs painted on the side of houses. “CHRISTIANS ARE DEMONS. THEY MUST LEAVE. THIS IS NOT THEIR HOME.” “Here,” she says, “feels very far from everywhere.”
(Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies).
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