Gendered violence and Hindu nationalism - Part I
by Angana Chatterji
[Published earlier under the title : “Where is your God now?” in Communalism Combat, August-September 2005]
In October 2003 (Issue 92) and March 2004 (Issue 96) Angana Chatterji authored two reports on Orissa for Communalism Combat, entitled, 'Orissa: A Gujarat in the Making' and 'Hindu Nationalism and Orissa: Minorities as Other', describing the political economy of the sangh parivar, a group of Hindu nationalist organisations, in the state; and Hindutva's (Hindu extremism linked to the movement for a Hindu Rashtra, supremacist state, in India) targeting of Christians, Muslims, women, Adivasis (tribals) and Dalits (erstwhile 'untouchable' castes). For background, please refer to them. In this article, an extract from a larger piece on the issue, she elaborates on the subjugation of Christian Adivasis and Dalits by Hindu nationalism. Information used in this article is derived from interviews, including with persons affiliated with sangh organisations, and archival research. As relevant, quotations are anonymous or pseudonyms have been used, and place names listed or omitted. Insertion(s) within [] in the quotations are the author's.
In Jagatsinghpur, Jesus is the son of a subaltern god
Provoked by the sangh parivar, on February 10, 2004, seven Christian women and a male pastor were tonsured by Dalit and upper caste Hindu neighbours, against their will, signifying their 'return' to Hinduism. Staged in Bauri Sahi, a Dalit hamlet in Kilipal village, adjacent to Kanimul, this event took place in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa.
As I narrate this event from recent history a social and economic boycott is in place against these women, the pastor, and their families. The iniquity of this violence remains unnamed and disassociated with Hindu nationalism. Their story and the experiences lived by the Christian community in Orissa, offers daunting insight into the activities of Hindu nationalists in the state.
“It is all filled with sadness, with hollowness, with fear,” one of the women who was tonsured tells me. “There is fear in us of what has occurred, of what might come. We are held tightly in the midst of this, wedged in-between the past and the coming of the future. Speaking is painful… Silence is also painful. And lonely” (Personal communication, January 2005). The incident, the recollection, the restaging. A reproduction of memory. Confrontation. Refusal. Terror and resistance, together. The assault continues, even as I stop writing, as we re-witness the event, make meaning of its aftermath. It is imbued in the everyday, in body, posture, speech. In residues and remnants. In that way the head is held, for three married women, the odani (portion of the sari covering the head) as it remains drawn concealing the hair as it grows. The sari is lifted to reveal the hair. “Look,” she says, pointing, “tonsuring” (Personal communication, August 2004). A violent, symbolic, castration. A collision of displacements, literal and figurative. Life after is defiance, as the body learns to adjust to difference, reacquainting with its beauty, its meaning.
On August 8, 2004, after six months in Bhubaneswar, the state capital about 70 kilometres away, exiled from their village, these seven women journeyed 'home' to Bauri Sahi, one and a half kilometres from Kanimul village. At the behest of S. Sonathan Mohanty, a Pentecostal pastor from the Church on Mount Zion, and his family, who had offered shelter to these women and cared for them after the incident, and other colleagues, on August 10, I travelled to Kilipal and Kanimul to meet with them, accompanied by SM Farooq, who works with Muslim women's rights in Bhadrak, and Pastor Mohanty's two sisters. I returned to San Francisco shortly after.
I travelled to Orissa in January 2005 and met with four of the women who had returned to Bhubaneswar, training to acquire new skills, and travelled to Kanimul village to meet with the others, to continue the conversation. In Nilachakra Nagar, the city's largest slum, where Pastor Mohanty was pushed to relocate from a higher rent area, we talked about the writing about/of this violence. The survivors expressed concern that following the event, though journalists and human rights organisations interviewed Pastor Samal and the women, their tongues have disappeared from public memory, as other depositions supplant their voices, making ritualistic their participation. I re-met three of the women from Kilipal again in June of 2005.
In 2004 and 2005, these women, Pastor Mohanty and Samal, offered me testimonials. In turn, I asked that we discuss my writing and issues in representation. We decided that what I write should circulate in varied contexts. We spoke of the trauma that speech reinvigorates. We discussed if speech, theirs, in this instance, breaks the silence imposed by social disgrace, and enables action, legal and political. “Speaking is necessary,” she says. “In speaking and writing, if what happened to us is broadcast, it can be a wall against their zulum (injustice) on us. If we keep this to ourselves, they have no reason to think that we are not alone. Bahut aghat ashuchi. Write to let us know we are not alone” (Personal communication, January 2005). The women expressed that they wanted their names to be a part of this narration, but not exhibited in ways that objectify and render them invisible. I use names not while citing testimonies but in speaking of the event to remind us that the violence was committed on people bearing names, faces, lives. Through conversation, the idea emerged of a composite figurative 'woman', 'she', in recounting the stories offered me by the seven women who have been targeted. Aside from, per her request, a story that belongs only to one woman.
As I listen to the tapes, to testimonials lucid and tongue-tied, both at once, I aspire that language (mine) can display accountability. We do not share the same worlds. Is writing possible? Writing as attentiveness to our own complicity in the present, seeking to encapsulate in narrative the descriptive and analytical, to call for a methodology that disrupts established interpretations. Language, introspection. For what?
Conversion/ 'reconversion'
Kilipal is a heterogeneous caste village of 231 recorded households, in Kanimul panchayat, under the jurisdiction of the Tirtol police station, in Jagatsinghpur district. The village is located more than 50 kilometres from the district headquarters, and 21 kilometres from the police station. Upper caste members, Brahmins, Karans, Banias, Khandayats, live in houses assembled along the sides of a narrow village road, amidst agricultural land and banana plantations. The upper, dominant, caste hamlet has pucca houses and families with employment in the government sector or industrial plants. Among both poor and rich, people travel to cities in other states seasonally for employment. Five families own the title to much of the land in the village. One household owns almost 100 acres, which daily wage agricultural labourers cultivate. The women of Bauri Sahi were these cultivators.
There are 40 households in Bauri Sahi, the Dalit hamlet crossways from Kilipal village. Most adult inhabitants are economically underprivileged, landless or subsistence farmers who engage in agricultural and other wage labour. Some migrate to Assam, Delhi or Mumbai seasonally in search of livelihood. Homes here are made of mud and thatch, mostly kuccha. Seven Dalit families that converted to Christianity live here.
Subhas Samal was the first in the village to convert in 1994 while living in Mumbai. Of his decision, he states, “Christianity does not see me as 'untouchable'. As a Hindu, I was untouchable” (Personal communication, August 2004). He is the pastor now, affiliated with the Church on Mount Zion, and practises in adjacent Kanimul village, which bears the name of the panchayat, one-and-a-half kilometres from Kilipal. Services are held in the home of Gouranga Mallick, whose brother, Prafulla Das, was the first to convert in the area, in 1992. Dhaneswar Kandi of Bauri Sahi was another convert, who was later accused of practising injurious exorcism. Response to these and other conversions led to a gradual ostracisation of Christians from the Hindu Dalit community. Following the cyclone of 1999, non-sectarian humanitarian aid distributed by Church organisations, such as World Vision, to Christian and non-Christian families, had repaired the estrangement in some measure. An uneasy calm settled over the village until 2003, when a Hindu activist, allied with nationalistic organisations, leased some land in Kilipal for flower cultivation. By 'nationalistic', I refer to patriotism premised on belief of the absolute superiority of (one's) nation. He acquainted Hindutva activists in the area with the conversions, as, with increasing impetus, sangh parivar organisations commenced a determined anti-minority movement in the village. Resident Hindus, aided by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers' Association) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council, Hindutva's ideological front), enacted power as activists for Hindu nationalism. Harassment accelerated as Sujit Jena, an upper caste Khandayat youth who on his return from Assam, where he had gone in search of employment after failing the Standard 10 examinations, sought guidance from Pastor Samal, engaged in Bible study, and took flight from his village and family. Jena's departure indicated to Hindus that the 'Christian problem' was not solely a Dalit issue; it was dangerously proximate, capable of undermining the cohesion and authority of upper caste mythologies. Such contingencies did not surface a questioning of how caste bondage or familial confines in patrilineage oblige life-affirming transgression. Predictably, scrutiny focussed on issues of discipline and punishment, on structures and actions that would enable the maintenance of caste and Hindu dominance and power.
Other youth too were interested. Dolly Bhoi evinced attraction to Christianity without incurring the ire of her parents who continue as Hindus. Most met with familial opposition. Pastor Mohanty records that there are about 35 Christians in the village, all affiliated with his church. Per the 2001 census, 1,188 people reside in Kilipal, 879 from dominant castes, 307 from scheduled caste groups, and two Adivasis. Prior to the conversions, Kilipal was uniformly Hindu. The village held Pastor Samal in contempt and charged him as a traitor who interrupted cultural unity with the insertion of an alien faith to undermine its integrity. He was pressured to return the converted to Hinduism.
The confrontation deepened in December 2003, and surged with the arrival of 2004, as Hindus regarded the Christmas procession and festivities, which were held as well in previous years, as an assault on their religion. Christians in Kilipal and Kanimul were accused of violating Hinduism and an economic and social boycott was introduced, restricting their right to public water, roads and grazing lands. Christian agricultural labourers who worked the fields of landed caste farmers were denied employment. More and more, the women who relied upon the public tube well and pond in Hindu Kilipal for water were declined access. With one notable exception. Sarat Dash, an upper caste farmer from Kilipal, offered support to the Christian community, the use of his well, his fields for defecation and bathing.
Christians in Kilipal and Kanimul were intimidated, and besieged to 'reconvert'. Numerous meetings were held to determine a resolution acceptable to the Hindu community. Suppression of Christians crossed party lines, as people allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Hindu nationalist party, parliamentary wing of the sangh parivar) and Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the ruling coalition of Orissa, and Congress, participated in inflicting terror, aided by the sangh parivar. A committee, supervised by Abhaya Sahu, was created to oversee the 'reconversion' of Christians, and ensure obedience to ritual and religion. Members of this committee included Dalits, still held 'untouchable' and stigmatised by upper caste Hindus. Non-Christian Dalits of the village were under pressure from upper caste residents to oppose their Christian neighbours, some of whom were family. An array of cultural signifiers was presented to the converted for conciliation: attendance at Hindu ceremonies, partaking of blessed foods during religious functions, vegetarianism during sacred times, vermilion, the red power adorned to represent marriage. The Christians refused to be made Hindu. Each refusal intensified reprisal.
The event
Enacted by local Hindus, the event of February 10, 2004 occurred in the daytime, as upper caste and Dalit neighbours watched. Dragged from their homes, beaten, stripped for resisting, heads shaved in sadistic rite of passage. That morning, Hindu men held down seven Dalit Christian women, Dolly Bhoi (20 years at the time of the tonsuring), Sanjukta Kandi (45 years), Shanti Kandi (25), Sumitra Kandi (22), Umitra Kandi (19), Nayana Samal (21), Nisha Samal (40), and Subhas Samal (pastor and Nayana's brother). Hindu women, mostly Dalits, sheared the hair of their Christian neighbours, as upper caste men chanted: “Where is your god now...?” (Personal communication, August 2004).
Several acts guided the event of February 10. On February 4, Subhas Samal was beaten by Sukadev Samal, his cousin and a member of the Reconversion Committee, for trespassing. The same day Sukadev Samal filed a first information report with the police charging that Pastor Samal had engaged in unlawful conversion. On February 6, Pastor Samal was detained at the police station. On February 7, Sukadev Samal and others arrived at the station. The police, Pastor Samal states, struck him for violating Hinduism, asking: “What proof is there that you are a Christian? If you want to be a Christian why don't you go to Australia? If you convert people you will face the fate of Staines” (People's Union for Civil Liberties, 2004). The police, assisted by villagers, forced Pastor Samal into signing a statement, whereby he would 'reconvert'. Pastor Samal was discharged to Sukadev Samal. On February 8, Pastor Samal was driven, under duress, via motorbike by a person from the village and an outside RSS member, to a meeting organised by the Sangh. On February 9, Nisha Samal was beaten by her husband's two brothers. Voices circulated that Christians in the village would be harmed. Anticipating that they would be the targets in an attack, that night, male members from Christian families in Bauri Sahi left Kilipal for Bhubaneswar. The community assumed that without men present, women would not be singled out. Pastor Samal stayed on in Kilipal, concerned that the police might apprehend him if he left the village.
On February 10, Hindus surrounded Bauri Sahi. Pastor Samal pleaded that the women be spared. Those tonsuring responded: “Where is your god now? Where is your Jesus? He cannot save you now” (Personal communication, August 2004). None among the onlookers acted on behalf of the Christian community. Lata Samal, who was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, was not tonsured. That morning, approximately 17-20 Christians were in the village, the others were away for work or study. A Christian woman, Kokila Kandi, had travelled to a nearby village with her two children to phone Bhubaneswar, and so avoided being tonsured. She remained in hiding for two days. Manjukta Kandi, another Christian, was working in the fields and took shelter with a family in Damodarpatna, a hamlet near Kilipal. Later on February 10, Sukadev Samal, with three men, took Pastor Samal to the police, where he was detained.
The women attempted to live their day in Kilipal. They walked, a long distance, to collect water. They covered their heads. “I looked down, all the way as I walked. I felt unclothed,” she says, “I tried to hide myself, as I walked. My body hurt, but my mind hurt more. As I was walking, the things I see everyday were peculiar to me. I was terrified. They wanted to tear my home and my body, and destroy my faith. As I lifted the pot of water to my head I ... [felt her shaved head]. I kept thinking 'there is a god that wants us,' and I wanted to be free” (Personal communication, August 2004). By the early evening, rumours spread of their impending murder lest they serve as witnesses. The women were forced to leave the village. Kameshwar Das, a sanyasi (renunciant) of the Aydhoot sect offered them shelter at his ashram. Gouranga Mallik assisted them in leaving for Bhubaneswar late that night. Christian family members of those tonsured too fled Kilipal to sidestep oncoming aggression, seeking refuge in Bhubaneswar.
Body and mind are the battlefields of 'nation'. In Kilipal, the corporeal and spiritual are terrains on which transactions of fear and subordination are etched. Tonsuring, an alive sign of conversion and punishment. The sangh parivar, to discipline, to terrorise, contains and makes obedient difference, and enforces violence. Gestural and physical, its acts do not disgrace the perpetrator, they covet to shame the recipient, and intervene psychosocially to reshape subject and subjectivity. Its means are gendered and classed. Hindutva's everyday, regularised and habitual forms typify verbal and physical exploitation and maltreatment, violation, economic and social boycott, dislocation. As in Delhi (1984) and Gujarat (2002), its episodic and spectacular forms involve acts of arson, rape, murder, displacement, genocide.
Sexual and 'eroticised' brutality has been integral to defining self and sexuality in primordial nationalism (Bhatt, 2001). Sanctifying national culture is proximate to violent acts that aid the constitution of nation. The degree of patriarchal authority is evident in the severity of violence, in acts that humiliate the woman, and expresses the capacity to punish and mete out justice on the part of the man. The intersections of sexualised violence and militant patriotism require ideological, political, economic allegiance to brutality supported by the apparatus of culture and state. Through militant nationalism, men's bodies become the weapons that entrust terror. The deployment of violence on women, sexualised violence, hinges on the abuse of gendered power, and the denigration of women as sexual beings, practised within a sexualised cultural order. Endangerment testifies to the uneven and permeable relationship between ethnicity, gender, class, religion and identity. [. . . ]
[Continues in Part II ]
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