ORISSA'S COMMUNAL FLARE UP
by Sampad Mahapatra
NDTV, December 27, 2007 (Kandhmal)
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Indian Express
December 27, 2007 at 0000 hrs
Editorial
REMEMBER STAINES
ATTACKS ON CHURCHES, PRIESTS FRAME A CULTURE OF IMPUNITY IN WHICH HATE CRIMES ARE ALLOWED TO OCCUR
The Indian Express
: On Tuesday, this paper reported the case of Brother Ramesh, a Catholic priest from Tamil Nadu working in Gujarat. Brother Ramesh was attacked a few days earlier in Kwant, a tribal town in Vadodara, by “activists” who alleged that he was involved in “conversions”; four fingers of his right hand have had to be amputated since. Strangely, though, the police has registered an FIR against the victim, while the assailants are still absconding. Brother Ramesh’s predicament appears to point to the vicious circle of impunity within which attacks on minority communities, including Christians, continue to take place in parts of our country. The attack on churches and large-scale violence between Hindu and Christian groups that has followed in the wake of a reported attack on a VHP leader who leads the anti-conversion movement in Orissa’s Kandhamal district, must be seen in the same grim context.
Both Gujarat and Orissa have a recent history of violence against Christian missionaries by groups that subscribe to an ideology of militant Hindutva. On the night of January 22, 1999, in Manoharpur village of Keonjhar district, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his minor sons were burnt alive by a mob as they slept in their station wagon. That case had rightly sparked country-wide outrage. At roughly the same time, a 10-day spate of violence against Christians in the Dangs district of Gujarat had also stirred the nation’s conscience. Both events have been seared into collective memory and this, in itself, should have ensured that such hate crimes did not recur.
Yet the latest episodes of violence in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat and Naveen Patnaik’s Orissa frame a continuing failure of both civil society and the state. In a diverse and plural polity like India, both must be vigilant against forces of intolerance. The onus is especially on the government. The message must be sent out that violence will not be tolerated and that all its perpetrators will be brought to book. Only when justice is done and is seen to be done will goons and criminals acting in the name of their faith be dissuaded.
editor@expressindia.com
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The Tribune
27 December 2007
Editorial
ATTACK ON CHURCHES
Attempt to terrorise a whole community
WHILE the people the world over were celebrating Christmas on December 25, the Christians in Orissa’s Kandhamal district were at the receiving end with alleged activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad destroying church after church. In the mindless violence unleashed on the community, one person was killed and several were injured. The attack was ostensibly to retaliate against the alleged manhandling of a VHP leader. That the VHP chose to convert some Christians to Hinduism on that day bears out that the whole purpose was to foment trouble. Orissa is one state where the so-called Freedom of Religion law is in force which makes it obligatory for the organisers of such conversion ceremonies to follow certain procedures. That the VHP has been paying scant regard for such a law on the specious plea that what it organises is not conversion but “home-coming”.
Despite all the potential for mischief, the district authorities failed to take any preemptive action. What’s more, they could not even protect the house of a minister from the communally surcharged lot. It is not the first time that Orissa has witnessed religious tension. The burning of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons was preceded by several incidents of attack on the minorities in the name of protest against cow slaughter and religious conversion. It is the kid-glove treatment those behind such violent campaigns received that emboldened them to burn the missionary who was tending to the leprosy patients in one of the most backward areas of Orissa. There are feudal and pseudo-political forces that do not want the poor to get educated and know their legal and democratic rights for fear it would upset the caste-based social system.
The Orissa government is duty-bound to take stringent action against all those who desecrated the churches. It should also go after those who “attacked” the VHP leader and bring them to book. No excuse is good enough to terrorise a whole community. In fact, any leniency shown will be construed as a failure of the state to protect not just the life and property of the people but also their right to preach and practise their religious beliefs. What the Orissa government does in Kandhamal district will show how committed it is to uphold the rule of law and the religious rights of the people.
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