Hindutva Wave of Murder and mayhem in Orissa: Media Commentary

#1.

The Telegraph
August 27 , 2008

Editorial

Love For Hate

When the caretaker of an orphanage run by Christian missionaries is burnt alive by a Vishwa Hindu Parishad mob in the Bargarh district of Orissa, the obvious reference point is the Graham Staines murder. Yet even that was the result of the ruthless hate campaign against Christians conducted by the VHP and its sangh brethren in Orissa. Nothing has changed since the United Progressive Alliance came to power; the conflict seems to have intensified with the coalition of the Biju Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party running the state government. The government seems blind to the numerous instances of vandalism on churches, homes and orphanages, as well as of violence against Christians. In October 2006, the India Peoples’ Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa had given 13 recommendations to the state and Central governments to check growing communalism. That has been useless.

The story is the old one, and is most forceful in Kandhamal district. The sangh parivar claims to be opposing conversion by force or allurement by Christian missionaries. The old plot has been given a new twist by the fact that tribal Kandhs and Dalits are ranged against one another. Many Dalits are Christian, and, according to the controversial Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, they have lost the advantages due to SCs. The Kandhs retain scheduled tribe status whatever religion they choose. So Kui-speaking Dalits, linguistically and culturally similar to the Kandhs, are fighting for ST status. Meanwhile, the sangh is busy “reconverting”, by both force and allurement, tribal people to Hinduism, even though they were nature-worshippers in the first place. That the Dalits are improving economically has added urgency to the VHP’s campaign. It was led most successfully by Laxmananda Saraswati, whose call to destruction caused numberless violent incidents, murders and work-stoppages in the district, although they left the government and the police remarkably unperturbed. His murder, presumably by Maoists, was the cause for the bandh during which the VHP went on a destructive spree, and burnt to death an innocent woman in an orphanage. But what is amazing is that the Central and state governments have allowed the violence of a religious hate campaign to become routine in the heart of a secular republic.

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#2

The Hindu, August 27 2008

Editorial

Dangerous turn in Orissa

No words can adequately condemn the cycle of murder and mayhem in Orissa that led on Monday to the burning alive of a young woman at a Christian orphanage. The 20-year-old perished in violence that recalls the fiendish lynching in 1999 of Graham Staines and his two little sons. It is not just that Orissa has been the staging ground for both atrocities. The suspects belong to the same ideological persuasion. This time the thuggery is sought to be justified as retribution fo r the horrific killings, on Saturday, of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Swami Lakshmanananda and four others. Mobs affiliated to the VHP have since unleashed a retaliatory wave of terror across the State, calling a bandh in defiance of curfew orders, paralysing rail and road traffic, torching Christian homes, and attacking churches, prayer halls and other Christian institutions. The circumstances leading to Saturday’s killings are not fully established. As of now, there is no evidence pointing to a Christian missionary involvement, as is being claimed by the VHP and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The VHP priests fell to an armed attack on their ashram in Jalespata in the communally sensitive district of Kandhamal. A day earlier, the ashram reportedly received a letter carrying a threat to eliminate the Swami. The Orissa police deduced from the manner of the attack — especially the threat letter, the automatic weapons carried by the assailants, and the claiming of responsibility by an entity styling itself the People’s Liberation Revolutionary Group — that it was probably spearheaded by Maoists.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who has come under attack from the saffron fringe, has ordered a judicial probe into the ashram murders. The VHP’s sense of loss and outrage at losing five of its followers might have resonated with the public at large had the organisation not so brazenly taken the law into its own hands. It points to a December 2007 murder attempt on Swami Lakshmanananda to buttress its claim that he was eliminated as part of a larger Christian missionary agenda. That incident set off widespread communal clashes in the State. Given all this, the best option before the sangh parivar was to await the findings of the judicial probe. Of course, to ask that of the VHP is to ask for the impossible. Witness the lawlessness unleashed by parivar affiliates in Jammu and, in tandem, by Islamist activists in the Kashmir Valley. Recklessness comes naturally to fanatics. But with the 15th general election just months away, the BJP must weigh the political costs of alienating its non-communal allies — which it has in Orissa as well as in other States.

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#3.

Deccan Herald
August 27, 2008

Editorial

Spectre of hatred
A civilised society must protect constitutional rights.

Serious cases of violence, inspired by communal hatred and intolerance, have been reported from different parts of the country in the last few days. The incidents in Orissa where attacks have led to loss of lives are more serious. The chain of violence started with the killing of a VHP leader,and four others, allegedly by Maoists in Orissa’s Kandhamal district. The district was known for Hindu-Christian clashes and the incident became a trigger for widespread VHP violence in a number of districts. A number of churches and Christian institutions have come under attack and five people have been killed. The killings were reminders of the killing of an Australian missionary Graham Staines in 1999. Two people have died in police firing too.

As Maoists were suspected to have been behind the VHP leader’s killing, there was no reason to target Christian institutions and people for attacks. The state police had failed to protect the VHP leader who had received threatening letters. The state government is also to be blamed for failing to check the VHP cadres, who took it as an opportunity to unleash violence on Christians. A number of districts are in the grip of violence and the VHP and Bajrang Dal mobs are having a free run. The attacks deserve to be strongly condemned and the government should immediately bring the situation under control. Intolerance of minority communities and attacks against them have marked the attitude and activities of the Hindu fundamentalist groups. They are too blinded by hatred to realise that their actions only weaken and bring into disrepute what they are claiming to protect.

Another incident which also exposes such hatred and intolerance was the attack on the prints of celebrated artist M F Husain’s paintings at an exhibition in Delhi. Husain has been a target of Hindu fanatics for long. His works have been destroyed and he has been threatened and harassed in many ways in the past. He was hounded out of the country and is living in exile now. It is shameful that the country’s greatest artist is so humiliated on the specious ground that his works have offended religious sentiments. His works were not included in the first India Art Summit and the attack came when an organisation arranged a separate exhibition in protest against the exclusion. A society which cannot protect its minorities and artists against majoritarian intolerance and violence cannot claim to be fair, just or civilised. Democratic freedoms and constitutional rights have no meaning in such an environment of hatred.

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#4.

The Tribune
August 27, 2008

Murder of pluralism
End this insanity in Orissa

THE VHP protesters who torched 12 churches in Orissa on Monday, killing two persons, including a woman, and critically injuring a pastor, also killed the secular image of India. Suddenly, they have made the country open to the criticism that minorities are not safe here. The naked dance of violence they indulged in was too macabre to be justified by any reasons, although it was in retaliation for the equally gruesome murder on Saturday of 84-year-old VHP leader Laxmanananda and his four followers who had been resisting the forcible conversion of tribals to Christianity in Orissa. Their brutality has opened the wounds caused earlier by the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. With such “nationalist” forces wrecking the country from within, there is no need for external anti-India elements to ruin it.

The blame lies at the door of the Naveen Patnaik government too. It has allowed the law and order situation to worsen to such an extent that there in several parts of the state it is the law of the jungle that prevails. Whether it was Saturday’s attack on the ashram of Swami Laxmanananda or Monday’s targeting of the churches, the authorities played a passive role. When the state withdraws, lumpen elements are bound to fill the vacuum and have a field day.

Tremendous damage has been done by these bouts of sectarian violence. While the government has to bring the criminals to justice at once, the least that the Sangh Parivar must do to atone for the atrocities is to express regret over the attacks and restrain those causing mayhem. The same holds true for leaders like Mr L. K. Advani who must condemn the incident and intervene to restore peace and order. How can a party which is part of the ruling coalition in the state let such a shocking outrage go unchecked? Silence on the issue will only make the entire Parivar politically culpable. Such violence is unacceptable, whether from the majority community or the minority community.

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#5.

Economic Times
27 August, 2008

Editorial

Dara Singh's Orissa?

The largescale anti-Christian rioting and arson provoked by a state-wide bandh called by the VHP and Bajrang Dal — in the tribal districts of Orissa signals an unacceptable collapse of the state. We endorse the Opposition Congress’ decision to move a no-confidence motion against the Biju Janata Dal-BJP government.

The motion is unlikely to result in its fall, but it would constitute a crucial indictment of the divisive socio-political consensus on which the current Orissa government thrives. This perverse will is the source of the ineptitude displayed by the state’s police-administrative apparatus in preventing the bandh from turning into a vicious communal campaign.

Considering that Kandhamal is known to be communally sensitive, the state apparatus ought to have done much more than merely air its suspicion of Maoist involvement in the murder of VHP leader Swami Lakshmananda and his four disciples. The allegation against the Maoists gives the BJD-BJP government an alibi to step up its ongoing, and under-reported, project of repressing various grassroots movements in tribal areas in the name of containing Maoism.

Its inability to swiftly authenticate the suspicion has, on the other hand, left the field wide open for the VHP and Bajrang Dal to indulge in incendiary provocation with a view to sharpen the already existing communal polarisation.

The anti-Christian animus in Kandhamal is the consequence of these organisations communally exploiting the existing competition between the non-Christian Kui tribal community and the Dalit Christians for quotas in jobs and educational institutions. The resulting polarisation has, needless to say, helped the BJP garner votes for the ruling alliance.

And the current violence, a few months ahead of the assembly polls, is without doubt meant to serve that purpose even better. Both cynical attempts to mobilise votes on communal lines and failure on the part of ‘secular’ parties to counter such divisive politics would serve to deepen the pall of insecurity that hangs over many parts of Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Secularism and empowerment are not just catchy slogans but essential means to social stability and sustained prosperity.

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#6.

New York Times
August 25, 2008

Hindu-Christian Violence Flares in India

by Somini Sengupta

NEW DELHI — The remote, destitute state of Orissa, marred for years by Hindu-versus-Christian violence, erupted in a retaliatory killing on Monday after the murder of a Hindu leader led a mob to burn small Christian churches, prayer halls and an orphanage that had housed 21 children.

The police said a woman’s body, charred beyond recognition, was found inside the church orphanage. The church’s pastor, whom the police did not identify and who was injured in the fire, told the authorities that the body was that of a nun working there. No children were injured.

The attack on the orphanage on Monday, in an isolated district called Bargarh, came after the killing Saturday of a Hindu leader who had been associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, and who was leading a drive to wean local villagers from Christianity. Radical Hindu groups like the council are vehemently opposed to conversions to Christianity, which in India tend to focus on traditionally downtrodden lower-caste and indigenous groups, and have lately taken to conducting mass ceremonies to convert them back to Hinduism.

The Hindu leader who was killed, Laxmanananda Saraswati, was among five people slain by unidentified armed men who stormed a Hindu school in the nearby district of Kandhamal. The police blamed Maoist insurgents who prevail in the area. Mr. Saraswati’s followers, however, blamed Christians, and called for a statewide strike on Monday. The state government ordered all schools closed.

The Press Trust of India reported that Hindu activists, defying an official curfew in the area, paraded through the streets, attacking Christian churches and homes.

Fights broke out in Orissa last Christmas Eve, when one person was killed and churches and temples were damaged. In 1999, a Hindu mob burned an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two children while they slept inside their car. A Hindu has been sentenced to life imprisonment in their deaths. Eleven others who had been convicted were freed by an appeals court in 2005 because of insufficient evidence. Mr. Staines ran a hospital and clinics for leprosy patients.

A version of this article appeared in print on August 26, 2008, on page A11 of the New York edition.

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#7.

The Hindu
August 26, 2008

VHP bandh turns violent in Orissa, churches attacked

by Prafulla Das

Woman burnt alive in orphanage; Congress to move no-confidence motion

— Photo: By Special Arrangement

After the arson: Firefighters douse the flames at an orphanage at Khuntpalli village in Orissa where protesters burnt alive a 20-year-old woman.

BHUBANESWAR: Orissa was on the boil on Monday during a bandh called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal in protest against the killing of VHP leader Swami Lakshmanananda.

Protesters burnt alive a 20-year-old woman in an orphanage at Khuntpalli village in Bargarh district. In Kandhamal district, where the Swami and four others were killed by suspected Maoists on Saturday night, a villager was burnt to death.

Many churches, prayer houses and other Christian institutions were attacked in Kandhamal, Bargarh, Koraput, Rayagada, Gajapati, Boudh, Sundargarh and Jajpur districts. At least two prayer houses were damaged in the capital city.

Director-General of Police Gopal Chandra Nanda said the woman who was killed in the orphanage was a student. Asked whether the victim was a nun, he said it was yet to be ascertained.

As regards the death of a villager in Kandhamal, Mr. Nanda said the police had received information, but were yet to reach the spot.

Unconfirmed reports said the victim, Rasanand Pradhan, who was suffering from paralysis, could not escape when many houses in the Christian-majority village were set on fire.

Road and rail traffic was affected all over the State during the bandh. Banks, markets and business establishments remained closed, while government offices recorded thin attendance. Educational institutions were closed.

In the Assembly, the Naveen Patnaik government faced an embarrassing situation when Bharatiya Janata Party legislators trooped into the well and stalled the proceedings demanding the immediate arrest of those involved in the killing of the Swami.

Simultaneously, the Opposition Congress demanded a discussion on the “deteriorating” law and order situation. They demanded the resignation of the Biju Janata Dal-BJP coalition government for its failure to maintain law and order.

Speaker Kishore Kumar Mohanty adjourned the House for the day after he failed to persuade the BJP members to allow the proceedings to continue.

The Congress, however, gave notice for moving a no-confidence motion against the government on Tuesday.