The Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - L No. 6, February 07, 2015
... While young Christian women were raped as and when the mob found them, the followers of the swami made a special effort to hunt for nuns. Two elderly nuns report how the mob broke into their convents and shouted “Where are the sisters?” The case of a nun who was gang-raped and paraded semi-naked on the road had made headlines then. This report shows that apart from nuns, female community workers too were especially targeted. One of them suffered the same fate as that unlucky nun: dragged out on to the road and assaulted, then taken to a building, gang-raped and again dragged out on the road in a semi-nude condition. Another community worker was chased into the jungles and hunted for four days. A third was threatened with “You are doing a lot of leadergiri. Come we will cut you into pieces. Bring your daughter, we will rape you and her in the middle of the road.’ ...
Breaking the Shackled Silence: Unheard Voices of Women from Kandhamal (first edition) by Saumya Uma, published by National Alliance of Women, Odisha chapter, 2014.
Jyoti Punwani (jyoti.punwani[at]gmail.com) is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and human rights activist.
Can you imagine how a mother would have felt when her son
repeatedly told her that he was going to die? I banged on the
door of my Hindu neighbours and pleaded with them to help me,
but out of fear that they too would be attacked, no one opened
their doors…I sat with his body for three days, safeguarding it
from dogs.
– Testimony of a 70-year-old Hindu woman from Kandhamal
It was not the “other” community that killed this woman’s (quoted above) only son, it was her own. Angered by his attempt to stop them from killing Christians in his village, which included his sister’s husband, the Hindu mob cut his legs, hands and penis and left him to die.
Those who rule us today at the centre and represent us abroad are the very people under whose mentorship this mob acted. The incident took place in August 2008 in Odisha, in the wake of the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), notorious for his opposition to Christian missionary activities in the extremely backward area of Kandhamal. Along with him, four of his disciples, including a woman, were killed. Eight persons including a Maoist leader were convicted for his murder five years later. But immediately after his murder which took place during the Janmashtami celebrations, Christians became the target of his enraged followers. Over the next three months, Hindu mobs killed 34 Christians (as per the police; the Odisha church authorities say they could account for 75 deaths), and raped and sexually assaulted an unknown number of women while leaving an estimated 30,000 displaced.
Exceptional Brutality
The National Alliance of Women, Odisha, has brought out a report on the experiences of the women survivors of the violence. Breaking the Shackled Silence has been researched and written by Mumbai-based lawyer Saumya Uma, who has been working with the Kandhamal victims since the violence.
The brutality with which the Hindu male mentioned above was killed was not exceptional. Most of the women whose menfolk were killed describe how they were dismembered. One of the women, just 32 years old, was lucky enough not to have witnessed it, but she too was not spared the horror. She found her husband’s body with his legs, hands and head cut off. Worse was to follow. She went to get the police; when she returned, the head was missing; it was found later hanging from a tree. Imagine the confidence of the killers and the message they wanted to send.
In the January 1993 phase of the Mumbai riots following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, Shiv Sainiks hunted down Muslims they found on the streets, lynching them in broad daylight and then burning them by placing logs of wood on them almost as if to Hinduise them in death by cremating them. In Kandhamal too, in at least two of the cases cited in the report, women found the remains of their husbands in the form of bones and ashes. A cow bone had been placed at the site where one of them had been killed. Significantly, both these men were pastors. A third victim worked with the village church. His wife fell at the feet of the mob, pleading with them to “cut off (her husband’s) hands and legs, but let him live. My daughter is physically challenged, how can she live without a father?’’ They responded by cutting off his neck, stabbing him in the stomach and cutting up his body into three parts. They then began looking for his wife and daughters with the intention of raping them.
While young Christian women were raped as and when the mob found them, the followers of the swami made a special effort to hunt for nuns. Two elderly nuns report how the mob broke into their convents and shouted “Where are the sisters?” The case of a nun who was gang-raped and paraded semi-naked on the road had made headlines then. This report shows that apart from nuns, female community workers too were especially targeted. One of them suffered the same fate as that unlucky nun: dragged out on to the road and assaulted, then taken to a building, gang-raped and again dragged out on the road in a semi-nude condition. Another community worker was chased into the jungles and hunted for four days. A third was threatened with “You are doing a lot of leadergiri. Come we will cut you into pieces. Bring your daughter, we will rape you and her in the middle of the road.’’ Both these women managed to escape the mob. A fourth who also ran into the jungles nearby with her family was blamed by her husband’s brother for inviting the Hindus’ wrath because of her work in a Christian organisation. She wonders now “If the mob had caught me first, maybe those others (who were raped) would have been spared.’’
Rape as punishment for having converted to a “foreign” religion, for being too assertive, for others’ misdeeds: our Hindutva heroes made sure they covered all possible reasons to violate women. One mob told a Hindu woman as they carried her off that they were taking revenge on her because her uncle had not converted to Hinduism despite being given several deadlines. She knew these men, they were Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) members from her village. Their RSS compatriots later persuaded her not to file a complaint as that would bring shame upon her.
It is important to stress that these murderers and rapists were RSS men, because the organisation never fails to flaunt its moral superiority, its adherence to the ancient Hindu “way of life”. The actions of its followers in Kandhamal however, were no different from its own characterisation of Muslim invaders. Like the armies of yore, our heroes went forth, saffron flag held high, swords and trishuls in hand, to vanquish the men, ravish the women, and destroy places of worship. Shiv Sena chief, the late Bal Thackeray, had described the violence of his “boys” against Muslims in 1992-93 as a dharmayuddh (religious war). But the RSS, as befits its ideological seniority in the Hindutva brigade, went one step ahead of the Shiv Sena in their dharmayuddh: they converted their captives. Kandhamal saw a 21st century version of the spread of Hinduism by the sword.
Hollow Conversions
But these were hollow conversions. One elderly woman recounts how, forced to attend weekly satsangs, she would silently pray to her own god. After the violence died down, many of those forcibly converted went back to the church. In this competition for faith, it was obvious which one inspired genuine belief. This return to the faith of their choice by the Christians was even more courageous given that despite the arrests of some of the rioters, the intimidation by their supporters continued.
For women, this intimidation took the form of threats of sexual assault and rape. The brother of one nun got a phone call telling him that if his sister spoke to the European Union (EU) delegation that was then visiting Kandhamal, she would be gang-raped. The sister of the man who had been decapitated (mentioned above) escaped a rape attempt in her village after she accompanied her brother’s widow to the police station to lodge a complaint. The community worker who was taunted for her “leadergiri” returned to the village later to visit her uncle. Seeing her, a shop owner called her uncle and told him “Tell her I will cut off her breasts, insert a sword in her vagina, cut her into pieces and throw her in the river. Where will she go?’’
Women affected by violence have spoken out earlier, but this might be the first time that so many women raped during communal violence have done so. These interviews were conducted last year; after that, the women raped in the Muzaffarnagar riots in August-September 2013 also spoke out. It is the easiest thing to get men to talk during riots; it takes special effort to make women do so, and Uma must be thanked for making their voices heard.
The report, however, is not only about sexual assault during the Kandhamal violence and its long-term physical and emotional after-effects on the victims – it is also about loss of confidence, hatred of men, and an omnipresent fear of everything from loud noises to crowds which rule their lives. As one woman who had herself not been raped but knew three who had been, said
For sexual assault, it is not sufficient for the perpetrators to
be imprisoned for life or even punished with death. Even if they
give compensation to the woman, will it undo what they did to
her? …The women remain in hiding as if they were criminals;
their relationships are strained; engagements and marriages are
broken for no fault of theirs; they live a life of fear; they
are shunned by their communities. What justice can be done?
Women Pay the Price
The report is also about how women are affected by communal violence as a whole. A common effect of communal violence is the reduced freedom of women thereafter; in this particular case, it is even more damaging because education for girls had become the norm for daughters of adivasi and dalit Christians, though their mothers may not have been educated. The report estimates that the education of 10,000 children was disrupted due to displacement and fear after the violence. Interestingly, one convent was saved from being damaged because someone from the mob restrained his companions. The head of the convent ascribed this to the fact that the local Hindus’ daughters too studied there.
Christian girls keep dropping out if they cannot get admission to boarding schools or hostels, says the report. However, though they lost a year due to the violence, eight adolescent girls interviewed have continued with their studies, despite facing harassment from Hindu boys (and in the case of four of them, Christian boys too) both to and from school. The report notes that their parents support them but have made it clear that they cannot protect them from such harassment, advising them to simply ignore it.
Male survivors of communal riots have to live for some time with taunts, fear and the loss of livelihood. Their children have to cut short their education. For a while, they become dependent on their extended families. But they pick up the pieces and start afresh, even though some may never regain their original economic status. The difference with women survivors, especially those young and widowed by the riots, is that they become forever dependent on their parents or in-laws.
The Kandhamal story is unique because many of the Christian women were working, some in church organisations, some in self-help groups, the majority used to make products out of forest produce at home. That avenue has closed because the Hindus do not allow them to use the forest produce. Most of those spoken to lived contented lives in their own homes with a little land. That contentment has gone forever since many of them cannot return to their homes, because of the hostility with which the Hindus view them, especially since many of the Hindu men have been arrested and even convicted.
Though the church has helped rebuild lives, most of the women remain jobless and destitute. This despite a number of central government schemes designed to help destitute women. Some widows appealed to the collector for a piece of land that they could jointly cultivate, or for jobs of any kind, to no avail – the collector said he could not provide jobs for so many uneducated widows. Some of the women living in Nandagiri, a rehabilitation site for victims, said they would be happy with goats and poultry, instead of the daily wage labour they had to depend on.
These are such small demands that it is well within the powers of a collector to grant them. But the government and police in Odisha have behaved much like their counterparts in other states in their response to communal violence. Here too, the police remained passive as Hindutva mobs went about doing whatever they wanted. The official figures supplied by the superintendent of police (SP) of Kandhamal district bear this out: out of 39 killed, two were policemen and only three were rioters. When the community worker who was gang-raped and dragged to the road in a state of semi-nudity went to the police station, the police asked her to hand over whatever clothes were left on her body as they would need them for evidence. It was a stranger at the police station who gave her some clothes.
In court, the rape victims have faced the usual badgering from defence lawyers, but in two cases the judges intervened to stop that. But the rape trials here were made more traumatic because of the presence of a large number of supporters of the rapists in the courtroom while the victim testified. After all, the rapists belonged to a well-organised body, they were not just criminals! Despite this, in Kandhamal, the conviction rate for rioting, at 28.5%, has been above the national average of 21.5% (according to the SP quoted in the report).
Hindu Women
This report, unlike many others of its kind, makes it a point to talk to Hindu women too. They face fears of another kind – their husbands have been or might be arrested. Before the 2008 violence, a Hindu-Christian riot had taken place in December 2007, in which they had also been at the receiving end of the violence. In 2008, these women many of whom belong to the Durga Vahini, had been part of the mobs, allege the Christian victims.
Before the violence, the two communities – the Hindus who are adivasis and the Christian who belong to the scheduled castes (SCs) and adivasis were part of the same self-help groups, and the Christians worked on the Hindus’ lands. Their perception of each other is therefore significant. The Hindu women who were animists till they were Hinduised by the RSS, feel the Christian women are unclean because they go to church even while menstruating and do not bathe before they enter the kitchen. The Christian women are proud of their qualifications and communication skills, and resent the untouchability practised by the Hindus “They do not touch us…if they sit with us, they will have a bath and only then enter their houses.’’
However, the most significant difference is in their perceptions of peace. For the Christian women, peace means a return to the trust they shared with their neighbours, the return of their property, a guarantee that the Hindus would never attack them again, a freedom from fear. For the Hindu women, peace means freedom from domestic violence and alcoholism.
Will the peace the victims of Kandhamal desire ever be restored? It seems unlikely since their attackers might get more aggressive now that their patrons rule the country. But the work of Saumya Uma and women’s groups, which comprise women of all faiths and from almost all states, should help these victims feel that the church is not their only saviour and that all Hindus are not what most of their neighbours turned out to be.
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