The Guardian, 28 October 2008
The government must act now to prosecute those who have sullied India's proud tradition of tolerance
The air is still thick with tragedy in Orissa state. Someone just told me the story of a Christian widow he chanced upon in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, who chokingly related the story of her husband's death. She said that he fled from an angry mob that came to his house in the night of August 28, but he was caught and told that he and his brothers and all their families must convert to Hinduism or he would be killed. He resisted the pressure, so they tied him to a tree, took kerosene from his brother's house, poured it over him and set him on fire. He escaped when the plastic ropes holding him melted, but had suffered serious burns. He died the next day. Traumatised, his widow left the body in the house, which began decomposing and attracted dogs. After three days, he was buried, although the body was exhumed by investigating police the next day. Their house was destroyed by one of the mobs systematically attacking Christian targets, and its contents looted. The widow and her four children now live in a relief camp, wondering what their future could possibly hold.
What makes this particularly horrifying is that the political narratives of extremist Hinduism suggest that the victims are to blame for the atrocities committed against them. A demonisation of conversions to Christianity has allowed radical Hindu nationalists to paint this as a root cause of their violence against that minority community. The extremist Hindu nationalist groups known collectively as the Sangh Parivar, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as the ideological mentor, the opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) as the political face and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) as the instigator of the violence in Orissa, propagate a narrative about Christians allegedly converting others by "force". In response to violence against religious minorities they call for legislative restrictions on conversions: there are now anti-conversion laws in seven states and possibly nationally after next year's elections. This assumes that the victims are ultimately culpable for the violence against them, which has destroyed their lives, by consequence of their supposed illegitimate behaviour.
Violence against religious minorities is nothing new in India. In 2002, around 2000 people, mostly Muslims, were massacred in Gujarat in one of the worst religiously-motivated attacks known in recent times.
Anti-Christian violence is nothing new either. Although the past months have seen a notable rise in attacks (including arson attacks or significant damage caused to around 35 churches in southern Karnataka state since mid-September), the fact is that on average, at least three anti-Christian attacks have been reported each week for several years now.
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However, the violence against Dalit and tribal Christians in Orissa since August 24 is on an altogether more serious and devastating scale. The attacks began after the murder of local Hindu nationalist figurehead, Swami Lakhmananda Saraswati, and although a Maoist group has claimed responsibility, mobs were rampaging through the area almost immediately, shouting Hindu nationalist slogans and blaming Christians for the attack. Now around 60 are confirmed dead, many of them killed in brutal ways, and over 50,000 have been displaced. Most people are still terrified of returning to their villages.
A brief acquaintance with the Christians displaced by the Orissa violence indicates that most are at least third-generation Christians, not forced to convert from Hinduism against their will. Secondly, India has perfectly adequate laws to deal with issues of religious intolerance, but nobody is being indicted under these. Anti-conversion laws simply add public legitimacy to the fevered rhetoric about conversions, and their normative effect is very damaging to religious minorities. If forced conversions are a problem (a notion of which many commentators in India are far from persuaded), they should be dealt with under India's excellent penal code, not by inciting anti-minority fervour and dispatching hate mobs armed with lethal weapons
In interpreting the violence in Orissa, and elsewhere in India, it is highly important to see that it is not about natural animosity between Hindus and Christians. In the relief camps, some Christians praise attempts made by their Hindu neighbours to mitigate their suffering – heroic acts in the midst of frenzied inhumanity. Across India, Hindus committed to a secular, religiously pluralist society have made very clear their outrage at the violence.
But the very idea of a secular, pluralist India is at stake here. Are religious minorities to be tolerated, even if they share the same right as the majority to "profess, practise and propagate" their faith? And does the government have the grit and determination to prosecute those who have sullied the democratic heart of India?
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