A dangerous government parity between Bajrang Dal, Pentecost Churches

A caution for the Church: Government equates Bajrang Dal and Pentecostal Pastors

JOHN DAYAL

The Congress government’s advisors in New Delhi seem to balance, if not equate, the Sangh Parivar with the evangelist and Pentecost churches.

At the height of the anti Christian pogrom in Kandhamal, Orissa, in 2008, while a section of the Congress-led Union government contemplated imposing a ban on the murderous Hindutva group called the Bajrang Dal, its top security advisor felt government would also have to take action against Pentecostal churches which are accused by various government organisations – and a section of the so-called “mainline churches” of being provocative and insensitive in their evangelistic activities.

Secret reports sent by the United State Embassy and consulates to Washington from their locations in India, leaked recently by Wikileaks, and if they are to be believed as being genuine, give an interesting understanding of how the Indian government, and foreign diplomats, look at complex issues of culture, faith, religion and ideology motivated targetted violence. The diplomatic cables also expose the propensity of the Indian government to continuously “balance” between communities without being unduly concerned with the truth or issues of justice. The cable also exposes the seemingly irreconcilable differences between various denominations, fissures so deep they one group may not hesitate in condemning another to persecution and official action.

The diplomatic cable accessed from Wikileaks was from the Consulate in Chennai and dated Monday, 29 September 2008, just more than a month after the Hindutva violence against Christian Tribals and Dalits in the Kandhamal district of Orissa. That violence, which began on 24^th August 2008, after the assassination of the Hindutva leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati by Maoists in the state has been blamed on armed thugs belonging to various Hindutva organisations including the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Bajrang Dal, and others. Many of those arrested for the violence belonged to such groups, according to information provided to the State assembly by the government of Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik. In the violence, 400 villages were totally purged of all christens, 5,600 houses were burnt, almost 60,000 personally internally displaced, half of them forced to live in government refugee camps for more than a year. More than 100 persons were killed, a Catholic nun and several other women were raped, and normalcy could not be restored for more than a year.

The unclassified but “sensitive” cable was addressed to PGOV [Internal Governmental Affairs], PREL [External Political Relations], PHUM [Human Rights], ASEC [Security], PINR [Intelligence], KIRF [International Religious Freedom], SOCI [Social Conditions], IN [India; Andaman Islands; Lakshadweep Islands; Nicobar Islands].

In its summary, the cable said “A prominent Catholic voice in the Congress party came away from a recent meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Indian National Security Advisor MK Narayanan feeling that India will probably ban the militant Hindu group Bajrang Dal as a result of the violence in Orissa and Karnataka. He believes the government will also take unspecified actions against Pentecostal churches that have allegedly engaged in forcible conversions and the distribution of inflammatory anti-Hindu literature. The contact refused to blame Karnataka’s ruling BJP for the violence in that state and described the central government’s unpublicized efforts to protect Christians in Orissa.”

In the detailed report that followed, the Cable named more names, specially that of Kerala politician K V Thomas who apparently briefed the diplomats on his meetings with Sonia Gandhi following the violence. “In a September 25 meeting, K. V. Thomas discussed Congress party thinking on the recent religious violence in Orissa and Karnataka. Thomas, currently a member of the Kerala state legislative assembly who previously served as a member of the Indian parliament, is a prominent Catholic voice in the Congress party. Thomas told post that he met with Congress party President Sonia Gandhi and Indian National Security Advisor MK Narayanan during the week of September 15 – September 19 to discuss events in Orissa and Karnataka. Thomas said that, based on his discussions with Gandhi and Narayanan, he believes the Indian government will probably ban the militant Hindu group Bajrang Dal, which admitted to attacking churches in and around Mangalore on September 14 . He said a Bajrang Dal ban could be based on the fact that the group is “terrorist” and “anti-national.”

“But he added that Narayanan told him that “forced” conversions and anti-Hindu literature distributed by Pentecostal churches “are a big problem” that help fuel anti-Christian violence. Thomas said that the government will also have to take some sort of action against Pentecostal churches if it decides to ban Bajrang Dal. He acknowledged that it is not possible to enact an outright ban on the Pentecostal churches, but said the government will have to take some sort of action against them to curb their provocative activities. Don’t politicize by blaming BJP.

“Thomas resisted blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the recent violence in Karnataka. Echoing what we heard from Mangalore Catholics, Thomas said that “forced” conversions and distribution of inflammatory literature by the new Pentecostal churches in India has harmed the Christian community’s previously harmonious relations with the Hindu majority. When asked whether the BJP government bore any responsibility for anemic police response to the church attacks, as well as for the violent quelling of Catholic protests in Mangalore on September 15 , Thomas said the police response was “understandable.” “The police are 99% Hindu and their feelings were hurt” by the Pentecostals, he said. He said one should not “politicize the issue” by blaming BJP. Under-the-radar efforts to protect Orissa Christians. Thomas explained that with parliamentary elections close at hand Congress had to carefully measure its response to the outbreak of violence.

“Many of the government’s efforts to protect Christians are done in a deliberately low-profile manner according to Thomas. For example, he said, the government quietly sent to Orissa Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) units from areas with a substantial Christian population. Thomas said that these units have a larger proportion of Christians serving in them, which would help counterbalance Orissa’s largely Hindu local police forces.

“Thomas told post that he believes the situations in Orissa and Karnataka are both largely under control. He told us that Sonia Gandhi and MK Narayanan asked him to help open a dialogue between Christians and Hindus, which he said he has already begun to do. Despite these efforts, he expects “low-level” problems to continue until after the upcoming Indian elections because of the atmosphere of heightened tension surrounding the elections.”

The US diplomat in his own personal comment said “With an election around the corner, Congress is balancing the need to preserve law and order and protect minorities with its desire to avoid handing the BJP another opportunity to claim that Congress coddles minorities at the expense of the Hindu majority. Banning Bajrang Dal would signal that Congress is willing to risk losing votes from the Hindu right in hopes of consolidating minority Christian and Muslim votes. To ameliorate the impact on the Hindu vote, the party may pair its possible ban on Bajrang Dal with some sort of action against the Pentecostal churches. But there is something beyond politics at play in MK Narayanan and K.V. Thomas’s easy acceptance of the argument that there is a moral equivalence between the thuggish Bajrang Dal and the followers of the New Life church. That an intelligence services security professional and a Catholic politician both feel this way shows mainstream society’s deep-seated suspicions about the new Christian players — especially the Pentecostal churches — on the Indian scene.”

The charge of “forcible conversions” is facetious and has been stoutly denied by every Protestant Christian denomination. With a largely Hindu majority police, district administration and assembly or other decision-making organisations, it is impossible for any minority groups and individuals to use force on anyone. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules in many states alone or as a partner in coalitions [it was a member of the coalition government of Orissa when the anti Christian violence took place] and its Sangh Parivar have persistently accused both Catholic and Protestant Churches of forcible conversions. However, in its subtle strategy to divide the Church in India, the BJP and its partners seek to make a difference between “nationalistic Indian churches”, and other “missionaries”. Churches almost routinely fall into the trap set to divide them– by safeguarding their own interests and throwing other Christian groups to the wolves. Much of this is because of a lack of understanding of the ideology of Hindutva.

The government and the Congress trust MK Narayanan, currently Governor of West Bengal and a career officer in the Intelligence services. And he is being nothing more than a policeman in “catching” everyone so that he is not seen as being soft either on the Christians or on Hindutva.

The trouble of course is that this need for finding “equivalence” seems to strike parity between the guilty aggressors and the victims who suffer violence, arson, murder and rapine. The US cables are an eye opener. They are also a caution to the churches, specially the Pentecostal churches and their pastors.

Christians and India General Election 2014

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The Christian Minority and Strategic Voting in General Elections 2014

JOHN DAYAL

The emergence of Caste politics, the dominance of regional satraps with their own political parties, and the sheer realities of demographic distribution have ensured a political marginalization, and rapid disenfranchisement, of religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians in India. This ought to be the matter of prime concern to India’s 200 million [20 crore] or so minorities as they look to the General elections which will elect the next Lok Sabha, the House of the Peoples, and create the next federal government in 2014, and possibly even earlier if current political rumours are to be believed.

The Sikhs have managed to escape this marginalization, as the 19 million strong ethno-religious group is concentrated in the rural Punjab countryside where they win all constituencies up for election from the village panchayat to the Lok Sabha, and then get to rule in the state in a coalition with the right wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party with its base among the business communities in the state’s urban areas. This also gives them a disproportionate clout in Parliament.

The Sikhs, who constitute 60 per cent of the population in Punjab – their other much smaller concentrations are in Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi, Bhilai and parts of Jharkhand – had voted Congress till about the 1970s when militancy started in the wake of a demand for Khalistan, vast unemployment among the Sikh youth and the resultant government crackdown. The 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi alienated the majority of them from the Congress. The Akali Dal, representing the landed peasantry if the Jat Sikhs, which had been a silent participant in the anti government agitations, emerged as the major mobiliser of public opinion. The delay in judicial processes to punish those who masterminded the 1984 riots has given them a continuing political stick with which to beat the Congress. The Dalit Sikhs, called Mazhabis, still seem to veer towards the Congress as a reaction to their exclusion by the rich and powerful Jat Sikhs. It is expected that the Jat Sikhs will largely vote for the Akali Dal even in 2014.

The Muslims are India’s largest minority, their figures perhaps as high as 15 per cent of the population according to their own estimates, and are an important political force in as many as 150 out of 542 parliamentary constituencies across the country. As a much persecuted and therefore highly politically conscious religious group, they are perhaps the most aware of their identity and the role they can play in national politics. They are also one community which has recorded in micro detail its declining presence in elected bodies, which it sees as the result of a deliberate neglect by all political parties, specially the Congress, in the years since Independence, and more so since 1980 when Mrs. Indira Gandhi returned to power.

There is little doubt that the Muslim presence in Parliament has been declining. It was never more than really half of what they deserved because of their percentage in the national population, but even in absolute numbers it has never crossed the peak of 49 members in 1980. It has ranged between the mid 20s to the mid 30s.

According to Muslim analysts, except in 1980, when the percentage of Muslim MPs in the Lok Sabha – 9 per cent – was roughly equivalent to the percentage of Muslims in the Indian population – 11.4 per cent according to the 1981 census – this minority has always been under-represented in Parliament. The gap increased in the late 1980s, to fall to about 5 per cent in the 1990s, the decade when the BJP remained the first party in the Lok Sabha for quite some time; it then increased slightly in 1999 and 2004 because of the good performance of parties which had nominated a large number of Muslim candidates, mainly the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi party.

It is felt that Muslims remain under-represented in the Lok Sabha primarily because the secular parties fail to field adequate number of Muslim candidates, even from Muslim-concentration constituencies.

Muslim voters have evolved a multi-pronged strategy, which acts as a force multiplier and increases their political clout even if does not actually increase the number of Muslims in State legislatures and the Lok Sabha. They call it strategic voting.

As mentioned earlier, there are about 140 districts, in two categories, corresponding to an almost equal number of Lok Sabha constituencies across the nation [barring the north eastern states of Arunachal] where Muslims are either about 10 per cent or from 20 to 40 per cent of the population. The Planning Commission calls the second group Minority Concentrated Districts and has an entire series of development programmes for them running into thousands of crores of rupees.

Muslims are not a monolithic community in India, and those in Assam or Bengal will have very little in common with those in the Kashmir Valley, in North Kerala or in Hyderabad and Lucknow. As every other community in India, they too are afflicted with caste divisions. The majority is of the Sunni sect, but here is a thriving Shia community, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad with a distinct culture and a strong consciousness of their identity. More than half belong to the other backward Communities, and the rest are divided between those who claim upper caste, Arab, Pathan or Persian descent, and those converted from Hinduism’s former untoucbable castes.

The Dalit Muslims have in recent years asserted their identity, demanding rights given to Hindu Dalits, making common cause with Dalit Christians and chastising their upper castes for neglecting them over the centuries.

The years following the Babri Masjid demolition, the Mumbai, Gujarat and Assam riots have however seen a strong move for a united Muslim assertion in the country. This does not always translate into electoral policy because of the strong regional fixation of most Muslim political entities. The major religious groups such as Jamaat e Islami e Hind and the madrasa based powerful Jamiat e Ulema e Hind are focused on the north Indian states, and to some extent in Karnataka. Hyderabad is the monopoly of MIM, the All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen, which is both a movement and a political party that regularly wins one seat from its home base. The other major Muslim political parties are the Indian Union Muslim League in Kerala and a rather recent party, the All India United Democratic Front or AIUDF in Assam, which was launched by a tycoon who made his fortune selling perfumes. The Muslim League is a partner of the Congress on the ruling United Democratic Front in the state.

The Muslim electoral strategy in the country takes cognizance of their strengths and weaknesses. The non-political fronts endeavor to get as many Muslim candidates nominated by the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj party and the Samajwadi party and also any other non-Hindutva political group that they can. But knowing the internal dynamics of each political party, which remain deeply impacted by caste groups of Hindus, they have understood that their political clout will come not so much from the umber of Muslims they can get elected, but how many Members of Parliament or legislators they can help win who later will be more amendable to help them in their development efforts.

Strategic voting, which ahs been well studied, therefore does not involve allegiance to any one particular party even though the SP, the BSP and the Congress are seen, in that order, as sympathetic to the Muslim cause. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other northern states, unfortunately, these three parties are routinely pitted against each other, splitting the non-Hindutva “secular” vote. This poses a challenge to the Muslim voter. The Muslim electorate has resolved this dilemma in understanding that they should not split their votes amongst competing secular candidates, but vote for the one who is most likely to win, irrespective of which political party to which he or she belongs. They thus become the critical swing vote, and make an impact if not in government formation, at least in defining the character of the Lok Sabha or the state assembly.

Strategic voting has come to stay as a potent instrument of deriving whatever political power it is possible to do in India’s peculiar demography. And by practicing it, Muslims have been able to garner political fruits over and above their real percentage in the population. The large number of development and economic schemes, from scholarships to funds for business and industry, now monopolized by the community is ample proof of this.

It is important for the Christian community to draw lessons, if not to learn, from the experience of both the Sikhs and the Muslims in reclaiming some political presence in the body parliament, and especially in the institutions and levers of power.

Unlike for the Muslims, there is no body of serious academic research work analyzing the political reality of India’s Christians who are 2.3 per cent of the population and electorate, if not really the 10 per cent that many Christian groups tend to believe. Many factors make such a study even more complicated because Christians too are not a monolithic block. They differ not only in denomination, ethnicity and language, but suffer from the impact of the caste system.

The states where Christians are in a majority or significant strength – Goa, Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Kerala – do not add up to even five per cent of the electoral seats in Parliament or state legislatures. Significantly, in the largest north eastern state of Assam which has a huge Muslim clout, Christians do not matter at all politically.

In the states that matter politically, Christians are not a significant percentage of the population. That includes most of North India. The exceptions are the States of south India. But in Karnataka, where there is a strong Christian community among the Tamils, Malayalis and Konkani speaking Manglorean, only a couple of Christians were elected in the recent state assembly elections. The solitary Christian minister in the state cabinet is a Malayali.

So severe is the research crisis that we do not know for sure – unlike the Muslims – just what was the Christian strength over the years, in the Lok Sabha or in state assemblies. Parliament does not record the religion of its members, and identification is either through self-declarations or through someone trying to identify MPs and MLAs through their names. Not all Christian legislators have “Christian”, Biblical, or Western names, and it becomes difficult for researchers to reach a correct count. But my own study extending over 40 years as a journalist-covering Parliament is that the numbers are decreasing after a peak in the 1984 elections. Most of the well-known Christians in Parliament are from the Upper House, the Rajya Sabha. Most of the known ministers are from Kerala, such as Mr. AK Anthony, the Defense minister.

There is also no all-India Christian political party. Kerala has its Kerala Congress, favored by plantation owners and farmers from the Syrian groups of the Catholic and Protestant denominations. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh see a seasonal mushrooming of political parties, often one-man shows, every time a state or Lok Sabha election is announced. Significantly, Goa does not have genuine Catholic political party but banks on the other national players for its politics. It almost always voted for the Congress, but in the last assembly elections, a significant number fed up with Congress corruption, did not voted for the party but for the BJP. The BJP won. In the process, almost half a dozen Christians became MLAs and some of them ministers. But disillusionment with the BJP is fast setting in.

How have Christians voted in the past elections? At an all India level, they have voted for the Congress. In Kerala, the Dalit have voted for the Communist front, and in fact the Communists have chosen a few candidates every time, some of whom always win. There are Christians; therefore, both in the Congress led UDF, and in the Marxist party led Left Democratic Front, a happy consummation, some would say.

But the general impression that Christian vote for the Congress, or for Sonia Gandhi with her Catholic origins, may not necessarily be true in every constituency. There are pockets of deep dissatisfaction with the Congress, and other regional factors attract local Christian support, such as in Tamil Nadu where Christians vote both for the All India Anna DMK of chief minister J Jayalalitha and for her opponent, M Karunanidhi of the DMK.

Defining voting patterns of the Christian community inevitably leads to regional surveys. In Mizoram, Meghalaya and Manipur, people vote largely on tribal lines, but if the major contestants are of the same tribe, individual reputation and party does matter. This explains why the party of a senior tribal leader, who was also a national personality, Mr. Purno Sangma, lost in his home state where his family has had held sway for decades.

How do Christian Tribals of Central India vote? They are numerous, but not a majority, in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh states, and in the Dangs region of Karnataka, the Udaipur region of Rajasthan and the Kandhamal region of Orissa. Barring an MLA or so in Dangs, Christians do not win themselves anywhere else in the western states, and are said to be voting for the Congress. Tribal identity remains an added attraction specially where the constituencies are reserved for scheduled tribes. In reserved Tribal seats in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, a few Christians manage to win, from all non-BJP parties.

The critical issue is how do the Dalit Christians vote, and taking off from there, how do the so called Quasi or Krypto Christians, particularly among the Malas and Madiga scheduled caste groups of Andhra Pradesh. Do they vote as a community? And do they vote as a Christian community. Officially most of them are not registered as Christians on the electoral rolls, but as Scheduled Castes and are therefore eligible to contest from Scheduled Caste reserved seats as Hindus. Do they make common cause with other Dalits in caste politics and then chose their candidates. Perhaps that is the best stagey for them at the moment.

At the root of the Christian disenfranchisement is the repugnant Presidential order of 1950, now in the Constitution as Article 341 with it evil part III which says “no person who professes a religion different from the Hindu [and the Sikh or the Buddhist] religion shall be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste.

This means that scheduled caste who convert to Christianity, and to Islam, are absolutely taken out of all reservations meant for Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits. Apart from employment, education and even agricultural and economic activity in which there are doles for the Dalits, the most malicious impact is on political activity.

Under the Indian Constitution, there is a stipulated 15 per cent reservation in all elected posts, with constituencies reserved for the scheduled castes. This is true right from the grassroots level Panchayati Raj system through the block and district administrations, the State legislatures and the Lok Sabha. Christians have no place in this dispensation. Dalit Christians have taken the matter to the Supreme Court of India in a writ position, but the Union Government, possibly understandably given the political sensitivity of the matter, has so far not given its response to the court.

Why is the matter so sensitive and why was the Presidential order of 1950 enforced. Historical research shows beyond doubt that the original law to empower the scheduled castes who has suffered from prejudice for 3000 years was without reference to their current religion as the infirmities crossed religious boundaries and permeated Islam, Christianity, Sikhism and even Buddhism.

The fear among the law makers, including those of the Hindu Mahasabha and the right wing of the ruling Congress, was that the scheduled castes could en masse convert to Christianity, getting not just the constitutionally guaranteed reservations, but also whatever social uplift they could in their new religion. The Scheduled Caste number a full 17 per cent of the population. The transfer of such a large number of people from the Hindu fold would not just shake society as they knew it, but politics itself. With 17 per cent or more of these people voting against caste Hindus, the stability of their regime was at risk. The Scheduled caste Hindus were thus prevented from converting – denied a freedom of faith –and forced to remain in the Hindu fold.

Till this law remains on the statute books. Dalit Christians cannot vote as scheduled castes to make a difference. This is of great relevance in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Punjab, which have sizable populations of Dalit Christians.

How should, then, Christians conduct their political affairs?

Setting up their own political party is not the answer. Even the Kerala Congress remains a one seat parliamentary party. Nor is it a good policy to put all eggs on the Congress party in an era of coalition party. As political workers, Christians must permeate all parties that they can, even the BJP if it will have them. They must ensure that “believers”, Dalits who believe in Christ but remain Hindus on the rolls, make common political cause with them.

As voters, they must chose the secular parties in their area, and if possible, taking a leaf from the Muslim political thesis, vote for the candidate most likely to win. With this, even if not many Christians get elected, at least they will carry strategic weight with the winning candidates and their political parties.

In a parliamentary democracy, this is of essence. And to a small extent, this will diminish the political marginalization they now face, till Dalit Christians once again get their full rights.

[First published in the NCCI Journal June 2013]

Subcontinent of Intolerance

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Subcontinent of Intolerance: Throttling minority faiths in South Asia

JOHN DAYAL

Away from the international focus on the Islamic states of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia’s increasing bigotry and religious intolerance has reached an unacceptable stage. Official impunity, extreme legislations and the complicity of state and non-state actors compound the issue.

Although Christians as minority religionists are the subject of persecution in each one of the seven South Asian countries — India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka [Maldives, the seventh, has almost no minorities in an entirely Islamic state] – followers of every other major world religion are persecuted in one or the other of the sub-continent’s seven country. Muslims and Christians are victims in India, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh and Pakistan which are Muslim-majority nations, and Christians and Muslims in the Buddhist countries of Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal. It complicates issues as the countries differ in their political structures and overlays of ethnic identities.

Ironically, India’s anti conversion laws designed against the Christian church, and Pakistan’s anti Blasphemy laws, are sought to be replicated in the other countries to contain evangelisation, and assert the supremacy of the majority religion.

This complicates sharing of good practices – such as the proposed Communal and targetted violence prevention Bill which the National Advisory Council headed by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi evolved in 2011 in the face if sharpening religious divides in India in the wake of the 2002 anti Muslim violence of Gujarat and the 2008 pogrom against Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa state.

Recent dialogues between representatives of all religious groups from the south Asian countries have cautioned against a rise in extremism that could threaten peace in the region where India and Pakistan have huge nuclear arsenals

While majoritarianism is a common factor, and the recent rise in Wahabi Islam in Pakistan and Bangladesh a major trigger, smaller nations such as Bhutan and Nepal are falling prey to extreme protectionism to keep “alien” faiths, and immigrants, from polluting “traditional culture”. In politically chaotic Nepal this is done without legal provisions, as the country is no longer officially a Hindu nation. A draft bill banning conversions remains on the anvil. A cause of concern is the tentacles the extreme Hinduism ideology of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh is spreading in the Himalayan nation.

The Catholic Church is tolerated because of its educational institutions, but a Damocles sword always hangs over about 25,000 Christian believers in house churches and Pentecostal Para churches. For all practical purposes, it remains almost an underground church.

It is even more underground in Bhutan with its archaic nationalism and culture policy designed to preserve the purity of its Buddhist tradition and ethnicity. Even Buddhist Nepalese feel the sting of being aliens.

There are a mere 14,000 Christians in a Bhutanese population of 700,000. But the country’s first-ever democratic government is yet to clear a proposal to grant Christians the right to build churches and form organizations, although it has not been tardy in enacting a law against conversions. This means that officially the state does not acknowledge the presence of Christians in the country.

In Sri Lanka after the end of the civil war with The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the victorious Sinhala-Buddhist government has started putting pressure on the Muslims, and the Christians. About 70 per cent of the population of Sri Lanka is Buddhist Sinhalese, 15 per cent Hindu Tamils, 8 per cent Christian, and 7 per cent Tamil speaking Muslim. Almost 80 per cent of the Christians are Roman Catholics, many of them Sinhala. The regime is particularly suspicious of Protestant groups, 40 per cent of who suffer from the double disability of being Tamils. Churches and individual Christians, who comprise approximately 7 percent of the population, have been physically assaulted

War crimes apart, the current triumphal Buddhist onslaught against Muslims, and the sustained pressure on Christians has caused deep concern in the international human rights community.

The plight of Christians in Pakistan – women raped, houses burnt and men arrested and threatened with execution on charges under the notorious anti blasphemy laws – is well known and has attracted international opprobrium and clemency campaigns. But it is the wave of violence against Hindus and Christians in Bangladesh that is the immediate cause of deep concern, especially in India, which is the recipient of people fleeing for their lives from the febrile nation. India itself has a nuanced policy on people from coming from Bangladesh; the Hindus are absorbed and often given nationality as refugees, but the Muslims are deemed to be illegal infiltrators and are forever under the shadow of expulsion. The situation of Christians remains on a limbo.. In recent weeks, Islamic fundamentalists protesting a trial of the war criminals of the 1971 struggle for Independence from Pakistan vent their anger specially on Hindus in an orgy of violence that has left thousand homeless. The Dhaka government is taking some timid steps to control the Islamists, but the minorities remain terrorized.

India, the big brother in the sub continent named after it, is in no moral position to point a finger at its neighbors. Official records show that in 2012, there reportedly were 560 communal riots, big and small, leading 89 dead and 1,846 injured. A majority of the victims were Muslims. There are no official records for the persecution of Christian pastors and believers. [First published in UCAN]

Pakistan elections and peace with India

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Out of Army’s shadow, Nawaz Sharif could begin a new peace process with India

JOHN DAYAL

It was under his government that Pakistani sent in army units in 1999 into the frozen heights of the Kargil glacier in Jammu and Kashmir, but the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif can well say he is ready for a new chapter in peace building with India. In the event, Indian troops evicted the Pakistanis after a long and bloody skirmish. General Pervez Musharraf, then chief of the Pakistani army who later ousted Sharif in a coup and became Pakistan’s third military dictator since independence, claimed credit for the Kargil incursion, giving Sharif just the fig leaf needs to claim he is for peace with India.

Historically, democratically civilian leaders have not always meant peaceful relations between India and Pakistan. The army remains restive under a civil boss. Relations have been the most stable when Pakistan has been army rule. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was foreign minister in 1965, when his refusal to hand over power to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Redman after the general elections, led to a war with India and the liberation of Bangladesh. His daughter Benazir Bhutto could not really bring about a no-war pact with India. In fact their Pakistan People’s Party governments have had a very turbulent relationship with New Delhi, reaching its nadir in the killing of Indian prisoner Surjit Singh in a Lahore jail this year.

Nawaz Sharif claims victory in a historic election, which for the first time in Pakistani history has seen a peaceful transition from one democratic government to another. Sharif has also made it clear that the Army will have to accept the supremacy of the civil government.

It was not an entirely peaceful election though, with over 100 dead in bomb blasts and shootouts durting the campaign and 15 dead on polling day. As such Pakistan has seen more than 47,500 dead in terrorist violence in the last 12 years.

There is now a fatigue setting in against terrorist violence – reflected in the massive voter turnout of over 60 per cent – and the state of perpetual armed tension with India. Both countries have huge nuclear arsenals which they can ill afford with their economic slowdowns, poor quality if life especially in their large rural hinterlands, and their massive outlays on defense. Unlike India, Pakistan does not even have the economic depth for a real and decisive military confrontation with India despite its backing by China and the USA.

Sharif has no option but to talk peace with India. It remains to be seen if he will have the political strength. He will not have an absolute majority in Parliament, it seems, and will depend on independents and smaller parties. His party will govern only in Punjab, with other powerful satraps controlling Sindh, Baluchistan and the North West Frontier where Imran Khan will call the shots.

But it will be India’s interests to encourage Sharif in his peace initiatives. The right wing Bharatiya Janata party has already criticized Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh’s open invitation to Sharif to visit India. But the BJP does not reflect the real yearning in India for lasting peace with its neighbor, which will also resolve such niggling issues as the situation of political, military and civil prisoners in both countries, and an escalation of the Siachin tension, which is bleeding both countries in an ongoing battle of attrition.

Nawaz Sharif’s warm if off the cuff remarks on his desire to visit India offer just that olive branch. The two governments will do well to rise above the babble from self-serving hyper patriots including the BJP to resume full-scale peace talks with each other.

BJP rout in Karnataka

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BJP’s ignominious retreat from South India

JOHN DAYAL

The ignominious rout of the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] in the elections this week to the Legislative Assembly of the state of Karnataka has implications far beyond provincial boundaries; and the political detritus that the government leaves behind will continue to impact religious minorities, women and the cultural world for a very long time to come.

When the votes were counted, the BJP had lost 70 of the 110 seats it once held, winning a mere 40, yielding space to the Congress which overcame dissidence and its usual chaotic functioning to win 121 of the 223 seats in the house of 224 seats. One election was called off following the death of a candidate. Former chief minister and leader of the Janata Dal secular HD Kumarswamy won a surprising 40 seats mostly appealing to voters of his own caste, while Mr. Yeddyurappa, another former chief minister who broke away from the BJP managed a mere 6 seats.

The results are a major political embarrassment and setback for the national leadership of the BJP. The party had since inception remained limited to North and Western India, and was non-existent in the four populous states of South India – Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala- for six decades. The demography of Karnataka with its mix of upper castes and the Konkani belt along the western coast, which is influenced partly by the religious politics of neighboring Maharashtra, seemed a suitable “gateway to the South”, as party ideologues termed it. The rapid growth of Hindu right wing extremist groups under the umbrella of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, or the Sangh Parivar as it is generally known, among youth and upper caste groups brought the party to power five years ago, touted as the beginning of the BJP’s eventual conquest of southern India. With this defeat, the party has once again shrunk to the northern states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and partly in Punjab and Bihar where it is the junior partner in coalitions with the Akali Dal and the Janata Dal United respectively.

The Congress returns to power in the state after seven years and has the onerous task of not only cleaning up the mess left behind, but making sure it does not itself fall prey to corruption at a time when its national leadership is itself in deep trouble on the eve of the General elections in 2014, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and several of his ministers accused of corruption in areas as different as the railways and the coal sector.

The results themselves come as no surprise. In the five years the party was in power, the BJP changed its chief ministers three times in a desperate attempt to undo massive corruption on the one hand and open rebellion on the other. Karnataka’s capital Bangalore is the silicon valley of India, its economic boom creating a vast market in real estate, which attracted a group of daring entrepreneurs who bought political influence and then used it to circumvent the law with impunity. Often they became politicians themselves. Two of them, known as the Reddy Brothers, who in fact became ministers in the government, carried on their business of mining for iron ore with such audacity they tunneled under state boundaries to dig deep into the ore veins in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, breaking just about every national law. They were eventfully trapped, sacked, arrested and sent to jail.

Not every guilty person faced such retribution, and corruption, which impacted on the common man, soon made the regime very unpopular, and its continuance untenable. In the end, neither the call to the hyper nationalism that is the Sangh’s forte, nor rapid changes in the office of the chief minister could save the day.

For the Congress, the task is not just cleaning up the corruption and ensuring that its own ministers do not dip their fingers in the state exchequer, but to cleanse the education system, the police and the village panchayat or local self government apparatus which have been heavily penetrated by Sangh elements in the last five years.

The State currently tops the list of provinces with the highest incidence of persecution of Christians, especially of independent pastors. After Orissa’s Kandhamal area, Mangalore and other parts of Karnataka saw massive violence in 2008. In a People’s Tribunal held last month held in Bengaluru by the All India Christian Council, 80 of over 200 persecuted pastors, including women, deposed of violence they had faced, often by goons in connivance with the local police and village systems. Some estimates put persecution figures at over 300 every year.

Cultural police and thugs have disrupted cultural functions, sometime in colleges and churches, attacked young couples and artistes, and launched campaigns against Love Jihad, the so called organized wooing of Hindu young women by Muslim men. With the social and cultural landscape often under siege of such “patriotic and nationalistic” elements, restoring civil liberties and freedom of faith become priorities for the new government once it assumes office.

[Fist Published in UCAN]

Voice from the Past — the statement of Sister M, the Catholic Nun who was gang raped in Kandhamal, Orissa

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The Statement of Sister M, the Catholic Nun who was gang-raped in Kandhamal, Orissa

[John Dayal’s note: As India reels in an unceasing daily spate of rapes and gang rapes, often of very young girls, an outraged public is demanding that the government devise ways to curb the crime, and to bring the guilty to speedy justice. Among the many cases not heard of in the angry discourse are rapes of Dalit and Tribal women and girls. And five years after she was gang-raped in Kandhamal, Orissa, on 25th August 2008, people have almost forgotten Catholic Nun Sister M. There has been no justice yet in the case, The Magistrate charged with recording her evidence in identifying her rapists interpolated the record. She has gone to the Supreme Court against the magistrate. But the Media and the public seemingly no longer remember her. I am brining into the public discourse a statement she made to the national and international media at a press conference at thr Indian Social Institute in New Delhi 24^th October 2008. She too deserves justice. The Nun has signed the Statement, but members of the Indian Media may recall the Supreme Court Advisory on the use of names of victims of gender violence.]

Statement made to the Press by Sister M.

On 24^th August, around 4:30pm, hearing the shouting of a large crowd, at the gate of Divyajyoti Pastoral Centre, I ran out through the back door and escaped to the forest along with others. We saw our house going up in flames. Around 8:30 pm we came out of the forest and went to the house of a Hindu gentleman who gave us shelter.

On 25^th August, around1:30 pm,the mob entered the room where I was staying in that house, one of them stopped me on my face, caught my hair and pulled me out of the house. Two of them were holding my neck to cut off my head with axe. Others told them to take me out to the road; I saw Fr. Chellan also being taken out and being beaten. The mob consisting of 40-50 men was armed with lathis, axes, spades, crowbars, iron-rods, sickles etc.They took both of us to the main road. Then they led us to the burnt down Janavikas building saying that they were going to throw us into the smouldering fire.

When we reached the Janavikas building, they threw me to the verandah on the way to the dining room which was full of ashes and broken glass pieces. One of them tore my blouse and others my undergarments. Father Chellan protested and they beat him and pulled him out from there. They pulled out my saree and one of the stepped on my right hand and another on my left hand and then a third person raped me on the verandah mentioned above. When it was over, I managed to get up and put my petticoat and saree. Then another young man caught me and took me to a room near the staircase. He opened his pants and was attempting to rape me when they reached there.=

I hid myself under the staircase. The crowd was shouting “where is that sister, come let us rape her, at least 100 people should rape.” They found me under the staircase and took me out to the road. There I saw Fr. Chellan was kneeling down and the crowd was beating him. They were searching for a rope to tie us both of us together to burn us in fire. Someone suggested to make us parade naked. They made us walk on the road till Nuagoan market which was half a kilometer from there. They made to fold our hands and walk. I was with petticoat and saree as they had already torn away my blouse and undergarments. They tried to strip even there and I resisted and they went on beating me with hands on my cheeks and head and with sticks on my back several times.

When I reached the market the market place about a dozen of OSAP policemen were there. I went to them asking to protect me and I sat in between two policemen but they did not move. One from the crowd again pulled out from there and they wanted to lock us in their temple mandap. The crowd led me and Fr. Chellan to the Nuagaon block building saying that they will hand us over to BDO. From there along with the block officer the mob took us to police outpost Nuagaon, other policemen remained far.

The mob said that they will come back after eating and one of them who attacked me remained back in the police outpost. Policemen then came to police outpost. They were talking very friendly with the man who had attacked me and stayed back. In police outpost we remained until the inspector in charge of Balliguda with his police team came and took us to Balliguda. They were afraid to take us straight to the police station and they kept us sometimes in jeep. In the garage, from there, they brought us to the station. The inspector in charge and other government officers took me privately and asked whatever happened to me. I narrated everything in detail to the police, how I was attacked, raped, taken away from policemen paraded half naked and how the policemen did not help me when I asked for help while weeping bitterly. I saw the inspector writing down. The inspector asked me “are you interested in filing FIR? Do you know what will be the consequence?” At about 10:00 pm I was taken for medical check-up accompanied by a lady police officer to Balliguda Hospital. They were afraid to keep us in police station, saying the mob may attack police station. So the police took us to the IB (Inspection Bungalow) where CRP men were camping.

On 26^th August around 9:00 am, we were taken to Balliguda police station. When I was writing the FIR, the I I C asked me to hurry up and not to write in detail. When I started writing about the police, the I I C told me “this is not the way to write FIR, make it short”. So I re-wrote it for the third time in one and half page. I filed the FIR but I was not given a copy of it.

At around 4:00 pm the inspector in charge of Balliguda police station along with some other government officers put us in the OSRTC bus to Bhubaneswar along with other stranded passengers. Police were there till Rangamati where all passengers had their supper. After that I did not see the police. We got down near Nayagarh and traveled in a private vehicle and reached Bhubaneswar around 2:00 am on 27^th August.

State Police failed to stop the crimes, failed to protect me from the attackers, they were friendly with the attackers. They tried their best that I did best that I did not register an FIR, not make complaints against police, police did not take down my statement as I narrated in detail and they abandoned me half of the way. I was raped and now I don’t want to be victimized by the Orissa police. I want Central Bureau Of investigation enquiry.

God bless India, God bless you all.

Sr. Meena

India’s marketting of abortions

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Marketing Abortions – Indian government body wants it easier, and till late

JOHN DAYAL

Two seemingly bizarre recommendations by the Indian Government’s high profile National Commission of Women, which have gone unchallenged by both the religious bodies and the ethical civil society groups, may radically add to the marketing of abortion on demand. Outside of the Western world, India has one of the more liberalized abortion regimes with laws changed over the years under pressure from pro-choice lobbies and the medical fraternity.

Paradoxically, the Commission cites advancements in diagnostic sciences as its reason for demanding an advancement of available abortion from the current 20 weeks to 24 weeks, even as reproductive sciences experts try hard to progressively decrease the age of the unborn child where it can be viably sustained outside the womb in a life-nurturing environment. There are serious apprehensions that the rationale presented by the commission may increase female foeticide. It may also encourage attempted eugenics where parents and doctors attempt to prevent births of children with congenital defects.

The second suggestion to the government says traditional midwives be allowed to carry out the abortions. No official records are kept of abortions in villages at the hands of quacks. At present abortion in India can be done by medical doctors till 20 weeks of pregnancy, but an opinion of a second doctor is necessary between weeks 12 and 20.

Gynecologists and obstetricians at a meeting held recently in Delhi narrated how pregnancies that were sought to be terminated because non invasive and invasive tests had sown some “latent abnormality” eventually reached full term with the baby showing nothing more serious than a cleft lip, corrected early with simple surgery.

Abortion, politely called Medical Termination of pregnancy, has unfortunately never become a major political issue in the country otherwise known for its very orthodox social mores. The well-documented bias, both in rural and urban areas, has made legal and illegal termination of pregnancies the norm rather than the exception. The State of Emergency [1975-77] saw large-scale abuse of the process to curtail population and space families.

Now, as in the past, arguments of the baby conceived in rape or suspected to have congenital diseases, which would impair it quality of life, has been advanced by the commission, which says, “Keeping in view of the present scientific development in medical diagnostic technologies as well as social scenario, laws/statutes need to be revamped”. It seeks to explain “social scenario” as woman may be raped or a minor may have become pregnant or a woman from a depressed class violated, a woman/girl deserted by partner who had promised to marry her” It therefore wants Section 3(2)(b) of the MTP Act to be tweaked to read, “where the length of the pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks but does not exceed 24 weeks”.

There have been a few legal cases where parents have gone to court seeking permission to abort babies suspected to be malformed or diseased. In one celebrated case, in 2008, the Bombay high court dismissed a plea for abortion as the foetus had a congenital heart problem detected in the 24th week. India is also woefully short of facilities and personnel to counsel the parents, specially the woman.

India’s strict abortion laws were overhauled and liberalized in 1971 and amended again in 1975. The Consortium on National Consensus for Medical Abortion in India, estimates an average of about 11 million abortions, annually with an estimated d 20,000 women feared dead every year in the process. Legal abortions have shot up from a mere 24,300 recorded in 1972 to 2529, 979 in 2012.

The Commission has had one major national consultation on the subject, but the government is yet to take a call on its suggestion. But there are potent fears that well organised lobbies may pressurize the government to further liberalize the law in the guise of medical necessity.

Can one really dialogue with men of the Sangh parivar

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Dialogue, what dialogue, and with whom?

Ideology, not theology, is the issue

It is not a crisis between Hindus and Christians; it is a war that the fascism of the Sangh is waging against all of India’s minorities, the Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, as well as the Christians

The Sangh Parivar has a fascist ideology. To talk of a bilateral dialogue between Christians and the Parivar is to betray all of India’s minorities, its Dalits and its marginalised that are also victims of the Praiser

BJP plays on Church differences, clerical naiveté. ‘We are attacked as a community, and we respond as a denomination’

By John Dayal

(This article seeks to explain the motives behind the Sangh Parivar’s repeated suggestions for a dialogue between the church hierarchy and the Parivar. It also analyses why central minister of state of Rajagopal and National Commission for Minorities Christian member John Joseph want such dialogues to begin in Kerala. The National Commission for Minorities has thoroughly discredited itself in rushing to the defence of the Parivar in the rash of anti-Christian violence witnessed across the country in recent weeks. John Dayal argues that the Hindutva fascist thesis of One nation, One People, One Culture is a xenophobic political ideology with roots in the Nazi-fascism of Europe of the early 1920s, and not a matter of religion, theological reflection and dialogue. The Parivar has targeted all minorities, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and not just the Christians, by co-option (Buddhists and Sikhs) or violence (Muslims), and it can be countered only ideologically. If any single community, Sikh or Christian or Muslim, thinks it can reach a bilateral peace with the Sangh Parivar, it is only deceiving itself, and allowing the Parivar to buy time. The Sangh is cleverly suing for dialogue with the Hierarchy to stave off an international rebuke, which will affect international funding, and have other repercussions for the cosmopolitan image that the Parivar is now trying to project internationally through its spokesmen in the Indian Diaspora of the NRIs. If they are sincere, the government and the BJP should call for a national dialogue involving all communities, not just Christians, on steps to further strengthen the freedom to profess, practice and propagate one’s religion, rights that were won in the dialogue that the Constituent assembly had, and whose results are amply reflected in Articles 25 and 30 )

The day after Atal Behari Vajpayee led his council of ministers at the swearing in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan, there was considerable speculation about one minister among north Indian journalists gathered in Parliament’s Central Hall, the place where political foes meet in goodwill over a cup of tea, and gossip is generated which becomes reality the next day. The man under review was O Rajagopal. North Indian journalist wondered why Vajpayee had broken his own rule about taking people who had lost the Lok Sabha elections. Several heavyweights of the BJP had had to cool their heals in the wilderness till they could be rehabilitated with dignity.

Rajagopal’s claim to a berth in the Council of ministers was that he alone was a senior enough BJP politician from Kerala, and the state had to be represented both in the council of ministers and in the checklist of the BJP which wanted at least of its cadres in every ministry, as the top man or the second in command. (Just for the record, Ram Jethmalani, once a vice president of the BJP, is now technically an Independent member of parliament). This was the only way the party was at all times kept in the picture on matters of policy, and of course in ensuring that its own writ was not disregarded by a minister belonging to some other party in the ruling national Democratic alliance.

But political observers were not convinced if the loser had become a winner just for this reason. Sangh Parivar insiders then explained to the bewildered northerners just what Rajagopal meant to the BJP. Rajagopal’s inclusion, they said, had promised that the Christian church would be ‘delivered’ to the BJP through his strong hold in Kerala.

For good or for bad, this is the impression that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Sangh Parivar has of the Church in India. They firmly believe that Kerala is the soft under-belly of the Church, and whatever be the movements, currents or theological pursuits anyone else in the country may be following for the moment, he, she or they could always be brought to heel through the Kerala route.

This understanding is part of the Sangh Parivar’s overall assessment and categorisation of the Christian community in India. The North Eastern Christians, of Mongoloid stock and Baptist, Presbyterian and Catholic denominational adherence, have all been termed anti-national and supportive of violence and secessionist movements, to be politically denounced across the country. This is one reason whey the BJP reacted with such violence recently to the revival of the Forum of Christian Members of parliament, whose convenorship is with MPs from the North East. There is no way the BJP can sit quite if it feels that the 800 odd members of parliament are going to be sensitised on pro-Christian issues by these MPs of the North east.

The tribals of the larger Gondwana belt, from Rajasthan in the west to Bihar in the East, are not adivasis but Vanavasis to the BJP, forest dwellers of a larger Hindu Diaspora to be challenged for their current faith but be wooed constantly through the ‘ghar wapsi’ programmes as part of an aggressively spiralling co-option programme. The entire Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad, ekal school and sundry other programmes of the Parivar have been structured on this premise, and ironically, the fund collection programme for the tribal area involves seeking donations from western church based organisations as much as from Non resident Indians.

As far as the BJP is concerned, there are but few Christians in the north, living as the remnants of the British Raaj in UP and Rajasthan; and even the few lakh Dalit Christians of Gurdaspur in Punjab can be neatly bracketed and ignored. The Christians of the Konkan belt encompassing Goa, Maharashtra (mostly Mumbai) and Karnataka are still to invite a close BJP study, with their strong linguistic cohesion, their apparent western mein, and yet their strong nationalistic tradition. After all, the movement against the Portuguese was initiated by Goan Catholics, long before the 1847 movement was a reality elsewhere in the country. The strong Christian communities of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have invited the study of the Parivar, but are at present not part of its political programme, left to its allies in the Dravida groups to woo, a job that Karunanidhi is apparently doing with some success in Chennai.

The blatant manner in which Prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Sangh Parivar have rejected the Christian demand for Dalit Christians being given equal rights within their brethren from the Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist faiths, is also part of the Sangh’s attitude to the Dravida Dalit Christians. It is to be remembered that the Hindutva opposition to equal rights for Dalit Christian is not so much as to deny the Christians anything, or that it will be a big strain on the national exchequer the cost may be negligible in the context of the massive national budget), it is essentially a punitive measure to keep Dalits from wandering into Christianity. If they do, they lose whatever rights they have. In is locking the stable doors on a entire group deemed to be vassals, and correctly presumed to be ready to flee the caste stranglehold a the first opportunity. No one need misunderstand the Sangh’s attitude and thesis on this. They know very well that even after two hundred years of British Raj, there were not many conversions in the north, because of the harsh caste regime as well as for the presence of large intermediate castes, which acted as a buffer between the missionaries and the poor, preventing any large-scale conversions in two centuries. Dravida land was not so easily contained, and large numbers had indeed become Christians ( and Muslims) in the past. Even the Hindutva elements in the Congress realised this, and brought forth the Presidential order of 1950 to check any more group movement. The centre understands the Dalit Christian movement essentially as a Dravida Christian Dalit movement, outside of Kerala, even if major rallies are held in New Delhi. Incidentally, when Vajpayee and other Sangh leaders mocked at the Church hierarchy which called on them at various times during in 1998-2000, the reference was always to the caste system within the church, an issue of some gravity only in Tamil Nadu.

The demography of the South, and electoral politics of Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu also ensures that the Christian cannot be easily wooed by a north India based BJP. There are too many local and easily available opportunities, whether it is in Telugu Desam, Janata party or the Dravida Groups, on offer to Christians as an alternate to the Congress if they so desire, leaving them no reason to respond to the BJP’s warmest overtures.

Kerala is a different kettle of fish. To the Parivar, every parameter in Kerala seems to make the Malayalee Christian subject of much curiosity and interest for its think tanks and its socio-political strategicians.

The first is the obvious one. The Malayalee religious, priest and nun, diocesan Catholic or Pentecost and evangelical missionary, seems to dominate the religious horizon. The Kerala Diaspora permeates all parts of the country, every diocese, almost every parish. This is the strength of the Church in many ways. The BJP believes that any success it scores with the Kerala Christians will therefore automatically become operative in the rest of the country. The wide variety of denominations available in the ancient Church in Kerala, many of them with their headquarters in the state, also makes its possible for the Parivar to play on theological, doctrinal or dogmatic fissure lines to get someone or the other on its side in any given controversy or political situation. Not many have forgotten that anytime the church has shown any semblance of solidarity in the face of Parivar persecution, the Parivar or its allies have been able to find someone or the other in the state, often very vaguely identified and defined, who is willing to assume the posture propagated by the Parivar. Divide and rule is an imperial practice that the BJP mastered long ago, and used with considerable finesse at every opportunity and with every community. (As an interesting aside, it must be remembered that the BJP has successfully, if only for the time being, wooed the Shia community in Lucknow, after failing to make any dent in the Sunni solidarity after the Babri Masjid demolition. Progressive opinion within the Muslim community says that the BJP has sharpened the divide between the two sects, Sunnis and Shias, in Uttar Pradesh to suit its own politics).

The BJP is also looking at the electoral politics of Kerala, a state it has long sought to enter, in vain so far. After penetrating the Konkan community in the northern districts during the Emergency, and moving to the upper caste youth in the succeeding decades, the BJP realises it has to grapple with the community and political equilibrium in the state. The two Fronts, LDF led by the Communists and its rival led by the Congress, each have a strong base among the religious communities. Christians in a manner of speaking hold the balance of power in the state, and their support is crucial for a party to survive in the state. For historical reasons, the community has been with the Congress or some of its breakaway groups which bank entirely on their support.

The Left antagonised the Christians not so much for ideological reasons as for its chief minister EMS Namboodripad in 1958 bringing up legislation, which would have effected managements of educational institutions. Namboodripad eventually was dismissed at the behest of Indira Gandhi, then ruling the Congress. But the Church’s suspicion of the Marxists has remained as a lasting and powerful memory. The CPM has lived to rue it, for while the Left is supportive of the Christians during the troubles in many states, and has earned the admiration of Christian activists, it has not been to get the Christian hierarchy on its side in any real measure.

The Church is increasingly becoming disgusted with the corruption rampant in the political world. In Goa, church rejection of corrupt politics and politicians led to the defeat of the Congress in the last Lok Sabha and assembly elections, and a victory by default of the BJP alliance. Even in Kerala, tainted candidates of the Congress lost, because they had lost their traditional base among the Christians. The Congress in Kerala can become vulnerable.

The Christian community in Kerala is therefore, not surprisingly, becoming an attractive subject of Sangh attention. It has made no bones about it. Denominations are not of essence. Everyone is in focus, Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Pentecost, Evangelicals, and Brethren….

Soon after Rajagopal was made a minister, newspapers, including some very friendly with the Sangh, wrote long articles on how wooing, and not confrontation, would be the new BJP mantra in Kerala. Rajagopal himself made it a point to respectfully call on venerable bishops, and offer his service to more down to earth missionaries. Working through small favours for petty problems – and several of the problems, including denial of visas to visiting missionaries were creation of the BJP government itself – Rajagopal has been able to win a toehold in the community.

He addresses meetings large and small, and has won over several important community leaders who now speak good of him, even if they still harbour suspicion about his party, the BJP.

Rajagopal has a strong ally in national Commission for Minorities Christian member John Joseph. A Hyderabad-based Keralite, Joseph did a three-year term in the Commission as a nominee of PV Narasimha Rao. His first stint is remembered best for the delay in the Christian marriage laws coming up before Parliament. After a gap of three years, Joseph was again nominated, overruling the recommendations of the Church for a Dalit priest. No major church or group recommended him for nomination as a representative of the community. Joseph, an ever smiling middle aged man, is at pains to explain that he is not a BJP nominee but has been recommended by his good friend Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. But his current political Karam Bhumi remains Kerala.

Joseph was a member of the NCM team, which visited a handful of places in western Uttar Pradesh, which had witnessed violence against convents, nuns and priests. The NCM found each one of the cases to be a mere act of crime, and ruled out any communal angle to the incidents. The clean chit to the Hindutva forces was hotly contested by the Church, by the victims and by human rights groups, including the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, the ecumenical Hyderabad-based All India Christian Council and the all India Catholic Union, for all three of which I am the spokesman in New Delhi. The nuns and priests who were the victims, each complained that the commission had used only small and convenient portions of their testimony to reach its conclusions, entirely disregarding the brunt of their witness of increasing communalism and threats in their respective areas. The nuns of Mathura spoke of their terror, and the residents of Kosi Kalan of how the assailants beat the priest to the moth of death, and then nonchalantly drank and feasted on the Church lawns before making away with their booty, the priest still lying bleeding nearby. Another priest, from Haryana gave a written statement saying that while he had indeed said the attack on two nuns by a scooterist could be an accident – a scrap of sentence used by the commission – he had also told Joseph and other members how a Cross was burnt, together with a Crescent, during the Dussehara Ravana fireworks. His full statement on rising communalism in Haryana was disregarded.

The prime minister himself led the attack on Church spokesmen, while his party’s official voice, Venkiah Naidu, singled me out for the honour of a personal attack in a full press conference at the party headquarters. The prime minister’s point was that one should not question the integrity of the National Commission for Minorities as it could have serious consequences. He also maintained there would be serious consequences if an impression went around abroad that Christians were not safe in India.

It is worth pointing out to the Prime minister that the best way to avoid such an impression gathering force is to make sure there is no violence, communal or bureaucratic, against the minorities and the Christians in particular and that there is an immediate end to the Sangh Parivar’s billion-dollar hate campaign against Indian Christians. It is also worthwhile reminding him that it was the Sangh Parivar which led the attack on the Minorities commission when its then chairman, law professor Tahir Mehmood during 1999 slashed the BJP government for its anti-minority attitude.

But perhaps the Prime minister needs to be reminded, again, that it was he whose response after seeing with his own eyes the destruction of three dozen churches in the Dangs in 1998, was to call for an national debate on conversions. It is for him to introspect if he was callous towards the pain and tears of the minority community? His slogan was avidly picked up by his Parivar, and still resounds in most statements they make, whether at an academic seminar or at a street rally where they burn the effigy of Pope John Paul II for ‘abetting terrorism in Northeast.’

The Parivar, which has spawned a small-scale industry manufacturing anti-Christian literature, is not willing to look at objective truth, nor at statistics. It is of course incapable of understanding the nuances of human freedom, Constitutional guarantees. It is futile to expect it to compassionately study the theology that says that Conversion is a gift, a grace, of the Holy Spirit, a free choice of a sane human being exercising freedoms given him by God and reaffirmed by the Constitution of an India that rejoices in its freedom and in its plural cultural heritage.

To the Parivar, there is only one Mantra. Stop Conversions, and everything will end.

This is reflected in all their actions, and in all their moves.

When Law minister ram Jethmalani responded to persistent community requests and said he would bring forward the Christian marriage Bill 2000, he did not publish the drafts that the community had given the government several times. He brought forth a draft reflecting the Sangh’s political and ideological compulsions. The draft took away the right of a partner to marry his or her Christian intended spouse in a Church ceremony. This was an ancient and established right in India, but Jethmalani’s draft took it away. When the church protested, the government sought to put the hierarchy against the women’s lobby, denomination against denomination. Its efforts did not succeed, but there is tangible fear that the government will press with its changes in the Marriage bill.

The law ministry is already targeting the hierarchy and human rights activists for opposing its bulldozer attitude. In an interview that he gave not to an indeop4nbdent jo9urnal but to the official mouthpiece of the RSS, minister of state for law Rajagopal held the Catholic church leadership responsible for shooting down the Bill. In his powerful counter-attack, Rajagopal blamed a section of the Christian leadership ‘with good contacts in the press’ for raking up a hysteria.

Rajagopal gave ample proof of the sort of dialogue he wanted, saying ‘representatives of various Christian organisations were invited from Nagaland to Kerala and by and large the invitees appreciated the government’s initiatives and endorsed the proposals in the draft bill.’ Anyone who was present in the Vigyan Bhawan meeting where this ‘dialogue’ took place would remember the chaos that resulted from the government packing the hall with hand-picked persons, some of them screaming at senior church leaders who questioned the ministers’ attitude. In his interview, Rajagopal identified Catholic Bishops Conference of India president Alan De Lastic as the main person to hold up the Bill. ‘From the government’s part we decided amendments could be incorporated at the discussion stage in parliament. But the Catholic Church insisted that even the introduction should wait till the amendments were carried out.”

Rajagopal is not one who leaves anyone in doubt as to what he means. He told Organiser, the RSS weekly, “I have a feeling that there are a few elements who have good access to the press are more interested in creating misunderstanding against Vajpayee government than the welfare of their community members. The very same elements were behind creating a hysteria among minorities about Vajpayee government by highlighting isolated instances of attacks on some Christians in different places by criminals as a concerted attack on the Christian community itself under this government. After all we do not want to push reforms down the throats of Christians. Also we do not want to do something that would give a handle to anti-BJP propagandists who always alleged that BJP is all out to implement hidden agenda.”

The minister does not see the humour of his own remarks

But he has reason to smile in another matter. With the tension of the Marriage Bill’s delay, harsher FCRA regimes and a grass-root level pressure of the Sangh has unnerved some in the Christian community. There are a few stray and innocent voices that have emerged saying there is no harm in a dialogue with the Sangh Parivar. After all, Christianity is all about dialogue, both within the church and outside.

Not many have understood what the Sangh means by a dialogue. It is not a seminar where BP Singhal of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad comes and makes a statement and a Christian representative makes a statement. Nor is it a television debate, which, irrespective of the result, is good publicity for the persons participating. Even in these debates on camera, Christian representatives have seen how the Parivar spokespersons keep on repeating the same old manufactured lies like a goebblesian zombie.

To the Sangh Parivar, a dialogue is a monologue in which it speaks its mind, and the other has to lump it. Whatever the other party says is not heard, and if heard, rejected to their face , and in very blunt language.

The Christian hierarchy knows it itself. At the height of the violence in December 1998, it agreed to a ‘dialogue’ held at the CBCI centre. The organisers of the dialogue were a Christian from the US and a bunch of persons representing the BJP and its wings in New York. Some local Christians were also roped in. BJP general secretary Narendra Modi came, accompanying KS Sudershan, then the main ideologue, and today the Supremo of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh. They heard out the community and then spoke, briefly and bluntly, rejecting every thesis that was given of India’s plural heritage and the individual decision in a change of religion. They spoke with the arrogance of representing all Hindus, in India and in the world, and became quite after it was pointed out that it was the majority Hindu vote that had kept the BVJO from reaching a majority in parliament – that the average Hindu was against their communal thesis. The meeting ended with the organisers saying there would be more meetings in the future, but it was clear to us who participated that the Sangh Parivar was never interested in a dialogue.

Dialogue and democracy is alien to the Parivar’s ideology. It has no scope for dialogue even within itself. There are no elections within the Sangh, nor any debate. It is an aadesh, an order from the to which comes the holy word.

The Hindutva fascist thesis of One nation, One People, One Culture is a xenophobic political ideology with roots in the Nazi-fascism of Europe of the early 1920s, and not a matter of religion, theological reflection and dialogue. The Parivar has targeted all minorities, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists and not just the Christians, by co-option (Buddhists and Sikhs) or violence (Muslims), and it can be countered only ideologically. If any single community, Sikh or Christian or Muslim, thinks it can reach a bilateral peace with the Sangh Parivar, it is only deceiving itself, and allowing the Parivar to buy time. The Sikhs have seen through this game, especially after the Sangh set up a new wing to carry on its subtle war on the Sikh faith, insisting it is only a sect of Hinduism. The Akali spectrum has come out against this, and the future predicts a growing protest in the Punjab against the Sangh. The Buddhists have long victims of this cooption, and neo Buddhists as well as Tibetans and others have had to go on record to say they do not see themselves as just a new variety or Hindus.

The Sangh is cleverly suing for dialogue with the Hierarchy to stave off an international rebuke, which will affect international funding, and have other repercussions for the cosmopolitan image that the Parivar is now trying to project internationally through its spokesmen in the Indian Diaspora of the NRIs.

If they are sincere, the government and the BJP should give up their hate and seek a for a national dialogue forgiveness from all communities, not just Christians, and discuss steps to further strengthen the freedom to profess, practice and propagate one’s religion, rights that were won in the dialogue that the Constituent assembly had, and whose results are amply reflected in Articles 25 and 30 of the Constitution. As far as Christians are concerned, we have had a dialogue with other communities stretching back Twenty centuries. `this dialogue of life continues.

Trouble in “paradise” Mauritius

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Trouble in Paradise

Mauritius Christians cry injustice

JOHN DAYAL

Cruise and airlines tourism posters of Mauritius, the tropical island in the Indian ocean, as a slice of paradise – the sub, the sand, and the cuisine of the world in an English, French and Hindi speaking population which will make everyone but an Inuit feel at home.

But there is trouble in paradise. A group of Mauritian Christians has been in touch with Human rights movements in India and elsewhere, plaintively enquiring how to go about seeking justice for their faith community, which is in a small minority, and socially the most deprived. It is not so much violence, though that too exists, but the fact that they have progressively become almost absolutely powerless in the political environment, and in administrative and judicial systems, effectively throttling whatever voice they had under the constitutional provisions.

Adding to it is a sinister growth in the activities of India’s Sangh Parivar, which over the last thirty years has made deep inboards in the powerful ethnic Indian and religiously Hindu community, which today controls all the levers of power.

Decades after independence, Mauritius remains, in the words of a sociologist, a classic plural society, where a common set of formal institutions masks the basic social heterogeneity of a highly stratified and ethno-linguistically divided nation. “Mauritians rally as a single nation in international affairs, at trade policy conferences or in world championship track meets. But their emissaries always become members of discrete ethnic groups upon their return to Mauritius. Like a dysfunctional family pretending otherwise for the benefit of outsiders, Mauritius may appear united to observers who do not take a closer look.” Smacks of a classic Indian scenario!

The population can be broken down into three main groups: Hindus, Muslims and Christians. Of the entire Indo-Mauritian population, North Indian Hindus compose 52%, South Indian Hindus another quarter, and the Muslims forming most of the remaining population. There are 19% Maharashtrians. Hindus tend to follow the Caste system. The Christian community essentially consists of the Creole African descendants, who are mainly Catholics, and a section of the French, coloured and Indian community.

The Blacks claim they are being discriminated against by the state. The government is in the hands of Indians, and many Blacks interpret virtually every government policy as being “anti-Black”. A scheme was introduced some time ago by the state to improve the situation of small planters of sugar cane. Most small planters are of Indian descent, and so blacks tend to perceive this policy as being pro-Indian, and pro Hindu. Creoles have lost out on power because of a migration of their elite, but the drastic decline in numbers from 89 per cent of the administrative staff coming from the black community at the turn of the 20th century to less than 12 per cent at the end of the century speaks volumes in corroboration of their feeling.

The last straw is violence against the Christian community. No official records are available, but community spokesmen have told this to Christian leaders – to who they have appealed to come and help set up some human rights apparatus for the Christians in the country to take their voice to the world. There is, patently, need for a through enquiry by an international fact finding group.

[First published in Companion April-May 2013]

Persecution of Christians on rise in state of Karnataka, India

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ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL

PRESS STATEMENT

Christian victims tell People’s Tribunal about arrests on false charges by highly communalized Karnataka police

Sangh Parivar hoodlums had free hand in assault on pastors, demolishing churches during 2012-2013: Uttara Canara worst impacted.

Benguluru, April 19, 2013

More than 70 Christian Pastors told a People’s Tribunal in Bengaluru city today how a highly communalized Karnataka police arrested many of them and kept them confined in police stations or jails on false charges in league with hoodlums of the Sangh Parivar. Women too were also not spared. The Women victims broke down as they narrated the violence against them. The victims remained in confinement from overnight to several days, the distinguished jury consisting of eminent social activists heard in the Tribunal organized by the All India Christian Council to assess the victimization and persecution of Christian pastors and attacks on churches in the state.

It was quite clear from the narrations that Uttara Canara was the foci of the anti-Christian violence, but incidents of persecution were reported from every one of the 30 districts of the state during 2012 and in the first three months of 2013. The “People’s Hearing on Persecution of Christians in Karnataka” was held at the Institute of Agriculture Technologists in the city. The Jury consisted of Mrs Brinda Adige, the celebrated Founder member of Global Concerns India, Advocate Omkar KB, and Mr K L Ashok, general secretary of Komu Souhardha Vedhike [Communal Harmony Front].and Mr. Mohamed Rafi Ahmed,General Secretay Forum for Democracy and Communal Amity.

The Public Hearing comes in the wake of the statement by former Karnataka High court judge Michael Saldanha that Karnataka had witnessed 1,000 cases of persecution of Christians in three years between 2010 and 2012 – an average of more than 300 a year. This was the situation in 2012 also. Most of the victims remain in great fear.

Of the 200 persons requested to come to the hearing, only 80 agreed to come. But all of them were afraid of what would happen to them if they spoke in public at the hearing. Many asked the Christian Council how they would be protected if anything happened to them after they gave their evidence.

From the statements of the victim, it is clear that the police have been heavily penetrated and politicized under the BJP rule of Mr. B S Yediyurappa and of his successors, while local thugs and Sangh activists across the state have been encouraged to take the law into their own hands. Many villages show a sharp increase in intolerance, encouraged by the inaction of police forces. Incidents of intolerance included Sangh Parivar members goading villages to stop the construction of churches, demolition of existing structures and stopping people from preaching or peacefully distributing literature. Witnesses identified their attackers as belonging to RSS, the Bajrang Dal and some local frontal organizations.

Justice was procured only after the victims approached the local and higher courts. The High Court had to intervene in one case to allow the construction of a religious structure. The victims were, in essence, suffered four types of persecution – those who were imprisoned, those who had their churches destroyed, those who were physically assaulted and beaten up by mobs, and others who were stopped from praying or preaching.

Speaking on behalf of the jury, Advocate Omkar said it was clear the machinery of the state was used by the radical political elements to harass the Christian community and specially the pastors and religious leaders. There was a well-organized anti-Christian violence in 2008. It seems there is still a strong nexus between the police, the local village chiefs, tehsildhars against the community at the behest of the Sangh Parival. The state is also fully culpable. Advocate Omkar said the protectors had become the attackers.

Mr. K. Ashok called upon the community to make common cause with the civil society and progressive forces in asserting fundamental rights including freedom of faith. He also called for legal literacy in the community.

Mr. Mohamed Rafi Ahmed said it was heart rendering to hear the tales of horror and the many incidents of police complicity the Bajrang Dal and others. The Government must take notice of it. India has a secular Constitution and it is the right of every citizen to practice, profess and propagate his faith. He asked the victims to stand for firm and pursue justice with the perseverance

The All India Christian Council expressed its deep regret at the inaction of the State Government and the State Minority Commission in coming to the rescue of the persecuted Christians. The Council demanded that the Governor and Chief Minister send out categorical instructions to every police station to take notice of such incidents of violence and take stern action the aggressors.

The Council has also demanded a single-window redressal system by the State Director General of Police to listen to complaints because local police station are not recording the incidents, said Dr. John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council and Secretary General of All India Christian Council.

The testimonies have been recorded and are available for the press and the government. Copies will be sent to the concerned departments and a copy will be sent to the Chief Justice of Karnataka.

For further details, please contact, Rev. Kumar Swamy, National Secretary for Public Affairs aicc, 09980917316 Rev Anand Kumar, State coordinator aicc 9739810548 and Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, aicc, 09811021072