Orissa: Hindutva's Violent History
by Angana Chatterji
(Published in: Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 35, Dated September 13, 2008)
Hindutva's
production of culture and nation is often marked by savagery. On 23
August 2008, Lakshmanananda Saraswati, Orissa's Hindu nationalist icon,
was murdered with four disciples in Jalespeta in Kandhamal district.
State authorities alleged the attackers to be Maoists (and a group has
subsequently claimed the murder). But the Sangh Parviar held the
Christian community responsible, even though there is no evidence or
history to suggest the armed mobilisation of Christian groups in Orissa.
After
the murder, the All India Christian Council stated: “The Christian
community in India abhors violence, condemns all acts of terrorism, and
opposes groups of people taking the law into their own hands”. Gouri
Prasad Rath, General Secretary, VHP-Orissa, stated: “Christians have
killed Swamiji. We will give a befitting reply. We would be forced to
opt for violent protests if action is not taken against the killers”.
Following
which, violence engulfed the district. Churches and Christian houses
razed to the ground, frightened Christians hiding in the jungles or in
relief camps. Officials record the death toll at 13, local leaders at
20, while the Asian Centre for Human Rights noted 50. On 27 August,
Christian organisations filed a Writ Petition in the Orissa High Court
asking for a CBI inquiry.
The Sangh's history in postcolonial
Orissa is long and violent. Virulent Hindutva campaigns against
minority groups reverberated in Rourkela in 1964, Cuttack in 1968 and
1992, Bhadrak in 1986 and 1991, Soro in 1991. The Kandhamal riots were
not unforeseen.
Since 2000, the Sangh has been strengthened by
the Bharatiya Janata Party's coalition government with the Biju Janata
Dal. In October 2002, a Shiv Sena unit in Balasore district declared
the formation of the first Hindu 'suicide squad'. In March 2006, Rath
stated that the 'VHP believes that the security measures initiated by
the Government [for protection of Hindus] are not adequate and hence
Hindu society has taken the responsibility for it'. (Pointing to the
extra-legal nature of such “security measures”, in June 2008, Bal
Thackeray said, “Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure
existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation”.)
The VHP
has 1,25,000 primary workers in Orissa. The RSS operates 6,000 shakhas
with a 1,50,000 plus cadre. The Bajrang Dal has 50,000 activists
working in 200 akharas. BJP workers number above 4,50,000. BJP Mohila
Morcha, Durga Vahini (7,000 outfits in 117 sites), and Rashtriya Sevika
Samiti (80 centres) are three major Sangh women's organisations. BJP
Yuva Morcha, Youth Wing, Adivasi Morcha and Mohila Morcha have a
prominent base. Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh manages 171 trade unions with a
cadre of 1,82,000. The 30,000-strong Bharatiya Kisan Sangh functions in
100 blocks. The Sangh also operates various trusts and branches of
national and international institutions to aid fundraising, including
Friends of Tribal Society, Samarpan Charitable Trust, Sookruti, Yasodha
Sadan, and Odisha International Centre. Sectarian development and
education are carried out by Ekal Vidyalayas, Vanavasi Kalyan
Ashrams/Parishads (VKAs), Vivekananda Kendras, Shiksha Vikas Samitis
and Sewa Bharatis -- cementing the brickwork for hate and civil
polarisation.
This massive mobilisation has erupted in ugly
incidents against both Christians and Muslims. In 1998, 5,000 Sangh
activists allegedly attacked the Christian dominated Ramgiri - Udaygiri
villages in Gajapati district, setting fire to 92 homes, a church,
police station, and several government vehicles. Earlier, Sangh
activists allegedly entered the local jail forcibly and burned two
Christian prisoners to death. In 1999, Graham Staines, 58, an
Australian missionary and his 10 and 6 year-old sons were torched in
Manoharpur village in Keonjhar. A Catholic nun, Jacqueline Mary was
gang raped by men in Mayurbhanj and Arul Das, a Catholic priest, was
murdered in Jamabani, Mayurbhanj, followed by the destruction of
churches in Kandhamal. In 2002, the VHP converted 5,000 people to
Hinduism. In 2003, the VKA organised a 15,000-member rally in
Bhubaneswar, propagating that Adivasi (and Dalit) converts to
Christianity be denied affirmative action. In 2004, seven women and a
male pastor were forcibly tonsured in Kilipal, Jagatsinghpur district,
and a social and economic boycott was imposed against them. A Catholic
church was vandalised, figures of Mary and Jesus shattered, and the
community targeted in Raikia. In 2005, Gilbert Raj, a Baptist pastor,
was murdered and Dilip Dalai, a Pentecostal pastor, was stabbed to
death at his residence in Begunia, Khordha district.
Change the
cast, the story is still the same. 1998: A truck transporting cattle
owned by a Muslim man was looted and burned, the driver's aide beaten
to death in Keonjhar district. 1999: Shiekh Rehman, a male Muslim
clothes merchant, was mutilated and burned to death in a public
execution at the weekly market in Mayurbhanj, and social and economic
boycotts placed against the Muslim community. 2001: In Pitaipura
village, Jagatsinghpur, Hindu communalists attempted to orchestrate a
land-grab connected to a Muslim graveyard. On November 20, 2001, around
3,000 Hindu activists from nearby villages rioted. Muslim houses were
torched, Muslim women were ill-treated, their property, including goats
and other animals, stolen. 2005: In Kendrapara, a male contractor was
shot on Govari Embankment Road, supposedly by members of a Muslim gang.
Sangh groups claimed the shooting was part of a gang war associated
with Islamic extremism and called for a 12-hour bandh. Hindu right-wing
organisations are alleged to have looted and set Muslim shops on fire.
It
is Saraswati who pioneered the Hinduisation of Kandhamal since 1969.
Hindu activists targeted Adivasis, Dalits, Christians and Muslims
through socio-economic boycotts and forced conversions to Hinduism
(named 're'conversion, presupposing Adivasis and Dalits as 'originally'
Hindus).
Kandhamal first witnessed Hindutva violence in 1986.
The VKAs, instated in 1987, worked to Hinduise Kondh and Kui Adivasis
and polarise relations between them and Pana Dalit Christians.
Kandhamal remains socio-economically vulnerable, a large percentage of
its population living in poverty. Approximately 90 percent of Dalits
are landless. A majority of Christians are landless or marginal
landholders. Hindutva ideologues say Dalits have acquired economic
benefits, augmented by Christianisation. This is not borne out in
reality.
In October 2005, converting 200 Bonda Adivasi
Christians to Hinduism in Malkangiri, Saraswati reportedly said: “How
will we… make India a completely Hindu country? The feeling of Hindutva
should come within the hearts and minds of all the people.” In April
2006, celebrating RSS architect Golwalkar's centenary, Saraswati
presided over seven yagnas, culminating at Chakapad, attended by 30,000
Adivasis. In September 2007, supporting the VHP's statewide road-rail
blockade against the supposed destruction of the mythic 'Ram Setu',
Saraswati reportedly conducted a Ram Dhanu Rath Yatra to mobilise
Adivasis.
In 2008, Hindutva discourse named Christians as
'conversion terrorists'. But the number of such conversions is highly
inflated. The Hindu Right claims there are rampant and forced
conversions in Phulbani-Kandhamal. But the Christian population in
Kandhamal is 1,17,950 while Hindus number 5,27,757. Orissa Christians
numbered 8,97,861 in the 2001 census -- only 2.4 percent of the state's
population. Yet, Christian conversions are storied as debilitating to
the majority status of Hindus while Muslims are seen as 'infiltrating'
from Bangladesh, dislocating the 'Oriya (and Indian) nation'.
The
right to religious conversion is constitutionally authorised.
Historically, conversions from Hinduism to Christianity or Islam have
been a way to escape caste oppression and social stigma for Adivasis
and Dalits. In February 2006, the VHP called for a law banning
(non-Hindu) religious conversions. In June 2008, it urged that
religious conversion be decreed a 'heinous crime' across India.
'Reconversion'
strategies of the Sangh appear to be shifting in Orissa. The Sangh
reportedly proposed to 'reconvert' 10,000 Christians in 2007. But fewer
public conversion ceremonies were held in 2007 than in 2004-2006.
Converting politicised Adivasi and Dalit Christians to Hinduism is
proving difficult. The Sangh has instead increased its emphasis on the
Hinduisation of Adivasis through their participation in Hindu rituals,
which, in effect, 'convert' Adivasis by assuming that they are Hindu.
Such 'conversion' tactics are diffused and need not negotiate certain
legalities, which public and stated conversion ceremonies must.
The
draconian Orissa Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA), 1967, must be
repealed. There are enough provisions under the Indian Penal Code to
prevent and prohibit conversions under duress. But consenting converts
to Christianity are repeatedly charged under OFRA, while Hindutva
perpetrators of forcible conversions are not. The Sangh contends that
'reconversion' to Hinduism through its 'Ghar Vapasi' (homecoming)
campaign is not conversion but return to Hinduism, the 'original'
faith. This allows Hindutva activists to dispense with the procedures
for conversion under OFRA.
The Orissa Prevention of Cow
Slaughter Act, 1960 should also be repealed. It is utilised to target
livelihood practices of economically disenfranchised groups, Adivasis,
Dalits, Muslims, who engage in cattle trade and cow slaughter.
Provisions prohibiting cruelty to animals exist under the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.
In fact, an urgent CBI
investigation into the activities of the VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal is
crucial as per the provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention)
Act, 1967. Groups such as the VHP and VKA are registered as cultural
and charitable organisations but their work appears to be political in
nature. They should be audited and recognised as political
organisations, and their charitable status and privileges reviewed.
The
state and central government's refusal to restrain Hindu militias
evidences their linkage with Hindutva (BJP), soft Hindutva (Congress),
and the capitulation of dominant civil society to Hindu
majoritarianism. How would the nation have reacted if groups with any
other affiliation than militant Hinduism executed riot after riot:
Calcutta 1946, Kota 1953, Rourkela 1964, Ranchi 1967, Ahmedabad 1969,
Bhiwandi 1970, Aligarh 1978, Jamshedpur 1979, Moradabad 1980, Meerut
1982, Hyderabad 1983, Assam 1983, Delhi 1984, Bhagalpur 1989, Bhadrak
1991, Ayodhya 1992, Mumbai 1992, Gujarat 2002, Marad 2003, Jammu 2008?
The
BJD-BJP government has repeatedly failed to honour the constitutional
mandate separating religion from state. In 2005-2006, Advocate Mihir
Desai and I convened the Indian People's Tribunal on Communalism in
Orissa, led by Retired Kerala Chief Justice, K. K. Usha. The Tribunal's
findings detailed the formidable mobilisation by majoritarian
communalist organisations, including in Kandhamal, and the Sangh's
visible presence in twenty-five of thirty districts. The report
did not invoke any response from the state or central government.
In
January 2000, The Asian Age reported: “'One village, one shakha' is the
new slogan of the RSS as it aims to saffronise the entire Gujarat state
by 2005.” Then ensued the genocide of March 2002. In 2003, Subash
Chouhan, then Bajrang Dal state convener, stated: “Orissa is the second
Hindu Rajya (to Gujarat).”
We all know what happened in Kandhamal in December 2007, and again now.
The
communal situation in Orissa is dire. State and civil society
resistance to Hindutva's ritual and catalytic abuse cannot wait.
Angana
Chatterji is associate professor of anthropology at California
Institute of Integral Studies and author of a forthcoming book: Violent
Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India's Present, Narratives from Orissa.