[sacw] SACW | 7 Dec. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE

7 December 2000

http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

____________________________

#1. India: S.O.S to President, PM re forcible conversion of Church into Te=
mple
#2. India: Report on Festival of films on Communal Harmony [Bombay]
#3. India: Kashmiri Hindus likely to get minority status

____________________________

#1.

(Recieved from John Dayal)

ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL
Logos Bhawan, Medchal Road, Jeedimatla, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh
John Dayal
Secretary General
Correspond at: 505 Media Apartments,
Link Society, Delhi 110092, India
Phones: 91-11-2722262 Fax: 2726582, Mobile 9811021072
Email:johndayal@v...

6th December 2000

URGENT PRESS STATEMENT

S.O.S TO PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER TO INTERVENE TO PREVENT FORCIBLE
CONVERSION OF SOUTH GUJARAT TRIBAL CHURCH INTO TEMPLE ON EVE OF CHRISTMAS

The following statement has been issued by Dr Joseph D'Souza, President, an=
d
Mr. John Dayal, Secretary general, of the All India Christian Council
following urgent appeals to the President and the Prime Minister to
intervene in the forcible conversion of a Church into a temple in Chindia
village of Surat District in South Gujarat

The small Christian community of the tribal village of Chindia in Surat
District of Gujarat has been terroised on the eve of the Christmas season
with their church attacked, desecrated and attempted to be forcibly
converted into a temple. The local police are conniving in the conspiracy
that raises memories of the dark December of 1998 when over three dozen
churches were destroyed in the adjoining district of Dangs. This is an SOS
to you for your urgent intervention to prevent an ugly situation of the
forcible conversion of a tribal Christian church into a temple in the
Chindia village, Vyara taluka, Surat district, South Gujarat.

The All India Christian Council ands the All India catholic Union have sent
urgent SOS appeals to the President, the Prime Minister and the Union Home
minister to intervene immediately and have the church restored as the
rightful place of worship for the 80 Christian families of the village.

Mr. John Dayal, secretary general of the Council and national vice presiden=
t
of the All India catholic Union, also called on the national Commission fo=
r
Minorities to send a enquiry commission to the Vyara Taluka to see the
situation.

The local tribal Christian community feels betrayed by the district civil
and police administration as well as the state authorities. The community
has been chased away by show of force and is watching helplessly as communa=
l
thugs proceed to convert the five year old tribal church in to a temple wit=
h
the police looking on.

The Evangelical Church of India Bishop Ezra Sargunam, the spiritual head of
the congregation - he is also the Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Minorities
Commission and an Internationally known figure - who had sat on an
indefinite fast protesting the first attack on the church on 26th November
2000, has been forcibly removed by the district authorities in the early
hours of 5th December 2000 and taken to the Surat civil hospital.

The Christian community of the village, according to Bishop Sargunam, has
been chased away by the police who are conniving in the desecration of a
five year old established and well-attended tribal church.

The people of India will recall the violent destruction of about three doze=
n
tribal churches in South Gujarat in the post-Christmas season of 1998. We
have urged the highest authorities of the land in the name of humanity to
intervene urgently with the Gujarat government to prevent a repeat of that
great human tragedy and violation of India's secular ethos. The state
government of Gujarat must ensure that the rights to worship of the minorit=
y
Christian community are protected in the best interests of the nation.

A fact finding team visited the region on 1st and 2nd November and then
heard from Bishop Ezra from his hospital bed in Surat. The team consisted o=
f
All India Christian Council Secretary General, John Dayal (who is also
National Vice President, All India Catholic Union and National Convenor,
United Christian Forum for Human Rights), Council executive member Samson
Christian, core group member Mr. Sam Paul, and Mr. Cecil and Mr. Philip fro=
m
Mumbai. The facts they ascertained, together with the conversation with
Bishop Ezra, are:

The Evangelical church was founded in 1995 in Chindia village with a tribal
pastor Amar Singh Choudhary, and a local congregation of believers from the
Gamit and Kotwalia tribes. There has been peace since the beginning. This
peace was rudely shattered in a criminal conspiracy on the night of 26th
November 2000. The land once owned by a Parsee and subsequently was
transferred to the ownership of a tribal.

On the night of 26th November, at about 9.30 p.m. to 12 midnight one Bagu
Jania, the president of the local Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vyara and over 400
hundred of his activists, some of them allegedly bearing weapons, forcefull=
y
entered into the Chindia village shouting slogans. They attacked the church=
,
pulled down the cross which adorned the top front of the Church, broke iron
grill windows with a Cross pattern, entered the church hall, desecrated our
holy symbols and installed some Photographs of Hindu gods inside the church=
.
I saw the damage with my own eyes. Pastor Amar Singh and village people had
informed the Police that they were apprehending trouble. But the police
failed to act on their warning.

On 27th November, the local Christians made a complaint to the local police
on the incident of the violence and desecration. The police took no firm
action. The head of the Church, Bishop Ezra Sargunam also came to Chindia
from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, to be with his people. He was aghast at the damag=
e
done. He told us that he urged the authorities to restore worship in the
church while other issues of controversy, if any, were sorted out. He
subsequently went on an indefinite Protest Fast against the highhandedness
of some police officers who dragged him from the Church premises. The Bisho=
p
was himself forcibly removed from the place very early in the morning of 5t=
h
December and brought to Surat civil hospital

_____

#2.

[Recieved from Ram Puniyani , Bombay | 6 December 2000]

For your perusal

A Report of HARMONY 2000

Festival of films on Communal Harmony

In these days when misconceptions about "other" communities abound and
hatred for "others" rules the roost, we need to remind ourselves of the
basic goodness of people belonging to all communities. To highlight some
of these themes through visual media, Centre for Study of Society and
Secularism (CSSS) and EKTA, Committee for Communal Amity, with assistance
from Nehru Centre, organized this festival. The films shown in this
festival not only portrayed the deeper dynamics of inter-community
relationships but are also all time classics in their own right.
The Festival took place from 26th Nov. to 3rd Dec; most of the films were
shown at Nehru Planetarium basement barring the Bangla one, which was
shown at the SNDT Juhu campus. Shabana Azmi M.P., a Human Rights Activist,
who lauded this first ever festival on this theme and emphasized that such
efforts need to be broadened and sustained to give the message of harmony
amongst different communities inaugurated the festival. Mr. A. K. Hangal
the chief guest on the occasion was very nostalgic about various films in
which he himself has played the role and spoke about the pain and anguish
of the victims of communal violence. Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer, the noted
secular activist recalled some of his experiences in riot investigation
and also spoke briefly about the tragedy of partition.
The following films were screened:

26th November, 2000:
Garam Hawa (M.S.Sathyu)
Story- Kaifi Azami,
Cast- Balraj Sahni, Faroukh Sheikh, Jalal Agha, A.K. Hangal, Gita,
Shaukat Azmi.

This is based on the story of a family of Mirza Salim, a shoe manufacturer
in Agra. Shoe manufacture was mainly in the hands of Muslim traders due to
the religious taboos amongst the Hindus. Partition came and many
colleagues of Mirza left for Pakistan. Mirza sticks to staying in India
despite many social and business pressures. The film expounds the
different compulsions of the family, which results in the ruin of the
business of Mirza and suicide of his daughter. He decides to migrate to
Pakistan. The highlight of the film comes when while travelling in the
tonga to go to the station he jumps to join the morcha demanding
improvement of the economic conditions of weaker sections of society.

Monday, 27th November, 2000
Padosi (V. Santaram):
Prabhat Film Company, Pune.
Cast :Mazhar Khan, Gajanan Jagirdar, Script: Vishram Bedekar

A melodrama addressing communal harmony, Mirza (Jagirdar) and Thakur
(Mazhar Khan) are close friends and the senior guardians of their village.
The industrialist Omkar wants to build a bigger dam but is opposed by the
duo. He has Thakur sacked and his son excommunicated for allegedly burning
a house. This causes a rift between the two old friends, who eventually
make up as the giant dam bursts and they die in each other's arms.
Shantaram continued his relentless emotional and symbolic use of nature,
as the stormy scene that accompanies Omkar's decision to split the
friendship between Mirza and Thakur. This use of nature culminates
logically in the film's highlight: the dam bursting with a series of
impressive nature-on-the-rampage-shots.

Wednesday, 29th Nov, 2000.
Salim Langade Pe Mat Ro (Saeed Akhtar Mirza)
Story- Saeed Akhtar Mirza.
Cast- Pawan Malhotra, Makarand Deshpande, Rajendra Gupta, Neelima Azim

This film explores some of the biases against the Muslim community. The
story revolves around a young man Salim, a man with slight limp, who comes
from a respectable but poor family of a textile worker, rendered
unemployed following a protracted strike in his mill. His unemployment
brings him in contact with the world of organized crime with an illusory
apparent source of easy money. The travails of this association are
unfolded in a most sensitive way.

Thursday 30th Nov. 2000.
Mammo (Shyam Benegal)
Story-Khalid Mohammed.
Cast -Farida Jalal, Surekha Sikri, Amit Phalke, Himani Shivpuri.

This extremely touching film by one of the best directors of India is
centered on the life of Mahmooda Begum (Mammo), who is married to a man
from Lahore and so automatically becomes a Pakistani citizen. This
childless woman after the death of her husband is at the mercy of her
relatives and is thrown out of her house. She turns to her sister living
in Mumbai with the idea of living with her family for good. Her attempts
to extend her visa lands her up seeking help from a tout, whose fraudulent
act is caught and Mammo is deported to Pakistan where she has no one to
fall back upon.

Saturday, 2nd Dec. 2000.
Quiet Flows The River Chitra (Tanvir Mokammel from Bangla Desh)
Cast-Towkier Ahmad, Afsana Mimi, Towshan Jamil, Sumita Devi

The story of the film is placed in 1947 Partition of India in the then
East Pakistan. It depicts the travails of the family of a Hindu lawyer who
sticks to staying in his 'native' place and refuses to leave for India
unlike many belonging to his social groups, in the small provincial town
of Narail. The central character of the film Minoti sticks to staying
there till her brother is killed in the police firing in Dacca while
participating in an agitation for Bengali Nationalism.

Sunday, 3rd Dec. 2000.
Tamas (Govind Nihlani):
Story-Bhishm Sahni.
Cast - Om Puri, Deepa Sahi, Uttara Bawkar, A.K.Hangal

This is one of the most powerful statements on the partition tragedy. This
painful story is true for thousands of families caught in the
transmigration due to partition. It portrays the systematic propagation of
religious fanaticism, inter-community hatred that sowed the seeds of
suspicion about the other community. One of the core points of the film is
the depiction of impact of such strife on women and weaker sections of the
society.

On Friday, 1st December, 2000 Ramu Ramnathan's group staged a play based
on the novel of Vaikom Mohammed Bashir, "Me Grand-Dad 'ad an Elephant"
This play is in English- an adaptation from a Malayalam story, written by
Mr. Vaikom Mohammad Bashir an outstanding Malayali Litterateur. It is hard
hitting comment the imposition of retrograde practices in the name of
religion amongst the Muslim community in Kerala.

The films and plays were followed by discussions in which A.K.Hangal, Syed
Mirza, Farookh Sheikh, Vishnu Mathur, Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer and Ramu
Ramnathan participated.

The festival was attended by a large number of students, social activists
and those associated with film making. At the end of the festival it was
decided to make a film group which will carry on showing films in colleges
and bastis and also to plan future festivals on the themes of communal
racial and ethnic strife

_____

#3.

Kashmiri Hindus likely to get minority status

>From India Abroad News Service

Chandigarh, Dec 6 - Hindus in the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmi=
r
are likely to be accorded minority status, according to Tarlochan Singh, th=
e
vice-chairman of the National Minorities Commission (NMC).

The commission had already made a recommendation in this regard to the
government and a formal announcement was likely to be made soon, Singh said
in an interview to The Tribune newspaper published Wednesday.

The commission has already nominated V.S. Dhar, a former bureaucrat and a
prominent Kashmiri Hindu, as one of its members.

The recommendation for recognizing Hindus of Jammu and Kashmir as a minorit=
y
community was made more than a year ago by former NMC chairman Tahir
Mehmood. The government has not yet reacted to this recommendation.

Singh said the case of Kashmiri Hindus was distinct in nature as they had
been suffering from repression. He pointed out that Kashmiri Hindus had bee=
n
forced to leave their home state and were living like refugees in their own
country. Some constitutional safeguards were needed for them, Singh said.

He said the NMC's recommendation was not likely to face any hurdles as the
Jammu and Kashmir government too had been taken into confidence in the
matter. Singh hoped that this would improve the lot of Kashmiri Hindus to a
great extent. He pointed out that Kashmiri Hindus were faced with a peculia=
r
situation as they were normally considered a part of Hindu community that i=
s
in a majority in the country, while for all practical purposes they were in
a minority.

Referring to the resettlement of Kashmiri Hindus in the Kashmir valley,
Singh said there was a proposal to set up special security zones in
different areas to facilitate their return to Jammu and Kashmir. He,
however, ruled out the creation of only one particular zone in the Kashmir
valley as this move could be construed as the creation of a separate
homeland.

Singh said Kashmiri Hindus were keen to return to their homes in Jammu and
Kashmir but the main concern was that of their security, for which the idea
of security zones had been mooted.

He said the NMC had also submitted a proposal to the government for
including chapters on minority communities like Muslims, Sikhs, Christians,
Buddhists and Parsis in school curriculum so that children could learn abou=
t
the history and culture of these communities.

--India Abroad News Service

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(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996.
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