JUSTICE STILL ELUDES THE CHRISTIAN VICTIMS, AND MANY ARE TO BLAME FOR IT
JOHN DAYAL
There has been just one conviction for murder in 20 cases of the brutal killing of Christians of Kandhamal, Orissa, at the hands of Hindutva fanatics, and mobs led by them, during August--October 2008. More than two years and 9 months later the course of justice in the two special Fast Track Courts continues to be a travesty – with aberrations at all stages, from the presentation of the production case and examination of witnesses, to the coercive presence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh goons in the court premises, often in the court room, and the role of both judges and defence lawyers.
Lawyers for the victims have no role in court other than occasionally feebly protesting to the judges – in vain – those relatives and other eye witnesses who deposed they saw the men and women being killed are being threatened blatantly. The response of the judges has been, “we have sent the orders to the police.” The police have no response at all. The single biggest beneficiary of the miscarriage of justice has been Mr. Manoj Pradhan, the local Member of the State Legislature and a leader of the Bharatiya Janata party which was then a coalition partner in the government of Chief Minister Mr. Naveen Pattnaik. Mr. Pradhan is accused in over half a dozen cases, and is currently free on bail.
Investigation no doubt has been tardy and superficial – one junior gazetted officer and two inspectors head the small team trying to probe the vast number of cases with primitive forensic equipment and almost no training in probing cases of mass violence. No attempt was made to use video and mobile phone camera images that are widely available both with the victims and with the accused. In some cases, the two Fast Track Court judges have indeed passed strictures against the police investigation, and in most cases, they have found the testimony of witnesses --- victims and their relatives – either not trustworthy or insufficient to prove the offence against the accused, a review of the judgments shows.
There has been no attempt by the Directorate of Prosecutions or by the police to upgrade cases where victims died of their injuries not on the spot, but in hospital, refugee camps or other places. Under Indian legal practice, cases of attempted murder or murderous assault would automatically be upgraded to murder if the victim died of his injuries. This has prevented a large number of cases from being recorded as murder.
It may be recalled that the violence which began 24th August 2008 took a heavy toll. Over 14 of the 30 districts in the state were impacted. 6,000 houses were burnt in 400 villages, including 296 churches and smaller places of Christian worship. Over 56,000 became internally displaced persons, about 30,000 living from three months to a year in government refugee camps. Over 20,000 men, women and children spent days hiding in forests. Over 10,000 are yet to return home. About 1,000 have been warned or threatened by their neighbours they can return home if they become Hindus. Some are living in what can be called “Christian ghettos”, one of which is on land provide by the district authorities who find themselves impotent in rehabilitating the Christians in their villages. The rest have left Kandhamal in fear, or in search of jobs, as they do not have any livelihood now in Kandhamal where they also face an economic blockade.]
Cutting through the fog created around the legal data, the following is the current situation of the criminal investigation of cases of arson and murder, abduction and violence. Complaints were made at the local police posts, at the regional police stations, and often directly to the offices of the Superintendent of Police in the district capital of Phulbani by registered post. In some cases, complaints were sent to the Director General of Police in Bhubaneswar when the Police stations returned complaints sent by registered post.
3,232 criminal complaints were filed when the dust settled on the Second Phase violence that began on 24th August 2008 and after peaking by about 30 August, continued sporadically through most of September and October that year.
1541 complaints are acknowledged by the Kandhamal district police, but they did not file them as the First Information Reports required under Indian Criminal law.
828 complaints were actually converted to First Information Reports [FIRs} which mark the beginning of further investigation and the case being brought before a court for trial after a charge-sheet is filed.
327 Cases have actually seen a completion of the investigation process with the cases committed to the two Fast Track Courts headed by two ad hoc Additional District Judges for day to day hearings.
169 Cases have seen the acquittal of all accused,
86 cases have ended up in convictions -- not for the heinous crimes mentioned in the FIRs as the main ones, but for comparatively minor offenses meriting only prison terms of two or three years.
90 cases still are in the process of being tried.
1597 suspects have been acquitted. This does not include the thousands who could not be arrested in the cases, and therefore could not be brought to trial.
[The Orissa State government acknowledges and admits to 52 deaths in Kandhamal in the violence of 2007 and 2008. Of them 38 are of Christians, four deaths of Hindus include those of Vishwa Hindu Parishad Vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati and three inmates of his Ashram attacked by Maoists on 23 August 2008, 4 were killed in police firing in Kotagarh of Tumlibanda Police station and G Udayagiri police station, three were policemen killed by mobs, and 3 are said to be other deaths in other Maoist attacks. Data collected by church activists lists 91 murder cases. Of them, murders with death on the spot number 38, another 41 died of injuries sustained in the violence, but at places other than the place of violence and at various times after the attacks, and 12 died in police action. These figures do not include suicides and deaths that could be medically labelled as due to post trauma syndrome among the young and aged who saw the violence at close quarters and then spent much time in refugee camps or slums.]
[Larger issues of criminal law and justice have been recorded – till mid 2010 – by Supreme Court of India Advocate Vrinda Grover in her research book “The Law must change its course’, published by MARG, a Delhi-based NGO. Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik has admitted in a written answer in the State Legislative Assembly that of the arrested persons, over 600 were members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, and the Bajrang Dal, the militant wings of the Bharatiya Janata party, a national political party which was his coalition partner at the time of the anti Christian pogrom.]
[Jurists who have seen the records have said “There have been grave lapses on the part of each of the three, viz., the Investigating Officer, the Public Prosecutor (PP) and the Trial Judge. The Investigating Officer has failed to get the Statements of the Eye Witnesses, especially the injured witnesses recorded u/s 164 Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). The PP has failed to properly cross-examine the Eye witnesses who were turning hostile in the court. The PP also failed to get exhibited the confronted portions of the statements of the Hostile Eye Witnesses recorded prior in time u/s 161 CrPC. The Trial Judge has failed in his duty u/s 280 CrPC inasmuch as the Trial Judge has failed to record remarks regarding the demeanour of each of those eye Witnesses who were resiling from their previous statement recorded u/s 161 CrPC and who were become hostile to the prosecution. The Trial Judge has also failed to play his role to discover the truth and the Trial Judge has failed to put any court question to the hostile eye witnesses in order to discover the truth. Finally, the Trial Judge has wholly misapplied his mind and has failed to appreciate the evidence in terms of the guidelines laid down by this Hon’ble Court in several judgements. The Trial Judge has sufficient material available before him to hold that the persons facing trial were part of an unlawful assembly, the object of which was to cause inter alia homicidal death of the victims. There was also sufficient material to show participation of the accused persons in such an unlawful assembly. There was also sufficient material available to the Trial Judge to discover that the accused persons had acted in furtherance of the common object. The Trial Judge had sufficient available material before him to examine that the accused persons had been properly identified in the court and that specific roles had been ascribed to the accused persons and the Post mortem Report was corroborating the role ascribed to such accused persons in their assault with the weapons described by the witnesses.”]
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Kandhamal Update March 2011
ORISSA KANDHAMAL UPDATE
MARCH 18, 2010
Deep in village, thugs enforce economic boycott of Christians
From John Dayal
As Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, now on a farewell pastoral tour of Kandhamal, extols the courage, faith and perseverance of the Dalit Panos and Tribal Kondh Christians of the central Orissa district in the face of unceasing Hindutva pressure, deep in the villages, the economic boycott of Christians in enforced by organised gangs of fanatical thugs.
The 77 year old Divine Word Society prelate of Orissa retires on 2nd April 2011. Like Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi who emerged the face and voice of the community in his unflinching challenge to persecution in the 1990s, Cheenath was the central figure in the legal and civil society challenge to mass arson, serial murders and gang rapes unleashed in 2007 and 2008 by members of the RSS, Adivasi Kalyan Ashram and Bajrang Dal, whose political identity was confirmed by Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik in the State Legislative Assembly.
Cheenath saluted his people saying “You have raised the faith into new heights at the face of death. I am proud of you.” As he cautioned them not to be misled by the apparent peace prevailing in the area, he said “For the government, peace has returned, but I am not sure how long it would remain, We cannot sit idle, but continue to fight for our Constitutional rights, especially religious freedom to earn sustainable peace.”
In the past, stressing that justice and peace had to go together, the Archbishop moved the Supreme Court in 2008 when the arrogant Collector-cum-District Magistrate Dr Krishna Kumar banned the entry of Christian relief organisations to help the traumatised people. The Supreme Court ruled in the Archbishop’s, favour. He has moved the Supreme Court through the Human Rights Law Network on several issues, including a challenge to the Orissa High Court granting bail to a convicted murderer, Manoj Pradhan, on the plea the he was a legislator. The Supreme Court again ruled against the lower court.
Despite these heroic efforts, much remains the same in that heavily forested district as far as justice and state action is concerned. Br Markose, a Gabriel Brother from Ranchi now working at the grassroots, has been systematically reporting issues of economic boyctott an official apathy.
In an email to me yesterday, Br Markose narrated recent cases of vigilante decisions from Bodimunda where houses of Christians were destroyed in August 20908. Twice during 2009, the Christians tried to bring construction material such as sand to rebuild their houses. On both occasions, the sand was reloaded into the tractor and taken to the temple. The owners of tractor were fined before the vehicle was released by the hardcore Sangh cadres of the village.
After six months, due to the untiring efforts of activists, the villagers took courage to hire a tractor and bring sand. On 14th March this year, Pradeep Nayak hired a tractor from village Rudangia and brought two loads of sand. The next day, Joseph Nayak hired the tractor of Tileshwar Digal of village Breka,. After making two trips, driver Ishak was stopped by a mob of about 12 persons led by Birendra Pradhan, stopped him and demanded a fine of Rs. 5051. The driver did not have the money. He left the tractor on the road and returned to the village.
Nabin Nayak and Bikram Nayak called Bro Markose on the phone who told them to immediately tell the police. Pastor Sunil Paricha called up the Superintendant of Police who referred him to the Tikabali police station. The Police cane to Bodimunda at night and the tractor was released. But the goons had taken away battery, jack and wrench from the tractor in lieu of fine. They told the driver that these materials would be returned when fine was paid.
On 17th March a four-hour long meeting was held at Catholic Church of the village more than 60 Christian men and women participated. Finally they wrote a formal report to the police, saying they would see the matter through, come what may.
------------
LEGAL FACT-SHEET AND UPDATE DECEMBER 2010
Complaints lodged before the police station in Kandhamal after the
Violence of 2008 -- 3232
Cases registered -- 831
Number of cases committed to the Fast track courts 1 & 2 -- 277
Number of case Acquitted ( Violence case ) court No – 1 & 2 -- 128
Number of case Convicted ( Violence case) court No – 1 & 2 -- 59
Number of case pending trial (Violence case) court No – 1 & 2 -- 44
Accused convicted so far --183
Accused acquitted so far -- 639
MARCH 18, 2010
Deep in village, thugs enforce economic boycott of Christians
From John Dayal
As Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, now on a farewell pastoral tour of Kandhamal, extols the courage, faith and perseverance of the Dalit Panos and Tribal Kondh Christians of the central Orissa district in the face of unceasing Hindutva pressure, deep in the villages, the economic boycott of Christians in enforced by organised gangs of fanatical thugs.
The 77 year old Divine Word Society prelate of Orissa retires on 2nd April 2011. Like Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi who emerged the face and voice of the community in his unflinching challenge to persecution in the 1990s, Cheenath was the central figure in the legal and civil society challenge to mass arson, serial murders and gang rapes unleashed in 2007 and 2008 by members of the RSS, Adivasi Kalyan Ashram and Bajrang Dal, whose political identity was confirmed by Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik in the State Legislative Assembly.
Cheenath saluted his people saying “You have raised the faith into new heights at the face of death. I am proud of you.” As he cautioned them not to be misled by the apparent peace prevailing in the area, he said “For the government, peace has returned, but I am not sure how long it would remain, We cannot sit idle, but continue to fight for our Constitutional rights, especially religious freedom to earn sustainable peace.”
In the past, stressing that justice and peace had to go together, the Archbishop moved the Supreme Court in 2008 when the arrogant Collector-cum-District Magistrate Dr Krishna Kumar banned the entry of Christian relief organisations to help the traumatised people. The Supreme Court ruled in the Archbishop’s, favour. He has moved the Supreme Court through the Human Rights Law Network on several issues, including a challenge to the Orissa High Court granting bail to a convicted murderer, Manoj Pradhan, on the plea the he was a legislator. The Supreme Court again ruled against the lower court.
Despite these heroic efforts, much remains the same in that heavily forested district as far as justice and state action is concerned. Br Markose, a Gabriel Brother from Ranchi now working at the grassroots, has been systematically reporting issues of economic boyctott an official apathy.
In an email to me yesterday, Br Markose narrated recent cases of vigilante decisions from Bodimunda where houses of Christians were destroyed in August 20908. Twice during 2009, the Christians tried to bring construction material such as sand to rebuild their houses. On both occasions, the sand was reloaded into the tractor and taken to the temple. The owners of tractor were fined before the vehicle was released by the hardcore Sangh cadres of the village.
After six months, due to the untiring efforts of activists, the villagers took courage to hire a tractor and bring sand. On 14th March this year, Pradeep Nayak hired a tractor from village Rudangia and brought two loads of sand. The next day, Joseph Nayak hired the tractor of Tileshwar Digal of village Breka,. After making two trips, driver Ishak was stopped by a mob of about 12 persons led by Birendra Pradhan, stopped him and demanded a fine of Rs. 5051. The driver did not have the money. He left the tractor on the road and returned to the village.
Nabin Nayak and Bikram Nayak called Bro Markose on the phone who told them to immediately tell the police. Pastor Sunil Paricha called up the Superintendant of Police who referred him to the Tikabali police station. The Police cane to Bodimunda at night and the tractor was released. But the goons had taken away battery, jack and wrench from the tractor in lieu of fine. They told the driver that these materials would be returned when fine was paid.
On 17th March a four-hour long meeting was held at Catholic Church of the village more than 60 Christian men and women participated. Finally they wrote a formal report to the police, saying they would see the matter through, come what may.
------------
LEGAL FACT-SHEET AND UPDATE DECEMBER 2010
Complaints lodged before the police station in Kandhamal after the
Violence of 2008 -- 3232
Cases registered -- 831
Number of cases committed to the Fast track courts 1 & 2 -- 277
Number of case Acquitted ( Violence case ) court No – 1 & 2 -- 128
Number of case Convicted ( Violence case) court No – 1 & 2 -- 59
Number of case pending trial (Violence case) court No – 1 & 2 -- 44
Accused convicted so far --183
Accused acquitted so far -- 639
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Police keep peac in Kandhamal on Christmas
A CHRISTMAS UPDATE FROM KANDHAMAL
From John Dayal
Christmas celebrated in Kandhamal villages in Orissa after three years
26 December 2010
Bodimunda village in Kandhamal, Orissa, celebrated Christmas for the first time in three years. And in Barakhama village several kilometres away, a strong police posse kept watch as 2,000 Christians prayed a little distance from where a 500 strong group was “observing” events that led to death and mass destruction in December 2007, and then again for seven weeks from 23 August 2008.
Christmas will never be the same ever again in this part of Orissa which at the peak of the violence saw 54,000 internally displaced Christians – over 30,000 of them in government refugee camps and the rest in forests or far away from home. But the people would not be denied celebrating the birth of Christ – many of them had faced death when asked to leave thier faith, drink some cow urine and become Hindus if they wanted to live in their villages.
Midnight Mass had become a memory, but this time two Catholic priests, a religious brother, the head of the Mother Teresa Sisters in Orissa and their friends decided to challenge the fear and the “Kui” group of the dreaded Lambodhar Kahar and celebrated the Christian festival as it should be.
Fr Ajay Singh, himself born in a hamlet near Brahmanigaon village which bore the brunt of the 2007 Christians violence, told me on the phone that there was absolute fear on the Eve of Christmas. There had been posters and repeated announcements by the Kui Samaj that they would go ahead with their programme, recalling the Kui programme on 24 December 2007 that was the trigger to the mass violence, and had been surprisingly allowed by the government authorities. The District government allowed the programme once again, but this time ensured there were some policemen to keep guard.
In Delhi, I had been receiving frantic and repeated calls from contacts in Barakhama and Tikabali who said about the same thing, urging with me to get the federal government in the national capital and state authorities in Orissa’s capital Bhubaneswar to ensure that Christmas passed off peacefully.
On Sunday, Lambodhar Kahar, leader of Kandhamal Kui Samaj, had told reporters that his group would hold the rallies to honour Mallick, a tribal villager who had died under mysterious circumstances in December 2007. Kahar and local Hindu leaders blamed Christians for his death and wanted to “honour him as a Hindu martyr. “ Mallik had earlier been accused of pulling down a church. Villagers said Hindu radicals held secret meetings and distributed leaflets asking people to congregate in large numbers in every area to observe the “memorial day.”
St Gabriel Brother Markose, an advocate who from Jharkhand who has made Kandhamal his temporary home, told me on the phone that in Bodimunda village, the most tense this week, the Catholic catechist who was forced to become a Hindu, came back and animated prayers at the local church. The Catholic community celebrated with a night mass. The Believers Church repaired their church and celebrated on 25th during day. Baptists and Pentecostals were still afraid to openly celebrate Christmas in the hinterland areas.
Br Markose said armed police personnel were deployed and subordinate officers and senior officials kept on visiting. Towards end of the mass The Collector and the SP too reached the village.
Fathers Ajay Singh and Nicholas Barla, another priest-lawyer who ahs been working on human rights and legal issues in the district for some time, volunteered to say night mass at the sensitive village. Sr Suma along with other Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa was also present.
Br Markose narrated: “Before the Mass as we moved around the village, we stopped at the only tea shop for tea. All of us from outside took our cups of tea and the last cup of tea was taken by a person from the village. Just as he was about to sip the tea, the shop keeper told him in the local Kui language ‘if you took tea, I will have to pay fine of Rs. 1000. Hearing this, the villager was returning the cup of tea. I understood, and told the shop keeper that I would reimburse if he had to pay fine and I gave him my phone number. If he is fined by fanatics, he can call me and I will reimburse his expense, of course it will give me a chance to expose the social boycott of Christians in that village.”
According to Br Markose, about 10 days ago a Christian woman purchased 'muri' -- puffed rice -- from an old lady. That old lady was imposed a fine of Rupees 500 for selling muri to a Christian. Since she was too poor to pay the fine, she pleaded and her fine was reduced to Rs. 100.
From John Dayal
Christmas celebrated in Kandhamal villages in Orissa after three years
26 December 2010
Bodimunda village in Kandhamal, Orissa, celebrated Christmas for the first time in three years. And in Barakhama village several kilometres away, a strong police posse kept watch as 2,000 Christians prayed a little distance from where a 500 strong group was “observing” events that led to death and mass destruction in December 2007, and then again for seven weeks from 23 August 2008.
Christmas will never be the same ever again in this part of Orissa which at the peak of the violence saw 54,000 internally displaced Christians – over 30,000 of them in government refugee camps and the rest in forests or far away from home. But the people would not be denied celebrating the birth of Christ – many of them had faced death when asked to leave thier faith, drink some cow urine and become Hindus if they wanted to live in their villages.
Midnight Mass had become a memory, but this time two Catholic priests, a religious brother, the head of the Mother Teresa Sisters in Orissa and their friends decided to challenge the fear and the “Kui” group of the dreaded Lambodhar Kahar and celebrated the Christian festival as it should be.
Fr Ajay Singh, himself born in a hamlet near Brahmanigaon village which bore the brunt of the 2007 Christians violence, told me on the phone that there was absolute fear on the Eve of Christmas. There had been posters and repeated announcements by the Kui Samaj that they would go ahead with their programme, recalling the Kui programme on 24 December 2007 that was the trigger to the mass violence, and had been surprisingly allowed by the government authorities. The District government allowed the programme once again, but this time ensured there were some policemen to keep guard.
In Delhi, I had been receiving frantic and repeated calls from contacts in Barakhama and Tikabali who said about the same thing, urging with me to get the federal government in the national capital and state authorities in Orissa’s capital Bhubaneswar to ensure that Christmas passed off peacefully.
On Sunday, Lambodhar Kahar, leader of Kandhamal Kui Samaj, had told reporters that his group would hold the rallies to honour Mallick, a tribal villager who had died under mysterious circumstances in December 2007. Kahar and local Hindu leaders blamed Christians for his death and wanted to “honour him as a Hindu martyr. “ Mallik had earlier been accused of pulling down a church. Villagers said Hindu radicals held secret meetings and distributed leaflets asking people to congregate in large numbers in every area to observe the “memorial day.”
St Gabriel Brother Markose, an advocate who from Jharkhand who has made Kandhamal his temporary home, told me on the phone that in Bodimunda village, the most tense this week, the Catholic catechist who was forced to become a Hindu, came back and animated prayers at the local church. The Catholic community celebrated with a night mass. The Believers Church repaired their church and celebrated on 25th during day. Baptists and Pentecostals were still afraid to openly celebrate Christmas in the hinterland areas.
Br Markose said armed police personnel were deployed and subordinate officers and senior officials kept on visiting. Towards end of the mass The Collector and the SP too reached the village.
Fathers Ajay Singh and Nicholas Barla, another priest-lawyer who ahs been working on human rights and legal issues in the district for some time, volunteered to say night mass at the sensitive village. Sr Suma along with other Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa was also present.
Br Markose narrated: “Before the Mass as we moved around the village, we stopped at the only tea shop for tea. All of us from outside took our cups of tea and the last cup of tea was taken by a person from the village. Just as he was about to sip the tea, the shop keeper told him in the local Kui language ‘if you took tea, I will have to pay fine of Rs. 1000. Hearing this, the villager was returning the cup of tea. I understood, and told the shop keeper that I would reimburse if he had to pay fine and I gave him my phone number. If he is fined by fanatics, he can call me and I will reimburse his expense, of course it will give me a chance to expose the social boycott of Christians in that village.”
According to Br Markose, about 10 days ago a Christian woman purchased 'muri' -- puffed rice -- from an old lady. That old lady was imposed a fine of Rupees 500 for selling muri to a Christian. Since she was too poor to pay the fine, she pleaded and her fine was reduced to Rs. 100.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
In Kandhamal, Maoist violence adds a new dimension to recovery
Kandhamal Update One in the Season of Advent 9dec10
Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air
John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010
Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.
Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.
In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.
In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.
In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.
The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.
The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.
It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.
Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.
Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.
In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.
… …
Batticola – The Parish that vanished
Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.
Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.
Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.
The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.
But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.
Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.
Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air
John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010
Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.
Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.
In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.
In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.
In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.
The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.
The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.
It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.
Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.
Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.
In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.
… …
Batticola – The Parish that vanished
Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.
Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.
Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.
The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.
But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.
Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Economic boycott of Christians in Kandhamal; rampant insecurity as villagers forced to live as Hindus
KANDHAMAL UPDATE NOVEMBER 2010
From John Dayal
9 November 2010-11-09
[Based on the Report of a Fact Finding group of Activists on the Social and Economical Boycott of Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa:]
The Collector of Kandhamal, Orissa, Dr. Krishan Kumar who headed the district during the anti Christian violence of August-October 2008 which left 100 dead, 5,600 houses burnt and about 56,000 persons displaced, seems now to be presiding over a well thought out economic boycott of the minority community. Confronted with the stark reality, Krishan has taken to blaming the Church and its leadership for being a hindrance in restoring peace – possibly because they have petitioned the High Court and the Supreme court of India on issues of justice in the region.
The economic boyctott of Kondh and Panos Christians in Kandhamal, which first came to light in the People’s National Tribunal headed by former Delhi chief justice Shah, held in New Delhi in August this year, continues to be a source of major harassment of the community, a fact finding team of social activist and lawyers has discovered in a field study of the region earlier this month. The preliminary report was released yesterday.
The fact finding team consisted of four well-known activists led by Advocate Nicholas Barla, a tribal activist leader, with Advocate Brother Marcus, a social worker, Jugal Kishore Ranjit, a dalit human right activist and Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist. They visited Kandhamal on 5th of November 2010 to verify the allegations of social and economical boycotts of Kandhamal Christians. The team visited four villages of four police stations of three blocks in violent hit district of Kandhamal in Orissa.
The following is the operative part of the Fact Finding Report and Update:
Despite the state administration claims of normalcy, what has been found by the Fact-finding group report reveals a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity of the persecuted Christians.
The team first visited Gadaguda village under G. Udayagiri police station under Tikabali that witnessed violence as late as 30th of October 2008, almost two months after violence was unleashed against Christian. An elderly couple in their late 70s were axed and then burnt alive here. Scores of people were injured. One of them, an army man, has bullets in his hands and thighs. Some are still in tents. The team interacted with the people of Dakanaju village and nearby villagers. They included the postman, Sarapanch and a group of affected Christians. The team was told the Christians of Dakanaju village were barred from taking water from the government dug well. The team then met Gadaguda Sarapanch, Sachindra Pradhan and asked whether he was aware of such instance. Mr. Pradhan told that he was not aware and would look into the matter and sort out at the earliest.
The team then headed for Bodimunda village under Tikabali police station in Tikabali block. They parked the vehicle on the roadside and headed towards the broken buildings and houses, a sure sign of wrath of anti-Christian violence. Upon reaching the village, the team members headed for a pastor’s house as there were hardly anybody seen on the street amidst the ruins. The pastor, Binod Pradhan (name changed), welcomed the group to his house and a definite anxiety reflected on his face. The team found that his house was intact. The pastor told the group that he has been forced to become a Hindu to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk even.
Within minutes of the team’s coming, a person later identified as a RSS cadre came to the house to enquire about the group. The pastor informed him that the guests are bank officials as his relative works in a bank. It was a sign that the team should leave the house soon.
Meanwhile, the team was informed of social and economical boycott imposed on the Christians by the right wing group RSS, the parent group of the Bharatiya Janata party, and there would be fines if any vehicle ferry any Christian be he healthy or sick, or their belongings from the village to outside or from outside into village. The team wanted to verify the allegations and went to a house of certain Bamadev Pradhan, a tribal Christian. Bamadev was lying on the muddy floor and could not get up as he was struck with paralysis. The family members told the group that being paralysis man and was suffering from fever, they looked for a hired auto to take him to a nearby hospital, Tikabali, 8 kilometres away from the village.
Nobody was ready to come to village and finally a Christian who owned an auto-rickshaw was almost forced to pick up the paralytic person. When the hired auto was returning after the drop, it was stopped and taken away by the RSS elements. The owner took the help of the auto union, which negotiated for the release of the auto paying fine of one thousand fifty one rupees (Rs 1,051) and with the assurance that the auto owner would not ferry any Christian from the village.
The team has started interacting with the paralysed family members for five minutes, when a Christian villager; Jesaya Nayak entered the house and informed the team members that it should leave the place as the situation was volatile.
The team went to another house. A fearful group of Christians had assembled there and interacted with them. The fearful Christians said, “We are in a state of shock. Those who have something have moved out the village and we poor people are left behind. What haunts us and saddens us is the administration, the BDO and police, who are hand in glove with RSS. Instead of becoming sensitive to our plight, the administration wants to deprive us of our basic amenities. They have banned the local auto-rickshaws, the only means of transportation in the area from taking Christians passengers. “We are not allowed to bring housing materials nor food provisions or medicines nor allowed to buy anything from the local shops. We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human being”, the victims said. The team enquired whether they had complained it before the police, the people replied positively and explained the statement of Inspector in charge, IIC, Tikabali, who said “being a Christian you have to suffer and there is no option’
The team wanted to meet the auto-rickshaw owner and others who have been fined. A villager volunteered to join to meet the auto owner, who has to pay the fine for ferrying the paralytic to the hospital. The auto-rickshaw owner, a pastor, told the team that he had to pay the fine one thousand fifty one rupees despite he had to complain to the police. The team then met Birendra Nayak (name changed and a Hindu himself), who told the team members that he had to pay Rs 5000 to get his tractor released as it was transporting the housing materials for the construction of the house of a Boarder Security Force soldier, which was destroyed during anti-Christian violence. Birendra Nayak went on to add, “It is because the local police takes percentage, (a bribe) and protects the anti-social elements who rule the roost. I informed the local police, but nothing happened”.
Pushpanjali Nayak, the soldier’s mother said who could be contacted over the telephone, told the group, “this incident shocked her army son, who became ill and left the village in disgust. We are presently living under polythene like a cowshed without roof and floor and proper wall with little money that we have had managed to collect, yet we cannot build our houses. We had brought sand for the house and were taken away by RSS. Our life is hell here”. She continued sobbing as she narrated. The former pastor, who says that he would openly practise the faith if situations become normal adds, “The sand that the tractor brought for the house was taken away to build the temple in the village”.
Incidentally, there are a group of 15 police persons stationed in the village and they are mute spectators to these incidents.
The team then headed for Keredi village under Phulbani block and went to a Christian household. The team found a huge photo of Lord Krishna. Naresh Digal, an ex-army man (name changed) explained that he had to” live like a Hindu as they are four households in the locality. The environment is quite hostile and there is no support from the administration. He went on to further state that his neighbour, an ex-army man, had to bear the brunt of RSS people and his house was destroyed. He filed the complaints and after eight days police came to see and left the place even without entering the broken house. The life time earnings of his neighbour are gone. What will he invest on the family’s future? What is the use of this way of life if there is no support from anywhere?” The woman, who shared that her cousin has become a nun, said”we are waiting for the day when we could be free to practise the religion of our choice. "Not sure when the day would dawn.”
The team then went to Gandapadar village in Minia gram panchayat in Phiringia block. It was deep in the interior. It was not difficult to identify the Christians’ houses. The woman of the house welcomed into the repaired house. The team saw a huge framed photo of Lord Shiva on the wall. When asked about the photo, she changed her face and struggled to explain,” The RSS has given us the photo and a “Tulsi” plant for worship. We have kept as often they come to check whether we reconverted to Christianity. We know we can never leave our faith.” The villagers also stated that almost all the houses in the village have two photos; that of Jesus and Shiva. Tarabati Digal explained that there are 10 families still living outside the village.
Signed by Peoples’ Fact Finding Report Team:
Advocate Nicholas Barla, tribal activist leader,
Advocate Marcus, social worker,
Jugal Kishore Ranjit, dalit human right activist
Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist
8th November 2010, Phulbani, Kandhamal, Orissa
From John Dayal
9 November 2010-11-09
[Based on the Report of a Fact Finding group of Activists on the Social and Economical Boycott of Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa:]
The Collector of Kandhamal, Orissa, Dr. Krishan Kumar who headed the district during the anti Christian violence of August-October 2008 which left 100 dead, 5,600 houses burnt and about 56,000 persons displaced, seems now to be presiding over a well thought out economic boycott of the minority community. Confronted with the stark reality, Krishan has taken to blaming the Church and its leadership for being a hindrance in restoring peace – possibly because they have petitioned the High Court and the Supreme court of India on issues of justice in the region.
The economic boyctott of Kondh and Panos Christians in Kandhamal, which first came to light in the People’s National Tribunal headed by former Delhi chief justice Shah, held in New Delhi in August this year, continues to be a source of major harassment of the community, a fact finding team of social activist and lawyers has discovered in a field study of the region earlier this month. The preliminary report was released yesterday.
The fact finding team consisted of four well-known activists led by Advocate Nicholas Barla, a tribal activist leader, with Advocate Brother Marcus, a social worker, Jugal Kishore Ranjit, a dalit human right activist and Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist. They visited Kandhamal on 5th of November 2010 to verify the allegations of social and economical boycotts of Kandhamal Christians. The team visited four villages of four police stations of three blocks in violent hit district of Kandhamal in Orissa.
The following is the operative part of the Fact Finding Report and Update:
Despite the state administration claims of normalcy, what has been found by the Fact-finding group report reveals a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity of the persecuted Christians.
The team first visited Gadaguda village under G. Udayagiri police station under Tikabali that witnessed violence as late as 30th of October 2008, almost two months after violence was unleashed against Christian. An elderly couple in their late 70s were axed and then burnt alive here. Scores of people were injured. One of them, an army man, has bullets in his hands and thighs. Some are still in tents. The team interacted with the people of Dakanaju village and nearby villagers. They included the postman, Sarapanch and a group of affected Christians. The team was told the Christians of Dakanaju village were barred from taking water from the government dug well. The team then met Gadaguda Sarapanch, Sachindra Pradhan and asked whether he was aware of such instance. Mr. Pradhan told that he was not aware and would look into the matter and sort out at the earliest.
The team then headed for Bodimunda village under Tikabali police station in Tikabali block. They parked the vehicle on the roadside and headed towards the broken buildings and houses, a sure sign of wrath of anti-Christian violence. Upon reaching the village, the team members headed for a pastor’s house as there were hardly anybody seen on the street amidst the ruins. The pastor, Binod Pradhan (name changed), welcomed the group to his house and a definite anxiety reflected on his face. The team found that his house was intact. The pastor told the group that he has been forced to become a Hindu to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk even.
Within minutes of the team’s coming, a person later identified as a RSS cadre came to the house to enquire about the group. The pastor informed him that the guests are bank officials as his relative works in a bank. It was a sign that the team should leave the house soon.
Meanwhile, the team was informed of social and economical boycott imposed on the Christians by the right wing group RSS, the parent group of the Bharatiya Janata party, and there would be fines if any vehicle ferry any Christian be he healthy or sick, or their belongings from the village to outside or from outside into village. The team wanted to verify the allegations and went to a house of certain Bamadev Pradhan, a tribal Christian. Bamadev was lying on the muddy floor and could not get up as he was struck with paralysis. The family members told the group that being paralysis man and was suffering from fever, they looked for a hired auto to take him to a nearby hospital, Tikabali, 8 kilometres away from the village.
Nobody was ready to come to village and finally a Christian who owned an auto-rickshaw was almost forced to pick up the paralytic person. When the hired auto was returning after the drop, it was stopped and taken away by the RSS elements. The owner took the help of the auto union, which negotiated for the release of the auto paying fine of one thousand fifty one rupees (Rs 1,051) and with the assurance that the auto owner would not ferry any Christian from the village.
The team has started interacting with the paralysed family members for five minutes, when a Christian villager; Jesaya Nayak entered the house and informed the team members that it should leave the place as the situation was volatile.
The team went to another house. A fearful group of Christians had assembled there and interacted with them. The fearful Christians said, “We are in a state of shock. Those who have something have moved out the village and we poor people are left behind. What haunts us and saddens us is the administration, the BDO and police, who are hand in glove with RSS. Instead of becoming sensitive to our plight, the administration wants to deprive us of our basic amenities. They have banned the local auto-rickshaws, the only means of transportation in the area from taking Christians passengers. “We are not allowed to bring housing materials nor food provisions or medicines nor allowed to buy anything from the local shops. We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human being”, the victims said. The team enquired whether they had complained it before the police, the people replied positively and explained the statement of Inspector in charge, IIC, Tikabali, who said “being a Christian you have to suffer and there is no option’
The team wanted to meet the auto-rickshaw owner and others who have been fined. A villager volunteered to join to meet the auto owner, who has to pay the fine for ferrying the paralytic to the hospital. The auto-rickshaw owner, a pastor, told the team that he had to pay the fine one thousand fifty one rupees despite he had to complain to the police. The team then met Birendra Nayak (name changed and a Hindu himself), who told the team members that he had to pay Rs 5000 to get his tractor released as it was transporting the housing materials for the construction of the house of a Boarder Security Force soldier, which was destroyed during anti-Christian violence. Birendra Nayak went on to add, “It is because the local police takes percentage, (a bribe) and protects the anti-social elements who rule the roost. I informed the local police, but nothing happened”.
Pushpanjali Nayak, the soldier’s mother said who could be contacted over the telephone, told the group, “this incident shocked her army son, who became ill and left the village in disgust. We are presently living under polythene like a cowshed without roof and floor and proper wall with little money that we have had managed to collect, yet we cannot build our houses. We had brought sand for the house and were taken away by RSS. Our life is hell here”. She continued sobbing as she narrated. The former pastor, who says that he would openly practise the faith if situations become normal adds, “The sand that the tractor brought for the house was taken away to build the temple in the village”.
Incidentally, there are a group of 15 police persons stationed in the village and they are mute spectators to these incidents.
The team then headed for Keredi village under Phulbani block and went to a Christian household. The team found a huge photo of Lord Krishna. Naresh Digal, an ex-army man (name changed) explained that he had to” live like a Hindu as they are four households in the locality. The environment is quite hostile and there is no support from the administration. He went on to further state that his neighbour, an ex-army man, had to bear the brunt of RSS people and his house was destroyed. He filed the complaints and after eight days police came to see and left the place even without entering the broken house. The life time earnings of his neighbour are gone. What will he invest on the family’s future? What is the use of this way of life if there is no support from anywhere?” The woman, who shared that her cousin has become a nun, said”we are waiting for the day when we could be free to practise the religion of our choice. "Not sure when the day would dawn.”
The team then went to Gandapadar village in Minia gram panchayat in Phiringia block. It was deep in the interior. It was not difficult to identify the Christians’ houses. The woman of the house welcomed into the repaired house. The team saw a huge framed photo of Lord Shiva on the wall. When asked about the photo, she changed her face and struggled to explain,” The RSS has given us the photo and a “Tulsi” plant for worship. We have kept as often they come to check whether we reconverted to Christianity. We know we can never leave our faith.” The villagers also stated that almost all the houses in the village have two photos; that of Jesus and Shiva. Tarabati Digal explained that there are 10 families still living outside the village.
Signed by Peoples’ Fact Finding Report Team:
Advocate Nicholas Barla, tribal activist leader,
Advocate Marcus, social worker,
Jugal Kishore Ranjit, dalit human right activist
Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist
8th November 2010, Phulbani, Kandhamal, Orissa
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
KANDHAMAL FACT SHEET SEPTEMBER 2010
LEST WE FORGET
[Based on Archbishop Raphael Cheenath’s latest Memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik AT THEIR MEETING IN Bhubaneswar on 13 September 2010]
1. EXISTENCE OF REFUGEE CAMPS: In spite of the fact that the relief camps were officially closed by the Orissa Government in the fist week of September, 2009, there are large numbers of victims living in more than a dozen make-shift shelters in Kandhamal. When the relief camps were closed in Sept, 2009, about 3500 refugees were sent out who had no other choice except live in temporary shelters. They live in the following villages even today ( Beheragaon, Tukangia, Phirigada, Godoguda, Penala, Dondingia, Tudubadi, Anandnagar, Telingia, Dagapadar, Sartaguda, Hatpada, Tatamaha and Badabanga).
2 TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: There are reports in the papers that large scale trafficking in women and girls are going on in Orissa. Communal violence has, perhaps, given an opportunity to the miscreants to prey on the hapless victims. Unless this is effectively stopped by the Government, Orissa too would be soon an established flesh trade centre.
3. DISPLACEMENT, REHABILITATION: Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards see in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Developments based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
4. RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN HOMES: The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return accordance with the above standards. Today the refugees return with fear and after their return they still live in fear of further attacks.
5. COMPENSATION PACKAGE: In order to estimate and determine compensation for the losses which the people have suffered an independent committee should be set up. The committee should take into account the opinion of the victims otherwise it would be only a one-sided calculation. Therefore, it is important to consult the victims to know how much property they have lost and how many lost their lives. In the case of Kandhamal communal valence the victims were never consulted. The compensation given to them has been, arbitrary and grossly inadequate, and possibly vindictive.
Compensation should be a package which should include not only houses, but the household things that normally should belong to a family and some financial assistance for the families who had no employment for nearly two years. Such package should take care of the needs of a family who has been displaced during violence.
6. THE INJURED AND THE WIDOWS: Adequate compensation should be given to those injured during violence, widows whose husbands were killed or missing, the families of those who were killed, or missing.
7. The victims of communal violence should be approached with sympathy
From a humanitarian point of view compensation given to the victims should have been a sign of compassion and sympathy to the poor victims. In many cases, the rules and regulations were absolutely strictly imposed on the victims that even the compensating allotted to them was very slow in coming and in some cases not at all given to them. In communal violence where victims lose everything and suffer so much, the help should be given with a sense of urgency.
8. WAIVE OFF LOANS: During the communal violence and its aftermath people had taken loan since they did not have any employment. Even now they are without any job since a large number of them are still displaced. Such loans could be waved off so that the victims could live without anxiety and earn something for their day to day living.
9. SETTLEMENT OF LAND: Some of the victims do not have land patta [land allotment letter], others have no land, some have disputed land. Unless these are settled the construction of houses can not proceed. On 25th July 2009, 58 cases for land settlements have been given to the Distinct Magistrate; unless these are settled , house construction slows down.
10. FORCIBLE CONVERSION TO HINDUISM: It is reported that the refugees live in 27 villages in make-shift shelter. In more than ten (10) villages Christians are forced to live as Hindus. For instances, Betticola, Beheragaon, Kutulumba, Mundarigon, Kalingia, Santikia, Bindugan, Rotingia, Bodimunda and Dodopanka. This is totally contrary to the freedom of Religion Act which the Orissa Government upholds with great vigour. The Administration which claims secular credentials should not condone such violence.
11. COMPENSATION TO CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES: The RTI has recorded 233 churches and prayer halls, but it is estimated that there are 21 churches more which are not included in this list. During the communal violence in 2007 too about 200 churches and payer halls were destroyed. No consultation was made with the victims when compensation was fixed which is only a pittance and is not at all proportionate to the colossal destruction of property. In fact the compensation given to the churches amounts to about one tenth of the total cost.
12. HATE CAMPAIGN: The Government machinery should be alert to prevent hate-campaign that brews hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities. The communal carnage in Kandhamal is the result of such hate-campaign that was going on in the State for decades, unfortunately unhindered by the State authorities.
13. MOB RULE: It is a very dangerous development in the country and also in Orissa that the mob is taking over the responsibility of controlling the Law and Order situation. If two or three hundred hooligan can control the situation what is the use of police, courts and civil administration? If one or two hard core criminals can take the whole administration, even the courts, for a ride, the very foundation of democracy is at stake. Daily shows on all the TV. channels prove amply what we have said. Often the victims are victimized by the administration.
[Based on Archbishop Raphael Cheenath’s latest Memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik AT THEIR MEETING IN Bhubaneswar on 13 September 2010]
1. EXISTENCE OF REFUGEE CAMPS: In spite of the fact that the relief camps were officially closed by the Orissa Government in the fist week of September, 2009, there are large numbers of victims living in more than a dozen make-shift shelters in Kandhamal. When the relief camps were closed in Sept, 2009, about 3500 refugees were sent out who had no other choice except live in temporary shelters. They live in the following villages even today ( Beheragaon, Tukangia, Phirigada, Godoguda, Penala, Dondingia, Tudubadi, Anandnagar, Telingia, Dagapadar, Sartaguda, Hatpada, Tatamaha and Badabanga).
2 TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: There are reports in the papers that large scale trafficking in women and girls are going on in Orissa. Communal violence has, perhaps, given an opportunity to the miscreants to prey on the hapless victims. Unless this is effectively stopped by the Government, Orissa too would be soon an established flesh trade centre.
3. DISPLACEMENT, REHABILITATION: Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards see in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Developments based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
4. RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN HOMES: The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return accordance with the above standards. Today the refugees return with fear and after their return they still live in fear of further attacks.
5. COMPENSATION PACKAGE: In order to estimate and determine compensation for the losses which the people have suffered an independent committee should be set up. The committee should take into account the opinion of the victims otherwise it would be only a one-sided calculation. Therefore, it is important to consult the victims to know how much property they have lost and how many lost their lives. In the case of Kandhamal communal valence the victims were never consulted. The compensation given to them has been, arbitrary and grossly inadequate, and possibly vindictive.
Compensation should be a package which should include not only houses, but the household things that normally should belong to a family and some financial assistance for the families who had no employment for nearly two years. Such package should take care of the needs of a family who has been displaced during violence.
6. THE INJURED AND THE WIDOWS: Adequate compensation should be given to those injured during violence, widows whose husbands were killed or missing, the families of those who were killed, or missing.
7. The victims of communal violence should be approached with sympathy
From a humanitarian point of view compensation given to the victims should have been a sign of compassion and sympathy to the poor victims. In many cases, the rules and regulations were absolutely strictly imposed on the victims that even the compensating allotted to them was very slow in coming and in some cases not at all given to them. In communal violence where victims lose everything and suffer so much, the help should be given with a sense of urgency.
8. WAIVE OFF LOANS: During the communal violence and its aftermath people had taken loan since they did not have any employment. Even now they are without any job since a large number of them are still displaced. Such loans could be waved off so that the victims could live without anxiety and earn something for their day to day living.
9. SETTLEMENT OF LAND: Some of the victims do not have land patta [land allotment letter], others have no land, some have disputed land. Unless these are settled the construction of houses can not proceed. On 25th July 2009, 58 cases for land settlements have been given to the Distinct Magistrate; unless these are settled , house construction slows down.
10. FORCIBLE CONVERSION TO HINDUISM: It is reported that the refugees live in 27 villages in make-shift shelter. In more than ten (10) villages Christians are forced to live as Hindus. For instances, Betticola, Beheragaon, Kutulumba, Mundarigon, Kalingia, Santikia, Bindugan, Rotingia, Bodimunda and Dodopanka. This is totally contrary to the freedom of Religion Act which the Orissa Government upholds with great vigour. The Administration which claims secular credentials should not condone such violence.
11. COMPENSATION TO CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES: The RTI has recorded 233 churches and prayer halls, but it is estimated that there are 21 churches more which are not included in this list. During the communal violence in 2007 too about 200 churches and payer halls were destroyed. No consultation was made with the victims when compensation was fixed which is only a pittance and is not at all proportionate to the colossal destruction of property. In fact the compensation given to the churches amounts to about one tenth of the total cost.
12. HATE CAMPAIGN: The Government machinery should be alert to prevent hate-campaign that brews hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities. The communal carnage in Kandhamal is the result of such hate-campaign that was going on in the State for decades, unfortunately unhindered by the State authorities.
13. MOB RULE: It is a very dangerous development in the country and also in Orissa that the mob is taking over the responsibility of controlling the Law and Order situation. If two or three hundred hooligan can control the situation what is the use of police, courts and civil administration? If one or two hard core criminals can take the whole administration, even the courts, for a ride, the very foundation of democracy is at stake. Daily shows on all the TV. channels prove amply what we have said. Often the victims are victimized by the administration.
Friday, September 3, 2010
A must read on Kandhamal
Date:04/09/2010 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2010/09/04/stories/2010090454521300.htm
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Opinion - News Analysis
Three pogroms held together by a common thread
Vidya Subrahmaniam
Secular, democratic India has seen pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
– PHOTO: LINGARAJ PANDA
DECEPTIVE: An idyllic scene does not mask the trauma. A burnt church in Kandhamal, Orissa.
The accounts of murder, arson, and crimes against women sounded horribly familiar: Each detail, each grisly fact seemed taken out of a script enacted before; the sequence of events was as predictable as the shattering, gut-wrenching climax.
It was like a macabre replay of Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984, as 43 communal violence victims from Orissa — who had come all the way to the national Capital — testified recently before the National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal headed by A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. As the narratives ended, the audience was left with another chilling thought: In secular, democratic India, there had been pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.
Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama's young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu's body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband's killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.
Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.
Many of the victims said they spotted Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manoj Pradhan among the attackers. In June this year, a fast-track court in Orissa sentenced Pradhan to seven years' rigorous imprisonment.
The Orissa violence, which targeted Dalit-tribal Christians, was undoubtedly smaller in scale compared to Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984. Human rights estimates of deaths, damages and sexual violations are many times higher in all three cases, but going only by the government figures for the dead, there were 38 killed in Kandhamal in Orissa, 1,180 murdered (including Hindus killed in Godhra and in police firing) in the 15 affected districts of Gujarat, and 2,700 put to death in the national Capital. Yet despite these variations, the three pogroms could have been written, produced and directed by a single satanic mind, judging by the astonishing similarity in the detail and sequence of events and the stunning brutality of the crimes committed.
Tribunal foreword
In his November 2002 foreword to the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which collected 2,094 oral and written testimonies from Gujarat's victim-survivors as well as human rights groups, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said: “The gravamen of this pogrom-like operation was that the administration reversed its constitutional role, and by omission and commission, engineered the loot, ravishment and murder which was methodically perpetrated through planned process …”
Eight years later, the jury at the Kandhamal Tribunal had similar words to say: “The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured … There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood … The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.”
‘Action-reaction' theory
When, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination, thousands of Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi, the commonly-held view was that it was an aberration brought about by an extraordinary situation. Comparisons were made with the 1947 Partition riots but few could have known at that time that the clinically planned and executed anti-Sikh pogrom would serve as a model for two more episodes of mass aggression against minorities.
Consider the features of the 1984 violence: Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh guards was the “action” which justified the “reactive” killings. Rajiv Gandhi's insensitive equation of the mob rage to tremors arising from a falling tree was taken as licence by the rioters to plunder, rape and kill. Members of the ruling establishment lent tacit support to the killings, and in some instances were seen directing the violence. The police abandoned their protective instincts, becoming either bystanders or collaborators in the crimes. The hooligans did not just kill, they used innovative techniques to kill, such as fitting burning car tyres over the necks of little, helpless children. In the days following the anti-Sikh orgy, the community was further victimised by an unwritten social boycott.
As in Delhi, so in Gujarat and Orissa. Delhi 1984 went beyond “an eye for an eye” to justify the extermination of an entire community for the perceived crimes of a handful. It established the legitimacy of the administration and the police slipping into supporting roles in mob violence. It also established that killing was not enough, killing must be perverse. In Gujarat, Muslims as a whole had to pay for Godhra. Here too, the action-reaction theory was propounded at the highest level, with the police and the administration wilfully abdicating their duties.
The testimonies recorded by the Krishna Iyer Tribunal brought out the sadistic, bestial nature of the Gujarat killings: “The widespread violence that targeted Muslims in urban and rural Gujarat was marked by utter bestiality and brutality … Evidence recorded before us shows how in the macabre dance of death, human beings were quartered and the killing protracted while the terrorised survivors looked on …” Violence over, the majority community enforced a social and economic boycott against Muslims.
In the “action-reaction” sequence in Orissa, rioters targeted the Dalit-tribal Christian community for revenge killings despite the lack of direct evidence linking the community to the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Here the Chief Minister, to his credit, did not justify the killings. On the contrary, he appeared contrite and eventually broke his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet during the violence, the levers of administration remained cruelly unresponsive to the cries of Kandhamal's Christian citizenry. As in Delhi and Gujarat, the victims found the police curiously missing or standing by, when the mobs, armed to the teeth and shouting inflammatory slogans, went on the rampage. The torture and violence were again extreme; murder was by burning alive, by dismembering the person. And as previously, the violence was followed by a crippling social boycott.
Abuse of women
All three pogroms had another common feature: Rampant abuse of women. Women were gang-raped, invariably in front of their families, not for sexual gratification but as a demonstration of power, to heap humiliation on male relatives. At the hearing organised by the Kandhamal Tribunal, Vrinda Grover, a member of the jury, remarked that the Orissa rioters had “used women's bodies as sites for punishment.” The Hindu of September 30, 2008 reported the case of a Catholic nun who was stripped naked and brutally gang-raped in front of a police post with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching. The Catholic priest who was with her was mercilessly thrashed for refusing to participate in the atrocity. Incidents of rape in Gujarat 2002 have been too well documented to bear repetition here.
But here again, the trend was set 26 years ago in Delhi. Until recently, the dominant perception about 1984 was that the mob violence largely spared the women.
The myth was conclusively demolished in 2007 following publication of the painstakingly documented book, “When a tree shook Delhi”. Lifting the “veil of silence” over the rape cases, authors Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka pieced together evidence placed before the Nanavati Commission to establish rape as a commonly used weapon in the anti-Sikh pogrom.
In one case, the rioters killed all the men in the family, raped the woman of the house in front of her young son, and left her naked so that she could not go out to save the child when he too was dragged out and burnt alive (case reported in Manushi magazine and submitted to the Commission).
The Kandhamal tribunal, as the Krishna Iyer tribunal before it, noted the “institutionalised bias of State agencies, their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence, and a deliberate scuttling of the processes of justice …” Each of the findings applied to Delhi 1984 as well.
Perhaps that is why, a questioner asked the jury of the Kandhamal tribunal, if it was not a shame that 26 years after 1984 — and two more pogroms later — India was still trying to find a solution to planned violence against minorities.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back
Opinion - News Analysis
Three pogroms held together by a common thread
Vidya Subrahmaniam
Secular, democratic India has seen pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
– PHOTO: LINGARAJ PANDA
DECEPTIVE: An idyllic scene does not mask the trauma. A burnt church in Kandhamal, Orissa.
The accounts of murder, arson, and crimes against women sounded horribly familiar: Each detail, each grisly fact seemed taken out of a script enacted before; the sequence of events was as predictable as the shattering, gut-wrenching climax.
It was like a macabre replay of Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984, as 43 communal violence victims from Orissa — who had come all the way to the national Capital — testified recently before the National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal headed by A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. As the narratives ended, the audience was left with another chilling thought: In secular, democratic India, there had been pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.
Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama's young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu's body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband's killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.
Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.
Many of the victims said they spotted Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manoj Pradhan among the attackers. In June this year, a fast-track court in Orissa sentenced Pradhan to seven years' rigorous imprisonment.
The Orissa violence, which targeted Dalit-tribal Christians, was undoubtedly smaller in scale compared to Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984. Human rights estimates of deaths, damages and sexual violations are many times higher in all three cases, but going only by the government figures for the dead, there were 38 killed in Kandhamal in Orissa, 1,180 murdered (including Hindus killed in Godhra and in police firing) in the 15 affected districts of Gujarat, and 2,700 put to death in the national Capital. Yet despite these variations, the three pogroms could have been written, produced and directed by a single satanic mind, judging by the astonishing similarity in the detail and sequence of events and the stunning brutality of the crimes committed.
Tribunal foreword
In his November 2002 foreword to the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which collected 2,094 oral and written testimonies from Gujarat's victim-survivors as well as human rights groups, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said: “The gravamen of this pogrom-like operation was that the administration reversed its constitutional role, and by omission and commission, engineered the loot, ravishment and murder which was methodically perpetrated through planned process …”
Eight years later, the jury at the Kandhamal Tribunal had similar words to say: “The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured … There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood … The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.”
‘Action-reaction' theory
When, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination, thousands of Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi, the commonly-held view was that it was an aberration brought about by an extraordinary situation. Comparisons were made with the 1947 Partition riots but few could have known at that time that the clinically planned and executed anti-Sikh pogrom would serve as a model for two more episodes of mass aggression against minorities.
Consider the features of the 1984 violence: Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh guards was the “action” which justified the “reactive” killings. Rajiv Gandhi's insensitive equation of the mob rage to tremors arising from a falling tree was taken as licence by the rioters to plunder, rape and kill. Members of the ruling establishment lent tacit support to the killings, and in some instances were seen directing the violence. The police abandoned their protective instincts, becoming either bystanders or collaborators in the crimes. The hooligans did not just kill, they used innovative techniques to kill, such as fitting burning car tyres over the necks of little, helpless children. In the days following the anti-Sikh orgy, the community was further victimised by an unwritten social boycott.
As in Delhi, so in Gujarat and Orissa. Delhi 1984 went beyond “an eye for an eye” to justify the extermination of an entire community for the perceived crimes of a handful. It established the legitimacy of the administration and the police slipping into supporting roles in mob violence. It also established that killing was not enough, killing must be perverse. In Gujarat, Muslims as a whole had to pay for Godhra. Here too, the action-reaction theory was propounded at the highest level, with the police and the administration wilfully abdicating their duties.
The testimonies recorded by the Krishna Iyer Tribunal brought out the sadistic, bestial nature of the Gujarat killings: “The widespread violence that targeted Muslims in urban and rural Gujarat was marked by utter bestiality and brutality … Evidence recorded before us shows how in the macabre dance of death, human beings were quartered and the killing protracted while the terrorised survivors looked on …” Violence over, the majority community enforced a social and economic boycott against Muslims.
In the “action-reaction” sequence in Orissa, rioters targeted the Dalit-tribal Christian community for revenge killings despite the lack of direct evidence linking the community to the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Here the Chief Minister, to his credit, did not justify the killings. On the contrary, he appeared contrite and eventually broke his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet during the violence, the levers of administration remained cruelly unresponsive to the cries of Kandhamal's Christian citizenry. As in Delhi and Gujarat, the victims found the police curiously missing or standing by, when the mobs, armed to the teeth and shouting inflammatory slogans, went on the rampage. The torture and violence were again extreme; murder was by burning alive, by dismembering the person. And as previously, the violence was followed by a crippling social boycott.
Abuse of women
All three pogroms had another common feature: Rampant abuse of women. Women were gang-raped, invariably in front of their families, not for sexual gratification but as a demonstration of power, to heap humiliation on male relatives. At the hearing organised by the Kandhamal Tribunal, Vrinda Grover, a member of the jury, remarked that the Orissa rioters had “used women's bodies as sites for punishment.” The Hindu of September 30, 2008 reported the case of a Catholic nun who was stripped naked and brutally gang-raped in front of a police post with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching. The Catholic priest who was with her was mercilessly thrashed for refusing to participate in the atrocity. Incidents of rape in Gujarat 2002 have been too well documented to bear repetition here.
But here again, the trend was set 26 years ago in Delhi. Until recently, the dominant perception about 1984 was that the mob violence largely spared the women.
The myth was conclusively demolished in 2007 following publication of the painstakingly documented book, “When a tree shook Delhi”. Lifting the “veil of silence” over the rape cases, authors Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka pieced together evidence placed before the Nanavati Commission to establish rape as a commonly used weapon in the anti-Sikh pogrom.
In one case, the rioters killed all the men in the family, raped the woman of the house in front of her young son, and left her naked so that she could not go out to save the child when he too was dragged out and burnt alive (case reported in Manushi magazine and submitted to the Commission).
The Kandhamal tribunal, as the Krishna Iyer tribunal before it, noted the “institutionalised bias of State agencies, their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence, and a deliberate scuttling of the processes of justice …” Each of the findings applied to Delhi 1984 as well.
Perhaps that is why, a questioner asked the jury of the Kandhamal tribunal, if it was not a shame that 26 years after 1984 — and two more pogroms later — India was still trying to find a solution to planned violence against minorities.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu
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