By Maxwell Pereira
In the context of the still ongoing violence against Christians in various states when I wrote about the sinister designs of the Sangh Parivar and their declared agenda, as also of the canards spread by the 84 percent strong majority community drowning the voice of a mere two percent minority Christians, some of my Hindu friends took offence. “Is every Hindu spreading canards against Christians?” they asked me, dubbing my remark as doing great injustice to non-extremist Hindus, who constitute the larger majority within the Hindu community.
They were disturbed no end with my answer “Isn't the silence of the 84% majority on the canards being spread in their name by some amidst them not construed as their voice?”
In recent weeks voices of many a right-thinking Hindu have been raised in public forums – in articles, television debates etc condemning the violence against Christians perpetrated by criminals and goons who openly identify themselves under the over all banner and umbrella of the Sangh Parivar. On this score very powerful declarations of how individually one is ashamed to call himself a Hindu have appeared in the printed medium (Karan Thapar’s “Who is a Hindu” in the Hindustan Times, Shashi Tharoor’s in the Times of India, etc) with many an agitated soul also stopping me during morning walks to tell me how ashamed they themselves are to identify themselves with the religion in the name of which the goons are perpetrating their heinous deeds.
On Christmas Day December 2007 gangs of fanatical elements in Kandhmal District Orissa had attacked churches and Christian institutions, desecrating statues and Bibles, and burning houses in Christian bastis in a series of pre-meditated and well organised assaults. In the atrocities that continued for a month, 107 churches were destroyed in arson, at least six people died and thousands were rendered homeless. The declared perpetrators none other than local Bajrang Dal units, the militant wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad under the umbrella of the total Sangh Parivar; pursuant to Swami Laxmanananda’s declared agenda of wiping out Christians off the face of Orissa.
Following widespread outrage from all quarters national and international over this carnage, the state government - whose benevolent protective hand over the rabid communal forces was evidently and eminently seen - reacted by transferring out the then Kandhmal Superintendent of Police, replacing him with young Nikhil Kanodia – a 2003 entrant into the IPS, reputed to have controlled with a firm hand another local district infested with Hindu-Muslim communal tension. Specially selected, Kanodia was overnight sent to Kandhmal to restructure and rejuvenate effective policing in the riot-ridden District. The State govt simultaneously ordered a judicial commission to look into the causes and effects of the Kandhmal riots.
The activities of Swami Laxmanananda in the area, inciting disharmony and communal disturbances in the Kandhmal district over the past many years, had led the Orissa police to open and maintain a police file on him which has grown fat over the years with accounts of riots caused or triggered off by him. Strangely, even while supposedly keeping violence under control, his activities were not checked by the police after the December carnage too. Instead, on State Govt’s direction he was provided police protection – ostensibly after receiving written threats on his life from local Maoists whose displeasure he had also incurred.
Despite the police protection, Laxmanananda and other adult members of his ashram were murdered on August 23. The attackers identified themselves as Naxalites and left a letter at the scene of murder claiming responsibility and stating why they murdered the Swami. On the basis of evidence of AK-47 used in the attack and the letter left behind, Kanodia briefed the media on Aug-24 that Maoist hand was indicated in the Swami’s murder – which position was soon after endorsed by the Police Headquarters too in briefings at the State level – reiterated in a televised interview more recently also by underground Naxalite leader Sabyasachi Panda.
This however did not, it appears, suit the Sangh Parivar in their designs and ultimate objective of targeting Christians. Praveen Togadia, the virulent head of the VHP visited Orissa the next day Aug-25 and declared it was Christians not Maoists who killed the Swami. As if in support of his line, the BJD led State government of Naveen Patnaik placed Kanodia under suspension, and removed him from the scene to the Lines in Police Headquarter at
Not only was the one man who had kept the communal forces under check over the past seven months ignominiously suspended, he was also conveniently removed from the scene to ensure a clear ground for Bajrang Dal goons to unleash their violence with no State intervention. The whole exercise smacked of criminal connivance. And yet Naveen Patnaik denies inaction and blatantly claims innocence even as his government is openly attempting now to deflect the blame from the Dal resting it solely on the Swami’s students?
Orissa violence was followed by incidents elsewhere, mainly in BJP ruled southern state of Karnataka, when Bajrang Dal goons struck in Mangalore and around vandalising churches, attacking nuns, and desecrating sacred artefacts. But Mangalore was not Kandhmal. The reaction of the people at large, not only of Christians, stunned the perpetrators. The State Bajrang Dal chief who had himself gone on television to proudly boast and claim responsibility had to be axed by the BJP leadership and faced arrest.
The main canards floated by the Sangh Parivar as reasons for attacks on Christians are about forced conversions and foreign funds. Despite categorical assurances that there cannot be forcible conversions to the Christian faith, and there exists not a single chargesheet or conviction under the highly hyped Anti-Conversion Laws enacted in many States, the canards on this score continue. The myths have been blasted time and again, but the bogey is sought to be kept alive without ever sitting across the table to thrash it out once and for all. While no one in government or the Sangh leadership explains why this imbroglio cannot be nailed once and for all with a national debate, the ploy continues to be used as a plank for propaganda and more attacks.
It is common knowledge that majority of the intelligentsia who has administered this country in the past sixty years has received education in Christian institutions in some form or the other, at some stage or the other. Have they been forced to convert? There are non-Christians who have worked and are working in Christian institutions for generations without ever converting to Christianity - if there was any force or inducement, how come they continued or continue to still benefit the Christian largesse without conversion?
I spent my entire service career pleading with Christian institutions to admit children of my non-Christian colleagues, friends and acquaintances into Christian schools and convents. Why is it the effort of every non-Christian to seek admission not only for their children and wards, but also those of their friends and acquaintances too in a Christian school or convent? Is it because they will be converted?
Talking of Christian concentration in backward and tribal areas: Is it right to fault the missionaries for having ventured into such areas hitherto totally neglected by the country, its successive governments and administrators, and by the very communities who have now suddenly woken up for political vote bank reasons? Was it wrong of them (the missionaries) to have provided succour, healthcare and educated them? Is it the fault of the missionaries that with their newfound knowledge and education, the backward classes and tribals are now being empowered enough to ward off exploitation by the marwaris/ other trader communities/ landgrabbers/ landlords and so on who sucked their blood for generations and hundreds of years?
If the compassion and selfless service of the missionaries, their aid and succour in times of need, medicines and healthcare they provided, and most of all the empowerment through education they enabled - has attracted, motivated or induced the neglected downtrodden from the backward classes or tribal areas to appreciate the "true Christian values" and embrace of his/her own free will the faith of the one that rendered him/her such self-service and gave him such "true values"..... then why should this cause such an irritating 'itch' in the ones of the majority community, or constitute such a threat to their existence as to warrant violence, arson and murder, and sinister designs to eliminate the Christian community from the face of the earth?
Yes, this is the declared agenda of the Sangh Parivar in Orissa and elsewhere, which the 84% majority is silent to, tantamounting to tacit concurrence and approval... Unless right-minded people speak up, the tolerant secular fabric of this country is bound to be destroyed - with a lot of blood on hands that otherwise consider themselves clean. And we will go the way our neighbours have gone - by becoming as is sought to be, a fundamentalist and rabid "Hindu"stan hated by all, and all the way down the drain like the stained-by-shame and disgraced-among-the-world-community as a terrorist-infested fundamentalist "Paki"stan.
Sixty-three million terror-battered and verifiable Pakistanis in a record participation have recently signed up to a unique anti-terror campaign stating “Yeh Hum Nahin!” (This is not us) in an effort to send a strong signal that they neither believe in terrorism nor are a party to it. Do the right-minded of
**published in Civil Society Magazine - November 2008 issue Vol 6 No.1 (www.civilsocietyonline.com) and carried on various websites
© Maxwell Pereira: Email: mfjpkamath@gmail.com; web: www.maxwellpereira.com
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