Secular India

2012-01-16T05:51:00.001-08:00

Rediff.com » News » 'There is nothing illegal in evangelisation'Last updated on: January 16, 2012 14:54 ISTVicky Nanjappa in BengaluruThe Evangelical Fellowship of India's annual report, identifying Karnataka as the most unsafe place for Christians, has set the cat among the pigeons. Amidst intense debate on the controversial report titled Battered and Bruised... came reports about incrimination of pastors Jim Borst and C M Khanna by a Islamic Shariat court in Srinagar for their alleged involvement in luring Kashmiri Muslims to convert to Christianity.The All India Christian Council has cried foul and states that such orders are only provocative and affects the safety of Christians.In an interview with rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa, Dr John Dayal, member of the national monitoring committee for minority education, government of India, and secretary general of the All India Christian Council, says that the Constitution gives the community the right to practice, profess and propagate its faith. So there is nothing illegal in evangelisation, he says.Vicky Nanjappa: How do you view the living conditions of Christians in India today?John Dayal: We have demanded that the government set up a commission on the pattern of the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee that went into the condition of Indian Muslims. There is a myth that Christians are better off and highly educated. This may be true in the case Delhi or Mumbai only. Over 60 per cent of all Christians are of Dalit origin. Many are poor tribals. Very few are highly educated (graduate or post graduate). Most are under employed. This is from our analysis of the data from the National Sample Survey. It is true that in national statistics, Christians are just above the national average in education, but in the rural areas, the story is different. Please remember that even apart from the Dalits, there are Christians who are small farmers, landless peasantry, and even manual labour. There is some evidence that in some states like Gujarat and Punjab even manual scavengers include those professing the Christian faith. Let there be a formal study so that the church and the government can both devise appropriate policies.Vicky Nanjappa: Attacks against Christians and churches were reported in Orissa and Karnataka. What are your views on this?John Dayal: In 2007-08, there were attacks in 14 different states, including New Delhi. Orissa and Karnataka led the list, with Kandhamal in Orissa being the worst. Over 5,600 houses were burnt, 400 villages were purged of all Christians, at least a hundred were killed, about 300 churches were destroyed, over 56,000 were forced to flee to the forests for safety and over 30,000 stayed up to a year in government refugee camps and shanty towns. Rehabilitation and relief has been tardy, and justice a far thing. The National Peoples' Tribunal held in 2010 has just published its full report on the situation.The political party in power does not matter. Orissa was jointly ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Biju Janata Dal. Karnataka is a BJP-ruled state as is Chhattisgarh. They top the list of guilty states in the matter of Christian persecution. It also happens in Congress-ruled states. Perhaps the few Marxist states in the past did not have violence of this nature. In fact, the Congress has also been guilty of passing the so called freedom of religion laws, which are directed against the Christian faith. But the aggressors are the same. They belong to the many branches of the Hindutva Parivar. Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Ram Sene, Vanvasi Kalian Ashram and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -- all are guilty.Vicky Nanjappa: Why do you think the attacks against Christians have increased in the recent past?John Dayal: The attacks on Christians started increasing after 1995-96, which also marks the time that the RSS-BJP launched its movement to get to power in New Delhi and major states. The Sangh policy of India for Hindus finds all other religions as aliens. It has a Hitlerian solution for aliens, as it defines us.Vicky Nanjappa: Conversions are often the reason cited for attacks against Christians. This has often been denied by the Christians. John Dayal: Let us make it clear that there cannot be forced conversion in India where every policeman and judge, as also the vigilante groups, are all staunch Hindus. They will stop it even if it were to take place. And regarding fraudulent or money induced conversion, it just cannot take place. With neighbours watching over each other, it remains impossible. For the record, I must say it is the Constitutional right of every Indian to choose the faith he want to profess. The Constitution also guarantees him the right to change his faith. The Constitution also gives us the right to practice, profess and propagate our faith. So there is nothing illegal in evangelisation.Vicky Nanjappa: Would you say that conversions are not a reality?John Dayal: Conversions are a reality. Tibet became Buddhist as did Sri Lanka and Japan by conversion. Manipur became Hindu. All of us became Christians by conversion -- two thousand years ago. New Christians happen every year all over the globe, and they do so in every state in India of their own free will, without coercion and without being tempted. Conversion is an act of God. Baptism is just a physical manifestation of the spiritual experience, and it is also a rite of admission to a Christian society. It is perfectly legal and constitutional. But there is no largescale Christian baptism. That is why we remain so much less than 3 per cent, perhaps around 2.3 per cent or so, which we will see when the detailed religious data is available from the 2011 census. In the Kashmir Valley, there are just about 400 Christians -- a little more than one hundred families and most of them are not of Kashmiri ethnic origin.Vicky Nanjappa: What is the issue between Muslims and Christians in Srinagar?John Dayal: There is no issue. There are so few Christians. But the hardliners among the Muslim clergy, for their own political ends, are making an issue of it. The clerics have no right to impose the Shariat laws on us. I don't understand why the government allows these Shariat courts to run in Kashmir. Are they part of the legal process? The government should clarify.Vicky Nanjappa: You say that the indictment of the two pastors would encourage violence in Jammu and Kashmir. Why has this tussle broken out in the Valley?John Dayal: It is a part of the power struggle between local extreme political groups. We are just victims. The so called indictment gives the signal to terror groups to become violet against Christians too.Vicky Nanjappa: Are Christians threatened more by Muslims or Hindus?John Dayal: All over the country, Christians work closely with Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus on issues of development, communal harmony, peace and human rights. We are not threatened by people of any religion. We are threatened by extremists of every religion. There is gross intolerance among sections of Hindus and Muslims. Vicky Nanjappa: The church says that conversions by force or fraud are not permitted. Is this followed everywhere in India and the rest of the world?John Dayal: We have repeatedly said there is no conversion by force or fraud. That is the law of the church. Theologically such conversions, if ever they take place, are illegal and abhorrent in the sight of God.

India's religous minorities demand law against targetted violence

2011-12-17T07:17:00.001-08:00

National advocacy and prayer campaign for Communal Violence Prevention Bill JOHN DAYALMr Hazare and many of the middle class who have joined him in his national camoaign against corruption do not seem to take the threat of communalism as seriously. No national campaign has yet been launched against the sort of hate violence that leaves hundreds dead every year in various parts of the country, and periodically peaks in the massacre especially of the religious minorities, particularly Muslims, and occasionally Christians and Sikhs.It has therefore fallen, so to speak, on the church in all its denominational diversity to launch a united campaign of advocacy and prayer to urge that Government of India urgently bring before Parliament and pass the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill 2011 after suitable amendments that take care of continuing concerns of minorities, and some concerns of state governments.The Bill, commonly called the CV Prevention Bill, was drafted earlier this year by the National Advisory Council and is now with the Union government. The All India Christian Council , an apex Human Rights and Freedom of Faith forum, and several other groups recently inaugurated the prayer campaign with large meetings of priests, pastors and laity in Bangalore, Mysore, Pune and Panchkula in Haryana. Meetings are planned nationwide. The Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the National Council of Churches, Diocesan Bishops and heads of various church groups and NGOs are also being requested to take the prayer and advocacy campaign to the grassroots in every state. The Bill, with some proposed amendments, has been strongly supported by religious minorities as well as by most members of civil society as an effective means to curb communal violence which has plagued this country after Independence in 1947, and bring justice to the victims. In the last ten years there have been more than 6,000 incidents of communal violence, according to information provided by the government to Parliament.Among the most heinous mass crimes against religious communities in India have been the anti-Sikh violence of 1984 in New Delhi and other cities, the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat of 2002 and the anti-Christian massacre and mass arson in Kandhamal in Orissa in which 56,000 persons were forced to flee to forests when over 5,600 houses in 400 villages were burnt down by Hindutva mobs. Over 100 persons were killed, Nuns and other women were raped and over 290 churches destroyed. In all cases, the police and officials stood by without acting. Many police and civil officers were guilty of involvement in all these acts of mass violence, and others were guilty of inaction and impunity. In the first week of December 2011 again in Orissa, 12 families of Christians were attacked in a will planned manner in Keonjhar district. In Kashmir, Pundits in a major way and local Christians have also been subject of targeted violence and threats by fundamentalist elements.. All these have been in reported in Indian Currents.Justice, rehabilitation and resettlement in all cases has been tardy. The worst is the issue of justice. Most victims, including of murder, have been denied justice. In Kandhamal, for instance, not a single person has been convicted for murder.The proposed Bill seeks to secure justice for victims and end the climate of impunity by bringing the guilty officials to book. The proposed law maintains that minorities are denied justice because of the communal behaviour of a section of religious and political extremists and the apathy or involvement of the administration.The Bill will also curb hate speech and similar actions. In recent months, VHP leader Dr Praveen Togadia has called for the beheading of missionaries in issues of conversion. Janata party leader Subramaniam Swamy has launched a slander campaign against the Christian and Muslim communities.The Christian groups have denounced conspiracies to scuttle the Bill. The last meeting of the National Integration Council was an example of how the government failed to intervene effectively in support of the bill which, expectedly, came under severe attack from Chief Ministers of BJP Ruled stares as also some allies of the Congress who had issues with the powers of the states on matters of law and order. The government seems reluctant to take immediate steps and discuss the Bill with political parties to end the attempt of Hindutva groups to raise false alarms against the proposed law.Christian leaders in Mumbai had earlier filed a formal complaint demanding legal action against Dr Subramaniam Swamy for spreading hate and violating the Constitution when he wrote an article in a Mumbai newspaper advocating that Muslims should not be given voting rights. Complaints were also filed in New Delhi.Communalism is as evil as corruption. The minority communities have repeatedly called for strong laws to curb hate campaigns and similar activity which leads to the targeting of minorities and marginalised communities, including Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribals. It remains to be seen if gthe government will wake up to its duty in this matter.Box itemAll that you wanted to know about the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 is intended to enhance State accountability and correct discriminatory exercise of State powers in the context of identity-based violence, and to thus restore equal access to the law for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and religious and linguistic minorities. It is the Constitutional right of every citizen, no matter how numerically weak or disadvantaged, to expect equal protection from an impartial and just State. Evidence from state records and several of Commissions of Enquiry has confirmed institutional bias and prejudicial functioning of the State administration, law enforcement and criminal justice machinery when a non- dominant group in the unit of a State, based either on language or religion, or a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, is attacked because of their identity. This prevents such non-dominant groups from getting full and fair protection of the laws of the land or equal access to justice. The Bill does not give additional powers to the State. This administration already has adequate powers to prevent and control communal violence when it chooses to do so. Communal and targeted violence spreads mainly because the public officials charged with protecting and preventing, either fail to act or act in a biased manner. Existing laws of the land and the machinery of the State are found to work relatively impartially when targeted identity-based offences are committed against dominant groups in a State, but not similarly for non-dominant groups. This Bill will provide correction of institutional bias against groups particularly vulnerable in any State. All citizens, no matter how small their numbers or where they choose to be domiciled, get an equal playing field, in enjoying their full measure of rights as citizens. This is a special provision Bill, for the non-dominant groups, being the linguistic and religious minorities in the unit of the State, and the Dalits and Tribals across the country. KEY PROVISIONS OF THE BILL 1. Defining communal & targeted violence: The provisions of this Bill will apply only when it is first established that the offence was ‘targeted’ in nature i.e. it was knowingly committed against members of a non-dominant group because of their membership of that group, and not for any other reason. Offences under the Indian Penal Code shall be considered offences under this Bill when they meet the definition of ‘targeted’ above. The Bill also specifically defines ‘organized’communal and targeted violence as mass violence that consists of multiple or mass commission of crimes that is widespread or systematic in nature. 2. Dereliction of duty by Public Servants: This Bill recognizes offences of both omission and commission. Often the greatest cause for communal and targeted violence against non-dominant groups occurring, spreading and persisting, is that public officials do not act. Public servants who act or omit to exercise authority vested in them under law and thereby fail to protect or prevent offences, breach of public order, or cause an offence, screen any offender, or fail to act as per law, or act with malafide and prejudice shall be guilty of dereliction of duty with penal consequences. This is the heart of the legislation, for such accountability shall serve as a deterrent to biased action. 3. Breach of Command Responsibility: This Bill seeks to ensure that the power of holding command over the actions of others is indeed upheld as a sacred duty, and that there is culpability for those who are ‘effectively in-charge’. Given the hierarchical nature of administrative systems, the reality is that too often it is those higher up in a chain of administrative or political command that are responsible for failure to perform their duties. Yet, it is only the junior officer on the ground whose dereliction is visible. The tendency for accountability to be fixed only at the most powerless levels of the official hierarchy is being prevented through the offence of breach of command responsibility. The chain of command responsibility may extend to any level where effective decisions to act or not act are taken. 4. Sanction for prosecution of public servants: This Bill proposes that if there is no response to a request for sanction for prosecution within 30 days from the date of the application to the concerned government, sanction to prosecute will be deemed granted. In relation to certain offences under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, when committed by a public servant, the requirement of obtaining sanction is being dispensed with. This is because these are offences against public justice. Judges shall be the most competent persons to assess the situation and proceed without sanction when satisfied that public justice has been obstructed. 5. Monitoring and Accountability -: This Bill seeks to put in place mechanisms such as a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation and State Authorities that can make the administrative and criminal justice system work as it should, free from favour or bias or malafide intent. Monitoring and grievance redressal shall be the responsibility of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (NACHJR) and corresponding State Authorities for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparations (SACHJR). Their mandate is to ensure that public functionaries act to prevent and control communal & targeted violence and also that public servants ensure victims have access to justice and reparation when violence occurs. The functions of the NACHJR/SACHJR are to watch, advise, remind, recommend and warn of consequences if public servants fail to act as per law. The NACHJR or the SACHJRs do not, in any instance, take over any existing powers of any public official or institution, nor supersede the existing law enforcement machinery. They merely monitor to ensure that the system works impartially. The NACHJR/SACHJRs will thus monitor, inquire into complaints, receive or suo moto seek information, and issue advisories and recommendations only when there is alleged inaction or malafide action by public officials and governments. The monitoring mechanism of the National and State Authorities will also provide the ‘paper trail’ to ensure robust accountability of public officials in a court of law. The NACHJR and the SACHJR shall monitor the implementation of the law and prevention of communal and targeted violence. Almost all modern legislations enacted in the last 5 years like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and the Right to Education Act, 2009 have built-in provisions for monitoring and grievance redressal. 6. Bi-partisan selection of members of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice & Reparation (NACHJR): The Bill proposes a bi-partisan Selection Committee for members (including Chairperson) of the NACHJR consisting of the Prime Minister (Chairperson), Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, Leader of Opposition in the Upper House, Minister for Home Affairs, and the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission. 7. Composition of the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation: The Bill proposes a total of 7 members of the NACHJR, of which 4 shall belong to the non-dominant ‘group’ i.e. 4 members must belong either to a linguistic minority in any State in the Union of India, or to a religious minority in any State in the Union of India, or to SCs or STs. Further, no more than 2 members of the NACHJR may be retired public servants. 8. Offences of communal and targeted violence: The Indian Penal Code (IPC) contains most offences committed during episodes of communal and targeted violence. These have been appended in a Schedule to this Bill, and shall be considered offences under this Bill when they meet the threshold of being ‘knowingly directed against any person by virtue of membership of a group’. These offences shall attract the same penalties as laid down in the IPC. Government is currently considering two other forms of violence for inclusion as offences in our statute books, either in the form of amendment bills or new bills. These include brutal forms of Sexual Assault (beyond the limited IPC definition of Rape in S. 375) and Torture. Both these offences have therefore been included in this Bill. Additionally, this Bill defines an offence of Hate Propaganda, because if hate propaganda can be effectively stopped it will enhance the chances of preventing violence. 9. Victims Rights : This Bill seeks to strengthen the rights of the victim in the criminal justice system, through certain provisions in their struggle for justice – from the simple right to information at all stages, the right to get copies of all their statements, to the right to be heard in a court of law, right to protection, right to appeal, and the right to file a complaint with the NACHJR/SACHJR if and when they are aggrieved by failure of the system to protect and secure for them justice and reparations. These provisions are based on the documented experience of the denial of basic rights to victims of non-dominant groups in a State. Indian criminal law is based on the assumption that the State is always on the side of the victim, against the accused, and therefore primarily the rights of the accused need to be protected. The State investigates, prosecutes, and also adduces evidence and appeals. The victim has limited rights in this process. The reality of targeted violence against non- dominant groups is that a biased State may in these cases, be on the side of accused and actively hostile to the victim. This Bill seeks to correct this bias. 10. Relief and Reparation including Compensation for all affected persons whether or not they belong to a non-dominant ‘group: This Bill recognizes that there are no statutory norms and rights for any Indian citizen under present law, for relief, reparation, and compensation. Thus, all affected persons, whether or not they belong to non-dominant groups in a State have been given justiciable rights to immediate relief, and comprehensive reparations, including compensation if they suffer any harm. The Bill casts legal duties on the State to provide rescue, relief, rehabilitation, compensation and restitution, to ensure that all affected persons are restored to a situation better than which prevailed before they were affected by violence. This is based on the experience that some state governments fail to provide even elementary humanitarian services, by refusing to establish relief camps or forcefully disbanding these prematurely. The Bill also recognizes and protects the rights of Internally Displaced Persons, who are temporarily or permanently dislocated because of targeted violence. 11. Compensation – a national standard for all ‘affected persons’: This Bill requires that when there is violence, and citizens lose their lives, livelihoods, and homes, then each devastation must be recognized in the same manner. Each life lost must be compensated for justly and uniformly. Regrettably this has not been the case, and governments have been both arbitrary and selective in awarding compensation to different groups of citizens with different standards of generosity. Compensation must not be a matter of charity or largesse, but a justiciable right with a single uniform standard for every Indian citizen. This Bill provides that compensation shall be paid within 30 days from the date of the incident, and in accordance with a Schedule, which shall be revised every 3 years. No compensation for death shall be less than Rs. 15 lakhs. No compensation for rape shall be less than Rs. 5 lakhs. 12. The Federal Principle: This Bill takes care not to violate in any way the federal nature of our polity. All powers and duties of investigation, prosecution, and trial remain with the State Governments. WHO ARE THE NON-DOMINANT GROUPS IN ANY STATE? The Bill defines non-dominant ‘groups’ as religious or linguistic minorities in any State in the Union of India, and SCs and STs. Examples of non-dominant groups who have, in recent years, come under attack because of their identity in different States and where the State machinery has acted prejudicially, would include Tamils (as a linguistic minority) in Karnataka, Biharis (as a linguistic minority) in Maharashtra, Sikhs (as a religious minority) in Delhi, Muslims (as a religious minority) in Gujarat, Christians (as a religious minority) in Orissa, and Dalits and Tribals in several places in the country. The salient principle is that each of these non-dominant groups in a State may be vulnerable to institutional bias, and thus need special support to restore equality in the way the law works at the local level. ‘Minority’ which refers to both linguistic groups and religious groups, is a shifting category at the level of the States. Thus Biharis, of all religions, constitute a linguistic minority in Maharashtra or in Assam – where they have been vulnerable to attack based on their regional/linguistic identity, but they are dominant in Bihar. Tamil speakers are similarly a linguistic minority in Karnataka, but not in Tamil Nadu. In several states in the Northeast, in Punjab, in the Union territory of Lakshadweep, and in Jammu & Kashmir, Hindus, belonging to any region, are numerically a religious minority. Constitutional arrangements in this regard require that the State of Jammu & Kashmir may suitably domesticate relevant aspects of this legislation, keeping in mind the unique situation prevailing in that State. IS ANY PARTICULAR GROUP THE PERPETRATOR OF COMMUNAL & TARGETED VIOLENCE? The Bill does not classify or assume any particular group to be the perpetrator of communal & targeted violence. The perpetrator of violence could be any person, belonging to any region, language, caste or religion. The Bill is only concerned with ensuring that when the group under attack is non- dominant in that State, then the officers of the State machinery must not be allowed to let bias to breach their impartiality or colour the performance of their sworn legal duty. THE CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE : There exists a clear mandate to legislate on the issue of prevention and control of communal and targeted violence. Positive and rational legislative measures to correct discriminatory exercise of State power draw their strength from the Constitution of India. Article 14 states that ‘the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection of the laws within the territory of India’. Article 21 guarantees right to life and personal liberty, thus State is under duty to protect all its citizens from any kind of violence against them. Article 15 (1) lays down that ‘the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them’. The Constitution thus recognizes that vulnerable groups, defined in Article 15(1), may require protection from discrimination by the State. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and the Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are examples in the Indian legal system of special legislative provisions for vulnerable groups in response to social reality and experience. Entry 2A and 97 under List 1 of the seventh schedule empower the Central Government to enact laws for the protection of life and liberty.

The Kandhamal Report

2011-12-02T21:03:00.001-08:00

WAITI NG FOR JUSTICE: A REPORT OF THE NATIONAL PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL ON KANDHAMALEXECUTIVE SUMMARYA National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on Kandhamal was held in New Delhi on 22-24 August 2010, organized by the National Solidarity Forum - a countrywide solidarity platform of concerned persons from various walks of life. The NPT aimed at assisting the victims and survivors of the Kandhamal violence 2008 to seek justice, accountability and peace and to restore the victim-survivors’ right to a dignified life. The twelve-member jury of the NPT was headed by Justice A.P. Shah (retd.). The Tribunal’s final report was released in Bhubaneswar on 2nd December 2011. The report is based on the testimonies of 45 victims, survivors and their representatives. Additionally, it incorporates and draws upon the contents of studies, field surveys, research, fact-finding reports and statements to the Tribunal that were presented by 15 experts. The 197-paged report is divided into four parts. The first part provides the background and context of the violence in Kandhamal in 2008, and highlights the fundamental aspects of the violence. The second part focuses on the impact of the violence. In separate chapters, this part examines aspects such as freedom of religion, the gendered impact of the violence, impact on children, and the impact on socio-economic and cultural rights. The third part compiles and analyzes the responses to the violence. It encompasses role of the state and democratic institutions, processes of justice and accountability and the aspect of reparations. The fourth and concluding part of the report lays down the concluding observations and the recommendations of the jury. Annexures to the report include details of victim-survivors who deposed before the Tribunal, details of reports / statements presented to the Tribunal and details of members of the Organizing Committee for the Tribunal. MAJOR OBSERVATIONS:• Communal Violence in Orissa: The targeted violence against the adivasi and dalit Christian community in Orissa violates the fundamental right to life, liberty and equality guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and affirmed by the ICCPR, ICESCR, CERD and other international covenants. The brutality of the violence also falls within the definition of ‘torture’ under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Communal forces have used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and incited horrific forms of violence and discrimination against adivasi and dalit Christians. • Violence in Kandhamal: The 2008 attacks in Kandhamal were widespread, and were executed with substantial planning and preparation. The violence meets all the elements of ‘crimes against humanity’ as defined in applicable international law. Christians who refused to abandon their faith and convert to Hinduism were brutally killed or injured. Burning and destruction of property (residential, official and religious / charitable institutions) was also a predominant form of violence. Human rights defenders have been deliberately targeted for their role in assisting victim-survivors. Moveable property, valuable documents and certificates were looted / destroyed to economically impoverish and lower the socio-economic status of the victim-survivors. Evidence of the attacks was systematically and meticulously destroyed in order to scuttle the processes of justice and accountability. • Gendered Impact: The jury observes, with deep concern, the silence that prevails in matters of sexual assault, at various levels including documenting, reporting, investigating, charging and prosecuting cases. The threats of sexual violence against women and their daughters continue, heightening women’s sense of vulnerability. The attacks on women violate constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination on the ground of sex, and other international standards, including the CEDAW. The relief measures undertaken by the government have been marked by gender blindness and did not address women’s special needs for privacy, nutrition, medical and psychological support. There is no implementation of government schemes by which widows, single women and women survivors of violence can be restored to a life with dignity. • Impact on Children: The impoverishment of the victim-survivor community after the violence has had an adverse impact on the children jeopardizing their physical, psychological and intellectual development. Many children have witnessed horrific violence to their close family members and suffer from acute trauma with no access to services of socio – psycho support and healing. Many children have dropped out of school due to the financial inability of the families to bear the expenses, due to fear or discrimination by the school authority. Children having been forced into the labour force, in hazardous conditions, in order to supplement the family income, and have also been trafficked for the purposes of forced labour, sexual exploitation and abuse. • Impact on Socio-economic and Cultural Rights: The violence against Christians has caused large-scale displacement, leaving the victim-survivors with a sense of rootlessness. The destruction of many churches and prayer halls, and the failure to reconstruct them has deprived the victim-survivors of their right to religious practice. The victim-survivor community is unable to freely practise its faith and is thereby reduced to a state of secondary citizenship – an anathema in a democracy like India with a constitution that guarantees fundamental rights. The violence has had an adverse impact on the livelihood and economic well-being of the affected people. Socio-economic boycott of the Christian community continues to be implemented in a variety of ways. The provisions of NREGA too do not benefit them as it is implemented in manner that discriminates against persons on grounds of religion, caste and gender.• Role of State Administration and Public Officials: The jury members observe, with grave concern, the deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties by public officials, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence and a deliberate scuttling of processes of justice through acts of commission and omission. The state agencies have blatantly failed to extend much-needed institutional support to victim-survivors and protect them from attacks to their persons and properties, ostracism, socio-economic boycott and subjugation by non-state actors. The state government has also failed in its responsibility to prevent the violence in Kandhamal in August 2008. • The Justice Process: The jury observes, with deep concern, that the criminal justice system has been rendered ineffective in protecting victim-survivors and witnesses, providing justice and ensuring accountability for the crimes perpetrated. The complicity of the police and their collusion with the perpetrators during the phase of investigation and prosecution, indicate an institutional bias against the targeted Christian adivasi and dalit community. Victims and witnesses engaged in the justice process have been threatened and intimidated, as there is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. Guidelines on witness protection, issued by the Supreme Court and various High Courts, are not followed by the Fast Track courts. Women and child witnesses face extreme vulnerability. The jury further observes that clear gaps exist in substantive, procedural and evidentiary law to prosecute and punish those responsible for targeted mass violence, and that international jurisprudence in this regard has potential relevance for filling the gaps in Indian criminal law. • Reparations: Through the issuance of a notification prohibiting non-profit organizations from conducting rescue and relief work in Kandhamal, the state government abdicated its constitutionally-mandated duty to protect the lives and human rights of vulnerable populations. The dismal conditions in the government-run relief camps are clearly indicative of the indifference of the State government to the plight of victim-survivors. They are violative of the right of victim-survivors to a life with dignity and equality, as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution; and the right of all IDPs to an adequate standard of living, as recognized UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, 1998. The award of meagre compensation to some victim-survivors and its denial to many, defeat the very purpose of awarding compensation - to repair the harm and loss caused to the victim-survivors. The lack of uniform criteria in damage assessment has led to an arbitrary determination of compensation amounts by State authorities whose acts are coloured by institutional bias against the Christian community. The absence of a comprehensive rehabilitation package has prevented the victim-survivors from being restored to a life of dignity. The negative role of public officials in the peace committees and the infiltration of perpetrators in such committees indicate that the state government’s peace initiatives have been a dismal failure. The jury reiterates that while confidence-building measures are of prime importance, these cannot be undertaken in the absence of or as a substitute for processes of justice and accountability, which are the tool for long-lasting peace in the region.MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS:A. Socio-economic and Cultural RightsApply National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and other livelihood schemes of the state and central government to the affected community, without any discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. Act against those engaging in such discrimination. Implement widow pension schemes; provide government jobs to individuals from families of deceased victims, on compassionate grounds; reinstate/reappoint victim-survivors engaged in government jobs prior to the violence and transfer them to areas that they perceive to be safe and secure; provide soft loans for commencement of small businesses. Ensure that relief camps meet the minimum international standards of health, hygiene and privacy for IDPs; they should have facilities to meet the educational and nutritional needs of children, lactating mothers and pregnant women; provide medical and psychological, particularly trauma counselling to the victims/ survivors, with a special attention to the needs of women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Incorporate a separate section in the State policy on relief and rehabilitation that conforms to Article 3 of the Child Rights Convention, as the guiding principle for all relief and rehabilitation work. Recommend that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Commission on Scheduled Castes and the National Commission on Scheduled Tribes assess the needs of children, dalits and adivasis respectively from the affected Christian community in Kandhamal, and make recommendations to appropriate agencies at the state and central levels for ensuring their rehabilitation at the earliest. Address educational needs of the children who have suffered displacement as a result of the violence. Address the long-standing problem of landlessness and land alienation of the dalits and adivasis in a comprehensive manner through land reform and redistribution. B. Legal and Judicial ProcessesIdentify unreported cases of sexual and gender-based violence and include the offence of sexual assault in First Information Reports (FIRs), in cases where it has been ignored and ensure that they are effectively investigated and prosecuted. Enquire into the acts of all public officials named in this Report, and pursue stringent disciplinary, administrative and other legal action against them for grave dereliction of duty, and for collusion and complicity in the crimes committed by the perpetrators. Strictly enforce Sections 153 A and B of the Indian Penal Code (promoting enmity between different groups and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony) in order to proactively prevent programmes that are divisive, propagate hate and incite violence against religious minorities.Constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to re-examine the already registered FIRs for accuracy, examine registrations of fresh FIRs, the trials that resulted in acquittals due to intimidation and/or lack of evidence and recommend the trials that need be transferred or fresh trials be conducted outside Kandhamal. Appoint Special Public Prosecutors who discharge their duties with professional competence and integrity. At the appellate stage in the Orissa High Court a special panel of lawyers to represent the victims of Kandhamal violence should be constituted. Recommend that State Legal Services Authorities set up a legal cell to assist victims in their legal cases and interactions with the police and courts. Provide protection to victims and witnesses before, during and after the trial process according to the guidelines provided in the judgments of the Delhi and Punjab and Haryana High Courts. Take pro-active measures to prevent threat of sexual and gender-based violence to women survivors and their daughters and pay attention to the needs of the child witnesses involved in various proceedings related to the Kandhamal violence. The State Legal Services Authority lawyers to also ensure, that witnesses depose freely and without fear in the fast Track Courts and to bring any incident of intimidation to the notice of the concerned authorities including the Court. State Legal Service Authority to assist the victim- witnesses to initiate appropriate legal action in this regard. Accord special protection to human rights defenders and adequately compensated the damage to their residential and organizational properties so that there are no impediments to their work in assisting victim-survivors with processes of justice and reparations. C. ReparationsAdopt, at the very minimum, the 1984 anti Sikh and 2002 anti Muslim Gujarat compensation package to enhance the compensation already announced. In addition, victims of sexual and gender-based violence should be included as a ground eligible for compensation and employment. Recognize the right of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to return home and create enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return in accordance with the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-based Evictions and Displacement, 2007 and UN Guiding Principles on Internally Displaced Persons. Facilitate the return and reintegration of the affected families back in their villages of habitual residence, or resettle them in safe and secure alternative places of residence that is near to agro-based or other livelihood possibilities. Formulate and implement policies to provide victim-survivors full reparations, which include compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, guarantees that the crimes committed will not be repeated, and forms of satisfaction such as restoration of their dignity and a public acknowledgement of the harm that they have suffered; meeting national and international human rights standards. Include movable properties into the scheme of compensation, and adequately compensate loss of valuables, cash, agricultural produce and cattle, essential documents, household articles and vehicles towards restoring the victim-survivors and their families to the standard of living that they enjoyed prior to the violence.Focus on revival of dignified livelihood options for the affected families, and facilitate a resumption of the livelihood they had pursued prior to the violence. Make a concerted effort at recovery and return of lands that the victim-survivor families had abandoned at the time of the violence, in order that they may pursue agro-based forms of livelihood. Include members of the affected community, particularly women, in all confidence-building and peace-building initiatives by the state and district administration. Substantive participation of women in village level peace committees should be facilitated, rather than a token representation. D. Minority RightsProtect the right to religious freedom and clarify that this freedom means and includes the right to remain animist, areligious and/or atheist, and make any form of forced conversion or reconversion illegal. Formulate a policy / programme to urgently address the issue of institutional bias against the minority Christian community in Kandhamal and other parts of Orissa, through a combination of perspective-building and stringent action that is intended at upholding the rule of law. Review OFRA to ensure that it does not violate the right to religious freedom as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and international law. Review the definition of the Scheduled Castes in The Presidential Order of 1950, on the basis of the discrimination experienced by members of schedule castes even after conversion. Implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities, issued in their reports of January, April and September 2008 with immediate effect. **********

A Pastor in interrogated by Shariah Mullahs, arrested by State Police in Srinagar, Kashmir

2011-11-26T07:16:00.001-08:00

Conversions, Shariah kangaroo courts, the law of the land and fragile unity of minoritiesJOHN DAYALIn retrospect, the church in India has displayed remarkable sobriety and a sense of responsibility in their response to the arrest in Srinagar of Reverend Chander Mani Khanna, pastor of the All Saints Church. The Muslim Ulema of the rest of India have been reluctant to condemn the arrest, precipitated by the demand of a local Mufti. The vital issues of the rights of minorities, and freedom faith are however involved, which impinge on all minorities even in states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Orissa and remain relevant in Kashmir. I suppose one can understand their reluctance in the backdrop of the complexities and sensitivities involved in anything that is concerned with the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The same is the reason perhaps for the silence of civil society in India and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Only journalists and activists Seema Mustafa in New Delhi and Javed Anand in Mumbai have dared spoken, pleading for caution but articulating the voice of sanity and freedom.Before anything else, it is important to recall the political geography of Jammu and Kashmir. It is, of course, an inseparable member state of the Union of India, as patriotic voices constantly remind us. It was once ruled by a Hindu King, the late Hari Singh, not much liked by the large Muslim population of the Valley of Srinagar, which is one of the three district entities that make up the state. The other two are the areas of Jammu, with a huge Hindu population and a record number of temples, and Ladakh, an almost entirely Buddhist region with just a handful of Muslims, Hindus and Christians. The tiny Christian minority in the State lives largely in the Jammu region, mostly of Dalit origin, with about 500 in the valley and a much smaller population in Ladakh. For some time after Independence and the ascension of the state to the Union of India, J and K, as it is known popularly, had its own prime minister and sadr-e-riyasat, [head of state] Karan Singh, before they were designated chief minister and Governor respectively. Special status is accorded to the State under Article 370, many Indian institutions have no jurisdiction in the state and many laws have to be extended to the region through the state legislature.India and Pakistan have fought four wars over the State, the last being the infamous Kargil glacier encounter which cost both countries precious human lives with tension still prevailing in the uninhabitable heights. In the habitable valley, there is another confrontation. Half a million Indian soldiers, by some counts, are in the valley tackling both the border situation and a continuing confrontation with terrorists as well as with the civilian population, The confrontation has been violent most of the time. Many innocents have been killed, entirely illegally. Women and children have been victims. A major victim of the communalised situation in the valley has been the exodus of the Hindu Pundit population to Jammu, Delhi and refugee camps elsewhere. A sad aftermath has been the rise of fundamentalism and the supremacy of a doctrinaire kind of politico-religious Islamic clergy.The seeds of the confrontation with the Christian community lies in the powerful segment of this clergy which is carving out its space in challenge to the established state government, the other political groups, the military and the political parties. As Seema Mustafa points out, the vast majority of Kashmiris in the valley, all Muslim, are peaceful people adhering to a soft and melodious Sufi Islam, far removed from the stridency of Wahabism espoused by the extremist groups. But there do not seem to be any routes of approaches to the aggressive clergy,Apart from the confrontation with the state forces, and the occasional violence on the small number of Pundits who remain in Srinagar and some rural areas of the valley, there has been violence against Christians in the past too. On 26 February 2011 , the school run by a Christian family was burnt. The government helped with the reconstruction. Before this the Tyndale Biscoe School Tangmarg was burnt , The Good Shepherd School of the Roman Catholic church at Pulwama was burnt. The community as a whole has suffered much, in silence. The people, who speak with us on conditions of anonymity, and the family of Rev Khanna, say the situation is very volatile and bad, stressing they do not want to add fire to the situation there at present “but try to apply some political pressure from outside the state in an silent manner so that we get what we want and the lives of people are safe also”.This is a sentiment shared by Seema Mustafa who says “We must take into account the sensitivity of Kashmir as it is different from Madhya Pradesh and UP. That is imperative or anything you say will create more trouble than the initial trouble itself. Unlike the popular perception created here, Kashmiris are secular people and we can reach out to many there to ensure that sane voices emerge. The state government has created additional trouble with the arrest, and that needs to be countered as well. The separatists can be persuaded to give a statement for secular harmony, I am sure, as can civil society, and for the release of the pastor. But it has to be worked out properly.’Pastor Khanna is a well known personality in Srinagar. Dr Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and outgoing secretary of the National United Christian Forum, says “I have known Rev. Khanna for many years. He in fact was involved in reconciliation work in Kashmir valley. He confidently went to Srinagar from Jammu, much against the advice of all. I am sure that he has done no wrong. We need to move soon on some sort of a dialogue to stop rumours, the latest being; now it is the turn of Christians to leave the valley. There are about 400 Christians working in schools and hospitals, a few in government service.” The events leading up to Khanna’s formal arrest at the behest of a Mullah, the Grand Mufti, have opened up serious questions that need to be addressed. Pastor Khanna had baptised some people in the church during the regular baptism ceremonies. A few of those were former Muslims who had been coming to the church for a long time. All were adults. A video was made of this event and put on YouTube on the Internet. The pastor was summoned, not by the police, but by the Mufti, He was questioned for seven hours, harangued, threatened. The government became scared, or possibly wanted to divert attention from other on-going crises in the state, not the least of which is an accusation against chief minister Omar Abdullah of involvement in the murder of a member of his own party who had become a criminal.The police told Khanna they were protecting him, then raided his church, and finally arrested him on charges of fomenting communal strife. The church feels cornered. It took days for the local church to make statement. The NHRC, National Commission for Minorities and he National Advisory Council and others are silent though they have been informed by many. The political parties are mute. Civil society is dead in Srinagar, and silent in India. No group of activists has yet denounced the arrest or the kangaroo court. Right wing Hindutva groups agree with the mullahs. Political action is patently required and people have call upon the President of India, the prime minister, the governor of the state of J and K and the leaders of various political groups to take steps to get the priest out of the police lockupAbove all, the frail relationship between Muslims and Christians -- both minorities in India – is under great stress. Remember, Christians had made common cause with Muslims in their hour of crisis in Gujarat 2002 and elsewhere.The media, as usual, seems barking up the wrong tree, giving tendentious stories, not questioning how religious groups over-rule or act on behalf of the police. This is how a local newspaper reported the episode: Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Central Kashmir Range, A G Mir told ‘Kashmir Images’ that Khanna has been arrested by Police Station Ram Munshi Bagh and FIR 186 of 2011 under section 153A and 295A registered against him. Police have also registered a case against six unidentified Kashmiri youngsters who were allegedly baptized by the Christian priest. Kashmir’s Grand Mufti, Mufti Bashir-ud-din last month summoned the priest to his court to explain about the alleged attempts of conversion. The Pastor, however, was out of station and had sought time to appear before the Grand Mufti, who heads Court of Islamic Jurisprudence in Kashmir. And finally when Khanna presented himself before a group of 15 Islamic scholars and representatives of various religious groups headed by the Grand Mufti, he denied his involvement first, but later on confessed his complicity. Initially he did not accept that he was doing this,” Mufti Bashiruddin said. The Pastor reportedly said he was on a “peace mission promoting communal harmony between Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians. But when confronted by some boys, he had no option but to accept,” the Grand Mufti said, adding that they had a CD containing evidence about how the Pastor was performing conversions. The Pastor has confessed to having converted 15 boys so far and promised to give their list to the Grand Mufti, reports said. “The Pastor said some NGOs and intellectuals were with him in this mission and some of them had accompanied him to South Africa to preach Christianity,” said the Grand Mufti. Terming the issue a “grave” one, he said Muslim ‘Ulema’ (scholars) from various organizations including the Jamat-e-Islami, the Jamiat-e-Ahle Hadees, the Islamic Study Circle and the Nadwatul Ulema would meet again to take a final decision.As of now I have reserved my judgment. The Ulema council was scheduled to meet on November 19, but it has been postponed,” the Grand Mufti said.”The Church of North India and the local Christian community deny any wrong doing by the pastor. They have also reaffirmed their resolve to continue with their mission of service in the valley and the state.The most incisive comment has come from Javed Anand, general secretary, Muslims for Secular Democracy of Mumbai. ” Addressing the media, Kashmir’s grand mufti, Mohammed Bashiruddin warned that such activities “warrant action as per Islamic law” and will not be tolerated. “There will be serious consequences of this. We will implement our part and the government should implement its," the mufti thundered. What’s Islamic law and a shariah court doing in a secular democratic polity? ... For what crime has Khanna been booked? Unlike states like Gujarat, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, J&K does not have a law against conversions. But where there is a will there’s a way. The pastor has been charged under sections 153A and 295A of the Ranbir Penal Code, the J&K equivalent of the Indian Penal Code. Section 153A pertains to the offense of “Promoting enmity between different groups…” and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”. Section 295A has to do with “Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”.“Why should conversion of a few Muslims to Christianity be deemed a malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings? Why should it be tantamount to promoting enmity between different groups? These might be questions for you and me. But Omar Abdullah and his police may well be wondering whether the FIR and the arrest are enough to douse the flames. The worse quite possibly is yet to come. A Dharma Sansad comprising of leaders of different Muslim sects in Kashmir is to meet soon to deliberate over the “grave issue” and decide on further course of action. The responses to the video-clip have apparently been venomous. "We promise to kill all Christian missionaries and burn their buildings, schools and churches!" pronounces one of them while another proclaims, "We should burn this priest to death!" Echoes of Pakistan’s obnoxious blasphemy laws?“It is far from clear whether the priest is in fact guilty of a cash-for-conversion deal. Only a thorough and impartial investigation could establish if there’s any truth in the charge. But in the brand of Islam the grand mufti and most mainstream Muslim organizations espouse, the issue of inducement is irrelevant. The theology is simple: for conversion into Islam, there’s Divine reward aplenty for both the converter and the converted; but conversion out of Islam is gunaah-e-azeem(mahapaap), treason of the highest order, deserving of the harshest punishment.” Human rights groups and Muslim bodies from the Valley and elsewhere especially, must denounce the hounding of the pastor and the ‘Islamisers’ reminded that Article 25 of the Indian Constitution guarantees to all citizens “the right freely to profess, practice and propagate (their) religion”.The last word, of course has not been said. Even as efforts continue to get the pastor out of prison on bail, or to get him transferred to the Jammu jail for safety reasons, National Commission for Minorities vice chairman Dr. Hmar T Sang liana was paying a visit to Srinagar to meet with various groups and the government. Efforts were also on to open a dialogue with various national and Kashmir Muslim groups for a long term peace with a broad basic agreement that the dialogue must continue in an environment of mutual understanding, and not in short term grandstanding. The government, meanwhile, is being encouraged to stick to the points in law and not to exacerbate the situation in the guise of buying peace.- - -[First published in Indian Currents, New Delhi]

RESPONDING TO THE MURDER OF SISTER VALSA JOHN IN JHAKHAND

2011-11-20T01:42:00.001-08:00

Activist and Whistle-blower Sr Valsa John pays with her life for defending the Tribals’ ownership of their land, minerals and forests JOHN DAYAL It was proper that the candlelight vigil in memory of Sister Valsa John of Dumka, Jharkhand, on Friday 18th November 2011 at New Delhi’s Sacred Heart Cathedral became a celebration of her life, the work of Christian activists in defence of the rights and dignity of the poor, tribals, dalits and marginalised.It also posed a challenge to the Church in general if it would retreat in fear at the brutality of Valsa’s sacrifice, or get courage from the luminescence of her sacrifice and go deeper into territories of human rights still uncharted -- obeying the demands of Caritas in Veritate, love and the Truth underpinning the social teachings of the church. It also had a message for the State, the government and the political, bureaucratic and criminal justice system – will they wake up to the threat posed to society in general and to whistle blowers and rights defenders in particular from the unholy regime of impunity and the conspiracy between vested interests in governance and the corporate sector for whom profits are God.Valsa John’s fellow activists in Jharkhand, New Delhi and elsewhere, mourned a comrade. The gathered Archbishops, Bishops, Nuns, Priests and Laity felt the loss of a person who heard the call of God when she was already working as a teacher. Valsa had responded to that call with an alacrity and sincerity that surely will remain a lesson for many more than just her congregation, the illustrious Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. To the common people, Sr. Valsa John is a Martyr whose blood would not go in vain. But they also wanted to find out why she was murdered, calling for a high level enquiry, possibly by the Central Bureau of Investigations, into the criminal conspiracy behind her dastardly murder because Jharkhand State’s police investigation and justice system are rickety at best, and often part of the corporate and mafia conspiracies.Sr Valsa John, 52, is the fourth social activist killed in unexplained circumstances in India this year. Like many other activists, trade union leaders and Right To Information crusaders, she had a premonition of her death, and had warned friends and relative, and perhaps even the police, that she feared a brutal end. Valsa was brutally murdered in her room in a rented house in Pachaura, In Pakur in Dumka district of Jharkhand late at night on Tuesday, 15th November 2011. The bloodstained floor of Sister Valsa’s room bore testimony to the violence. She had been attacked by a group, said to number anywhere from two dozen to forty men armed with swords, axes and other weapons. Her head was nearly severed from her body. Some Maoist literature and a spade were left behind, possibly as a ruse. Many immediate theories were floated to account for the attack. One was that Valsa may have incurred the wrath of a group of local criminals for seeking justice for a raped tribal girl and that may have been the immediate provocation . Valsa had sought an appointment with Pakur deputy commissioner S K Singh after the Amrapara police refused to lodge an FIR against the alleged rapists. Singh did not deny that an appointment had been sought, newspapers reported, quoting him as saying “She may have contacted my office for an appointment.” Amrapara police maintained no FIR about a rape had been lodged at the police station, although they detained two persons for questioning today in connection with the murder. A deathly silence remains in Pachaura, the village where Valsa was butchered. The local media too has taken sides, some imputing motives. The local reporters of the large media such as the Times of India have particularly come in for scrutiny for their apparently biased reporting.Valsa was laid to rest at the Christian cemetery at Dudhani in Dumka on 17th November after the Mass in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Her eldest brother, Baby Malamel, and two of her nephews, from Kochi were present for the funeral. About 600 to 700 people were present for the funeral, 200 of whom were from the village Pachaura where she lived.Even as her body as buried in the Jharkhand she had come to love, Valsa has been espoused by national and international organisations working in Human Rights. Amnesty International asked for an enquiry at the highest level, suspecting the hand of mining mafia. Cardinal Telesphore Toppo called it a shame for the state. Officials of almost every church organisation – from the Catholic and Syrian Churches to the Evangelical and Pentecost denominations, made common cause, calling her a martyr in the cause of serving the poor, as mandated by Jesus Christ who she loved so dearly.Sr Mary Scaria, an Advocate of the Supreme Court of India and also an activist, recalled Sr Valsa as a member of her own congregation, the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary known for their work in education and activists in various parts of the country. The Congregation was founded on the 4th November in 1803, in a little village of Lovendegem in the diocese of Gent, Belgium by the parish priest, Fr. Peter Joseph Triest, in the aftermath of the French Revolution which left so much poverty and misery, specially that of the children. On 4 November 2003 the Congregation celebrated 200 hundred years of living out the charism of the Sisters of Charity. Following the footsteps of the founder, no challenge was too great, no request too trivial and no one too precious. This has been a sacred history during which every milestone has seen the deepening of the threefold dimension of the SCJM life of love - Love for God her father, love for one another and love for all peoples especially the poor, the abandoned and those who are deprived of love and dignity in the world. The sisters are active in England, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Israel, Rwanda, Mali, Congo, South Africa, Venezuela, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Republic of Central Africa and Rome. The Mother house of the Congregation is in Ghent, Belgium.This was the congregation Valsa chose to be her destiny.Valsa was born on 19 March 1958 at Vazhakala village of Idappally in Ernakulam District of Kerala, the second child of her parents. A good student, she went on to become a teacher in her home town’s St. Pius UP School,. Her life still felt unfulfilled, and one day Valsa decided she would live and work for the poor and exploited people of our country. The Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary had a convent in her village and she approached them and told them about her wish. They told her that the SCJM sisters work in the rural areas, mainly among the marginalized people and through this congregation; she would be able to fulfil her desire. She did not hesitate. After her religious training she was assigned to Palamu district. In 1993 she came to Sahibganj district and worked with the Jesuit Fathers at Kodma. She was transferred to Jiapani Mission in 1995.Jesuit priest and tribal intellectual-activist Dr Marianus Kujur says “If she wanted she could have had a cosy and comfortable life in ‘God’s own country’, where she started her career as a teacher more than 20 years ago. But she did not.She came to Pachaura in 1998 and the anti-mines movement in the area started in 2000, working for the people in coal mining areas of Jharkhand for 12 years and guided them in their struggles. She perhaps did not realise it then, but she was joining a distinguished band of people who had fought for the right of the tribals. Long ago in the 1880s, suffocated by injustice and oppression from all sides visionary leader Sido of Bognadih village near Barhait sent a clarion call to all the Santhals to get organized and rise up in arms. His brothers Kanhu, Chand and Bhairav and his sisters Phulo and Jhano too joined him to give his leadership shape and substance. This, historians recall, resulted in the legendary Santhal rebellion of 1855, which swept the British administrators off their feet.Valsa landed in the midst of important developments – the issue of rights over the coal in that mineral rich region. Kataldih village near Amrapara block in Pakur district has reserves of good quality of coal on a very large scale The main users are the Punjab State Electricity Board and the private sector Emta Group of companies – collectively called the Panem coal mines..Human Rights group Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, PUCL, investigated the issue back in 2003 and published a detailed report on the Pachaura coal mining project when the media began reporting resistance from local tribals to the Project. The PSEB is a ‘public utility service’ wholly owned by the Government of Punjab. By a letter of the Ministry of Coal and Mines (Department of Coal), letter No. 47011/1(4) 2000- CPAM dated 26th December, 2001, Pachaura Central Block was allotted to the PSEB for captive mining for supply of coal on an exclusive basis to its own power plants. The PSEB formed a Joint Venture Company, PANEM Coal Mines Limited, with Eastern Minerals and Trading Agency (EMTA) to produce, supply, transport and deliver coal from the coalmines of Pachaura Central Block, exclusively to PSEB thermal power stations. According to Gazette notification, by the Ministry of Coal and Mines (Department of Coal) F.no.38011/4/2002 CA, dated Feb.22, 2002, the Central Government specified “as an end use the supply of Coal from the Pachaura Central Block by PANEM Coal Mines Limited on an exclusive basis to the power plants of Punjab Electricity Board for generation of thermal power.PUCL noted that the Government surveyed and delineated the whole area covering 41 square kilometers with demarcated divisions such as North, South and Central Blocks. Pachaura Central Block is given to PSEB. This Block measures approximately 13 square kilometers covering nine revenue villages (mouzas) such as Singhdehri, Taljhari, Kathaldih, Chilgo, Bisunpur, Dangapara, Amjhari, Liberia and Pachaura. It is estimated that Pachaura Central Block holds 562 million ton of coal reserve. Out of this reserve it was proposed that in an area of approximately 13 square kilometers open cast mining will be done in 11 square kilometers. The Central Block envisaged 44 years of open cast mining to extract 289 million tons of coal. The Jharkhand Government is expected to get annual royalty at the rate of Rs. 100 crores.The Government claimed it was legally within its power to acquire land for specific purpose given the Land Acquisition Act. The PUCL team heard the local people who said “We have been living here for long. Our forefathers Sido and Kanhu and their followers sacrificed their lives and won for us freedom from oppression and gave us an identity. And all of a sudden, like a bolt from the blue, we hear that someone is coming to enter our premises and oust us as if we are encroachers and criminals.”The people knew that that elsewhere in Santhal Parganas, at Lalmatia and at Chitra, collieries have displaced and decimated tribals and most of the promises of rehabilitation remained only on paper. The PUCL report highlighted that the tribal community is a cohesive community with its communitarian mode of living, interaction and decision-making. It depends on a life close to nature with its rivers and forests, with agricultural fields and grazing lands, places of communitarian gatherings for festivals and village functions. It also has its ancestral abode right in its midst. It is in this socio-cultural phenomenon they live and conduct their affairs. Their homes may be mud walled and grass roofed but they have a beauty and functional practicality of their own. Land is their most important natural and valuable asset and imperishable endowment from which the tribals derive their sustenance, social status, economic and social equality, permanent place of abode and work and living. It is a security and source fr economic empowerment. Therefore, the tribes too have great emotional attachment to their lands.Civil servant and later Commissioner for Scheduled Tribes Dr. B. D. Sharma has noted this was the thesis behind Jawaharlal Nehru’s Panchsheel which enunciated that “ people would develop along the lines of their own genius and we should avoid imposing anything on them. We should try to encourage in every way their own traditional arts and culture. Tribal rights in land and forest should be respected. We should try to build up a team of their own people to do the work of administration and development. Some technical personnel from outside will, no doubt, be needed, especially in the beginning. But we should avoid introducing too many outsiders into tribal territory. We should not over administer these areas or overwhelm them with a multiplicity of schemes. We should rather work through, and not in rivalry to, their own social and cultural institutions. We should judge results, not by statistics, or the amount of money spent, but by the quality of human character that is evolved.”This was codified in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution which is an integral scheme of the Constitution with direction, philosophy and anxiety to protect the tribes from expropriation. Its objective is ‘to preserve tribal autonomy, their culture and economic empowerment to ensure social, economic and political justice for preservation of peace and good government in the Scheduled Areas. B D Sharma said all actions of the State must be in furtherance of the above Constitutional objective and dignity of persons belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, preserving the integrity of the Scheduled Areas and ensuring distributive justice as an integral scheme thereof. The executive in the name of the Governor stands vested with all the necessary powers, perhaps more, for achieving the aforesaid objectives.”. Sr Valsa John believed in this thesis of justice for the tribals.The sustained resistance of the people forced the PSEB to work out a rehabilitation package which included monetary compensation, employment against land in exceptional circumstances only to fill vacancies, jobs for one member of a family which has lost three or more acres of land, Sr Valsa had been jailed in 2007 for protesting against the forced acquisition of adivasi lands for Panem. It was because of her role in negotiations with all the authorities that a more comprehensive agreement was worked out. The agreement with Panem paved the way for alternate land, employment, a health centre and free education for the children of the displaced families. Apart from economic rehabilitation and resettlement benefits, the company agreed to fill the pits of the open cast mines, level them, put good sand, make it cultivable and give back the land to the people. It agreed to a crop compensation for the land under mining at Rs. 6000 per acre per year, a share of the profit to the people (Rs. 10,000 per acre per year) till they fill the pits and give back the land to the people and undertaking to level the remaining land of the people and make it fit for better cultivation using lift irrigation facilities. The company also agreed to jobs for the affected people, free education, a hospital with all modern facilities, quarters with four rooms and a veranda and the standard facilities under existing government rules.As the local media now reports, there were some who were dissatisfied with the agreement Valsa had reached. No one knows if any of these disgruntled elements are a part of the conspiracy.For civil society, Sr Valsa’s murder is part of another chain too. Three other social activists have been killed this year after fighting on behalf of victims of human rights violations and marginalized communities, or using India’s Right to Information legislation to expose human rights violations and government corruption. In November 2011, Nadeem Sayed, a Gujarat-based activist, was stabbed to death after he testified on behalf of the victims of the Naroda Patiya massacre case in which 95 persons had been killed during the 2002 Gujarat anti-Muslim riots. In August, environmental activist Shehla Masood, 35, was shot dead in Bhopal city in August after trying to expose environmental violations of urban infrastructure projects and challenging mining plans in Madhya Pradesh. In March, Jharkhand social activist Niyamat Ansari was abducted and killed after he used the Right to Information legislation to expose local contractors and officials who had embezzled funds earmarked for the rural poor. Suspicions centre around armed Maoists because Ansari's exposes threatened their share of the embezzled funds in return for protecting the corrupt contractors and officials.India’s civil society has been demanding new legislation to protect activists who received threats after filing petitions demanding crucial information affecting the livelihoods of local communities. For the Church and the Christian community, the brutal murder of Sr Valsa has to be also seen in a different light. This certainly is not a question of persecution of a minority community. Sr Valsa was in Dumka not as a proselyser, as some in the print and electronic media make her seem, but as a human rights activist obeying her calling. But the murder does have a critical mission dimension. After being battered into some sort of submission to the will of the state during the seven year regime of the pro Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, and the last eight years of an insipid United Progressive Alliance, the church is at the cusp, or the precipice, of a great rethink.The State has betrayed the Church on the issue of rights to Dalit Christians. It has given no clear answer in the Supreme court which is hearing Writ petitions by various groups on restoring the rights of Dalit Muslims and Christians which they enjoyed before the passing of the 1950 Presidential Order. The State has also shown no signs of reversing the notorious Freedom of Faith laws enacted by many Congress and BJP ruled States. The government is also playing an insidious game in using the Right to Education Act to “tame” the church institutions. These are signals as much as the central government’s silence to the call of that great Hindutva leader, oncologist Dr Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad who has called for the beheading of anyone who converts a single Hindu. Any other person would have been in jail for saying less.Will the church be cowed down before this building pressure. There are some murmurs saying that the church must focus on faith and leave social action to others. A section of the Church wants to focus on insinuation building. A small but influential section of the church wants to stress its “nationalistic” credentials to cosy up to the right wing Hindutva elements and evade their political wrath. But this is not the majority of the Church.One is happy to note a strong spine in all denominations of the Church. The recent mass movement, which the church supported in Tamil Nadu, is an indication of this. The Bishop and priests who participated in the movement against an ill planned nuclear power plant in Koodankulam where villagers of Idinthakarai staged relay hunger strikes to protest against the Koodankulam nuclear plant whose safety has been called into question. Right wing propagandists, politicians and a section of the media have joined hands to demonize the Church. It is heartening to see the brave response of the people and the religious who hold the public cause to be superior to their own well being. The situation in Orissa, Chhatisgarh and several other states may demand the same fortitude and courage from the church. The Nun working in a distant forest hamlet, or standing in challenge to the conspiracy of mafia, police and the corporate sector, is proof that the church actually practices its theoretical preferential commitment to the poor.

Say NO To the Big N

2011-09-28T22:19:00.001-07:00

People’s life and livelihood versus nuclear power for industry JOHN DAYAL It is the life and the livelihood of the poorest of the poor versus a nation’s ambitions in nuclear energy for industry and super-powerdom in Koodankulam in south India.A lakh of men, women and children demonstrated earlier this month at the, several of them launching a ten daylong hunger-strike, demanding a stop to the Russia-assisted construction of a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant which has triggered a nagging controversy both on its physical safety, following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and its impact on the environment affecting the livelihood of several million boatmen and fisher-folks along the Coromandel coast.It made international news was the presence of a large number of Catholic Priests and Nuns, many of them born in the area and umblically connected with the people whose cause they so openly espoused. Catholics and other Christian denominations form a significant part of the coastal population of Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and of neighbouring maritime states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, most of them subsisting on fishing and prawn farming, both sensitive to a warming of sea currents because of unchecked waste water discharge.According to a UCAN report , the people came from 20 Catholic villages and a dozen others around Koodankulam from the districts of Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli. The agency interviewed some of the demonstrators.“Russian nuclear technology has failed in Chernobyl. Why should we use it here to endanger our lives,” said Bishop Yuvon Ambroise of Tuticorin and chairperson of the Office for Justice, Peace and Development (JPD) at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. Bishop Ambroise said the country should look to Europe and Japan as an example.“India should follow Germany and Japan, who recently announced that they are giving up their nuclear facilities after the Fukushima disaster.” “Our lives are in danger because of the nuclear plant,” said Bishop Peter Remigius of Kottar. “We want the facilities to be used for useful purposes.” Medha Patkar, who mothered the Narbada Bachao movement against big damns said questions remained over why the government had approved the facility in an inhabited area despite environmental concerns. After more than a week, the agitation was called off when the Union government and the administrations of Puducherry and Tamil Nadu, the two affected States, called a temporary halt to work on the nuclear plant and promised talks with the local people. The Tamil Nadu Cabinet of chief minister J Jayalalitha is to pass a formal resolution and send it over to the Union Government. Prime minister Manmohan Singh will have to take a call on the issue after he returns from New York where is attending the General Assembly of the United nations. It remains a moot question if the government will indeed halt further work and eventually shut down the existing units of the plant. Fears are it will not.Nuclear energy, for war and for peace, remains locked in a fierce stranglehold of hyper nationalism and the needs of the growing economy in a country whose people aspire to be a global superpower in the not too distant future. This nationalism has made real debate on safety and security issues all but taboo in the country, with just a handful of activists and academics involved in any genuine debate. Years of nuclear isolation, when its only technological support was from the then Soviet Union, accentuated India’s paranoia that the world wanted to keep it away from cheap power for its growth. A clandestine nuclear military experiment exploded India into the Big Power club when the regime of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi carried out an underground blast in the early 1980s in the desert sands of Rajasthan. Two decades later, the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, leading a National Democratic alliance collation headed by his own Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, carried out a series of explosions in the same testing grounds. Pakistan, neighbour and traditional enemy, followed suit with its own nuclear experiments. Both countries today have an estimated more than two hundred strategic nuclear warheads mounted on ground and air-borne missiles, and possibly also on warships. This show of might, and an end of the soft military alliance with Russia, has helped India reach pacts in nuclear material with the US and Europe who look on the expanding Indian market with deep interest. Electricity for industry and homes remains a critical need for India, which does not have great reserves of oil, and only limited reserves of high grade coal for hydrocarbon-fuelled thermal power plants. With most of its northern rivers flowing through unstable seismic regions prone to earthquakes, the safety of existing hydel power plants has been called into question. The collapse of the tunnels in the Teesta river project in the north eastern state of Sikkim in the recent earthquake had revived the paranoia first evoked when a quake hit the Koyna dam in Maharashtra some years ago. Jawaharlal Nehru and his scientific advisers thought succour lay in clean nuclear energy. In 1962 Homi Bhabha, the father of atomic energy in India, projected 20,000 mw in nuclear generation capacity by 1987 based on imported reactors. The target, and future targets, could never rally be achieved. The Department of Atomic Energy which owns the largely indigenous nuclear power program now has a target of 20,000 MWe for 2020 and expects to have 63,000 MWe nuclear capacity on line by 2032. It aims to supply 25 per cent of electricity from nuclear power by 2050. Because India is outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due to its weapons program, it was for 34 years largely excluded from trade in nuclear plant or materials, which has hampered its development of civil nuclear energy until 2009. Due to these trade bans and lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium. Its current energy derived from nuclear plans is 5,000 mw.According to the government’s own assessments, quoted in the media, electricity demand in the country is increasing rapidly, and the 830 billion kilowatt hours produced in 2008 was triple the 1990 output, though still represented only some 700 kWh per capita for the year. Because of the massive transmission line losses, this resulted in only 591 billion kWh consumption. Coal provides 68 per cent of the electricity at present, natural gas 8 per cent, hydro-electric units giving 14 percent more The per capita electricity consumption figure is expected to double by 2020, with 6.3% annual growth, and reach 5000-6000 kWh by 2050. By the way, there are many who blame coal based units for pollution and question the security and safety, even the displacement potential, of dams meant for irrigation and power.The crippling of the Fukusima plant in Japan in the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 has for once brought the safety debate into the public domain. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s global expert fact-finding group has in its June report said “there were insufficient defence for tsunami hazards” the likes of which devastated the Coromandel coast of India, as also Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka, some years ago. The Nuclear Power Corp. of India has undertaken safety evaluation of 20 operating power plants and nuclear power plants under construction, suggesting a series of safety procedures, specially for plants along the coastline.The nuclear power lobby says the Russian VVER reactors of 1000 MWe are considered to be quite safe, unlike the Chernobyl graphite RBMK reactors. They have many safety features built in to them, and have an operating life of 40 years. The reactors at Koodankulam have an added “passive cooling” system for additional safety. The more advanced VVER 1200 reactors, with more safety features, are being built in Russia, and would be available for the future expansion of Koodankulam. While 30 VVER-1000 reactors have been built, 19 more are planned or are under construction. China has built two such reactors at the Tainwan nuclear power plant and is constructing six more. The VVER 1000 built in China has 94 per cent of its systems automated, i.e. the plant can control itself under most situations. The IDEA has referred to the Tainwan station as the “safest nuclear power plant in the world”.The lobby says the Koodankulam reactors can be considered to be adequate from the safety standpoint. “There would be no rational reason for stopping the project at this stage, when it is over 95 per cent completed.” The plant is far from major seismic activity, it is said, and therefore the risks are manageable.This is challenged by anti Nuclear activists such as the pioneering journalist Praful Bidwai who has carried out a safety campaign for more than twenty years.The environment impact on the ocean is a more urgent issue. The Koodankulam thermal power plant will require large amounts of cooling water, an estimated 70 cubic metres per second, which will be heated up while going through the coils of the nuclear power plant and will be discharged into the sea. The impact of this warm water on the marine environment is said to be difficult to assess, and would depend on the sea depth, flow rates, and ecology. There have also been some allegations of the health effects of radiation on people living in the vicinity of nuclear power plants elsewhere in India.But India has clearly indicated it will not abandon the quest for nuclear energy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is emphatic about the future of India’s nuclear energy programme, saying “there would be no looking back on nuclear energy,: and in fact proposing expanding India’s civil nuclear energy with adequate safety measures. Indian civil society is not convinced if the measures will really be adequate to prevent a future disaster. Koodankulam and the fishermen in its neighbourhood remain apprehensive.

Killing the Communal Violence Prevention draft bill

2011-09-20T23:54:00.001-07:00

KILL BILL- Or how the BJP and its friends across party lines tried to shoot down the draft Communal Violence Bill in the NIC meetingJOHN DAYALI must begin with a Disclaimer: I was a member of the Working Group of the Mrs Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council which drafted the Prevention of Communal Violence [Access to Justice and Reparations] Bill 2011. I am also a member of the National Integration Council. In the council’s belated meeting on 10th September 2011 in the magnificent Vigyan Bhawan, I was the solitary Christian Member – of the other two, St Stephens College principal Dr. Valson Thampu did not attend, and Delhi Archbishop Vincent Concessao was away in Rome – to speak and support the enactment of such a Bill, which otherwise came in for a brutal drubbing at the hands of Bharatiya Janata party’s parliamentary leaders Mrs Shushma Swaraj of the Lok Sabha and Mr Arun Jaitely of the Rajya Sabha, and the party’s chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, leaders of most major non Congress parties and even the bosses of some Satellite TV channels. My views in this article may, therefore, be somewhat biased, and if they are, it is despite my trying hard to be absolutely neutral. I may also point out that during the framing of this draft Bill, I, together with jurists Vrinda Grover and Usha Ramanathan and activist Shabnam Hashmi, have been a critic of many a provision relating to a feared erosion of the federal character of our governance and possible allusions to “disturbed areas” which are anathema to many of us in the civil liberties movement. The NAC accepted over 57 objections before publishing its draft Bill.Having said that, I fear that there has been a possible attempt in some official quarters to kill this Bill even before it has formally seen the light of the day by being send to the Cabinet, then introduced in Parliament, discussed in select committees and then debate openly on the floor of the Rajya Sabha [where an apparition of a 2005 Bill still lives] before being passed and signed into law. The manner in which it was allowed to be mauled in the open meeting of the National Integration Council – just four of us really supported it, three being social activists – put a huge question mark on why the Bill was so prematurely put before political opponents for their views, and why no one from the government or from the Congress Party spoke, or was allowed to speak, in defence of either the Bill or the rational for coming up with suitable legislation to save religious minorities of all sorts from targetted violence. The Bill came into being from the group experiences of the anti Muslim pogroms of Gujarat in 2002, the attempted annihilation of Christians in Kandhamal, Orissa in 2007-2008, the haunting memories of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and other cities, together with attacks on Dalits and Tribals over the past few decades. The government had come up with a Bill in 2005, but when it presented its version in the Rajya Sabha, it was clear that the administration was empowering governments and police rather than protecting and defending the victims. It took five years of hard labour by civil society and specially by the Muslim groups, led by the likes of former Chief Justice Ahmadi and several retired high court judges, before the government agreed there was need to revise the Bill thoroughly.The National Integration Council took upon itself the task of drafting the proposed new Bill, together with other social legislation it was working on including the Right to Food. It set up a working group with members Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi as coordinators and experts and activists representing the minorities, legal luminaries and others on the team. It took close to a year before the Bill took some share, seeing bitter and prolonged discussions between members to balance the needs of the minorities and reconciling it with constitutional provisions and the Indian penal Code. It was quite clear from the beginning that there was a felt need to identify and punish targetted violence, define who will be identified as victims and when, and how action would be taken to end impunity, enforce command responsibility, set up some mechanism to trigger state action. It was also clear that we did not want to repeat the experiments of the National Human Rights commission and the national Commission for Minorities which were either toothless, or as themselves as defenders of national honour by defending the government, or were toothless. It was also clear to us that the federal character of the state could not be trifled with. And above all, many of us were absolutely adamant that there be no reference to disturbed areas on the pattern of Jammu and Kashmir and the north eastern States which gave unfettered powers to the Armed Forces. Although most of the members had worked with the victims of communal violence, and therefore wanted some universal principles and equality to be introduced both in justice and in reparations and relief and rehabilitation, we did not want fears to be expressed about possible overthrow of state governmetns by the Centre and the introduction of President’s Rule. Therefore it was only the second part of Article 355 which was seen as an entry point for the Central government to encourage state governmetns to act swiftly when communal violence went out of hand, as had happed in Gujarat and Kandhamal. In defining groups, it was also clear to us that most groups could be in a minority in some state or the other, and in certain circumstances. Though Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians were the national minorities, even Hindus were a minority in as many as seven of the 35 States and Union territories of India. Other issues covered in the Bill in detail were Dereliction of Duty by public servants which was recognised both in omission and commission. The definition said public servants who act or omit to exercise authority vested in them and fail to prevent or offences or protect victims or act in a malafide or predicted manner will be guilty of punishable offences. They had of course first to identify the violence as targetted. The monitoring and grievance redressal, the bill said, shall be with the National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation (NACHJR) and corresponding State authorities (SACHJR). The monitoring mechanism of national and state authorities will also provide the “paper trail” to ensure robust accountability of public officials in a court of law.The critical clauses related to the identification of targetted and communal violence. The Indian Penal Code contains most offences committed during episodes of communal violence. These have been appended in a schedule to the Bill and shall be considered offences when they cross a threshold of being knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of a minority group. Brutal forms of sexual offence as seen in Gujarat and Kandhamal have also been included in the bill, as is hate campaign and propaganda leading to alienation and targetted violence. Just to make it doubly sure that the Bill passed muster, the draft said advisories and recommendations of the NACHJR were not binding on State governments. All powers and duties of investigation, prosecution and trial remained with the State governments.The draft Bill, after being put in a legislative format by Additional Solicitor General Indira Jai Singh [she did only the formatting, not the actual drafting, it must be made clear] the draft was put on the Internet by the National Advisory Council to garner public opinion which would be sent to the Central government together with the suggestions came. In due course, the ministries were supposed to clear it before the Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister adopted a final version for introducing in parliament.That is why the developments in the NIC meeting surprised us. The government had not formally intimated its position on the Bill nor had it formally sent it to the opposition parties and the state governmetns for their official opinion and suggestions other than the NAC putting it on its website. The agenda formulation too made it seem that those who were to speak had either to accept it or reject it, rather than to critique and analyse it. As the formal NIC note put it, the agenda of the meeting was “measures to curb communalism and communal violence, approach to the Communal Violence Bill, measures to promote communal harmony and measures to end discrimination, specially against minorities, and finally, how to prevent radicalisation of youth”.Unfortunately, barring the preliminary remarks of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the discussion, along political divides, focussed on just the Draft NAC Bill. The tone was set by Sushma Swaraj who slammed the Bill and said it did not consider people as Indian citizens but divided them on line of religion or ethnicity and language. Her party, she said, would formally oppose the Bill. Arun Jaitely followed suit, saying the federal structure would be hit. In saying so, they almost verbatim followed the propaganda that had been let loose for weeks earlier by the RSS and its wings, the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad whose leadership threatened a nationwide agitation to ensure that the bill, which they aid stigmatised the Hindu community, did not bring law. It was mostly the BJP chief ministers who were present in force barring Narendra Modi of Gujarat. They all opposed the Bill in the language similar to the Bajrang Dal and RSS. Nitish Kumar, Jayalalitha and Mayawati had stayed away, but the text they circulated criticised the Bill for infringing on the rights of the states. The CPM – and both Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury spoke, also had grave apprehensions about the federal motives of the NAC. BJP’s allies at one time or the other, the Akali Dal and the Biju Janata Dal, also toed the line. What surprised observers was the stance of the UPA ally Trinamul Congress of Mamta Bannerjee which made common cause with other state governments in the issue of the rights of the states. Scholar Zoya Hasan and some media stalwarts also spoke against the Bill for a verity of reasons, but essentially implying that existing laws were more than sufficient. There were very few supporters. Ministers do not speak at NIC meetings as a matter of form. But other Congressmen do. They refrained this time from supporting a draft emerging out of a council headed by party president Sonia Gandhi.. The support came from Muslim members Navid Hamid and Asghar Ali Engineer and a few others. The Chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, Wajahat Habibullah, repeatedly asked for permission to speak, but in the end could not. In an interview later, he said he wanted to stress issues of Rehabilitation, Accountability and the plight of Internally Displaced persons, which in fact was added on NCM’s recommendation following Kandhamal, Ahmedabad and the situation in Tribal areas of Tripura. He also referred to the agenda item on youth, mentioning the victimisation of Muslim youth arrested In the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case and the governmetns” arresting them under laws on criminal conspiracy and sedition and so on.The matter of course is not over. The debate continues even among those of us who were members of the NAC Working group. Many have called for an urgent meeting of the Working group to revisit the issues of federalism and possible encroachment of the powers of the States. There is a feeling that even if the objections have been political, there is need to make the Bill go through parliament with consensus and dialogue, and therefore there is a need to engage with the states governmetns and with various political parties. There is a definite agreement, articulated by eminent law teacher Upendra Buxi that there is need for a law to prevent targetted and communal violence. Vrinda Grover said “we must also pay heed that criticism or anxiety is being expressed from across the board and not just the usual suspects.” Vrinda and Usha Ramanathan were among the first in the Working group to flag problematic provisions. “There is some merit in reconsidering some legal propositions presented in the final NAC draft of the CV Bill, 2011,” she says. “I am afraid the apprehension that this law is a device for the Union to usurp the power and role of the States and intrude at will, lingers on. The ill advised Clause 20 of the penultimate NAC Bill, still haunts public memory, with some reason. Despite Clause 20 having been dropped no corresponding change has been made the powers and functions of the National Authority. It is this that has invited the wrath of many regional, Left, 'secular' parties who would have otherwise been our allies and advocates of this Bill.Most of us agree with Vrinda when she says “tampering with the federal structure will not yield anything for those constituencies who need the protection of the CV law. It will however alienate critical allies, without whose support, it is unlikely that this Bill will ever translate into law, as the numbers will simply not add up.”All eyes are now on the NAC and the Union Government, though the hopethat the Bill would be placed before Parliament, possibly as government amendments to the Bill of 2005, are fading fast.

Justice issues of Kandhamal, Dalit Christian demands raised at meeting of National Integration Council

2011-09-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

[The following is an abridged version of the points raised by Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, All India Christian Council, at the meeting of the National Integration Council at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on Saturday, 10th September 2011. The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, chaired the meeting moderated by Union Home Minister Mr. P Chidambaram. Mr. L K Advani, BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitely, Defence minister A K Anthony, chief ministers of Orissa and other States, leaders of the Congress and other parties, leading industrialists were among the Members of the NIC present.]

“Mr. Prime Minister, Honourable Union Ministers, Honourable Chief Ministers, distinguished Members

I bring you greetings from the Christian community in India, proud to be Indians, and proud of the fact that our country has rule of law under a Constitution that guarantees us Freedom of Faith as a vital component of our Secular, Socialist Democracy.

At the outset, may I express our community’s strong condemnation of the recent bomb blast outside the Delhi High court, and express our solidarity with the victims and our fellow citizens. Terror has no place in Indian society. There is no cause big enough to merit mindless violence that targets innocent men, women and children. As people of Peace, we pray for the dead as we also pray for the speedy recovery of the injured. Above all, we pray eternal peace and prosperity for India, our motherland.

We ourselves are victims of a different sort of socio-political terror, the terror of communalism. Our data shows we are targetted across the country with at least one incident a day of hate-motivated violence at some town or village, in one state or the other. Some states are worse than others. Among the worst are Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, and districts such as Udaipur in Rajasthan. In many states, the local police and administration are complicit. Often their actions and impunity blatantly encourage local violent elements. In Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh for instance, local police and administrative coercion and threatening of prayer services in homes, or house churches as they are called, almost immediately leads to acts of physical violence. Not every church has to be a large Cathedral. Jesus said “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there”. That is the basis of house churches, small Christian communities and Basic Christian Communities as they are called in the Evangelical, Episcopal and Catholic denominations respectively.

Such targetting, intolerance and officially conducted so-called “surveys” and demands for “registration” of churches must end forthwith. It does not happen with believers of other faiths, and it must Not happen with Christians.
Hate campaigns must also end. We have identified, as I am sure the governmetns' intelligence agencies must also have identified, the origin of such hate from the headquarters of certain political groups who want India to be rid of its religious minorities, or wants them to live as second rate citizens. We are first class citizens, much as everyone else, and seek our rights, the first of which is security so that we can enjoy that other right – freedom of faith and worship. Government must take urgent steps to train its police and administrative personnel in the principles of secularism, and sensitize them on the needs of all minorities, and the Christian minority in particular.

The Targetted and Communal violence [prevention, reparation and justice] Bill 2011 drafted by the National Advisory Council seeks to ensure this. We still feel the Bill needs some fine-tuning on issues of protecting India’s federalism and the autonomy of States.. We also specifically seek Christian representation in the structures it envisages. We commend its early adoption by government and its enactment as law after checking the Constitutionality of every clause and sub clause.

It may come as a surprise to some, but our community also has its share and more of the poor and the deprived. The Dalit Christians are one such group. They must be restored their constitutional rights at the earliest as recommended by the Justice Rangnath Misra Commission. Other poor, specially among the tribals and the rural landless and fishermen, must be identified and receive the assistance of the Government’s many schemes. For this it is important they first be identified. We have repeatedly demanded a Prime Minister’s Committee, on the pattern of the Justice Sachchar Committee set up for the Muslims, to look into the socio economic and developmental status of the Christian community across the country. Such a survey will help the Church generate its own development strategies. And it will help the government implement its secular agenda of development.
There must also not be any confrontation and conflict between the educational rights guarantees for minorities in the Constitution, and the new Right to Education Act. Across the country, our educational sector is facing harassment in recent months with local authorities trying to intimidate school managements.

In the drafting of the 12th plan, we have suggested several measures for the uplift of those of my brothers and sisters who are deprived, in education, hostel facilities, employment and self employment. I commend those recommendations made to the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Planning Commission. They must form part of government policy and must be implemented.

I close with reflecting on the many lapses that have taken place in ensuring justice, rehabilitation and reparation to the Christians of Kandhamal district in Orissa. Kandhamal saw an anti Christian pogrom in August, September and October 2008 and it seemed that the Connotation of India was not operative in that distant plateau in the centre of Odisha. Over 56,000 people were rendered homeless, over 5,600 housed destroyed, almost 300 churches torched, nuns raped. There was other and significant gender violence. According to our count, and the government differs, more than 90 persons lost their lives. Men and women lost livelihood and homes, jobs and fields. Children lost opportunities of education. Many villages banned the entry of Christians if they did not convert to Hinduism. Three years on, justice in the real terms remains a dream despite two Fast Track Courts which are known for witnessing the terrorizing of witnesses. Government aid for reconstruction was timid and small. The church helped out. But even then more than 2,000 houses remain unbuilt. It is shocking but many people have not been able to return home. Education, jobs, agriculture opportunities are missing. Even in the cases of murder, there has been no punishment in over 20 cases because the witnesses were scared or paid off. Sometimes their terrorizing took place in court, as I have witnessed personally.

Justice must be done, Dear Prime Minister and Dear Chief minister of Odisha. We look to you for justice.
I thank you for this opportunity to address the National Integration Council.”

Open your eyes, your Lordship

2011-08-14T02:59:00.001-07:00

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Justice K T Thomas must know the truth of the RSS

JOHN DAYAL

As a Malayalee who was also a judge of the Supreme Court of India, Justice Kallupurackal Thomas Thomas occupies an enviable place in the Kerala Christian social pantheon. No one in his right mind will dare say he is turning senile. Far from it. That man of justice, and of peace, remains as sharp as when he was on the highest Bench in the land. It therefore remains a mystery why Justice Thomas, invited often by right wing forums in his twin identity as jurist and Christian, always ends up praising the Hindutva lunatic fringe and denouncing the conversions of new people turning to Christ.

In an address in Kochi on 1 august 2011, Justice Thomas praised the RSS for its discipline and said the propaganda that the organisation was anti-minority was "baseless". The Press Trust of India reported that speaking at a function here, attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, he also said the ''smear campaign'' against RSS that it was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi must end. “There is a smear campaign that RSS was responsible for Gandhi’s assassination just because the assassin was once an RSS worker," he said, adding that the organisation had been ''completely exonerated'' by the court. This smear campaign must end against RSS," he said.

Gratuitously, Justice Thomas sought to expand his personal views to make them seem he spoke for the entire Christian community, including you and me. “I am a Christian. I was born as a Christian and practise that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also learnt many things about RSS," he said. He said he became an admirer of the RSS in 1979 when he was posted as district judge of Kozhikode, adding simple living and high thinking was its hallmark. During the Emergency, RSS was the only non-political organisation which fought against it. "We owe very much to RSS for sacrificing many lives for regaining our fundamental rights ...". "The propaganda that RSS was anti minority was also baseless," he said, adding he is a great admirer of the organisation as discipline is given importance.

This writer share some qualifications with the venerable justice. Like him, “I too am a Christian, a Catholic as a matter of fact. I was born as Christian and practice that religion. I am a church going Christian. But I have also leant many things about the RSS.”

One may in fact have learnt many more things about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, for when he was rapidly going the ladder of jurisprudence, Reporting on the RSS forty years ago, visiting their shakhas, recording what their leaders said, and documenting their written statements and literature, one saw the training of youngsters and college students, and the excesses of fat pot bellied middle agenda traders in khaki shorts and white shirts, an hour before they went back to their shops in Chandni chowk and Chawri bazaar, the wholesale market of old Delhi.

It was perhaps too early in the day,, because one did not see what crowds in Jhansi saw decades later -- the frightening scene of RSS cadres practicing with mock and real rifle and double barrelled guns down the main thoroughfares of town, or of RSS chief ministers themselves firing military hardware while posing for photographs. But one did see how RSS cadres were trained in meetings early morning in public parks as much as in closed door vyayamshalas, their “boudhiki” intellectual brain washing, and their war games. “Exercises” no less frightening –elaborate handwork with thick lathis, or staves, the sort policemen carry at night. One also saw “children’s games” in which boys formed a string holding hands, and then swopped down on a rival group, trying to “abduct” or capture persons, presumably women. The “boudhikis” were given to reading the editorials and main articles in those poison-pen official mouthpieces of the Sangh, the Organiser in English, not read at the Shakhas, and the Hindi language Panchjanya, the mainstay of the morning discourses. They would then discuss what damage the Muslims had done to India. It would all conclude with another salute not to India, but to a mythical “Mother India”, more goddess than a symbol of the land which they shared with practitioners of all other religions.

And therefore it is quite obvious that Justice Thomas, as is his right, looked only at the pretty saffron flowers, and forgot to look at the blood which sullies the earth on which the RSS flag is hoist.

First things first. Let us get the Gandhi murder out of the way, so to say. And I am indebted to Professor Shamsul Islam, the global authority of the Sangh Parivar, for once again going me this documentary evidence. He remains, with Communalism Combat, Anhad, Sahmat and the All India Christian Council, the national libraries on this fascist organisation.

After the murder of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 30, 1948 the RSS was banned on February 4, 1948. It was banned for anti-national activities and the government communiqué banning the RSS was self-explanatory: “In their resolution of February 2, 1948 the Government of India declared their determination to root out the forces of hate and violence that are at work in our country and imperil the freedom of the Nation and darken her fair name. In pursuance of this policy the Government of India have decided to declare unlawful the RSS.” [Cited in Justice on Trial, RSS, Bangalore, 1962, p. 64.]

The communiqué went on to disclose that the ban on the RSS was imposed because,” undesirable and even dangerous activities have been carried on by members of the Sangh. It has been found that in several parts of the country individual members of the RSS have indulged in acts of violence involving arson, robbery, dacoit, and murder and have collected illicit arms and ammunition. They have been found circulating leaflets exhorting people to resort to terrorist methods, to collect firearms, to create disaffection against the government and suborn the police and the military.” [Ibid, pp. 65-66.]

Prof Islam points out that the then Home Minister, Sardar Patel, reputedly had a soft-corner for the RSS. Patel continues to be a favourite with the RSS. However even Sardar Patel found it difficult to defend the RSS in the aftermath of Gandhiji’s assassination. In a letter written to the head of the RSS, Golwalkar, dated 11 September 1948, Sardar Patel stated: “Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing…Apart from this, their opposition to the Congress, that too of such virulence, disregarding all considerations of personality, decency or decorum, created a kind of unrest among the people. All their speeches were full of communal poison. It was not necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. In fact opposition grew. Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the Government to take action against the RSS…Since then, over six months have elapsed. We had hoped that after this lapse of time, with full and proper consideration the RSS persons would come to the right path. But from the reports that come to me, it is evident that attempts to put fresh life into their same old activities are afoot.” [Ibid, pp.26-28.]

Hindu Mahasabha and RSS were jointly responsible for the murder of Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, this fact was further corroborated by Sardar Patel in a letter to a prominent leader of Hindu Mahasabha, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee on July 18, 1948. Sardar wrote: "As regards the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, the case relating to Gandhiji’s murder is sub judice and I should not like to say anything about the participation of the two organizations, but our reports do confirm that, as a result of the activities of these two bodies, particularly the former, an atmosphere was created in the country in which such a ghastly tragedy became possible. There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy.

The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.” [Letter 64 in Sardar Patel: Select Correspondence19450-1950, Volume 2, Navjiwan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1977, pp. 276-277.]

Congress secretary general Digvijay Singh, who was for ten years chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and Union Home ministered P Chidambaram are supported by historical data when they called a focus on right-wing terror groups, specially the progeny of the RSS. Chidambaram recently has favoured a proper research and study of the phenomenon, asking the security forces to deal with the right-wing terror groups "sternly and fearlessly". He said that these groups were also radicalising the youth in the same manner as was done by banned SIMI or Indian Mujahideen. There was no difference between Indian Mujahideen and Hindu terror groups and both were enemies of the country."..so actually, we do not have one enemy within today, we have two enemies within and hope there will not be a third or a fourth or fifth," Chidambaram said.

Digvijay Singh has repeatedly said “I do not rule out anything. If they want evidence about Sangh’s involvement in terror activity, I have got evidence”.

Just in case Justice Thomas, and his friends such as Karnataka Minority commission member P N Benjamin, whose organisation BIRD provides occasional platform for the former judge’s fulminations and homilies, require judicial evidence, here is a brief summary of extracts from a series of judicial commissions that have investigated the role of the RSS in anti-Muslim violence since the Ahmedabad riots of 1969. That is over forty years of history.

"Here was not only a failure of intelligence and culpable failure to suppress the outbreak of violence but (also) deliberate attempts to suppress the truth from the Commission, especially the active participation in the riots of some RSS and Jana Sangh leaders." — Report of the Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission on the Ahmedabad riots of 1969

“The organisation responsible for bringing communal tension in Bhiwandi to a pitch is the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal. The majority of the leaders and workers of the Rashtriya Utsav Mandal belonged to the Jan Sangh (the predecessor of the BJP) or were pro–Jan Sangh and the rest, apart from a few exceptions, belonged to the Shiv Sena.” — Report of the Justice D.P. Madon Commission on the Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad of 1970

“In Tellicherry the Hindus and Muslims were living as brothers for centuries. The ‘Mopla riots’ did not affect the cordial relationship that existed between the two communities in Tellicherry. It was only after the RSS and the Jana Sangh set up their units and began activities in Tellicherry that there came a change in the situation. Their anti-Muslim propaganda, its reaction on the Muslims who rallied round their communal organisation, the Muslim League which championed their cause, and the communal tension that followed prepared the background for their disturbances....That is what the rioters who attacked the house of Muhammad asked him to do. “If you want to save your life you should go round the house three times repeating the words, ‘Rama, Rama’. Muhammad did that. But you cannot expect the 70 million Muslims of India to do that as a condition for maintaining communal harmony in the country. This attitude of the of the RSS can only help to compel the Muslims to take shelter under their own communal organisation.” — Report of the Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission on the Tellicherry riots, 1971

"The RSS adopts a militant and aggressive attitude and sets itself up as the champion of what it considers to be the rights of Hindus against minorities. It has taken upon itself to teach the minorities their place and if they are not willing to learn their place to teach them a lesson. The RSS methodology for provoking communal violence is: a) rousing communal feelings in the majority community by the propaganda that Christians are not loyal citizens of this country; b) deepening the fear in the majority community by a clever propaganda that the population of the minorities is increasing and that of the Hindus is decreasing; c) infiltrating into the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes; d) training young people of the majority community in the use of weapons like daggers, swords and spears; e) spreading rumours to widen the communal cleavage and deepen communal feelings by giving a communal colour to any trivial incident."— Report of the Justice Venugopal Commission on the Kanyakumari riots of 1982 between Hindus and Christians

"The dispute on the route of the procession became sharp and agitated reactions from a group of persons calling themselves the Sanyukt Bajrang Bali Akhara Samiti who systematically distributed pamphlets to heighten communal feelings and had organisational links with the RSS. A call for the defiance of the authority and the administration when it refused permission for one of the routes led to a violent mob protesting and raising anti–Muslim slogans and thereafter an incendiary leaflet doing the rounds of Jamshedpur that is nothing short of an attempt to rouse the sentiments of Hindus to a high pitch and to distort events and show some actions as attacks on Hindus that appear to be part of a design. A survey had already established that all policemen, havaldars, home guards etc. were at heart ready to give support to them (Hindu communalist organisations)." — Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Jamshedpur, April 1979

“Even after it became apparent that the leaders of the Shiv Sena were active in stoking the fire of the communal riots, the police dragged their feet on the facile and exaggerated assumption that if such leaders were arrested the communal situation would further flare up, or to put it in the words of then Chief Minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, “Bombay would burn”; not that Bombay did not even burn otherwise.” — Report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission on the Mumbai riots of 1992–1993

Justice Thomas is invited to look up the full reports ,if he wishes too.

It would help the Church leadership, too, if it were to read those reports.

[ends]

Open your eyes, your Lordship

2011-08-14T02:59:00.000-07:00

Not suggesting a coup, Infosys Murthy?

2011-08-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

Billionaire Narayana Murthy owes an explanation for his slur against Sonia

JOHN DAYAL

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, of course had the backing of the billionaires of his time, the Ghanshyamdas Birlas and the Jamnalal Bajaj families, if not of the Tatas who could be presumed to be leaning just a trifle towards the British with whom their community identified so strongly. Jawaharlal Nehru, with his perceived socialist political ideology, was all but an anathema to India’s industrial, corporate and business classes, and the landlords, who inevitably drifted towards the Swatantra party and eventually found a safe haven in the bosom of the Jana Sangh which is now the Bharatiya Janata party. So was Nehru’s daughter, Indira whose sweeping nationalisations of vital sectors such as banking and finance left the rich seething with suppressed anger.

Analysts understand this angst. This is a global phenomenon, as much as corruption and nepotism. Money bags in India or in the US want governments under their control. Historically, in India from the times perhaps of Dhhana Seth and Jagat Seths, Marwari money princes who financed caravans and armies going past their strategic locations in the Rajputana, money has also meant political clout. In the recent corporate history of India since Rajiv Gandhi, India’s corporate sector has sought liberation from the “Permit Raj” or stifling government regulations made in the public interest to prevent profiteering. But the same industrialists, including such giants as the Ambanis, have sought protection from western monopoly capital. That would seem strange to anyone with reason, but such is the logic of high competition.
While the middle and small traders continued with the BJP, it was being presumed that big industry had developed a soft corner for Rajiv Gandhi with his modernistic views and futuristic vision, and because of the thrust to technology that he gave during his short five year term in government.

The drift towards the Congress became a flood, again in perception, when Prime Minister Narsimha Rao brought in as Union Finance Minister the International Monetary Fund former economist Dr Manmohan Singh [and with him such luminaries as Planning Commission deputy chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia] and launched the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Despite a BJP interlude in power as the National Democratic Alliance for six years or so, with Dr Manmohan Singh’s advent into power as Prime Minister in United Progressive Alliance One and Two, one would have thought the Corporate sector, better known by its euphemism “India Inc.” were now firmly fixed in the Congress corner.

This of course did not happen.

Dr Manmohan Singh’s coalition regime’s fast-paced liberation in UPA-I has understandably sought time to consolidate in UPA-II. The rise in poverty, the land acquisition tension are all signs that the government is working for big business and not for the poor man in the parched fields. But this so called delay has created suspicion among India Inc.

It is not surprising that the biggest boys in industry support the BJP, and go as far on the limb as to support Narendra Modi, that icon of Hindutva and that persecutor of those who oppose him, specially Muslims. His role in the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 is well documented, and is now before the courts at various levels of investigation by a multitude of central and state agencies.
Two years ago, in an infamous statement, Ratan Tata, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani endorsed Narendra Modi as the “Next Prime Minister”

Fortunately, there was a popular uproar, and the troika was condemned in no uncertain terms. Political elements also took on big business and questioned its morality and short-sightedness, as much as its collective amnesia in forgetting what bloodletting had taken place in Gujarat. Ratan Tata got his small car project in Gujarat, but stopped carrying his love for Modi on his sleeve. His involvement in the Radia Tapes, which he has challenged in court, further silenced him as far as political indiscretions were concerned. The 2- G Scam has also made the Ambanis and the Mittals beat a hasty retreat from the public microscope.

It seems to have, however, taught no lessons to Infosys founder and chairman N R Narayan Murthy. Unless of course one were to argue that Murthy’s recent statement is part of an elaborate strategy to sow seeds of dissent and de-stabilisation in the UPA and the Congress with a much deeper conspiracy or agenda which could include a split in the Congress, the formulation of a new ruling alliance which marginalises the Nehru-Gandhi family. These have been tried before, the most recently during the Narsimha Rao era.

In an interview with the New Delhi Television channel 24x7, Murthy said UPA-II had failed to move ahead with reforms despite being in office for over two years. He put a part of the blame on the dual leadership structure with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh heading the government while Sonia Gandhi controlled the party. "You know, I mean, I understand that he (Singh) leads a coalition. I understand that we have two leaders in the whole set-up. There is a leader of the party (Sonia), there is a leader of the government. So, all these things do slow down the decision-making; but I think that's precisely why the reason that the prime minister must, in fact, take acute note of that and perhaps accelerate decisions," Murthy told NDTV.

As news reports said, the Infosys founder, who is due to step down, was highly critical of the slowdown in decision-making. In the past too, he had expressed concern over corruption but his remarks coincide with those made by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, which is headed by C Rangarajan, a close aide of Singh. The panel of economists had blamed the government's preoccupation with corruption-related controversies for going slow on decision-making. "Well, you know we have a culture of taking slow decisions, we have a culture of dithering. This is not just at Delhi, it happens in every state. It happens in corporations, it happens in educational institutions. Therefore, the need of the day is for all of us to realise that nothing is gained by dithering. Nothing is gained by postponing decisions. You have to take decisions quickly, no matter that they appear unpalatable in the short term. Well, if I look at the facts and data, then it is true that we haven't had, or you know, taken any decisions ever since this government came back to power in 2009. Which means it is already two years and about three months old. So, to that extent, I think we should all be concerned," Murthy said.

Incidentally, Murthy also spoke out against corruption saying economists have argued that graft shaved off 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points from economic growth. By controlling inflation, India could have growth at double-digit rates. And he had some advice for politicians too. "It's a good idea to have politicians retire at 60."

He did not speak against business dynasties, though his own son has not succeeded him at Infosys but will, of course, inherit much of his wealth regardless.
It is not that Murthy alone is concerned at the slowdown in the economy which robs them of some profit taking, specially for service sector tycoons who do not have much stakes in the long term vision of brick and mortar companies. Newspapers have carried warnings by various corporate leaders on the “policy paralysis” . One such outburst was at a meeting tycoons had with Union Finance Minister and trouble shooter Pranab Mukherjee . The minster brushed aside suggestions of policy paralysis, saying it was perception,

Those who keep a keen eye on India Inc have said they are not surprised at all that Murthy said what he said, and how he said it.” With success comes hubris. This seems to have hit Narayana Murthy too. One tends to believe that I am successful, so I must be right. Whatever I think, say and do must be right. Because if I was wrong, I couldn't be successful, my company couldn't be successful. So I am right. Since I am right, I have a right to lecture the world on what is right,” blogged one critic.
He was commenting on Narayana Murthy's writing in a recent issue of Smart Manager, reproduced by Rediff.com on its website. The article starts off with describing and defining leadership, mostly quoted from Robert F Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. “Sadly, Murthy has started off on a wrong note. Many of the quotes in his article apply equally well to leaders of the wrong sort, which Narayana Murthy has in mind. "Leadership is about raising the aspirations of followers and enthusing people with a desire to reach for the stars. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi created a vision for Independence in India and raised the aspirations of our people." So did Hitler, said the blogger. Or Chairman Mao. “It is good to use Mahatma's name to justify your statement. Only, when you take Mahatma's name, be careful that what is attributed to Mahatma or Martin Luther King does not apply equally well to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. But it does. Good leaders need not always be impeccable men. While trying to describe leadership, Narayana Murthy unknowingly puts leaders of all kinds into the same box. He fails to distinguish the ideal leadership strain that he has in mind, thereby putting great names to disrepute.”

There is nothing theoretical when Murthy talks so directly of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.
There is no doubt that Murthy is critical of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership, and of her place as the chairman of the UPA, a position to which she wad democratically elected. Murthy also tends to forget that Sonia could well have been UPA chairman as also Prime minister if she so desired, but chose deliberately to enounce that option and chose a more democratic form of governance with a distinction between party and governance. The RSS would never understand this difference, for whenever the BJP was in power, so too was the RSS.

It is this duality in governance that has provided the correctives and kept a check on runaway liberalisation. The economic meltdown in the west is evidence that unchecked liberalisation is a recipe for disaster. The number of poor has grown in the USA in the last decade. In India, some tribals at least have been spared their land because the Congress party and its leadership cried a halt to the government’s plans. Ministers rooted in the party showed a human and political instinct. Rahul Gandhi’s recent sojourns in rural and Dalit and Tribal India could not have been done by mere economists of UPA-II. If the Congress returns to power next time, it will be in spite of India Inc, and because of the political will displayed by Rahul Gandhi, and by Pranab Mukherjee, come to think of it.

Murthy’s is, unfortunately, a direct call for a coup within the Congress. More so when it comes at a time that Sonia Gandhi is in a hospital, un-named, in an undisclosed country, presumably the US, where she has been operated upon for an unknown abdominal condition. In any other country including the US and the UK, this would be a reason for much political gossip and considerable political uncertainty. It speaks for the maturity of Indian politics that the country has taken this in its stride, respecting the Gandhi family’s privacy and allowing Sonia to convalesce without politics chasing her.

It also speaks for the dual system of political governance she has put in place. The party’s day to day affairs have been left to a small committee consisting of family and senior untainted advisers who have no agenda other than the welfare of the party. A K Anthony, the Defence Minister, loyal political trouble shooter Ahmad Patel, and Congress general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi have been appointed together with Rahul Gandhi. This is a core group that cannot be denied. Government has been left to Dr Manmohan Singh, with Pranab Mukherjee standing by with him. Manmohan Singh’s health itself is cause for concern, but there is no threat to the government.

The opposition seems to feel this is an opportune time to mount the most vicious attack it has done in the past seven years. The criss in Parliament on the 2-G scam and Commonwealth Games scams and the crisis on the roads on the Lok Pal Bill are signs of the BJP and the RSS flexing their collective muscles.

It is, therefore, a pity that there has been no major denunciation of Murthy’s statement by the party official spokesmen. Mukherjee has dismissed such talk. Even Manmohan Singh ahs chosen not to give it any credence. They must point out that the twin leadership is the best course for the country for the present times, when the UK burns and the US melts down in fires of their own making, fires fuelled by the greed of their own corporate sectors.

Enough! said the People

2011-08-06T22:42:00.001-07:00

But caution before one gets carried away with the rhetoric of a second freedom movement"

John Dayal

The problem with revolutions is that no one can predict how they will end up. That is as true of Cromwell’s in England’s hoary history as of Jose Marti and Bolivar in South America, and not forgetting Napoleon Bonaparte and Lenin in Europe. The jury is still out in the Indian subcontinent which saw “revolutions” in 1857 and 1942. The last one, a so-called “peaceful” one, led to Independence five years later in 1947 in the aftermath of one of the bloodiest unclassified religious civil wars in the history of the world, with at least a million dead, and tens of millions displaced in what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
And if you are of a religious bend of mind, the revolution started by Martin Luther. Not many would dare write about moral revolutions started by Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Nanak, which today face charges of paedophilia and prosperity doctrines, terrorism and xenophobia. Hinduism escaped a study because of its unforgiving allegiance to Brahminical exclusivity, and the Manu code, both proof against mere social, political and religious revolutions and analysis.
Retired Havildar Kisan Baburao Hazare, better known to TV news-channel audiences as “Gandhian Anna Hazare”, yoga teacher and tele-evangelist Ramdev, and for that matter Arya Samaj breakaway sect leader and former Haryana Minister Agnivesh, each promise India a new revolution which will cure “Bharat Mata”, the mythological icon common to their rhetoric, of such ills as corruption, hunger, mal-governance and homosexuality. Millions of middle class innocent and lumpens have sought instant nirvana in their arguments, “satyagrahas” and fasts unto death. No one has died for the cause so far, barring perhaps the death of credibility and a diminishing of a faith in parliamentary democracy and its instruments.
Faced with food shortages and corruption, rising prices in uncured inflation, a shortage of jobs and a rapidly widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, it is not spurring that in both the poor and the middle classes – who are not starving, but do feel the pinch of rising prices of fruit and television sets -- there is a desire to see the system change. For want of any other argument, they mistakenly also see the omen of systemic failure as a failure of democracy itself, and then seek solutions and instant cures outside the perimeter of Parliament and its structures. They lose faith in judicial institutions which, as wheels of justice are wont to, grind exceedingly slow, even if they occasionally grind exceedingly fine and do deliver justice. It remains to be seen if justice delivered in the rare judgments of the Supreme Court has the inertia to change systems of governance and of democracy in a permanent manner. Because such judgments are rare, as are the infrequent piece of legislation, they remain tantalizing in their hope. But they do not have the strength to reassure the masses, and stop them from pursuing mirages of permanent revolutions, and “new independence struggles.”
Early in the 1960s, a mere 15 years after the dawn of Independence, one of the grandsons of Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, launched the Moral Rearmament Movement. Raj Mohan Gandhi, one of the three celebrity siblings – the others were his elder brother and philosopher Ramu Gandhi and the younger Gopal Gandhi who last was Governor of West Bengal – had reinvented for India a version of the MRA birthed as a moral and spiritual movement in 1938 from the Reverend Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. This was a response to the first indications of the second world war and the militarisation of Europe. The slogan was that moral recovery was critical to economic recovery. MRA was, in Europe at least as well as in emerging free nations after the second world war, important in bringing unity between groups in conflict, and helping ease the transition into independence.
In its initial phases, Rajmohan Gandhi’s MRA attracted the youth, and as a student of Delhi University, this correspondent participated in some of the meetings together with hundreds of others. MRA however failed to take off as a major social movement in India, fast losing even its youthful participants. But it did leave an impact on the discourse on politics and critiquing the state apparatus in a non violent way.
Ram Manohar Lohia, lifelong critic of Jawaharlal Nehru’s eliticism, and articulating a socialism of his own away from the Gandhi-Nehru brand of Congress politics after 1947, had even earlier attracted the young, together with the socialist elements in the Congress such as Acharya Narendra Dev, Aruna Asaf Ali and others who flirted with democracy, socialism and Marxism of the Russian variety through the early years of Independent and democratic India.
It was perhaps left to Jaiprakash Narayan, working in the economic and political crisis after the euphoria of the Bangladesh war of independence in 1971 and India’s transient victory over Pakistan -- remember the 90,000 Prisoners of War from the Pakistani army captured by India – had ended, to launch another, and the most powerful, movement in contemporary history. His version of a “sampoorna kranti”, or total revolution, based on morality, rebelling against all forms of corruption and dynastic rule, would perhaps have taken another route if it were not for Indira Gandhi losing a court case against her election to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. Instead of accepting defeat and bowing to the judicial ruling, Indira chose a drastic way out. Believing that the people would eventually back her up, she suspended the Constitution, and imposed a state of internal emergency. Narayan, in hindsight, played into her hands, calling upon the army to revolt. That was the last straw. Opposition leaders were arrested overnight, the media shackled and democratic discourse banished. With no checks and balances, power, as it is wont to, soon passed into the hands of a apolitical coterie led by her younger son Sanjay Gandhi.
This was an extra-constitutional centre of authority. A vicious governance became the norm.. More people filled jails. Bulldozers cleared off slums an millions were banished to far off resettlement camps. Muslims rebelled in town after town in Uttar Pradesh, seeing a design to disperse them and disenfranchise them. Forcible sterilisations were the norm, but Muslims again saw themselves as the main targets. There was much violence. Obviously, a police state of this sort could not last long and Indira Gandhi had to lift emergency after 22 months and call for elections. A grand coalition in which the RSS was partners with the Marxists and all sorts of middle parties, many of them break way groups of the Congress, came to power as the Janata Party government under Morarji Desai. But JP's movement was quite dead in that government.
By the way, two major evils of today have roots in that rule of the Janata Party. One is the legitimisation of the Sangh Parivar [and what was then the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and is today the Bharatiya Janata Party], in its members’ shared incarceration in several jails with Marxists and rebel Congressmen. The second is the infiltration by RSS cadres into Media, the Police and other administrative and judicial structures which came under the control of this motley bunch in their brief “raj” or governance between mid 1977 and 1980 when Indira Gandhi swamped Parliament once again in a powerful resurgence.
It is always, therefore, good to remember a bit of history as one sees, or imagines, seeds of a revolution in the Hazares and the Ramdevs, Kiran Bedis and sundry self appointed leaders of civil society.
The people are today correctly and legitimately questioning the dispensation of the day. The IMF-ordered liberalisation and globalisation that the then Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh unsheathed in India has not brought about the desired impact on the economy as it is visible at the grassroots. It has created thousands of Dollar Billionaires in India. It has sired a 200 million and expanding middle class, estimates say. But it has had a terribly negative impact on the poor in the villages and the small towns, and in the slums of the metropolitan cities.

Writing in a rent edition of the Tehelka magazine, that bright young journalist Revati Laul – who defied the trend by switching from satellite news channels to the print media – wrote “The Indian growth story has been written with the blood of famers and tribals” She is referring to sell-outs to big land mafias and multinationals such as Posco and Mittals, but also to home grown giants such as Reliance and Tatas.
India’s education, food and employment records – the so called quality of life index – make it shrink from a economic powerhouse to a pigmy not too far ahead of new Africa.
India’s record as presented in its UPR – the Universal Periodic Review that nations have now to face in the United Nations once every five years – makes for dismal nod tragic reading in just about every segment – from gender and dalits, farmers and landless peasantry, all the way to police atrocities, custodial deaths, miscarriage of justice, and the xenophobic treatment meted out to religions memories, specially to the Muslims and Christians.
At a recent hearing in Geneva, NGOs spoke at length of the “exclusion of the most vulnerable – Dalits, adivasi communities, the rural poor – being perpetuated by the current economic growth model”. The vast majority of India’s working population are employed in the informal sector as “flexible labour”. As a result of this, the vast majority of India’s working population has been reduced to further poverty – about 77% (850 million) of the working people of India subsist on Rs. 20 per day. With no social protection, their rights are totally denied to them. The “social cost” of India’s growth was also discussed, particularly the mass displacement of millions of families due to purported “development” projects. With the displacement, traditional livelihoods are being destroyed on an unprecedented scale.[Data from the NGOs document for the UPR]
Although the then Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Maken told Parliament of 6,000 communal riots [mostly attacks on Muslims, but also the Kandhamal atrocities against Christians] in the last decade, the Indian state has failed to acknowledge this. Or to address human rights violations, including: large-scale displacements resulting from development projects and communal violence; enforced disappearances in conflict areas, deaths through encounters. widespread use of torture and increasing attacks against human rights defenders. The curtailing of human rights in the state’s response to terrorism, and the need to interrogate this response and its impact on human rights, was also discussed in the UPR.
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the international associate of the All India Christian Council, specialising in religiousfreedom, told international for a of the widespread abuses in India, and the infringements of religious freedom, particularly that of the most oppressed castes, the Dalit Christians, “which are symptomatic of the extremist nationalist agenda of Hindutva.” It noted that the issue of caste lies at the heart of many of India’s human rights problems, including prejudicial violence, discrimination, labour exploitation and religious freedom infringements. “It should be considered as the main prism through which to view and interpret these problems; and the means of addressing these problems should involve reference to caste. The hierarchical caste system continues to dominate and shape Indian society to a considerable extent, detrimentally affecting the social status, treatment and socio-economic prospects of the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who comprise the ‘lowest’ layer of the caste system and represent 16% of the total population (at least 167 million), according to official 2001 census data. Dalits often bear the brunt of religious freedom violations in India, owing largely to proponents of Hindutva.
It is not just international agencies that have noted the extremist nationalist manifestation of Hindutva, which encompasses a vision of India as a Hindu nation in which minorities must assimilate to and revere the Hindu religion, race and culture and which, in practice, seeks to preserve and defend the cultural hegemony of Hinduism at the expense of minority religions.
CSW and others note that the chief victims of human trafficking, bonded labour, sexual slavery and other forms of labour exploitation, are Dalits or members of ‘low’ castes. The implementation of laws to prevent such exploitation is extremely poor.
Freedom of religion is infringed by legislative means: specially through religious discrimination in reservation policy and through state-level ‘anti-conversion’ laws. It is also threatened by religiously-motivated violence against the minority Christian and Muslim communities, which is typically committed with impunity.
Former Delhi high court chief justice Rajindar Sachhar, author of the eponymous report on the social and economic status of India’s Muslim community, recently noted “The cynicism of political parties is shown by the facts that inspire of warning in recent state elections which show another trend to criminal nexus in elections, thus of 824 newly elected MLAs of recent elections in the States a total of 257 have criminal cases pending against them. As is well known the politicalization of criminal is a stark and dangerous reality. Even in Parliament there are nearly over 100 MPs having criminal cases pending against them. There has been demand that tainted persons should not be allowed to contest elections. I feel that the law of Lok Pal should provide that the legislator has to be prosecuted for his misdemeanour, he should be deemed to be ineligible to continue as legislator till he is proved innocent.” Justice Sachhar was commenting on the controversy raised in the formulation of the Lok Pal, or Ombudsman Bill, with government keeping the Prime Minister, the senior judiciary and Members of Parliament out of its purview while the Hazare led group not only wanted all these groups to be coved by the Bill, but also demanded that government have no say in the choice of the ombudsman.
The furore over the Bill is an indication of the rot that has sent in. But the debate also shows that the voice of the pretty well off middle class – the same group that does not want affirmative action for Dalits in education -- has swamped the voice of the men and women in the village, the bonded labour, the homeless.
What sort of a second Freedom Struggle can we envisage for the poor. Not a freedom from Direct taxes, and certainly not the freedom to profiteer in the guise of free market economy.
Aruna Roy, perhaps one of the more sober human rights activists in the country – like many others, she too was a member of the elite Indian Administrative service, but resigned long before she would have become entitled to a pension – came up with some telling comments in recent reflection. “We have warned that in its current form, the Lokpal could become a Frankenstein Monster, concentrating power in a few, new, hands. Our key argument is over democracy itself. You know how easily one can become almost fascist in this country under its democratic overlay. To prevent that, one has to make sure he parliamentary process is strengthened, cleansed. But if you bypass the institution, you create very serious worries. Tomorrow, if three lakh RSS workers want a joint committee to look at changing the Constitution to make India into a theocratic state, will there be space for the/”
There is absolutely no question but that India needs reforms. Sensible economic reforms that put food into the mouth of babes and ensure cash transfers to the poor and the marginalised for all sorts of things, from education to clothing and a roof.
There must me a multiple pronged attack on corruption – the institutionalised payolas of the ministries and the nexus between the tycoon and the minister as exposed in the 2G scam have to be stopped. So also the corruption in the educational sector, and even in the private sector. It is common knowledge that in the entire private sector, including schools and colleges run by famous groups, the employees including teachers sign one certain amount as salary and get a substantially lesser one. There must be an end to the corruption which sends a soldier to the Siachin Glacier clad in ill suited uniform, and an end to the racket in coffins in which some of these soldiers return home.
Above all there must en end to the corruption – the bribe giving and the bribe taking – which impinges on the common man back in the village, in the small town, over every facet of life – from the making of a ration card to the money that comes from the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme.
It needs a commitment and a political will to contain this corruption. It can surely be done. That is the sort of revolution that can bring a second Independence. Independence from the tyranny of corruption and the moral and physical poverty it breeds.
[end]

west must awake to threat of hindutva

2011-07-31T04:15:00.001-07:00

Any lessons from Norway on internal threat from xenophobic fanaticism of the Majority?

JOHN DAYAL

‎"The primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamo-fascism" -- that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning -- but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority,” Prof Dilip Simeon wrote to me in a message on my Facebook profile. This was after I wrote that zealots and terrorists of all sorts live in a zone where it becomes difficult to tell them apart. Dilip is a younger contemporary from our days at St Stephen’s college. He faced a murderous assault in Ramjas College, Delhi, where he taught, and emerged as a major human rights voice after the anti Sikh violence in Delhi in 1984.

The Norway massacre of July 2011 is indeed Fascism with thick overlays of Racism and Xenophobia.
Islamophobia was common on the World Wide Web. So was Islamic intolerance of Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist and Sikh minorities in West and South Asia.

Islamic terror is well documented, more so since the bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York and the rise of Al Qaida. Despite Osama bin Laden’s assassination, it remains under the hawks-eye of the US and West Europe intelligence, who share their information on a real-time basis. It is also well documented in India where not only government agencies but also the common people – driven by the ceaseless propaganda by the Bharatiya Janata party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, lapped up eagerly by our Hindi and English language TV Channels -- keep track of all things “suspicious” in their neighborhood.

Analysis of majority terrorism have, for now, overwhelmed WWW portals in the wake of the Norway bombing-and-massacre by Christian gunman and bomber Anders Behring Breivik who singlehandedly killed 76 youth in his twin acts of violence. There is some emerging evidence that the killer, a drug user, may have himself largely used the Internet to keep abreast of, if not actually in personal touch with, political allies as far away as in the United Kingdom. He was also in touch with the WebPages, if not some webmasters, of the Sangh Parivar in India. In another chilling parallel, he too used large quantities of phosphorous and nitrogenous fertilizers in his car bomb, the same ingredients used by the perpetrators on the recent serial bombings in Mumbai, and in earlier bombings traced both to Islamic and Sangh groups.

This reporter has some experience of Xenophobia, both at the academic level and at personal level when he was living abroad as a journalist in the late 1980s, and saw Britani’s skinheads wreck havoc on lonely passers on the underground railways late at night both in London and in Germany, or desecrate Jewish graveyards. Recent visits show that neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism remains an issue in West Europe. Even in Poland, a devout Catholic country, the authorities are looking deeply at signs of emerging anti-Semitism and fascist youth groups who in a unified Europe can travel across borders with ease. The fact that Poland is where the Nazi Germans set up the notorious mass murder camps of Auschwitz makes the task of containing these groups so much more urgent. Poland, current President of the European Union, is however, taking transparent measures to check this political trend.

However, some other countries have apparently started going the xenophobic way in the wake of the economic meltdown, particularly in Germany, Ireland, even Greece, Spain and Portugal. At a recent international seminar in Holland, this correspondent came face to face with how governmetns can take wrong decisions when pressured by populist moves from opposition or ruling political groups and their cohorts in the masses. Holland itself has a not very clean image on racial issues despite the large number of descendants of migrants from former African and Indonesian Dutch colonies. But it is now monitoring, in a scientific way, hate speeches and hate documents. The lawmakers are also waking up to face right wing politicians who work on the people’s insecurities, economic or personal. Demanding cultural assimilation, specially from Muslim migrants, but also for instance from Sikhs, is the tip of the iceberg. Majoritarian xenophobia is dangerous, and Europe has long been Islamophobic, one can all the way back to the first Crusades to wrest Christian Holy Lands from Muslim control.

The examples that were cited from Ireland however took the xenophobic cake. Ireland – south or Republic of Ireland – has had good relations with India for more than a century, sharing an anti-colonial and anti imperialist history opposing British domination. Ireland also has a wonderful history of trade Unions. Former Indian President VV Giri was a respected trade unionist in Ireland before he came back to Indian politics. Irish freedom fighters borrowed the weapon of the peaceful hunger strike from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and many Irish youth dies in jail while on fasts-unto-death. Irish men and women themselves suffered anti-Celtic racism when they came down to England looking for work.

And yet, Ireland is now in the midst of installing a system to stop “birthing tourism”. Ireland has a policy like some other countries, which grant automatic citizenship to a child born in the land. Apparently, leveraging this law, many pregnant women from poorer countries would take a flight to Ireland in the last month of their pregnancy, deliver a child in Ireland, and then stay back as a family of the newborn “citizen of Ireland”. Efforts are now on to plug this “loophole”. Birth Tourism will be soon a memory. {For Indian Catholics, it may be salutary to remember that Ireland has hit out sharply at the Vatican, attacking the Pope on issues of protecting children from sexual violence.

What should ring alarm bells in New Delhi, indeed in the whole of India, is the real or make-believe environment in which the Norwegian young man of the unpronounceable name reached his delusional but fatal conclusions. His personal manifesto hails Hindutva, noting that the goals of the Sanatana Dharma nationalists were identical to Justiciar Knights, a future group, and therefore it could be key ally in a global struggle to bring down democratic regimes across the world. That future campaign would wage a campaign that will graduate from acts of terrorism to a global war involving weapons of mass destruction — aimed at bringing down the “cultural Marxist” order. Breivik acquired some 8,000 e-mail addresses of “cultural conservatives” not just across Europe but North America, Australia, South Africa, Armenia, Israel, and India – ensuring scrutiny of anti-Muslim groups far beyond Europe.

Western media noted that India figured in a “remarkable” 102 pages of the 1,518-page manifesto. “Hindu nationalists are suffering from the same persecution by the Indian cultural Marxists as their European cousins,” he noted, condemning the Dr Manmohan Singh government of “appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low caste Hindus with lies and fear, alongside Communists who want total destruction of the Hindu faith and culture.”

An interesting sweep, as he goes on to applaud groups who “do not tolerate the current injustice and often riot and attack Muslims when things get out of control.” His advice is that the Indian groups “instead of attacking the Muslims, should target the category A and B traitors in India and consolidate military cells and actively seek the overthrow of the cultural Marxist government. It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical.” Organisations figuring in that deadly manifesto include the BJP, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. They will have some explaining to do as the manifesto pledges military support “to the nationalists in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India.”

Americans newspaper Christian Science Monitor’s Delhi based columnist Anders Behring notes that in the case of India, “there is significant overlap between Breivik’s rhetoric and strains of Hindu nationalism – or Hindutva – on the question of coexistence with Muslims.” Behrings records that Human rights activists have long decried such rhetoric in India for creating a milieu for communal violence, “and the Norway incidents are prompting calls here to confront the issue.”

The Hindu’s correspondent Praveen Swami, derided often for his apparent toeing of the line of the Indian Intelligence Bureau in his reportage, strikes a similar note saying “Like Europe’s mainstream right-wing parties, the BJP has condemned the terrorism of the right – but not the thought system which drives it. Its refusal to engage in serious introspection, or even to unequivocally condemn Hindutva violence, has been nothing short of disgraceful. Liberal parties, including the Congress, have been equally evasive in their critique of both Hindutva and Islamist terrorism,” he adds.

Human rights activists second the view that there are important lessons for India in the murderous violence in Norway: lessons it can ignore only at risk to its own survival.

It was left not to an Indian newspaper but to the Christian Science Monitor to recall that former East Delhi‘s BJP Member of Parliament Baikunth Lal Sharma ‘Prem' held a secret meeting with key members of a terrorist group responsible for a nationwide bombing campaign targeting Muslims. He has been quoted as saying “It has been a year since I sent some three lakh letters, distributed 20,000 maps of Akhand Bharat but these Brahmins and Banias have not done anything and neither will they do anything. It is not that physical power is the only way to make a difference, but to awaken people mentally, I believe that you have to set fire to society.”

In recent weeks, we have seen a sharp rhetoric coming from the BJP opposing the drat Communal and Targetted Violence Prevention Bill written by the civil society members of the National Advisory Council of the government of India. The BJP rhetoric seeks to rouse the common Hindu population by falsely trying to create ear among them from religious minorities. The BJP and RSS leadership, which targets individual activists as much as the NAC as a body, says the Bill crimeless the Hindu community while empowering the Muslims and Christians. This is a blatant lie. The draft bill – which has not yet been presented to the Union Cabinet and is still far away from the final shape that will be visible when it comes up before the Rajya Sabha -- merely ensures that a government response is triggered at the first indication of communal violence, and that the authorities are held responsible because it is their lethargy and complicity that has aggravated riots in the past.

Not surprisingly, mainstream political parties, among them the Congress, the Marxists and the socialist or Dravidian parties, have so far not challenged the BJP rhetoric. No senior leader has come before the media to denounce this blatant effort to whip up passions.

It has been left to the two persons outside the official power structure – Mani Shankar Aiyar and former Madhya Pradesh Chief minister Digvijay Singh – to come down to brass tacks and identify the Sangh Parivar for threatening Indian secularism and unity, and for itself being a purveyor of terror, including terror bombings.
Digvijay Singh is on record for saying repeatedly that bombings take place when the BJP is “politically cornered over something or the other. The timing of the bomb blasts is quite uncanny. Why does it always happen when the BJP is in trouble? That needs investigation”

Digvijay, an archetypal politician, speaks of the coincidences. “When the Tehelka issue was to be discussed in Parliament, the House was adjourned for three days. Then when the expose was to be discussed, the Parliament attack took place. When the Godhra incident took place, Congress was doing exceedingly well in the local body elections and Narendra Modi had won by only 6,000 votes as a chief minister and that too with great difficulty. During the recent Karnataka election, there was a bomb blast in Hubli on the very first day of polling. Similarly, two days before the polling in the second phase in Karnataka elections, there was a bomb blast in Jaipur. It really needs an investigation.”

Whatever investigations have taken place have unearthed a pretty large and well oiled ring whose nodes and modules involve Army officers, Sadhus and Sadhvi and men at the top of the RSS, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and other groups. The national Intelligence Agency’s charge sheets in court make for chilling reading.
Digvijay Singh adds to the charge sheets by way of background, ”In 1992 there was a bomb blast in the VHP office in Madhya Pradesh, where one VHP member died and two were injured while making bombs. Then in 2002, there was a bomb blast in a temple in Mhow. When the police arrested the VHP activists after investigation, they confessed that they were even given training to manufacture bombs. I have a videocassette of that confession. Again, in 2006, in Nanded, there was a bomb blast in the house of a RSS activist where two RSS activists died. After that in March 2008, there were bomb blasts at two places in Tamil Nadu. Then too VHP activists were arrested by the Tamil Nadu police who confessed that they were involved. And how did the Gujarat police suddenly find eighteen bombs planted on trees in Surat. RSS, VHP activists have been caught making bombs, material for preparing bombs have been found at their office and there are three-four clear cases where they have been arrested and a case has been registered. Why is not anyone looking into this?

It remains a moot question why there has not been a real investigation into rightwing majority extremism in India. Intelligence agencies are looking to the political leadership to show some willpower in decision-making. The central government is so beset with its own problems of shrugging off charges of corruption against half the Union cabinet –a crisis that also afflicts the BJP in Karnataka and other states – it has little energy and less time to devote to deeper threats to the Indian Union.

As far as the Church is concerned, it may support media-driven anti corruption campaigns, but is far too timid to either research or speak about issues as grave as racism, xenophobia, religious fundamentalism, and majority communalism.

2011-07-25T09:45:00.001-07:00

Political myopia, fascist bigotry and lunacy
Or, How Christians can be hurt as much by shortsighted friends as by daft enemies
JOHN DAYAL
An absolutely hate-filled and lunatic analysis of terrorism by Janata Dal leader and lawyer Subramanian Swamy, and a well meaning but myopic policy paper by the redoubtable former IAS officer and National Advisory Council member Harsh Mander show how minorities in general, and micro minorities in particular, can face political and developmental disenfranchisement at the hands of foes and friends.
Writing a column on Terrorism in the Mumbai edition of the DNA daily newspaper, Swami says Hindus cannot accept to be killed in a “halal fashion”, continuously bleeding every day till the nation finally collapses. Painting a scary scenario to hold readers’ attention, he says, “There will be no doubt about Islamic terror after 2012” when he expects a Taliban takeover in Pakistan and the Americans to flee Afghanistan. “Then, Islam will confront Hinduism to complete unfinished business.
The lawyer, who has so far made the Congress and Sonia Gandhi his main targets, says the Hindu leadership has not united the people against the victimisation of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram. “If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies. Muslims of India, he says, are being programmed by a” slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus.”
“Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated. If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat committed Hindu”, he says. Swamy forgets that in Kashmir, Mumbai and Gujarat, a very large number of people killed in terror actions have been Muslims, as also the occasional Sikhs and Christians.
For Swamy, what is required is a “collective mindset as Hindus.”If any Muslim acknowledges his or her Hindu legacy, then we Hindus can accept him or her as a part of the Brihad Hindu Samaj (greater Hindu society) which is Hindustan. Hindustan is a nation of Hindus and others whose ancestors were Hindus. Others, who refuse to acknowledge this, or those foreigners who become Indian citizens by registration, can remain in India but should not have voting rights (which means they cannot be elected representatives).”
Swamy’s arguments take the discourse back to Guru Golwalkar, Savarkar and the other founders of the RSS and thier theology of a Brihat Bharat in which there would be no place for followers of the so-called non-Indic religions, unless they agreed to a second class, vote-less position. Living in the dream world of a Larger India, Swami says “however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively.”
His other remedies are ones repeated by the RSS every week in the Organiser and the Panchjanya, their official organs: “remove article 370 on Kashmir,”, “clear the mosques adjacent to Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites, device a Uniform Civil Code, rename India as a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus, name the land as Hindustan, stop attempts to “change India’s demography by illegal immigration, conversion, and refusal to adopt family planning,” and of course, “enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion , re-conversion will not be banned.”. [ http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/comment_analysis-how-to-wipe-out-islamic-terror_1566203-all]
Swamy’s last sentence gives away his game again. It is not just Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism he is against. Many a Muslim, and most Indian Muslim organisations, has denounced terrorism and fundamtnlaism. Swamy is against all non-Hindu minorities. He is against Churches and pastors preaching there, he confesses, as much as he opposes the Constitutional freedom to convert to another religion. All conversions, he stresses more than once, can only be to Hinduism. Those who do not know Swamy’s mindset may feel surprised at the outburst of the former Union Commerce Minister, because he is married to a Parsi lawyer, and one of his daughters is married to a Muslim.
Unlike Swamy, Harsh Mander positively loves the religious minorities. The Indian Administrative Service officer was working for Action Aid on a sabbatical when he resigned from government service denouncing the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Since then, he has done wonderful work to ensure justice for the victims, himself rising to be made a member of the National Advisory Council headed by United Progressive Alliance chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi. In the NAC, Mander is in charge of issues concerning religious minorities, specially the Communal and Targetted Violence Prevention Bill, which is now nearing completion, and the Food Guarantee Bill, which has been completed. A major input in the Communal Violence prevention bill is the recognition that it is not just Muslims who are victims of such actions, but also Christians, and therefore the Bill has provisions to help Christian victims.
It is therefore frightening, no less, to read a long report written by Mander on why government’s affirmative action must be openly targetted only at Muslims. Christians would be right in presuming that Mander does not want the grants diluted by being passed on to the Christians or the Buddhists.
As reported in the Times of India of 21 July 2011, Mender’s Centre for Equity Studies prepared report dubs the Centre's minority welfare schemes and the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme as non-starters, blaming government's timidity in declaring the schemes as Muslim-oriented for fear of opposition campaign of minority appeasement. “The diffidence on the Muslim-word led to schemes being dubbed as "minority" or "area based", thereby diluting targeted community approach. “
He asks the government to openly resolve to improve the lot of Muslims by making a dedicated 14 per cent budgetary allocation for the Muslim community on the lines of sub-plans for SCs and STs. With the findings raising an alarm, NAC has sought a "detailed response" from the minority affairs ministry on the study.
Mander’s r report questions the efficacy of schemes launched with fanfare for amelioration of minorities — in education, self-employment and infrastructure among others. He dismisses UPA's minority outreach as tokenism. The Ministry for Minority Affairs is the target. Mander says it lacks institutional and political authority to ensure compliance of its objectives from other arms of government. He says the anxiety over appeasement charge led to Multi-Sector Development Programme for Muslims morph into one for "minorities" and ultimately to an "area-scheme" — aiming to improve infrastructure in 90 districts with over 25% Muslims.
Mander’s Centre for Equity Studies, which publishes his report, terms the allocations for minorities as small — 19 per cent of population got 5 per cent budgetary allocation, with per capita allocation of a mere Rs 797. It recommended that the PM’s 15-point programme implemented by various ministries be turned into an independent minority sub-plan having earmarked funds in each ministry and monitors to check their use.
While Subramanian Swamy’s rantings are easily dismissed as the delusional outpourings of a demented Hindutva fundamentalist, Mander’s report seems to hit at the very basis of constitutional guarantees to “all” religious minorities, and may aggravate and empower the Hindutva forces.
Not many know that the very formation of the Ministry of Minority affairs by the UPA in 2006 two years after it came to power after the rule of the BJP-dominated NDA has been challenged by anti-minority forces.
There have been several court cases against the ministry, challenging its very existence. One argument, facile as it may be, is of course that why are separate ministries, Plan and budget components and other affirmative action required at all when the Constitution guarantees every citizen equal rights and equal protection. Why then, it is argued, should we have special provisions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, for instance, or for women in terms of reservations, and certainly whey for religious minorities when the nation is secular and the movement holds all religions in equal respect. This argument flies in the face of the fact that three thousand years of a religion-sponsored hierarchy has created situations which have kept Dalits and Tribals, even women, and certainly several religious groups outside the pail of development, denying them equity in national progress.
It, perhaps, is not widely known that that Ministry has been made party in Writ Petition no. SCANO No. 2245/2008 of Vijay Harish Chandra Patel in the High Court of Gujarat, Writ Petition (PIL) 84 of 2008 of S. G. Punalekar in the High Court of Bombay and Writ Petition no. (298/08 and WPC No. 9569 of 207) in Delhi High Court.
One Vijay Harish Chandra Patel challenged the Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme and filed a public interest litigation challenging the steps taken by the Union of India and the Planning Commission to utilize the national resources in favour of a particular minority community, which according to the petitioner is discriminatory, arbitrary and violative of various constitutional provisions.
Chief Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan ruled that “funds used to minimize inequalities among minority Communities by adopting various social and welfare activities like public safety, health, slum development, improving the deficiencies in civic amenities, economic opportunities, improving standard of education, skills and entrepreneurship development, employment opportunities, eradication of poverty etc., would no way violate the constitutional principles of equality or affect any of the fundamental rights guaranteed to the members of other communities.”
S. G. Punalekar in the High Court of Bombay also challenged the scholarship schemes of the Ministry of Minority Affairs including PM’s New 15 Point Programme for the welfare of minorities in the public interest as violative of Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India. The High court recently dismissed this PIL.
In Delhi, the petitioners said that Muslims of India could not be treated as minority community that the treatment of Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Parsis and Muslims as a “minority” is irrational from a constitutional point of view. The High court is yet to pass a judgment on this PIL.
Sources in the Union government say the Ministry of Minority Affairs has been able to win some cases and sustain their argument because of the approach adopted of not focusing on any particular minority but on all the identified minorities and that the disadvantaged and economically deprived amongst them.
Harsh Mander’s report denies this well settled and sound government policy.
The All India Christian Council and the All India Catholic Union have been struggling with the Union government to set up a Justice Sachchar Commission to assess the economic and development infirmity in the Christian community, especially among the Tribals and the Dalits, the boatmen, fishermen, landless labour and other deprived communities. This campaign started when the government first set up the Justice Sachchar committee after decades of campaigning and advocacy by Muslims groups. The data in the Sachhar committee report has greatly strengthened the Muslim cause and has given a tool to NGOs and community leaderships to strengthen the struggle for their rights in the development pie.
Unfortunately, the government has not given heed to the Christian demand, partly because the Church leadership has not been as vocal in its interaction with the government, remaining satisfied with minor crumbs.
If the government were to listen to the Mander report, it would entirely undo whatever little headway has been made towards the empowerment of the poor in the Christian community through the advocacy in the Working Group on Minorities of the Planning Commission now involved with the 12th Five Year Plan Document. A minority sub plan, which Mander suggests, will be feasible only if it covers all minorities and is not confined just to the Muslim community. Our argument in the working committee has been that the major budgetary and plan allocations for minorities have not percolated to the Christian community, whatever be the reason, and whether the fault lies with the government or with the church leadership.
Another danger if the government were to accept the Mander recommendations is the threat to secular unity, and giving additional ammunition to people like Subramaniam Swamy. At present, the dialogue between Christians and other minorities is very little. The formal dialogue is limited to casual and occasional contact by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and its equivalent federations in the protestant churches meeting once or twice a year with sundry Maulanas and Granthis, RK Mission, the Bahais and the Brahmkumaris for some lip service to common issues of peace and brotherly love. There never has been a serious political dialogue between minorities on issues of development and demands to the Union and State governmetns.
The result has been that Christians have had to chalk their own destiny or accept whatever little may come out of, on a pro rata basis, from government’s plans for the major minority community, the Muslims. Christians have therefore felt discriminated and isolated, feeling that Muslims have taken away all the development booty earmarked in the Budgets. This in a way creates a distance between Muslims and Christians and shatters whatever element o unity could be created.
The government would do extreme damage to micro minorities such as Christians if it goes by the Mander thesis, without making adequate provisions on a pro rata basis for the uplift of the Christian community. The government must acknowledged that islands of gross underdevelopment occur in all religious minorities, and specially in Christianity where the Dalit Christians and other groups are not even officially acknowledged, and millions of believers are not even counted in the Census as Christians. Their needs have to be addressed. Therefore an “inclusive” thesis, which will ultimately save the government from the charge of “appeasement” or “vote bank politics”

Christian issues with Communal Violence Prevention Bill Draft

2011-06-12T00:47:00.001-07:00

Christian community’s observations on National Advisory Council Draft Bill on ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011

The following note was endorsed at a National Consultations of Christian Leaders on Saturday, 11th June 2011, presided over by the Archbishop of Delhi, His Grace Vincent M Concessao, and attended by Bishops, Church leaders from the CBCI, NCCI, CNI, EFI, aicc, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, NGOs and lawyers and Scholars from across India endorsed the following response and commentary on the National Advisory Council Draft Bill on ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011. Supreme Court advocate and Human Rights activist Ms Vrinda Grover facilitated the Consultations, held at the India International Centre, and hosted by the All India Christian Council.

This note articulates major issues of agreement with the NAC draft, which is a great improvement on the 2005 Bill now in the Rajya Sabha, but also some points of serious disagreement. It also answers the questioned in some political quarters as to why the law on Communal Violence must specifically address protection of religious minorities.

Dr John Dayal, Advocate Sister Mary Scaria and Advocate P I Jose were members of the NAC working group. Of them, Adv P I José was on the drafting committee and Dr Dayal and Sister Mary on the advisory Committee. At all stages of the year long discussions we had filed our points of view, suggestions and objections in writing to the NAC. We worked in the backdrop of the anti Christian violence ion Kandhamal in 2007-2008, in Gujarat and Karnataka and in 12 other states in the last ten years. These states were ruled by the BJP, the Congress and by various regional parties.

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The need for a new legislative mechanism, to deal with communal violence targeting religious minorities, was confirmed by the experience of the 1983 Nellie killings in Assam, anti Sikh massacre of 1984, the genocidal pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 among others. The abdication of all preventive measures, absence of protection for the lives and properties of the religious minorities and the absolute impunity thereafter for these crimes characterised each violent assault.

State records, such as Commission of Inquiry reports, of the 1961 Jabalpur riots, the Madon Commission report of Bhiwandi riots in 1970, the report into the Bhagalpore riots of 1989 and the Srikrishna Commission report on Bombay riots of 1992-1993, all documented that, prior to, during and post the violent attacks on religious minorities, state complicity and institutional bias was evident among different public authorities and state officials. Time after time the protection of minorities was highlighted as an issue of concern and this placed centre stage the need for legal and other measures to be taken to ensure protection of religious minorities.

Some of the issues that emerged from the narratives of these experiences reveal acts of omission and commission by officers of the state and others, who wield the power of the state. It was found time and again that violence could have been controlled or stopped if there had been willingness to act on behalf of the state. The problem of state complicity and impunity are recurring themes in all these episodes.

People impacted by communal violence do span all communities. However studies and data clearly indicate, that religious minorities suffer greater harm and loss, and find less protection from the law, due to institutional bias in the performance of statutory duties. This has been a serious lacunae that has for some decades required to be addressed.

The Constitutional promise of equality before the law, as embodied in Article 14, requires us to make rational discrimination in our treatment of problems that come before us. The mounting evidence in the decades past, show that the legal protection secured for religious minorities has declined, gravely infringing their enjoyment of the right to life and other fundamental rights, as citizens. This calls for a corrective measure in the exercise of state power and actions of state agencies, to restore equality in the working of the law. This explains why a special legislation for religious minorities is being proposed. The outcry by the BJP against a law for protecting the rights of religious minorities is neither legally nor factually tenable. In so far as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are concerned the State under Article 15(4) Constitution can make laws for their protection.

Campaign for a CV law initiated by civil society activists
The campaign, for a law to protect religious minorities and punish the sponsors, abettors and perpetrators of communal and targeted violence, was initiated by civil society groups and activists. (This legislation is commonly referred to as the CV Bill). The CV Bill placed before Parliament by the UPA Government in 2005, was rejected outright by civil society. Through 2 National Consultations, the key elements and a draft outline of the law was prepared, drawing upon experience, insights and discussions with victim survivors, activists and legal and other experts.

There was unanimity that a new law was required to respect and protect the rights of religious minorities Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, cognizant of the contours of communal and targeted violence. The primary focus of such a law, it was agreed, would be making those exercising state authority and power accountable to the law; through the setting out of offences by public officials and those with the power to protect persons and communities affected by communal and targeted violence; hold the superior functionaries culpable; dilute the shield of impunity. Enabling provisions to allow the victim/ witness to access the criminal justice system would be incorporated, mindful that fair trial standards and rights of the accused are respected.

The new law would also introduce the rights of all affected persons to reparation from the State. From the analysis of communal and targeted violence, it was clear to the activists that the new legislation should not in any way enhance the arsenal of State power. A draft outline of the CV Bill was submitted by civil society activists to the Hon’ble Law Minister, in May 2010.

In July 2010 the NAC Working Group on the Communal Violence Bill set up an Advisory Group and Drafting Committee, to prepare a draft legislation on the subject. The Draft ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, prepared by NAC and on which comments are invited, has some disturbing features which we believe are contrary to the purpose and objectives of such a law. It is a cause of serious concern for all of us that a Bill which contains regressive and draconian principles, has been adopted by the NAC and proposed as its draft CV Bill.

The pernicious idea of “disturbed area” was proposed in the Government CV Bill of 2005. Well aware that the accumulation of extraordinary powers in the hands of state authorities leads to gross violations of human rights, as witnessed in Punjab, Nagaland, Manipur and Kashmir, civil society contested any use of the mechanism of disturbed area on the pretext of providing protection to victims. The Key Elements of the CV Bill as enumerated on the NAC website also state that the “Basic framework of law must not rest on declaration of “disturbed areas””. This has been the consistent position through the discussions on the making of the law.

The NAC draft Bill however in Clause 20 reintroduces the idea of “internal disturbance” and states that organized communal and targeted violence shall constitute “internal disturbance” within the meaning of Article 355 of the Constitution, and empowers the Centre to take such measures as required. During the drafting process it was suggested to the NAC that reliance for Entry point of the law should be on the latter part of Article 355, “to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.

The inclusion of any form of “ disturbed areas” device to concentrate power in the hands of certain government functionaries is not acceptable. Clause 20 also attempts to reconfigure the federal equation between the Centre and State, a move that is ill advised and counterproductive. It would indeed be short sighted of civil society to support any provisions that further legitimise use of draconian measures by the state against the citizenry.

Central to the drafting of a new CV Bill is a definition that describes what constitutes ‘’communal and targeted violence”. Civil society groups had through public consultations arrived at a working definition in May 2010, and forwarded the same to the Law Minister. The NAC Draft CV Bill, proposes in Clause 3(c) “communal and targeted violence means and includes any act or series of acts, whether spontaneous or planned, resulting in injury or harm to the person and or property, knowingly directed against any person by virtue of his or her membership of any group, which destroys the secular fabric of the nation.” This definition is central to the Bill, and all offences and rights of victims to justice and reparation will ensue only if the action warrants description as a communal and targeted violence. It is arguable, if any event of violence in post independent India, whether against religious minorities or Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, can be said have destroyed the secular fabric of India.

The aim of the civil society campaign for a CV Bill is to provide statutory protection against all and each act of communal and targeted violence. The NAC draft Bill has raised the threshold so high that no act of communal and targeted violence against Dalits, Scheduled Tribes or religious minorities would come within the ambit of the CV Bill. This preliminary definition, by shifting its focus away from affected people, whose security, equality and citizenship are jeopardized by communal and targeted violence or organized communal and targeted violence, has ousted the most vulnerable from its statutory protection, rendering this Bill toothless and meaningless.

One main thrust of this legislation is to counter impunity by securing accountability from all persons exercising State power, for acts of omission and commission, relating to communal and targeted violence. This requires the acknowledgment of certain offences in the CV Bill. At the same time since this Bill deals with offences it is important to define them sharply and clearly. The NAC Bill falters on both these counts. It fails to incorporate crimes such as disappearances, although India is already a signatory to the Convention Against Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances and has in its recent pledge before the Human Rights Council at the UN, stated that it would work towards ratification of the Convention.

The definition of Torture in Clause 12 of the NAC draft Bill falls short of the definition proposed by the Rajya Sabha Select Committee on the Prevention of Torture Bill. Definition of command or superior responsibility in Clauses 14-15 as well as offences by public servants in Clause 13, which extend criminal liability to those who mastermind, sponsor and allow communal and targeted violence, lack legal certainty and precision. Inclusion of phrases such as ‘impartial’, ‘fairness’, ‘respectful’ or ‘dignity’, do not secure any rights for the victims nor do they place any legal obligation on duty bearers. For impunity to be reined in, particularly at the top echelons of political and administrative authority, much more purposeful drafting is required.

The NAC draft Bill makes a half-hearted attempt to address the difficult circumstances in which victims of communal and targeted violence find themselves in the aftermath of an attack. Clause 61 of this Bill, recognizes the need to assist displaced victims to initiate legal proceedings. However it is baffling why the police officer visiting the relief camp, “will record statements and conduct an inquiry into the circumstances and cause of each individual being displaced and put in a relief camp”. Would the cause of justice not be better served if the police officer records statements of victims with respect to commission of cognizable offences, dispatch such statements to be registered as FIR and investigated by the Police Station of competent jurisdiction. Similarly Clause 64 (1) is misconceived, as it makes it compulsory for the statement of victim- informant to be recorded by a Magistrate on oath. This does not recognize the situation in which victims find themselves after a communal and targeted assault and will only heighten their vulnerability, particularly in light of the scant protection offered to witnesses by this Bill. Clause 64 (4), which permits a victim or witness to submit any statement or material directly to the Designated Court and the same shall form part of the chargesheet is contrary to all norms of fair trial standards and deserves deletion.

For victims and witnesses of communal and targeted violence to access justice, a few enabling provisions are required. The NAC Bill fails to draw upon the advances made in the jurisprudence and practices of victim and witness protection and restricts victim protection only to ‘the period of investigation and trial’ (refer to Clauses 86-87). The NAC draft Bill places no obligation on the State to protect witnesses after they depose against the socially and politically powerful. This Bill claims to offer protection during trial by keeping the identity of the witnesses confidential. However Clause 88 of the NAC draft Bill makes it mandatory for all court proceedings under this law to be video recorded and a copy of this recording to be given to the accused person among others. While apparently enhancing transparency, there is a serious apprehension that in the short term and long run, these video recorded proceedings may increase the vulnerability of the victim/witnesses.

Further to withstand legal scrutiny, the deviation from, the Criminal Procedure Code and the law of evidence in this legislation, must be minimal. It is extremely unfortunate that the NAC draft Bill draws upon provisions found in draconian laws such as MCOCA and earlier in TADA and POTA, to modify criminal procedure. Illustrative of this is Clause 82, which authorises attachment of property of the accused at the stage of charge, without the usual guidance that such property should be linked to the offence.

Again Clause 85, increases the period of detention of the accused and places a heavier burden on the accused for securing bail. Similarly Clause 67, of this Bill gives the state and central government the power to intercept telephonic communication, and censor and control the same. The draft Bill states that "any message or class of messages to or from any person or class of persons or relating to any particular subject, brought for transmission by or transmitted or received by any telegraph, shall not be transmitted, or shall be intercepted or detained, or shall be disclosed to the government ..." This could well be used to stop messages going out to, or from, victim groups. Why would we want to risk legalising this kind of power? It is regrettable that no lessons seem to have been learnt, that the whittling down of civil liberties in one sphere provides the state with an alibi to erode rights across the board. The very ‘group’ that this Bill seeks to protect could well become the target of such excessive measures.

Clause 78 of this Bill is based on a flawed understanding of the criminal justice system. The Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) in a criminal trial represents the state and not the victim/ informant or witness. The role of the SPP is to advance the interests of justice in a criminal trial and not the interests of a victim or witness. Accordingly the appointment or dismissal of a SPP cannot be decided through “general public comments” or to serve the interests of any party before the Court. Fair trial standards demand that the SPP discharges his duty without bias against any party.

With 178 human rights institutions already in existence, clearly any proposal to establish newer bodies must be approached with maturity and sobriety. The limited purpose why a National Authority is needed is only to ensure that the changes brought in through this CV law, particularly in relation to offences committed by public servants, superiors and commanders are operationalised. That is the specific purpose and it is to ensure this that that the latter part of Art. 355 is operationalised. This is an important function of the Union government at the Centre, not to be intrusive, not to be usurping of the power of the state, but to ensure that the laws are implemented and the State performs its functions in accordance with the constitution. If there is a state authority, as envisaged in the NAC draft Bill, the drafts persons may need to explain how an authority located within the state will keep itself aloof from the immediacy of the violations and not be open to use and abuse.

The most promising aspect of the relief and rehabilitation chapter of the NAC draft Bill, is that it recognizes that while the religious minority suffer a particular disadvantage in terms of impunity and complicity of the state, all victims of communal and targeted violence need to be recognized in law for purposes of compensation, relief, rehabilitation etc. That has been acknowledged in the law and this is an important acknowledgment. However due to tardy drafting, rights for all affected persons regardless of denomination, is not reflected in Clause 90.

The way relief and rehabilitation has been conceptualized in this Bill however is quite problematic, it is paternalistic and does not invest rights in the affected persons. The term reparation under international law encompasses within it aspects of rescue, relief, compensation, rehabilitation, public apology and guarantee of non-repetition. The term ‘reparation’ in the NAC draft Bill has been used alongside relief, compensation etc. which is confusing and misleading. A clear articulation of the right to reparation and what it encompasses is required in the law.

The idea that loss of earning capacity should be a criterion for determination of compensation for victims of communal and targeted violence is contrary to any notion of reparative justice. The draft Bill does not recognise that victims of targeted and communal violence are not akin to victims of natural disaster, or victims of industrial disaster, or victims of workplace accidents (Schedule IV). Introducing loss of income as the basis for determining compensation misses the distinctiveness of victims of targeted and communal violence, which often includes dislocation, exclusion, difficulties of return, the failure of responsibility of the state to protect. The present Schedule is a partial compilation of existing provisions, but it is difficult to see how these may be relevant in the context. More thinking needs to go into what would constitute compensation where communal and targeted violence occurs. The Bill sees State assessment committee and District Assessment committees as agencies that will identify victims, make lists, issue identity cards and certificates. There is an objectification of the victim that apart from other things is not in consonance with the way international law has developed to help us see the place occupied by victims. There is a token mention of agencies of victims with the full participation of the victims but the same is not actualised in the way the chapter is set out. Revamping of this chapter to recognise the rights of the victims, the responsibility and obligations of state actors, liabilities of the state and consequences when these obligations are not fulfilled, is necessary.

Clause 111 of the draft Bill seems to have strayed into this Bill. It is taken from the Bhopal Claims Act 1985, which was later introduced in Schedule to the National Environment Tribunals Act 1995 (which passed into oblivion without ever being notified). The Bhopal Claims Act dealt with a situation where a corporation, as an economic centre of power, may be required to pay for all costs, injuries and losses arising from an industrial disaster. The CV Bill does not share any aspect of the situation. The idea that administrative costs and litigation costs, for example, are to be recovered does not acknowledge the complicity of the state nor how the offender will be identified who should pay for the costs set out in the Schedule. This is inapposite, and adds to the confusion on compensation and reparation.

Among the disturbing equivalences made in the draft Bill is the use of the standard in the Land Acquisition Act 1894 in computing loss due to injury to property. It is widely known that `compensation’ in the 1894 Act is as contested as the power of the state to compulsorily acquire under that Act. Reference to compulsory acquisition as setting the standard, and relying on the highly contested 1894 Act to dictate compensation for injury to property, is inexplicable.

The retention of requirement of prior sanction for prosecution of public servants and the good faith clause for actions done in pursuance of the Bill, subvert the main objective of this Bill and is a contradiction in terms. Interestingly Clause 76 of this draft Bill excludes prior sanction for offences detailed in Schedule III, which are largely offences under the Indian Penal Code pertaining to the performance of official functions by public servant. However the requirement of prior sanction has been retained for graver offences enumerated in Schedule II and more significantly for all the crimes formulated in this draft Bill. Clause 130 of this draft Bill, retains the good faith clause for all acts done by public servants of the Central government, State government, National Authority and State Authority, sowing the seeds for lack of accountability and transparency in discharge of public functions.

We, cannot accept the present NAC Draft ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011. We continue our struggle for a meaningful and effective CV Bill, fully engaging government and civil society in the process.

KANDHAMAL UPDATE 1 MAY 20 2011

2011-05-08T00:45:00.001-07:00

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.”]

Indian Christians profiled by government of Madhya Pradesh state

2011-04-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh cops pull back Christian profiling plan

Naveen and Firoz Mirza , Hindustan Times
Bhopal, April 15, 2011

A police circular in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh seeking detailed profiles of Christians and churches in the state has been withdrawn after protests from members of the minority community.

State chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday sought a report on the circular issued on March 23. This is the first time such a circular was issued in Madhya Pradesh.

The controversy caused by the circular surfaced at Ashtra town in Sehore district when a police official allegedly threatened a Christian priest who declined to give information sought through the circular. “The officer threatened to take me to the police station when I refused to provide details,” said Father Francis Scaria of the Ashtra parish.

The police top brass claimed ignorance about the circular even though the state police headquarters issued it to all police stations, seeking information on the financial status, political leanings and sources of funding of churches and their staff.

Director general of police SK Rout reportedly did not know about the circular till Wednesday when a delegation of Christians brought it to his notice.

Rout told HT, “All district police units have been directed not to collect any such information.” The circular had triggered alarm and anger among Christians, who viewed the order as a prelude to unleashing organised violence on the community.

Bhopal’s Archbishop Leo Cornelio, who heads the Catholic Church in the state, said, “It is a conspiracy against Christians in Madhya Pradesh.” He said similar profiling was done in Gujarat, where Christians were targeted in religious violence in some districts between 1999-2000.

Father Anand Muttungal, spokesperson of Catholic Church, Madhya Pradesh, said the circular violated the community’s fundamental rights. It betrayed the anti-Christian bias of the state government, he said.

Kandhamal Update March 2011

2011-03-18T01:00:00.001-07:00

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.

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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

LEST WE FORGET

2011-03-06T18:28:00.001-08:00

TOGADIA WANTS VOTING RIGHTS IN INDIA ONLY FOR HINDUS

Bharat has seen how viciously many governments are going after Hindus, creating NIA and giving simple cases to NIA so that they get Muslim votes…
Solution? There should be voting rights only to the Hindus. Those whose forefathers opted out for Pakistan and those who do not follow 2 kids norm have no right to vote in Bharat. The political parties who loot national coffer on Muslims in the name of minority should be banned from elections. There must be a common civil code - if it is not now then there will sure be a common civil code but that will be Sharia in Bharat. [Dr Pravin Togadia, International Secretary General of VHP. Contact: drtogadia@gmail.com] [From the column TogadiaSpeak, the Organiser, published from New Delhi, edition dated 13 March 2011. http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=388&page=34 ]

Anti Christian campaigns on eve of Narmada festival

2011-02-05T05:10:00.001-08:00

FACT FINDING REPORT ON THE EVENTS ON THE EVE OF THE PROPOSED NARMADA SAMAJIK KUMBH AT MANDLA, MADHYA PRADESH

JABALPUR, 1 FEBRUARY 2011

A fact finding team which toured the Narmada Valley areas in Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh on the eve of the so-called Narmada Samajik Kumbh scheduled to be held from 10th to 12th February 2011 has found that the Christian community not just of the district but of the entire region encompassing Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring state of Chhatisgarh, have solid reasons to fear an outbreak of violence against them during or after the event from cadres of the Sangh Parivar.

The Sangh Parivar has left no one in any doubt that the main reason for organising the Kumbh, or holy river bank gathering, at which they expect two million people and the entire leadership of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, its daughter organisations and the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to attend, is to purge the region of “Christian missionaries” they accuse of carrying on large scale conversions of tribals, mostly Gonds in this part of the country.

The church leadership in turn has sent urgent representations to the Governor and chief minister of Madhya Pradesh apprising them of the sinister developments and calling on the State to ensure that they are not persecuted and that there is no outbreak of violence. “Our sources tell us there will be a major ghar wapsi or conversion to Hinduism of local Christians. We urge the administration to take timely action and appropriate steps to protect the citizens and particularly the minorities, their places of worship and institutions and religious personnel. The administration would be entirely and wholly responsible in case of any undesirable eventuality,” a memorandum signed by priests and representatives of the Christian community to the State Governor, with copies to the Chief Minister and the divisional and district authorities said. The memorandum also listed samples of newspaper clippings and the offensive posters targetting minorities.

The Fact Finding Team: the fact finding team consisted of Dr John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council of the Government of India, and secretary general of the All India Christian Council, and Mr Vijayesh Lal, Human rights activist and Secretary of Religious Liberty Commission - EFI. The team spent three days in the Mandla-Jabalpur region, and met with the Catholic bishop of Jabalpur, Right Reverend Gerald Almeida as well as over 200 Catholic, Protestant and evangelic priests, pastors and church workers of the region in two groups in Jabalpur, where one group had come as they were afraid to meet the team in their village areas, and in the Mandla Catholic parish church hall.

The team visited the banks of the Narmada River, particularly the left bank, where some houses and fields had been levelled to make housing, toilet and other arrangements of the crowds expected to attend. The team spoke with the contractors building the “shamianas” and tents, roads and a new barrage, to local policemen, and others. The team could not, for want of time, go to Bhopal to meet with the Chief Minister, the Home Minister, the State Minorities Commission and the Governor, all of whom have been apprised of the situation by the local church authorities.

The fact finding team also collected, or photographed, pamphlets, posers, hoardings, and were given copies of other printed material.

Background: The district lies in the Mahakoshal region of Madhya Pradesh state. Most of the district lies in the basin of the Narmada River whose origins are in streams perhaps a hundred kilometres upstream from the town. Mandla district is part of the Administrative commissioner’s division of Jabalpur, with an area of 8,771 square kilometres, an official Census population of 779,414, a literacy rate of 59.85. Politically, it sends a member to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament and as many as 12 members to the State Assembly, making it politically a very important region. Government statistics say much of the population are Adivasis (tribals, who the RSS wants to describe as Vanvasis, or forest-dwellers, a term abhorred by the people). The State government admits that despite 60 years of Independence, 11 Five year Plans and millions of rupees spent in Union and State projects, the Mandla district “consistently” ranks among the 20 most backward districts in India. It is rugged terrain, and barring the state highway, inner roads continue to be in a terrible condition. Even within sight of from the highway, housing ranges from brick and cement houses to mud and thatch huts.

The Church is active in the region in education, health and development projects, many begun in recent years. The Catholic Church runs a hospital, a girl’s school and a boy’s school, apart from work done by the fathers and Sisters. The Church also has a home for its retired clergy in the region. The catholic population is thinly spread over the region, barring two villages which have a sizable number of Gond Catholics. The Church of North India has a century old church in the town, near the offices and residences of the Collector and Police chief. The CNI church has some historical and architectural importance. About 400 protestant and evangelical Pastors

Backgrounder to Kumbh Melas: The Kumbh, as the encyclopaedia says, is a mass Hindu pilgrimage, usually on the banks of a holy river and with a fixed periodicity. The minor Kumbhs are held every 3 years, the Ardh or half Kumbhs every six years at on the Ganges at Haridwar in Uttarakhand and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh on the junction of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and the main or 12 yearly Kumbh at river banks at four places --Allahabad, Haridwar, and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh and Nasik in Maharashtra. The government spends billions of rupees in the periodic preparations, largely on crowd management, sanitation and habitation, but the religious rituals are carried out by well known Akharas, or congregations which have traditional rights of bathing and prayers in a sharply contested hierarchy and priority. The government has little role in it, and political parties even less. Political parties however to register their presence, and it not just Bharatiya Janata party leaders but such Congress top brass as Mrs Sonia Gandhi who make their presence felt at these religious fetes together with the other millions of the faithful. [By the way, the Supreme Court has recently upheld the official expenditure at Kumbhs, the Muslim Haj and the Hindu pilgrimage to Mansarover in Chinese-held Tibet as legitimate.]

What distinguished the “”Narmada Samajik Kumbh” from the others is that is part of a very recent series of religious festivals invented by the Sangh Parivar as part of an ideological campaign to animate tribal populations in western and central India, specially the Chhotanagpur region inhabited by some of the oldest tribes in the world, anthropologically older than the Dravidian and the Aryan groups that now constitute much of the Indian population. While the people call themselves Adivasis, or original people, the Sangh Parivar calls them Vanvasis or forest dwellers as it is loath to admit that they pre-date the Aryans in the subcontinent. This region is also heavily forested, and has vast reserves of rare earths, minerals, coal and much of the country’s bio diversity. While the late Lakshmananda Saraswati was evangelising the Kondh tribals of Kandhamal in Orissa – later scene of much violence against Christians – with similar heavily Sanskritised ritual, his colleague in the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram Swami Aseemanand, invented the “Shabari Kumbh” in the Dangs district of Gujarat to create a political and ritual campaign against local Christians and church workers. Aseemanand, born in Bengal and with a master’s degree in science, had become a terror in south Gujarat, which first saw serial violence against Christians on Christmas Eve in 1998 in which over three dozen village churches were torched. Aseemanand is currently in police custody and is being investigated for his part in “Hindutva terror” targetting religious minorities and involving the3 bombing of Muslim shrines and mosques as well as the India-Pakistan peace train, called the Samjhauta express, in 2007. In fact the Shabari event launched by Aseemanand was planned in Madhya Pradesh, according to media reports.

The India Abroad News Service in a despatch from Ahmedabad in January 17 reported that Aseemanand, the chief organiser of the 'shabari mahakumbh', first held in February 2006 to reconvert Christian tribals as Hindus in the tribal Dangs district of Gujarat, had earlier announced that the second edition would be held this year at the same venue, but the venue was shifted later. IANS quoted Hindu Jagran Manch and other co-sponsors based in Surat saying the decision to shift the congregation away from Dangs has been taken in view of the heightened surveillance by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It was first christened 'Maa Narmada Kumbh'. The name was changed to Narmada Samajik Kumbh when some tribal groups objected and threatened to hold their own festivities to challenge the Kumbh. The Fact Finding team was told that the Tribals possibly would go ahead with their alternative celebrations.

The Kumbh venue is spread over 14 square km area to accommodate about 20 lakh people that are expected to attend. The government has allotted Rs 140 crore [Rupees 1,400 million] for the civil works, tentage, roads and other arrangements.

Already, a barrage has been built across the nascent Narmada River to hold back water for the people to bathe in, as normally at this time of the year, there is not much water in the river. The fact finding team could not ascertain if environmental clearances had been got from the Central authorities for this barrage which itself may have repercussions on wildlife and irrigation downstream. Several kilometres of roads have been built on the riverbed and fields, while tens of kilometres of roads leading up to the river from Jabalpur are being hurriedly given a fresh black-top after removing the old asphalt coating. In normal times, a small temple and a natural island host the several ritual bathing ceremonies held every year, and attended only by local people. The fact finding tram witnessed one such bathing festival, which was supervised by a handful of policemen.
We understand that for the coming Kumbh, not only police from the division but other parts of the State is being deployed, as prominent Hindu religious leaders as well as activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and other Hindu organisations, besides prominent Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, are expected to attend. We were given to understand that Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states, including Mr. Narendra Modi of Gujarat, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh and Mr. Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh, were also expected to attend.

We were told that even before the New year, groups of Sadhus and Sangh activists had been roaming about the villages in Mandla, as well as villages and town in the rest of state, going home to home to tell about the Kumbh and to collect money for food and arrangements for the devotees. We were told that such teams of fund collectors were even active in Jabalpur, the second major town in Madhya Pradesh and seat of its High court.

It was in this context that the Pastors and social leaders in Mandla told us of the threatening nature of the Sangh propaganda. They said much of the treat was oral, and conveyed as the groups moved across the villages briefing the people about the activities of the “missionaries” or Christian pastors. The group leaders were openly saying they would wipe out Christianity from the region and covert the region’s Christians to Hinduism in Ghar wapsi through ritual cleansing.

We came across software used to print various sizes of banners and flex-boards. One such set of slogans on the posters charged the Christian missionaries of fooling the local people through their educational and medical services. The main slogan was that the “Church will do anything for conversions” Some of this software bears the signatures of the “Dharma Jagran Samiti, Maharashtra”.
Interestingly, the State administration is going out of its way to patronise the Kumbh The police superintendent on 6 December 2010 issued orders telling Churches , and others, that they needed to close down their schools and other institutions which would used to house the visiting dignitaries, women police and other officials. The school officials told the police it would be impossible to close down the schools for such a long period. After this, the police superintendent claimed he had not signed such an order. The fact Finding team could procure a copy of the order.

The Mandla police have always kept close tabs on the local Christian leadership. The police issued a notice to Sister Olga Lucas of the Deenbandhudham Convent that they were investigating complaints and wanted the Convent to give a list of the nuns serving in the convent with details, further details of their bank accounts, the details of other inmates, numbers of landline and mobile telephones in the convent and the names of those who owned these instruments. Going to ridiculous lengths, the police also asked for full details of patients undergoing treatment in the hospital and clinics, and the details of the administrative structure of the congregation of the nuns, together growth names, addresses and phone numbers of the office bearers and superiors.

Similar notices were also issued to other catholic priests and protestant pastors. The Fact Finding committee could get hold of copies of many of these handwritten notices and orders

The collective fears of the community and church leaders are evident in the text of the Memorandum submitted to the Governor, which inter alia says [English translation, as the original is in Hindi] “It is a matter of great happiness for the Mahishmati Nagar Mandla that the Narmada Kumbh is organized at Mandla on 10,11 and 12th February 2011. As per the information received about 20 lacs [two million] people are expected to arrive for this program. The Kumbh is supposed to be a time of blessings for all. But many fears too are expressed about the purpose of organizing this Mela.

1. As per one of the Paper reports, one of the aims of the Mela is to save the tribals from the persecution of the Christian missionaries. To persecute somebody is against the principles and teachings of Christianity. Moreover the Christian Community in Mandla District have been giving generous support for the development of this District through its educational, medical and social works. Therefore we request the Govt. take care and stop the black propaganda going on against the Christians so that the religious good will prevailing here may not be lost.

2. It is informed by various sources that during the Kumbh in large number, Christians will be reconverted to Hinduism through “Ghar wapasi” (Home Coming) program. Joining any religion or returning to any religion is a fundamental right of every citizen of this country. But we request the Govt. to see that no one is allured or forced to go back to any religion and thus violate their fundamental rights.

3. Another fear about Kumbh is that large number of people from outside M.P. are involved in the preparations and conducting the Kumbh. Since the work is allotted to people who do not know well the language and culture of this place, it can create unwanted situations and problems. In that situation if anything unwanted like stampede etc happens we wish that any antisocial elements should not put the blame on the minorities and take advantage of the situation. To face such situation we request the Government to insure all the buildings, shops, institutions and other movable and immovable properties of the minorities at the expense of the Govt. itself and save the minorities from any risk.

4. Some of the political groups have expressed their doubt that the Kumbh is organized to lease out terrorism here. If the Govt. has some doubt of such thing, to save the innocent people from such situation, in time Govt. may deploy necessary police and Para military forces.

5. From the information received it is learnt that in order to spoil the religious harmony and social peace, a lot of leaflets and flexes are printed and they are being distributed. In time if the Govt. does not take precautionary measures on it and stops it, there is a possibility of losing religious harmony and cause social unrest.

6. Mandla is a peaceful and healthy area. But the coming of such a large number of people may pollute this area and this may lead to some kind of epidemic.

7. We request the Govt to introspect on the above points and take necessary steps in time. Give total protection for the people, institutions and worshipping places of the minorities. If needed kindly arrange sufficient paramilitary force for the same. If through the negligence of the Govt. if anything unwanted happens the Govt. will be held responsible for the same. We wish a peaceful Kumbh and all the success for it and promise our full support and cooperation.”

The Church leadership has reserved its right to consult legal opinion and, if necessary, move the courts for protection.

After its visit, the Fact Finding team fears that even if there is no violence and no forcible conversions of Christians to Hinduism during the duration of the Kumbh, the Hindutva campaign had vitiated the atmosphere and seriously impacted on human relationships between Christian and other tribals in the hamlets, villages and townships of the region. The penetration of hard core Sangh activists and their cells in this area may have long term repercussions for the freedom of religion in this region and may seriously impact on the continuing social work of the Church, including the running of schools and medical centres.

The Fact finding tram hopes the Madhya Pradesh government will take whatever administrative steps are required to prevent any coercive moves against the Christian minority community, that the government will take cognisance of the massive hate campaign that has been unleashed, that it will monitor the security of the minorities during the Kumbh and that it will take long term measures to see that constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith continue to be implemented in the Mandla region.

A copy of this report is being sent to the Governor of Madhya Pradesh, to the Chief Minister, to the National Commission for Minorities, to the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and to the office of the Prime Minister of India for their information.

Enclosures:
Soft copies of posters
Photocopies of police notices to Convents and churches
Text of the Church memorandum to the Governor

Anti Christian campaigns on eve of Narmada festival

2011-02-05T05:10:00.000-08:00

2011-01-29T01:43:00.003-08:00

A bit of the Cancer remains in Supreme court’s Judgment on Dara Singh

John Dayal

Oncologists, cancer surgeons, take extra care when excising a malignant tumor from the human body. They make sure not an iota, not one cell remains of the tumor, lest it blow up in full bloom some years later and send the patient to his or her death.

The Supreme Court of India, the last bulwark of justice and secularism from the point of view of micro minorities such as the Christians, seems not to have take such due diligence when in a rare suo moto action this week it modified its remarks in a judgement denying the investigating agency’s demand for the death penalty for Bajrang Dal activist Dara Singh who led a mob that burnt alive Australian mission and health worker Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons Timothy and Philips in Orissa on the night of 22 January 1999. The court upheld the High court judgement which had given Dara Singh a life term holding that the crime was not the rarest of the rare, and the trial court in Khurda had erred in giving Dara Singh and some of his associates the death penalty in the first place.

The Christian community is still divided on its support or opposition to the death penalty, but most in the Catholic and Protestant churches say capital punishment is an anathema in this age and time. I am myself a staunch opponent of the death penalty.

When the Supreme Court delivered its judgement, the community was slow to respond. I was on satellite television to welcome the life term, but to express my strong apprehensions to the implication of the Supreme Court judgment which made it seem that Dara Singh was justified in “punishing” Stainless for his Christiana activities including alleged conversions of the tribals I Orissa.

The Supreme Court through most of its judgement text dwelt on the circumstances of the case and held that Dara had been indirectly identified through slogans and identification through photographs. It did bold that the triple murder was horrendous. But in its concluding paragraphs, the court said the following: In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity. All these aspects have been correctly appreciated by the High Court and modified the sentence of death into life imprisonment with which we concur." The Court had also said, "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of 'use of force', provocation, conversion, and incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."

The All India Christian Council issued an immediate press statement, which expressed concern about affect of Judges’ comments about conversion on cases of communal violence. Dr. Joseph D’souza, President of the Council said, “We are satisfied with the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the 2005 Orissa High Court’s verdict which commuted a death sentence for Dara Singh to life imprisonment for killing Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons in Orissa in 1999. In dismissing Dara Singh’s petition for dropping of the case against him, the Apex Court clearly denounced the heinous hate crime perpetrated by communal forces.”

Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, “Most Indian Christians oppose the death penalty both on moral and theological grounds, as much as we oppose abortion and taking away life at any stage. Of course, as Citizens, we want the State and Central government to uphold the rule of law.” In the conclusion of the ruling on Criminal Appeal No 1366 of 2005, “Rabindra Kumar Pal @ Dara Singh Vs. Republic of India”, the judges wrote, “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.” Some media reports insinuated this meant ‘conversions’ are illegal or the root cause of the violent attack. Dayal said, “Although we are yet to analyse the full judgment of the Supreme Court, we are disturbed by the parts carried by the media, mentioning terms like fraud and forcible and conversion. The Court must comment on Hindu conversions, termed Ghar Wapsi. But more than anything, we fear such remarks may negatively impact trials in Kandhamal, Orissa and future challenges to so-called ‘freedom of religion laws’ in various states.”

The aicc said inquiries by the National Commission for Minorities, Right To Information (RTI) requests, and other investigations have proven repeatedly there have been no fraudulent or forceful conversions by Christians in India anywhere, anytime. After analyzing the Supreme Court reference to conversions, the aicc might move Supreme Court to revise the reference at an appropriate time. “We do not want any court to pre-judge the matter of conversions and violence. The real root cause of strife in which Staines lost his life with his two kids was a misunderstanding of conversion. We have seen communal violence not only against Christians, but also on Muslims and Sikhs since India’s Independence. It is unfortunate that Hindutva forces look for an excuse to attack Christians and others because they believe that India is for Hindus only. This goes against India’s spirit of secularism.”

A day later, civil society activists, among them Navaid Hamid, Shabnam Hashmi, Seema Mustafa, Harsh Mander, H S Hardenia, and former MP Shahid Sidiqi, and Christian activists John Dayal, Dominic Emmanuel, and Mary Scaria also issued an angry press note, widely covered on the internet and controversially covered by the Hindu on Page One -- leading to a hilarious editorial development, of which some other time – calling the comments gratuitous. The statement noted A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and B. S. Chauhan went on to add: “It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of ‘use of force’, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other. It strikes at the very root of the orderly society, which the founding fathers of our Constitution dreamt of. ”

“This statement patently is unconstitutional as it goes against guarantees of freedom of faith on the one hand and seems to acknowledge vigilante action of criminals like Dara Singh who take upon themselves ‘to teach lessons’ to persons serving lepers and the poor. Did the SC ever take into consideration the report of the Wadhwa Commission which was set up to probe the murder of Graham Staines and which had observed, “There has been no extraordinary increase in the Christian population in Koenjhar district between 1991 and 1998. The population had increased by 595 during this period and could have been caused by natural growth”. The SC ruling may in fact send the wrong signals to courts trying cases of religious violence in Kandhamal, for instance, and in other places. It also tends to preempt possible challenges to the black laws enacted by many states in the guise of Freedom of Religion Bills.

“The secular India looks at SC and other judicial forums as its last hope to preserve Constitutional guarantees given to religious minorities and other marginalized groups. It is therefore understand disturbed when judgments such as this one and the Allahabad-Lucknow Bench, ruling on Ayodhya are made and interpreted as supporting the bigoted point of view of right wing fundamentalists such as the Sangh Parivar. The state cannot abrogate its responsibilities to ensure the secular fabric of the country. We expect the government to ask the SC to expunge the unnecessary, uncalled for and unconstitutional remarks..”

The uproar had its impact. The Supreme Court did not wait for us to file an application. In a salutary rare revision of its own order, the two judges expunged most of the offending words.
The suo moto changes made by the court are:

"In the case on hand, though Graham Staines and his two minor sons were burnt to death while they were sleeping inside a station wagon at Manoharpur, the intention was to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity."

has been replaced with:

“However, more than 12 years have elapsed since the act was committed, we are of the opinion that the life sentence awarded by the High Court need not be enhanced in view of the factual position discussed in the earlier paragraphs," said the bench in its one of such replacement.”

And
We hope Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of religion playing a positive development integrating into a prosperous nation will be realized. "It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone's belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other."

has been replaced with:

"There is no justification for interfering in someone's religious belief by any means."

On the face of it, it is satisfactory. But senior Supreme court advocates I have consulted have told me there is enoiugh cause to go back to the Supreme court to seek clarifications on what it means by the term “interference” in someone else’s religion. Is talking about your own religion “interference”, or is evangelization interference. This suddenly gains in importance in view of the Somaekharan Commission report on the Karnataka attacks on churches in which it calls for drastic measures to regulate church activity, including registration of churches.

The bench of justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan, while dismissing the agency’s plea for death penalty, said the punishment can be imposed only in the “rarest of rare” cases depending upon the facts and situation of each case. Dara Singh and Mahendra Hembrom were found guilty of burning to death Staines and his sons, who were sleeping inside a van outside a church, at Manoharpur village in Koenjhar district of Orissa on January 22, 1999. The bench had on December 15 last year reserved its judgement after hearing at length the arguments of CBI’s counsel and Additional Solicitor General Vivek Tankha and counsel for the convicts.

Senior counsel KTS Tulsi and Ratnakar Dash, besides Counsel Sibo Shankara Mishra, appeared for the 12 convicts. Appearing for CBI, Tankha had told the bench that Dara Singh deserves death sentence as the murders were committed in a most “diabolic and dastardly manner” which warranted exemplary punishment. Dara had filed an appeal challenging his conviction and the life sentence awarded to him. The appeals were admitted by the apex court in October 2005. On May 19, 2005, the Orissa High Court had commuted to life imprisonment the death penalty imposed by the sessions court on Dara Singh for the murder of Staines and his two minor sons, 10 y3ear old Philip,6 year old Timothy. Mahendra Hembram, a tribal, was convicted but the High Court acquitted 11 others who were awarded life terms by the trial court in the case. The trial court in Khurda had in September 2003 convicted all the 13 accused. While Dara Singh was awarded death sentence, others were given life terms.

While the Christian Council has reserved its right to move the Supreme Court again, there seems to be a division in the church on what to do next. High level meetings in the Delhi archdiocese have not arched a unanimous decision on the course of action, but it is clear that senior counsel and even the National Commission of Minorities has to be consulted.

CBCI law panel secretary Sr Mary Scaria said; the freedom of religion is a Constitutional Right under Article 25 of the Constitution of India and it is accepted and respected both in the national and International laws. The right to freedom of religion allows Indian citizens to choose any religion that he / she wants to choose. This fundamental right was chosen after lot of thought regarding the process of person choosing his / her own religion. The right to freedom of religion is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution of India. Article 25 reads as follows:-The judgment will give impetus and be used as a precedent to justify the "Freedom or Anti-Conversion" Acts and Bills in many states, besides emboldening religious fundamentalists and moral policing. As the Supreme Court itself have realized that they have made a mistake and expunged those portions which according to them were unconstitutional, the community after having gone through the judgment before and after expunging feel the urgency to go before the APEX COURT with another petition perhaps as it is a larger Constitutional issue pray for a proper dealing of the issue. Or referring to a larger bench?

One of the messages tome said “”The modified version of the Supreme Court judgement in the Graham Staines case may be less offensive, but it is in no way less dangerous. In some ways it is even more dangerous to liberty than the earlier offensive wording. While deleting references to "teaching the victim a lesson" etc, and direct use of the word "conversion", the Court still maintains that "There is no justification to interfere in someone's belief by any means", implying thereby, that propagating one’s beliefs is tantamount to interference in another’s beliefs. This judgement needs to be challenged – not under criminal law, but under Constitutional law.

Advocate P I Jose said: Rules of statutory interpretation are not applicable to reading of a Judgment. But there are well accepted judicial norms for this too. Keeping that in mind the basic question that scares every one, particularly Christians in India, is- what is the larger social evil that disturbed and prompted the two judges while dealing with the subject case to pen paragraph 47 as a post script to the Judgment? References to Shri K.R. Narayanan and Mahatma Gandhi in the same Para 47, which was retained even after suo-moto ‘clarification’ make it clear, the evil that disturbed them is “intolerance and disrespect for another’s religion The issue is whose intolerance or disrespect- the convict’s or the victims’? The replaced sentence answers it without any doubt as the words used are “religious belief” because Dara Singh did not interfere with helpless Stains and two innocent children’s “religious belief” but with their “right to life”. This takes us to the conclusion that the judges were disturbed by the victims’ way of life.
On the first place making a comment on the victims’ is out of place and against the basic principles of judicial thinking because a victim is not given an opportunity to explain their conduct in a criminal trial. Secondly, but more important, applying the yardstick of victims’ conduct while judging a criminal act not committed on a sudden provocation, rather in a case of cold blooded murder. Sadly the feeling of scare and deep hurt the comments made to the Christian community in India is because it fell from the highest court of the land. A comment deviating from the ordinary norms of judicial thinking from the Supreme Court has the potential not only to propel the conduct of a billion people but also determines the performance of a policeman’s lati in this country. “
This is still a story which is developing.

2011-01-29T01:43:00.001-08:00

2011-01-01T02:27:00.000-08:00

PRESS STATEMENT
For Immediate Release
For more information, contact Dr. John Dayal

CHRISTIAN COUNCIL CONCERN AT TARGETING OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS BINAYAK SEN, TEESTA SETALVAD, AND OTHERS

CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY SAYS FREEDOM OF FAITH AND HUMAN DIGNITY CORNERSTONES OF INDIAN SECULAR DEMOCRACY

NEW DELHI: 1 January 2011 -- The All India Christian Council (aicc) today expressed deep distress at the systematic targeting and persecution of human rights defenders by government agencies as well as by organised groups. Christian Council leaders said India’s future as a vibrant secular democracy requires an abiding commitment to the civil liberties and human dignity of its citizens.

In a New Year Statement to the Nation, the aicc President and leadership also listed erosion of freedom of faith and disregard of special rights for vulnerable sections such as Tribals and Dalits as major issues facing India -- not just in the New Year 2011 -- but the second decade of the 21st Century. The Christian Council wished all fellow citizens peace, security, and a share in the national prosperity.

“Freedom of faith and human rights were special victims in the last year and the last decade. We recall the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 and the pre-planned mass violence against Christians in Kandhamal and other districts of Orissa as well as Karnataka,” said Dr. Joseph D’souza, aicc President. D’souza urged the Union Government to proactively resolve the unprecedented prison term for humanist doctor Mr. Binayak Sen and bring to an end the harassment of brave activist Ms. Teesta Setalvad who is currently targeted by both state and rightwing fundamentalist organisations.

Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, “It is tragic that a great republic such as India doesn’t have a sufficiently strong civil society and civil liberty mass movements which are required to monitor fault lines and lacunae in the administration of justice. A few daring individuals -- at great risk to their own lives -- and a handful of human rights groups have kept alive the spirit of the Constitution and taken up the cause of the common man victimized by extremist groups or a power-crazed governance system. People such as Binayak Sen and Teesta kept alive the pursuit of justice for the victims.” The Christian Council paid tributes to several activists who passed away last year – including Dr. Bhagwan Das of the Dalit movement, socialist leader Surendra Mohan, and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties Advocate Kannabiran.

Dr. Dayal said, “We call upon the government to ensure that a bill against communal violence is brought before Parliament which fully addresses the fears of micro-minorities such as the Christians in India. The Christian Council fully supports the demands of Dalit Christians and Muslims, and we hope the government and Supreme Court grant them justice in 2011.”

“It is high time that the government makes three structural changes to strengthen justice mechanisms in India. It should bring forth legislation establishing an Equal Opportunities Commission, set up a study group along the lines of the Sachar Commission to study the economic and social conditions of all strata of the Christian community in every part of the country, and strengthen the Nation Commission for Minorities. The 12th Five Year Plan must also reflect our needs, aspirations and hopes,” said Dr. Dayal.

The All India Christian Council plans to organise a series of seminars and consultations on these issues to educate the community and to keep the Union Government, Planning Commission, and state authorities abreast of issues crucial to the 26 million Christians in India.

The All India Christian Council (www.christiancouncil.in), birthed in 1998, exists to protect and serve the Christian community, minorities, and the oppressed castes. The aicc is a coalition of thousands of Indian denominations, organizations, and lay leaders.

# # #

Police, Coercion, and Peace in Kandhamal Christmas

2010-12-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Kandhamal victims observe third Chrismas season under the sky

2010-12-09T09:36:00.001-08:00

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.

Economic boycott of Christians in Kandhamal; rampant insecurity as villagers forced to live as Hindus

2010-11-09T01:18:00.001-08:00

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

The High Court judgment on Ayodhaya, if it becomes the law of the land through the Supreme Court, has ominous ramifications for India’s minority commu

2010-10-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

Response of Dr John Dayal, Secretary General, ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL, to the Judgement on Ayodhaya by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court:

New Delhi, Sept 30, 2010

The judgment of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High court today [30th September 2010] on the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute is patently based on populist and political sensitivities, rather than on points of law. Its implications, not just for the Muslims who were a party in the dispute, but all other religious minorities is yet to be fully assessed, but here is little doubt that there is an ominous aura to a verdict being touted by some as the only way to inter community peace in India. Judges SU Khan, Aggarwal and D V Sharma – the last of the 18 justices who have heard the case since its inception -- have given a legal cloak to popular Hindu mythology and faith that the Lord Rama was born at the very spot where the mosque was built over the ruins of a Hindu temple sometime in 1528 AD during the reign of Emperor Babar.

The fractured judgement -- Justice Sharma took an absolute and unabashed pro-Hindu line while the other two appeared to give somewhat more consideration to the arguments of both Hindus and Muslims -- does not bring a closure to the dispute as an appeal in the Supreme Court is inevitable. But Hindu groups, who see the demolition of the mosque on 6 December 1992 as the natural outburst of an injured majority sentiment, have hailed this as a glorious victory. RSS chief Bhagwat has called upon all Hindus and others to join in a national campaign to build a “magnificent” Ram temple at the spot. Political leaders such as Mr Lal Krishan Advani have supported this move, and others have asked the Muslims to be magnanimous in defeat. The more virulent right wing of the Sangh Parivar, unmoved by calls of restraint, has demanded absolute control of the Mosque land, and everything else around it.

All sides have three months to move the Supreme Court. The time, some feel, may be used for out of court negotiations and dialogues which will make it easy for the Supreme court to make the High Court decision absolute and pave the way at some time in the future for the Ram Temple to take shape. The more secular elements, among them academics, hope the Supreme Court will take a long enough time for a new generation of Indians to accept the situation with the baggage of emotions and religious fervour.

That is as maybe. But jurists, law scholars and thinkers among the minority communities have been left numb at the Lucknow bench’s effort to play “village mediator”, accept mythology and theology as legal facts, and then proceed to divide the disputed land in a three way distribution – one part to the Muslims and two parts to two different Hindu groups. This surprised most because it is not even a prayer by any one of the many litigants. This also treads a very thin edge of the legal wedge in
India where land disputes between religious groups is legion, and documentation, written and archaeological very scarce. Even in the Hindu Muslim relationship, there are at least three other major Temple-mosque disputes and the Sangh Parivar lay claims to as many as 3,000 mosques built at various times over former temples. Forgotten in this claim is the history of Buddhist stupas and shrines all over the country which were demolished to make way for temples during the first Hindu resurgence a thousand years ago. There are, however, no Buddhists of Indian origins in any numbers to make a claim. Also apparently blown away by the wind is the law of the land that the religious character of a building, church, mosque, temple or gurudwara, has been “fixed” for all times from the moment of India’s Independence on 15th August 1947 and no one can usurp each other’s religious places.

It is not for nothing that historians and archaeologists, as well as jurists of the stature of Rajeev Dhawan and PP Rao, have commented on the court’s temerity in framing issues of faith and devotion, and then giving a ruling on them, banking on specious evidence if available or on folk lore when even the shred of academic proof was not forthcoming. This is the caution bell for other minority communities. The major disturbing signal from the judgement is that the courts in India are not ruling anymore on points of law, but on the feelings and faith of people, which gives the majority community an extraordinary power in a multi cultural nation such as India. It can, I fear, have serious implications in inter community disputes of this nature in the future.

The supporters of the judgement and these include the diverse ruling parties in New Delhi and the states are gloating on “a window of opportunity for peace and reconciliation”. It is to be examined how the judgement, even if it buys time, provides the way to future peace with possibly a temple and a mosque coming up, this time lawfully, in the future. There is no doubt that a jubilant Hindu majority will sue for peace and this could see their right wing religious groups ensuring that there is no trouble. But at this time in history, I do not see Hindu groups agreeing to have a Ram Temple rub shoulders with a revived Babri Mosque across a barbed wire fence. With the issue back in the courts, onus is also on the Muslim community to ensure that its extreme elements do not turn violent but wait for the next judgement, even if at least one major Muslim leader as said “We will not surrender”, quite reflecting the rather depressed mood of the community at large.

What has been salutary in the existence of the past few days has been the preparedness of the Union government and the state governments to take the strictest precautions so there was no flare up violence between the communities. The Indian army, the Air Force and hundreds of thousands of state militia and police forces were mobilised across the country, extraordinary precautions including a modicum of censorship of SMS and mass mailings were taken, and thousands of people taken into protective custody on the eve of the judgement. This decisiveness is welcomed by the minorities who, unfortunately still have more faith in central armed forces than the local police for their security.

The disputed land is currently in the custody of the Union government, as is the final responsibility of maintaining peace in a land that seen so much bloodshed over the last 19 years since the former deputy prime minister, Lal Krishan Advani, led a religious crusade across the nation, his land march leaving thousands dead in Hindu Muslim riots which reached their culmination in the demolition of the Babri mosque in the afternoon of 6th December 1992.

Indian Christians denounce threat to burn Holy Quran in Florida, US

2010-09-10T00:38:00.000-07:00

All India Christian Council

Press Statement

The following is the text of the press statement issued by the All India Christian Council secretary general Dr John Dayal, Member, National Integration Council, Government of India]

"The Christian community in India has denounced the threat of a US Pastor, Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, Gainesville, Florida, to burn a copy of the Holy Quran to "commemorate 9/11". This man today stands isolated in the world.

“This is not a Christian way to register one's anger and sorrow at the 9/11 act of wanton terrorism that left so many thousands dead. The best way to commemorate the memory of the innocent dead, and to protest that criminal action, is to resolve to denounce and renounce violence, especially religion-motivated violence.

“We in India who count amongst us almost 200 million Muslims, 26 million Christians and 20 million Sikhs, in a population of a billion and a quarter, understand the need for religious peace, inter-religious dialogue, and most importantly, the need of not identifying lunatic violent and fundamentalist fringes, with the populations of those faiths. Al Qaida does not represent the Islamic faith and this pastor certainly does not represent the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is carrying US constitutional freedom of expression to ridiculous and dangerous extremes. There can be violent consequences of his quixotic action across the world."

Three pogroms held together by a common thread

2010-09-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

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.

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

NATIONAL PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL ON KANDHAMAL

2010-08-24T08:33:00.001-07:00

JURY’S PRELIMINARY FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS

24 AUGUST 2010

The National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on Kandhamal, held in New Delhi on 22-24 August 2010, was organized by the National Solidarity Forum - a countrywide solidarity platform of concerned social activists, media persons, researchers, legal experts, film makers, artists, writers, scientists and civil society organizations to assist the victims and survivors of the Kandhamal violence 2008 to seek justice, accountability and peace and to restore the victim-survivors’ right to a dignified life.

The jury of the NPT was headed by Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. Joining him as jury members were Harsh Mander (member of National Advisory Council), Mahesh Bhatt (film maker and activist), Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Housing), P.S.Krishnan (retired Secretary, Government of India), Rabi Das (senior journalist based in Bhubaneswar), Ruth Manorama (women and dalit rights activist), Sukumar Muralidharan (Delhi-based free lance journalist), Syeeda Hameed (member of Planning Commission, Government of India), Vahida Nainar (expert on international law, mass crimes and gender), Vinod Raina (scientist and social activist with a specific focus on right to education), Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (former Chief of Naval Staff) and Vrinda Grover (advocate, Delhi High Court).
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Introduction

Thousands of dalits and tribals belonging to the Christian minorities in the Kandhamal region of Orissa were victims of organized violence starting in August 2007. According to government figures during the last bout of violence from August to December 2008, in Kandhamal district alone more than 600 villages were ransacked, 5600 houses were looted and burnt, 54000 people were left homeless, 38 people were murdered. Human rights groups estimate that over 100 people were killed, including women, disabled and aged persons and children; and an unestimated number suffered severe physical injuries and mental trauma. While there are reports of four women being gang-raped, many more victims of sexual assault are believed to have been intimidated into silence. 295 churches and other places of worship, big and small, were destroyed. 13 schools, colleges, and offices of 5 non-profit organizations damaged. About 30,000 people were uprooted and lived in relief camps and continue to be displaced. During this period about 2,000 people belonging to minority communities were forced to repudiate their Christian faith. More than 10,000 children had their education severely disrupted due to displacement and fear. Today, after two years, the situation has not improved, although the administration time and again claims it is peaceful and has returned to normalcy. With a view to create conditions for justice and accountability for the violence, the National Solidarity Forum organized a National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on 22-24 August 2010 at the Constitution Club in Delhi. The objectives of the Tribunal were:

1. To provide a platform for victim-survivors and their families to voice their experiences, perceptions, demands and aspirations to civil society at large;

2. To study and analyse the long-term and short-term causes and impact of the Kandhamal violence;
3. To assess the role, conduct and responsibility of various organizations, groups of individuals or persons, in influencing, precipitating and escalating the violence;

4. To assess the role played by the state and district administration and public officials, including the police, before, during and after the pogrom;

5. To assess the functioning of the criminal justice system for fixing criminal accountability and prosecuting the guilty;

6. To study and analyse the various rights of victims and survivors that have been violated during the violence and thereafter;

7. To recommend both short-term and long-term remedial measures for promoting an efficient delivery of justice and reparations, and for strengthening peace-building, prevention of communal violence and secularism; and

8. To present the findings and recommendations before civil society, including the media, and to persuade the government and other agencies to pursue the necessary follow up action to restore dignity, right to life, justice and peace to the victim-survivors of Kandhamal violence.

The Tribunal heard 43 victims, survivors and their representatives, and 15 experts who presented studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence. Documentation related to each case, consisting of affidavits, court documents, medical and other supporting documents, as well as copies of reports and studies on the violence were placed before the jury for its perusal. The depositions were on a range of issues including a) adivasi and dalit rights to religious and culture freedom; b) role of police, administration and the criminal justice system; c) issues relating to housing, compensation, relief, rehabilitation, food and livelihood, displacement and migration of the victims; d) impact on children and their education; e) gender violence and violations of human rights; and f) role of media, political parties, and civil society in peace and reconciliation processes. Formal invitations were extended to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Women’s Development and Child Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, as well as the National Human Rights Commission, National Commission for Minorities, National Commission for Scheduled Castes, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and National Commission for Women to participate in the proceedings of the Tribunal. However, there was no participation from the concerned ministries and commissions.

PREAMBLE

The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community, a vast majority of who are dalits and tribals were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured. The deliberate destruction of evidence pertaining to these crimes came to the attention to the jury. There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood. The victim-survivors continue to be intimidated and systematically denied protection and access to justice.

From the testimonies heard and the detailed reports received, the jury is convinced that the carnage in Kandhamal is an act of communalism mainly directed against the Christian community, a vast majority of who are of scheduled caste origin and anyone who supported or worked with the community. It is clear to us that there was deliberate strategy of targeting of the community, fed by groups of the Hindutva ideology such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and the active members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

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.

The jury acknowledges and appreciates the courage, determination and resilience of the victim-survivors and the human rights defenders supporting them, who have braved physical, psychological and economic hardships and intimidation to tell their stories before this Tribunal, thereby breaking the culture of silence. After listening to the myriad accounts of all the victim-survivors and their representatives, as well as the experts who presented a summary of their studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence, the jury offers the following preliminary findings and recommendations:

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

The jury observes that a majority of victim-survivors and their families are from marginalized groups, particularly from the dalit and adivasi (SC and ST) Christian community, and that most live in abject poverty and on the brink of despair. The victim-survivors and their families are yet to obtain justice, rehabilitation or regain a right to life with dignity. The victims/survivors have undergone incredible hardships, including physical and psychological trauma, threats and humiliation, deprivation of a dignity, an extensive loss of movable and immovable property, a source and means of livelihood and their right to a decent standard of living - including food, housing, education and health services. They have faced persecution in all its forms – such as social and economic boycott as well as religious, caste-based and cultural discrimination. They live under a constant threat to their lives and personal security and continue to suffer from trauma. The consequence is that even two year after the outbreak of the violence, the victim-survivors are unable to return to their villages and resume their normal way of life. They continue to be subjected to constant and overt manifestations of communal, caste and class-based discrimination. All victim-survivors and their representatives who deposed before the Tribunal strongly articulated their demand for justice and security.

The jury observes that communal forces have used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination against the Christians of SC origin and their supporters in Kandhamal. The object is to dominate them and ensure that they never rise above their low caste status and remain subservient to the upper castes. The jury observes, with deep concern, that a range of coercive tactics have been used by the communal forces for conversion or re-conversion of a person into the Hindu fold, including threat, intimidation, social and economic boycott and coercion, as well as the institutionalization of humiliating rituals. The state and district administrations have, on no occasion, intervened to protect the freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

The jury observes, with concern, the institutionalised communal and casteist bias of state agencies, and their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence and a deliberate scuttling of processes of justice through acts of commission and omission. The state agencies have blatantly failed to extend much-needed institutional support to victim-survivors and protect them from ostracism , socio-economic boycott and subjugation by non-state actors.

SPECIFIC OBSERVATIONS

A. State’s Complicity and Collusion

• Institutional Bias: All testimonies and reports have pointed towards the complicity of the police – senior officers as well as the constabulary – during the phase of violence, and their collusion with the wrongdoers during the phase of investigation and prosecution. Based on the testimonies, the jury concludes that this was not an aberration of a few individual police men, but evidence of an institutional bias against the targeted Christian community.

• Failure to Prevent the Violence: The police deliberately failed to prevent the violence by a) non-implementation of the recommendations made by the National Commission for Minorities in its reports of January and April 2008; b) permitting the funeral procession of Swami Lakshmananda through a 170 kilometre route through communally sensitive areas; c) allowing hate speeches and incitement to violence; d) allowing a series of programmes by the communal forces (such as the bandh of 25 August 2008, shraddhanjali sabhas and dharnas by Hindu religous leaders). In particular, the permission given by the state administration to the funeral procession cannot, in any way, be a mere lapse of judgment. The state agencies displayed long overdue political resolve when they stopped VHP leader Praveen Togadia from visiting Kandhamal in March 2010. This late awakening was however, of little help to the victim-survivors of the district.

• Suspension of Police Officials: Many witnesses deposed about the failure of the police to protect them from the violence and their refusal to register First Information Reports subsequently. There were long delayed actions to check police complicity, when five police officials were suspended for misconduct and negligence in connection with the sexual assault on Sister Meena, and the identification of 13 police officials for failure to protect persons and property in Kandhamal by A.K. Upadhyay, DIG (Training).

• Destruction of Evidence by Public Officials: The jury is constrained to observe that public officials have colluded in the destruction of evidence and there is testimony directly implicating the District Collector in this misdemeanour (Case No. 24)

B. Communal Forces, Freedom of Religion and Discrimination

• Forcible Conversions: Testimonies pointed towards forcible conversion of Christians to Hinduism during the violence and subsequently, as a condition for their return to their villages. No known action has been initiated against any of the perpetrators by the administration under the provisions either of criminal law, or the state’s Freedom of Religion Act.

• Serious Violation of Religious Freedom: The violent intimidation of the Christian community, accompanied by social sanctions against the practice of Christianity, the destruction and desecration of places of worship, the forcible conversions to Hinduism, the killing and torture of victims and survivors for their refusal to repudiate their faith, are all acts violative of the constitutional guarantees of right to life, equality and non-discrimination, as well as the right to religious freedom.

• The Role of Hindutva forces: The accused identified in all witness testimonies were members of Hindutva organisations. This is substantiated by the response of Orissa Chief Minister, to a query raised in the state Legislative Assembly, on 23 November 2009. In his written response, Mr. Naveen Patnaik said that pursuant to investigation, 85 members of the RSS, 321 members of the VHP and 118 members of the Bajrang Dal had been arrested.

• Discrimination on the Basis of Caste and Religion: The targeted violence against dalit Christians, as well as the continued discrimination against them are violative of Constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination, right to a dignified life and the prohibition of untouchability. Further, they amount to a serious violation of all provisions of the UN Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a convention ratified by India. The Concluding Observations of its forty-ninth session held in August/September 1996 (as it reviewed India's tenth to fourteenth periodic reports under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, 1965), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination affirmed that "the situation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes falls within the scope of" the Convention. The Committee states that "descent" contained in Article 1 of the Convention does not refer solely to race, and includes the situation of scheduled castes and tribes.

C. Sexual Violence and Other Gender Concerns

• Silence and Invisibility: The jury observes, with deep concern, that silence continues to prevail in matters of sexual assault. This applies at all levels, including documenting, reporting, investigating, charging and prosecuting cases. Though witness testimonies show that sexual violence was rampant, there are only five reported cases, and an even smaller number that have been registered and are pending in the courts. One of the testimonies refers to the gang rape (Case No. 3), but none of the accused has been formally charged.

• Special Vulnerability of Women: While all victims and survivors face intimidation and threats, women face the additional danger of sexual violence not just against themselves but also against their daughters (Case No. 12). The immediate consequence of such threats is a hightened sense of vulnerability and a restriction on their movement. The jury observes that the threat of sexual assault against women continues to be used as a tool to prevent families from returning to their villages, to prevent women from resuming their livelihood activities, and pursuing justice.

• Violation of international covenants: The pattern of violence against women is violative of constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination on the ground of sex as well as a right to life with dignity. In addition, the attacks violate international standards, including the UN Convention on Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) which has been ratified by India. The CEDAW Committee, through General Recommendation 19, has clarified that gender-based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately, amounts to discrimination against women.

D. Failure of the Criminal Justice System

• Arbitrary Exercise of Discretionary Power: The jury observes, with concern, an arbitrary exercise of the discretionary power vested in the police and the prosecuting agencies. In many instances, the police have refused to register FIRs, have delayed registering FIRs by 2-5 months, and dissuaded victim-survivors from registering FIRs and coerced them to omit the names of perpetrators and other details from the FIRs, particularly if they indicated the complicity of public officials or members of communal organizations. Victim-survivors were also shunted between various police stations for registration of FIRs in contexts where their safety was at risk.

• Arrests: Many victim-survivors deposed before the jury that the perpetrators of heinous crimes had not been arrested, and were roaming freely and continuing to threaten, intimidate and humiliate them. Testimonies point to an inordinate delay in arresting the perpetrators, and a failure to arrest many more, contributing to an overall climate of impunity. Honest police officials who attempted to arrest perpetrators were threatened. Testimonies indicate that victim-survivors were often threatened with arrest under fabricated charges in order to silence them and deter them from pursuing justice.

• Investigation & Prosecution: The deliberate destruction of evidence, particularly of killings, through the burning or disposal of bodies, has resulted in the absence of forensic evidence in many cases. Investigations were marked by a neglect of the basic requirements of gathering evidence, which severely impaired the efficacy of the prosecution. Delay in obtaining forensic evidence, failure in obtaining corroborative evidence and the rampant intimidation of victim-survivors and witnesses, have led to many acquittals.

• Appreciation of Evidence by the Fast Track Courts: Upon perusal of judgments, affidavits and statements, the jury concludes that the judicial weighing of evidence failed to recognise the extraordinary context in which these mass crimes have been committed. Minor discrepancies in witness testimonies in court have been given undue weightage, leading to an alarmingly high number of acquittals.

• Judgment and Sentencing: Studies indicate that lenient sentences have been awarded without an acknowledgment of the gravity of the crimes committed and their consequences, both in terms of heinous killings and assault, as well as rampant looting of movable property and destruction of immovable property belonging to the dalit and adivasi Christians. A fine of Rs. 2000 has been mechanically imposed, without any correlation with the value of property destroyed. Further there seems to have been little attempt to apply S. 357 of the Cr.PC which provides for an imposition of a higher amount of fine, which could be recovered and paid to victim-survivors as compensation.

• Gaps in Indian Criminal Law: The jury observes that clear gaps exist in the criminal law to prosecute and punish those responsible for targeted mass violence. These include the absence of investigative procedures and evidentiary rules relating to mass crimes, such as punishing for murder even in the absence of the body of deceased. The protections guaranteed by law to public servants obstruct their accountability. Such gaps make dispensation of justice in contexts of mass violence extremely difficult.

• Relevance of International Criminal Law: The testimonies shows that the Kandhamal violence meets all the elements of Crimes Against Humanity as defined in applicable international law. The jury has come across cases where victims were dismembered or burnt alive, constituting the crime of torture under jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals. (The International Criminal Court’s definition of torture in Article 7 does not require that torture be committed by public officials.) That a victim was forced to drink cow urine and shave his head amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

E. Protection of Victims and Witnesses, Access to Justice & Fair Trial

• Willingness to Testify in Court: Those who deposed before the Tribunal were keen, ready and willing to depose before the Fast Track courts. However, they face severe intimidation and threats. Despite the concerned authorities being informed, no steps have been taken to provide any protection to the witnesses and victim-survivors.

• Hostile Atmosphere in Court: The atmosphere in the trial court (Fast Track courts) was described as hostile. The atmosphere was fearful as the accused were accompanied by a large number of persons representing the accused, and from communal forces. The atmosphere in court is not conducive to a fair trial. There has been no initiative taken, either by the Prosecutor or the court, to hold the proceedings in camera.

• Absence of Safe Passage: Victims who have dared to lodge complaints & witnesses who have courageously given evidence in court are unable to return to their homes. There is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. They are living in other cities and villages, many of them in hiding, as they apprehend danger to their lives.

• Threat of Sexual Assault: Women victims and witnesses have received constant threats of sexual violence and rape to themselves and their daughters. Ironically most of the accused roam freely and live in their villages and homes.

• Absence of Free Legal Aid: Since most of the victim-survivors are from underprivileged communities, there is a dire need for quality legal aid services at state expenses. None of those who deposed before us had been extended free legal aid services. Most victim-survivors have been supported in court through the initiatives of non-profit organizations. The failure of the state to provide free legal aid has contributed substantially to an absence of fair trial.

F. Concerns Related to Children

The most important finding related to children status in Kandahamal is sense of hopelessness, injustice discrimination and fear prevailing among children, threatening to severely impact their growth and development.

• Mental Health: Children are in deep state of mental trauma. There has been no trauma counselling for the affected children and adolescents in Kandhamal. Even today they have night mares of running in the jungle, with the killers in pursuit, are scared of any loud sound and are afraid of people walking in groups or talking loudly.

• Education: Large number of children has dropped out of school due to financial and social insecurity and many have them have gone out for work. Many of them had to discontinue their education due to discrimination meted out to them by the school authority and also in some cases by children in schools. Many children were forced to change school and many of them opted for residential schools out of the state. Post violence many dropped out due to the inability of the families to bear the expenses, fear, and also due to lack of facilities to commute to school.

• Child Labour: Many children have left education and have gone to Kerala, Surat and neighbouring states. Even girls have gone to Udhagamandalam (Ooty)and working in coffee plantation. there is no data available with the district Labour Office regarding the present status of child labour in the state. Last child labour census in the district was done in 1997.

• Child Trafficking: There are rise incidences of trafficking for children, mainly for labour, sexual exploitation and abuse. Though there are no consolidated data on number of children being trafficked post violence in the district, we have come across some instances.

G. Reparations

• Compensation: Compensation for loss of life, injuries and loss of / damage to property has been awarded in an extremely arbitrary manner. The amounts awarded are grossly inadequate and do permit victim-survivors to regain the standards of living enjoyed prior to the violence. The award of compensation does not recognize sexual assault or the extent of loss of house and movable property destruction, the exclusion of which has caused immense difficulties to victim-survivors and their families.

• Relief and Humanitarian Assistance: From the testimonies of victim-survivors and reports, it is evident that the relief camps did not provide for basic facilities such as nutritious food, clean water and sanitation, or adequate security. There was a lack of trauma counselling, medical assistance and other forms of humanitarian assistance that ought to have been made available to all victim-survivors in the relief camps.

• Safe Return or Resettlement: Many victim-survivors have been forced or duped into returning to their villages, where they have faced continuous threat, intimidation and fear of attacks if they did not repudiate their faith. Many victim-survivors and their families continue to live on the outskirts of their villages, without any source of livelihood. The state and district authorities have taken no proactive measures at creating an atmosphere conducive for the safe return of victim-survivors to their villages. By failing to recognize the right of all victim-survivors and their families to a safe return to their villages or resettlement at state expense, the state has grossly violated the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 1998.

• Reconstruction of Houses and Places of Worship: Some victim-survivors have been provided inadequate compensation for rebuilding their houses and many excluded from an award of compensation altogether. A majority of places of religious worship that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence, have not been re-built. The amounts awarded as compensation to some are grossly inadequate for re-building such structures, while many others have been denied compensation altogether on technical grounds. The jury strongly believes that reconstruction of houses and places of worship at state expense would restore a sense of confidence and justice among the victim-survivors and their families, and restore them to a life with dignity.

• Livelihood and Education: Many educational institutions that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence are yet to be rebuilt, thereby depriving children from victim-survivor communities of their right to education, jeopardizing their future opportunities and causing a generational setback for emerging deprived dalit communities. Many victim-survivors who lost their source of livelihood, including agricultural land and government jobs, due to the mass displacement that took place, have received no assistance from the state for a restoration of the same. Many testimonies presented before the jury highlighted the fact that victim-survivors have been illegally deprived of employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act subsequent to the violence.

• Peace-building: Although village level peace committees had been set up, the testimonies before the jury as well as studies and reports indicate that such committees have not enjoyed the confidence of the victim-survivors and have been used as a platform for further intimidation. Notably, there has been no involvement of women in peace-building and negotiating processes, which violates standards set by international law, particularly UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

H. Human Rights Defenders

Non-profit organizations and human rights defenders have been targeted for their role in assisting victims with aid, relief, rehabilitation and process of justice. Victim-survivors have testified with regard to the destruction of personal and official property, attacks and damage to the offices of such organizations. These are contrary to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that calls upon the State to protect Human Rights Defenders and their work.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Enquiry into and suspension of police and administrative officials responsible for grave dereliction of duty.

• Proactive prevention of programmes planned by Hindutva forces that are divisive and propagate hate such as kalash yatra, Shraddhanjali sabhas (memorial meetings) and dharnas by Hindu religious leaders of Orissa held to perform rituals to eliminate the ‘enemies of Hindus.’

• Sections 153 A and B of the Indian Penal Code be strictly enforced.

• National Legal Services Authorities at both State and Central level to set up legal cell to assist victims to register FIRs where they were not registered or inaccurately registered, re-open closed cases, and transfer pending cases to outside the Kandhamal jurisdiction.

• A Special Investigation Team (SIT) be constituted to re-examine the already registered FIRs for accuracy, examine registrations of fresh FIRs, the trials that resulted in acquittals due to intimidation and/or lack of evidence and recommend the trials that need to be transferred or fresh trial conducted outside Kandhamal;

• Proactively identify cases of sexual assault has been grossly underreported due to fear and intimidation; and recognize and charge sexual assault in FIRs where they have not been so recognized.

• Appoint Special Public Prosecutors who enjoy the confidence of the affected community.

• State must provide protection to victims and witnesses before, during and after the trial process according to the guidelines provided in the recent judgment of the Delhi High Court.

• Endorse the recommendations of the National Advisory Council of drafting a new bill on mass crimes against impunity and secure accountability for mass crimes. The draft be in accordance with the emerging international standards of individual criminal accountability for mass crimes as set in the statute of the International Criminal Court and jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals.

• Both the State and Central government adopt at the very minimum the Gujarat compensation package to enhance the compensation already announced. In addition, victims of sexual assault be included as a ground eligible for compensation and employment. , Compensation for loss of livelihood

• All mechanisms set up to improve the criminal justice response, provide reparations, including compensation and rehabilitation be based on human rights indicators and standards that recognises the fact that even after two years thousands continue to be displaced.

• State make all effort to provide medical and psychological, particularly trauma counceling to the victims/ survivors, particularly the women and children.

• The specific educational needs of the children who have suffered displacement as a result of the violence be address with measures such as bridge school under the Sarva siksha Abhiyan, Kasturba Balika Vidhyalaya for SCs and STs girls; and residential ashram schools.

• The livelihood schemes of the state and central government be particularly provided to the affected community including M G Narega and special thrust be given for the affected youth in the PM’s skill training mission.

• The special component plan for the SC and the tribal sub-plan for STs should given priority focus to the schemes directed at the affected community. Dalit Christians to be provided all non-statutory benefits available to schedule castes.

• All training centres both of administrative and police to focus on education and awareness about rights, secularism and constitutional gurantees to minorities.

• Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards set 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 Development based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.

• 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 in accordance with the above standards.

• Review The Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 given the failure of the state machinery to prevent the violence and protect lives and properties of the people.

• Designate the affected areas as communally sensitive, appoint officers with professional integrity and sensitivity to the overall communal context and be alert to any early warning signs and develop appropriate response mechanisms to halt the brewing of hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities.

• Given the fact that human rights violations continue to take place as outlined in this report, the NHRC should take immediate steps to initiate an investigation into the incidences of violence.

• The National Commission on protection of Children Rights should investigate the need for children of the affected community to receive trauma councelling, to respect and promote their right to education and nutrition, take specific steps to prevent child labour and child trafficking. Appropriate agencies at the central and state levels need to respond to these issues.

• All efforts by the central and state government to improve the situation in Kandhamal must comply with the provisions of international human rights instruments that India has signed and ratified including CERD, CAT, CEDAW, CESCR, CRC, , UNPCR, UNDHR.

• Confidence-building and peace-building initiatives by the state and district administration should have the participation of members of the affected community, particularly women.

• The state and district administration should, with immediate effect, implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities, issued in their reports of January, April and September 2008

Justice A.P. Shah Harsh Mander Mahesh Bhatt
Former Chief Justice Member Film maker and activist
Delhi High Court National Advisory Council

P.S.Krishnan Miloon Kothari Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
Former Secretary, Former UN Special Former Chief of Naval Staff
Government of India Rapporteur on
Right to Housing

Syeeda Hameed Vahida Nainar Sukumar Muralidharan
Member Expert Free lance journalist
Planning Commission International law

Vinod Raina Ruth Manorama Vrinda Grover
Scientist and Social Activists Dalit & women’s rights Advocate
Right to Education Activist

Rabi Das
Senior Journalist
Bhubaneswar

The wounds are still fresh

2010-08-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

A Report to the Nation on the Second Anniversary of the Pogrom

By John Dayal

This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two regions.]

But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.

In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed, apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered, and we will never know the real figure because the government does not want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention. Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested in what is politely called gender violence.

For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in his own house.

The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the fires and the killings under control.

And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further. Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!

The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to sign.

It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.

The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa, or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and the trauma to their graves.

Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any account.”

He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about 25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch, what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”

Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.

I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists, and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on. Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa. But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and police actually assisting the cause of justice.

We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the district.
--------- -
Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794

----------- -
Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.

This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour. There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions, are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists, there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the family members by job offers.

Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence. According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.

Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second least developed on overall human development index while it is least on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.

There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.

Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make transportation of critical ill difficult.

The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30 thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way, unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no provision to help people rebuild their lives.

But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes – the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may take years before they are healed, if ever.

For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

With main Kandhamal Report

The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been presented to the Central and State governments by the National Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.

DEMANDS:

The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation

[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]

Raphael Cheenath of Kandhamal

2010-08-18T23:15:00.001-07:00

By John Dayal
August 2010

In a year which marks the Centenary of Blessed Mother Teresa and of Saint Alphonsa, most would find it difficult to find another authentic Christian hero for the Faithful in India. Raphael Cheenath would possibly blush if someone were to describe him as a living Saint -- if a tall deeply tanned and well built man in his late Seventies, who has seen both the urbane world and the deep of the forests, can indeed blush. But the Archbishop of Cuttack Bhubaneswar, and as he is now better known across the globe, “Archbishop Cheenath of Kandhamal”, is indeed one of a kind, a hero of the faith for Catholics, Episcopal and Evangelical Christians. This for having provided leadership to a battered and fragile community consisting of indigenous Tribal Kondh people and Dalit Panos groups, the poorest and the most marginalised segments of the population, to stand up to the worst form of persecution Christians have faced in over three hundred years. The last such large scale violence against the faithful was at the hands of Tipu Sultan, King of Mysore, who ravished the West coast of the Konkan and drove the Catholics on a long march to captivity.

What Cheenath and his people faced was the full hatred of India’s emergent neo-fascist religious bigots, described by political scientists as the Sangh Parivar. This is a pseudo-military political conglomeration believing in the right of their upper caste co-religionists to be the true and only inheritors of India, with Muslims and Christians in particular as aliens who have no place in the motherland. This group, which took inspiration from the Nazi and fascist traditions of Adolf Hitler and Il Duce Mussolini from the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, has been unhappy at India’s partition with the Muslim dominated western regions becoming the Islamic republic of Pakistan. They transferred their political angst into an animosity against Indian Muslims. This animosity has triggered perhaps twenty thousand riots in fifty years against the Muslims, who form just over ten per cent of the population. The Sangh hatred of Christians – who are less than 2.4 per cent of the national population -- was perhaps even deeper, partly by identifying the community with the imperial British who ruled India for more than a Hundred years, and partly for seeing in proselytising Christian missionaries a threat to the core of Hinduism itself. This led to a series of violent acts, sporadic in the first forty years of Independence of India in 1947, but bursting into the open in the mid 1990s, mostly in Gujarat, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.

The Sangh violence of the 1990s against Christians saw the emergence of Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi as the undisputed leader and spokesman of the Christian community in the country. Alan took to advocacy at the highest level, representing the community’s cause with the highest political leadership in the land, and when that failed to rouse the national conscience, led the community into radical action, including all India agitation such as the strike of 4 December 1998 which saw every educational and medical institution run by the community close down for a day in protest.

The government’s response, then, and of the Bharatiya Janata party now, was to call for a national debate on conversions, a ruse repeatedly used by the Sangh Parivar to coerce the community and subvert Constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith.

The Sangh violence in Kandhamal was at a much higher pitch, lasted much longer and affected more people than the mayhem had in 1998 or even earlier. When the fires died down in the plateau of Kandhamal right in the middle of the State of Orissa, more than 54,000 people had become refugees in their own homeland, Over 400 villages had been purged of all Christian presence, a hundred people had been killed and over 5,600 houses burnt. Children lost their childhood, those going to school lost years of academic progress. A Nun was gang raped, and there were reports of many other rapes and molestation. Girls were molested, and into the third year, some had been victims of human trafficking. For many, the trauma was worse – they had been told they could not return to their villages till they became Hindus, a process accomplished by forcibly shearing off their hair and making them drink a mixture of the dung and urine of a cow. Most refused and were severely beaten up and brutalised. They remain the real heroes.

In a way, Cheenath had a lifetime of experience in the tribal regions of central India to know how to respond even to the unexpected. Raphael Cheenath, born in Manalur, Kerala on 29 December 1934 joined the Society of the Divine Word, worked in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa as a missionary and priest, and was eventually appointed Bishop of Sambalpur, before being named 1 July 1985 as the second Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocese. As missionary, priest, Bishop and Archbishop, he had worked closely with the Dalit and Tribal communities. It is an interesting factoid that his Bishop’s house is almost entirely staffed by people from Kandhamal.

When violence broke out, first in December 2007 at Christmas-time and then in August 2008, it was natural and swift for a duty-bound Cheenath to convey the cries and the anguish of the victims to the national political and governmental leadership. With other colleagues of the Episcopacy in the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, he met the President of India and the Prime minister, the Governor and the Chief Minister. When the Chief Minister refused to meet the Christian delegation which had called on him, Cheenath led the clergy group to stage a Gandhian “dharna” or sit-in at the residence of the Chief Minister till the man, Mr Naveen Pattnaik, agreed to meet them.

The fires however continued to rage in the forests. It was the forest, like a mother, which sheltered the refugees, preventing a much higher death toll. But they were without relief. The district officers refused permission for Church agencies to bring in relief. The Sangh had feared that church relief agencies would further convert people or spread Christianity! The media was not helpful.

Cheenath had the courage to go to court. He has consistently shown this commitment to justice, to the need to challenge the legal system of the country to deliver justice to religious minorities. This is not as easy as it sounds. Justice still eludes most in Kandhamal, and it is the legal review system that has been put ion place by the church that is ensuring that the Fat Track courts trying several of the criminal cases are closely monitored and preparations made for remedial action.

Cheenath’s writ petition in the Supreme Court of India was the first of the many steps that would have to be taken in courts big and small, and it produced results. If over 2,000 of the houses have now been completed and relief agencies are working, it is because of that court action.

Cheenath would sound out the justice system more than once. He became the first Archbishop, or Christian leader, in living memory to appear before a Judicial Commission, the Justice Panigrahi Commission, to put on record the plight of the common an the poor of his community. He refused to be cowed by the cross examination of hostile lawyers, most of whom were politically aligned with the Sangh Parivar.

It has been this charismatic leadership in all sectors – the justice system, the relief and rehabilitation, and the matter of faith – that Cheenath has been successful in strengthening the spiritual values of the people and of his clergy and restoring faith in the system, which had been shattered. In fact, government and judiciary owe him a debt of gratitude for this, for it would have been so easy for the frustrated and the angry to lose faith in democratic processes and institutions when faced with the magnitude of the crisis and the initial hostility of police and administration.

It is not that the Archbishop has not faced charges from the lesser informed among clergy and lay persons, mostly for not being physically present in Kandhamal in the initial weeks, and coming first to Delhi and then staying back in the Bishops House in Bhubaneswar. But to say this is to not fully understand the geography of the area and the political and violence situation. There was hardly a Catholic institutional building intact in the entire region. It may, by the way, be recalled that a bomb was thrown at Bishop’s house during Christmas 2007; the complaint of this was made to the police by no less than Father Bernard Digal, then Treasurer of the Archdiocese. One of the great tragedies of Kandhamal was the martyrdom of Fr Bernard, who left the comparative security of Bishops’ house to travel close to 300 kilometres to see the ground situation in the district, which also happened to be his homeland. His own village had been devastated. His brother and family had seen their hut being burnt to the ground, and were now staying with thousands of others in a refugee camp. Bernard was waylaid, and beaten savagely, and then left for dead. He was rescued by others a day alter, brought to hospital. He almost recovered after intensive treatment in Mumbai, but eventually succumbed to his internal injuries and complications in a hospital in Chennai just when everyone was expecting him to be declared cured.

That showed the threat to all clergy and religious, especially women who were absolutely not safe. The Archbishop had been identified by the Sangh Parivar and named as their main enemy. The Sangh staged dharna and agitations in Bhubaneswar asking for his immediate arrest, tighter with Rajya Sabha member Radha Kant Nayak and a couple of others. The threat to the Archbishop’s life and liberty was very real. The Sangh was trying hard to implicate him and some other Catholic leaders in the murder of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati whose murder, acknowledged to be their handiwork by left-wing militant Maoist groups of the region, that had triggered off the violence. The body of this man had been taken in a procession of over 200 kilometres through the hills and valleys of Kandhamal, accompanied not just by Sangh leaders, but even by the highest district civil and police authorities who ten stood by while well armed mobs used direr and knife to lay into the Christian community village after village. The district authorities were just not ready to take the risk for a survey of the violence by the Archbishop, afraid both for his security and possibly that his presence could make the Christian community rise in revolt in the refugee camps where living conditions were barely fit for animals. And when finally Cheenath did come to the district, it had to be while being escorted by an armed convoy.

There had also been charges, muttered silently and gossiped through SMS messages and emails that while Pentecost pastors stayed with the community even in refugee camps, the Catholic priests had gone to the forests. Cheenath had even in the Christmas 2007 violence given clear instructions to the men and women under his charge – human lives were precious and sacred, but buildings could be rebuilt. Catholic fathers including parish priests saw their churches burn as they fled to the forests, but many of the parishes were coming alive within months of the return of peace, the lone priest living in the ashes of the parish church, so to speak, of perhaps a single surviving room in what was once his home. Catholic institutions were the main target of the violence of 2008, but it is the resilience of the church and the strength of its leadership – including the courage of individual priests – that the Church is alive once again in the forests of Kandhamal.

Cheenath has toured Europe and other countries, but more important, it has been his witness in many states in the country that has encouraged and strengthened the community and given it hope. His evidence before visiting human rights groups, and as important, before emissaries of various countries and the international human rights movement, including the Untied Nations Human Rights Council through its Special Rapporteur, that Cheenath ahs been successful in explaining to the world at large the danger that neo Nazi and fascist groups, riding a narrow religious nationalism, pose not just to India, but to international peace. We cannot say this of many other religious leaders in the country today. As someone who has seen him at close quarters over the last three years, I have come to respect and admire Archbishop Raphael Cheenath. His life remains under threat. But Cheenath has been a veritable Admiral, leading his men, of course, but also steering the community to security, and peace while maintaining pressure on the State to give Justice to the victims.

Raphael Cheenath of Kandhamal

2010-08-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

C V Bill

2010-07-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

http://twocircles.net/2010jul26/community_leaders_social_activists_demand_amendment_cv_bill.html