June 2006 
Year 12    No.116

Saffronwatch


Rules of anarchy

BJP governments defy Centre and Constitution on religious freedom

BY JOHN DAYAL

In an irony that will haunt and embarrass the Government of India for a long time to come, New Delhi’s
commitment to the International Human Rights Council formed in Geneva this month as also Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s refinement of the 30-year-old 15-point programme for minorities coincided with a major escalation in violence against the minority Christian communities in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

The situation has come to such a pass that senior Christian leaders have with all gravity asked the Union government if its writ still runs in states that are ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party or its allies. Church leaders have in fact cautioned the Union government that unless urgent steps are taken, and are seen to be taken, the overriding impression will hold that two sets of laws operate in the country – one criminal justice system operating in areas ruled by the BJP and another constitutional law operative in the rest of India.

Needless to say, this poses a serious threat not only to the secular fabric of India but indeed to the federal structure of its polity in which, while states have a wide range of freedom of action, they are constitutionally bound to adhere to the basic tenets of our republican democracy. These, of course, include such basic freedoms and human rights as those of freedom to profess, practice and propagate one’s faith or religion.

Indicative of the BJP’s defiance of both the Congress and the Constitution is the recent three-pronged attack on the Christian community. The first of this is repeated articulation by chief ministers and regional BJP heads in the four or five central Indian States that they would slam down with all severity on Christian missionary activity, calling it anti-national and disruptive of national unity. The second is heightened activity of conversion to Hinduism, politically called Ghar Wapasi of the indigenous or tribals of Central India, in which politicians such as the lumpen giant, Judeo, as also the controversial Shankaracharya of Puri are involved. The final blow is unabashed violence against poor and illiterate tribals in remote villages who profess the Christian faith or are even remotely hospitable to a visiting pastor.

Violence is no longer confined to beating up the man or demolishing the family hut but has now graduated to molesting of women, parading them in the streets and finally subjecting them to gang rape as a way of teaching them a lesson. An illustrative case is that of two Christian women in Nadia village of Bhagwanpura block in the Khargone district of south-west Madhya Pradesh on the night of May 28, 2006. The women and their families had earned the wrath of the region’s BJP leadership for continuing to worship in a house church, defying the diktat of local sangh thugs.

On the night of May 28, a group of men led by those now identified as Lalla, Nandla, Kallu, Rewal Singh and Sakaram, all from the same village, came and raided the Christians’ houses, beat up the men and then gang-raped the women. The women say they can identify the tormentors (see testimonies).

I fully realise that rape is endemic in many areas in India, including my home city of Delhi. We have police records that demonstrate the gravity of the situation where in India a woman is raped every 30 minutes and another is murdered every 75 minutes. National Police Crime Records Bureau data says a third of these rapes take place in Delhi but a very large number do take place in rural India, including the tribal parts of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh.

The Madhya Pradesh case is however different because of its religious connotations and the fact that the victims were raped so they could be "taught a lesson" for professing the Christian faith. This is reminiscent of the gang rape of nuns in Jhabua, not far from Khargone. Adding insult to injury is the attitude of the district authorities, including the police. They have consistently refused to file First Information Reports on behalf of the women or several eyewitnesses. Not only this, they went on to coerce the victims to remain quiet. And finally, as if to show their contempt for the rule of law, the police filed a case against the families of the victims for encouraging conversion to Christianity.

Under such a protective police umbrella, thugs of the sangh parivar have created so much communal fear that fact-finding groups from the state capital of Bhopal find it difficult to travel to the villages of Khargone even in broad daylight.

After persistent complaints to the Centre’s National Minorities Commission, Chairperson Hamid Ansari sent two of his members to Madhya Pradesh for an on-the-spot inquiry. Commission member Harcharan Singh Josh later said that the situation in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was not safe for Christians. He said that the Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and a new organisation called the Dharam Dal were terrorising the Christians even as the police forces turned a blind eye to this violence.

There is very little that Christian groups and activists can now do other than to move the high court at Jabalpur to direct the state government to take action against the culprits. Further recourse, perhaps, lies in moving a similar writ in the Supreme Court.

But moving the judiciary can only be effective if the Union government shows any signs of being politically alive to the communalism being fanned by the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and adjoining states. So far, reactions from the Union home ministry have been disappointing. Several letters from me to Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – in my capacity as President of the All India Catholic Union, the biggest Christian organisation in the country claiming to represent a 1.8 crore Catholic laity, and also as a member of the central government’s own National Integration Council – do not seem to have elicited any response from the mandarins of North Block.

Little wonder then that the Shankaracharya has openly organised mass conversion of Christians to Hinduism in Orissa while district collectors look on. And in Rajasthan the state home minister and the chief minister pursue their one-point programme of implementing an anti-conversion law in the face of almost universal condemnation.

______________________

Three testimonies from Nandya village, Khargone district

Baysubai Ben

On May 28, the village mukhiya’s men came and took my husband Gokhariya. They kept hitting him on the way; they even beat him up at the gram panchayat. But he refused to reject Jesus. Someone said that these Christians don’t drink alcohol. If we make him drink liquor, he will become a non-Christian. So they forced the liquor into his mouth. Then they asked him to leave Jesus or give up his land. He said, "I will leave anything but not Jesus".

The village Patel, Pandya, was there. He said, "You people can do anything you want to with their women. There will not be any police case. If there is a case, I will handle it."

So some people came to our village. From my house I saw two men molesting my sister-in-law (brother’s wife, Rekha Bai). I knew they could do something to me too as my husband was not at home. I ran and took shelter in the neighbouring house. It was around 10 in the night. They came and found me. They dragged me out and threw me in the field. They forcibly undressed me and flung the clothes on the ground. Both of them raped me repeatedly.

My husband and his friend were walking to our home from the friend’s village. They heard my cries and came to my rescue. But there were a few other men standing guard. They caught hold of my husband and his friend. They started to beat up the friend more than my husband. My husband took me home...

The people who raped me told my husband and me that if we told anyone about this they would kill us. As we were in shock and very frightened we did not do anything. The next day they came and warned us that we should not leave the village or be foolish enough to report the incident – it would cost us our lives. But on the second night we escaped to a neighbouring village and found shelter in a neighbour’s house, someone who is a Christian.

I am afraid and frightened when I see the men who beat up my husband or raped me. I feel so ashamed.

Rekha Bai

On May 28 some men came to our home after a meeting with the mukhiya. They caught hold of me and started to molest me. I escaped but as I am seven months pregnant I could not run far. So I ran to my father-in-law’s house which is 200 metres away. My father-in-law tried to save me. They started to beat him up with logs of firewood and the poor man ran for his life. Three men came to my in-laws’ house and found me hiding there. They dragged me out and threw me on the cot that was placed outside for my father-in-law’s use. They stripped me and raped me. (One cot that was broken was taken away by the police as evidence.) Three men raped me. When my mother-in-law started to curse and attempted to save me, one man took a big log of firewood and hit her on the back. Writhing in pain, she sat there abusing the men.

As they were leaving, they warned us, "You talk of this to anyone, try to make a complaint – we will get rid of you forever."

My husband was in the next village. The next day when he came back, the people who raped me came and warned us again, "You dare to report this to anyone or try to leave the village – we will not let you live."

This was on Sunday night. On Tuesday night we left the village – since no one was watching us. On Wednesday we went to the police station. The police inspector told me, "You are a prostitute and you are trying to blame these innocent people." He abused us continually.

The police sent us to the government hospital. The doctor gave Gudiya an injection and some pills but did not examine me. So one policeman came with us to the Khargone district government hospital. The doctor did a medical check-up there.

Gudiya

My name is Gudiya. On May 28, my friend Gokhariya from a nearby village came to me and said that the people of his village had beaten him up very badly for being a Christian. We discussed what we could do faced with this new wave of persecution. We sat there until 9.45 p.m. Then Gokhariya said that he was going home. I said I would walk with him. As we were walking by a hill, we heard a woman’s cries from the field. It was Gokhariya’s wife. We ran there to find two men raping her. But there were more men standing around. They caught hold of us. They were angry as I came forward to help my friend. They started to hit me with a stick on my back and there were deep wounds. They were taking me to see the mukhiya (Ram Singh Patel) but then they bound me to a tree, my hands were tied behind, and they left. I still have the rope marks on my arms. They left me there like that and reported to the mukhiya. He came and set me free. n

(John Dayal is national president of the All India Catholic Union and a senior journalist and human rights activist.)

 


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