Frontline

July 2000
Targeting Minorities


Violence in the North, dialogue in Kerala?

Christian organisations challenge the National Minorities Commission investigation team’s claim that the pre-planned attacks on nuns and priests in UP and Haryana were ‘non–communal’

Representatives of a wide spectrum of Christian organisations have challenged the motivated dismissal by the National Minorities Commission of the attacks as ‘non–communal.’ In a hurried report following attacks on Catholic nuns, priests, schools and churches in Agra, Mathura, Kosi Kalan, Bijnore and other parts of UP and Haryana, the NMC had recently dismissed these brutal acts of violence as unconnected acts of petty criminals, or accidents.

As part of the strong protest against the action of the NMC, the groups have also questioned the motive behind the NMC (members Tarlochan Singh and John Joseph) initiating a dialogue between the spiritual leaders of Hindus and Christians in far flung Kerala while violent incidents have struck terror among Christians of the north.

Ø After 30 churches had been destroyed and property worth lakhs destroyed by the hit squads of the sangh parivar (Janubhai Pawar a local leader allegedly led the attacks) in Dangs district of south Gujarat during Christmas week in 1998, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited the traumatised area on January 1, 1999. His reaction after the visit was to call for a national debate on conversions!

Ø Within weeks of the PM call, on January 23, 1999, Dr Graham Stuart Staines and his children were burnt alive in the forests of Manoharpur in Orissa. Union Home minister L.K. Advani too had given a clean chit to the organisations of the sangh parivar, VHP and Bajrang Dal, directly indicted in the incident, saying that he did not believe these were criminal organisations.

In a joint statement released at Trivananthapuram, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and New Delhi, Gospel for Asia head KP Yohannan, All India Christian Council president, Dr Joseph D’Souza, All India Christian Voice national convenor, Sajan K George and John Dayal, have stated that Christian–Hindu dialogue and interaction has existed on the subcontinent for twenty centuries since the arrival of St Thomas in the first century. The spate of anti–Christian violence over the last three years has peaked only after vicious hate–campaigns were systematically unleashed by all sections of the sangh parivar, supported ably by the BJP in power. Their continuing intolerant slogans of ‘One nation, One People, One culture,’ and the open call of its leaders for a ‘Dharma yuddha’ against the minorities is what is responsible for the violence, the statement says.

The statement calls upon the NMC to devote its energies to honestly and openly investigate the invocation and perpetration of hate through oral and written means and investigate the atmosphere of hate which has been created, and to fully appreciate the climate of fear that now permeates convents and churches, schools and dispensaries, social–action groups and isolated Christian communities travelling and living in various parts of the country.

The statement also raises crucial questions about the recent whitewash of a report by the NCM to exonerate the communal elements involved in the various acts of violence:

1. If robbery were the motive, why are all the victims Christians? If robbery were the motive, how are priests being beaten close to death even after they plead and offer to the attackers all the money that is in the church?

2.The commission has also chosen to ignore evidence that the BJP ruled government of Uttar Pradesh, has itself declared an ‘open season’ on Christian schools. The United Christian Forum for Human Rights repeatedly brought to the attention of the commission statements made by UP Legislative Council chairman Nityanand Swami in Meerut on 13 February 2000 (Amar Ujala, February 14, 2000) saying there will be a check on convent schools ("Convent schools par ankush lagega").

The real motives of the committee going into the affairs of convent schools was clear. The UP leader made no bones about the fact that convents and other minority schools were the special target of this committee and that punitive action will be taken against schools indicted by this committee. This agenda of the committee of the UP government is clearly politically motivated and inspired by political vendetta against minority schools, in gross violation of Articles 25 and 30 of the Constitution. Such official actions encourage lawless and fundamentalist elements to take the law into their own hands and wreak violence against the minorities.

3. Former UP police officers, including those who have held the rank of director general of police (BK Singhal) have unleashed a propaganda war against the Christian community using falsehood, manufactured lies and innuendo to demonise the Christians, to poison the minds of innocent people and to rouse communal elements against Christians. What message does this kind of behaviour of former policemen send to the state’s police force?

4. In Agra, the specific complaint filed before the NCM by Frs Fr Raphy V, manager of the St Paul’s Hindi–medium High School, Agra, Fr Varghese Kunnath, director, social works of the Agra Catholic Archdiocese, Fr Ignatius Miranda, former manager, St Paul’s School, against SHO Ram Shiromany Pandey of Hariparvat police station, who has harassed and humiliated them using his official position was ignored by the minorities commission.

5. The commission’s team was totally cavalier in the manner in which, according to available reports, it dealt with the case of the attack on a team of preachers from Andhra Pradesh. The gospel team from Hyderabad, was attacked by VHP activists on April 22 in Agra. The 14–member team led by Walter Benjamin, and comprising 12 students who had taken up gospel work during the vacations, arrived in the same van, which VHP activists threatened to set on fire. As soon as the police landed, one of the activists caught hold of Walter and said, "Bolo, tum kya bola hai. Tum log nai bola? Matantar karte, paise dete? Sach bol." (Confess that you are trying to convert people). Walter replied that he did not come there to convert people or give them money, but only to speak of the message of Christ. He said that they were not even giving the books free and each New Testament Bible was priced at Rs 7 and a testimony tract at Rs 1. The police, however, were not satisfied with the explanation and took the team to the police station and detained them till 2.30 pm, when eventually they were released on bail. The FIR filed by the activists said that Walter and his team had entered Hindu temples, stamped on idols and blasphemed Hindu gods.

The team wanted to leave but were advised by the people there to file a complaint. Immediately the crafty police personnel, who according to Walter were siding with the VHP activists, provided them with blank papers and asked them to sign on it. Walter said, "Last year, when we preached in UP, we were just threatened and warned, but it wasn’t this bad."

6. In Rewari in Haryana, the injured nuns say a man on a two wheeler circled them and then hit two of them. But minister of state for law, O Rajagopal calls it a mere accident, with the NCM and others quoting some unrelated person to reiterate that it was a mere accident.


 

Law ministry pulls a fast one on Christians

For seven years now, Indian Christians — spearheaded by women but today encompassing all Christian denominations — have been campaigning in a sustained fashion for a change in Christian personal laws. (CC, March 1994, CC, June 1997, CC February 2000).

The entire exercise resulted in the community itself framing personal law reform bills after sustained and eventually successful lobbying with the Christian clergy, belying propaganda from the Hindu right that minority communities are unprepared for progressive change.

In our cover story three months ago we had highlighted how the Christian laity and Church organisations had recently resolved to make the issue of tabling and passage of the consensually evolved reformed personal laws the matter of a national campaign. It was indeed ironic, and this was pointed out in the CC story, that despite the readiness and resolve of a minority community, successive governments had stoically refused to push this proposed reform.

Out of the blue, on May 1, the present Union law ministry, headed by Ram Jethmalani, tabled the Christian Marriage Draft Bill, 2000 that apart from anything else removes one of the more progressive elements of existing Indian Christian personal law without necessarily addressing the more radical provisions of the three new pieces of legislation proposed by the community – Christian Marriages and Matrimonial Clauses Bill (1990), the Indian Succession Amendment Bill, 1990 and the Christian Adoption and Maintenance Bill, 1990. The move followed an assurance from the Union law minister to a delegation of Christians that he would set up a committee to review provisions of the proposed law before tabling it.

The solitary section of existing Indian Christian personal law that the present political dispensation seeks to change, is the section on who can marry under this law. This happens to be a provision that exists only within Indian Christian personal law that allows a non-Christian to marry a Christian in a church without having to convert. The proposed ‘reform’ prohibits any Church marriage between a Christian and a non–Christian. Another amendment proposed reportedly seeks to penalise Christian priests if the marriage is not conducted within thirty days of banns being read..

Could the motive of the Union law ministry be to remove the one section within Indian Christian personal law that by its existence disproves and belies the viciously unleashed propaganda about the ‘conspiracies of conversions’?

 

 


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