The recently released final report of the National People’s Tribunal on
the communal carnage in Orissa’s Kandhamal district is yet another grim
reminder of the ugly method that lies behind Hindutva’s tormenting of
India’s religious minorities with the connivance of the police and other
arms of the administration, irrespective of which government is in power.
The killing of over 100 Christian people, including
the aged and the disabled, children and women (only 38 according to
official figures), the ransacking of more than 600 villages, the
uprooting of well over 50,000 people, the destruction of 295 churches
and other places of worship, the damage to over a dozen educational
and other social institutions, the forced conversion to Hinduism of
over 2,000 Christians, and gang rapes are only part of the story. The
other part pertains to Hindutva’s methodical pursuit of hate politics
over long years in Orissa, which has made the situation so highly
combustible that a single spark – the self-proclaimed murder by
Maoists of Swami Lakshmanananda in August 2008 – was enough to set
Kandhamal aflame.
Genocidal crimes develop in eight stages –
classification, symbolisation, dehumanisation (of the target group),
organisation, polarisation, identification, extermination, denial (and
destruction of the evidence of crimes) – according to Dr Gregory H.
Stanton of Genocide Watch. Appropriate state intervention can arrest and
reverse the process in the early stages. But where the state itself is
mute witness to, complicit in or sponsor of the entire process, it
becomes inevitable, progressing from one stage to the next.
Kandhamal may not compare to the 2002 genocide in
Gujarat in terms of the intensity and spread of violence, the extent of
bestiality involved or the level of state collusion. But it is evident
from the tribunal’s 160-page report that all the ingredients of
genocidal intent and action were present in Kandhamal too: from the
systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of Christians, to
organisational preparations and planning for the carnage, to the obvious
attempts at destruction of evidence. “The deliberate destruction of
evidence pertaining to these crimes came to the attention of the jury,”
says the report.
Here are two examples from the report of the attempts
to destroy evidence:
One: “The body of Rajani Majhi, the warden of an
orphanage at Padampur, was burnt and, according to Nicholas Barla, who
testified before the tribunal and quoted Fr Edward Sequeira, the lower
part of her body was completely burnt so as to destroy all evidence of
alleged gang rape.”
Two: “The collector of Bargarh forced Fr Basil
Kullu to remove all evidence of damage to and destruction of the
Madhupur church and hostels and even sent some persons to clear the
debris that was lying in the compound, indicating the nature and extent
of the attack.”
The second instance is just one of the many examples
of the gross dereliction of duty and collusion of various state actors
and representatives of other democratic institutions: the police,
administration and officials in charge of local bodies. The shameful
conduct of the police in particular consisted in the refusal to act
despite advance intimation of criminal preparations; reluctance to take
cognisance of crimes through refusal to register first information
reports; shoddy investigation; inaction over victim survivors’
complaints of threats and intimidation or forced conversions; or lodging
of criminal complaints against witnesses in a bid to turn the victims
into the accused.
Compounding and concluding this sad narrative of our
recurring national shame is the all too familiar failure of the justice
delivery system after Kandhamal: shoddy charge sheets; public
prosecutors biased against the victims/witnesses; threats and
intimidation of victims/witnesses in the absence of any witness
protection; and the insensitive and biased conduct of some judges during
trials. In short, Kandhamal seems fated to remain yet another grim
example of the failure of the institutions of Indian democracy to
protect the life and property of a section of citizens, compounded by
the lack of punishment of the perpetrators and denial of justice to the
victims.
Lest we think that the 2008 targeting of Christians
is a thing of the past, in the new year the Catholic-Christian Secular
Forum and the All India Secular Forum have released a report
highlighting the fact that 2011 was the worst ever year in
post-independence India for this religious minority. Mercifully, there
was no repeat of Kandhamal in terms of the intensity and consequences of
communal violence. But the attacks were numerous and widespread across
16 states and union territories. The worst offences were committed in
Karnataka, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Included in the list of crimes were murder, grievous injuries and
merciless beatings, rape and molestation of women, desecration and
destruction of churches and other places of worship, illegal detention
and arrests, abuse and insult of Christian clergy and the laity. While
highlighting 250 criminal incidents, the report claims that there were a
total of over 1,000 such incidents during 2011.
Kandhamal 2008 and the attacks on Christians during
2011 are the focus of this issue of our journal. Next month marks 10
years since the 2002 genocide in Gujarat. Our next issue (February-March
2012) will be a special issue to commemorate Gujarat 2002 and to look
back on the process of justice.
