(Open letter to the raped nuns of Jhabua)
Friday, September 25, 1998

Precious Sisters,

The men that raped you tried to dishonour you, but somehow your tragedy has filled me with a deep sense of honour and respect for you. I honour your faith. We are told that all faiths are the same. But the faith of your rapists is clearly the antithesis of yours. Their faith has never allowed ordinary families in the history of our nation to send their daughters to live in remote villages and serve those who would abuse them.

You are indeed model followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who allowed his body to be violated for the salvation of his enemies. May your love for God inspire millions more to follow Christ at personal cost.

Through your medical service you have been seeking to heal the sick bodies. Why did then these "brave and powerful" men rape you? Indeed they ought to have been leading a procession to honour you. But they knew that their culture - the culture of Hindutva - would consider them great, not if they served you, but only if they attacked and raped you. Their act is irrefutable evidence that it is the soul of our nation that is sick. Our social history shows that our culture has always oppressed and exploited the weak - the "Dalits", including women.

Your lives, dear sisters, are glorious evidence that healing is possible for our nation through the blood of Jesus Christ. You are a proof that it has the power to transform us so radically that we would see humility and service as the route to honour. May I, therefore, urge you to be strong in your faith! Keep following the one who shed his blood to bless all the nations of the earth.

I honour you because you remind me of Abraham - your father in faith. Like yourselves, he too offered costly sacrifices to God, but God seemed absent. It was the vultures who pounced upon the flesh of his holy sacrifice, just as they did on your bodies that had been sacrificed to God. Abraham tried to chase the predators away, but proved to be too weak. He fell into a "deep and dreadful sleep". It was in the midst of that "dreadful darkness" that he finally saw the fire of God accept his sacrifice, and heard the voice of God promising to bless him and all the nations through his Descendants (Genesis 15). The vultures and the darkness are not the final realities. God is. He will use your sacrifice to bless our nation. ‘The soul of India is sick’, but you have strengthened my resolve to sacrifice my body for her healing.

Thank you.

Your brother,
Vishal Mangalwadi
Ivy Cottage, Landour
Mussoorie (U.P.), India 248 179

December 4, 1998 will be observed as a protest day all over the country, with programmes at state
headquarters, diocese and parishes of all major denominations in India.

Join the relay protest hunger strike at Raj Ghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation, at New Delhi. To be followed by a memorandum to Parliament, and a public meeting which will be addressed by leaders of the human rights movement, Muslim and Sikh community leaders as well as of the majority Hindu community.

The national organising committee of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, which was set up last month, has a presidium consisting of all Bishops resident in Delhi, with the executive panel including heads of churches and communities representing the member-churches of the National Council of Churches in India, the Salvation Army, the Methodist Church in India, the Baptist Church and the Evangelical Fellowship of India, CRI, All India Catholic Union, apart from Christian NGOs, the YMCAs and YWCAs. Special programmes are also being designed to sensitise laity and youth, school children and others on the issues involved.

This year has seen more violence against the Christian community in India than perhaps cumulatively in the first 50 years of Independence. Especially disturbing are the following aspects of the violence and the pressure on the community:

1. The severity of violence.
2. The geographic spread of the violence.
3. The connivance of political elements and the backing of political groups in power.
4. The complicity of the state machinery, particularly that of the police.
5. The behaviour of the magistracy, the subordinate judiciary and of the higher judiciary.
In addition, the pressure on the community has taken other forms too, in many of which it is a co-victim with the Muslim and other minority communities:

1. Dilution of special encouragement given to charitable work, by the attempt made in taxation laws.
2. Delays in reaching a satisfactory decision on the Dalit issue.
3. Delays in the formation of the Supreme Court bench to consider the question of the rights of minority institutions.
4. Abuse of official powers in the denial of visas, harsher conditions for travel and participation visas for conferences.
5. Abuse of official media to manipulate news, and denial of equal media opportunity to minorities.
6. Lack of action on the minority Finance Development Corporation.
7. Continued ignoring of the National Minorities Commission and its orders.
8. Failure of the National Human Rights Commission to do anything on Christian complaints.
9. Continuing delays in central, state and municipal authorities on issues such as new land and clearances for cemeteries, churches and schools, clearing of encroachments and alienation of properties. And,
10. Attempted Hinduisation and Brahmanisation of the national education and youth programs which subverts the education system and erodes the plural and democratic edifice of country.

Violence: The violence is aggressive and its scale, magnitude and severity bestial. Stripping of Christudas, murder of others, inexorably culminates in the rape of the nuns. A body is exhumed, and bibles burnt. Chapels in mission stations in rural Gujarat and Rajasthan are razed, village after village.

The attack is on the physical symbols of the church, specially on personnel involved in grass roots empowerment. The attempt is to scare, coerce, limit.

The second pressure is on institutions, again with the apparent objective to ensure that Christian social outreach is curtailed, its developmental contribution to nation building is minimised, that Christians become socially irrelevant and therefore easier to target in the understanding that the majority people will not rise in your defence anymore.

The final attack is on the charismatic movement, the evangelisation effort, the preaching and witness of the word of God, of the healing power of Christ. This is the final coercion, the final blackmail. It is designed not just to break our spirit, but to weaken our very faith.

What happens when you complain?

l Fr Christudas was stripped again in police custody, and officers and judiciary have ganged up to abort justice in Bihar.

l In Gujarat, the chief minister gave a commitment of peace to the Christian community. This commitment was made to the National Minorities Commission. Despite the chief minister’s personal pledges, attacks on Christians continue in major Gujarat cities, including Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and the industrial capital, Baroda. In Orissa, no one is punished. In Rajasthan, no one from the sangh parivar has been brought to book for saying that Banswara will be cleansed of all Christian presence by 2000 AD.

l Several memoranda have gone to the President of India, and to the Prime Minister. Our leaders met the Union home minister. He made polite noises and promised to pull up those who were defending the rape of the nuns.

The government is yet to apologise for the incident. The government is yet to condemn fundamentalism and communalism.

The sangh parivar continues to attack Christians by word and by violence.

The official and political reaction to the rape incidents has been in three stages:

First, to try to prove that no one was raped, and that it was ‘ordinary’ crime, a mere molestation.

Secondly, the endeavour was to try to say no one from the parivar was involved, that it was not a communal issue, and finally,

Thirdly, and now, the effort seems to be to try to prove that Christians were the rapists.

Many persons have been arrested. Some of them perhaps may be tribal Christians. But who is to believe the police? The general perception, and fear, is that this is a deliberate official ploy to involve Christians to take the wind out of our protest.

The immediate issue is rape, of course, but rape is not the only issue.

The trauma of the nuns is the final violence in a long chain of violence. There have been more than 40 cases this year in Gujarat alone. The total cases involving Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, MP, Bihar, UP, Punjab, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and even Kerala, are now reaching a hundred.

What has happened to the Constitution of India, to Articles 19 to 30, including the important Article 25, and to the very guiding principles, the fundamental rights guaranteed to each one of us as children of this land?

What has happened to Article 18 of the UN charter on Human Rights, dealing with the Freedom of Faith, and the Special UN Resolution on minorities?

What is the Christian response? Prayer, of course.

Also, continued commitment to witness, and to serving the poorest of the poor, the outcasts, the bonded, women and exploited children.

The response is also to sensitise the secular Hindu, to network with the movements of civil liberties and those others who seek to protect the Constitution.

This must be done by first showing that we are conscious of our own trauma, and that we are strengthened in our faith so as not to succumb to this insidious pressure and coercion. This we must do by protesting the current wave of violence.

Hence, we propose a relay hunger strike on December 4 at Raj Ghat. Together with this is a memorandum to Parliament. And a public meeting where Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs will stand with us and join our protest, sending out strong signals that the victimisation of any of India’s many plural components weakens the entire nation.

And, therefore, will not be tolerated by the entire people of India, whatever is the faith they profess.

The local unit of the All India Catholic Union (AICU) in association with the Bombay Catholic Sabha
(BSC), Lourdes Community Action Group (LCAG) and the Muslim Intellectual Forum (MIF) organised a meeting to discuss, deliberate and plan a course of action against the atrocities that have been committed with impunity and on a regular basis all over the country on minorities and more specially at present on Christian institutions and personnel.

The meeting which was held at St. Anne’s High School Hall, Malad, on Sunday the November 1, was attended by over 200 people from all over Bombay.

The action plan agreed upon was as follows:

1) A massive awareness campaign is being launched all over Bombay to bring these attacks to the knowledge of the people.

2) To have a protest rally, dates of which would be finalised later; on this day, a call be given to close down all institutions.

3) All parishes have been requested to organise a one-day relay hunger-strike in addition to the prayer crusade call given by the Archbishop of Bombay, Reverend Dr. Ivan Dias on November 8. This fast rally would help us to conscientise all the people concerned besides sympathising with the victims of these attacks.

4) A follow-up meeting will be held on Nov. 15 at St. Anne’s High School Hall, Marve Road, Malad (W), at 10.00 a.m. to work out final details of the programme.

Narayan Desai, an anti–nuclear activist from India, and the Joint Action Committee for Peoples
Rights of Pakistan have been declared joint laureates of the UNESCO–Madanjeet Singh Prize for Promotion of Tolerance and Non–Violence. The jury for the $40,000 prize, announced in Paris by UNESCO Director–general, Federico Mayor, was chaired by Nobel Peace prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and comprised former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali, former Indian Prime Minister I.K. Gujral and French Rabbi Rene-Samuel Sirat.