1 may2015
FINAL CUT
How the Sangh Parivar manufacturers a lie
JOHN DAYAL
Since the change in
the national government in May 2014,
there has been a staple in the armoury of the various spokesmen of the
ruling Bharatiya Janata party, and its mother force, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh, when they have to face criticism
that their cadres are attacking churches, or molesting pastors and Nuns. “This
is the work of Christians, as was found in the gang rapes of the Nuns in Jhabua
when Mr. Digvijay Singh was the chief minister,” RSS spokesman Dr. Rakesh Sinha
has said on many Television new Channels in the past ten months or so.
uns and looting of a remote convent near Jhabua in central Madhya
Pradesh state.
This writer has some personal knowledge about the Jhabua gang-rape
case, and how this lie was born, and then manipulated and used by the BJP
leadership and the Sangh over the years in a process that would have done Herr
Joseph Goebbels proud.
As journalists at that time reported, at about 2:00 a.m. on September
23, 1998, four nuns who operated a medical clinic in Preetisharan Ashram in
Nawapura village in the Tribal-dominated
Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh, were gang raped by more than a dozen
men. According to Father Lucas, who was then secretary of Indore Diocese, a
group of about 20 or so armed men tried to enter the convent by pretending to
be the relatives of a sick boy who needed medical attention. When the nuns
refused to open the gate, the men forced their way in and looted cash and
valuables. They then proceeded to gang rape the four nuns who had taken refuge
in the chapel.
The gang rape shocked the nation, and the world. The Congress
government in the state first tried to shrug it off as just another
incident. A woman functionary of a
national commission in fact remarked “Why do you send Nuns to forests; don’t
you know Tribals are rapists.” The BJP first condemned the crime, but Vishwa
Hindu Parishad secretary Baikunth Lal Sharma Prem, who later became a BJP
Member of the Lok Sabha and now goes around dressed as a Sikh, claimed that the
incident reflected the "anger of patriotic Hindu youth against the
anti-national forces. Kanchan Gupta, the editor of BJP Today and a BJP spokesperson said, "It's only a
rape."
We were able to get an FIR registered. Eventually, 24 men were
identified, but not all could be arrested, and escaped punishment. The criminal
trial itself was traumatic for the nuns, and the public prosecutor was accused
of doing a shoddy job. Eventually, only 10 of the 24 were sentenced to various
terms in prison. While six were acquitted, the rest were never brought to book.
But meanwhile rumours had began that 12 of the accused were
Christians. Home Minister L. K. Advani immediately made a statement in
Parliament that 12 of the 24 accused rapists belonged to the Christian
community. Sadhvi Uma Bharati [and her honorific is the equivalent of a Nun], a
former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh who is now a minister in the cabinet of
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, repeated the insinuation.
We followed up the allegation that Christians were involved in the
rape. In fact, when the first 17 men were arrested, and identified by the
victims, the Superintendent of police had categorically said there were no
Christians among them. Bishop George Anathil of Indore diocese, in which Jhabua
is located, wrote to the newspapers which had printed the erroneous reports,
saying a detailed investigation had been
done in every church in the area and not one of the accused had been found to
be a Christian. We asked the newspapers to print the rejoinder. The editors
failed to do so.
The
lie has been repeated by the BJP and the Sangh Parivar ever since. The Congress
lost power in the state to the BJP soon thereafter. The BJP is still ruling the
state.
The
younger generation of media persons, and the common people, knows only the lie;
they have neither the patience nor the inclination to establish the truth, even
though some of them are not faithful to the ideology of the Sangh and the BJP.
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