This interview of John Dayal with the New Leader, one of the oldest news magazines in Asia, was recorded in November 2007, weeks before the Christmas Week violence against Christians erupted in the Kandhamala district of Orissa, India. New Leader published in its February 2008 issue.


QUESTION 1. Church in India should thank and congratulate you for your relentless fight on behalf of the Christian community in India. What motivates you?

JOHN DAYAL: Nothing that a human rights and civil society activist does can really compare with the courage, faith and forbearance of the victims, and those who survive persecution, terror, coercion, the physical violence and the humiliation that comes when there is an assault on his God given human dignity, the erosion of the freedoms guaranteed to a citizen by the Constitution of India.

Nothing can, of course, replace a human life lost, or recompense a widow or an orphan. We can pray with them, and in that prayer, find the strength in ourselves, as individuals and as society, to try and see that such tragedy is not repeated, such impunity is not allowed to go unchallenged.
It is perhaps that moment of prayer that sustains me as an activist, now nearing forty years in standing together with many others to say `Stop that tyranny, curb that vicious torch, be shamed of defying laws made by men, and afraid before you defy the law of God’. Activism, at the end of the day, is not a display of courage, or duty, or even love. It is surrender to God’s Will. After that there is no fear. It is the means, and it is an end in itself. I, therefore, seek no one’s gratitude. I do seek understanding, for sometimes one has to go against the grain. And I seek forgiveness, for sometimes what I say or do or write may seem to offend Hierarchy, leaders and others, or embarrass them in their own attempts at peace, reconciliation or negotiations with their tormentors.

QUESTION 2. Recently in a press statement, you had mentioned that roughly four incidents of Christian persecution take place in a week in India. This is shocking, since we had assumed that the plight of Christians in India will improve, once the BJP-led coalition lost power at the centre. Is anti-Christian persecution restricted to the BJP-ruled States in India?

JOHN DAYAL: I studied Physics as a student, and then worked in areas of Operational Research, surveys before becoming what is now called an Investigative Journalist back in the first years of the 1970s. That has taught me the power of data, of number crunching, in proving a point, and of field studies in discovering what others may want to remain hidden. These issues have included drugs and human trafficking, corruption and instances of bigotry and injustice, the forcible sterilizations of the Emergency of 1975-77, and of course the massive and penetrating sabotage of the Indian psyche and of its secular ethos by the Sangh Parivar from when it was just the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. That is how, leaning on the strong staff of the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic of Delhi, I could publish the first Unofficial White Paper of Violence against Christians in 1998, exposing the massive persecution of Christians across the country. We have sought to be able to publish that document every year since then, and I am happy its data, carefully collected and correlated, is by and large accepted by national and international Human Rights and Freedom of Faith institutions and organisations. It is in analysing such data that we find that even in 2007, there are almost 200 cases in 11 months – the year is yet to end, and these are but recorded and reported cases. Maybe there are hundreds of other cases which have not come to my notice.

Careful analysis shows persecution to be a complex criminal phenomenon. It involves massive hate campaigns. It involves vicious political forces and week Governments. Above all it implies slice, complicity or impunity of Government agencies such as police, civil administration and subordinate judiciary. Government is deaf and blind to hate campaigns, whether it is congress which is ruling or the BJP which is in power alone or in collation. The police will not register complaints. The civil administration will gleefully coerce schools, pressurise priests, abet religious fundamentalists, and often accompany mobs as they assault Christians. They ill not arrest culprits, nor will they convict guilty or award them just punishment. No wonder fundamentalists and mobs are encouraged. Media perceptions and unconcern aggravate matters.

Surely the religious fundamentalism and the criminal concept of nationalism that the Sangh Parivar espouses make persecution quite the norm in states ruled by them. The Sangh also penetrates the police, administration and local judiciary, and that means the entire system is loaded against the weaker elements of the minority communities, especially against Christians.
Sometimes, as in Himachal and other areas, the local Congress leadership seems to be in completion with the Sangh Parivar in appeasing the majority. Himachal hardly has any Christians, and neither does Rajasthan, but both states have laws designed to curb conversions! Mrs. Sonia Gandhi once responded to me to assure her Party, the Congress, opposed such laws, but apparently the Himachal chief minister does not care for what his political leader feels and says. His eye is always on the next election. We can challenge the Sangh, but when secular groups such as the Congress and the Left for political reasons actively or by default join forces against Christians, it really saddens me. Then I almost feel helpless.

3. Apart from the vicious campaign by the Sangh Parivar, are there other factors that contribute to anti-Christian violence?
There is what I call the Ravi Shankar-Niyogi Syndrome. You will recall the rule of Pandit Ravi Shankar, a Congressman but an arch Hindutva protagonist who was Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. He defied Jawaharlal Nehru, ignored his caution, and appointed Justice Niyogi to head a farcical commission designed to indict the Church for fraudulently and forcible conversions especially of tribals. That report mothered the anti conversion laws in many states.
That explains it all. The persecution is not a legitimate, if violent, response to Christian spiritual violence -- if you so want to describe evangelistic activity in urban, rural and tribal areas. The laws, which include the Presidential Order of 1950 which deprives Christian Dalits of their development rights, and the social and political perceptions, are designed to keep a vast population of the Dalits and the poor in the thrall and slavery of a few from the traditional social elite. There is virtually no persecution in areas which also do not also have harsh caste distinctions and Dalit or Tribal persecution. It is a one-on-one match! Political groups either encourage or condone persecution of Christians for political reasons.

QUESTION 4. Have national bodies like National Integration Council, of which you are a member, and the National Minorities Commission done anything to stop this?

ANSWER: The National Commission for Human rights does not look at religious persecution, leaving it to the national Minorities commission. Even otherwise I have problems with the NHRC whose focus is essentially on police and jails and torture, and that too not always honestly. It is little more than lip service. I recall at least one former Chief Justice of India who became NHRC chairman was strong supporter of the black law called POTA, used mostly against Muslims.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes had, till Dr Buta Singh became its chairman, adopted a very hostile attitude towards Dalit Christians - whether the chair was a Congress person or a Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stalwart.
The National Commission for Minorities, barring the brief interlude when Dr James Massey, a Dalit, was the Christian member, has almost always had time servers or political appointees whose interests were anything but relating to the community. Some have been hostile to the community, some have been corrupt, and some have been retired politicians or bureaucrats whose ignorance has been exceeded only by their unconcern.

One went to the extent of saying he saw no persecution, because he had never been persecuted. Another was keen to bring the community to its knees before the RSS in the guise of a dialogue. Little wonder, therefore, that when the Union Cabinet devised the so called Communal Violence prevention Bill, it just did not cover the issues of Christians, and hate crimes and persecution of the micro minority. The Muslims, after their Gujarat pogrom experience, and Sikhs with the 2004 massacres, rightly rejected the CV Bill out of hand because it strengthened the hands of the police without helping the victims of communal violence. The CV prevention Bill did not even understand the persecution of Christians in various parts of India, or the massive hate campaign against the community carried out in tribal belts, villages and even in cities. Sad to say, in the many seminars organised by Civil Society and by Muslim groups and intellectuals, there were hardly any Christians present and almost no formal representation by Catholic and Protestant hierarchies.

QUESTION 5. Do you think individuals like the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and Sonia Gandhi are fully aware of this continuing harassment of Christians in India?

ANSWER: I am sure they are aware. It is not just the many memorandums the community has submitted to them in the last four years. Governors of many states have repeatedly written to the President and through him to the Home Minister. The Police Intelligence must have told them too. But I expect little of political figures.

QUESTION. Are human rights organisations outside India aware of this situation?
ANSWER: Every Human Rights group in India and abroad worth its salt is fully aware of the situation. Firstly, it is not just persecution of Christians. There is persecution of Muslims. There are issues of delayed justice for the Gujarat massacre victims, for the widows of the Sikhs killed in 2004, and of course much delay in registering cases of persecution. The issue has figured in Amnesty reports, the US Government’s annual reports on International religious Freedom, and reports of NGOs.

As part of our larger advocacy exercise, we have kept the global village aware of what is happening to our community here, and in other countries too. India is a signatory to international Treaties and Resolutions on Human Rights, Freedom of faith and similar civilisation value documents. We hope international peer pressure will force the Government of India to take action and meet its Treaty obligations. India’s Human Rights record is up for review in April 2008 in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which replaces the old UN Human Rights Commission. This is a body directly answerable to the UN General Assembly. India eagerly looks forward to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and I hope the Government will take this opportunity to assure the UN of its honorable intentions in safeguarding full minority rights in the country.

But I wish to make it clear once again that we will never seek any punitive action against India, or sanctions of any kind, that may eventually impact on the poor of the country. We hope to fight and win this battle on our terms, and in utter peace.

QUESTION 7. Is there anything the Christian community in India can do to protect itself from such attacks?

ANSWER: We do not seek anything other than our full and honest rights ads citizens of this great country. It is for those in authority to seek that justice prevails and citizens’ security is safeguarded. That is what Governments are for, that and the fact that they must also ensure economic and development justice. Christians are the worse off in this matter too. And Government has not even bothered to set up an assessment committee such as the Justice Rajinder Sachchar high powered committee that the Prime Minister set up for Muslims.
There are precautions, of course, including prayer and unity amongst all Christians. There is the need to be aware of out rights, and not to be afraid of going to the police and insisting that they register a case if there is violence doe, or threats made. Evangelists need to evolve a new vocabulary. Human rights must be a part of the curricula of every Bible school, every seminary. There is need to dialogue with all groups, and to participate in civil society duties in speaking out for others when they are victimised and targeted. We must stand together with anyone who is victimised. That is the only way to ensure we will not hang separately.
Bowing to pressure, accepting defeat, toadyism and displays of weakness will never assure security. The hierarchy and NGOs with FCRA accounts permissions to protect must recognise this. There can be no dialogue between dead bodies and their killers, or between rapists and their victims. Dialogues take place between peaceful persons. Truce is not peace. Peace without justice can be eventually fatal. And in the short run, it merely ensures servitude and a loss of civil rights. I hope it never happens.

QUESTION 8. For quite some years now, you have boldly spoken out for the Christian community. Have you faced any personal threats or risks as a result?

QUESTION; I am not afraid. Like anyone else, I fear the thought of pain, but I do not fear death. In a lighter vein I may say the material and economic violence against me has been more than the physical. But of course as many a priest and lay activist, I have often been threatened with personal injury. Cyber police and security agencies are investigating a recent threat, to me and some top Congress leaders, which had roots abroad. For some time in the past, the Government had given me armed bodyguards, but mercifully they were removed after a time. They were an embarrassment, and guards have never saved anyone. That is what history shows us. I am protected by the prayers of many.