1 May 2015
Short circuits and communal violence
John
Dayal
The Christian leadership in India should
perhaps hire better electrical engineers, instead of going screaming to the
national media and international forums about increasing persecution of the
community in the country. The Delhi police says fires in two Delhi churches
were caused by short circuits. The desecration of statues in two churches were
petty vandalism, while two others were mere thefts. Nothing communal or
targetted about the six cases in the national capital.
In one of the cases where a Grotto in
a Catholic church was vandalised, the
police arrested three inebriated Sikh young men whose images had been
apparently recorded in the closed circuit TV camera.
Elsewhere in the country, a love-lorn
Muslim rickshaw puller was arrested for decapitating a statue of Jesus and
tying the statue of Mary with a dog chain in Agra. And for the rape of a 72
year old Nun in Bengal, police arrested Muslim men said to be illegal migrants
from Bangladesh who were apprehended as far away as Ludhiana in Punjab and Bangladesh.
This must be one of those coincidences.
The Delhi Police Commissioner, Mr. B S
Bassi, has apparently sent a long confidential report to the Ministry of Home
Affairs which somewhere got leaked as “exclusives” to every news channel. It is
a coincidence that the Bassi Report comes within hours of the United States
Commission for International Religious Freedom publishing its annual report for
2014, in which it puts India in the list of Tier Two countries under watch for
religious freedom transgressions. Neighbour Pakistan, if it is any
consolidation, is a Tier 1 country together with some theocracies and
dictatorships .
The police commissioner had said much the
same two months ago when he was summoned by the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra
Modi. And indeed, the Union Home Minister, Mr. Rajnath Singh, had done so even
earlier, talking to a group that had been beaten up and detained by the police
on the eve of the state elections in Delhi. And two months before that, Mr.
Modi had told a delegation led by an Archbishop which had come to greet him on
the eve of Christmas that Christians were exaggerating this, “making mountains
out of molehills,” as he colourfully put it, and their actions would
impact the government’s development
agenda.
To substantiate there twas nothing religious about such
crimes, Mr Bassi had earlier
produced statistics to show that 206 temples, 30 gurdwaras, 14 mosques and three
churches were burgled in 2014. This would be some contribution to interfaith
dialogue on security issues. Far be it from me to call it an attempted
white-wash.
There is no clarification by the commissioner, or by the government,
on communal and targetted violence against Muslims, though also figures in the
US report. But that could possibly be because of a presumption in government
and political circles that the US, with all too many resident
Islamophobes, is bothered just about the
Christian community which, to quote Chief Justice Dattu, gets so much money
from the West.
But persecution is not about the desecration of a church, or the
smashing of a Marian statue. It takes many forms. Churches are not burnt in
China, but there is fear in the community. Though not as it may be in some
Islamic countries where violent death is always a breath away. Bhutan, with its quotient of happiness, is
also as intolerant as the Maldives when it comes to “alien” faiths though no
one has been killed. India records from
150 to 250 cases of some form of violence against Christians every year.
It has always been, everywhere, about defining the other. But in popular, even academic and
parliamentary discourse, Indians are talking of “Indic religions” and “Semitic”
religions, holding Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism with about 500,000 of his followers has nothing out
of the ordinary, but every Tribal’s voluntary change of faith a crime that can
put him in Jail, together with anyone else caught with a Bible. A dozen or so Christians, including one
pastor, and a baby of less than a year,
spent Christmas 2014 in a Madhya Pradesh
police lockup on the demand of the local political leaders. Madhya Pradesh has
a so called Freedom of Religion” Act. But this routinely also happens in states
which do not have such a statute. In Chhatisgarh, several villages have passed
resolutions banning the entry of religious persons from any community other
than Hindus.
Mr. Modi’s government says
there was violence against Christians even during the government of the
United Progressive Alliance, chaired by a person of Italian catholic descent,
with a Sikh as prime minister.
How does that minimise the undercurrents if communalism and hatred
that are, unfortunately such a deep part of the landscape, and escalating with
each passing year? Governments have come and gone, and even the Congress as a
strong section that says the party should not be seen as “appeasing” or being
sympathetic to Christians and Muslims.
But the common factor is the pungent hatred spewed by the Rashtriya
Swayamsewak sangh and the organisations that are collected in its Sangh
parivar. Mr. Modi has said everyone should feel safe in the country; but not
once has he named the Sangh. Perhaps he cannot. Many of the hate mongers are in
his party in Parliament. At least two are in his Council of ministers. It is
difficult to believe that they do not have his permission, or at least his
indulgence.
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