A Report to the Nation on the Second Anniversary of the Pogrom
By John Dayal
This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two regions.]
But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.
In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed, apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered, and we will never know the real figure because the government does not want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention. Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested in what is politely called gender violence.
For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in his own house.
The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the fires and the killings under control.
And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further. Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!
The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to sign.
It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.
The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa, or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and the trauma to their graves.
Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any account.”
He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about 25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch, what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”
Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.
I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists, and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on. Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa. But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and police actually assisting the cause of justice.
We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the district.
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Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794
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Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.
This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour. There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions, are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists, there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the family members by job offers.
Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence. According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.
Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second least developed on overall human development index while it is least on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.
There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.
Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make transportation of critical ill difficult.
The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30 thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way, unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no provision to help people rebuild their lives.
But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes – the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may take years before they are healed, if ever.
For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.
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With main Kandhamal Report
The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been presented to the Central and State governments by the National Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.
DEMANDS:
The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation
[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Raphael Cheenath of Kandhamal
Admiral of the Faith
By John Dayal
August 2010
In a year which marks the Centenary of Blessed Mother Teresa and of Saint Alphonsa, most would find it difficult to find another authentic Christian hero for the Faithful in India. Raphael Cheenath would possibly blush if someone were to describe him as a living Saint -- if a tall deeply tanned and well built man in his late Seventies, who has seen both the urbane world and the deep of the forests, can indeed blush. But the Archbishop of Cuttack Bhubaneswar, and as he is now better known across the globe, “Archbishop Cheenath of Kandhamal”, is indeed one of a kind, a hero of the faith for Catholics, Episcopal and Evangelical Christians. This for having provided leadership to a battered and fragile community consisting of indigenous Tribal Kondh people and Dalit Panos groups, the poorest and the most marginalised segments of the population, to stand up to the worst form of persecution Christians have faced in over three hundred years. The last such large scale violence against the faithful was at the hands of Tipu Sultan, King of Mysore, who ravished the West coast of the Konkan and drove the Catholics on a long march to captivity.
What Cheenath and his people faced was the full hatred of India’s emergent neo-fascist religious bigots, described by political scientists as the Sangh Parivar. This is a pseudo-military political conglomeration believing in the right of their upper caste co-religionists to be the true and only inheritors of India, with Muslims and Christians in particular as aliens who have no place in the motherland. This group, which took inspiration from the Nazi and fascist traditions of Adolf Hitler and Il Duce Mussolini from the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, has been unhappy at India’s partition with the Muslim dominated western regions becoming the Islamic republic of Pakistan. They transferred their political angst into an animosity against Indian Muslims. This animosity has triggered perhaps twenty thousand riots in fifty years against the Muslims, who form just over ten per cent of the population. The Sangh hatred of Christians – who are less than 2.4 per cent of the national population -- was perhaps even deeper, partly by identifying the community with the imperial British who ruled India for more than a Hundred years, and partly for seeing in proselytising Christian missionaries a threat to the core of Hinduism itself. This led to a series of violent acts, sporadic in the first forty years of Independence of India in 1947, but bursting into the open in the mid 1990s, mostly in Gujarat, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
The Sangh violence of the 1990s against Christians saw the emergence of Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi as the undisputed leader and spokesman of the Christian community in the country. Alan took to advocacy at the highest level, representing the community’s cause with the highest political leadership in the land, and when that failed to rouse the national conscience, led the community into radical action, including all India agitation such as the strike of 4 December 1998 which saw every educational and medical institution run by the community close down for a day in protest.
The government’s response, then, and of the Bharatiya Janata party now, was to call for a national debate on conversions, a ruse repeatedly used by the Sangh Parivar to coerce the community and subvert Constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith.
The Sangh violence in Kandhamal was at a much higher pitch, lasted much longer and affected more people than the mayhem had in 1998 or even earlier. When the fires died down in the plateau of Kandhamal right in the middle of the State of Orissa, more than 54,000 people had become refugees in their own homeland, Over 400 villages had been purged of all Christian presence, a hundred people had been killed and over 5,600 houses burnt. Children lost their childhood, those going to school lost years of academic progress. A Nun was gang raped, and there were reports of many other rapes and molestation. Girls were molested, and into the third year, some had been victims of human trafficking. For many, the trauma was worse – they had been told they could not return to their villages till they became Hindus, a process accomplished by forcibly shearing off their hair and making them drink a mixture of the dung and urine of a cow. Most refused and were severely beaten up and brutalised. They remain the real heroes.
In a way, Cheenath had a lifetime of experience in the tribal regions of central India to know how to respond even to the unexpected. Raphael Cheenath, born in Manalur, Kerala on 29 December 1934 joined the Society of the Divine Word, worked in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa as a missionary and priest, and was eventually appointed Bishop of Sambalpur, before being named 1 July 1985 as the second Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocese. As missionary, priest, Bishop and Archbishop, he had worked closely with the Dalit and Tribal communities. It is an interesting factoid that his Bishop’s house is almost entirely staffed by people from Kandhamal.
When violence broke out, first in December 2007 at Christmas-time and then in August 2008, it was natural and swift for a duty-bound Cheenath to convey the cries and the anguish of the victims to the national political and governmental leadership. With other colleagues of the Episcopacy in the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, he met the President of India and the Prime minister, the Governor and the Chief Minister. When the Chief Minister refused to meet the Christian delegation which had called on him, Cheenath led the clergy group to stage a Gandhian “dharna” or sit-in at the residence of the Chief Minister till the man, Mr Naveen Pattnaik, agreed to meet them.
The fires however continued to rage in the forests. It was the forest, like a mother, which sheltered the refugees, preventing a much higher death toll. But they were without relief. The district officers refused permission for Church agencies to bring in relief. The Sangh had feared that church relief agencies would further convert people or spread Christianity! The media was not helpful.
Cheenath had the courage to go to court. He has consistently shown this commitment to justice, to the need to challenge the legal system of the country to deliver justice to religious minorities. This is not as easy as it sounds. Justice still eludes most in Kandhamal, and it is the legal review system that has been put ion place by the church that is ensuring that the Fat Track courts trying several of the criminal cases are closely monitored and preparations made for remedial action.
Cheenath’s writ petition in the Supreme Court of India was the first of the many steps that would have to be taken in courts big and small, and it produced results. If over 2,000 of the houses have now been completed and relief agencies are working, it is because of that court action.
Cheenath would sound out the justice system more than once. He became the first Archbishop, or Christian leader, in living memory to appear before a Judicial Commission, the Justice Panigrahi Commission, to put on record the plight of the common an the poor of his community. He refused to be cowed by the cross examination of hostile lawyers, most of whom were politically aligned with the Sangh Parivar.
It has been this charismatic leadership in all sectors – the justice system, the relief and rehabilitation, and the matter of faith – that Cheenath has been successful in strengthening the spiritual values of the people and of his clergy and restoring faith in the system, which had been shattered. In fact, government and judiciary owe him a debt of gratitude for this, for it would have been so easy for the frustrated and the angry to lose faith in democratic processes and institutions when faced with the magnitude of the crisis and the initial hostility of police and administration.
It is not that the Archbishop has not faced charges from the lesser informed among clergy and lay persons, mostly for not being physically present in Kandhamal in the initial weeks, and coming first to Delhi and then staying back in the Bishops House in Bhubaneswar. But to say this is to not fully understand the geography of the area and the political and violence situation. There was hardly a Catholic institutional building intact in the entire region. It may, by the way, be recalled that a bomb was thrown at Bishop’s house during Christmas 2007; the complaint of this was made to the police by no less than Father Bernard Digal, then Treasurer of the Archdiocese. One of the great tragedies of Kandhamal was the martyrdom of Fr Bernard, who left the comparative security of Bishops’ house to travel close to 300 kilometres to see the ground situation in the district, which also happened to be his homeland. His own village had been devastated. His brother and family had seen their hut being burnt to the ground, and were now staying with thousands of others in a refugee camp. Bernard was waylaid, and beaten savagely, and then left for dead. He was rescued by others a day alter, brought to hospital. He almost recovered after intensive treatment in Mumbai, but eventually succumbed to his internal injuries and complications in a hospital in Chennai just when everyone was expecting him to be declared cured.
That showed the threat to all clergy and religious, especially women who were absolutely not safe. The Archbishop had been identified by the Sangh Parivar and named as their main enemy. The Sangh staged dharna and agitations in Bhubaneswar asking for his immediate arrest, tighter with Rajya Sabha member Radha Kant Nayak and a couple of others. The threat to the Archbishop’s life and liberty was very real. The Sangh was trying hard to implicate him and some other Catholic leaders in the murder of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati whose murder, acknowledged to be their handiwork by left-wing militant Maoist groups of the region, that had triggered off the violence. The body of this man had been taken in a procession of over 200 kilometres through the hills and valleys of Kandhamal, accompanied not just by Sangh leaders, but even by the highest district civil and police authorities who ten stood by while well armed mobs used direr and knife to lay into the Christian community village after village. The district authorities were just not ready to take the risk for a survey of the violence by the Archbishop, afraid both for his security and possibly that his presence could make the Christian community rise in revolt in the refugee camps where living conditions were barely fit for animals. And when finally Cheenath did come to the district, it had to be while being escorted by an armed convoy.
There had also been charges, muttered silently and gossiped through SMS messages and emails that while Pentecost pastors stayed with the community even in refugee camps, the Catholic priests had gone to the forests. Cheenath had even in the Christmas 2007 violence given clear instructions to the men and women under his charge – human lives were precious and sacred, but buildings could be rebuilt. Catholic fathers including parish priests saw their churches burn as they fled to the forests, but many of the parishes were coming alive within months of the return of peace, the lone priest living in the ashes of the parish church, so to speak, of perhaps a single surviving room in what was once his home. Catholic institutions were the main target of the violence of 2008, but it is the resilience of the church and the strength of its leadership – including the courage of individual priests – that the Church is alive once again in the forests of Kandhamal.
Cheenath has toured Europe and other countries, but more important, it has been his witness in many states in the country that has encouraged and strengthened the community and given it hope. His evidence before visiting human rights groups, and as important, before emissaries of various countries and the international human rights movement, including the Untied Nations Human Rights Council through its Special Rapporteur, that Cheenath ahs been successful in explaining to the world at large the danger that neo Nazi and fascist groups, riding a narrow religious nationalism, pose not just to India, but to international peace. We cannot say this of many other religious leaders in the country today. As someone who has seen him at close quarters over the last three years, I have come to respect and admire Archbishop Raphael Cheenath. His life remains under threat. But Cheenath has been a veritable Admiral, leading his men, of course, but also steering the community to security, and peace while maintaining pressure on the State to give Justice to the victims.
By John Dayal
August 2010
In a year which marks the Centenary of Blessed Mother Teresa and of Saint Alphonsa, most would find it difficult to find another authentic Christian hero for the Faithful in India. Raphael Cheenath would possibly blush if someone were to describe him as a living Saint -- if a tall deeply tanned and well built man in his late Seventies, who has seen both the urbane world and the deep of the forests, can indeed blush. But the Archbishop of Cuttack Bhubaneswar, and as he is now better known across the globe, “Archbishop Cheenath of Kandhamal”, is indeed one of a kind, a hero of the faith for Catholics, Episcopal and Evangelical Christians. This for having provided leadership to a battered and fragile community consisting of indigenous Tribal Kondh people and Dalit Panos groups, the poorest and the most marginalised segments of the population, to stand up to the worst form of persecution Christians have faced in over three hundred years. The last such large scale violence against the faithful was at the hands of Tipu Sultan, King of Mysore, who ravished the West coast of the Konkan and drove the Catholics on a long march to captivity.
What Cheenath and his people faced was the full hatred of India’s emergent neo-fascist religious bigots, described by political scientists as the Sangh Parivar. This is a pseudo-military political conglomeration believing in the right of their upper caste co-religionists to be the true and only inheritors of India, with Muslims and Christians in particular as aliens who have no place in the motherland. This group, which took inspiration from the Nazi and fascist traditions of Adolf Hitler and Il Duce Mussolini from the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, has been unhappy at India’s partition with the Muslim dominated western regions becoming the Islamic republic of Pakistan. They transferred their political angst into an animosity against Indian Muslims. This animosity has triggered perhaps twenty thousand riots in fifty years against the Muslims, who form just over ten per cent of the population. The Sangh hatred of Christians – who are less than 2.4 per cent of the national population -- was perhaps even deeper, partly by identifying the community with the imperial British who ruled India for more than a Hundred years, and partly for seeing in proselytising Christian missionaries a threat to the core of Hinduism itself. This led to a series of violent acts, sporadic in the first forty years of Independence of India in 1947, but bursting into the open in the mid 1990s, mostly in Gujarat, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.
The Sangh violence of the 1990s against Christians saw the emergence of Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi as the undisputed leader and spokesman of the Christian community in the country. Alan took to advocacy at the highest level, representing the community’s cause with the highest political leadership in the land, and when that failed to rouse the national conscience, led the community into radical action, including all India agitation such as the strike of 4 December 1998 which saw every educational and medical institution run by the community close down for a day in protest.
The government’s response, then, and of the Bharatiya Janata party now, was to call for a national debate on conversions, a ruse repeatedly used by the Sangh Parivar to coerce the community and subvert Constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith.
The Sangh violence in Kandhamal was at a much higher pitch, lasted much longer and affected more people than the mayhem had in 1998 or even earlier. When the fires died down in the plateau of Kandhamal right in the middle of the State of Orissa, more than 54,000 people had become refugees in their own homeland, Over 400 villages had been purged of all Christian presence, a hundred people had been killed and over 5,600 houses burnt. Children lost their childhood, those going to school lost years of academic progress. A Nun was gang raped, and there were reports of many other rapes and molestation. Girls were molested, and into the third year, some had been victims of human trafficking. For many, the trauma was worse – they had been told they could not return to their villages till they became Hindus, a process accomplished by forcibly shearing off their hair and making them drink a mixture of the dung and urine of a cow. Most refused and were severely beaten up and brutalised. They remain the real heroes.
In a way, Cheenath had a lifetime of experience in the tribal regions of central India to know how to respond even to the unexpected. Raphael Cheenath, born in Manalur, Kerala on 29 December 1934 joined the Society of the Divine Word, worked in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa as a missionary and priest, and was eventually appointed Bishop of Sambalpur, before being named 1 July 1985 as the second Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocese. As missionary, priest, Bishop and Archbishop, he had worked closely with the Dalit and Tribal communities. It is an interesting factoid that his Bishop’s house is almost entirely staffed by people from Kandhamal.
When violence broke out, first in December 2007 at Christmas-time and then in August 2008, it was natural and swift for a duty-bound Cheenath to convey the cries and the anguish of the victims to the national political and governmental leadership. With other colleagues of the Episcopacy in the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, he met the President of India and the Prime minister, the Governor and the Chief Minister. When the Chief Minister refused to meet the Christian delegation which had called on him, Cheenath led the clergy group to stage a Gandhian “dharna” or sit-in at the residence of the Chief Minister till the man, Mr Naveen Pattnaik, agreed to meet them.
The fires however continued to rage in the forests. It was the forest, like a mother, which sheltered the refugees, preventing a much higher death toll. But they were without relief. The district officers refused permission for Church agencies to bring in relief. The Sangh had feared that church relief agencies would further convert people or spread Christianity! The media was not helpful.
Cheenath had the courage to go to court. He has consistently shown this commitment to justice, to the need to challenge the legal system of the country to deliver justice to religious minorities. This is not as easy as it sounds. Justice still eludes most in Kandhamal, and it is the legal review system that has been put ion place by the church that is ensuring that the Fat Track courts trying several of the criminal cases are closely monitored and preparations made for remedial action.
Cheenath’s writ petition in the Supreme Court of India was the first of the many steps that would have to be taken in courts big and small, and it produced results. If over 2,000 of the houses have now been completed and relief agencies are working, it is because of that court action.
Cheenath would sound out the justice system more than once. He became the first Archbishop, or Christian leader, in living memory to appear before a Judicial Commission, the Justice Panigrahi Commission, to put on record the plight of the common an the poor of his community. He refused to be cowed by the cross examination of hostile lawyers, most of whom were politically aligned with the Sangh Parivar.
It has been this charismatic leadership in all sectors – the justice system, the relief and rehabilitation, and the matter of faith – that Cheenath has been successful in strengthening the spiritual values of the people and of his clergy and restoring faith in the system, which had been shattered. In fact, government and judiciary owe him a debt of gratitude for this, for it would have been so easy for the frustrated and the angry to lose faith in democratic processes and institutions when faced with the magnitude of the crisis and the initial hostility of police and administration.
It is not that the Archbishop has not faced charges from the lesser informed among clergy and lay persons, mostly for not being physically present in Kandhamal in the initial weeks, and coming first to Delhi and then staying back in the Bishops House in Bhubaneswar. But to say this is to not fully understand the geography of the area and the political and violence situation. There was hardly a Catholic institutional building intact in the entire region. It may, by the way, be recalled that a bomb was thrown at Bishop’s house during Christmas 2007; the complaint of this was made to the police by no less than Father Bernard Digal, then Treasurer of the Archdiocese. One of the great tragedies of Kandhamal was the martyrdom of Fr Bernard, who left the comparative security of Bishops’ house to travel close to 300 kilometres to see the ground situation in the district, which also happened to be his homeland. His own village had been devastated. His brother and family had seen their hut being burnt to the ground, and were now staying with thousands of others in a refugee camp. Bernard was waylaid, and beaten savagely, and then left for dead. He was rescued by others a day alter, brought to hospital. He almost recovered after intensive treatment in Mumbai, but eventually succumbed to his internal injuries and complications in a hospital in Chennai just when everyone was expecting him to be declared cured.
That showed the threat to all clergy and religious, especially women who were absolutely not safe. The Archbishop had been identified by the Sangh Parivar and named as their main enemy. The Sangh staged dharna and agitations in Bhubaneswar asking for his immediate arrest, tighter with Rajya Sabha member Radha Kant Nayak and a couple of others. The threat to the Archbishop’s life and liberty was very real. The Sangh was trying hard to implicate him and some other Catholic leaders in the murder of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati whose murder, acknowledged to be their handiwork by left-wing militant Maoist groups of the region, that had triggered off the violence. The body of this man had been taken in a procession of over 200 kilometres through the hills and valleys of Kandhamal, accompanied not just by Sangh leaders, but even by the highest district civil and police authorities who ten stood by while well armed mobs used direr and knife to lay into the Christian community village after village. The district authorities were just not ready to take the risk for a survey of the violence by the Archbishop, afraid both for his security and possibly that his presence could make the Christian community rise in revolt in the refugee camps where living conditions were barely fit for animals. And when finally Cheenath did come to the district, it had to be while being escorted by an armed convoy.
There had also been charges, muttered silently and gossiped through SMS messages and emails that while Pentecost pastors stayed with the community even in refugee camps, the Catholic priests had gone to the forests. Cheenath had even in the Christmas 2007 violence given clear instructions to the men and women under his charge – human lives were precious and sacred, but buildings could be rebuilt. Catholic fathers including parish priests saw their churches burn as they fled to the forests, but many of the parishes were coming alive within months of the return of peace, the lone priest living in the ashes of the parish church, so to speak, of perhaps a single surviving room in what was once his home. Catholic institutions were the main target of the violence of 2008, but it is the resilience of the church and the strength of its leadership – including the courage of individual priests – that the Church is alive once again in the forests of Kandhamal.
Cheenath has toured Europe and other countries, but more important, it has been his witness in many states in the country that has encouraged and strengthened the community and given it hope. His evidence before visiting human rights groups, and as important, before emissaries of various countries and the international human rights movement, including the Untied Nations Human Rights Council through its Special Rapporteur, that Cheenath ahs been successful in explaining to the world at large the danger that neo Nazi and fascist groups, riding a narrow religious nationalism, pose not just to India, but to international peace. We cannot say this of many other religious leaders in the country today. As someone who has seen him at close quarters over the last three years, I have come to respect and admire Archbishop Raphael Cheenath. His life remains under threat. But Cheenath has been a veritable Admiral, leading his men, of course, but also steering the community to security, and peace while maintaining pressure on the State to give Justice to the victims.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Hindutva Terror Network Targets Christians in Indian State
FILLING IN AN INFORMATION GAP
The Hindutva terror groups linked with a series of bomb blasts in Muslim shrines and other places Rajasthan and Maharashtra terror have also killed Christian activists and targeted evangelistic work in the tribal belt of India.
Police investigators have traced the murder of Malwa Christian leader Pyar Singh Ninama to hit men of the terror gangs responsible for bombing the world famous Ajmer Sharif shrine.
According to news reports this morning in the New Delhi edition of Mail Today and Rediff, the Malwa region in western Madhya Pradesh is a focal point and recruiting ground of this terror group which also has as its members retired and serving officers of the Indian Army, who may have sourced the explosives used by the group.
This is the first time official information has come about the network which so far was presumed to be working against Muslims alone.
The following is the text of the Rediff illuminating report: published July 12, 2010:
Most names figuring in the investigations of the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer, at Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid, and in Malegaon hail from Madhya Pradesh's Malwa region. Rediff.com's Krishnakumar Padmanabhan traces the common thread that could have brought these men together.
What started as minor skirmishes between two groups vying for power seven years ago in a small Madhya Pradesh cantonment town was the beginning of the phenomenon that is now spoken about as Hindu terrorism.
Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Rajasthan Anti-Terror Squad made a string of arrests from in and around Indore and established that the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer and Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid were the handiwork of the same group of people.
At least three of the accused in the bomb blast case were charged with the murder of a tribal leader from the Congress party in 2003.
As like-minded men began coming together and plotting heinous attacks, the Madhya Pradesh establishment turned a blind eye. Investigators now say the perpetrators found haven in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, as they wreaked havoc in other parts of the country.
In 2003, towards the end of Digvijay Singh's tenure as chief minister in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress party had strengthened its hold in its traditional areas — the party base, the minorities, and the Adivasis.
In Malwa's tribal belt, Pyar Singh Ninama, a local tribal strongman, was the party's face among the Adivasi population. Around that time, accusations began to trickle that Christian missionaries were stepping up efforts to get more Adivasis into their fold. Around that time a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Sunil Joshi, was 'sent' as the Mhow pracharak from Gujarat, where it was said the heat was on him following the 2002 riots.
In Mhow -- an acronym for Military Headquarters of War -- the Sangh Parivar was virtually a family. The most active among them were Lokesh Sharma, his cousin Jitender Sharma -- from the RSS and Bajrang Dal respectively -- and Devendra Pandya, who were working to spread Hinduism in adjoining tribal areas.
On the other hand, Ninama, a converted Christian, was seen as nudging his fellow tribals towards Christianity. The two groups were soon at loggerheads and in one of the ensuing clashes, Pandey's choti (tuft) was allegedly cut off. In apparent revenge, three people including Ninama and his son, were brutally killed.
Cases were filed against Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi, Ramesh Sharma, a businessman from neighbouring Pithampur, and 10 others. While most of them are still in jail and the case is before the court, Lokesh Sharma and Joshi were never caught. Here is where the seeds of what is now seen as Hindu terror were sown.
Investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Anti-Terror Squads of Rajasthan and Maharashtra have revealed that the lynchpin was Sunil Joshi, who was murdered in December 2007. Lokesh Sharma is accused of planting the bomb in Ajmer.
Locals say soon after the Ninama murder case, Joshi's stock rose among hotheaded youngsters.
In the assembly election that followed a couple of months after Ninama's murder, the Congress party was voted out, and the Bharatiya Janata Party [ ] came to power.
Around this time, some local residents claim Joshi and Lokesh Sharma began to be seen in public quite often.
"Digvijay Singh had often spoken about how the violent activities of the Hindu groups was fast turning to 'terrorism'. He said he had evidence that they were gaining bomb-making capabilities. But then he was voted out at a crucial juncture," says Manohar Limbodia, a veteran journalist.
With what was seen as a friendly BJP government, Joshi began to operate quite openly, mobilising support.
"Joshiji was someone who would say one death from our side should be avenged with five from the other side. The youngsters liked him and his approach a lot," a Bajrang Dal activist in Mhow recalls, speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.
As it was becoming evident that Joshi was going down an aggressive path, the RSS publicly distanced itself from him.
"Though the RSS distanced itself from the likes of Joshi, we could see that he had the support from within the organisation and also local BJP leaders. Joshi and his group could not have operated without strong support," a businessman, familiar with the Sangh Parivar in Dewas, where Joshi was murdered, says, again speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.
Soon after the Ninama murder case, the police defused a bomb at the venue of a Muslim congregation in Ghansipura, Bhopal, which they now allege was planted by the same group behind the terror attacks.
It was an improvised device with explosive material stuffed in metal pipes, connected to a mobile phone. The bomb was set to explode when the mobile rang, but the police defused it in time.
Had that bomb exploded it would have been the first attack of Hindu terror in the country.
How did those who came together in Mhow establish contact with foot soldiers like Ramji Kalasangra (who allegedly made the bombs used in the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid attacks) and Sandeep Dange (who is alleged to have 'facilitated' the others in executing the blasts) on the one hand and alleged masterminds like Colonel Prasad Purohit and sadhvi Pragya Thakur on the other hand?
"The RSS has many organisations," says Deepak Joshi, son of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kailash Joshi and the BJP legislator from Hatpipliya, Dewas. "There are also different kinds of people. First, there are the RSS members. Then there are people who might be involved in the RSS's activities without being members. Then, there are people from sister organisations like the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), Bajrang Dal, etc. Finally, there are people who believe in the ideology but are not associated in any way with any organisation. There are about five or six RSS events in a year where all the four kinds of people come together. Since they are all from the region and had extremist leanings, that is how these people must have met."
Explaining how various people could have gotten to know each other, he says he had met Pragya Thakur about 10 times. "She has sat in the exact place where you are sitting. The connection between her and me is that we are both from the ABVP. She was very aggressive from those days, and I did not make any efforts to know her better," he adds.
But he shies away from dubbing the phenomenon as Hindu terrorism.
"It is not organised to begin with," he says, "And it does not have the sanction or approval of an organisation like the RSS."
He accepts that the likes of Sunil Joshi did have support at the local level.
"When the police said Sunil Joshi was in hiding, I had met him at an event. He told me he was being framed," says the BJP MLA. "In small places, it is not difficult to meet and get to know people. In Madhya Pradesh, a lot of BJP politicians owe their career to the RSS. And some of them may have shared beliefs with people like Sunil Joshi. In the end, such politicians end up using these people for their personal gains."
How did the Malwa region become the hotbed for Hindu terror?
The Malwa region is predominantly tribal. Indore, which is the biggest city in the region, does not have much of an Adivasi presence. But Dhar is 75 percent Adivasi, Jhabua is nearly 100 percent Adivasi. Balwani, Khargon and Khandwa are 50 percent Adivasi.
The Hindus form the second biggest community. They comprise Malis from Rajasthan, Jats, Thakurs, Baniyas and Brahmins.
"More than the composition, the reason the region has been the hotbed of radical Hinduism is because of the leaders," says Limbodia. "Nagpur may be the seat of power for the RSS, but Malwa is the front. RSS stalwarts like Khushabhau Thakre, Pyarelal Khandelwal and Suresh Soni hailed from the Malwa region and shaped the RSS philosophy. That way, this region is the cradle of the RSS."
"It is not just Hindu terror," says Kamil Seher, a hotel owner in Pithampur, an industrial area. "The Pithampur-Dhar region was the base for SIMI [ ]. They used to train there. Before that, the Dawood Ibrahim gang used to be active here. Now the Maoists are also entering this region. Why, some time ago, even an LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) soldier was arrested from a Pithampur factory, where he was working as a gunman for the owner."
"If you are working in a factory, and you bring in someone from your village to stay with you, how would we know if he is a criminal or not?" asks Seher.
He alleges that though the likes of SIMI leader Safdar Nagori were arrested, those who were pumping money and were the brains of the outlawed organisation got away.
"If with an organisation like SIMI, money power and clout could work, how will anyone be able to get close to the top of the Hindu terror hierarchy, if it exists?" he asks.
While the official RSS line is that those arrested are not part of the organisation, it is reported to be helping the accused's families and has arranged for lawyers to fight their cases.
"The RSS arranged for lawyers in Ajmer and Hyderabad to take up my brother's case," confirms Jitender Sharma, Lokesh Sharma's cousin. "I am thankful to the organisation. But at the same time I understand why they want to distance themselves in public. There is a Congress government at the Centre, and all the three states where the terror charges have been filed are also ruled by the Congress, which wants to link the RSS with terrorism. For the Congress, the RSS is the biggest enemy, not the BJP. They want to finish off the RSS."
Jitender's version of what happened is different.
"I was with the Bajrang Dal and Lokesh was with the RSS. Under Digvijay Singh, Hinduism was under attack. So we tried to get a case filed against him. But it is not easy to get the police to file a first information report against the state's chief minister. So we indulged in chakka jams (blockades), and jail bharo protests on a small scale. The state police had marked us from that time. There were a lot of small cases (filed) against us. But we are not people who will get into hardcore criminal activities. At the most we would have stoned a few shops during bandhs," he says.
Though he does not criticise the RSS, Jitender does not have the same feelings about the BJP and its local leaders.
"Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is the BJP MLA for Mhow, has done nothing. He used Lokesh during elections and after that has turned a blind eye," he alleges.
Jitender is now fighting a lone battle to save his cousin.
"First he was implicated in the Ninama murder case. He lost five years of his life hiding from the police. Only last year he got married and his son was born this year. But he hasn't been able to see his son. We are poor people and now his family is struggling to make ends meet and also spend on the legal proceedings."
Though others do not buy the witch hunt theory, they agreed that the Congress party being in power at the Centre and the three states involved is the prime reason the case is moving at this pace.
"These people first surfaced in 2003," says journalist Manohar Limbodia. "After a few failed attempts, they executed their first attack in 2007. Wasn't four years enough for the state police to act? In fact, had any party but the BJP been in power in Madhya Pradesh, you might not be talking about a phenomenon called Hindu terror today."
"Even before the Ajmer blasts, they all met in a temple in Bhopal. What did the police do? After the blasts too, the Vasundhara Raje government (in Rajasthan) did not do anything," says Naveen Mali, a businessman and community leader in Mhow. "Only after (Congress Chief Minister) Ashok Gehlot [ ] took over did things start moving. True, it smacks of politics, but then something happened and something had to be done."
The Dewas-Indore belt was home for those accused in the terror cases.
"They thought they would be safe as long as they could strike in other states and hide here. They thought they were untouchable. They never expected the police from other states to come looking for them," says Limbodia.
Though Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare blew the lid off the Hindu terror phenomenon when he cracked the Malegaon blast case, it is the Rajasthan ATS, with its sweeps into border towns and midnight arrests, that has struck terror in the hearts of those hiding in the region.
"The Rajasthan ATS comes and picks up people for questioning and drops them back whenever it wants to. The local police is clueless. They come to know only when the Rajasthan ATS informs them as a formality about who they are taking away with them. Sometimes they don't even do that," says Seher about the arrests that the neighbouring state's police have made in Pithampur.
"The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government (in Madhya Pradesh) is not very strong," says Jitender Sharma. "In Gujarat, (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi ] doesn't allow the ATS to touch anyone. But here, the ATS from other states walk in freely and pick up whoever they want to whenever they want."
The Hindutva terror groups linked with a series of bomb blasts in Muslim shrines and other places Rajasthan and Maharashtra terror have also killed Christian activists and targeted evangelistic work in the tribal belt of India.
Police investigators have traced the murder of Malwa Christian leader Pyar Singh Ninama to hit men of the terror gangs responsible for bombing the world famous Ajmer Sharif shrine.
According to news reports this morning in the New Delhi edition of Mail Today and Rediff, the Malwa region in western Madhya Pradesh is a focal point and recruiting ground of this terror group which also has as its members retired and serving officers of the Indian Army, who may have sourced the explosives used by the group.
This is the first time official information has come about the network which so far was presumed to be working against Muslims alone.
The following is the text of the Rediff illuminating report: published July 12, 2010:
Most names figuring in the investigations of the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer, at Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid, and in Malegaon hail from Madhya Pradesh's Malwa region. Rediff.com's Krishnakumar Padmanabhan traces the common thread that could have brought these men together.
What started as minor skirmishes between two groups vying for power seven years ago in a small Madhya Pradesh cantonment town was the beginning of the phenomenon that is now spoken about as Hindu terrorism.
Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Rajasthan Anti-Terror Squad made a string of arrests from in and around Indore and established that the 2007 bomb blasts in Ajmer and Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid were the handiwork of the same group of people.
At least three of the accused in the bomb blast case were charged with the murder of a tribal leader from the Congress party in 2003.
As like-minded men began coming together and plotting heinous attacks, the Madhya Pradesh establishment turned a blind eye. Investigators now say the perpetrators found haven in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, as they wreaked havoc in other parts of the country.
In 2003, towards the end of Digvijay Singh's tenure as chief minister in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress party had strengthened its hold in its traditional areas — the party base, the minorities, and the Adivasis.
In Malwa's tribal belt, Pyar Singh Ninama, a local tribal strongman, was the party's face among the Adivasi population. Around that time, accusations began to trickle that Christian missionaries were stepping up efforts to get more Adivasis into their fold. Around that time a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Sunil Joshi, was 'sent' as the Mhow pracharak from Gujarat, where it was said the heat was on him following the 2002 riots.
In Mhow -- an acronym for Military Headquarters of War -- the Sangh Parivar was virtually a family. The most active among them were Lokesh Sharma, his cousin Jitender Sharma -- from the RSS and Bajrang Dal respectively -- and Devendra Pandya, who were working to spread Hinduism in adjoining tribal areas.
On the other hand, Ninama, a converted Christian, was seen as nudging his fellow tribals towards Christianity. The two groups were soon at loggerheads and in one of the ensuing clashes, Pandey's choti (tuft) was allegedly cut off. In apparent revenge, three people including Ninama and his son, were brutally killed.
Cases were filed against Lokesh Sharma, Sunil Joshi, Ramesh Sharma, a businessman from neighbouring Pithampur, and 10 others. While most of them are still in jail and the case is before the court, Lokesh Sharma and Joshi were never caught. Here is where the seeds of what is now seen as Hindu terror were sown.
Investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Anti-Terror Squads of Rajasthan and Maharashtra have revealed that the lynchpin was Sunil Joshi, who was murdered in December 2007. Lokesh Sharma is accused of planting the bomb in Ajmer.
Locals say soon after the Ninama murder case, Joshi's stock rose among hotheaded youngsters.
In the assembly election that followed a couple of months after Ninama's murder, the Congress party was voted out, and the Bharatiya Janata Party [ ] came to power.
Around this time, some local residents claim Joshi and Lokesh Sharma began to be seen in public quite often.
"Digvijay Singh had often spoken about how the violent activities of the Hindu groups was fast turning to 'terrorism'. He said he had evidence that they were gaining bomb-making capabilities. But then he was voted out at a crucial juncture," says Manohar Limbodia, a veteran journalist.
With what was seen as a friendly BJP government, Joshi began to operate quite openly, mobilising support.
"Joshiji was someone who would say one death from our side should be avenged with five from the other side. The youngsters liked him and his approach a lot," a Bajrang Dal activist in Mhow recalls, speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.
As it was becoming evident that Joshi was going down an aggressive path, the RSS publicly distanced itself from him.
"Though the RSS distanced itself from the likes of Joshi, we could see that he had the support from within the organisation and also local BJP leaders. Joshi and his group could not have operated without strong support," a businessman, familiar with the Sangh Parivar in Dewas, where Joshi was murdered, says, again speaking on condition that he would not be identified for this report.
Soon after the Ninama murder case, the police defused a bomb at the venue of a Muslim congregation in Ghansipura, Bhopal, which they now allege was planted by the same group behind the terror attacks.
It was an improvised device with explosive material stuffed in metal pipes, connected to a mobile phone. The bomb was set to explode when the mobile rang, but the police defused it in time.
Had that bomb exploded it would have been the first attack of Hindu terror in the country.
How did those who came together in Mhow establish contact with foot soldiers like Ramji Kalasangra (who allegedly made the bombs used in the Ajmer and Mecca Masjid attacks) and Sandeep Dange (who is alleged to have 'facilitated' the others in executing the blasts) on the one hand and alleged masterminds like Colonel Prasad Purohit and sadhvi Pragya Thakur on the other hand?
"The RSS has many organisations," says Deepak Joshi, son of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kailash Joshi and the BJP legislator from Hatpipliya, Dewas. "There are also different kinds of people. First, there are the RSS members. Then there are people who might be involved in the RSS's activities without being members. Then, there are people from sister organisations like the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), Bajrang Dal, etc. Finally, there are people who believe in the ideology but are not associated in any way with any organisation. There are about five or six RSS events in a year where all the four kinds of people come together. Since they are all from the region and had extremist leanings, that is how these people must have met."
Explaining how various people could have gotten to know each other, he says he had met Pragya Thakur about 10 times. "She has sat in the exact place where you are sitting. The connection between her and me is that we are both from the ABVP. She was very aggressive from those days, and I did not make any efforts to know her better," he adds.
But he shies away from dubbing the phenomenon as Hindu terrorism.
"It is not organised to begin with," he says, "And it does not have the sanction or approval of an organisation like the RSS."
He accepts that the likes of Sunil Joshi did have support at the local level.
"When the police said Sunil Joshi was in hiding, I had met him at an event. He told me he was being framed," says the BJP MLA. "In small places, it is not difficult to meet and get to know people. In Madhya Pradesh, a lot of BJP politicians owe their career to the RSS. And some of them may have shared beliefs with people like Sunil Joshi. In the end, such politicians end up using these people for their personal gains."
How did the Malwa region become the hotbed for Hindu terror?
The Malwa region is predominantly tribal. Indore, which is the biggest city in the region, does not have much of an Adivasi presence. But Dhar is 75 percent Adivasi, Jhabua is nearly 100 percent Adivasi. Balwani, Khargon and Khandwa are 50 percent Adivasi.
The Hindus form the second biggest community. They comprise Malis from Rajasthan, Jats, Thakurs, Baniyas and Brahmins.
"More than the composition, the reason the region has been the hotbed of radical Hinduism is because of the leaders," says Limbodia. "Nagpur may be the seat of power for the RSS, but Malwa is the front. RSS stalwarts like Khushabhau Thakre, Pyarelal Khandelwal and Suresh Soni hailed from the Malwa region and shaped the RSS philosophy. That way, this region is the cradle of the RSS."
"It is not just Hindu terror," says Kamil Seher, a hotel owner in Pithampur, an industrial area. "The Pithampur-Dhar region was the base for SIMI [ ]. They used to train there. Before that, the Dawood Ibrahim gang used to be active here. Now the Maoists are also entering this region. Why, some time ago, even an LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) soldier was arrested from a Pithampur factory, where he was working as a gunman for the owner."
"If you are working in a factory, and you bring in someone from your village to stay with you, how would we know if he is a criminal or not?" asks Seher.
He alleges that though the likes of SIMI leader Safdar Nagori were arrested, those who were pumping money and were the brains of the outlawed organisation got away.
"If with an organisation like SIMI, money power and clout could work, how will anyone be able to get close to the top of the Hindu terror hierarchy, if it exists?" he asks.
While the official RSS line is that those arrested are not part of the organisation, it is reported to be helping the accused's families and has arranged for lawyers to fight their cases.
"The RSS arranged for lawyers in Ajmer and Hyderabad to take up my brother's case," confirms Jitender Sharma, Lokesh Sharma's cousin. "I am thankful to the organisation. But at the same time I understand why they want to distance themselves in public. There is a Congress government at the Centre, and all the three states where the terror charges have been filed are also ruled by the Congress, which wants to link the RSS with terrorism. For the Congress, the RSS is the biggest enemy, not the BJP. They want to finish off the RSS."
Jitender's version of what happened is different.
"I was with the Bajrang Dal and Lokesh was with the RSS. Under Digvijay Singh, Hinduism was under attack. So we tried to get a case filed against him. But it is not easy to get the police to file a first information report against the state's chief minister. So we indulged in chakka jams (blockades), and jail bharo protests on a small scale. The state police had marked us from that time. There were a lot of small cases (filed) against us. But we are not people who will get into hardcore criminal activities. At the most we would have stoned a few shops during bandhs," he says.
Though he does not criticise the RSS, Jitender does not have the same feelings about the BJP and its local leaders.
"Kailash Vijayvargiya, who is the BJP MLA for Mhow, has done nothing. He used Lokesh during elections and after that has turned a blind eye," he alleges.
Jitender is now fighting a lone battle to save his cousin.
"First he was implicated in the Ninama murder case. He lost five years of his life hiding from the police. Only last year he got married and his son was born this year. But he hasn't been able to see his son. We are poor people and now his family is struggling to make ends meet and also spend on the legal proceedings."
Though others do not buy the witch hunt theory, they agreed that the Congress party being in power at the Centre and the three states involved is the prime reason the case is moving at this pace.
"These people first surfaced in 2003," says journalist Manohar Limbodia. "After a few failed attempts, they executed their first attack in 2007. Wasn't four years enough for the state police to act? In fact, had any party but the BJP been in power in Madhya Pradesh, you might not be talking about a phenomenon called Hindu terror today."
"Even before the Ajmer blasts, they all met in a temple in Bhopal. What did the police do? After the blasts too, the Vasundhara Raje government (in Rajasthan) did not do anything," says Naveen Mali, a businessman and community leader in Mhow. "Only after (Congress Chief Minister) Ashok Gehlot [ ] took over did things start moving. True, it smacks of politics, but then something happened and something had to be done."
The Dewas-Indore belt was home for those accused in the terror cases.
"They thought they would be safe as long as they could strike in other states and hide here. They thought they were untouchable. They never expected the police from other states to come looking for them," says Limbodia.
Though Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare blew the lid off the Hindu terror phenomenon when he cracked the Malegaon blast case, it is the Rajasthan ATS, with its sweeps into border towns and midnight arrests, that has struck terror in the hearts of those hiding in the region.
"The Rajasthan ATS comes and picks up people for questioning and drops them back whenever it wants to. The local police is clueless. They come to know only when the Rajasthan ATS informs them as a formality about who they are taking away with them. Sometimes they don't even do that," says Seher about the arrests that the neighbouring state's police have made in Pithampur.
"The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government (in Madhya Pradesh) is not very strong," says Jitender Sharma. "In Gujarat, (Chief Minister) Narendra Modi ] doesn't allow the ATS to touch anyone. But here, the ATS from other states walk in freely and pick up whoever they want to whenever they want."
Saturday, July 10, 2010
WWW integral to Democracy, and vice versa
10 July 2010
John Dayal
Poland is a young people, and a younger nation in terms of centuries. Slav tribes came together not more than a millennium ago. They became Christian as recently as in 966 AD – remember, St Thomas made his first converts in Kerala and Madras circa 54 AD, the first century after Christ – and made its first international show with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. And at various times, it defeated the Teutonic German knights, but was brutally conquered by Hitler, freed by Marshal Stalin, but held ideologically captive by the Soviet Union, freed once again by a combination mass movement led long distance from Rome by home boy Pope John Paul II and by ship builder Lech Walesa of Gdansk. That was about thirty years ago, just. It is home to Auschwitz where a million Jews were incinerated, but is also where Chopin was born, and Copernicus and Madame Curie. Let us say, Poland knows a bit about democracy, and the lack of it, and the difference between the two. Not surprisingly, when in the middle of its Presidential Elections this month, it held the Tenth anniversary meeting High Level Meeting of the Community of Democracies, the event was alternately dominated by events showcasing Polish culture and ethos on the one hand, and US arrogance on the other, specially as displayed by the very vocal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors Madeline Alright. Between the two, they put up the US as the global underwriter of democracy, and financier of pro democracy movements in third world countries, Clinton announcing a support fund with an initial Dollar donation of Five Million.
But as part of the observances was an interesting sub-conference on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions said “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.”
The issues would have interested India, but alas, of the three civilians and one diplomat at the conference from home, only one attended this session. Egyptians and Latin Americans spoke of the use they had made of the Internet in globalising their struggles. Others spoke of Internet censorship, by China and Pakistan, for instance. And a representative of an international Search engine-turned portal tried to forecast the future where the Internet in an advanced version would be an important tool for “equality, fraternity and the pursuit of happiness,” or words to that affect.
For NGOs in India, there was much to reflect upon. We boast the second largest number of Internet users in the world, but poverty, still prehistoric infrastructure maintenance, low penetration where it matters among the rural, the forested tribal communities and the religious minorities -- the huge victim group in other words – it remains a moot question if Indians can pin their democratic hopes on the World Wide Web, yet. The blame cannot be put on Airtel , Idea, Reliance, BSNL, Aircel, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, MTNL, and Loop Mobile, though they too care tuppence for the 600 million consumers, almost half of the total national population connected by wire or wireless. Another demon is the cost. India still rates as one of the most expensive in communication and Net access.
The ghost culprit is the Government of India. It is, I admit, no monster compared to China’s regime, but let us not forget that Kashmiris cannot often still carry hand mobiles every so often, villagers lose touch for want of electricity, and above all, things are not clear about shadow organizations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team ("CERT-IN") are meant to ensure Internet security. Officially, the Ministry of Home Affairs, all courts, the military and civil intelligence bureaus can use it, as they say in officialese, to enhance the security of India's Communications and Information Infrastructure through proactive action and effective collaboration.
Nothing legal yet about website censorship, but news reports on a weekly basis speak of interest groups fingering some site or the other, foreign or national. Records show, and I should be I suppose indebted to CIA portals for this information, not just pornographic but also anti-establishment political websites have been blocked. In 2001, the Bombay High Court appointed a committee to oversee issues relating to online pornography and Cybercrime. A court panel called for licensing of cyber cafés, putative identity cards for cyber cafe visitors, and long books for internet service providers. Good for internal security and since the Indian State and its police defines what is national good, bad news for a free society. Not that in India we need India to scare us. Self Censorship in India ensures that most of us, the Media included, quietly toe the government line where it matters, afraid we may be branded Maoist supporters, if not Maoists of Jaish operatives. Our hard disks remain squeaky clean, our ‘Net signatures absolutely innocent of real democratic shouts. Time for some debate on Internet freedom, and its importance for Civil Society – without drawing on the 5 Million Dollar American fund.
[An editorial in FNB news for the soul]
John Dayal
Poland is a young people, and a younger nation in terms of centuries. Slav tribes came together not more than a millennium ago. They became Christian as recently as in 966 AD – remember, St Thomas made his first converts in Kerala and Madras circa 54 AD, the first century after Christ – and made its first international show with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. And at various times, it defeated the Teutonic German knights, but was brutally conquered by Hitler, freed by Marshal Stalin, but held ideologically captive by the Soviet Union, freed once again by a combination mass movement led long distance from Rome by home boy Pope John Paul II and by ship builder Lech Walesa of Gdansk. That was about thirty years ago, just. It is home to Auschwitz where a million Jews were incinerated, but is also where Chopin was born, and Copernicus and Madame Curie. Let us say, Poland knows a bit about democracy, and the lack of it, and the difference between the two. Not surprisingly, when in the middle of its Presidential Elections this month, it held the Tenth anniversary meeting High Level Meeting of the Community of Democracies, the event was alternately dominated by events showcasing Polish culture and ethos on the one hand, and US arrogance on the other, specially as displayed by the very vocal Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors Madeline Alright. Between the two, they put up the US as the global underwriter of democracy, and financier of pro democracy movements in third world countries, Clinton announcing a support fund with an initial Dollar donation of Five Million.
But as part of the observances was an interesting sub-conference on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions said “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.”
The issues would have interested India, but alas, of the three civilians and one diplomat at the conference from home, only one attended this session. Egyptians and Latin Americans spoke of the use they had made of the Internet in globalising their struggles. Others spoke of Internet censorship, by China and Pakistan, for instance. And a representative of an international Search engine-turned portal tried to forecast the future where the Internet in an advanced version would be an important tool for “equality, fraternity and the pursuit of happiness,” or words to that affect.
For NGOs in India, there was much to reflect upon. We boast the second largest number of Internet users in the world, but poverty, still prehistoric infrastructure maintenance, low penetration where it matters among the rural, the forested tribal communities and the religious minorities -- the huge victim group in other words – it remains a moot question if Indians can pin their democratic hopes on the World Wide Web, yet. The blame cannot be put on Airtel , Idea, Reliance, BSNL, Aircel, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, MTNL, and Loop Mobile, though they too care tuppence for the 600 million consumers, almost half of the total national population connected by wire or wireless. Another demon is the cost. India still rates as one of the most expensive in communication and Net access.
The ghost culprit is the Government of India. It is, I admit, no monster compared to China’s regime, but let us not forget that Kashmiris cannot often still carry hand mobiles every so often, villagers lose touch for want of electricity, and above all, things are not clear about shadow organizations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team ("CERT-IN") are meant to ensure Internet security. Officially, the Ministry of Home Affairs, all courts, the military and civil intelligence bureaus can use it, as they say in officialese, to enhance the security of India's Communications and Information Infrastructure through proactive action and effective collaboration.
Nothing legal yet about website censorship, but news reports on a weekly basis speak of interest groups fingering some site or the other, foreign or national. Records show, and I should be I suppose indebted to CIA portals for this information, not just pornographic but also anti-establishment political websites have been blocked. In 2001, the Bombay High Court appointed a committee to oversee issues relating to online pornography and Cybercrime. A court panel called for licensing of cyber cafés, putative identity cards for cyber cafe visitors, and long books for internet service providers. Good for internal security and since the Indian State and its police defines what is national good, bad news for a free society. Not that in India we need India to scare us. Self Censorship in India ensures that most of us, the Media included, quietly toe the government line where it matters, afraid we may be branded Maoist supporters, if not Maoists of Jaish operatives. Our hard disks remain squeaky clean, our ‘Net signatures absolutely innocent of real democratic shouts. Time for some debate on Internet freedom, and its importance for Civil Society – without drawing on the 5 Million Dollar American fund.
[An editorial in FNB news for the soul]
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Poland Diary 3
8 July 2010
Poland drowns murmurs of anti Semitism in festivals of Jewish Culture, and a Museum to Schindler’s List
From John Dayal
Krakow, Poland
The fat lady sang her heart out, and then collapsed on stage. But Kurdish-Jewish singer Ilana Eliya, singing with Jabalayo Ensamble, was made of sterner stuff. After ministrations from a concerned audience in the historic Temple Synagogue, now alas just a tourist attraction and packed to the rafters, she had a sip of water, got on her feet, and completed her song of love and patriotism. She got a standing ovation with what seemed most of Krakow’s remaining Jewish population and the rest strapping young Poles with their girl friends.
There was much that was familiar in her song and music to anyone from west or south Asia. Her voice shifted the octaves between Pakistani singer Reshma and our own Shobha Mudgal singing Sufi song, and the music, part Turkish and with the Kashmiri looking Saaz, seemed nostalgically familiar to the solitary Indian in the audience – this correspondent.
Elia, a child prodigy was on her first visit to Poland, her explanatory speeches interspersing her ballads reminding audiences of what her people had to bear when Iraqi dictators bombed them with poison gas. She had the audience hanging by her lips, for many of the tourists had earlier in the day been to there see the poison gas chambers at Auschwitz in the town nearby, where a million Jews, and thousands of Poles, were industrially murdered by Hitler in World War II.
Ilya’s was one of a series of performances during a weeklong Festival of Jewish Culture, now in its 20th year, which Poland has used artfully to apply some salve to a guilty conscience. The annual festival, together with a massive conservation of the three concentration camps, gas chambers and cremation factories at Auschwitz, and a brand new museum in what was the factory of former Nazi businessman, Oskar Schindler – remember the film Schindler’s List which played in India some years ago -- are but thee of the many social-psychological instruments that the government uses to caution its youth against anti Semitism. An underground current of anti-Semitism, and the occasional crop of neo Nazi and skin head groups rising in an otherwise prosperous Poland is cause of grave worry to the authorities, the intelligentsia, and the people at large.
Not that Poland is alone in Europe in this. Germany itself, and many of the countries it conquered seventy years ago showed repeated signs of anti Semitism, the worse five years ago, but some as recent as late last year and early this year. So much so that when some thieves in December last year stole the sign at the concentration camp, the ironical slogan “Work will make you Free”, there was a national sensation which sent ripples from Moscow in the East to London in the West. There was a collective sigh of relief when police said the thieves were not Nazis, just young men out for a lark. But the controversy has by no means ended.
Former Canadian minister and long-time member of Parliament David Kilgour, who was with us in Krakow and who had also visited the camps, noted that the two large camps, about four kilometres apart and preserved by the Polish Parliament in 1947 as monuments to the Holocaust - Shoah, are “undoubtedly the most inhuman scenes we visitors from around the world have ever seen,” and last year alone about 1.2 million visited the place. Russian soldiers on Jan. 27, 1945, who freed approximately 7000 surviving inmates, including 400 children-many of them barely alive from starvation, said the “perfectly organized” facilities were “the most shocking thing seen and filmed”.
Prisoners came in train cattle cars at Birkenau after 1942, the year Hitler ordered the ‘Final Solution’ for Europe’s Jewry. Healthy men were separated from the others to work in the fields and factories, the rest, including 230,000 children and babies, were taken immediately for “showers”, of cyanide gas in concrete bunkers. A million and more were murdered at these two facilities alone. The rooms of the barracks in the concentration camp now house exhibits which include 800,000 women’s, dresses, 348,000 men’s suits, millions of pairs of shoes, pots and pans, which the victims brought with them because they had been told they were being relocated. The guide told me these grim reminders were carefully preserved. “Care was taken to ensure that anti Jew lobbies could not say the camps had been constructed later to stigmatise Hitler.”
This is required.. As an official of the foreign ministry told me, current Europe politics even has parties which openly call for anti Semitism among their members and supporters as they seek votes to the European Parliament.
The Museum in Schindler's factory, opened just a few weeks ago, carries the education into the Nazi phenomenon further. Only the office block remains of the WWII enamel products factory. But this has been lovingly preserved, its interiors converted into a multi media exposition with a chilling display of Nazi flags, uniforms and guns, the lives of the ordinary people under a world war. With intent, the huge Swastika flags loom over flooring made of Swastika flags on which the visitors have to walk, something which would have been impossible in real life of the times.
The museum also reopens the debate on this German businessman who was a top Nazi but eventually helped save more than one thousand Jews by telling the government they were needed in the war effort, and then helping many of them escape. A grateful Jewish community ensured that his body was buried in Jerusalem., the only non Jew with a Nazi past to be so honoured in death. And yet, many say he was a mere opportunist who played both sides to prosper himself. The Museum does not make him out to be a hero – just tells us in multi media what it meant to be living under murderous and racist military regimes.
Poland, like Germany, has made it a crime to display Swastikas or Nazi flags in public, but it is no crime to buy a copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, in German or a Polish translation. And it does sell, it seems.
Poland drowns murmurs of anti Semitism in festivals of Jewish Culture, and a Museum to Schindler’s List
From John Dayal
Krakow, Poland
The fat lady sang her heart out, and then collapsed on stage. But Kurdish-Jewish singer Ilana Eliya, singing with Jabalayo Ensamble, was made of sterner stuff. After ministrations from a concerned audience in the historic Temple Synagogue, now alas just a tourist attraction and packed to the rafters, she had a sip of water, got on her feet, and completed her song of love and patriotism. She got a standing ovation with what seemed most of Krakow’s remaining Jewish population and the rest strapping young Poles with their girl friends.
There was much that was familiar in her song and music to anyone from west or south Asia. Her voice shifted the octaves between Pakistani singer Reshma and our own Shobha Mudgal singing Sufi song, and the music, part Turkish and with the Kashmiri looking Saaz, seemed nostalgically familiar to the solitary Indian in the audience – this correspondent.
Elia, a child prodigy was on her first visit to Poland, her explanatory speeches interspersing her ballads reminding audiences of what her people had to bear when Iraqi dictators bombed them with poison gas. She had the audience hanging by her lips, for many of the tourists had earlier in the day been to there see the poison gas chambers at Auschwitz in the town nearby, where a million Jews, and thousands of Poles, were industrially murdered by Hitler in World War II.
Ilya’s was one of a series of performances during a weeklong Festival of Jewish Culture, now in its 20th year, which Poland has used artfully to apply some salve to a guilty conscience. The annual festival, together with a massive conservation of the three concentration camps, gas chambers and cremation factories at Auschwitz, and a brand new museum in what was the factory of former Nazi businessman, Oskar Schindler – remember the film Schindler’s List which played in India some years ago -- are but thee of the many social-psychological instruments that the government uses to caution its youth against anti Semitism. An underground current of anti-Semitism, and the occasional crop of neo Nazi and skin head groups rising in an otherwise prosperous Poland is cause of grave worry to the authorities, the intelligentsia, and the people at large.
Not that Poland is alone in Europe in this. Germany itself, and many of the countries it conquered seventy years ago showed repeated signs of anti Semitism, the worse five years ago, but some as recent as late last year and early this year. So much so that when some thieves in December last year stole the sign at the concentration camp, the ironical slogan “Work will make you Free”, there was a national sensation which sent ripples from Moscow in the East to London in the West. There was a collective sigh of relief when police said the thieves were not Nazis, just young men out for a lark. But the controversy has by no means ended.
Former Canadian minister and long-time member of Parliament David Kilgour, who was with us in Krakow and who had also visited the camps, noted that the two large camps, about four kilometres apart and preserved by the Polish Parliament in 1947 as monuments to the Holocaust - Shoah, are “undoubtedly the most inhuman scenes we visitors from around the world have ever seen,” and last year alone about 1.2 million visited the place. Russian soldiers on Jan. 27, 1945, who freed approximately 7000 surviving inmates, including 400 children-many of them barely alive from starvation, said the “perfectly organized” facilities were “the most shocking thing seen and filmed”.
Prisoners came in train cattle cars at Birkenau after 1942, the year Hitler ordered the ‘Final Solution’ for Europe’s Jewry. Healthy men were separated from the others to work in the fields and factories, the rest, including 230,000 children and babies, were taken immediately for “showers”, of cyanide gas in concrete bunkers. A million and more were murdered at these two facilities alone. The rooms of the barracks in the concentration camp now house exhibits which include 800,000 women’s, dresses, 348,000 men’s suits, millions of pairs of shoes, pots and pans, which the victims brought with them because they had been told they were being relocated. The guide told me these grim reminders were carefully preserved. “Care was taken to ensure that anti Jew lobbies could not say the camps had been constructed later to stigmatise Hitler.”
This is required.. As an official of the foreign ministry told me, current Europe politics even has parties which openly call for anti Semitism among their members and supporters as they seek votes to the European Parliament.
The Museum in Schindler's factory, opened just a few weeks ago, carries the education into the Nazi phenomenon further. Only the office block remains of the WWII enamel products factory. But this has been lovingly preserved, its interiors converted into a multi media exposition with a chilling display of Nazi flags, uniforms and guns, the lives of the ordinary people under a world war. With intent, the huge Swastika flags loom over flooring made of Swastika flags on which the visitors have to walk, something which would have been impossible in real life of the times.
The museum also reopens the debate on this German businessman who was a top Nazi but eventually helped save more than one thousand Jews by telling the government they were needed in the war effort, and then helping many of them escape. A grateful Jewish community ensured that his body was buried in Jerusalem., the only non Jew with a Nazi past to be so honoured in death. And yet, many say he was a mere opportunist who played both sides to prosper himself. The Museum does not make him out to be a hero – just tells us in multi media what it meant to be living under murderous and racist military regimes.
Poland, like Germany, has made it a crime to display Swastikas or Nazi flags in public, but it is no crime to buy a copy of Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, in German or a Polish translation. And it does sell, it seems.
Poland Diary 2
7th July 2010
Hillary sets up new US fund for NGOs fighting for democratic rights; Cuban Padre awarded for questioning Castro brothers
FROM John Dayal
Krakow, Poland:
The Holy Roman Catholic Church and the current Pope may be on the receiving end of public and media criticism in Europe and the United States, but Washington and its European allies have used a Catholic priest from a small Cuban parish, and the memory of Pope John Paul II. to focus on human rights violations and demand early democratisation in Havana, Iran and Burma.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors, Madeline Albright, “named and shamed’ Cuban President Raul Castro, the Islamic leaders in Teheran and the Yangon junta as they watched Father Jose Conrado Rodriguez receive the second Bronislav Geremek democracy promotion award in the key function of the High Level Democracy Meeting in Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland, earlier this week.
Nelson Mandela was the first recipient of the award founded ten years ago by Albright and Geremek, the then Polish Foreign minister, to “support legitimacy and authority of people form around the world working in promoting democracy and human liberty.” To add substance to the award, Hillary Clinton in her speech announced the formation of an international fund with a seed capital donation of US Dollars Five Million to assist NGOs and groups engaged in freedoms struggles. She did not name any particular country which would be the target of this effort.
Fr Rodriguez, of the Friars Minor Order, is from the province of Santiago de Cuba and has earned acclaim in the Americas for his sharply worded reprimands to President Fidel Castro. The Pastor wrote a letter again to Fidel’s brother and successor General Raul Castro, protesting that police had beaten up his parishioners inside his church. The letter went on to say “We have spent our lives blaming the enemy, and even our friends, for our situation. The collapse of the bloc of communist countries and the US trade embargo has become the scapegoat that bears all our sins. It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly serious and urgent, of food, and of the homes that so many of our countrymen – “with their meagre belongings: fears, sorrows” - have just lost in the recent hurricanes. We are at such a critical moment that we must undertake a thorough examination of our beliefs and our practices, of our aspirations and our objectives. As the great Jose Marti said, You do not found a nation, General, the way you run a military camp.”
Fr Rodriguez, who got a thunderous ovation in the Krakow Opera House together with his statuette, does have an indirect connection with Krakow – when Krakow’s favourite son and former Cardinal, Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in a history-making tour in 1998, among those receiving him was the fiery Parish priest from Santa Teresita del Nino Jesus. Joining him on stage this time was the current Cardinal of Krakow and ministers from Indonesia, the European parliament, Lithuania, South Korea, Canada, and Kenya. India had a low key presence 2-4 July meeting, its delegation headed by an additional secretary from the External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi. Polish foreign minister Radoslav Sikorski played the host.
Though called the Community of Democracies and held in Poland, the show piece of democratic transition from the Soviet era, the Krakow meet was dominated by the US presence, the speeches of the former and present Secretaries of State remaining the dominant voices. Mrs. Clinton was particularly sharp after her concurrent tour of Eastern European countries. In Krakow and in the neighbouring countries Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, she questioned Moscow, decried the Caucasian habit of coveting other’s lands and the still continuing restrictions on civil rights in some countries. “We seek a community of nations working together to strengthen democracy, and transparency of government processes, sound electoral systems, respect for human rights and the rule of law, active civic education, prevention of official corruption and related core values basic to democratic governance.”
Stressing the importance of democracy both as a central organizing principle of official government foreign policy and as the basis of international alliances of NGOs, she said “We are convinced the time has arrived for the democracies of the world to build upon the experience of the UN and NATO, a new institutional framework for global cooperation among democratic nations.”
She focussed on the "crisis" of governments “around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit." She named Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Congo, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea and China.
As she announced a US fund to assist NGOs and civil society, presumably working in threes and other countries, Mrs Clinton said the United Nations Human Rights Council needs to do more to protect civil society. “Freedom of association is the only freedom defined in the United Nations declaration of human rights that does not enjoy specific attention from the UN human rights machinery. That must change. She spoke of US pressure on organizations, such as the OAS, the EU, the OIC, the African Union, and the Arab League, others, to do more to defend the freedom of association. “We need to make sure words are matched by actions,” said, calling for coordinated diplomatic pressure by allied governments.
An interesting aspect of the meeting was a series of side discussions on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions spoke of “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.” At present time, there is a need to give priority to economic and social development and to fight unemployment; both of those have implications for democratic governance,” the documents said.
Hillary sets up new US fund for NGOs fighting for democratic rights; Cuban Padre awarded for questioning Castro brothers
FROM John Dayal
Krakow, Poland:
The Holy Roman Catholic Church and the current Pope may be on the receiving end of public and media criticism in Europe and the United States, but Washington and its European allies have used a Catholic priest from a small Cuban parish, and the memory of Pope John Paul II. to focus on human rights violations and demand early democratisation in Havana, Iran and Burma.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors, Madeline Albright, “named and shamed’ Cuban President Raul Castro, the Islamic leaders in Teheran and the Yangon junta as they watched Father Jose Conrado Rodriguez receive the second Bronislav Geremek democracy promotion award in the key function of the High Level Democracy Meeting in Krakow, the cultural capital of Poland, earlier this week.
Nelson Mandela was the first recipient of the award founded ten years ago by Albright and Geremek, the then Polish Foreign minister, to “support legitimacy and authority of people form around the world working in promoting democracy and human liberty.” To add substance to the award, Hillary Clinton in her speech announced the formation of an international fund with a seed capital donation of US Dollars Five Million to assist NGOs and groups engaged in freedoms struggles. She did not name any particular country which would be the target of this effort.
Fr Rodriguez, of the Friars Minor Order, is from the province of Santiago de Cuba and has earned acclaim in the Americas for his sharply worded reprimands to President Fidel Castro. The Pastor wrote a letter again to Fidel’s brother and successor General Raul Castro, protesting that police had beaten up his parishioners inside his church. The letter went on to say “We have spent our lives blaming the enemy, and even our friends, for our situation. The collapse of the bloc of communist countries and the US trade embargo has become the scapegoat that bears all our sins. It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly serious and urgent, of food, and of the homes that so many of our countrymen – “with their meagre belongings: fears, sorrows” - have just lost in the recent hurricanes. We are at such a critical moment that we must undertake a thorough examination of our beliefs and our practices, of our aspirations and our objectives. As the great Jose Marti said, You do not found a nation, General, the way you run a military camp.”
Fr Rodriguez, who got a thunderous ovation in the Krakow Opera House together with his statuette, does have an indirect connection with Krakow – when Krakow’s favourite son and former Cardinal, Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in a history-making tour in 1998, among those receiving him was the fiery Parish priest from Santa Teresita del Nino Jesus. Joining him on stage this time was the current Cardinal of Krakow and ministers from Indonesia, the European parliament, Lithuania, South Korea, Canada, and Kenya. India had a low key presence 2-4 July meeting, its delegation headed by an additional secretary from the External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi. Polish foreign minister Radoslav Sikorski played the host.
Though called the Community of Democracies and held in Poland, the show piece of democratic transition from the Soviet era, the Krakow meet was dominated by the US presence, the speeches of the former and present Secretaries of State remaining the dominant voices. Mrs. Clinton was particularly sharp after her concurrent tour of Eastern European countries. In Krakow and in the neighbouring countries Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, she questioned Moscow, decried the Caucasian habit of coveting other’s lands and the still continuing restrictions on civil rights in some countries. “We seek a community of nations working together to strengthen democracy, and transparency of government processes, sound electoral systems, respect for human rights and the rule of law, active civic education, prevention of official corruption and related core values basic to democratic governance.”
Stressing the importance of democracy both as a central organizing principle of official government foreign policy and as the basis of international alliances of NGOs, she said “We are convinced the time has arrived for the democracies of the world to build upon the experience of the UN and NATO, a new institutional framework for global cooperation among democratic nations.”
She focussed on the "crisis" of governments “around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit." She named Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Congo, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea and China.
As she announced a US fund to assist NGOs and civil society, presumably working in threes and other countries, Mrs Clinton said the United Nations Human Rights Council needs to do more to protect civil society. “Freedom of association is the only freedom defined in the United Nations declaration of human rights that does not enjoy specific attention from the UN human rights machinery. That must change. She spoke of US pressure on organizations, such as the OAS, the EU, the OIC, the African Union, and the Arab League, others, to do more to defend the freedom of association. “We need to make sure words are matched by actions,” said, calling for coordinated diplomatic pressure by allied governments.
An interesting aspect of the meeting was a series of side discussions on the use of the Internet and emerging communication technologies to assist NGOs and Civil society groups in their struggle for democracy. Also discussed was the role of parliamentarians, and women’s groups and civil society participation in economic development. The concluding documents of the group discussions spoke of “developing mechanisms to ensure that the voice of NGOs, Think tanks and other actors is heard is essential to foster the democratic ideal.” At present time, there is a need to give priority to economic and social development and to fight unemployment; both of those have implications for democratic governance,” the documents said.
Poland Diary 1
Polish president Komorowski wins vote, walks tight rope between Russia and US
From John Dayal
Warsaw, 6 July 2010
Ignoring sentiment and a subtle pressure from the Catholic Church, a highly polarized Poland electorate last night voted acting president Bronislaw Komorowski to power with his agenda for rapid privatization and a balance between Russia and nuclear ally United States, with whom his government two days ago signed a missile defence pact.
“Pragmatic” Komorowski won 53 per cent of the votes against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who fought passionately on the memory of his twin brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski who died with 96 others on 10 April while flying to a memorial meeting in Katyn in Russia where Stalin’s Russian army had allegedly shot dead over 20,000 polish soldiers during the World War II.
The Church patently sided with Kaczynski and his Law and Justice Party, as did a large chunk of the traditional and rural poor in the highly Catholic post-communist Poland. But Komorowski’s poll managers in the Civic Platform party, a right of the centre group, marshalled a last minute turnout of the younger voters and the emerging middle class to beat back the tough but controversial leader of the Law and Justice party. Kaczynski received 46.99 per cent of the vote in a 55.31 per cent turnout, which was a huge change from the apathy shown by voters in the first round.
Komorowski, a former defence minister, was Marshal of the Sejm -- Speaker of the Lower house of the Polish Parliament – at the time of the air crash and was automatically elevated President under the country’s constitution. He managed a high profile support base when he decided to fight the elections, preponed from their scheduled date in autumn this year. Poland’s modern-age hero Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity movement, backed him, as did men of the caliber of film maestro Andrei Wajda who told this correspondent at Komorowski’s victory headquarters, aptly in a building housing Coca Cola and many bank headquarters; “He is the man for the future, the man who will make Poland a major in the European Union.’ Wajda also praised the new president as a man who supported free speech and the arts – an abiding virtue in the land of music immortal Chopin.
The media here has noticed that Komorowski has had to dilute many of his policies to win over the Poles. Among his talking points was his party’s alliance with the UK’s ruling Tories, speaking of a larger alliance in the European Union which Poland will head in the second half of next year.
Despite a powerful Opposition, and a church looking over his shoulders, Komorowski hopes to have an easier time in his newly won term because his Civic Platform party now controls both the Presidency and the Parliament. “Polish democracy has won,” Komorowski told widely cheering, but visibly well off, supporters in his headquarters as he and his wife made an appearance last Sunday night in a US-inspired made for television event late Sunday night after polling officially ended.
Komorowski has been Minister of National Defence from 2000 to 2001 and Deputy Speaker from 2005 to 2007. His party backs church positions against abortion and gay marriages, but strongly calls for privatization of the remaining public sectors of Polish economy, direct elections to local body chiefs such as mayors and other electoral reforms,. labour law reform, and a 15% flat tax.
Symbolic possibly of modern Poland, a country which has repeatedly seen its nobility and intelligentsia murdered en masse by invading armies over the last several centuries, Komorowski traces his origins to an old and noble family which was active against the communist regime, many relatives ending up in prison.
International observers here noted that the elections coincided with a high profile trip to Poland and Eastern Europe by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She participated in ceremonies marking ten years of Council for Democracy – for which international media had been invited – but took time off to supervise the signing of a deal with Poland last Saturday allowing a revised missile-shield program to defend against potential threats from Iran or elsewhere. It has been reported that Poland also received a Patriot missile battery, manned by American soldiers and situated at the military base at Morag, some 250 kilometers north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometers from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory.
From John Dayal
Warsaw, 6 July 2010
Ignoring sentiment and a subtle pressure from the Catholic Church, a highly polarized Poland electorate last night voted acting president Bronislaw Komorowski to power with his agenda for rapid privatization and a balance between Russia and nuclear ally United States, with whom his government two days ago signed a missile defence pact.
“Pragmatic” Komorowski won 53 per cent of the votes against Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who fought passionately on the memory of his twin brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski who died with 96 others on 10 April while flying to a memorial meeting in Katyn in Russia where Stalin’s Russian army had allegedly shot dead over 20,000 polish soldiers during the World War II.
The Church patently sided with Kaczynski and his Law and Justice Party, as did a large chunk of the traditional and rural poor in the highly Catholic post-communist Poland. But Komorowski’s poll managers in the Civic Platform party, a right of the centre group, marshalled a last minute turnout of the younger voters and the emerging middle class to beat back the tough but controversial leader of the Law and Justice party. Kaczynski received 46.99 per cent of the vote in a 55.31 per cent turnout, which was a huge change from the apathy shown by voters in the first round.
Komorowski, a former defence minister, was Marshal of the Sejm -- Speaker of the Lower house of the Polish Parliament – at the time of the air crash and was automatically elevated President under the country’s constitution. He managed a high profile support base when he decided to fight the elections, preponed from their scheduled date in autumn this year. Poland’s modern-age hero Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity movement, backed him, as did men of the caliber of film maestro Andrei Wajda who told this correspondent at Komorowski’s victory headquarters, aptly in a building housing Coca Cola and many bank headquarters; “He is the man for the future, the man who will make Poland a major in the European Union.’ Wajda also praised the new president as a man who supported free speech and the arts – an abiding virtue in the land of music immortal Chopin.
The media here has noticed that Komorowski has had to dilute many of his policies to win over the Poles. Among his talking points was his party’s alliance with the UK’s ruling Tories, speaking of a larger alliance in the European Union which Poland will head in the second half of next year.
Despite a powerful Opposition, and a church looking over his shoulders, Komorowski hopes to have an easier time in his newly won term because his Civic Platform party now controls both the Presidency and the Parliament. “Polish democracy has won,” Komorowski told widely cheering, but visibly well off, supporters in his headquarters as he and his wife made an appearance last Sunday night in a US-inspired made for television event late Sunday night after polling officially ended.
Komorowski has been Minister of National Defence from 2000 to 2001 and Deputy Speaker from 2005 to 2007. His party backs church positions against abortion and gay marriages, but strongly calls for privatization of the remaining public sectors of Polish economy, direct elections to local body chiefs such as mayors and other electoral reforms,. labour law reform, and a 15% flat tax.
Symbolic possibly of modern Poland, a country which has repeatedly seen its nobility and intelligentsia murdered en masse by invading armies over the last several centuries, Komorowski traces his origins to an old and noble family which was active against the communist regime, many relatives ending up in prison.
International observers here noted that the elections coincided with a high profile trip to Poland and Eastern Europe by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She participated in ceremonies marking ten years of Council for Democracy – for which international media had been invited – but took time off to supervise the signing of a deal with Poland last Saturday allowing a revised missile-shield program to defend against potential threats from Iran or elsewhere. It has been reported that Poland also received a Patriot missile battery, manned by American soldiers and situated at the military base at Morag, some 250 kilometers north of Warsaw and just 60 kilometers from the border with Russia's Kaliningrad territory.
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