| The brutality directed against Christians in Orissa in north-east India has brought the underlying violence in much of that country into more public view (News, 19 September). About two-thirds of the 115,000 Christians in the Kandhamal district are reported to have been displaced — some 20,000 into camps, and the rest hiding in forests.
In the worst cases, mobs have ranged through villages, attacking Christian houses, burning them, and sometimes hacking their occupants to pieces or throwing them into the burning properties. The authorities say 20 people have been killed, but the communities, Roman Catholic and Evangelical, say it is nearer 50. The President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference has called for stronger action.
Most of those who have been attacked have been Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Scheduled Tribes (STs), as the Indian Government calls them, the former “Untouchables”. Politically aware SCs now call themselves Dalits.
Some of the attackers have also been from the SC/ST communities, but there remain questions about who is orchestrating this activity. There has been unrest in Kandhamal for some time, but, in August, a Hindu leader, Swami Saraswati, was assassinated (News, 29 August). Maoist guerrillas claimed responsibility, but someone, somewhere, decided that this was an opportunity to whip up anti-Christian hysteria.
The state government says that the situation is returning to normal, but this is because Christians are either hiding, or have accepted “re-conversion” to Hinduism.
David Griffiths of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, who recently returned from Orissa, reports that police in the area are small in number, and so overwhelmed by complaints that they have fallen several years behind in dealing with them. Many fail to register complaints from Christians.
The Indian government has sent in a modest force, but it is insufficient, and is often rendered immobile by the roadblocks set up by the mobs.
There has been a reaction in other parts of India, notably from the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR), based in Delhi, and the All-Indian Confederation of SCs and STs (AICSCST), which last month organised a rally of 5000 people in Maharashtra, 1000 miles away. Both are aware of the issues of caste and religion behind the violence.
The AICSCST has also actively campaigned about the Kherlanji atrocity in Maharashtra, in which four of a family — mother, daughter, and two sons — were murdered. The women were also raped, and the bodies were burned.
Often in such cases, arrests are made, bail is given, and the perpetrators drop out of sight. In Kherlanji, vigorous protests by Dalit communities forced the authorities to act. Six of the accused have been sentenced to death, and two more have received life sentences, although Dr Indira Athawale, General Secretary of AICSCST, says that the main instigator has escaped.
The international community is beginning to take notice of the violence, although Delhi diplomatic circles can be rather cut off from rural realities. The British Deputy High Commissioner, Creon Butler, says that last month the EU Presidency wrote to the Indian External Affairs Ministry “underlining our shared concern [about Kandhamal] . . . and asking for a report on progress made”.
The European Parliament passed a critical resolution on 24 September, and both Nicolas Sarkozy and the President of the EU Commission, Manuel Barroso, raised the situation at the EU-India summit press conference on Monday of last week. They did, however, describe it as “an internal issue”. Caste-related violence is a human-rights violation, and can no longer be considered internal.
Activists in the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) are now pressing the European Union to make its own enquiries. The IDSN, NCDHR, and the Asian Human Rights Council have issued two joint statements, and there is to be a demonstration outside the UN in New York on 11 October. There was a protest in London last Saturday, organised by Indian Christian Concern (News, 3 October).
The reasons for the rising tide of violence may be two-fold. One is suggested in research by Professor Richard Wilkinson of the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham (for example, in Health and Inequality (Routledge, 2008). He maintains that the greater the inequalities in a society, the higher the level of violence. Assuming the boom in India continues, and inequalities rise even further, unhappiness and violence are likely to do the same.
More directly, elections are due in India next year. The divisive communal forces that surround the BJP, the party that led the government until 2004, see intercommunity strife as one of their main weapons. The BJP is part of the “Sangh Parivar”, proponents of Hindutva, the extreme nationalist version of Hinduism. In Orissa, the BJD is the largest party, but it is in an alliance with the BJP. The present violence seems aimed at strengthening their position.
What is needed is a more interventionist policy by the Indian government to redeploy its considerable military resources from the Pakistan border. This would ensure peace and stability in trouble spots such as Kandhamal and Kherlanji.
International pressure can play a part, too. India has a high profile in the UN Human Rights Council, and should therefore be properly sensitive to appropriate criticism. Otherwise, there could be much more brutality in the months to come in places where communal forces see political advantage to be gained.
The Revd David Haslam is a Trustee of Dalit Solidarity Network UK.
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