Smokes of prejudice rising in Khandamal

The Sangh Parivar, seems to be muddled up with words like christians, maoist, american culture, ten commandments, congress, world vision and bible. Behind the tepid pronunciation of the Kandhamal violence as “regrettable” lies vague and malleable dogma. The typical Hindutva sentiment is that American are sending in money through organizations like world Vision and alluring poor dalits to convert to Christianity. All this coordinated by one single person (probably George Bush). Congress,(the Indian National Congress) and UPA government is facilitating this. And Maoist and Christians have link-up and conduct joint operations for conversion. People who have converted to Christianity will naturally have allegiance to America as Christianity originated in America and most Americans are Christians. And CPI (M) CPI-ML and Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army are almost same things with headquarters in China. (Prakah Karat must be chief of its operation in India, or is it Sitaram Yechuri?)

Today as I write this fresh violence has broken out in Khandamal. The Hindus are apparently avenging the murder of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswat, on August 23rd, who had been spear heading anti-conversion movement since 1960s. All the Christian quarters have condemned the murder of the seer and one week after the murder CPI-Maoist claimed responsibility for the murder. Azad, spokesperson of the CPI-Maoist, in an interview to an Oriya daily, said, "We killed Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati to avenge his villainous role in Kandhmal". Azad said ever since the December 2007 riots in Kandhmal, Laxmanananda and VHP Secretary General Pravin Togadia portrayed Christians as Maoists and attempted to defeat the revolutionary movement. "Laxmanananda was taking the lead in Hindu fascist activities", Azad said.The Maoist are concerned about diluting its revolutionary credentials among masses by comparing the party to christian missonary work. A few days later a press release warned the VHP of more punishments if it continued its persecution of minorities. Further it called Swami Laxmananand “a rabid anti-Christian ideologue and persecutor of innocent Christians.” After all these the Sangh Parivar likes to believe that Christian missionaries committed the murder.
The Sangh Parivar’s obstinate adherence to this has only one logical conclusion. It is arousing religious sentiments, to gain grass root level workers in view of the forth coming elections. the Shiv Sena and Maharahtra Navinirman Sena(MNS) are not doing any thing different in Mumbai, in the name of Marathi sentiments by picking up Bollywood stars as their targets. By accusing Radhakanta Nayak, a Congress Rajaya Sabha MP and a dalit Christian who heads World Vision in Orissa for backing the murder attempt o Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, in 2007 reveals the outfit’s political inclination. Soon after the murder locals caught the “murderer”, Pradesh Kumar Das, an employee of World Vision and handed him over to police.
Four days later World Vision in a response to the comments made by RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav on CNN-IBN condemned the murder and made it clear that two of their employees were apprehended by a mob and later rescued by the police were trying to flee to Bhubaneshwar because of rumors regarding impending violence as in 2007. The police verified their identity and purpose before they let them go.

Much energy on the inter community dialogue was wasted arguing for and against these misunderstandings. Christian arguments were along the lines that “conversion” is not a challenge to the majority community and that the percentage of Christians actually dropped from 2.8 in 1961 to 2.3 in 2001.Christians also need to do their share of introspection. I personally have heard about conversion in which the missionaries take advantage of the ignorance of tribals. I heard from a missionary himself that in certain areas the tribals are converted just by the change of name of them and their gods. These efforts to increase the Christian population should stop altogether, though all the churches are unequivocal officially that no such means should be employed for conversion
Anti-conversion laws
Presently the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Arunanchal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and recently Gujrat, has anti-conversion laws. The spirit behind the acts was that conversion would affect the harmony of society and disturb the public order and status quo. These Acts define the terms “government”, “conversion”, “indigenous faith”, “force”, “fraud” and “inducements” By late 1960s it had become clear that the purpose of anti-conversion laws were to keep the dalits within the fold of Hinduism. It is a cognizable offence to convert to any religion other than Hinduism. But re-conversion is not an offence. The Act remains dubious as it says that propagation of religion is not an offence but conversion is. The Acts maintains that Article 25 (1) of the Fundamental Rights does not give the right to expose the tenets of ones religion to convert another person. At the same time a person has the right to choose the religion according to his free will. But propagation of the religion if it results in conversion will amount to infringement on the free choice of an individual.
The Act in practice negates the Fundamental Rights of a citizen not because of the vague definition of the terms “force”, “fraud” and “inducements” etc. But because of the the narrow legal premise on which it is based. The assumption underlying the Act is that coversion happens only through external influence and the person converted has no role in conversion. Further it makes it mandatory for the person converting to produce his reason for conversion before the district magistrate. The Distict Magistate who is empowered to pass judgement on people facilitating conversion and passes judgement on the subjective reason of the person converted. In Madhya Pradesh two priest and a nun were sentenced to imprisonment in August 2002 following charges of forced conversion. But repeated appleals to senior police officials that the conversion was voluntary fell on deaf ears.
Communalism is such a prevalent in India that it is intertwined with politics The Hindutva outfits are just the favourite whipping boy of the media. The Meenakshipuram mass conversion of dalits to Islam in 1981 and has reportedly resulted in the then ruling party Congress(I) to issue notice to all the states to pass anti-conversion laws. It may be maintained that the notice was issued because of the give-us-benefits-or we-will-convert attitude of dalits, it points to the inseparability of India politics and religion.
The smoke of prejudice is so thick against the backdrop of continuing violence that there are no constructive dialogues remain possible.