RIGHTS-INDIA: Christians Offered Sops As Churches Burn

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dev Raj

NEW DELHI, Jan 17 1999 (IPS) - Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has offered a “national debate on conversions” as a sop to people outraged by a series of attacks on people and churches in the Dangs district of western Gujarat state.

In fact so feeble was Vajpayee’s response to the attacks in the largely tribal Dangs district by groups of marauding Hindu fundamentalists, that two more churches went up in flames soon after he visited the area last week.

Vajpayee is apparently unwilling to take on hardliners in his Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which leads a fragile coalition of 17 allies – many of them dismayed by the unprecedented attacks on churches.

A key partner, J. Jayalalitha who heads a group of 27 members of Parliament from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has demanded dismissal of the BJP provincial government in Gujarat if the attacks continue.

In a statement, Jayalalitha said “there have been a lot of words. Now it is time for action that will preserve and protect the rights of minorities in the home state of Mahatma Gandhi.”

The statement went on to say that Gujarat had “become a blot on the fair name of India, provoking international attention and condemnation.”

Digvijay Singh, leader of another close ally of the BJP, the Samata Party, said the Gujarat incidents were “destroying the fabric of the Indian ethos of tolerance.”

Typically, the BJP’s official response given at a meeting of the party’s national executive on Jan. 9 in Bangalore city was to disassociate itself with the Hindu Jagran Manch a shadowy fundamentalist organisation which claimed credit for the pillaging.

Militant wings of the BJP, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have also “officially” condemned the attacks on churches but their leaders have sought to justify the violence on the grounds of ‘forcible conversions.’

Vajpayee and the BJP have defended their government in Gujarat led by Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel although there is abundant evidence of indifference and even complicity by the state government machinery in the attacks.

Indeed fundamentalist groups have been bold enough to serve notice that by March-end they would throw all Christian workers out of the Dangs district and even from Gujarat state itself.

Patel in interviews given to journalists since the incidents has sought to give the impression that the attacks resulted from a “well-orchestrated conspiracy”, against his government and said the trouble on Christmas Day started when a Hindu Manch- rally was attacked first.

In any case, Patel argued, there were no deaths and the incidents had been completely blown out of proportion when worse things were happening in the country.

But a team of the National Commission for Minorities has found that the violence by mobs of outsiders was completely unilateral and that if there were no deaths it was simply because the impoverished, unarmed tribal Christians simply did not resist.

Between Christmas day and New Year the Hindu mobs led by the Jagran Manch had set fire to nine churches and another 11 throughout the heavily forested Dangs district beating up any one who looked capable of resisting. The attacks started in early December.

Eyewitnesses said the raiders drive up to targeted churches in the nights unhindered and working to a well-organised plan apparently having the benefit of recent government surveys conducted on Christians and Christianity in the region.

Although as many as 139 people were arrest as news of the violence spread most of them have been released on bail and going by past record are never likely to be charged.

In fact the collector (chief administrator) of the District D.N. Joshi was served with four separate memoranda warning of preparations being made by the HJM for the attacks but he chose to ignore them.

Joshi has been transferred out of the district as part of placating exercises accompanying Vajpayee’s visit although initially the state government resisted the order.

Vajpayee has been content with blaming the incidents on the

local government for its neglect in curbing the activities of the Hindu right and also on “conversions” by missionaries who carry out the only worthwhile welfare activities in the Dangs district.

Vajpayee has also resorted to the familiar charge of a political motive in hyping up the incidents by the BJP’s main rival the Congress party which happens to be led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who married into the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty.

Such have been the charges made against her by the BJP that Gandhi has had to clarify, during her own visit to the Dangs district, that she was making her tour not as a Christian but as the leader of the Congress party.

The Congress party which has religious secularism as its major plank has accused the BJP of attempting to build up a Hindu vote bank by attacking minorities through its sister organisations.

According to Sharad Pawar who leads the Congress party in Parliament, the BJP gameplan is to divide the minorities in the country including tribals, Muslims and Christians. “But that gameplan is bound to fail,” he said.

The BJP certainly owes its spectacular rise to power over the last decade by whipping up frenzy against the Babri Masjid, a 17th century mosque in Ayodhya town which right-wing Hindu politicians insist was built on the birthplace of a Hindu god.

According to Hindu fundamentalists, the Babri Masjid was built over a demolished temple and the BJP has pandered to that sentiment by vowing to rebuild the temple on the same site.