The Force Of Unreason

The Force Of Unreason A month and a half after the anti-Christian drive began in Kandhamal, Orissa, VIJAY SIMHA finds that it may just be the beginning Photos: Shailendra Pandey FOR THE first time in a month, in a crowded classroom, Sujan Nayak went to sleep at night. Hours later, he wished he hadn’t. He woke with a start, to the sound of rumbling. It was 4.30 am. Huge trees were making the sound as they fell, cut furiously by members of the biggest attack mounted in Kandhamal. The trees would ensure that no one got in, until the job was done. There were close to 5,000 people. Some with guns, others with swords, axes, and a variety of other weapons. They were raucous and ravenous. The CRPF guards, about seven of them, were sent in the wrong direction, chasing sounds of people screaming for help. The mob came swarming down the hill, moving swiftly, splitting into groups in the lanes and bylanes, and joining back effortlessly. This group could have taken a town hostage. The villages of Gadaguda and Rudangia were chicken feed. Astonished women and children gaped, as people they knew as friends pointed loaded guns at them. “My classmates were there. They pointed their guns at my father. I turned and grabbed a gun. The others fired. My father went down. I lifted him and ran to the hills. They kept firing but they were not sharpshooters. The bullets missed,” says Nayak. His uncle, old and infirm, could not make it. They caught him and slashed at his neck. He died in a hospital in Berhampur, adjacent to Kandhamal, two days later. Nayak’s father, who had served in the army, is lying on a dirty bed in a dirty hospital in Cuttack. Police lines? The Gochpada police moved into a school after their station was destroyed In 90 minutes, the supporters of the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Durga Vahini, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — all radical Hindu organisations — ravaged the two villages. They snatched television sets, jewellery, cash, and mobile phones. They set fire to what they couldn’t take. By 6 am, it was over. The dawn attack on September 30 came five weeks after the anti-Christian drive began in Kandhamal in Orissa. It was a long spell. The villagers of Gadaguda and Rudangia mistake as the administration. They thought they had it covered. There were over a thousand Christians in Gadaguda and Rudangia, and in adjoining hamlets. For a month, they kept guard on the hills, two men on each hilltop, watching and reporting to friends in the village by mobile phones. One man on each hilltop kept guard during the day, another man at night. Each time the Bajrang Dal and VHP met, the men on the hills watched. In the villages, the men didn’t sleep at night. Thus alert, they survived five weeks. ON SEPTEMBER 29, however, the CRPF arrived. It cheered the administration and the villagers. The lookouts came down from the hills. That night they slept. “It was a very well-organised attack. It was not spontaneous. They came from all directions, shouting slogans. This was when the CRPF was already there,” says Kandhamal Collector Krishan Kumar. Sujan Nayak says they thought they would be all right with the CRPF around. “That’s when they hit us,” he says. Survivors Grim refugees huddle for safety inside a vandalised church when they hit us,” he says. Radical Hindu groups have been targeting Christians in Kandhamal since August 23, when a senior VHP member, Swami Lakshmanand Saraswati was killed by armed attackers. The VHP says Christian groups paid for the killing. The Christian groups say they had nothing to do with the murder. The Maoists have, on three occasions (the last in a media conference organised in the jungles), claimed that they killed Saraswati. The Kandha tribe in Kandhamal, predominantly supporters of the RSS, began attacking the dalits, predominantly people who have converted to Christianity. By September 16, says Kumar, the movement was ‘saffronised’. “There is a jehaditype Hindu group of 150 people, which is moving in the hills in one part of Kandhamal. They are led by four or five persons who have decided that they are already dead,” says Kumar. In 45 days, the Bajrang Dal, the VHP, the RSS, and allied organisations have targeted almost the whole of Kandhamal. Those who haven’t been attacked, like in Mallikapodi village, have quit. Christians, who are the dominant group in Mallikapodi, have locked homes and reached relief camps. There isn’t a sound in the village. Some distance away, in G Udayagiri, a town in Kandhamal, people have begun putting saffron flags on rooftops. Almost every house has a saffron flag, with the Aum symbol on it. It is meant to announce that a Hindu family lives in the house and, therefore, it must not be attacked. Most Christian homes, the targets, don’t have the flags. “It makes you wonder where you are. What land are we in,” says Kumar. Gangleader Lambodar Kandha (left) has given the government a month before he resumes his anti-Christian campaign When the administration tried to act, like in Gochapada, they were attacked. The police in Gochapada had arrested seven RSS supporters for their role in the attacks on Christians. There are virtually no Christians in Gochapada, so the arrests were bold by Kandhamal standards. On September 15, barely days after the arrests, over a thousand people marched to the Gochapada police station. It was 11 pm, and pouring. “We ran. What else could we do? I had just gone to bed. By the time I rose, they had snatched away my shirt. I had put my mobile phone and some money in the shirt pocket. My men fled. I tried to fire, but my revolver jammed in the rain. So, I too fled,” says sub-inspector Narayan Raut. Raut says his colleague, Ramakant Patra, a sub-inspector on probation, had learnt that an attack was being planned on the police station. “He went away on sick leave just days before the attack,” says Raut. The mob had come with so much petrol and kerosene that they could set everything on fire in the rain. A police jeep, a van, a motorcycle, bedding, files, furniture, everything. The Gochapada police station is in a shambles. Today, the police station is operating in a section of a school building. It is an object of ridicule. Raut has been stripped of his ability to inspire fear. He has sought a transfer. He is biding his time. In a room in Phulbani, the district headquarters of Kandhamal, Lambodar Kanhar, the chief of the Kandha tribals, is not biding his time. Kanhar is happy. He has led a long campaign targeting the dalits. He is looking forward to the consequences. “The Panos, the dalits, are criminal by nature. Initially, they helped the tribals. But when the number of Panos started increasing, they began cheating us,” says Kanhar. He says the tribals were furious when a letter, supposedly written by the Maoists, was released a day after Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati’s killing. The letter said the Maoists would kill Kanhar as well. “My people got agitated. They decided to snatch what was theirs. Finally, the administration came to me and asked me how to stop the violence. I told my people not to attack now. We have done what we want to do. Nothing will happen now. I can give it in writing that my men will not set fire to churches anymore,” he says. But, peace is only for a month. Kanhar says he is waiting to see how the government implements its promises. “For a month, it will be quiet,” he says. By then, the government should have 10 police officers investigating cases of fake certificates listing the dalits as tribals, eight new tehsils should be created, a B.Ed college for adivasis should have been opened, special land courts ought to have been set up to investigate land grab by dalits, and 500 tribals should have been recruited as constables. That is a tall order. IN BHUBANESWAR, miles from Kandhamal, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is busy dealing with Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Criticised as a weak and aloof home minister, Patil upped the ante on Patnaik saying the Orissa Government was warned six times and had still not acted. This inaction was a breach of the Constitution, Patil said Patnaik, also criticised for being aloof during the crisis, wrote back saying Patil should not “point fingers at the state government”. Patnaik wrote to Patil that the “terror strikes in New Delhi must have put much greater strain on your resources”. The tone of the exchange indicated that President’s Rule in Orissa could be an option. It is in times like these that Smti Rekha Nayak is raising her son Aditya. Smti is 22 years old and Aditya was born two years ago. Smti is a Hindu married to a Christian. She considers herself a Christian now and is appalled at what the radical Hindu organisations are doing. “They keep asking the Christians to become Hindus. I’d like to tell them to become Christians for a minute and see what it is like,” she says. Smti has shut her home in Mallikapodi and is living at her motherin- law’s house in Kanbagiri, another village that hasn’t been attacked yet. Hindus and Christians are on joint patrol every night in Kanbagiri. It’s been noted by the Bajrang Dal. • WRITER’S EMAIL : vijay@tehelka.com

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 41, Dated Oct 18, 2008