The violence and terror visited upon churches, clergy members and Christian tribals in Kandhamal district in the eastern state of Orissa through August by rowdy cadres of the Bajrang Dal, the armed youth wing of the Hindu fundamentalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), has set a dangerous precedent and a template for emulation countrywide. The anti-Christian violence in Orissa which has resulted in the burning of 558 houses, 17 places of worship and 12,539 people taking shelter in ten relief camps, has spread to Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. On September 13 in the Udupi, Mangalore and Chikmaglur districts of Karnataka, which recently elected the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, Bajrang Dal activists launched a wave of vandalism on 14 churches, ransacking prayer halls and assaulting seven persons including pastors and nuns.
It’s no coincidence that the new battleground of the VHP is Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka — both BJP ruled states — and Orissa, ruled by a BJP-supported state government. Nor is it surprising that BJP-led state governments, which pledge allegiance to the sangh parivar’s Hindutva ideology, delayed arrests and deployment of anti-riot police. Even several days after the violence no arrests were made, and BJP apparatchiks appeared on television channels defending the violence as retaliation for alleged forcible conversions.
Regretably the BJP national and regional leadership seems to be unaware that if elected to office, their prime obligation is not protection of Hinduism and propagation of hindutva, but maintenance of law and order and providing equal protection of the law to citizens of all and every persuasion.
Quite patently after demonising and harassing the country’s Muslim minority community for several decades, the constituent organisations of the sangh parivar are targeting the softer 2 million Christian community, notwithstanding their invaluable contribution to Indian education. It needs to be unequivocally acknowledged that Indian society owes a great debt to Christian missionary evangelism for the promotion and spread of excellent English schools and colleges during the British era, and even after India attained independence. Moreover, countrywide they run a huge number of charitable hospitals, health clinics, orphanages and shelters for the poor and destitute, cutting across religious barriers.
Therefore if impressed by their message of love, peace and forgiveness as also by their good deeds, a growing number of citizens suffering the injustices and discrimination of the Hindu caste system, opt to change their faith, so be it. The appropriate response of the BJP leadership and sangh parivar would be to look within, and reform and eliminate the worst injustices of Hinduism and hindutva. That was the Mahatma’s response, and he was murdered by a sangh parivar activist for it.
At a period in its history when the nation is confronted with the spectre of pan-Islamist terror, the BJP and sangh parivar leaders are adding fuel to the fire by tolerating — if not encouraging — hindutva terrorism. That’s a prescription for destabilisation of society and blood-dimmed anarchy.