The Telegraph August 27 , 2008 Editorial
LOVE FOR HATE When the caretaker of an orphanage run by Christian missionaries is burnt alive by a Vishwa Hindu Parishad mob in the Bargarh district of Orissa, the obvious reference point is the Graham Staines murder. Yet even that was the result of the ruthless hate campaign against Christians conducted by the VHP and its sangh brethren in Orissa. Nothing has changed since the United Progressive Alliance came to power; the conflict seems to have intensified with the coalition of the Biju Janata Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party running the state government. The government seems blind to the numerous instances of vandalism on churches, homes and orphanages, as well as of violence against Christians. In October 2006, the India Peoples' Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa had given 13 recommendations to the state and Central governments to check growing communalism. That has been useless. The story is the old one, and is most forceful in Kandhamal district. The sangh parivar claims to be opposing conversion by force or allurement by Christian missionaries. The old plot has been given a new twist by the fact that tribal Kandhs and Dalits are ranged against one another. Many Dalits are Christian, and, according to the controversial Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, they have lost the advantages due to SCs. The Kandhs retain scheduled tribe status whatever religion they choose. So Kui-speaking Dalits, linguistically and culturally similar to the Kandhs, are fighting for ST status. Meanwhile, the sangh is busy 'reconverting', by both force and allurement, tribal people to Hinduism, even though they were nature-worshippers in the first place. That the Dalits are improving economically has added urgency to the VHP's campaign. It was led most successfully by Laxmananda Saraswati, whose call to destruction caused numberless violent incidents, murders and work-stoppages in the district, although they left the government and the police remarkably unperturbed. His murder, presumably by Maoists, was the cause for the bandh during which the VHP went on a destructive spree, and burnt to death an innocent woman in an orphanage. But what is amazing is that the Central and state governments have allowed the violence of a religious hate campaign to become routine in the heart of a secular republic. -- Question everything -- Karl Marx