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The Rediff Special

Burden of the Cross

The persecution of Christians is not restricted to Gujarat. In fact, the list of priests/nuns murdered/assaulted/raped since 1978 maintained by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, has no entry from Gujarat. Christians are fewer in number there than in most other states. Partly, politics may be accountable for this. It may have something to do with the space the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is seen creating for itself there, almost desperately, via the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

RSS leaders have been long convinced that a former swayamsevak (voluntary worker, as an RSS member is known) like Shankersinh Vaghela could split the BJP and skyjack a section of legislators to Khajuraho only because of the Bharatiya Janata Party's fast growth in the state. It still cannot keep pace with the BJP as gradualism is the essence and merit of RSS work-culture. As there's no Vaghela II, among other things, the VHP has been put on a fast track.

There has been present, anyhow, for anyone to build on, the unspent anger from the Nav Nirman movement against the late Chimanbhai Patel. And there's hatred generated from Madhavsinh Solanki's experimental caste/community governments that didn't find full vent even in violent anti-reservation agitation.

In such circumstances, assaults on Gujarat's small, isolated, unprotected Christian communities were inevitable. These may likely intensify since the police force is pressurised at the top and becoming increasingly communal below. Grievous attacks on clergymen could now follow. Whipping and intimidation of evangelists have already begun.

Elsewhere, the situation is serious but different. Though there is no formal link between the attacks on Christians, and the presence of Hindutva forces may alternate with those of worsted moneylenders or landlords, the action of district authorities disfavouring victims either by themselves or under pressure, and the general inconclusiveness of investigations form a trend.

In February 1995, Sister Rani Maria, a councillor with the social works department of the St Franciscan Clarist Congregation, working with tribals against moneylenders, was stabbed in daytime inside a bus in Udainagar village of Madhya Pradesh's Dewas district.

There had been a quarrel during the panchayat election. The alleged killer, a BJP worker, was a complainant and the accused were bailed out by Sister Maria. During the murder trial, witnesses were intimidated, and the murderer escaped with a token sentence. Later, a memorial that local tribes built for her was pulled down.

The other incident that became a national scandal concerned the forced stripping of Father Christudas, twice in a day last year. Christudas was the vice-principal of St Joseph's High School in Guhiajori of Bihar's Dumka district. A seventh class boy, Sakal Hansda, alleged that the priest had fondled his genitals in his room on August 30.

Four days later, three senior boys accompanying Hansda forced Christudas to walk with them to the bishop's house in Dudhani, Dumka, 13 kilometres away, to register a complaint. The apprehensive principal of the school, Father Joachim Lakra, followed them. A mob soon gathered after them.

Three kilometres from the school, according to a report of the Minorities Commission, Subdivisional Magristrate Harendra Sharma met the group. When Lakra urged him to intervene, Sharma apparently said he had only his personal staff, but assured that nothing would happen.

A little later, Santhal Parganas college students led by a student leader, who had attacked another of the school's priests in 1995, burst upon Christudas, hit him on the head with a hockey stick, punched and kicked him, stripped him naked, cut up his hair with scissors, put ash all over his face, and garlanded him with chappals and shoes. Christudas ran and hid inside a district administration jeep but was dragged out and beaten again and made to walk.

At the mofussil police station he was thrashed again. In the main street of Dumka, the district collector (since transferred), A Jha, whose wife St Joseph's employed, in the presence of N P Singh, the superintendent of police (also transferred), ordered Christudas to the town police station. The Commission's report quotes witnesses saying that Jha was abusive. Christudas was handed his clothes back.

The Commission has been unable to determine what happened in the backrooms in the next 15 minutes. Except that soon policemen were ordering Christudas out of his clothes and out of the police jeep and handing him back to the mob to be beaten and dragged to the Bishop's house. The Commission says a telephone order came to policemen; who made it for what is being inquired by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Christudas was a disciplinarian and had removed some students from the hostel. The Commission's case is that the collector, without the most preliminary of investigations into Christudas's alleged sexual misconduct, branded him, acquiesced in his being returned to the maddened mob, and demanded of the Church to expel him. As for his subordinates, the next day's newspapers published pictures of a naked Christudas flanked by policemen looking as smug as the students.

"Almost the entire senior district staff is of non-tribal origin,'' says the Commission's report. ''Many of (them) have open or latent sympathy for the BJP. In Dumka's largest education institute (SP college) the BJP-RSS frontal organisations control the students' union and have a following among the teaching staff, including the acting principal of the college."

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

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