7 Sep 2008, 0003 hrs IST, Atul Sethi,TNN
Kandhamal district, in the heart of Orissa, is God’s own country — an area of
great natural beauty, dotted with springs, waterfalls, lush forests and green
hills. Today, it is synonymous with how much we can hate in God’s name. ‘Welcome
to Kandhamal,’ announces a road sign. It might have read ‘Welcome to the latest
Ground Zero of India’s communal politics.’
Barely eight months after it was ravaged by attacks on Christians, Kandhamal is
back in the headlines as a symbol of religious strife. For more than a week now,
Kandhamal’s Christians have been brutalized, their homes pillaged and burnt,
chased into the forests, left to languish in relief camps. And worse. Many have
died in the spiralling communal violence. The trigger was the killing of local
VHP leader Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati.
Orissa has historically been witness to Hindu-Christian clashes, most notably
when Australian missionary Graham Staines was burnt alive in January 1999 along
with his two sons. Staines died ostensibly for encouraging forced conversions.
But what makes Kandhamal’s newest bout of violence disturbing is its unique
underlying socio-economic tension. It has left the area’s largely tribal
population at odds with itself. The infusion of religious extremism stoked the
tension further. Saraswati’s death unleashed the hatred already simmering
within.
It makes for a potent cocktail. Is Orissa becoming India’s newest laboratory of
hate?
‘‘Unfortunately, it’s true. The extreme poverty as well as illiteracy of a large
section of the tribal population of the state, has resulted in Orissa becoming
the hunting ground of religious groups,” says Bhubaneswar-based sociologist Rita
Ray.
She says it has left the tribals divided “along religious lines, which is a
dangerous trend”. Orissa has 62 different tribal communities, which make up 22%
of the total population. Most of them are aborigines, the area’s original
inhabitants. The rest are settlers from adjoining regions such as the
Chhotanagpur belt.
Ray says it is ironic that religion now divides the area’s tribals because most
of them “have followed their own religion for many years — which is neither
Hinduism nor Christianity but a form of paganism that involves nature worship.”
They consequently have little understanding of the religion they convert into
and are credulous enough to believe everything their preachers of hate tell
them, she says.
Add economic envy to the pot and it makes for a deadly stew. Kandhamal has a
history of conflict among tribal groups. The district has roughly six lakh
people, more than half of whom are the mainly Hindu Kandh tribals. Another major
chunk of the population is the mainly Christian Dalit Panas. They account for
70% of the district’s roughly 1,50,000-strong Christian community. Sudhanshu
Naik, general secretary of the YMCA in Bhubaneswar, belongs to Kandhamal and
says the root cause of the recent violence there was economic envy. “The Pana
Christians have always been better off economically than the Kandhs. They are
literate and their living conditions are much better. The Kandhs have always
begrudged them this economic prosperity.” Naik adds that it is hardly surprising
the tension erupted into a full-fledged religious riot once “radical elements
gave it a Hindu versus Christian twist.”
What makes matters worse is Kandhamal has no one to explain away that dangerous
“twist”. The tribals do not have strong, wise leaders, says sociologist Mary G
Bage of Utkal University. “The absence of effective leadership has made the
tribals in the area open to exploitation by groups who have come from outside.”
Bage says Kandhamal’s current Pana versus Kandh conflict illustrates this sad
truth. “Even though this conflict is historic, it was exploited by religious
groups for their own ends.”
There is reason to fear Orissa may have many Kandhamals. The state is dotted
with districts, notably Sambalpur and Sundergarh, where Hindu-Christian ratio is
almost the same as Kandhamal. Bage dolefully cautions that “local factors in
these areas may be exploited by fundamentalist forces to create a similar rift.”
It is a dark warning.
Courtesy: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Why_we_hate/articleshow/3453431.cms
Date: Tuesday, 16 September 2008