COMMUNALISM

A hate campaign

A fresh round of attacks on Christians lead the police to new theories in Karnataka, while in Tamil Nadu the police see no pattern in the violence.

PARVATHI MENON
in Bangalore
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
in Chennai

POPULAR anger and revulsion against the relentless attacks on Christian places of worship, and the pressure - even from its allies - on the Bharatiya Janata Party to rein in the violent groups, have not stopped the violence. Reports of attacks on priests , nuns, churches and church-goers in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and more recently in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, continue to appear in the mainstream and alternative media. In most of these cases there is direc t proof of the involvement of organisations of the Hindu Right in the attacks. In the two years since open attacks on the Christian community began, the violence has ranged from gross forms of physical and mental intimidation to murder. Nuns have been ab used, spat at and physically attacked, priests have been beaten, churches have been burnt, groups of students engaged in social work have been brutally beaten. Most recently, some activists assaulted a nun, Sister Sissy, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat and loote d a godown where bags of wheat meant for distribution to the drought-hit people in Limbdi taluk of Surendranagar district were stored.

T.L. PRABHAKAR
Karnataka Home Minister Mallikarjun Kharge at the site of the blast in a van in Bangalore on July 10.

While physical attacks of this nature continue, the sudden spurt of bomb blasts in and around churches is a new element in the ongoing violence. There was a series of blasts that took place on the morning of June 8 in three places simultaneously - Wadi in Gulbarga district of Karnataka, Vasco in Goa, and East Godavari in Andhra Pradesh. A month later, another incident took place in Hubli. On July 8 at around 3-45 a.m., a group of four men hurled a bomb at the St. John's Lutheran Church on the Hubli-Gad ag Road, which caused extensive damage to its doors and windows. Before people could come out of their homes, the men escaped in a van. Earlier the same group had driven up to the St. Peter's Church on Gadag road but fled upon seeing the watchman.

And then on the night of July 9 yet another blast occurred in Bangalore in the premises of the St. Peter's and Paul's Church. Around 3,000 Christians had attended the Feast of Corpus Christi. The celebrations went on till 10 p.m. and all had left when th e blast occurred at 10-15.

In all these cases the bombs exploded in the premises of the churches when there were no people present. The damage to church property has been extensive, and although there have been no injuries to people, the incidents have created anger and fear among st Christian congregations. In Hubli, crowds protesting against the violence took to the streets, threw stones on buses and later torched two buses. They forced the closure of shops and took out a procession through the city. A bandh was called by variou s Christian organisations in Hubli-Dharwad on July 10 and 11. In Bangalore too, agitated crowds were restrained by Christian community leaders.

The emergence of a bomb culture has provided the Hindu Right and its leaders the opportunity to deflect the mounting criticism of their involvement in anti-Christian attacks. When the first incidents of church bombings took place last month, the leaders were quick to pin the blame, with zero evidence at the time, on Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Acharya Giriraj Kishore, the vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), said that he would take Christian leaders to court if they conti nued to hold the VHP and the Sangh Parivar responsible for the attacks. A meeting arranged by the National Minorities Commission between Christian organisations and militant Parivar groups for July 11 was called off following the bombing incidents.

The first breakthrough made by the Karnataka police in the investigation of the latest bomb blast at a church in Bangalore reveals the involvement of a fanatical sect that shares anti-Christian sentiments. The Karnataka police were quick to establish ini tial leads into the blast. An hour before the bomb attack in the church, an explosion ripped through a van in the city killing two of the passengers and seriously injuring the driver. Police investigations revealed that the kind of explosives - nitroglyc erine (in the form of gelatin sticks) and ammonium nitrate - used in the church blast were present in the van. The house of the driver of the van, S.M. Ibrahim, in Varthur, Bangalore, was searched and incriminating information found in his computer. A co py of a pamphlet found in the van which contained a warning to Christian missionaries to "Stop Conversions or Quit India" with the "Om" symbol prominently displayed was also found on his computer. Books and pamphlets found in his house revealed that Ibra him is a member of a small cult organisation called the Deendar Channabasaveshwara Siddique Firqa. He had let out a part of his house to members of the sect. C. Dinakar, Director-General of Police, Karnataka, told Frontline that while the police h ad no evidence yet of the involvement of the ISI, it had been established that the particular sect had connections in Pakistan. "We know for example that the leader of the sect, Syed Zia-ul Hasan, is settled in the city of Mardan near Peshawar."

Little is yet known about the antecedents and ideology of the Siddique sect. According to Obidulla Sherief, who is the editor of the Urdu newspaper Daily Pasban and is chairman of the minority cell in the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC I), the sect, a breakaway from the Ahmadia group (which is banned in Pakistan), was founded in 1932 in Hyderabad is the south. "Their founder, Siddique, declared himself an avatar of Channabasaveshwara, the founder of Veerashaivism," Sherief said. The se ct, which preaches a form of syncretic Islam, has been excommunicated by orthodox Muslim religious leaders. The group's headquarters is in Hyderabad (India), although it has branches in Hubli and Raichur. It recently held a conference in Tumkur. The basi s for its anti-Christian sentiments, sources of funding, and other linkages are yet unclear. Little is known of the Pakistan connection or its motives in targeting Christians, if it is indeed responsible for the blasts.

"There has been tremendous restraint shown by the Christian community despite these attacks," Sajan George, national convener of the Global Council of Indian Christians told Frontline. "But tolerance levels are coming down and we want some positiv e action by the government to stop the hate campaign."

Andhra Pradesh has also seen a spate of bomb blasts in churches and prayer meetings, and the police are now looking for linkages with the Bangalore incident. The Inter-Church Committee, an umbrella organisation representing as many as 25 Christian church organisations, called for a rally and public meeting on July 9 to observe a day of communal harmony in response to the series of attacks in the State.

T.L. PRABHAKAR
At the St. Peter's Church in Bangalore where a bomb exploded on the night of July 9.

SPOKESPERSONS of the Christian community in Tamil Nadu whom Frontline spoke to say that their state too is no longer isolated from attacks on them, especially after the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party to power at the Centre in 1998. According to them, 14 incidents of violence against Christians between March 1997 and July 6, 2000 have taken place in the State. These include attacks on churches, incidents of fires in prayer halls, preachers being prevented from distributing literature, and so on. The latest incident took place on July 6 when over-zealous bureaucrats demolished a small shrine in the compound of the Directorate of Medical Services in Teynampet, Chennai, an action for which Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi later apologised.

A publication compiled by the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR), the Catholic Bishops Council in India , the National Council of Churches in India and the Evangelical Fellowship of India lists 184 incidents of attacks on Christians in India between March 1997 and July 2000. Of these 14 took place in Tamil Nadu. These include cases of arson in churches, the destruction of the Bethany Fellowship Church in Erode in February 1998, the murder of Belarmine, a Christian worker, in September 1999 in Kanyakumari district, the desecration of icons in several churches, intimidation of Christian believers, and so on. According to Dr. Ebe Sunder Raj, joint convener, United Christian Forum for Human Rights, there was "a definite conspiracy" behind the attacks.

The Tamil Nadu police, however, say that of these incidents a majority relate to fires breaking out in make-shift, thatched roof structures that serve as "Assemblies of God" churches belonging to the Pentecostal sect. A police officer who investigated th e incidents told Frontline that six of these incidents took place between October 31 and November 7 when the Deepavali season was at its peak. "Rockets and crackers fired at that time fell on these prayer halls with thatched roofs resulting in fir es" he told Frontline.

THE attacks on Christians in Tamil Nadu were strongly criticised at a public meeting organised by the Tamil Nadu State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on July 6 in Chennai. Speakers from the CPI(M), the Tamil Maanila Congress, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Congress (I) attributed the attacks to a "planned conspiracy" of the outfits of the Hindu Right. They pointed out that the number of such incidents had gone up dramatically after the BJP first came to power a t the Centre. "A Prime Minister who is in the grip of bigoted outfits cannot be trusted to provide protection to the minorities," TMC president G.K. Moopanar observed. Leaders belonging to the Indian Union Muslim League, the Indian National League, the D alit Panthers of India and the Rashtriya Janata Dal sharply criticised Karunanidhi for his party's alliance with the BJP.

There are new organisations and groups that have come into being in the recent past, as the evidence that the police have unearthed on the Bangalore blast suggests. These can hardly any longer be dismissed as fringe groups. Take the Deendar Siddique sect . Its formal or informal linkages, if any, with other hate groups that have been active in the recent past in attacks on minorities have yet to be established by the police. But it is clear that such organisations have become active in an environment of intolerance and bigotry that the Hindu Right is squarely responsible for creating.