Remembering Kandhamal

[cathol...@gmail.com]

A Report to the Nation on the Second Anniversary of the Pogrom

By John Dayal

This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of
his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare
officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking
of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls
have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from
Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and
has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two
regions.]

But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky
for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal
episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a
National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th
August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts
will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have
been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender
violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little
children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the
Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The
expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat,
National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda,
eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.

In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have
indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of
vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-
December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian
population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and
loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed,
apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training
institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered,
and we will never know the real figure because the government does not
want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured
and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And
others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention.
Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs
and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested
in what is politely called gender violence.

For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take
years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the
trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement
after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters
such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their
villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become
Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or
in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple
process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a
mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a
victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is
now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in
his own house.

The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and
saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in
Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and
so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to
burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay
claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the
fires and the killings under control.

And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still
rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the
body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was
paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres
touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His
response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further.
Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which
the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year
unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even
expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most
remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of
duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some
institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less
than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid
from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the
government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for
denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian
victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the
role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet
government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!

The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the
Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and
his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre
said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were
mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to
look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been
repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the
Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and
now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough
incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the
Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik
to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little
other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian
Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime
Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to
sign.

It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of
the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.

The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in
the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were
shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations
that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa,
or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the
indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the
tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married
couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and
the trauma to their graves.

Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa
government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a
particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can
return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are
unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to
put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens
with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the
relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of
our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the
articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal
protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any
account.”

He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps
visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of
people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps
render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent
where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there
were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about
25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch,
what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the
full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one
hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a
personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause
have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these
camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how
to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be
provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with
them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these
tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the
camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”

Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in
dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the
Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved
both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact
that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and
dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the
administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the
local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority
of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias
of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted
one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55
organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to
take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.

I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast
track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district
capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be
conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists,
and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance
of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on.
Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they
remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened
Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there
were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross
examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are
inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major
cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang
rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before
they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from
Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa.
But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and
police actually assisting the cause of justice.

We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the
statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the
district.
--------- -
Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794

----------- -
Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its
Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned
that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching
implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime
registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process
now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in
Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.

This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop
Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major
criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit
people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl
was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally
rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the
Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour.
There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued
from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a
supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were
studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually
abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two
months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such
incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions,
are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists,
there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some
local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the
family members by job offers.

Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence.
According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child
Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and
states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-
division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala
where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he
maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in
Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to
cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been
present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had
been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in
the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary
and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government
forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-
Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children
become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and
dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.


Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human
Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development
Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government
records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in
Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal
Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced
percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in
the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people
living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second
least developed on overall human development index while it is least
on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below
Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.

There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line
anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting
employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the
actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to
grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self
employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that
were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within
eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.

Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care
remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in
malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district
records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in
the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is
difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and
other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical
emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make
transportation of critical ill difficult.

The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real
abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the
district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of
rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary
rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30
thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient
definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a
lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting
somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some
of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears
are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way,
unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court
and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build
them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land
ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this
issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build
a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for
fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient
for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those
houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no
provision to help people rebuild their lives.

But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I
accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and
unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams
thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in
education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most
major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies
discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes
– the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected
as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who
are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this
really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and
ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may
take years before they are healed, if ever.

For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation
has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance
projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and
religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered
by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the
incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of
responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems
not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political
rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its
ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the
invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure
thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

With main Kandhamal Report

The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations
from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to
take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom
held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the
carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed
artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The
exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed
Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury
comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A
P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film
maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council
members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda
Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National
Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and
Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been
presented to the Central and State governments by the National
Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.

DEMANDS:

The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to
register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in
Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible
conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central
Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass
arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the
riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their
villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue
their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of
land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision
of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their
testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels
prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model
of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for
their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation



[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New
Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]