Hate campaign builds up in Narmada Valley at Mandla

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FACT FINDING REPORT ON THE EVENTS ON THE EVE OF THE PROPOSED NARMADA
SAMAJIK KUMBH AT MANDLA, MADHYA PRADESH

JABALPUR, 1 FEBRUARY 2011

A fact finding team which toured the Narmada Valley areas in Mandla
district in Madhya Pradesh on the eve of the so-called Narmada Samajik
Kumbh scheduled to be held from 10th to 12th February 2011 has found
that the Christian community not just of the district but of the
entire region encompassing Madhya Pradesh and neighbouring state of
Chhatisgarh, have solid reasons to fear an outbreak of violence
against them during or after the event from cadres of the Sangh
Parivar.

The Sangh Parivar has left no one in any doubt that the main reason
for organising the Kumbh, or holy river bank gathering, at which they
expect two million people and the entire leadership of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, its daughter organisations and the governments of
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to attend, is to purge the region of
“Christian missionaries” they accuse of carrying on large scale
conversions of tribals, mostly Gonds in this part of the country.

The church leadership in turn has sent urgent representations to the
Governor and chief minister of Madhya Pradesh apprising them of the
sinister developments and calling on the State to ensure that they are
not persecuted and that there is no outbreak of violence. “Our sources
tell us there will be a major ghar wapsi or conversion to Hinduism of
local Christians. We urge the administration to take timely action and
appropriate steps to protect the citizens and particularly the
minorities, their places of worship and institutions and religious
personnel. The administration would be entirely and wholly responsible
in case of any undesirable eventuality,” a memorandum signed by
priests and representatives of the Christian community to the State
Governor, with copies to the Chief Minister and the divisional and
district authorities said. The memorandum also listed samples of
newspaper clippings and the offensive posters targetting minorities.


The Fact Finding Team: the fact finding team consisted of Dr John
Dayal, Member, National Integration Council of the Government of
India, and secretary general of the All India Christian Council, and
Mr Vijayesh Lal, Human rights activist and Secretary of Religious
Liberty Commission - EFI. The team spent three days in the Mandla-
Jabalpur region, and met with the Catholic bishop of Jabalpur, Right
Reverend Gerald Almeida as well as over 200 Catholic, Protestant and
evangelic priests, pastors and church workers of the region in two
groups in Jabalpur, where one group had come as they were afraid to
meet the team in their village areas, and in the Mandla Catholic
parish church hall.

The team visited the banks of the Narmada River, particularly the left
bank, where some houses and fields had been levelled to make housing,
toilet and other arrangements of the crowds expected to attend. The
team spoke with the contractors building the “shamianas” and tents,
roads and a new barrage, to local policemen, and others. The team
could not, for want of time, go to Bhopal to meet with the Chief
Minister, the Home Minister, the State Minorities Commission and the
Governor, all of whom have been apprised of the situation by the local
church authorities.

The fact finding team also collected, or photographed, pamphlets,
posers, hoardings, and were given copies of other printed material.

Background: The district lies in the Mahakoshal region of Madhya
Pradesh state. Most of the district lies in the basin of the Narmada
River whose origins are in streams perhaps a hundred kilometres
upstream from the town. Mandla district is part of the Administrative
commissioner’s division of Jabalpur, with an area of 8,771 square
kilometres, an official Census population of 779,414, a literacy rate
of 59.85. Politically, it sends a member to the Lok Sabha, the lower
house of Parliament and as many as 12 members to the State Assembly,
making it politically a very important region. Government statistics
say much of the population are Adivasis (tribals, who the RSS wants to
describe as Vanvasis, or forest-dwellers, a term abhorred by the
people). The State government admits that despite 60 years of
Independence, 11 Five year Plans and millions of rupees spent in Union
and State projects, the Mandla district “consistently” ranks among the
20 most backward districts in India. It is rugged terrain, and barring
the state highway, inner roads continue to be in a terrible condition.
Even within sight of from the highway, housing ranges from brick and
cement houses to mud and thatch huts.

The Church is active in the region in education, health and
development projects, many begun in recent years. The Catholic Church
runs a hospital, a girl’s school and a boy’s school, apart from work
done by the fathers and Sisters. The Church also has a home for its
retired clergy in the region. The catholic population is thinly spread
over the region, barring two villages which have a sizable number of
Gond Catholics. The Church of North India has a century old church in
the town, near the offices and residences of the Collector and Police
chief. The CNI church has some historical and architectural
importance. About 400 protestant and evangelical Pastors

Backgrounder to Kumbh Melas: The Kumbh, as the encyclopaedia says, is
a mass Hindu pilgrimage, usually on the banks of a holy river and with
a fixed periodicity. The minor Kumbhs are held every 3 years, the Ardh
or half Kumbhs every six years at on the Ganges at Haridwar in
Uttarakhand and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh on the junction of the
Ganges and Yamuna rivers and the main or 12 yearly Kumbh at river
banks at four places --Allahabad, Haridwar, and Ujjain in Madhya
Pradesh and Nasik in Maharashtra. The government spends billions of
rupees in the periodic preparations, largely on crowd management,
sanitation and habitation, but the religious rituals are carried out
by well known Akharas, or congregations which have traditional rights
of bathing and prayers in a sharply contested hierarchy and priority.
The government has little role in it, and political parties even less.
Political parties however to register their presence, and it not just
Bharatiya Janata party leaders but such Congress top brass as Mrs
Sonia Gandhi who make their presence felt at these religious fetes
together with the other millions of the faithful. [By the way, the
Supreme Court has recently upheld the official expenditure at Kumbhs,
the Muslim Haj and the Hindu pilgrimage to Mansarover in Chinese-held
Tibet as legitimate.]

What distinguished the “”Narmada Samajik Kumbh” from the others is
that is part of a very recent series of religious festivals invented
by the Sangh Parivar as part of an ideological campaign to animate
tribal populations in western and central India, specially the
Chhotanagpur region inhabited by some of the oldest tribes in the
world, anthropologically older than the Dravidian and the Aryan groups
that now constitute much of the Indian population. While the people
call themselves Adivasis, or original people, the Sangh Parivar calls
them Vanvasis or forest dwellers as it is loath to admit that they pre-
date the Aryans in the subcontinent. This region is also heavily
forested, and has vast reserves of rare earths, minerals, coal and
much of the country’s bio diversity. While the late Lakshmananda
Saraswati was evangelising the Kondh tribals of Kandhamal in Orissa –
later scene of much violence against Christians – with similar heavily
Sanskritised ritual, his colleague in the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram Swami
Aseemanand, invented the “Shabari Kumbh” in the Dangs district of
Gujarat to create a political and ritual campaign against local
Christians and church workers. Aseemanand, born in Bengal and with a
master’s degree in science, had become a terror in south Gujarat,
which first saw serial violence against Christians on Christmas Eve in
1998 in which over three dozen village churches were torched.
Aseemanand is currently in police custody and is being investigated
for his part in “Hindutva terror” targetting religious minorities and
involving the3 bombing of Muslim shrines and mosques as well as the
India-Pakistan peace train, called the Samjhauta express, in 2007. In
fact the Shabari event launched by Aseemanand was planned in Madhya
Pradesh, according to media reports.

The India Abroad News Service in a despatch from Ahmedabad in January
17 reported that Aseemanand, the chief organiser of the 'shabari
mahakumbh', first held in February 2006 to reconvert Christian tribals
as Hindus in the tribal Dangs district of Gujarat, had earlier
announced that the second edition would be held this year at the same
venue, but the venue was shifted later. IANS quoted Hindu Jagran Manch
and other co-sponsors based in Surat saying the decision to shift the
congregation away from Dangs has been taken in view of the heightened
surveillance by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). It was
first christened 'Maa Narmada Kumbh'. The name was changed to Narmada
Samajik Kumbh when some tribal groups objected and threatened to hold
their own festivities to challenge the Kumbh. The Fact Finding team
was told that the Tribals possibly would go ahead with their
alternative celebrations.

The Kumbh venue is spread over 14 square km area to accommodate about
20 lakh people that are expected to attend. The government has
allotted Rs 140 crore [Rupees 1,400 million] for the civil works,
tentage, roads and other arrangements.

Already, a barrage has been built across the nascent Narmada River to
hold back water for the people to bathe in, as normally at this time
of the year, there is not much water in the river. The fact finding
team could not ascertain if environmental clearances had been got from
the Central authorities for this barrage which itself may have
repercussions on wildlife and irrigation downstream. Several
kilometres of roads have been built on the riverbed and fields, while
tens of kilometres of roads leading up to the river from Jabalpur are
being hurriedly given a fresh black-top after removing the old asphalt
coating. In normal times, a small temple and a natural island host the
several ritual bathing ceremonies held every year, and attended only
by local people. The fact finding tram witnessed one such bathing
festival, which was supervised by a handful of policemen.
We understand that for the coming Kumbh, not only police from the
division but other parts of the State is being deployed, as prominent
Hindu religious leaders as well as activists of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and
other Hindu organisations, besides prominent Bharatiya Janata Party
leaders, are expected to attend. We were given to understand that
Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states, including Mr. Narendra Modi of
Gujarat, Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan of Madhya Pradesh and Mr. Raman
Singh of Chhattisgarh, were also expected to attend.

We were told that even before the New year, groups of Sadhus and Sangh
activists had been roaming about the villages in Mandla, as well as
villages and town in the rest of state, going home to home to tell
about the Kumbh and to collect money for food and arrangements for the
devotees. We were told that such teams of fund collectors were even
active in Jabalpur, the second major town in Madhya Pradesh and seat
of its High court.

It was in this context that the Pastors and social leaders in Mandla
told us of the threatening nature of the Sangh propaganda. They said
much of the treat was oral, and conveyed as the groups moved across
the villages briefing the people about the activities of the
“missionaries” or Christian pastors. The group leaders were openly
saying they would wipe out Christianity from the region and covert the
region’s Christians to Hinduism in Ghar wapsi through ritual
cleansing.

We came across software used to print various sizes of banners and
flex-boards. One such set of slogans on the posters charged the
Christian missionaries of fooling the local people through their
educational and medical services. The main slogan was that the “Church
will do anything for conversions” Some of this software bears the
signatures of the “Dharma Jagran Samiti, Maharashtra”.
Interestingly, the State administration is going out of its way to
patronise the Kumbh The police superintendent on 6 December 2010
issued orders telling Churches , and others, that they needed to close
down their schools and other institutions which would used to house
the visiting dignitaries, women police and other officials. The school
officials told the police it would be impossible to close down the
schools for such a long period. After this, the police superintendent
claimed he had not signed such an order. The fact Finding team could
procure a copy of the order.

The Mandla police have always kept close tabs on the local Christian
leadership. The police issued a notice to Sister Olga Lucas of the
Deenbandhudham Convent that they were investigating complaints and
wanted the Convent to give a list of the nuns serving in the convent
with details, further details of their bank accounts, the details of
other inmates, numbers of landline and mobile telephones in the
convent and the names of those who owned these instruments. Going to
ridiculous lengths, the police also asked for full details of patients
undergoing treatment in the hospital and clinics, and the details of
the administrative structure of the congregation of the nuns, together
growth names, addresses and phone numbers of the office bearers and
superiors.

Similar notices were also issued to other catholic priests and
protestant pastors. The Fact Finding committee could get hold of
copies of many of these handwritten notices and orders

The collective fears of the community and church leaders are evident
in the text of the Memorandum submitted to the Governor, which inter
alia says [English translation, as the original is in Hindi] “It is a
matter of great happiness for the Mahishmati Nagar Mandla that the
Narmada Kumbh is organized at Mandla on 10,11 and 12th February 2011.
As per the information received about 20 lacs [two million] people are
expected to arrive for this program. The Kumbh is supposed to be a
time of blessings for all. But many fears too are expressed about the
purpose of organizing this Mela.

1. As per one of the Paper reports, one of the aims of the Mela is to
save the tribals from the persecution of the Christian missionaries.
To persecute somebody is against the principles and teachings of
Christianity. Moreover the Christian Community in Mandla District have
been giving generous support for the development of this District
through its educational, medical and social works. Therefore we
request the Govt. take care and stop the black propaganda going on
against the Christians so that the religious good will prevailing here
may not be lost.

2. It is informed by various sources that during the Kumbh in large
number, Christians will be reconverted to Hinduism through “Ghar
wapasi” (Home Coming) program. Joining any religion or returning to
any religion is a fundamental right of every citizen of this country.
But we request the Govt. to see that no one is allured or forced to go
back to any religion and thus violate their fundamental rights.

3. Another fear about Kumbh is that large number of people from
outside M.P. are involved in the preparations and conducting the
Kumbh. Since the work is allotted to people who do not know well the
language and culture of this place, it can create unwanted situations
and problems. In that situation if anything unwanted like stampede etc
happens we wish that any antisocial elements should not put the blame
on the minorities and take advantage of the situation. To face such
situation we request the Government to insure all the buildings,
shops, institutions and other movable and immovable properties of the
minorities at the expense of the Govt. itself and save the minorities
from any risk.

4. Some of the political groups have expressed their doubt that the
Kumbh is organized to lease out terrorism here. If the Govt. has some
doubt of such thing, to save the innocent people from such situation,
in time Govt. may deploy necessary police and Para military forces.

5. From the information received it is learnt that in order to spoil
the religious harmony and social peace, a lot of leaflets and flexes
are printed and they are being distributed. In time if the Govt. does
not take precautionary measures on it and stops it, there is a
possibility of losing religious harmony and cause social unrest.

6. Mandla is a peaceful and healthy area. But the coming of such a
large number of people may pollute this area and this may lead to some
kind of epidemic.

7. We request the Govt to introspect on the above points and take
necessary steps in time. Give total protection for the people,
institutions and worshipping places of the minorities. If needed
kindly arrange sufficient paramilitary force for the same. If through
the negligence of the Govt. if anything unwanted happens the Govt.
will be held responsible for the same. We wish a peaceful Kumbh and
all the success for it and promise our full support and cooperation.”

The Church leadership has reserved its right to consult legal opinion
and, if necessary, move the courts for protection.

After its visit, the Fact Finding team fears that even if there is no
violence and no forcible conversions of Christians to Hinduism during
the duration of the Kumbh, the Hindutva campaign had vitiated the
atmosphere and seriously impacted on human relationships between
Christian and other tribals in the hamlets, villages and townships of
the region. The penetration of hard core Sangh activists and their
cells in this area may have long term repercussions for the freedom of
religion in this region and may seriously impact on the continuing
social work of the Church, including the running of schools and
medical centres.

The Fact finding tram hopes the Madhya Pradesh government will take
whatever administrative steps are required to prevent any coercive
moves against the Christian minority community, that the government
will take cognisance of the massive hate campaign that has been
unleashed, that it will monitor the security of the minorities during
the Kumbh and that it will take long term measures to see that
constitutional guarantees of freedom of faith continue to be
implemented in the Mandla region.

A copy of this report is being sent to the Governor of Madhya
Pradesh, to the Chief Minister, to the National Commission for
Minorities, to the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and to the
office of the Prime Minister of India for their information.

Enclosures:
Soft copies of posters
Photocopies of police notices to Convents and churches
Text of the Church memorandum to the Governor