Jhabua's Harvest
Of Hate
By Harsh Mander
The Hindustan Times
21 March, 2004
A
smouldering unquiet stalks the air in Jhabua. The arid undulating fields
of this Bhil tribal heartland in Western Madhya Pradesh have yielded
this year a vastly different harvest from the past - a harvest of hate.
For the first time in
the history of the district, Christian homes and properties, mainly
of tribal converts, were targeted and destroyed in many locations.
As I walked through
the torched and looted homes in Alirajpur - scorched walls, savaged
roofs now open to a hostile sky, everything contained
within these homes either looted or destroyed in malevolent bonfires,
the terrified residents in hiding, places of worship desecrated or vandalised
- it brought back painful memories of so many riots that I have been
burdened to
witness in the past in my work. Except that this time, the victims,
the manufactured enemies were new, and the burning winds of violence
had
traversed virgin territory, sweeping through a remote tribal region
inhabited by a proud and colourful people, that had never witnessed
sectarian violence in its entire history. How many new frontiers of
hatred will the warriors of
hate open in our land?
On a quiet Sunday
evening on 11 January 2004, a young nine year old girl was brutally
raped and strangled in a public toilet within a church
compound in the town of Jhabua. Her bloodied and savaged little body
was discovered the next morning.
It did not take
the organisations of the Sangh Parivar long to allege from the roof-tops
that the priests in the church had raped and killed the child. Calumnies
were heaped on the church in meetings and rallies organised across the
district. It was even alleged that churches are bastions not only of
anti-national activities but even of rape.
The Superintendent
(SP) of Police, Mayank Jain, responded with exemplary impartiality and
professionalism. Within four days, he arrested a young Hindu man Mahesh
who confessed to the crime. The SP was immediately transferred.
Mahesh, who worked
as a peon in an insurance office, lived close to the church. The little
girl sold vegetables with her 12 year old brother on a pavement outside
the church. On the fateful evening, Mahesh bought vegetables from the
children, but said he needed to borrow money from
the church nuns. It was on this pretext that he took the little girl
into the church, where he raped and killed her.
The Sangh Parivar
organisations were furious with what they saw as the 'unseemly haste'
of the police to solve the case. The next morning, on
16 January, a Sadhvi from Gujarat, Krishna Bahen, arrived with a clutch
of her women followers at a predominantly Christian tribal village Aamkhut.
There is an old church campus, where a white missionary ran an orphanage,
dispensary and school hostel for nearly half a century. After her departure,
the orphanage closed down but the school and dispensary continue.
The Sadhvi and her
followers gathered some of the non-Christian tribal residents of the
village and reached the school, where a board examination was in progress.
The Sadhvi entered the classes and distributed highly inflammable pamphlets
to the children, describing Christianity as an
anti-national conspiracy to destroy the Hindu faith. She exhorted the
Christian students to return to the Hindu faith, and abandon a faith
that promotes rape and treachery. Her followers pulled off the chains
with crosses that the
children wore, and tore up the examination sheets. The teachers pleaded
helplessly, then finally abandoned the examination and closed the school.
After the Sadhvi
was finally persuaded to leave with her followers, crowds gathered at
the police outpost to register their complaint. As the head constable
insisted on awaiting the orders of his seniors, the newly elected Alirajpur
MLA Nagar Singh Chauhan arrived with an enraged armed mob.
The local residents also brought out their weapons. Bullets and arrows
flew, vehicles were set on fire, and a young Seva Bharati volunteer
succumbed to bullet wounds.
The SDM rescued
the MLA and took him in his jeep to Alirajpur. There he gathered a large
mob, as his followers exhorted revenge against the Christians on loud-speakers
mounted on jeeps. The mobs then looted and burnt a number of Christian
homes, mainly owned by government servants.
The subsequent police
action has a familiar ring. Large numbers of Christian men, and even
some women, including priests, have been rounded up. The Hindu mob-leaders,
including the MLA with an old criminal record, walk free. The minorities
are just beginning to learn the lessons of how to live with fear, with
an openly partisan state.
Of a total population
of around 12 lakhs, as many as 85 per cent of people in Jhabua are tribal.
The church was established more than a century ago, but the percentage
of Christians in the district is not more than 4 per cent. The
manufacture of fear and hatred against this tiny minority is the result
of long years of effort by several front organisations of the Sangh
Parivar, especially Seva Bharati. Their efforts were further galvanised
five years ago with massive
mobilisation and recruitment of educated tribal youth as RSS workers
in virtually every village. They were drawn mainly from the Bhagats,
tribal
families converted by the Gayatri Parivar over the past two decades
to vegetarianism and abstinence. The Bhagats had adopted Hindu gods
and forms of workshops, like havans and deep yagyas.
In a massive mobilisation,
tens of thousands of pictures of Hanuman were distributed in every tribal
home, and he was re-invented as a tribal king. Triangular saffron flags
were hoisted in hutments in every remote tribal hamlet.
Single-teacher Ekal Vidyalayas were opened by the Seva Bharati, and
the local teachers indoctrinated into the ideology of the Sangh Parivar
through a series of camps.
Typically both the
Congress and the wide network of local NGOs watched helplessly. Even
more typically, Congress leaders belatedly tried to join the bandwagon.
As the Sangh Parivar organised huge Ganesh celebrations in which thousands
of tribal people participated for the first time, local Congress leaders
responded finally by establishing only their own rival Ganesh pandals!
On a wayside tribal
market, discordantly festooned with aggressive saffron banners and flags,
we stopped for tea at a small stall. The tea stall owner had pasted
on his shop window a very different slogan from his neighbours:
Har dharam ka gulistan
Hai Hindustan hamara
(Our India is a
garden in which every religious flourishes).
Amidst the swirling,
steadily building storm of hate that is sweeping this remote tribal
outpost, I wanted to hold the tea stall owner in an embrace.
Courtesy Harsh Kapoor/
SACW