Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Valentine’s Day in India – more than just a chocolate heart | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk,

Feb. 12, 2009

Pink chaddis v the moral police

Groups in India which threaten violence against unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day are facing a backlash
Poorna Shetty

Fed up with running the gauntlet of Valentine’s Day in England – over-festooned card shops and smug co-workers touting bouquets – it was with relief last year that I discovered I’d be spending it working in Mumbai.

India, I surmised, probably did not celebrate Valentine’s Day. Wrong.

India, as a nation, adores Valentine’s Day. Indians embrace it as a holiday that goes beyond just being nice to your partner. Everyone – from the coffee guy to the gym receptionist who tried to hand me a red rose – was full of non-lecherous cheer. So I was shocked the next day to find the news awash with stories about far-right Hindu activists – from Shri Ram Sena to Bajrang Dal – who had beaten up unmarried couples and blackened their faces as a mark of shame for celebrating Valentine’s Day. Their justification was that the day is a western practice, and promotes “lust not love”.

This year, the same groups are out again in force. However, while the Indian government has been slow to act against these self-styled moral police, there’s a keen sense that the winds of change are turning against these groups.

For a start, although it is a serious issue, it is hard not to laugh at the blustering of Pramod Mutalik, leader of Shri Ram Sena. Mutalik insists that his men will roam Bangalore armed with video cameras, capturing any unmarried couples found celebrating Valentine’s Day and then force them to get married. In response, the brilliantly titled Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women has started a campaign on Facebook – which now has a whopping 28,496 members and counting – that calls on people to send the Sri Ram Sena a pair of pink chaddis (meaning underwear in Hindi) on 14 February as a sign of protest.

Bangalore’s police have also promised to come down very hard on any activists causing trouble, and while some have expressed outrage at having to be policed in the first place, it seems like a good short-term measure.

The irony is that the Hindu activists have unwittingly united most of the nation against their cause. Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan condemned the moral policing, and said Valentine’s Day should be seen as a “day of friendship and love and not as a western culture attack on the Indian culture”. The youth wing of the Nationalist Congress party are selling 10-rupee cards in Mumbai, at a monetary loss to themselves, because they don’t want the “Shri Ram Sena to dictate terms to people”, while the Earth Saviour Foundation in New Delhi plans to offer volunteers to escort couples on the day.

As Namrata Kotwani, who is campaigning against moral policing via her blog, underlines: “We choose to protest on Valentine’s Day for its symbolic value. We all have our personal interpretation of religion and no one has the right to impose his or her ideas on others.”

If Mutalik, with his hate-filled rhetoric, can turn a hardcore cynic like me into a fervent supporter of all these pro-Valentine groups, then he’s got no chance. As for all these rightwing groups who are so desperate to protect India from being influenced by sex, surely someone’s going to point out the elephant in the room? Namely, which country was responsible for the Kama Sutra? Hands up, please.

India Police Say They Hold 9 From Hindu Terrorist Cell – NYTimes.com, Nov. 11, 2008

By HARI KUMAR
Published: November 11, 2008

NEW DELHI — For the first time in this Hindu-majority nation of 1.1 billion people, the police have announced the arrest of people who are accused of being part of a Hindu terrorist cell.

Police officials in western Maharashtra State said they had arrested the nine suspects and charged them with murder and conspiracy in connection with the bombing in September of a Muslim-majority area in Malegaon, a small city. Six people, all Muslims, died in the explosion, which was among a string of terrorist attacks in Indian cities in recent months.Blame for several of these attacks has been placed on radical Islamist groups; one group, calling itself Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for several attacks. But the arrests of the Hindu suspects in the Malegaon bombing raised the possibility of another source of terrorism, involving a radical Hindu fringe.

“This is a very dangerous trend,” said Ajit Doval, former chief of India’s Intelligence Bureau, who added that it could undercut efforts to bolster pluralism in India.

Those arrested by the police antiterrorism squad in Maharashtra over the past two weeks included a Hindu nun with links to the principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and an army colonel, who is suspected of having provided ammunition and training to the bombers.

Hindu Threat to Christians – Convert or Flee – NYTimes.com, October 13, 2008
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

BOREPANGA, India — The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

India, the world’s most populous democracy and officially a secular nation, is today haunted by a stark assault on one of its fundamental freedoms. Here in eastern Orissa State, riven by six weeks of religious clashes, Christian families like the Digals say they are being forced to abandon their faith in exchange for their safety.

The forced conversions come amid widening attacks on Christians here and in at least five other states across the country, as India prepares for national elections next spring.

The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.

Across this ghastly terrain lie the singed remains of mud-and-thatch homes. Christian-owned businesses have been systematically attacked. Orange flags (orange is the sacred color of Hinduism) flutter triumphantly above the rooftops of houses and storefronts.

India is no stranger to religious violence between Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, and India’s Hindu-majority of 1.1 billion people. But this most recent spasm is the most intense in years.

It was set off, people here say, by the killing on Aug. 23 of a charismatic Hindu preacher known as Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, who for 40 years had rallied the area’s people to choose Hinduism over Christianity.

BBC NEWS, Orissa tense after church attack, BBC, September 25, 2008

Orissa has seen weeks of violence

Hindu mobs have vandalised a church and dozens of houses in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, police say.

The overnight attacks took place in the Tikabali and Daringbadi areas of Kandhamal district, police said.

The area has witnessed a fresh bout of violence since Tuesday when police shot dead a protester in the town of Raikia.

Orissa has seen anti-Christian violence for several weeks. At least 20 people, mostly Christians, were killed after a Hindu religious leader was shot dead.

Hindus groups have long accused Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity.

Christians say lower-caste Hindus convert willingly to escape the Hindu caste system.

Blocked roads

About 20 houses were attacked in the Shankarakhol area and at least three churches were burnt in Simanbadi on Wednesday, senior police officer in Kandhamal, Praveen Kumar, told the BBC.

Police said mobs burnt or damaged at least 40 houses in overnight attacks.

Jacob Ignatius, India’s Christians: politics of violence in Orissa | open Democracy, September 2, 2008

A wave of Hindu nationalist attacks on Christians in eastern India is rooted in local issues of caste and conversion but also part of a larger political strategy, says Jacob Ignatius.

A catastrophic flood across the northeast Indian state of Bihar has displaced tens of thousands of people and caused untold damage to the meagre property and livelihoods of some of India’s poorest citizens. The challenges of delivering aid and protecting the health of those affected by this emergency – which is spreading to the state of Assam and across the border to Bangladesh – are immense. But alongside this natural and humanitarian disaster, another less visible crisis has been unfolding: attacks on India’s Christians in parts of the impoverished eastern state of Orissa.

Jacob Ignatius is an Indian who works in Britain as a software engineer.

On 29 August 2008, 45,000 Christian schools were closed across India to protest against the anti-Christian violence that had affected mainly the Kandhamal district of Orissa in the previous week. This was unprecedented in the history of independent India, for never before have Christians felt so compelled to stand publicly and unitedly against the forces of communalism in India. Moreover, the impact of this response is heightened by the fact that Christian schools – which provide education to both Christian and non-Christian children – form a significant part of Indias education system.

The unrest in the state of Orissa started on 23 August 2008 after the murder of a 90-year-old rightwing Hindu nationalist leader called Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati; four of his associates were also killed in the attack. Although the police suspected Maoist guerrillas for the murder, members of the radical Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad VHP blamed Christians and went on the rampage – killing several people, and destroying a Christian missionary-school, house-churches and other buildings. The Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR estimates that fifty people most of them Christians have been killed. Thousands of Christians have fled their homes to seek shelter in the forests or government camps. The murder of the Hindu leader is clearly reprehensible, but this is a matter for the judicial authorities and – even were the culprit found to be a Christian – would not justify what effectively became an assault against an entire local Christian community.

Hindu-Christian Violence Flares in India – NYTimes.com, August 26, 2008

NEW DELHI — The remote, destitute state of Orissa, marred for years by Hindu-versus-Christian violence, erupted in a retaliatory killing on Monday after the murder of a Hindu leader led a mob to burn small Christian churches, prayer halls and an orphanage that had housed 21 children.

The police said a woman’s body, charred beyond recognition, was found inside the church orphanage. The church’s pastor, whom the police did not identify and who was injured in the fire, told the authorities that the body was that of a nun working there. No children were injured.

The attack on the orphanage on Monday, in an isolated district called Bargarh, came after the killing Saturday of a Hindu leader who had been associated with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, and who was leading a drive to wean local villagers from Christianity. Radical Hindu groups like the council are vehemently opposed to conversions to Christianity, which in India tend to focus on traditionally downtrodden lower-caste and indigenous groups, and have lately taken to conducting mass ceremonies to convert them back to Hinduism.

The Hindu leader who was killed, Laxmanananda Saraswati, was among five people slain by unidentified armed men who stormed a Hindu school in the nearby district of Kandhamal. The police blamed Maoist insurgents who prevail in the area. Mr. Saraswati’s followers, however, blamed Christians, and called for a statewide strike on Monday. The state government ordered all schools closed.

The Press Trust of India reported that Hindu activists, defying an official curfew in the area, paraded through the streets, attacking Christian churches and homes.

Fights broke out in Orissa last Christmas Eve, when one person was killed and churches and temples were damaged. In 1999, a Hindu mob burned an Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his two children while they slept inside their car. A Hindu has been sentenced to life imprisonment in their deaths. Eleven others who had been convicted were freed by an appeals court in 2005 because of insufficient evidence. Mr. Staines ran a hospital and clinics for leprosy patients.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India party reserves women posts, January 29, 2008

Party leader Sushma Swaraj described the move as “historic” and a step towards “empowerment of women”.

The BJP and ruling Congress have backed reservation of a third of parliamentary seats for women since 1999.

The bill has been put forward several times, but has never been passed through parliament.

The proposal to reserve 33% of seats in the federal parliament and state assemblies has met with stiff resistance from several smaller parties.

Analysts say that the BJP and Congress parties’ support for reservation in parliament and state assemblies has also been unconvincing because they did not have enough women in their party positions.

Now the BJP has announced that it will give a third of party positions to women workers and senior party leaders said the party constitution would be amended to allow for the change.

“This [decision] will go down as a historic one … and it will be mentioned in the history of women’s empowerment in India,” BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said.

Women MPs make up only 8% of the present lower house of the Indian parliament.

Indian police shoot three dead, BBC, December 29, 2007

Police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa shot and killed at least three people on Thursday in continuing communal violence, officials say.

Police opened fire on a large crowd of Hindus after a village police station was set on fire.

The crowd had been complaining about a lack of protection after Christians set fire to several Hindu homes.

Christians had retaliated after 19 churches were destroyed in violence that began on Christmas Eve….

Members of the hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) said Christians sparked the violence by attacking one of their leaders, Swami Laxamananda Saraswati, on Monday.

Hindu groups also accuse Christian missionaries of forcing tribal people and low-caste Hindus to convert to Christianity.

But Christians deny the claims and accuse the Hindus of objecting to them celebrating Christmas.

Indian Christians held candles during a demonstration yesterday in New Delhi against the recent violence on Christians and their churches on Christmas in the Indian state of Orissa. (Manish Swarup/Associated Press)

Gavin Rabinowitz, Hindus, Christians torch homes and churches in India, AP, Boston Globe, December 28, 2007

NEW DELHI – Hindu extremists torched nearly a dozen churches and the home of a Christian leader yesterday, defying a curfew imposed to quell three days of religious violence in eastern India. Christians retaliated by setting fire to several homes belonging to Hindus.

Police have been unsuccessful in halting the attacks and the federal government announced it was sending in a paramilitary force.About 19 churches, most of them small mud and thatch buildings, have been razed since violence broke out on Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.

Hindu groups have long charged Christian missionaries with trying to lure the poor and those who occupy the lowest rungs of Hinduism’s complex caste-system away with promises of money and jobs.

Yesterday, a group of Hindus burned down the house of Radhakant Nayak, a member of India’s upper house of parliament and a Christian leader in the area, Nayak told the CNN-IBN news channel.

Also, 11 churches were ransacked and burned in Kandhamal district of Orissa state, the Press Trust of India quoted unnamed police officials as saying.

Superintendent of Police Narsingh Bhol said several prayer houses were ransacked and some were set on fire, but he did not have the exact number.

Meanwhile, in the village of Brahmangaon, a group of Christians burned down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for the attack on churches. Angry Hindus then burned down the village police station….

Orissa has one of the worst histories of anti-Christian violence. An Australian missionary and his two sons, aged 8 and 10, were burned to death in their car in Orissa following a Bible study class in 1999. Orissa is the only Indian state that has a law requiring people to obtain police permission before they change their religion. The law was intended to counter missionary work.

Ajit Solanki/Associated Press

Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrating Sunday in Ahmadabad, India, after the announcement of state election results.

Somini Sengupta, Hindu Radical Is Re-elected in India – New York Times, December 24, 2007

NEW DELHI — He has been likened to the Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned. He has been denied entry into the United States for violations of religious freedom, yet praised as a business-friendly politician who has allowed private industry to flourish in his state.

On Sunday, voters re-elected the politician, Narendra Modi, arguably India’s most incendiary officeholder, as the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat. His victory, by a wide margin, was a stunning defeat for the country’s governing Congress Party and signaled that Mr. Modi and his charismatic, often pugnacious, brand of Hindu supremacist politics would be a force to be reckoned with in the future.Gujarat is considered a test case for national politics because it is viewed as a laboratory for radical Hindu politics in contemporary India.

Mr. Modi, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, is accused of sanctioning or taking no steps to stop Hindu mobs from massacring at least 1,000 of their Muslim neighbors in February 2002, after a mysterious fire engulfed a train carrying members of a Hindu nationalist organization, killing 59 people on board. Ten months later, voters in Gujarat returned Mr. Modi to power.

In elections held earlier this month, Mr. Modi’s B.J.P. captured 117 seats in of the 182-member state legislature, falling just short of a two-thirds majority; the Congress Party, which leads the nation’s governing coalition, trailed with 59 seats, while 6 went to other parties. The results were announced Sunday by the Election Commission of India.

Hindu Nationalists Win State Elections – New York Times, December 23, 2007

AHMADABAD, India (AP) — India’s main Hindu nationalist party swept to an impressive election victory Sunday in the western state of Gujarat after a bitter campaign fought in the shadow of deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots that still scar the state.

The Bharatiya Janata Party won 117 seats in the 182-seat state assembly, according to the election commission. The Congress party, which heads the federal government, won 62, while independents took three seats, it said.

Congress conceded defeat earlier Sunday as early results indicated success for the BJP and its contentious Gujarat leader Narendra Modi, in a poll that many view as a test of party strength ahead of national elections….

While the elections may have national bearing, the campaign was dominated by local issues, particularly the anti-Muslim violence that swept Gujarat in 2002 after 59 Hindus were killed when a train car burst into flames in Godhra, a town in the state. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the subsequent riots.Modi, who was in power at the time of the riots, has been accused of not doing enough to stop them. In the last elections, the BJP swept the polls with 128 seats after Modi fought the election on an aggressively anti-Muslim platform in the aftermath of the riots. Congress won 51 seats.

J. Adam Huggins for The International Herald Tribune

Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat State in India, who seeks re-election, has been blamed for failing to stop riots in 2002.

Amelia Gentleman, Bloodshed in ’02 Shadows Indian Politician in Race That Tests Nationalist Party – New York Times, December 11, 2007

AHMEDABAD, India — Five years after more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed as riots swept through the Indian state of Gujarat, the man censured by the courts for failing to stop the violence is in a tight race to keep his job as the state’s chief minister.

The contest is being closely watched as an indicator of the strength of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is still struggling after its defeat in the 2004 national elections. The local election, which starts Tuesday, could also shape the party if the chief minister, Narendra Modi, is re-elected, increasing his eventual chances of taking over the party’s leadership.

Mr. Modi, 57, is a cult figure to his followers, but a pariah to most outside his party, largely because of the upheaval in Gujarat, one of the worst outbreaks of sectarian violence since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The debate about him has only grown in recent weeks after an influential magazine presented evidence suggesting that he may have supported the violence, a contention he has dismissed as politically motivated.

For all the outside scrutiny of the vote and what it says about his party’s view of sectarian tensions, the killings have barely merited a mention from either Mr. Modi or the leadership of the rival Congress Party. Instead, both parties are focusing, at least on the surface, on whether Bharatiya Janata has done enough to further economic development in Gujarat, in western India.

Mr. Modi’s image makers have advised him to concentrate on the economy in an effort to recast himself. When he last sought re-election, in 2002, soon after the riots, he fought on a platform of Hindutva, his party’s trademark Hindu nationalism, which calls for Hindu unity and fans fears about Muslims.

Munson: Although the Hindu nationalist BJP has not controlled the Indian government since 2004, it remains powerful, as do related Hindu nationalist movements.

Smita Narula, “Overlooked Danger: The Security and Rights Implications of Hindu Nationalism in India,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, 2003

As a region, South Asia has gained significant prominence in the eyes of the international community as a focal point for the U.S.-led war against terrorism. So-called Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia and the Middle East is the subject of much debate and analysis and the justification for racially and religiously charged immigration and detention policies in the West. Much overlooked is the dramatic rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the dangerous and even violent policies espoused by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (“BJP”) and its sister organizations—policies that have already resulted in considerable violence against India’s Muslim, Christian, and Dalit, or “untouchable,” minorities.While madrassas, or Islamic schools, have come under scrutiny for their recruitment and training of future jihadis in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and more recently Bangladesh, the mushrooming of hundreds of thousands of shakhas, or Hindu training camps in India, has been dangerously overlooked. India’s shift away from secular democracy and toward the militarization of a growing Hindu nationalist cadre poses a significant threat to the human rights of India’s lower castes and religious minorities and, in a region with two long-term and now nuclear foes, to the security of the region as a whole. If the activities of these groups remain unchecked, violence may spread to other parts of the country. When compounded with the growing political influence of the Islamic right and the military in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindu militarization may destabilize the region as a whole.

BJP dismisses Gujarat riot claims, BBC, october 26, 2007

India’s main opposition party has dismissed claims that its government in the state of Gujarat supported violence against Muslims in 2002.

The allegations against the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party BJP were made in secret video recordings by the Tehelka magazine.

They have also been broadcast on local television.

The BJP has described the allegations as a conspiracy hatched by India’s governing Congress party.

Elections are due in Gujarat next month.

According to official figures, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the 2002 riots. Independent groups placed the figure closer to 2,000.

A spokesman for the BJP, Prakash Javdekar, described the Tehelka report as an election stunt stage-managed by Congress.He said it was a sting operation based on rumours and hearsay.

In the secret video footage, apparently filmed over six months, several hardline Hindu politicians, mostly belonging to the BJP, are seen describing how they carried out the violence against the Muslim community, often with graphic details.

Plan for Sea Canal Puts Hindu Belief In Sharp Relief – washingtonpost.com, September 18, 2007

“Millions of Hindus believe that Ram built that bridge across the sea. Our scriptures and epics mention it,” said Surendra Jain, a leader of the World Hindu Council, a hard-line Hindu group. “We will not let them destroy our religious heritage.”