Justice Rare for Victims of Christian Persecution in India

[MirBadshah]

Justice Rare for Victims of Christian Persecution in India
Dr. John Dayal



New Delhi, March 26 (International Christian Concern) - Victims of Christian persecution from across India shared their horrific stories and highlighted the denial of justice to them before an independent people's jury.

The depositions were part of "The Independent People's Tribunal against the Rise of Fascist Forces in India and the Attack on the Secular State," a three-day program which concluded here on March 22.

The independent jury was organized by non-profit organizations Anhad and Human Rights Law Network, and supported and attended by a plethora of rights groups, including Christian organizations, like the All India Christian Council (AICC) and the Christian Legal Association.

Of the 100 victims who submitted their statements, about 40 were Christian. The rest were mainly were from Gujarat state, which witnessed a wide-scale killing of members of the Muslim minority community in 2002.

Impunity of perpetrators of gang-rape

"I was gang-raped by my fellow tribal villagers, including the brother and father of the local legislator in January 2004, and I named everyone in my police complaint, but no one has been arrested till today," lamented Taramani, a school teacher from Madhya Pradesh state's Jhabua district.

Taramani's village, Alirajpur, was one of the worst affected villages during the spate of anti-Christian violence that followed the infamous January 11 incident, in which a young girl was found dead in the compound of a Catholic school in Jhabua district. Hindu fundamentalist Hindu Jagran Manch (Forum for Revival of Hindus) blamed the murder on the church, and instigated a series of attacks on Christian individuals and their institutions. This was despite the fact that a non-Christian admitted to the crime.

"A crowd of about 250 people first launched an attack on my house and set it on fire and then some of them took me to a jungle and outraged my modesty," said, Taramani, a widow.

With tears in her eyes, she added that when she returned she found the house completely gutted. "Even the police initially refused to register my complaint which they did only later and reluctantly."

"All that I have received from the government is Rs.30,000 ($700), but no arrests. The perpetrators still tell me that nothing will happen to them, as they are very powerful," she said.

Attackers remain at large

Another victim, Shobha Onkar, also from Alirajpur, could not help crying as she narrated how she was attacked by a mob in the aftermath of the January 11 incident. "About 300 people surrounded our house in the presence of the local police inspector and started breaking in. I thought I should open the door before they vandalized my house, but when they entered into the house, one of them hit me with a stick on my head. I started bleeding profusely," she said.

"My son ran to the police and bent on his knees to plead them to rescue me, saying, 'They will kill my mother,' but they did not budge," she added.

Onkar also said that relatives of the local legislator belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were among the crowd.

Onkar's house was badly damaged and completely looted. "The government gave me only Rs.6,000 ($140) as compensation. And justice, which matters the most, was denied, as the perpetrators were not brought to justice," she added.

There were also victims from the states of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir.

Lessons for the church

Dr. John Dayal, secretary general of the AICC who was one of the jury members, told ICC, "From the Christian perspective, the hearings were memorable and important. Christians of all denominations, and both men and women, came forward to depose for the first time in a major way. In my experience this is also the first time that an all-India picture has emerged of anti-Christian violence from a people's tribunal."

The all-India pattern of violence has lessons for everyone, and particularly for the church whether it is Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical, he said, adding that urgent steps needed to be taken. "Clergy and church workers have to be trained in human rights and basic law."

Another memorable witness, said Dayal, was the compilation by the Rev. Madhu Chandra of AICC to prove the massive activity of Hindu extremists in the north-eastern Hindu majority states of Manipur and Assam.

"For me, the most heartening testimonies were of women - Muslim and Christian."

Madhya Pradesh a daylight church
He also said it was obvious that "Hindutva pressure" was working. "The church in Madhya Pradesh is fast becoming a 'daylight church' with mission activity in the evening and after sun down - which is how outreach programmes can work in forest villages when people return home after sunset - has stopped. Only in full daylight can some work be done. And yet, the church hierarchy seems not too worried."

In other areas, church activity is now confined to tribals alone, who constitute just a third of the population even in the so-called tribal belt of central India, he said. "This has serious ramifications."

Dayal thanked the civil society, including "well-meaning Hindu activists", for their "unstinted support" to the Christian community.

No help from the State

Based on the statements of the victims and presentations by human rights activists, the tribunal noted that "demonization of minorities, both Muslims and Christians, and their consequent marginalization and physical attacks have been noticed all over the country, particularly in the states where the BJP is in power, like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Gujarat."

In these cases, the victims have failed to get any help from the State. The role of the police is particularly dubious, as in most cases, the victims were not even able to file an FIR (first information report). It is often noticed that the victims are turned into perpetrators of crime. As a result, there is a sense of helplessness that the minorities feel."

Rights activists also deplored the role of the media, mainly local newspapers in vernacular languages, in inciting anti-minority violence.

The tribunal was an initiative of Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad and attorney Colin Gonsalves of the Human Rights Law Network.

ENDS

Vishal Arora
Independent Journalist New Delhi, INDIA
vishalarora_in@hotmail.com
www.vishalarora.co.in
mobile:
Skype ID: 91-9313346210
vishalarora.in

 

[joey]

Dr. John Dayal

You so sure about the thousands of peoples christian communities have killed , in the name of missionaries in India?

I can prove you Evangelical Christian violates the very basis of Indian constitution, so where is Jusice there? or hiding behind the mask of secularism is everything "el passe" for them?

Gang Rapes' are quite common, I read atleast 1 case in newspaper every week.

 

[MirBadshah]

Please put some details about missionaries killing people in India, it is quite surprising.

How do they violate constitution? Do they have any authority which they abuse?

 

[Keysersoze]

Gang Rapes' are quite common, I read atleast 1 case in newspaper every week.

Wow you are really going to use a statement like that to brush something off......

Well everyone it's OK now! There are gang rapes everywhere in India so no one is being targeted......

 

[joey]

Please put some details about missionaries killing people in India, it is quite surprising.

I can fill PFF pages if you want me to but I'll start with a little bit history, go forward if you want me to,

The Rediff Special/

'Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel'
September 14, 2005


Richard Zimler's novel, Guardian of the Dawn, documents the little-known Portuguese Inquisition in India, in 16th century Goa. He points out that, apart from their laws and religion, the Portuguese also imported and enforced their infamous methods of interrogation to subdue troublemakers.

Zimler has won numerous awards for his work, including a 1994 US National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and 1998 Herodotus Award for best historical novel. The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon was picked as 1998 Book of the Year by British critics, while Hunting Midnight has been nominated for the 2005 IMPAC Literary Award. Together with Guardian of the Dawn, these novels comprise the 'Sephardic Cycle' -- a group of interrelated but independent novels about different branches of a Portuguese Jewish family.

Intrigued by his novel, as well as his reasons for writing it, Senior Features Editor Lindsay Pereira decided to ask him a few questions.

You were born in New York and went on to study comparative religion. Why the decision to write about the Portuguese inquisition in Goa -- a whole other world?

About 15 years ago, while doing research for my first novel, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, I discovered that the Portuguese exported the Inquisition to Goa in the sixteenth century, and that many Indian Hindus were tortured and burnt at the stake for continuing to practice their religion. Muslim Indians were generally murdered right away or made to flee Goan territory.

I couldn't use that information for my novel but decided, a few years later, to do more research into that time of fundamentalist religious persecution. I discovered that historians consider the Goa Inquisition the most merciless and cruel ever developed. It was a machinery of death. A large number of Hindus were first converted and then persecuted from 1560 all the way to 1812!

Over that period of 252 years, any man, woman, or child living in Goa could be arrested and tortured for simply whispering a prayer or keeping a small idol at home. Many Hindus -- and some former Jews, as well -- languished in special Inquisitional prisons, some for four, five, or six years at a time.

I was horrified to learn about this, of course. And I was shocked that my friends in Portugal knew nothing about it. The Portuguese tend to think of Goa as the glorious capital of the spice trade, and they believe -- erroneously -- that people of different ethnic backgrounds lived there in tolerance and tranquillity. They know nothing about the terror that the Portuguese brought to India. They know nothing of how their fundamentalist religious leaders made so many suffer.

What were you trying to do with this cycle of novels? Did you set out, initially, to merely inform your audience about that period in history?

I always set out first to tell a good, captivating story. No reader is interested in a bland historical text. People want to enjoy a novel -- and find beauty, mystery, cruelty, love, tenderness and poetry inside it.

Within that story, I do try to recreate the world as it once was.

In the case of Guardian of the Dawn, I want readers to feel as if they are living in Goa at that time. I want them to see the cobblestone streets of the city and the masts of ships in the harbour, to smell the coconut oil and spices in the air, to hear calls of flower-sellers in the marketplace. I want them to feel the cold shadow of the Inquisitional palace falling over their lives.

In my cycle of novels, I have written about different branches and generations of the Zarco family, a single Portuguese-Jewish family. These novels are not sequels; they can be read in any order. But I've tried to create a parallel universe in which readers can find subtle connections between the different books and between the different generations.

To me, this is very realistic because we all know, for instance, that there are subtle connections between what our great-grandparents did and what we are doing.

The research involved in Guardian of the Dawn is obviously immense. Could you tell me a little about the kind of preparatory work you had to put in?

To write the book, I tried to read everything I could about daily life on the west coast of India -- more specifically, in and around Goa -- at the end of the sixteenth century. The Internet has made that sort of research much easier than it used to be, and I was able to order books about everything from traditional medical practices -- including recipes for specific ailments -- to animals and plants indigenous to that region.

When I write a novel, I want to get all the details right, so this is very important. Of course, it was also vital for me to know as much as I could about Hinduism and Catholicism. As you mentioned, I studied Comparative Religion at university, so this was pretty easy. One of the main characters in the novel is a Jain, which is a religion I have always been curious about, so I read three or four books about Jainism as well. It was wonderful to be able to learn a bit about Jain belief and practice. Writing is always a great opportunity for me to keep learning.

Tiago Zarco is a character you manage to strongly empathise with. Where did he come from? Was there factual data on someone he was actually based upon?

Yes, he's someone I really like -- and for whom I feel a strong empathy. He's a good man who is changed by his suffering and who decides to take revenge on the people who have hurt him and his family. But I did not base him on a real person. I think, in a way, he was born of my previous two novels, because I tried to make him someone who could fit into the Zarco family and yet be fully developed as an individual. With Tiago, I tried to ask the question -- how far can we bend our own moral code to fight evil?

In other words, can we use deception and even violence to try to destroy a cruel system of fundamentalist religious fervour like the Inquisition?

Re-examining the Inquisition seems apt, more so at a time like this when religious fanaticism is changing the world in ways unknown to us. What do you, as an author, believe we ought to take away from a study of it? I couldn't agree with you more, and that is one of the reasons I wrote Guardian of the Dawn. Put simply, I think we all need to be alert to the intolerance in our societies and in ourselves. We ought to maintain government and religion completely separate -- such a separation is the only guarantee we have of freedom of expression. We ought to learn from the ancient Asian tradition, which is to respect the religious beliefs of others and not impose our own Gods on them.

Did you visit Goa at any point? If not, what did you base your descriptions of the state upon?

No, I decided not to go to Goa, because I didn't want any images from modern Goa to infiltrate into the novel. I didn't want to risk inadvertently putting something from today into it. So I based my descriptions on other areas of the world I've visited that have similar flora and fauna -- Thailand, for instance. Also, I read all I could about the city so that my descriptions of the buildings, for instance, would be accurate. I then used my imagination, which is the most important thing for a writer. I now have a landscape in my head that is Goa -- and the surrounding region -- in 1600. I don't know how it developed. It's almost magical.

Portugal, today, is still a country deeply steeped in a Catholic tradition. Do you think people are aware of the Inquisition and what it meant back then? Would they look at this as a re-opening of old wounds?

No, few people here know anything about the Inquisition. Many of them would rather not examine what their ancestors did, both in Portugal and its colonies. But others are very curious about what they didn't learn in school about their own history. Yes, in a sense I am opening old wounds. But I think it's important to do that. I think that we need to face the bad things we do -- both individually and as a society. In general, the Portuguese have been very receptive to my books.

Guardian of the Dawn has been a Number One bestseller here, for instance. A great many readers tell me I have opened a door to a part of their history they know nothing about. I'm proud of that. And I'm proud of having made it possible for Indians and Jews who were persecuted and imprisoned to 'speak' to modern readers through this novel. I think that's important because I don't want their suffering -- and their heroism -- to be forgotten.

As an author -- more specifically, an author devoted to history -- you have a unique perspective on the past. As a journalist, how important is examining the past to you?

As a journalist, it's important, because I think we can change the world by exposing past injustices. By writing about atrocities, we can change policy and avoid future wars. We can get war criminals punished. We can help people win fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, so much journalism is superficial and stupid that there is little room left for important articles.

Do you plan, in future, to base your work on other periods, or religious themes? Or do you plan to break away from the genre of historical fiction?

I have written a new novel that has just come out in England called The Search for Sana, which is about two women -- one Palestinian, one Israeli -- who grew up in Haifa together in the 1950s. It's about how their friendship is destroyed by political events that lead to tragedy for one of them. I am now working on a novel set in Berlin in the 1930s, in which one of the main characters will be a member of the Zarco family. So this will bring the cycle up to the 20th century. Where I will go from there is anyone's guess.

Read an exclusive extract from Richard Zimler's novel, Guardian of the Dawn!
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14inter1.htm

You can read a expert here,

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/19spec2.htm

How do they violate constitution? Do they have any authority which they abuse?

Do you really want me to start with all that?



keysersoze, I said that in the simple sense to point out the gross simplification or generalisation that has been in the making through some various posts/threads I see here

Remember, The Christian missionaries (Evangelicans) came first them came Extremist Hindu groups,Left wing SIMI came before Right Wing Activists came etc.

 

[MirBadshah]

We all know about history, if there was a massacre or a crsuade in past that would not give todays world a right to start killing their own citizens.

the modern concept of state is that it would provide justice to everyone and specially in democracy the religion is no reason for Persecution of citizens.

If such things happen in todays world, we must condemn.

 

[joey]

We all know about history, if there was a massacre or a crsuade in past that would not give todays world a right to start killing their own citizens.

the modern concept of state is that it would provide justice to everyone and specially in democracy the religion is no reason for Persecution of citizens.

If such things happen in todays world, we must condemn.

Agree with you, nor i justified the killing however generalising based on reports from peoples like John Dayal whos in bed with the Evangelicans is a form of gross Generalisation and shows the anti-bias against a community.

If the killing has been done by thugs, so should they blame the thugs, getting in protective cover under the guise Of Indian constitution is a long trick the EJ's have used, by blaming and making it a issue,

Killing and corruption is quite common, Pointing a specific community is wrong, however I do admit Anti-Evangelism mindsets has been growing in the right wing activists, but there is a reason for that (two wrong done make right though).

I have told you I can show you experts from constitution that what "some" missionaries are doing are nothing but follow on from 200 years of british rule and violation of constitution.

They have deeprooted and exploited the caste system, not even Muslims are above the caste system it exists among them in the form of Zamindari system in certain parts of country where deobandhis exists whereeas in certain part it is not practiced where normally there is sufi influence.

The very form of subcontinental mentality is what they have cashed in "mai apka namak khata hu to apka sewa karunga".

Without the government looking into the matter they are giving these groups a right for granted where they are free to do whatever as they have money and hiding behind the mask of secularism.

 

[MirBadshah]

yes, your are right, the economic expliotation is always there, it even exists in West and imperialism have made it worst in todays world.

If such things exist on class level or to the extant of certain segments of society, it wont hurt the social fabric, but if these things become a norm and sponsored by state power, which is responsible to ensure the equality, then it is going to be a problem.

We can see racism in West and killings on racial and religous grounds as well in developing world, but when a certain religious group takes over the state power and starts killing the minorities, that is something which needs to be taken care of immidiately.

If a world body like UNO or EU puts severe sanctions on India and trade and finance is conditional with improvements in sectrian and ethnic improvements, the government would have no choice except to take care of these issues, what do you think?

 

[Skull-Buster]

y do indians argue on well known and globally accepted facts? even indians living in india knw that christians are killed and raped, when there is no protection for the 200 million Muslims so what can u expect for christians?

 

[joey]

^ do you have anything other than the one liners and fanfaring stories? else dont derail the discussion.

 

[A.Rahman]

well he does has a point there; India has failed to protect Babri mosque; state police did nothing while people were being killed in Gujarat genocide; now the christen is giving the same account about the police doing nothing.

 

[MirBadshah]

Well,

If only Muslims were being victamised in India, we would have assumed that they are at fault, what is happening to Sikhs in India, you can easily find on google, what is happening to Dalits, you can find in media.

I would suggest to watch "I am Dalit, How are you" , it is a good documentry.

Now same thing is comming from Christians, they are also being pesecuted every day by majority Hindu's, but our respected members here would simply refuse to admit that, denial and more denial is what they debate here, nothing more then that.

 

[Contrarian]

Sorry to burst your bubble. India is not persecuting any one based on his religion..Sikhs are not being persecuted. They are fullly integrated in India after the 80's riots. Neither are the christians being persecuted, nor muslims.

Next up you would want me to post how Pakistan's hindu population has dwindled and they are being persecuted systematically, and if such problems exist, then how do you imagine Pakistan continue to keep its territorial integrity?

 

[MirBadshah]

Given a reading to report, it is on page 1 of this thread.

Oh, other minorities, well, as I remember we have already discussed on this forum, should I post the links for you here as well?

 

[Contrarian]

you want me to post links as well? bout Pakistan?

Cuz they dont give the answer or the situations/ground realities. They focus on the worst cases or worst parts to give arguments. Which does not hold for the majority.