Was the carnage in Orissa necessary?

From Merinews (http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?title=Was%20the%20carnage%20in%20Orissa%20necessary?&articleID=141445)

By rhapsodysinger

JEWISH HISTORY is a history of Holocausts. The final destruction of the Temple marked just the beginning of the trials of the ordinary Jew. No wonder then, that the greatest Jew of all time is just a Marginal Jew. It is this idea of marginality or, in the Indian context — subalternity that distinguishes the path of this Marginal Jew. And the Lord of History has to repeatedly allow persecutions to beset those whom He loves to draw them closer to him once again. The real Panopticon is that of God’s who did not hesitate to crucify His own Son for the sake of defeating structures of sin. The ultimate woof of history belongs to God. It is keeping these aspects of the godhead and Jewish history that we should search for reasons for the carnage that is even now happening in Orissa. I write as a staunch Hindu, who nonetheless, believes in Jesus as my ’Ishta Devta’ and the Church as the rock on which the Kingdom of God is established. In other words, I witness as a Hindu Brahmin the wonders and the mysteries of Christ.

There are two angles to this simmering hatred that is boiling over in my nation: One is highly academic and thus, of only scholarly value; the other one is more plebian and thus, much more important for our discussion here.

 

After Vatican II the Church in India actively seeks to establish cultural roots here. There exists a large corpus of Christian theological exegesis which bolsters what is now known in seminary-circles as ’inculturation’. There is an ever increasing demand for dialogue and condemnation of what is termed as Hindutva. In other words, the Church desires to contextualise Hindu praxis within Her own matrix, namely, the liturgical practices of the Catholic Church in India. Putting it a bit more academically, the Roman Church in India wants to create a new grand narrative in contextualisation which deliberately wants to erase the old nakedly Eurocentric thrusts. At least, this is how the Church sees itself.

Even a cursory glance at the available Catholic apologetics of our times reveal this much instantly. How does it go about executing this erasure of the old ways and the construction of new paradigms sensitive to the Indian ethos? This has been done with great visual and aural effects in three ways: through the changing of the age-old habits of the religious from European soutanes to saris and ochre robes of the Hindu sannyasis; adding Sanskrit songs and chants within the liturgy in the Latin rite and lastly, by creating Hindu temple like structures where the Virgin and the Lord are made too look like Hindu deities. And often on Sundays, one finds the religious at the Church doors, speaking in Hindu terms to their parishioners: Jai Yesu, for example. Then there is the endless discussion of Hinduism in seminaries and courses galore on comparative religions in Papal Seminaries throughout India. These are what the Church in India thinks as legitimate endeavours of a free people.

Let us now in all fairness see how these efforts are construed at the grass root level. Why should the Church do this and not simply condemn the barbaric and heinous nature of the assaults in Orissa? Why should she concede that fundamentalists are not the only ones to blame? The answer lies in Church history, suffering often has a message. May be there is too much counter-witnessing within the Church. When demoniac men burn alive other women and men, then the former need not be discussed in conciliatory terms but rather delegated to penal systems to see them punished suitably. What is this message? Is it possible that inculturation is simply not working in India?

The much touted dialogue in the Church is in reality only monologue. Hinduism is fundamentally a non-celibate religion. The Church being top-heavy in India naturally draws Hindu monks in its efforts to reach out to Hindus. While certainly the Church runs much coveted educational institutions all over India; they simply serve to weaken the Church here. It is true that most students in such institutions are Hindus but notice how often their parents are offended by seemingly powerful headmasters and principals. Notice how often these same women and men of the cloth are seen posing in photographs with business-scions and politicians. Also notice the unavailability of these same education-religious within the local social structures of the places where they live. And these are the most numerous amongst Indian Catholic religious.

The Catholic Church in India is certainly perceived as an educational behemoth which is elitist and exclusive in Her choice of pupils. The Church in India is firmly entrenched within a vicious circle of paradoxes and thus, runs the risk of being termed a chameleon which preaches sacrifices but serves hedonism. Walk into any of the urban schools and colleges run by the religious in India and all the efforts of the rural religious in inculturation will immediately seem hypocritical to even the least conscientious of men. How is it possible that those who profess Sanyasa, those who vow renunciation of the world and its pomps, live like feudal lords in the fiefdoms that are their institutions? So the average man on the streets lusts after the coveted seats provided by these established places of learning while at the same time cringing at the tortures and humiliations that the process of entry to these places often entails. It never helps that the Church in India keeps on boasting about the service it so kindly renders to the Hindu populace. This Janus-nature of the Indian Church, this deplorable polarisation between the much more honest rural Church and the Pharisaical urban Indian Church is its undoing here. The whiff of double-standards defeats any efforts at inculturation.

This is not to condone the violence that rocks my fellowmen. Yet my response is one of faith in both the truths of Hinduism and Catholicism. Everything that happens, happens only because God allows it and God speaks to us through daily occurrances. More than the hierarchy who suffer, it is the ordinary Christian who is persecuted. Let the Church note this.

The academic explanation for this violence should not only be located in the idea of anti-conversion laws in India or the rise of the so-called Hindutva. By being seminary limited and imitative of Western, South American theology movements, Indian theologians have created a morass of dead theologies which subtly bypass the more lived elements of both Catholicism and Hinduism. By blindly accepting Indian society’s structural injustices as given, Catholic theology in India seems always resistant to understanding Hindu sentiments which see this discourse merely as another western diatribe. Indian Catholic theology is merely a rehash of western movements and draws its inspiration from Patristic sources rather than any genuine appreciation of Anekattavadas.

Thus, the whole idea of studying Hinduism is defeated in Indian clerical circles. There are no Hindus really involved in this experiment. Everything is reduced to changes of names from erstwhile European ones to new Sanskrit ones. This nominalist effort as claiming everything Christian in India as ontologically native just remains polemical and superficial.

May be God wants to send a message across to the Indian Church to be more loyal to the Gospels first and then inculturate. And as a Church of praying people in pilgrimage across this vale of tears, I request your prayers for my Hindu brothers who are persecuting you. Father, they do not know what they do.

Om Shanti.

MEDIAWATCH: What’s behind anti-Christian violence in India?

Written by: Joanne Tomkinson

<!– blog ## for search indexer, do not remove –>The fire is spreading,” Indian newspaper The Times of India says, talking about the escalation in Hindu attacks on Christians in the east and south of the country. Hindu extremists have burned down churches, homes and schools belonging to Christians, and the spiralling communal violence has so far killed 22 people in the eastern state of Orissa.

 

The mobs driving thousands into makeshift government camps are complaining that Christians in the area are forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity. But has this intensifying violence been solely sparked by conversions? 

Many commentators think not, pointing to the violence’s social, economic and political roots. 

“The attacks on Christians are being sought to be justified on the ground that people are being forcibly converted from Hinduism or tribalism to Christianity,” the The Times of India writes. “But on closer scrutiny, it appears the issue isn’t merely of conversion.” 

Instead the trigger seems to be in the rise in prosperity and status that accompanies this conversion to Christianity, the paper says. 

Some Hindu groups are saying that Christian converts are still claiming job benefits by stating their religion as Hinduism on official papers, but actually practising Christianity in order to get a jump up in social class, the paper says, though it adds that there is no independent verification of these claims. 

“Religious conversion is a social issue needing address by community leaders through dialogue,” the paper writes. 

An article on news website Voice of America (VOA) picks up on this point about the social and economic triggers for the violence. 

For example, one of the groups that have come under attack in Orissa, the Panas, are among the poorest in India, Hemanth Naik, of grassroots civil rights group Forum for Peace, in Kandhamal, Orissa, told VOA. 

With “scheduled caste” status, they are one of the lowest ranks in India’s caste system. By converting to Christianity, they have been able to access the schools and health clinics run by Christians that they’ve otherwise been unable to use. 

“Conservative Hindu groups bristled at the idea that Christian groups, largely funded by Western countries, were giving the lower-caste Panas an unfair advantage,” Voice of America says, summarising Naik’s take on the primary reasons behind the violence in the area. 

The All India Christian Council, a coalition of the country’s Christian groups, meanwhile, says state neglect has also played a significant role in allowing the violence to escalate. 

“The State government must assume full responsibility. The Chief Minister of Karnataka has failed to live to his promise of communal harmony. The State Home Minister is guilty of conniving in the violence, as he disregarded ample warnings that had come in the wake of the Sangh violence in Orissa,” the Council says in an article for the Daily Etalaat Srinagar newspaper. 

This view is echoed elsewhere. 

“State governments should realise the gravity of the situation and act accordingly,” a separate editorial in the Times of India says, concluding: “Communal violence is primarily a law and order problem. A strong response from the state government should bring the situation under control in Karnataka.” 

An editorial in Indian newspaper The Statesman, however, says that there is more than political neglect at play here, and blames hardline Hindu nationalists for stirring up trouble. 

“Since 1999, BJP (political party, Bharatiya Janata Party) affiliates like the Bajrang Dal, Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, have systematically fomented communal hatred and engineered inter-religious clashes at different places in Orissa in a bid to expand their parent party’s political support base,” The Statesman says. 

“In the backdrop of all that happened in December 2007, the anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal last month was a tragedy foretold – a painful narrative of police and administrative indifference, of repeated official complicity and consistent incompetence,” the editorial concludes. 

Local politics and power struggles have definitely inflamed the violence in areas like Orissa, agrees Jacob Ignatius in an article for current affairs website Open Democracy. 

Though Christians still only make up 2.3 percent of the Indian population, and are never likely to grow into the dominant religion, the fear of conversion is very real, Ignatius says. But this has been exploited. 

“Hindu extremist groups like the VHP are fixated on the issue of conversions to Christianity – in part from dogmatic opposition to people leaving their religious fold, in part from insecurity about members of the lower castes trying to break free from the caste system,” he explains. 

That’s why the majority of attacks on Christians are directed against the formerly low-caste converts such as the Dalit Panas of Orissa, Ignatius says. Attacks, he says, which are provoked by political manipulation and fear-mongering. 

“The political instigation of anti-Christian sentiment by the Hindu rightwing for electoral gain is another danger to Indian democracy. In the interests of a peaceful, progressive and just India, it must be opposed.” (Reuters Alertnet)

Opposition challenges government on conversions

MANGALORE (ICNS): An opposition party in Karnataka has challenged the state government to disclose the details of alleged conversions to Christianity in the state.

The demand follows State Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa’s statements that the Hindu radicals’ violence against Christians in the state on last Sunday was caused by Christians’ conversion activities. Opposition Janata Dal (Secular) president H.D. Deve Gowda on Wednesday asked the government to place before the people the details religious conversions that took place during the 100-days Yeddyurappa’s rule. The chief minister’s BJP government, backed by Hindu groups, completed 100 days of being in power on Sunday. Gowda told journalists that the Chief Minister, instead of taking action against those who attacked Christian prayer halls, said conversions were the main reason for Sunday’s attacks. He should tell people how many people were converted and where conversions took place. Gowda alleged that the government was turning the state into a “Hindutva laboratory.” He said if the government failed order a judicial probe by a High Court judge, his party would hold demonstrations. “We will take the issue to its logical end.” The judicial probe might also probe Yeddyurappa’s complaint that some forces were attempting to destabilize the government, he said.

Compensation package sought for violence victims

BHUBANESWAR (ICNS): A forum working for religious minorities says victims of communal violence in Orissa need to be compensated with package similar to that announced for victims of anti-Sikh riots.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday the National Minority Front officials said Orissa government should chalk out a plan and package that would compensate for loss livelihood besides compensating for loss of land, houses and lives. The Front is a non-government organization. Its officials including state unit official S. N. Patro wanted chief minister permit NGOs and church people to reach relief to the villages and assist the violence hit people in the process of re-building. A “fear psychosis” remains in the affected village, according to Bishop D. K. Sahu, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in India. The prelate said chief minister refused to conduct a CBI probe into the violence. He also said banning violent Hindu outfits serves no purposes because they will emerge again taking different names. But he said state should check people who are spreading hatred. The Church leaders and intellectuals from all religions earlier in the day held “call for harmony” program, reiterating the secular nature of Indian nation. Speakers at the meeting stressed the secular character of Indian constitution and the need of society respecting people of different religious traditions. Christian leaders at the meeting, coming from across India, demanded action against police and administrative officials who failed to carry out their duties and responsibilities. They also urged the government to set up a minority commission in the State to restore self-confidence and sense of security among people belonging to minority communities.(Indian Catholic)