Communal outrages in M.P.

The gangrape of three Catholic nuns and an attack on a Christian missionary centre in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh lead to allegations of a communal mobilisation to target minorities.

V. VENKATESAN

JHABUA, a backward, tribal district in western Madhya Pradesh, is characterised by abject poverty, the lowest literacy rate in India and a high crime rate. Outsiders proceeding towards Jhabua by vehicle after sunset do so only with police protection. Years of efforts by the government and non-governmental organisations to undertake development activities and improve the living standards of the people belonging to the Bhil and Bhilala tribes appear to have yielded only limited results. However, in Jhabua, no incidents of communal violence, organised attacks on minorities or crimes against women have been reported in recent years.

On September 23, a group of persons turned up at Priti Sharan, a Catholic mission church-cum-dispensary in Nawapara village in the district. Claiming that a patient required urgent medical attention, they demanded admittance into the building. The only persons present in the church at that time were four nuns who hailed from Pondicherry and who knew little Hindi. They did not immediately open the door. Thereupon, the gang at the door forcibly gained entry. Over the next two hours, the gang looted cash and other valuables from the church and raped three of the nuns, whose cries for help went unheeded.

PTI / AP
Union Home Minister L.K. Advani receiving a delegation led by Archbishop Alan de Lastic (centre), president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, in New Delhi on September 29. The delegation submitted a memorandum seeking action against those involved in the gangrape of three nuns in Jhabua district and protection for Christian institutions.

On September 26, another missionary centre at Jamali in the district came under attack. Some persons tried to break open the door of the premises and later pelted the premises with stones. The administration alleged that some hoodlums were trying to extort money from the centre.

The two incidents, which occurred within days of each other, triggered shock waves and allegations of a communal mobilisation to target minorities. Thousands of Christians, including nuns, priests and students of missionary schools, took out a procession in Indore on September 27 to protest against the incidents. The All India Association of Catholic Schools urged the Central and the State governments to take immediate action against the offenders and sought security for Christian institutions.

Chief Minister Digvijay Singh alleged that ever since a Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition assumed power at the Centre, there had been evidence of a plan to target Christian missionaries. He asked representatives of the Christian community to identify institutions that were operating in vulnerable areas so that police protection could be provided.

The police arrested six persons in connection with the looting and recovered part of the loot. Congress(I) MP Kantilal Bhuria, who represents Jhabua, alleged that intelligence reports had warned that some Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists from the neighbouring BJP-ruled States of Gujarat and Rajasthan had entered Madhya Pradesh to carry out atrocities so as to "defame" the Congress(I) regime. However, BJP leader and former MP Dileep Singh Bhuria alleged that a gang having links with a local Congress(I) leader, who is related to Kantilal Bhuria, might have been responsible for the Nawapara incident. The president of the State unit of the BJP Nand Kumar Sai alleged that this leader was an accused in a criminal case. The BJP also alleged that the Government had transferred three Superintendents of Police in 100 days in order to protect the interests of certain criminal gangs. Observers say that the criminal-liquor mafia-politician nexus is active in Jhabua.

Even as the local unit of the BJP sought to blame the Congress(I) for the Jhabua outage, the VHP caused the BJP acute embarrassment by justifying the attacks. The VHP said that the incidents of violence directed at Christian institutions and places of worship in Jhabua and Baghpat (in Uttar Pradesh, where a convent was looted and a chapel desecrated in August) were the "expressions of the anger of patriotic Hindu youth against anti-national forces". The VHP demanded that Christian missionaries be asked "to pack up and leave the country".

VHP central secretary and former BJP MP B.L. 'Prem' Sharma said that the "assault" on the missionaries in Jhabua and the incident at Baghpat were "the direct result" of the conversion of Hindus to Christianity by missionaries. He charged the Congress(I) Government with being "unnecessarily energetic" in dealing with the incident and giving it "undue importance". He accused the Congress(I) of ignoring the missionaries' "efforts" to convert Hindus.

The BJP sought to distance itself from the VHP's defence of the indefensible, but its efforts failed to placate those who were shocked by the VHP's outpouring of hatred. Several observers said that for all its posturing, the BJP was perhaps working in tandem with the VHP, much the same way that it made a show of toeing a line independent of the VHP's militant posturing on the Babri Masjid issue before appropriating the VHP-led campaign for its political ends.

VHP general secretary Acharya Giriraj Kishore later condemned the rape, but blamed it on local Congress(I) leaders; he clarified that Sharma had not defended the gangrape or the looting. He blamed the media for giving a communal twist to a criminal incident.

The VHP's "explanation" was proffered evidently after Union Home Minister L.K. Advani appealed to VHP president Ashok Singhal to condemn the incident. On September 29, the Auxiliary Bishop of Delhi, Rev. Vincent Concessao, and the Archbishop of Delhi and the president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, Archbishop Alan de Lastic, called on Advani in New Delhi; the Archbishop submitted a memorandum seeking action to stop the atrocities on Christian minorities in India. The memorandum drew Advani's attention to the Jhabua gangrape, the Baghpat incident, the desecration of a statue at the Jesus and Mary College in Delhi, the murder of priests and nuns in Bihar, the demolition of a chapel in Malad and the recent incidents in Gujarat (Frontline, September 11). Advani reportedly spoke to Singhal on the telephone in the presence of the delegation and appealed to him to get the VHP to condemn the incident. However, the action failed to convince the Christian leaders.

The VHP denied that Advani had discussed the Jhabua incident with Singhal; Advani's reluctance to condemn Sharma's statement has also disappointed the Christian community.

The secretary of the Madhya Pradesh State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Shailendra Shaily, deplored the State Government's reluctance to investigate the link between the culprits in the Jhabua incident and the Sangh Parivar. He noted that even State Home Minister Harvansh Singh had gone along with the VHP's 'hate campaign' by stating that the Government was helpless to act in the matter because the missioners were proselytising Hindus.

Shaily said that the accused in the murder of Sister Maria at Udaynagar in Dewas district two years ago had still not been prosecuted. The murder had taken place following a venomous campaign by the VHP and its allied organisations against missionaries. Although there were allegations that a sarpanch belonging to the BJP was involved in the murder, the police did not conduct a proper investigation, Shaily said. As a result of this the accused secured bail from the High Court. The Government did not go in appeal against the release.

A delegation of the All India Democratic Women's Association visited Nawapara on September 25 and later submitted its inquiry report to Harvansh Singh. The AIDWA demanded that the Government investigate the links between the incident and the blatant communal propaganda against Christian missionaries by the front organisations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It demanded the arrest of Sharma and the criminal prosecution of Sharma and other VHP leaders who had publicly justified the attacks.

The AIDWA said that the magisterial inquiry ordered by the Government was inadequate to investigate the background of the increasing number of assaults on missionaries. It demanded a time-bound inquiry by a sitting High Court judge.

The women's organisation expressed its shock over the callous approach of the doctors who examined the nuns at the nearby Gopalpura church, where they had taken shelter after the incident. It said that the callous attitude of the police was evident from the fact that the clothes that were initially taken from the nuns for forensic tests were not the ones that they had been wearing at the time of the gangrape.

As the victims were deeply traumatised, the AIDWA urged the Government to ensure that they were provided protection and the investigation was conducted speedily and with utmost sensitivity.

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