Media reports on violence

DIVIDE TO RULE - Communal Attacks on Christians in India During 1997-2000: Ebe Sunder Raj, Sam Thambusamy, Ezra Samuel - Editors; Bharat Jyoti, P.O. Box 7313, 1145/37, Jeevan Beema Nagar, Chennai-600101. Rs. 50.

THE COMING to power of a coalition headed by the BJP, a political party whose connection with the RSS is common knowledge, was considered by sections among the intelligentsia, as a development that will lead to the party giving up some of its sectarian slogans.

And the fact that the party agreed to put on hold such slogans as the promise to scrap Article 370 of the Constitution, a common Civil Code and the temple at Ayodhya (in its enthusiasm to forge an alliance) was displayed by the BJP's sympathisers as an instance of this change.

But then, the events across the country - in the Dangs district in Gujarat, the tribal regions in Madhya Pradesh, in Orissa and elsewhere - when members belonging to the Christian community, their places of worship, schools and hospitals run by the missionaries came under attack, one found a whole lot of senior leaders of the BJP either holding a brief for the perpetrators of such violence and blaming the missionaries for provoking the devout among the majority community to indulge in such acts.

The book, a collection of reports that appeared in the media, brief summaries of findings by independent teams that visited such sites of violence and such documents, brings out in a convincing fashion the ``machinations of the friends'' of the ruling BJP.

Rather than reproducing the reports and notes that were exchanged among a whole lot of concerned citizens, the publishers have taken care to place things in perspective; and in doing so they have relied entirely on material that appeared in the media (along with pictures) so that the publication is not dubbed as yet another ``alarmist'' pamphlet.

The editors have taken care to arrange the documents in such a fashion that it is more of a ready reckoner to anyone making use of the publication with a view to bring out the instances of attacks in a systematic fashion; apart from presenting the details of such attacks against the members of the Christian community and their institutions in the broader context in which they were taking place since 1997, the book provides information of the kind in respect of each of the states.

As for instance, the portion dealing with Gujarat demolishes the dubious argument that was dished out by vested interests that the attacks on the churches in the Dangs district were not a new development only after the BJP had come to power there; the editors have taken care to establish that the attacks, in such intensity, began only after the BJP came to power in the State as well as in the Centre.

Indeed, the editors could have, in this context, taken note of an analysis of the Dangs violence by Ghanshyam Shah, an activist researcher who could establish a link between the increasing attacks and the agitation in the region against the big dams; Shah, after some meticulous research had concluded that the tribals in the region had been joining the anti-dam protests in a big way of late and suggested that the anti-Christian campaign was a vehicle used by the Hindutva forces to distort this mobilisation among them.

Similarly, in the section on the Graham Steines killings, the editors have presented the entire build up to the grisly act in a manner that the ideology behind Dara Singh's act is brought out so well. However, they could have made use of a document brought out by the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, New Delhi, pointing out the holes (rather gaping holes for that matter) in the ``inquiry'' conducted on that matter by Justice Mr. Wadhwa.Such shortcomings, however, do not render the publication any less valuable. Instead, such documentation of events and facts are a necessary addition at least for all those concerned about the threat faced by the society today in the hands of the Hindutva forces.

V. KRISHNA ANANTH

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