Why we hate - By Atul Sethi

Why we hate - By Atul Sethi (Sep 6, 2008, Times of India)

Kandhamal district, in the heart of Orissa, is God’s own country - an area of great natural beauty, dotted with springs, waterfalls, lush forests and green hills. Today, it is synonymous with how much we can hate in God’s name. ‘Welcome to Kandhamal,’ announces a road sign. It might have read ‘Welcome to the latest Ground Zero of India’s communal politics.’ Barely eight months after it was ravaged by attacks on Christians, Kandhamal is back in the headlines as a symbol of religious strife. For more than a week now, Kandhamal’s Christians have been brutalized, their homes pillaged and burnt, chased into the forests, left to languish in relief camps. And worse. Many have died in the spiralling communal violence. The trigger was the killing of local VHP leader Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati. Orissa has historically been witness to Hindu-Christian clashes, most notably when Australian missionary Graham Staines was burnt alive in January 1999 along with his two sons. Staines died o
stensibly for encouraging forced conversions.

But what makes Kandhamal’s newest bout of violence disturbing is its unique underlying socio-economic tension. It has left the area’s largely tribal population at odds with itself. The infusion of religious extremism stoked the tension further. Saraswati’s death unleashed the hatred already simmering within. It makes for a potent cocktail. Is Orissa becoming India’s newest laboratory of hate? "Unfortunately, it’s true. The extreme poverty as well as illiteracy of a large section of the tribal population of the state, has resulted in Orissa becoming the hunting ground of religious groups," says Bhubaneswar-based sociologist Rita Ray.

She says it has left the tribals divided "along religious lines, which is a dangerous trend". Orissa has 62 different tribal communities, which make up 22% of the total population. Most of them are aborigines, the area’s original inhabitants. The rest are settlers from adjoining regions such as the Chhotanagpur belt. Ray says it is ironic that religion now divides the area’s tribals because most of them "have followed their own religion for many years - which is neither Hinduism nor Christianity but a form of paganism that involves nature worship." They consequently have little understanding of the religion they convert into and are credulous enough to believe everything their preachers of hate tell them, she says.

Add economic envy to the pot and it makes for a deadly stew. Kandhamal has a history of conflict among tribal groups. The district has roughly six lakh people, more than half of whom are the mainly Hindu Kandh tribals. Another major chunk of the population is the mainly Christian Dalit Panas. They account for 70% of the district’s roughly 1,50,000-strong Christian community. Sudhanshu Naik, general secretary of the YMCA in Bhubaneswar, belongs to Kandhamal and says the root cause of the recent violence there was economic envy. "The Pana Christians have always been better off economically than the Kandhs. They are literate and their living conditions are much better. The Kandhs have always begrudged them this economic prosperity." Naik adds that it is hardly surprising the tension erupted into a full-fledged religious riot once "radical elements gave it a Hindu versus Christian twist."

What makes matters worse is Kandhamal has no one to explain away that dangerous "twist". The tribals do not have strong, wise leaders, says sociologist Mary G Bage of Utkal University. "The absence of effective leadership has made the tribals in the area open to exploitation by groups who have come from outside." Bage says Kandhamal’s current Pana versus Kandh conflict illustrates this sad truth. "Even though this conflict is historic, it was exploited by religious groups for their own ends." There is reason to fear Orissa may have many Kandhamals. The state is dotted with districts, notably Sambalpur and Sundergarh, where Hindu-Christian ratio is almost the same as Kandhamal. Bage dolefully cautions that "local factors in these areas may be exploited by fundamentalist forces to create a similar rift."

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