While Orissa vies with Gujarat in the
activities of communal forces, it has lagged far behind the western
state in development. It continues to be the poorest state in the
country.
Analysts strongly believe that this sad cocktail of poverty, ignorance
and backwardness, made more potent by the continuing apathy of
successive governments in Bhubaneswar, has helped the communal forces
to spread their wings in the state.
“Acute poverty and backwardness have definitely helped the communal
forces to expand their network and activities in the state,
particularly in the tribal dominated districts,” said a political
science professor in a state university who did not want to be quoted.
The repeated conflicts between the majority Hindus and minority
Christians have centred around the controversial issue of conversion
and re-conversion. The seriousness of the issue could be assessed
from the fact that it has already caused two high-profile and
sensational killings in the state in the last one decade – the recent
gruesome murder of Laxmanananda Saraswati inside his ashram in
Kandhamal district and the brutal killing of Australian missionary
Graham Staines at Manoharpur in another tribal dominated district of
Keonjhar in 1999. Both the murders grabbed national and
international attention and brought a bad name to the state.
The conversion issue was also behind many big and small Hindu-Christian
riots and armed conflicts across the state, including two in the last
eight months in Kandhamal district which has emerged as the epicentre
of communal activities in the state.
Hindu organisations in Orissa and their supporters have always charged
the Christian missionaries, active in different districts,
particularly in the tribal belt, for long, of illegally converting poor
and illiterate tribals. According to them, the Christian missionaries
engage in developmental activities like setting up of schools and
health centres in tribal areas with the motive of converting innocent
tribals.
“Large-scale conversions have been going on in the tribal districts
like Kandhamal, Sundergarh, Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj,” insists Subash
Chouhan, a senior leader of the VHP’s Orissa unit and national
co-convener of the Bajrang Dal.
However, the charge has always been outrightly rejected by Christian
leaders who accuse the hardline Hindu groups of attacking and
intimidating the minority Christian population and the missionaries who
work for the development of both Christian and Hindu tribals.
“Conversion is not illegal. What is illegal and wrong is forced
conversions or conversions through allurement.
Christians do not believe in both (forced conversion or conversion
through allurement). Therefore, the hardline Hindu organisations’
allegation that Christians are involved in illegal conversion
activities is baseless,” said Rev P R Parichha, President of the Orissa
chapter of the All India Christian Council.
According to Rev Parichha if Christian missionaries were involved in
“large-scale” conversion activities as claimed by the Hindu groups then
the Christian population in the state would not have remained what it
is now. “If the Christian missionaries have been involved in
large-scale conversion then how come the Christians constitute only two
per cent of the state’s total population,” posed the Christian Council
leader.
But the Hindu groups don’t agree. “Illegal conversions are going on in
a big way in districts like Kandhamal. This is proved from the fact
that the Christian population in Kandhamal which was only 1928 in the
year 1961 has gone up to 1,17,954 now as per the latest census,” said
the Gajapati Maharaja of Puri, Dibyasingha Dev.
The Maharaja had recently demanded a complete ban on organisations
involved in unlawful conversions. The Hindu organisations in Orissa
have not confined themselves to violent activities alone to counter the
Christians, particularly the missionaries. They have also started
developmental works like setting up of schools and health centres in
the interior pockets of tribal districts like Sundergarh, Kandhamal and
Keonjhar. These activities have helped them to gain confidence of the
tribals, especially Christians among them, and to get them back into
the Hindu fold through re-conversion camps, popularly known among Hindu
activists as “homecoming ceremonies”. Organisations like the VHP hold
re-conversion camps in tribal dominated districts in regular intervals.
Unfortunately, the Orissa government had never made any serious effort
to check illegal conversions and re-conversions and punish those
involved in them. The state has an anti-conversion law – the Orissa
Freedom of Religion Act (OFRA) – which came into effect in 1967.
However, the law has been in cold storage and nobody had been punished
under the Act in the the last two decades.
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