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Not all India remembers Orissa’s martyrs
by Santosh Digal
In Madhya Pradesh, the Church organised prayer meetings and blood donations to commemorate the victims of Hindu violence three years ago. In Orissa, no prayer service was held. In Kandhamal, Hindu nationalists meet to remember the murder of Lakshmananda Saraswati, whose “martyrdom” unleashed a wave of violence in 2008.
Bhopal (AsiaNews) – Prayer meetings and blood donations were held on Sunday across the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to remember those Christians who died for their faith. That day, 28 August, is in fact Indian Martyrs’ Day. For Anand Francis, who organised the event, it was a “significant moment because on that day in 2008 many Christians were killed in the pogroms that took place in Kandhamal, Orissa.”
Sadly, in that state, no prayer service was held for the dead of Kandhamal, except perhaps for some Sunday Masses or a passing reference in some homilies, said John Dayal, president of the All India Christian Council (AICC), who spoke with AsiaNews. By contrast, on 23 August, activists from the Sangh Parivar (a Hindu nationalist umbrella organisation) held a meeting to remember “their” martyr, Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati, whose death at the hands of a Maoist group led to unprecedented anti-Christian violence in the district of Kandhamal.
“The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its sister organisations, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was once a part of the ruling coalition of Orissa, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, did not forget the day,” Dayal said. In fact, they “held the whole district hostage on that day.”
Not only did police prevented outsiders from getting close to the meeting, but “I personally saw RSS officials in motorbike stop people and journalists on the road,” Dayal explained. “It is interesting that Manoij Pradhan was among the event’s speakers. He is accused in a number of murder cases and is free on bail because the court decided that as a member of the Orissa legislative Assembly he did not have to wait in prison.”
After the meeting, VHP officials submitted a report to the district collector in which they call on the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct another investigation into Saraswati’s murder. They also want a stop to conversions to christianity, a ban on butchering cows, and a stop to Christian Dalits getting false caste documents.
For Dayal, “it would have been nice for a Church, Catholic, Orthodox, Syria, Episcopal, Pentecostal or Evangelical, to organise prayer meetings and events to commemorate the victims of Hindu violence in Kandhamal or any other part of India.”
During the 2008 anti-Christian violence, 56,000 (mostly Dalit panos and Tribal Kondhs, almost all Christian) were forced to flee their homes, hiding for days in the forest without food or water before finding some security in refugee camps.
According to Indian Church figures, about 6,000 homes were looted, destroyed or torched during the wave of violence. Almost 300 churches as well as convents, schools, hostels and welfare institutes suffered a similar fate.
The authorities say about 50 people died in the various incidents, but Christian activists put the death toll at 91: 38 killed outright, 41 dying later from injuries and 12 killed in police actions.