By Ajaya Kumar Singh

Bhubaneswar: The Karwan-e-Mohabbat, a civil society initiative of solidarity and conscience in response to rising hate violence, visited Odisha from 26-28 February.

This is the tenth state to be visited by the Karwan.

Now in its second year, the Karwan visited Gurudijhatia in Cuttack district where homes of Dalits were set on fire by their upper caste neighbours in April 2017. We then visited village Dhobatal in the same district where a Christian place of worship was burnt down in August 2017.

The Karwan’s third stop was Bhadrak town which saw communal clashes in April 2017 in which around 25 shops belonging to people of both communities were burnt down.

The Karwan also revisited Kandhamal, the scene of communal carnage in December 2007 and August 2008.

“Orissa revealed itself to be a state torn apart by communal and caste mobilization. The wounds from the gruesome killings of Kandhamal of 2008 are completely unhealed because justice has been entirely denied and the society bitterly divided with acts of sustained hatred. The state administration has failed to protect its religious minorities and disadvantaged castes but I am dismayed also that the ‘secular’ political opposition and large sections of civil society have also abandoned them,” said Harsh Mander, human rights worker and writer.

In Kandhamal, the Karwan team found the Batticola Catholic parish has now been converted into a temple. The Christian survivors, 35 families, of the 2008 pogrom now stay at Nandgiri Shantinagar with no hopes of ever going back to their homes. Their fields are now the properties of their neighbours.

“I am particularly aghast at the bias and lethargy of the criminal justice and rehabilitation process manifest whether the victims were Christians, Muslims or Dalits,” said Karwan member John Dayal.

“The Dalit houses remain unbuilt, a disproportionate number of arrests of Muslim youth in Bhadrak and the fact that thousands of Christians remain banished from their ancestral villages are dangerous to portend,” he added. Dayal, a peace worker has been working on violence and justice issues in Orissa for two decades.

“It was extremely distressing to meet the widows and families of the victims in Kandhamal, as they recounted the details of the mob violence and their struggle to pursue justice. The determination and courage of the survivors were reassuring and needs to be supported by the state as well as civil society,” said Natasha Badhwar, author and Karwan member.

Other members of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat include Sanjukta Basu, Sukhjit Singh, Priya Ramani, Amitabha Basu and Ashish Soni.