The recent death of Archbishop Emeritus Raphael Cheenath coincides poignantly with the days when we recall the martyrdom of perhaps the largest single group of Christians in India in many centuries.
The orchestrated pogrom, a targeted violence on Dalits and Tribal communities in the Kandhamal forest district of Odisha in 2008 speaks of the penetration of militant Hindutva groups into the deepest hinterland where they seek to challenge freedom of faith of the common people, in the process exploiting State impunity and the possible complicity of police and other government apparatus.
That over 60,000 people, who were displaced after 6,000 and more homes were destroyed in several days of mayhem, which had to struggle for years in the Supreme Court of India to get a modicum of justice speaks of the prevailing situation.
The Supreme Court, which had first overruled the local government to allow Christians to bring relief to the victims, not only enhanced financial compensation, but ordered fresh enquiry into over 300 criminal cases in the district. The late Archbishop Cheenath has been partly vindicated. But the struggle he led in his lifetime continues, for any more crimes need investigation.
The recent Supreme Court ruling which increases the monetary compensation paid to some of the 6,000 Christian families whose homes were destroyed in the 2008 targeted violence is some help. But this sort of pales do happen when it is compared to the compensation to some other communities, or to the dead in natural disasters in some states.
Also, the court has not given any relief to the demand that the state also pay to repair or reconstruct the 300 and more church buildings, big and small, that were also destroyed. In fact there are churches that were rebuilt after the Christmas 2007 violence, and were destroyed a second time in the 2008 pogrom.
It needs be remembered that the provincial governments spend huge amounts of money in supporting religious festivals of some communities. There is therefore possibly more to be said for the Supreme Court ordering fresh investigations into over 300 cases of anti Christian violence where the police had been either incompetent or complicit and had ceased further probe. These cases were never brought to trial, or summarily closed.
The fresh investigations ordered by the court also strengthen our position in another public interest write before the Supreme Court which seeks fresh probes into the violence as witnesses were intimidated by the Sangh Parivar and local criminals, or the State departments of prosecution had failed to do their duty.
It needs to be also remembered at all times that the victims were Dalits and indigenous people, Tribals. They are the poorest of the poor in India, and the most vulnerable. But justice is not just winning or losing a criminal case, or some criminals going to jail. It is a comprehensive situation.
The victims must feel the state cares for them as citizens, they must feel they have been rehabilitated, that there is employment that the children have overcome the break in their education, and that women who were assaulted are healed psychologically and spiritually.
The poor are resilient. Those who lost their land are now working as landless labor or as casual labor in towns and cities across the country. They are displaced persons. There are huge slums where Christians from Kandhamal now live 250 kilometers away from their villages, in Bhubaneswar. Many live and work in distant Kerala.
I suppose they will survive, as refugees of a sort, displaced persons. As the poor survive in India, but they need dignity, and hopefully work close to home. India is concerned at the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. This is just and proper. It is also, quite correctly, worried for the Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh. It speaks out against Nepal for its maltreatment to people of Indian origin.
It is important to speak out against injustice, against partisanship, against threats to violence, and against hate. When these happen against religious and ethnic minorities in India, surely the world must notice, and speak.