By John Dayal
Bhubaneswar: The sound of the Kui dialect speaks of a decade’s pain in Kandhamal district, Odisha, Eastern India.
The sound of the Kui dialect resonates in the tin-roofed Church as Father Manoj Nayak, social activists interprets Harsh Mander and the members of the Karwan-e-Mohabbat, a civil society initiative of solidarity and conscience, to the women and men of Shanti Nagar (near G Udayagiri town in Kandhamal), the settlement created by the Odisha government to house Christians who have been told they cannot return to their villages, particularly Batticola less than 50 km away.
There are widows here, and people who were fed cow dung in ‘cleansing’ rituals, and others, to tell the twin tale of brutality and failure of resentment processes in communal violence in the country.
Ten years on, wounds remain raw, memories fresh, and fear alive. “It is a nightmare that will not go away.”
Instant recall: August 23, 2008, in the wake of the Maoists’ murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad Vice leader Lakshmananda Saraswati, about 500 villages were attacked in the district, 6,000 houses and 320 small and big churches and institutions burnt.
A nun and other women were gang-raped, several priests and 120 others brutally murdered. The toll would be higher but for 60,000 Christians taking shelter in the forests close by.
More than 30,000 remained in Government refugee camps for a year, other in private camps and homes. More than 5,000 have not returned.
Many young women are feared trafficked. The farmlands have been grabbed by neighbours. The church is one village is now a temple.
Employment is a key issue. The Supreme Court intervened in response to four Public Interest Litigations, but the government has fallen short of the Court’s orders.