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Hindutva movement in Orissa
Parvathi Meon
 Angana
Chatterji’s starting point for her study on the growth of Hindu
majoritarianism in the specific context of Gujarat was a visit she
made to Orissa in the summer of 2002, soon after the
Gujarat
riots. The Sangh Parivar in Orissa had given a call for mobilisation
for a Hindu nation. She was deeply disturbed by what she saw, by the
“impenetrable reticence amongst the majority community, and a plea
for recognition of Hindutva’s violence from minority and other
subaltern groups, accompanied by denial and obfuscation on the part
of state institutions, the media and the paucity of countervailing
response, including scholarship in English and the vernacular.” The
book under review is the outcome of her six-year study of these
issues.
There is a
paucity of scholarly writing on the genesis, growth, and current
state of the Hindutva movement in Orissa — which by 2007-08 had
unleashed a war of terror against Christian groups — aside of
activism-generated writing in the form of reports of fact-finding
groups, and reports that have emanated from church groups.
The book meets
this information gap to a significant extent.
Valuable
information
Nevertheless,
and notwithstanding the lengthy and sometimes distracting
theoretical digressions that break the flow of the story, there is
valuable and hitherto undocumented information in the chapters
titled ‘Dispositif’ and ‘Impunity’, on the process by which the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and allied organisations under the
Hindutva umbrella built the apparatus of Hindutva in the State.
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The author was deeply disturbed by what she saw, by the
“impenetrable reticence amongst the majority community, and a
plea for recognition of Hindutva’s violence from minority and
other subaltern groups. |
These two
chapters trace the story of how a Hindu right wing movement
penetrated the spheres of culture, education, and politics as it
mobilised, spread, and grew. The movement started with the setting
up of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1940, grew through the periodic
communal riots of the intervening decades, received an impetus when
the RSS sent Lakshmanananda Saraswathi (the controversial Hindu
proselytiser whose murder in 2008 sparked a prolonged spell of
anti-Christian violence) to Phulbani/Kandhamal in 1960, to culminate
in the 2007-2008 pogrom against Christians.
The historical
background to conversions in Orissa, the reasons why poor tribal
populations embraced Christianity, and the confrontation with
militant Hinduism that led to re-conversions under duress, are
provided in the last two chapters. There is a welter of detail here,
drawn from interviews and case studies, on how Hindutva workers set
the oppressed against the oppressed in deadly acts of vengeance and
reprisal against so-called “forcible conversions.”
The author was
co-convenor of the Peoples Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa that
commenced its inquiry into the communal violence and human rights
abuses in June 2005. The depositions before the Tribunal were held
under considerable tension: at one meeting in June “Hindutva
activists wrought havoc”, the author says, and the Tribunal was
slandered and discredited by Hindutva leaders.
Submission
A part of the
submission made in May 2008 by the author to the Commission of
Inquiry under Justice Basudev Panigrahi on the violence in Kandhamal
in December 2007 that has been reproduced is based on extensive
trips to the towns and villages of the area and detailed interviews
conducted by her. The last chapter offers a detailed chronological
dissection of the violence against Christians that reached a
crescendo after the murder of Lakshmanananda Saraswathi in early
2008, and the state’s vacillating and collaborative response to it.
12
August 2009
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