Jhabua's Harvest Of Hate

By Harsh Mander

The Hindustan Times

21 March, 2004

A smouldering unquiet stalks the air in Jhabua. The arid undulating fields of this Bhil tribal heartland in Western Madhya Pradesh have yielded this year a vastly different harvest from the past - a harvest of hate. For the first time in the history of the district, Christian homes and properties, mainly of tribal converts, were targeted and destroyed in many locations.

As I walked through the torched and looted homes in Alirajpur - scorched walls, savaged roofs now open to a hostile sky, everything contained within these homes either looted or destroyed in malevolent bonfires, the terrified residents in hiding, places of worship desecrated or vandalised - it brought back painful memories of so many riots that I have been burdened to witness in the past in my work. Except that this time, the victims, the manufactured enemies were new, and the burning winds of violence had traversed virgin territory, sweeping through a remote tribal region inhabited by a proud and colourful people, that had never witnessed sectarian violence in its entire history. How many new frontiers of hatred will the warriors of hate open in our land?

On a quiet Sunday evening on 11 January 2004, a young nine year old girl was brutally raped and strangled in a public toilet within a church compound in the town of Jhabua. Her bloodied and savaged little body was discovered the next morning.

It did not take the organisations of the Sangh Parivar long to allege from the roof-tops that the priests in the church had raped and killed the child. Calumnies were heaped on the church in meetings and rallies organised across the district. It was even alleged that churches are bastions not only of anti-national activities but even of rape.

The Superintendent (SP) of Police, Mayank Jain, responded with exemplary impartiality and professionalism. Within four days, he arrested a young Hindu man Mahesh who confessed to the crime. The SP was immediately transferred.
Mahesh, who worked as a peon in an insurance office, lived close to the church.

The little girl sold vegetables with her 12 year old brother on a pavement outside the church. On the fateful evening, Mahesh bought vegetables from the children, but said he needed to borrow money from the church nuns. It was on this pretext that he took the little girl into the church, where he raped and killed her.

The Sangh Parivar organisations were furious with what they saw as the 'unseemly haste' of the police to solve the case. The next morning, on 16 January, a Sadhvi from Gujarat, Krishna Bahen, arrived with a clutch of her women followers at a predominantly Christian tribal village Aamkhut. There is an old church campus, where a white missionary ran an orphanage, dispensary and school hostel for nearly half a century. After her departure, the orphanage closed down but the school and dispensary continue.

The Sadhvi and her followers gathered some of the non-Christian tribal residents of the village and reached the school, where a board examination was in progress. The Sadhvi entered the classes and distributed highly inflammable pamphlets to the children, describing Christianity as an anti-national conspiracy to destroy the Hindu faith. She exhorted the Christian students to return to the Hindu faith, and abandon a faith that promotes rape and treachery. Her followers pulled off the chains with crosses that the children wore, and tore up the examination sheets. The teachers pleaded helplessly, then finally abandoned the examination and closed the school.

After the Sadhvi was finally persuaded to leave with her followers, crowds gathered at the police outpost to register their complaint. As the head constable insisted on awaiting the orders of his seniors, the newly elected Alirajpur MLA Nagar Singh Chauhan arrived with an enraged armed mob. The local residents also brought out their weapons. Bullets and arrows flew, vehicles were set on fire, and a young Seva Bharati volunteer succumbed to bullet wounds.

The SDM rescued the MLA and took him in his jeep to Alirajpur. There he gathered a large mob, as his followers exhorted revenge against the Christians on loud-speakers mounted on jeeps. The mobs then looted and burnt a number of Christian homes, mainly owned by government servants.

The subsequent police action has a familiar ring. Large numbers of Christian men, and even some women, including priests, have been rounded up. The Hindu mob-leaders, including the MLA with an old criminal record, walk free. The minorities are just beginning to learn the lessons of how to live with fear, with an openly partisan state.

Of a total population of around 12 lakhs, as many as 85 per cent of people in Jhabua are tribal. The church was established more than a century ago, but the percentage of Christians in the district is not more than 4 per cent. The manufacture of fear and hatred against this tiny minority is the result of long years of effort by several front organisations of the Sangh Parivar, especially Seva Bharati.

Their efforts were further galvanised five years ago with massive mobilisation and recruitment of educated tribal youth as RSS workers in virtually every village. They were drawn mainly from the Bhagats, tribal families converted by the Gayatri Parivar over the past two decades to vegetarianism and abstinence. The Bhagats had adopted Hindu gods and forms of workshops, like havans and deep yagyas.

In a massive mobilisation, tens of thousands of pictures of Hanuman were distributed in every tribal home, and he was re-invented as a tribal king. Triangular saffron flags were hoisted in hutments in every remote tribal hamlet.

Single-teacher Ekal Vidyalayas were opened by the Seva Bharati, and the local teachers indoctrinated into the ideology of the Sangh Parivar through a series of camps.

Typically both the Congress and the wide network of local NGOs watched helplessly. Even more typically, Congress leaders belatedly tried to join the bandwagon. As the Sangh Parivar organised huge Ganesh celebrations in which thousands of tribal people participated for the first time, local Congress leaders responded finally by establishing only their own rival Ganesh pandals!

On a wayside tribal market, discordantly festooned with aggressive saffron banners and flags, we stopped for tea at a small stall. The tea stall owner had pasted on his shop window a very different slogan from his neighbours:

Har dharam ka gulistan

Hai Hindustan hamara

(Our India is a garden in which every religious flourishes).

Amidst the swirling, steadily building storm of hate that is sweeping this remote tribal outpost, I wanted to hold the tea stall owner in an embrace.