Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Kandhamal of Orissa is in hot headlines for enmity between the followers of two religions: Hindu and Christian. The politico executive and judicial administration wants us to believe that it is a case of communality. But in reality it is a case of religious nationality.
The peoples of India have suffered the separation of precious parts from the body of their motherland in 1947 as it was a prerequisite for independence on August 15 on the ground of religious nationality when the Muslims, multiplied on this soil through conversions claimed to be a separate nation as against the nation of the Hindus.
With formation of Pakistan, Hindustan lost a great portion of its national asset and has been in constant loss due to the terrorism practiced by Muslim converts at the border.
So rise of another religious nationhood through multiplication of Christians by conversions has become the crux of alarm for the Hindus as the Christians, by concept and in practice belong to a religious nationality, as they themselves want others to know by projecting their religious head, the Pope, as a Sovereign Head of State.
It is politically significant that the Pope, because of being the Pope, is being projected and treated as a Sovereign Head of State.
This understood, there is no difficulty in understanding why everywhere in India Hindu activists are trying to bring prodigal children back to their homes through counter-conversions.
Every Hindu may act as a counter-conversionist if thereby his motherland could be saved from another division on religious nationality.
Laxmananand was such a counter-conversionist who had concentrated in Kandhamal.
Unknown assailants, who, in local perception, are Christians, have killed him
So attack on Christians by Hindus in that district is a counter-attack.
A man, face wrapped, projected as a Maoist, has told a private TV channel that members of his organization have killed Laxmanananda to obstruct religious revivalism. This assertion is being read as a Christian mischief to hoodwink the general public. This is simply because, peoples know, the Maoists cannot find any difference between a conversionist and a counter-conversionist as both of them are religious revivalists. So killing of Lamananand alone on reason of religious revivalism cannot be accepted as an act of the Maoists.
In the circumstances, it is easily inferred that the Christians of Kandhamal received the counter-impact of their own mischief after the cold-blooded murder of Laxmananand.
The assassinated Hindu activist was unambiguously the strongest obstacle that the Christian missionaries were facing in converting Hindus to Christian religion in the region. And he was killed.
The Hindu agony is increasing beyond tolerance as the Governments, both in the State and at the Center, have failed to find out the assassin of the man who had sacrificed his worldly comforts to conduct counter-conversion to obstruct the rise of a rival religious nationality again on the soil that has already suffered the disadvantage of division of the motherland by converted Muslims at the time of independence.
The Christians have gone to the Supreme Court of India through a PIL seeking orders for inquiry into the assault on them by the CBI.
Suppose the CBI takes over the case, should that automatically end the unrest?
What is the crux of their allegation that they need the CBI to inquire into? As they say it is the assault on Christians. But in reality the issue is not the assault on the Christians; the issue is counter-assault on the Christians.
It would therefore be wrong to inquire into the counter-attack before the attack is inquired into. Therefore the ghastly murder of Laxmananand should first be inquired into before any inquiry is ordered into assault on Christians.
And the assault on Christians being a counter-assault, should, instead of expenditure of so much official energy on it, be left to be settled by the Christians themselves through credible pledges that they would do everything to wipe out the feeling that they are building up a Christian nationhood like the Muslims of pre-independence era.
As long as this feeling is not wiped out, the Hindus of Hindustan cannot be, even at gun point of Police, obstructed from taking any step, including violent steps, to preempt any possibility of a fresh division of their motherland on the ground of religion.
It is absolutely wrong to say that the majority (Hindu) community has assaulted the minority (Christian) community in Kandhamal. The concept of community is a wrong concept. The correct phenomenon is that a portion of the citizenry has assaulted another portion of the citizenry and the later portion has mounted a counter assault on the former. And in this specific instance, minority amongst the citizens (Christians) assaulted majority amongst the citizens (Hindus) by killing Laxmananand and by building up a minority religious nationhood, in retaliation to which the Hindus, being the majority of the citizenry, have, if at all, mounted their counter-assault.
This had to happen. Majority citizens cannot sit mum when motherland is infested with the viruses of minority nationality.
This scenario is really painful. It would never have happened had all the religions been banned after adoption of the Constitution of India.
Every religion was a societal code that was controlling man’s behaviors vis-à-vis the Society. With framing of the Constitution these codes called religions should have been stored for sociological study only. But shortsighted politicians have played the nastiest of mischief by allowing them to control human behavior in free India. So these religions have become rivals to our Constitution and their followers have linked these codes to their respective religious nationalities.
This being the fact, Christians constitute a rival nation vis-à-vis the Hindus. Hindus form the majority. India is a democracy. Democracy is run by majority. So India as a democracy belongs to the Hindus. But Hindus have never misappropriated India for themselves. Though they were the majority in the Constituent Assembly they framed a Constitution that resolved to build up the country as a secular democracy. They gave full freedom to practitioners of their rival religions to treat India as their home and to practice their religion without obstruction. But nowhere they had said that the practitioners of their rival religions should be allowed to expand their religious nation by dragging away members of Hindu religion to their own.
In view of this every conversion since framing of our Constitution is absolutely unauthorized and blatantly illegal.
The Cuttack Archbishop’s PIL has given the Supreme Court a great chance to dive deep into this matter. The active practice of religion should be seen as active denigration of the Constitution inasmuch as the Constitution being the supreme code of conduct, parallel or rival codes of conduct cannot be countenanced.
It should be made clear that by secularism the framers of the Constitution had only meant that there should be no bar in practice of the religions by their respective followers’ families. But they had never meant for keeping the State mum when certain religions would try to encroach upon others.
If the Supreme Court gives real serious attention to the issue, it should nullify all conversions with retrospective effect from the day of the adoption of our Constitution. And put a blatant ban on emergence of religion as nation.
Words like protection to minority may look magnanimous, but if minority religions take turn towards becoming minority nations, the majority of the country’s citizenry will never sit silent. They must fight that design come what may. Because, to the Hindus of Hindustan, any possibility of further division of their motherland on basis of minorities’ religion-nation can never be acceptable.
So, let us be very clear that Kandhamal is not a case of communality as is being projected; it is a case of religious nationality.