BJP & police don’t buy Maoist angle

Rajaram Satapathy TNN
Bhubaneswar: Five days after the gruesome murder of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his associates, police are still clueless about the killers. The state government still maintains that Saturday’s attack on Jalespeta Ashram in Kandhmal district was the handiwork of Maoists, but BJP — the ruling coalition partner — refuses to buy its own government’s version. Neither do the police. BJP and other saffron organizations have thrown the blame on “Christian militants” who, according to them, were intolerant to the Swamiji’s “relentless battle against conversion and his years of effort to educate poor tribals”. DIG R P Koche, who has been put in charge of Kandhamal district after the district SP’s suspension in the wake of the killing, said some people have been detained for the incident, but that the “arrest process is yet to begin”. He re-fused to say how many suspects have been detained so far. Sources say even the police are baffled over the manner in which the attack was made on the Swamiji and the weapons used. The postmortem report says the Swamiji was riddled with bullets from AK-47 assault rifles and 9 mm pistols. “The attack group had more than 40 people, all young. They had about four AK-47s, and some carried countrymade guns,” said a senior officer. “It was not a spurof-the-moment hit. They came fully prepared.” The government seized on the AK-47 bullets to point a finger at Maoists. Besides, Kandhamal has been emerging as another hotbed of the Naxalites, who are using the dense forests and hilly, uninviting terrain to hold training camps and recruit locals. Even in the Nayagarh attack in February, in which truckloads of arms from police were looted and 15 people were murdered, the Maoists had used Kandhamal as their base before launching the offensive, sources say. But the police brass is not willing to believe the government’s theory on the Maoist angle. “Any killing by Maoists is decided by its 39-member central committee and they normally issue statements, taking the high moral ground. In case of Swamiji, the Maoists have so far not owned responsibility. More so, Laxmanananda Saraswati was not a class enemy for them — a terminology they often use against oppressors and exploiters. The Swamiji spent his entire life fighting against conversion,” a senior officer said. He said Maoists normally do not antagonize local people and couldn’t be so naive as to kill the propoor Swamiji. “We believe some of their newly recruited people may have done the killing,” he added. (TNN)

Kandhmal a tinderbox

Sandeep Mishra TNN
Bhubaneswar: Caught in the vortex of conversion and reconversion, Kandhmal’s agony is manifold. Like most other tribal-dominated districts, this southern Orissa district, too, grapples with poverty, deprivation, illiteracy and malnutrition. But what is most disturbing is the increasing ethnic and communal schism that has turned it into a tinderbox. Political one-upmanship and entry of Maoists have only made matters worse. Simmering since long, Kandhmal experiencing communal conflagrations — like in the present instance or last December — isn’t surprising at all. In fact, communal violence was waiting to happen. And at the genesis of this lies the divide between the tribal Kandhs and Panas (an SC community). What was more a competition for economic resources between the two communities over a century ago, has with time assumed religious dimensions due to Christian missionaries and Sangh Parivar outfits. Over the years, a many Panas have embraced Christianity, while a significant mass of Kandhs entered the Hindu fold. And taking advantage of the religious polarization, missionaries and the Sangh Parivar have in the last few decades been playing the politics of proselytisation. While Kandhmal (formerly Phulbani district) has been split along ethnic lines for decades, the problem took a turn for the worse in the early 1990s. “The ST central list was amended with enlistment of three more groups: Kui, Kuvi, Kuee. A lot of Panas also speak Kui language and they, too, started demanding ST status. This was a calculated demand as ST status would entail government benefits even for those Panas who had embraced Christianity,” a researcher says. Expectedly, this wasn’t acceptable to the Kandhs, who feared the Panas would corner the benefits. Matters turned ugly when delimitation of constituencies changed Kandhmal Lok Sabha seat’s reserved status from SC to ST, and the Panas resumed their demand for tribal tag. “An aggressive drive for illegal conversion by Christian missionaries is the root cause of the tension in Kandhmal,” said VHP state general secretary G P Rath. The president of All India Christian Council (Orissa chapter), P R Paricha, says: “The Sangh Parivar is making baseless allegations. Preaching is done in tune with the Constitution. Nobody can deny that the missionary has done a lot of good in Kandhmal.” ‘Call out army’ Mumbai: Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the archbishop of Mumbai, has appealed to the Centre to deploy the army in the jungles of Orissa, where hundreds of Christians have taken refuge after being allegedly terrorised by activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. “It is a shocking and shameful situation,” the cardinal told TOI on Wednesday. “The state government and the police have failed to build confidence among the minorities.” TNN