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Aug-29-2008
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Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is
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(Author is an independent researcher, and freelance contributor based in New Delhi, India)
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On 23rd August, 2008 Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and four others (including two minors) were shot dead at an Ashram for girls in the Kandhamal district of Orissa just on the eve of Janamashtami celebrations. While the police suspect Maoists behind the attack, there is more to it than meets the eye. For, this grand old man of 85 years had been at the vanguard of the anti conversion drive amongst tribals in the undivided Phulbani district of Orissa, which raised the ire of fundamentalist Christian missionaries of the region.
In December 2007; the secular media reported Hindu fundamentalists attacking churches in Orissa. What they suppressed for obvious reasons was the deadly attack on Laxmananda Saraswati being orchestrated by Christian fundamentalists, which V Sundaram believes was fully backed of Congress Rajya Sabha Member and World Vision chief Radha Kant Nayak on the eve of Christmas. Laxmananda Saraswati had informed how" a group of villagers launched an attack on me at the instruction of Nayak. The attack was intended to kill me and thus eliminate me from the scene so that under the leadership of Nayak, the local Christians could carry on their "anti-national and anti-social work" of illegal conversion without any hindrance in the area. This is the seventh time they have tried to murder me and I have survived because of divine grace." Unfortunately, in the age of kali it seems even divine grace has its limits.
In Orissa, the fundamentalist Christian missionaries have detected a fertile ground for spreading their poisonous culture. Laxmanand Saraswati in his interview to the RSS mouthpiece, the Organiser in December had explained how peace reigned in the region before the arrival of Christian missionaries who heightened tensions by first fraudulently converting tribals by substituting medicine for Prasad, then forcing neo converts to eat beef, setting scores of temples on fire, encouraging Kandh tribals to indulge in deforestation in cohorts with the local mafia using the Christian propaganda of trees being doomed by the lord.
Noticeably, the attack on Laxmananda Saraswati had immediately evoked strong counter protests even then by the Hindus which at some places turned violent with tit for tat responses. Unfortunately, for some baffling reasons the secular news media chose to report a completed distorted one sided story of Christian persecution at the hands of so called Hindu fundamentalists.
The day after the murder not more than one national English daily considered the news important enough to be front page material. Not one reporter ascertained the obvious maoist-missionary link up in Orissa which many suspect is prevalent in several other parts of the country as well. Conversions may be debatable but allying with enemies of the state is more than disturbing, for it is criminal and anti national.
Of course, our incredibly insensitive to Hindu interests, secular media chose to give a clean chit to missionaries by blaming the Maoists without even informing the readers of the several previously unsuccessful attempts on Laxmananda Saraswati"s life by Christian fanatics. Especially since we have news now which further reinforces the idea of "Christian missionary" involvement in the murders. The police have arrested Pradesh Kumar Das, an employee of the World Vision, a Christian Charity, from Khadagpur while escaping from the district at Buguda. In another drive, two other persons Vikram Digal and William Digal have been arrested from the house of Lal Digal, a local militant Christian, from Nuasahi at Gunjibadi, Nuagaan. They have admitted to having joined a group of 28 other assailants.
In the aftermath of the cold blooded murders, there is the deeply distressing report of a young woman (not nun) getting burnt alive. This is and will obviously make front page headlines. Needless to say such acts are unwarranted but arriving at conclusions that the attackers are Sangh Parivar activists is detestable especially when the Maoists are still at large who could have used the occasion to distract attention. Secondly, the fanatics who performed this act did not target any individual as such - the children were pulled out of the orphanage before setting it on fire and the women who was killed contrary to the earlier canards has been understood to have been just a caretaker. It may be that the attackers were oblivious to the presence of the woman and a priest within the building.
The lesson amidst all these tragedies is that if you keep pushing a particular community to the limit, the reaction can be disastrous. So far, not one reporter has demanded justice for the Hindu victims and investigation of the missionary maoist nexus. Whether the current attack on the orphanage was planned by Hindu activists is uncertain, but if the murder of justice is allowed to continue unabated then violent reactions from Hindus cannot be ruled out, their inherent tolerance notwithstanding. How can we ignore the fundamental problem is illegal Christian missionary drives like those perpetuated in the past by Graham Staine which elicited the heinous response from Dara Singh, a lone Hindu ranger and yet this same man became the highest object of veneration amongst the Hindu tribals proving how the agenda of resisting Christian missionaries appealed to them irrespective of the diabolical nature of the means employed for the same!
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