Christian missionaries are instigating Panas against Kandhas who are being squeezed out of their ancestral land in this Orissa district writes Saswat Panigrahi Battered and bruised by simmering caste and communal hostility, Kandhamal's agony is endless. Scuffled with poverty and illiteracy, the southern Orissa district continues to make headlines for rampant religious conversions and communal rupture.
Contrary to the widespread media reports blaming the Hindu organisations for the hostility, a look into the past would reveal that it is some Christian missionaries who in the name of social work have created religious conflict.
Kandhamal has two major inhabitants -- Kandhas who are STs and constitute 52 per cent of the district total population and Panas, who belong to the SC community and are 19 per cent of the population.
Over the years, a majority of the Panas were converted to Christianity, leading to an increase in the Christian population of the district from a mere 19,128 in 1951 to 1,17,950 in 2001. Of the total Christian population in the district, 60 per cent are converted Panas.
However, the Kandhas have a history of vociferous resistance for the forceful religious conversion by missionary forces -- during both the French and British colonialism. These resistances resulted in Kandha Meli (Kandha Movement), a revolution that lived from 1753 to 1846. The French colonialism succumbed to the movement in 1759 but the tentacles of conversion came back to the area with the advent of the British. Their efforts to convert the Kandhas to Christianity witnessed stiff resistance. TW Kawe, the administrator of the East India Company, in his report admitted: "The missionary activities all over the estate alarmed the people about the impending danger to their religion and civilisation, and subsequently they took to arms to defend their faith and culture."
The British left India, but the designs of conversion remained. Following the footprints of the British colonialists, Christian missionaries are today spearheading the rampant conversion.
Since long, Kandhas and Panas have been divided ethnically. Even on the grounds of reservation, STs continue to enjoy the benefits of reservation after conversion to other religions, but SCs cease to belong to any caste and hence are legally treated as general category.
The central scheduled tribe list, amended in the early 1990s, included the Kui community in the ST category. Sensing the benefit from both reservation as well as sops doled out by missionaries, a sizable number of Pana Christians, those who speak Kui language and who have lost their SC tag after conversion, wanted it back by circumventing the provision of the Indian Constitution which categorically refuses reservation along linguistic lines. This was vehemently opposed by the Kandhas.
The rift widened further after the change in the reservation status of Kandhamal Lok Sabha constituency and its three Assembly constituencies by the Delimitation Commission. Illegal encroachment of land by a section of Panas which originally belonged to the Kandhas further added to the problem. As per the Land Regulations Act of the State, no non-ST can buy or take possession of land from a tribal owner.
Christian missionaries take advantage of this by instigating the Panas against the Kandhas and inciting anti-Hindu sentiments. The violence in Kandhamal following the killing of VHP veteran Swami Laxmananda Saraswati is the result of such communal polarisation.
Though the Maoists claimed to have killed Laxamananda, its leader Sabyasachi Panda's claim that most Maoist cadres in Orissa are Christians only points to a deeper missionary-Maoist nexus.
-- Published in Op-Ed page of The Pioneer on November 11, 2008
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