Kandhamal is ‘graveyard of Indian Secularism’, says investigative book

NEW DELHI, Aug. 20, 2009, 15.10 Hrs (CBCI News):

An investigative book on the Kandhamal carnage and mayhem was released by former Ambassador K P Fabian, president of IGSSS, in New Delhi on August 19 at a news conference as part of the National Campaign for Justice and Peace in Kandhamal ahead of the first anniversary of the Kandhamal conflagration.

“The state of affairs in Kandhamal a year after raises question whether it is a part of the Secular Indian Republic. The impunity and lawlessness in Kandhamal make it a blot on the nation,” lamented Anto Akkara, journalist author of the updated book “Kandhamal - a blot on Indian Secularism” (that was first released in April 2009).

Elaborating on recent alarming incidents, the book cautions that “Despite winning a massive secular mandate, the Orissa government seems to be succumbing meekly to the fundamentalists instead of tackling them by the horns.” The Kandhamal administration ‘transplanted’ last month 50 Christian families of Beticola to Nandapur – 17 kms away – and allotted them plots of government land as fundamentalists in Beticola would not let the Christians return unless they became Hindu and withdrew the cases they had filed on destruction of their houses and the church.

Though the government claims that only less than one thousand refugees are left in the relief camps compared to 25000 last September, the book points out that many of refugees have not returned to their villages due to continuing threats to force them to become Hindu and so, they fled Kandhamal itself. “Thousands of them are languishing in the Saliasahi slum in Bhubaneswar alone,” noted the author.

The impunity that prevails in Kandhamal was reinforced by Justice S C Mahapatra heading the Commission of Inquiry into Kandhamal carnage and mayhem when he told the author that ‘Murderers could be innocents” justifying the police failure to arrest the culprits.

“Perhaps, it is time for the Supreme Court to take note of the ominous message from the Gochhapada acquittal as in the infamous Best Bakery acquittal in Gujarat that led to the reopening of the post-Godhra carnage cases. It is certainly time for higher judiciary to ponder trial outside Kandhamal to ensure justice and redeem people’s faith in the criminal and judicial system in the country,” the book points out.

The carnage and mayhem following the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda on the night of 23 August 2008 left dozens of Christians dead and displaced more than 50,000 Christians with more than 5,000 Christian homes, and 250 churches and Christian institutions looted and torched in Kandhamal.