PUCL's report finds Police in Karnataka colluded with Hindutva groups that attacked Christians
Bengaluru: People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) on Tuesday released a report named ‘Criminalizing the Practice of Faith, A report by PUCL Karnataka on the Hate Crimes on Christians in Karnataka, 2021’ that traces the hate crimes perpetrated against Christians in Karnataka by Hindutva groups.
The report that documents 39 incidents of hate crimes against Christian in Karnataka from January till November 2021 says police in Karnataka colluded with Hindutva groups that attacked Christian worshippers in the state.
“Given the frequency and intensity of these attacks, our report relies on the Christian community’s narratives of surviving majoritarian violence. The members of the Christian community especially in rural Karnataka continue to face threats of violence, discrimination, and survival in the course of their everyday lives,” the report states.
PUCL in its report has documented a) the attacks on pastors, believers, and Churches in Karnataka between January – November 2021, b) the modus operandi of the Hindutva groups behind these attacks and c) the patterns that emerge from these attacks.
“In most cases, Christians have been forced to shut down their places of worship and stop assembling for their Sunday prayers. Effectively, these attacks on praying in a gathering that is enforced by Hindutva groups with the complicity of the State function as a bar on the freedom to practice religion itself. Far from the right to propagate religion, today the attacks in Karnataka are actually on the right to freely profess and practice religion,” the report states.
“During the pandemic when thousands more lived on the brink of survival, instead of focusing on people-centric governance, the state was complicit in antagonizing those praying. In many cases of mob violence, the police arrested pastors and believers. They even issued formal notices to churches to stop prayer meetings. This failure of the State further marginalizes a minority community in how they live their lives struggling to access education, shelter, food, livelihood, and basic dignity during COVID,” it adds.
“The perpetrators behind these communal hate crimes in all the 39 instances are Hindutva organizations, namely Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Bajrang Dal, and Hindu Jagran Vedike. In two instances of hate crimes in Karwar (October 4) and Mandya (January 25), Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Sunil Hegde and 3-time BJP MLA Narayana Gowda (currently Minister of State for Youth Empowerment and Sports, Planning, Program monitoring, and Statistics) were also named as people who supported the police in targeting Christians. A new organization name that has emerged from the accounts is that of Banjara Nigama. This organization appears to be small but rather violent.
“What is particularly alarming is the discrimination and social boycott that the Christians have faced from persons who are not a part of these Hindutva organizations. Such as their own neighbors, landowners, employers, small businesses like grocery stores, even schools, in their localities.”
“Almost in every instance of mob violence studied in this report, it can be observed in the chain of events that the police have colluded with Hindutva groups. With the overt guidance of the local leaders of BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal, Hindu Jagran Vedike, and Banjara Nigama, the police actively work to criminalize the lives of Christians and stop them from organizing prayer meetings. This complicit role of the police emboldens a culture of intolerance and bigotry. Through the complicity, police have become an arm of social segregation strengthening of such Hindutva forces,” it added.
Adding that such attacks were in violation of Article 25 of the Indian Constitution, the report stated “When Christians pray in churches or pray in their homes, they are doing nothing more than exercising their right to profess and practice their faith. This attack by right-wing elements is nothing other than an attack on the right to profess a faith and practice a faith, leave alone propagate a faith.”
The report also addresses the role of media in setting narratives of such incidents and sensationalizing the issue by exploiting the technique of investigative journalism.
“We see that the media coverage is a mix of specious arguments, misleading statements, outright falsehoods, one-sided reporting and bias in favor of Hindutva forces and against Christianity. The reports are mostly sensationalist in nature, often deploying the device of ‘sting operations’ as if someone had been caught doing something illegal, whereas constitutionally, the activities are not only legal but an exercise of fundamental rights,” it writes.
The report highlighted the small share of the Christian population in India to deflate the claim of forced mass conversion.
It said that according to the 1971 Census, Christians comprised 2.60% of the population of India. “In 1981 they [Christians] were 2.44%, in 1991 2.33%, in 2001 2.18% and at present, they are 2.30%,” the report said.
The document added that as per the 2011 Census, Christians accounted for 1.87% of the population. “Thus, the statistics do nothing to suggest that the Christian population is increasing,” the report said.
The report pointed out that Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has publicly spoken about his plan to table an anti-conversion Bill in the Assembly.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties added in its report: “Evidently, without an increased population, there is nothing to substantiate the claim of forced mass conversions. At the very outset, these numbers are proof that forced mass conversion is a myth, a bogey that is being used to criminalize the practice of faith by Christians.”
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Congress slams Modi govt over Manipur unrest
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Friday attacked the Modi government over the situation in Manipur, accusing it of being apathetic and remorseless.
In a post on X, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge noted that Manipur started burning exactly a year ago on May 3, 2023.
"Humanity perished in Manipur The cruel combination of an apathetic Modi Government and an inept BJP State Government have virtually divided the state into two halves.
"A remorseless PM Modi has not set foot in this border state, for it exposes his rank incompetency and absolute indifference. His ego has damaged the social fabric of a beautiful state," he charged in a post on X.
Kharge noted that the people of Manipur, from all communities now know how the BJP made their lives miserable.
"People of Northeast, now know that Modi Government's shameless drumbeating about so called development drowned the voices of humanity in the region. People of India, now know that PM Modi and his Government has no iota of sympathy for the countless lives they destroyed in Manipur," the Congress chief said.
He claimed that more than 220 people have been killed, 60,000 people have been displaced and thousands, including women and children, still continue to languish in camps.
"Women were raped, paraded and horrific violence took place, but the PM kept quiet. Only after outrage, that the PM bothered to pay lip-service in August 2023, which now reverberates hollow," he alleged.
Our security personnel are getting martyred. Police trainees of two communities shot at each other and arms and ammunition were looted, he claimed.
In January, we witnessed, how an armed group coerced MPs/MLAs to attend a meeting at the heavily guarded Kangla Fort, where @INCManipur President was brutally assaulted and tortured, he said.
Kharge claimed that there is no semblance of governance in Manipur and that law and order has collapsed.
"With deep sense of sadness, we pay our tribute to the countless innocent lives who suffered this unimaginable violence and who are still suffering, searching for a glimmer of hope for peace to return.
"Due to the BJP, normalcy and peace evades Manipur," the Congress president alleged questioning the silence of the Modi government and the prime minister on the situation in the north eastern state.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh accused the prime minister of abandoning the people of Manipur and outsourcing the management of the state to the Home Minister, who, he charged, has proved to be "hopelessly inadequate, insensitive, and incompetent".
"Exactly a year ago today, Manipur erupted - or more accurately, was made to erupt by the cynical and divisive politics of the ruling BJP," he alleged.
"Hundreds of people have been killed, thousands have been displaced, and Manipur’s communities now live in a deep-rooted suspicion of each other.Security forces themselves are routinely attacked and armed militias enjoying official patronage rule the roost...What is astounding is that just fifteen months earlier in the assembly elections the BJP and its allies had received a thundering mandate. That mandate evaporated on May 3rd 2023 entirely because of the BJP's own (mis)calculations and manipulations," he said.
Even amidst this "civil war-like situation", the prime minister has been eloquent in his silence, Ramesh said criticising Modi for not visiting Manipur even for a few minutes, even though he has been to Assam, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh for his campaign.
The Congress leader charged that the situation in Manipur today is the doing of the Modi Sarkar’s policy of ‘Bluff and Rule,’ which has characterised its actions in the Northeast.
"It is a shortsighted policy that prioritises stringing communities and stakeholders along for as long as possible, without meaningfully addressing their concerns. It has blown apart the social fabric of Manipur, and it is now blowing apart Nagaland as well. The voter turnout in six districts of Eastern Nagaland, which went to polls in Phase I of the Lok Sabha elections, was a very high zero - which even the Election Commission could not revise to a higher number. The PM has talked of trailers: Manipur is itself a trailer of what the BJP will do to our wonderful diversity, he said.
"The pain and agony of the people of Manipur is the pain and agony of the people of India. RahulGandhi has visited Manipur twice in the last year, and the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra began in Imphal on the 14th of January, 2024. Today is a day when we empathise with the people of all sections of Manipur society and hope that peace and social harmony will once again return soon," he added.
