HOW SOME FAITH-BASED LAND CLAIMS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

Nandini Sundar is a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, and one of those who filed the PIL before the Supreme Court to stop the Salwa Judum movement. Because of her commitment to the cause of the tribals of eastern and central India whom she has long studied as an anthropologist, she is no favourite of the right wing Shining India crowd. In the article below, she points to the  double standards of the Hindutvavadis when it comes to what she calls faith-based land claims: one standard for Amarnath, sacred to caste Hindus, and another one for Niyamgiri, sacred to the Dongria Kondhs, an aboriginal community of Orissa.

In the former case, land granted to facilitate pilgrims to Amarnath was taken back after some Kashmiri Muslims (including assorted Muslim extremist organizations, some financed by the Pakistani ISI) threw a fit, seeing it as an attempt to appease the Hindus in Kashmir. After the land grant was reversed by a shortsighted state administration, it's now the turn of the Hindutvavadis (right wing Hindu nationalists and extremists, represented by the BJP and its stormtrooper organizations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal) to throw a fit in return, repeating their rancid slogans of Hindus in danger of Muslims in India. Both the grant of the land and its rescindment are the result of electoral calculations in preparation for the November elections, and have little to do with the sentiments of local Hindus and Muslims, except to rile them up after they had settled down to some kind of uneasy equilibrium.

Niyamgiri is a range of hills in Orissa sacred to the Dongria Kondhs, but their sacred status is of no concern to the BJP-led government of Orissa, which is about to give the land away to various mining interests. The Kondhs are of course the local aboriginals, who are not on the BJP's or the Congress party's electoral priority list. So any resistance they have to the alienation of land is attributed to the maoist extremists, and is being treated with the harshness reserved for those who refuse the predatory development agenda which is a Kamdhenu for both the Congress and the BJP.

The same double standards apply in the case of religious conversions. In the same state of Orissa, there is an ongoing massacre of Christians by the VHP and Bajrang Dal after the murder by unknown assailants of Laxmanananda Saraswati, a holy man, was attributed by these thugs - with no evidence whatsoever - to Christians. The basic cause of tension between Hindus and Christians there is the allegedly continuing conversion of tribal communities by Christian missionaries. But when caste Hindu organizations urge tribals to convert to Hinduism, it is regarded as shuddhikaran (purification). Mind you, "conversion" to Hinduism itself has never been part of traditional Sanatan Dharam Hinduism but is a recent development emanating from anxieties about endangered identities. A Supreme Court decision clearly identifies tribals as non-Hindus, but never mind! One more soul saved for Hinduism is one less lost to Christians.

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Nothing infuriates people more than double standards and indeed, this
is something the BJP constantly plays upon with its accusations of
"pseudo-secularism" and "Muslim appeasement". Yet, in at least two
recent instances involving religious sites in different corners of the
continent – Amarnath in Kashmir and the 'Ram setu' in the south – the
appeasement of Hindutva forces at the expense of everything else,
including actual Hindu sentiment, is glaring. The mainstream media
does it, the political parties do it, and sad to say, the security
forces are doing it, with one army officer allegedly saying they could
not fire upon protestors chanting 'pro-India' slogans, even as they
uprooted rail tracks and smashed public property. Alas, no such
qualms were displayed when it came to Kashmiri fruit sellers defying
an illegitimate blockade or even wounded people in ambulances.
Evidently, all one has to do while abusing the law is wave the
national flag, never mind that in doing so one is cheapening the flag
itself.

Curiously, none of the television channels covering the Amarnath issue
have interviewed the yatris themselves, many of whom have disowned the
agitation in Jammu being waged in their name. Instead, they give space
to rabid 'citizen-bloggers' with little knowledge of or connection to
the shrine, who falsify its history and location in the Kashmiri
emotional and economic landscape. Ignoring the inconvenient truth that
the shrine was discovered in the 18th century by a Muslim Gujjar, one
of the 'representatives' claimed the pilgrimage was 2000 years old.
There are exaggerators among the valley people too, and clearly the
claim that the transfer of land will lead to a demographic change is
one such. But the issue is more complex. Even as the locals are
dependent on the yatra for income, they are also suffering from the
environmental impact of the increased numbers. As Gautam Navlakha
writes in the Economic and Political Weekly, the increase in pilgrims
from 12,000 in 1989 to over 400,000 today, has nearly killed the Lidder
river, with some 55,000 kg of waste being generated every year. On the
other hand, even as more pilgrims flock to the site, the extension of
the yatra from 2 weeks to 2 and a half months with the shivling having
to be buttressed by artificial ice, is a mockery of their faith, since
it is the very naturalness of such formations that are signs of
wonder. In other words, both pilgrims and locals would gain from some
balance. Ironically, however, the very party that shouts the loudest
about the safety of pilgrims, or the sadhus and saints who are trying
to act as mediators, are silent about the inadequate arrangements
leading to the death of pilgrims at the shrines of Naina Devi in
Himachal and Kota in Rajasthan, within the same week.

It is also instructive to compare Amarnath with the Niyamgiri hills in
Orissa, where a faith-based land claim – this time by adivasis and not
caste Hindus – has been casually brushed aside by everyone from
politicians, to the courts and the media.

What the two areas share in common is the worship of nature and the
traditional entwinement of such sacred groves and hill shrines with
biodiversity. Whether one should emphasise the sacredness or the
importance for conservation can be debated. But either way, this
intuitive traditional connection is being rapidly brushed aside by a
commodified, market driven and aggressive Hindutva, where faith is
identified with portable prayer cassettes, video discourses, religious
blogs and credit card offerings.

The courts have often declared in the context of personal law cases --
and the constitution's reservation clauses reinforce this -- that
adivasis are not Hindus. In which case, their religious sites deserve
as much protection as Hindu sites, if not more, since they are
irreplaceable. While Hindus can visit Amarnath or Vaishno Devi or any
one of a number of teerths, all that the Dongria Kondhs have is their
Niyamgiri hills, the sacred home of the Niyam Raja, their law giver.
Destroy the hill and you have destroyed an entire religion. Yet when
the lawyer for the Kondhs tried to represent this point in the court
in the face of government efforts to hand the land over to a private
company for mining, he was not allowed to speak. Compare this to the
patient hearing the Courts gave the Ram Setu petitioners or the
protracted discussion in the Australian courts of aboriginal faith in
the Hindmarsh bridge affair. While the Courts may feel they have done
their bit for tribal welfare, and indeed, insisting on special
provisions for tribal development is important, it is clear that the
Kondhs feel otherwise. What is a special fund of Rs 10 crore against
the loss of an entire way of life and religious system? Yet if the
Kondhs were to rebel in the name of their faith or their livelihood,
we know they would not be treated with the kid gloves being used for
the Jammu agitators. There would be no dialogue here, only the charge
of Naxalism.

Even if faith was not at issue, there are very sound environmental
reasons not to allow Vedanta to blast Niyamgiri. When experts predict
water scarcity on a colossal scale, how wise is it to destroy a
forested hill top which feeds 32 streams and two rivers?

When the faith of a small defenceless group can be ignored with
impunity while agitators of one religion who don't even speak for
their co-religionists get special treatment, the country is sending
out a strong message. But whether that message is compatible with our
constitution and our civilisational traditions is another question.

Comments

[Fil Munas]

I despair for India and its polity.

I recently saw an article given prominent coverage in the American press, headlined, "Even in flood, India's `untouchables' last rescued." It went on to say, "Dalits, the social outcasts at the bottom of the Hindu caste ladder, have borne the brunt of the devastation as the rampaging Kosi River swamped hundreds of square miles in northern India after it overflowed and shifted its course dozens of miles to the east."

What does this tell you about a people and a culture that would rather kill to worship an icicle in Amarnath cave than help their fellow humans in a catastrophe?

Dr. Binayak Sen's saga is a reminder of this monumental insanity. Binayak's unique example could serve as a catalyst to exorcise this foolishness and save India from itself.

[KB]

Thanks for this article. Couldn't find it on the net.