Some Reflections on the 2008 Kandhamal Riots

Sailen Routray

Ravan Podi at Phulbani, Kandhamal District in 2012
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Given the specific targeting of Muslims in recent times aimed at communal polarisation and rendering this community electorally toothless, the persecution of Christians by majoritarian right-wing forces has now been receiving relatively less attention. But many of us find it difficult to forget the 2008 Kandhamal violence against Christians, that followed the murder of Lakshamanananda Saraswati on 23^rd of August 2008, the day of Janmashtami that year.

This violence occurred a few months after a three-day period of rioting around Christmas time the preceding year, in 2007, in which more than a hundred churches and church institutions such as hostels and convents were burnt down, seven hundred houses were torched and three persons were killed. But the government was able to control the tension and an uneasy calm prevailed in the Kandhamal district in the following months.  

The violence that began after the murder of Lakshamanananda Saraswati were much more widespread and lasted for a longer period of time with grievous impact on the local community. Thirty-nine persons, all belonging to the Christian religion, were murdered by rioting mobs; some reports put this figure at around a hundred. Around four hundred churches were attacked and were either vandalised or torched. Similarly, more than five thousand houses were either looted or burnt down. As more than six hundred villages were attacked and destroyed, over fifty thousand people, including a large number of children and the elderly, were left homeless. There were also reports of forced conversions from Christianity to Hinduism.

This violence was characterised as communal (broadly speaking, between the Christian pana, a dalit community, and the tribal community of Kandha, that has recently been Hinduised) continuing in a long tradition of reportage and scholarship. Over the last few decades, the violence between the Kandhas and the Panas in Kandhamal district has generated two parallel sets of narratives. These narratives have a certain consistency not merely in terms of their form and structure, but also in their geographical habitation. The first set of narratives is generated by regional newspapers and media organisations and local academics, and seems to set forth the dictum that Orissa is a ‘peaceful’ (santipurna) state and Odias are a ‘peace-loving’ (santi-priya) people, and that ‘communal’ violence, when it occurs, is an aberration.

The second set of narratives generally resides outside the state, and is generated by national media and human rights organisations, and academics based outside the state (some of them Odia). This set of narratives sees Orissa as the ‘next Gujarat,’ and sees the violence in Kandhamal and elsewhere in the state (e.g. in Bhadrak in the summer of 2017) not as an aberration but as a symptom of a thorough communalisation of Odia society, and as a trailer of things to come. As is the case with most such dichotomies, the truth is neither close to any of them nor is it even in the middle. The possibility of even starting to understand such violence in the state is available to us only when we cease asking the questions that lead to such dichotomous logjam.

Phulbani Town in 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)

Such a dichotomy as observed in the case of Kandhamal and Orissa mirrors the broader rules of writing narratives generated at the national level around the issue of ‘communalism.’ The first set of narratives in this case is merely the inverse of the one(s) mentioned earlier. Instead of positing a ‘history of peaceable coexistence’ it posits a history of millennium long communal conflicts, especially between the ‘Hindus’ and the Muslims. The Muslim league in the pre-independence era was able to create Pakistan (albeit ‘moth-eaten’) by the successful deployment of such a set of narratives; the Sangh Parivar are ideologically very similar to the Muslim league in this regard, as they also use the same set of narratives, albeit with a different political axe to grind.

The second set of narratives of this dichotomy may be loosely defined as a left-liberal one that posits that communalism was essentially a result of cynical manipulation by powers that be (be it some Muslim rulers in times of political crisis in the pre-colonial era or the British in the post-1857 period) to enable a policy of divide and rule. Most left-leaning commentators allow for the presence of the ‘communal virus’ in Indian society over a longer period of history (since we all know “‘religion’ IS the opium of the masses”). Most of the commentators of a more ‘liberal,’ post-colonial/post-modern persuasion will tend to argue that ‘communalism’ (like other categories such as ‘caste’, and ‘tribe’) is a ‘colonial invention.’ 

But these two positions are not as divergent as they seem. They seem to agree that there exists such a phenomenon called ‘communalism’ in India, that it is characterised by violence between the followers of different ‘religions,’ and that such violence has a ‘history’. In fact, they implicitly seem to argue that the historical mode of apprehension of social reality (as opposed to say fiction, or vamsavalis) is the only valid and effective one for apprehending such social phenomena.

These descriptions are a bad fit especially in an area such as the Kandhamal district in central Orissa. At first sight the ‘problem’ is a straightforward one of ‘communal’ conflict. Over the last three decades or so there have been increasingly intense conflicts between the ‘Hindu’ Kandha (classified as a scheduled tribe by the Government of India) and the Pana (a dalit jati) Christians. As put forward by the dominant narratives surrounding the conflict, the last five decades have seen an increasing penetration of the district by the Hindutva brigade resulting in an increasing polarisation between the ‘religious’ communities that takes the form of organised violence periodically.

Let’s see what this means in practical terms; such a narrative suggests that the Kandhas are a simple, gullible community that are amenable to manipulation by a few outsiders. Nothing can be further from the truth. They are one of the most resilient tribal groups of peninsular India, and rose again and again in revolt against British infractions on their traditional rights and privileges. They have traditionally been a dominant, landowning community in the Kandhamal district, and until a couple of generations back, had close patron-client relationships with the mostly landless Panas. In fact, as the saying went those days – ‘Kandha raja, Pana mantri’, to translate - ‘The Kondh is the king and the Pana is his minister’.

Meriah Sacrifice Post
Photo Taken in the First Decade of the 20th Century
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

The earliest colonial accounts in fact point at the structural closeness between the two communities. Some British officials in fact went so far as to record myths of origins of Panas that tied their community intimately to the Kandhas. In those days, the Kandhas and the Panas also seemed to share similar devas, rituals, and ceremonies, and it was not unusual for the Pana clients to attend the meetings of the Kandha patrons, albeit as mere observers.

Over the last half a century or so a section of the Panas in the district have been able to benefit in a limited manner from the various initiatives of the state and the activism of the various churches, and as a result have been able to make limited inroads into areas hitherto monopolised by the Hindu upper castes. For example, quite a few of the Panas are school teachers now. The increasingly aware and educated Panas have been recently agitating to better the conditions of their jati and obtain rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution.

This has added fuel to the fire of resentment amongst a section of the Kandhas. To a large extent the simmering (and sometimes overt) violence in Kandhamal is a result of the still-born project of development in the state of Orissa that has failed to provide viable economic opportunities to the people at large. But the 2008 violence in the district cannot be reduced to a mere economic conflict. Wider socio-cultural processes seem to also have had significant roles.

The adoption of pan-Indian deities by the Kandhas of Kandhamal is hardly a couple of generations old; in fact, the first ‘Hindu’ temple in the district headquarters of Phulbani has been constructed within living memory. So, has been the growth of Christianity in the area. The Kandhamal district has seen sustained missionary activity from the time the British extended their control over these highlands; Christianisation, like in many other colonial regions, was seen as a part of the process of pacification of these so-called wild tribes.

But it is the Panas that have been increasingly Christianised. Over the last five decades or so, the Hinduisation of the Kandhas in the district (spearheaded by the recently murdered VHP leader Laxamanananda) has been concurrent with the Christianisation of the Panas. Christian denominations of a range of persuasions, including a few of the more fundamentalist ones, have been active in the district. But concrete and reliable data regarding the actual numbers of break ups across these various groups is relatively difficult to come by.

A View in Daringbadi in Kandhamal
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Orissa has a really small Christian population; out of around 42 million people in 2011, a little more than a million (at 2.77 percent of the total) are Christians. But nearly one-seventh of the total population of Christians of the state live in the district of Kandhamal, and constitute around a fifth of its population. The processes of Christianisation and Hinduisation have meant that the Panas and the Kandhas no longer seem to worship the same/similar devas and devis, they no longer practice similar rituals, and they no longer seem to share communal spaces.

I have never set feet/foot in the district. I have never done ‘fieldwork’ there; so, my statements do not have the validity of ethnographic science. They do not even have the validity of reportage. I do not ‘know’ the reasons behind the violence in Kandhamal, nor do I have any clues about the ways out of these cycles of violence in Kandhamal and elsewhere in India. But one thing I am sure about; asking the wrong questions is the surest way of getting the wrong answers. And one of the ways of starting to ask the right questions is by looking at our own experiences unflinchingly, and by using these to interrogate the narratives offered as explanations of our social realities.

Some of the questions that one needs to ask in this context are: why different groups/tribes get associated with different ‘religions’, what is the understanding of the people themselves regarding the contemporary processes of identity-formation, contestation, and violence, what is it that makes a conflict ‘communal,’ does such a thing called Hinduism exist and what does Hinduisation mean in practical terms, is there a way out from these cycles of violence, and lastly but not the least, how is the current state of affairs in theorising in Indian social sciences implicated in these increasingly convoluted forms of violence.

Note: A different version of this essay (translated into Malayalam by Nuaiman Keeprath Andru) was published in the October 2008 issue of Pachakuthira, a monthly non-fiction journal in Malayalam published by DC Books, Kottayam.

Remains of a Church Property Vandalised in the 2008 Kandhamal Riots
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons