As I sit to write, the screaming, front-page headline of
The Asian Age catches my eye: RABRI CASTE ASIDE BY BJP.
I'm not surprised by the presentation or the pun; I know
the paper's agenda. My attention has shifted to a tiny
item: "Medical report says nun was not raped." I
sneer...
In Orissa, a 35-year-old nun had alleged that she'd been
gangraped by some men -- disguised as women -- on
February 3. While waiting to catch a bus, she had
accepted a lift from the "women", and after the vehicle
left Baripada, they had gagged and blindfolded her and
then raped her in the vehicle. The nun registered an FIR
in which she also stated that her colleagues had
convinced her to file charges. (I got these details from
the masthead news of the same paper of February 6.)
I'm deliberately vague in my recounting. For instance, I
say "vehicle" because the report by Our Correspondents
In Bhubaneshwar And Baripada cited "their car," while
today's PTI report says "a moving taxi." Ditto, "some
men": ToI cited three men, TAA enumerated two, and PTI
sets "a person." Then, ToI stated that *after* the rape,
"She managed to escape from the car when it was nearing
Baisinga..." Our Correspondents: "the miscreants gagged
her mouth and tied her eyes with a piece of cloth and
took her to Boisinga and raped her inside the car."
Short of travelling to the boonies (which this elitist
wasn't about to do), I had no way of ascertaining the
fine points. But the raggedness of the reports reeked --
as they say, God is in the details... Actually, ToI had
oh-so-fairly devoted one line to a police officer:
"Different sources have already testified that the nun
travelled in a bus and not in a car on that evening."
However, since the perpetually browbeaten were involved,
that wasn't important...
Next thing we knew, the Church authorities had
prohibited a fresh medical examination of the injured
party. And the medics resolved that the rape hadn't
occurred at all: Dr N K Mohanty of the SCB Medical
College Hospital, Cuttack, has submitted that the
injuries on the nun's person "might have been
self-inflicted."
But this is all *after* the "rape" caused "widespread
resentment." After Father Roy declared that he suspected
the involvement of "communal forces." After the Catholic
Church Association observed a protest day. After the
local Christians appealed to the collector for
protection. After the Congress' Girija Vyas toasted the
Parivar for spreading "a feeling of insecurity among all
women." And after the minorities felt suitably insecure
and unsafe. Similar deceptions -- by perpetrators and by
the Press -- have led to fatuous declarations from
Hindus now ashamed of being Hindu...
Strange but true: On the day the nun was "raped" in
Baripada, two nuns belonging to Mother Teresa's
Missionaries of Charity were threatened by unidentified
men during their visit to the Kandivili-Lokhandwala
complex in Mumbai. Stranger but truer: The good
Archbishop waited eight whole days before demanding
police protection and informing the Press about the
attack...
The ToI of February 13 moaned: "The local people told
the police that they could not understand why those men
treated the nuns in that manner. The nuns came to Vile
Parle every week and distributed free medicines to the
people, they said." And so it took the opportunity to
tabulate a series of Hindu atrocities -- in Calcutta,
Hyderabad, Orissa -- and concluded by quoting Madhavrao
Scindia: "the attacks on Christian missionaries across
the country were part of 'grand designs of the
fundamentalist forces' to divide the majority and the
minority communities. He said that the BJP had always
played the communal card to create a rift between the
majority and the minorities..."
Having established the BJP's guilt on the front page,
the hallowed newspaper -- loving tended to by Ms Dina
Vakil -- carried another report inside: "While the three
men who attacked the driver of a mobile dispensary run
by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity at a slum in
Kandivili (East) on February 3 are still at large, the
police suspect that the attack may have been organised
by local doctors. [DCP] Shelar reiterated that the two
nuns running the mobile dispensary were not attacked."
In case you're wondering why I'm splitting hairs, let me
assure you that the impetus has zero to do with the
dubious actions of missionaries. I was goaded by a
report on a discourse by the former director of
Intelligence Bureau, M K Narayanan ("who is considered
an ace thinker in his field"), on the role of
intelligence in national security. When a person of Mr
Narayanan's stature talks on the subject, I bloody well
should listen. And the first line that jumped out at me
was: "a substantial proportion of a sleuth's daily input
is based on newspaper reports..."
My insides crumbled. A neon light flashed. And
technicoloured letters danced a mocking whirligig before
assembling to spell: NOW YOU KNOW WHY THERE'S NO SUCH
THING AS INDIAN INTELLIGENCE.
The newspaper -- ToI, of course -- continued
self-congratulatingly: "[Narayanan] told a questionnaire
[sic] that newspaper reports formed a good part of a raw
material [sic] on which intelligence was based and
developed. He recommended wider reading of newspapers
not only by intelligence functionaries but other
sections of officials as well." I quietly died.
So beat me up, but I believed, or at least prayed, that
media reports would be the very last items to influence
spooks. As has become embarrassingly obvious over the
last five years, the purpose of the Press is as removed
from factual reportage as Clinton is from regret. Adults
who draw salaries for simply gathering data aren't able
to establish even the details noted in an FIR! Did Our
Correspondents and Our Bureau even go to the same police
station to copy what the nun had charged? In my book,
that's called haraam ki kamaai. And these are the
worthies on whom India's Intelligence Bureau depends. Oh
god.
OK, so you may say that the papers got some facts wrong
but that their intentions were entirely noble. Then, how
do you explain the case of the absent report on the
American missionary who was neither an American nor a
missionary? Bet you haven't heard this one...
On February 2, the Associated Press put out a report
that an American missionary, Dr John Sylvester, had been
forced to close down his Allahabad-based school and
clinic and take sanctuary in the Baptist Seminary after
being attacked by Hindu fundies. The item was naturally
picked up by our Presswalas.
Unfortunately, Dr Sylvester instantly sent a protest
letter to the news agency, declaring that he was a
native Indian living in his ancestral home, that he was
the executive director of Steward's Trust, that there
exists no such seminary in Allahabad, that he never met
any AP correspondent, that he never ran a clinic, and
that he was not even a priest!
How do I know all this? I know because the hallowed
ToI's man in UP checked (for more dirt, I presume). But
that's not how *I* know. Meaning, I couldn't have read
it if a pal flying in from Lucknow hadn't carried the
city special. You see, reports of Hindu atrocities on
minorities make headlines nationwide. But any
repudiation of the same is merely local news -- leaving
the rest of the country to nurture the fraud. Don't ask
me why Bombay didn't publish the negation datelined
Lucknow -- especially since half of the ToI has been
datelined Dangs since about four months. I'm sure the
editor's intentions were entirely noble.
On January 11, something called Tunku Varadarajan wrote
about the Gujarat uproar in the New York Times op-ed:
"On Christmas Day a school run by Christians was burned
down by arsonists... This happened a month after a Roman
Catholic priest was murdered and religious fanatics
vowed to turn an entire district into a 'Christian-free
zone.' In keeping with this promise, a chapel was set on
fire. Elsewhere, armed men broke into a Catholic convent
and assaulted two nuns inside, and another Catholic
priest was shot dead."
Excellent! In light of United Christian Forum for Human
Rights coordinator Father Cedric Prakash complaining
that "It is a question of sentiments and hurt feelings,
not just loss of property," and that "there is a section
of people which felt that the incidents were not serious
enough considering that NOBODY HAD DIED," from where did
NYT's scuzzball get the murders of two padres...?
Which, of course, brings us to the murder of Graham
Staines and his two young sons... The ToI carried a
heart-wrenching piece quoting widow Gladys Staines: "I
believe God allowed the incident to happen... Perhaps He
has done it with a purpose. [Staines] never converted
anybody; he only devoted his life to the service of the
poor and downtrodden."
Which is bollocks. Rashtradeep, a vernacular paper of
Cuttack, has written that Rev Staines did convert
Santhals in and around Manoharpur. That during the third
week of January, Staines, along with 10 other preachers,
including Australian Gilbert Venj, and two lecturers
from Cuttack, Subhankar Ghosh and Rajendra Swain,
conducted village meetings, showed films on Christ --
all mobilised towards the conversion effort. That the
"jungle camps" were used for betrothals, Bible-preaching
and baptism. That 56 families were converted on January
22 -- the day he was killed.
The article raises several other issues: Despite Dara
Singh's having several warrants against him, why hadn't
he been apprehended? If he belonged to the Bajrang Dal,
wouldn't the ruling party have terminated him? Who/what
protected him in this traditional Congress stronghold?
Why was there no police deployment during this year's
camp? Why did the police reach the spot 9 hours after
the incident? Why didn't the mob attack any other
Christian? There are too many questions left unanswered.
Details... details...
The ToI reported: "The police and district authorities
said that according to available evidence, the killings
were the handiwork of the Bajrang Dal. They identified
the main culprit as one Dara Singh... who has been
'spreading hatred' in the area against people of other
religions." I see. But do you see? The riots-related
testimonies of Bombay's police are automatically garbage
-- since they are lackeys of the BJP-Sena government.
But Orissa's...
As things stand, not a politico, not a journo has a
shred of evidence about where Dara Singh is, or which
org he belonged to, or who had masterminded Staines'
killing... All they have are: agenda, prejudice and
theory.
Like I have mine: Staines wasn't a Roman Catholic.
Non-RC evangelists, like those from the Bible Belt, are
particularly ruthless about reaching their century-end
conversion goals. It's known that in India, evangelists
are swiftly converting RCs to Protestant denominations
-- and the Church fears that. The Vatican has proved
itself to be a scheming, political institution -- right
up to Vietnam, and the murder of Pope John Paul I.
Political institutions do what they must to keep their
dominions intact. The ghastly murder of Staines kills
four birds: It sets back competing proselytisation; it
gains sympathy for Christianity; it damages the present
government; and it discredits the Hindutva movement...
Perhaps, the president of the party which rules Orissa
can shed Her Divine Light on the case. Or maybe Vincent
George can. Or Oscar Fernandes. Or Margaret Alva. Or P J
Kurien...
Tailpiece: On Sunday, a dispensary run by Catholics was
ransacked by unidentified persons in Dakor, Gujarat. The
police believe it to be a case of robbery. The Salesian
Sisters insist it's an attempt to terrorise missionaries
working for Dalits. Considering the Bombay incident,
let's not rule out a new breed of terrorists -- Medics!