A SMALL STORY WITH A BIG MESSAGE
Here’s a Reality Check

The Christian Mission arrived here on muleback in 1897. Dr John Buchanan and his Presbyterian fellows raised the Bhil Mission Church of Amkhut, Jhabua, in 1914. Now, for the first time in more than a century, the church and its followers are under siege. Spurred by a sympathetic government, the Hindu fascist fringe is unfolding its own diabolical mission against the missionaries. The church you see in the picture below was attacked and vandalised in mid-January; its adherents were told to give up Christ. This is a small story from a small village. But Amkhut may be the alarming synopsis of tomorrow's horror blockbuster. Sankarshan Thakur reports from a simmering region

FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL: Followers of the Bhil Mission Church of Amkhut

This is an unfolding crime story. We know the crime. We know the victims. We know the culprits. The odd thing about this story, even as it gets written, is that it isn't over yet; there's more to come. What we have no notion of is how deep the crime will run and how long will the criminals be allowed to remain at large. Another odd thing about this story is that in their chosen constituency, the outlaws enjoy the blessings of the law. They are in cahoots.

On the morning of January 16, a procession of 300-odd people emerged from the Sangwan jungles surrounding Amkhut and filed purposefully up the hillock where the Bhil Church Mission of 1914 stands. They were not local, tribal people but they wore their emblems loudly enough for there to be no confusion: they were carrying saffron flags and banners and they were demanding the ouster of Christ and churches from Jhabua. " Church-isaai, Jhabua chhoro, Jhabua chhoro".It was a Friday. The church doors were shut. Classes were on in the Masihi Madhayamik Vidyalaya on the premises. At first few took notice. Amkhut abuts Gujarat - Godhra and Dahod - and people had got used to the odd Hindu religious congregation or procession, especially since Narendra Modi's resounding victory in the assembly elections.

But then they could not ignore the processionists any more. They walked into the classrooms of the barrack-like middle-school, tore up posters of Christ, flung aside copies of the Bible and warned students never to wear the Cross. "Yeh Hindusthan hai," one of them said, "Yahan ab Jesus-vesus jyada nahin chalega." (This is a Hindu country, Jesus worship won't work here too long.)

Angelina Duncan, an elderly arithmetic teacher, remembers trying to reason with them. "I told them they were doing wrong things. I told them we had done no harm to them. I asked them to leave but they wanted to frighten us, I think. They would not leave. They came and erupted like a storm."

One of the kids sneaked out of a back door, clambered up the slope to the church, and began tolling the huge brass bell that has hung there for close to a century. Community members gathered and there were skirmishes. The processionists left, promising they would come back. Amkhut sighed. But worse was to come.
News of the saffron processionists' retreat from Amkhut went out on the jungle wire and lit fires everywhere. A small church at Kathiwara nearby was torched the same afternoon. The church in Alirajpur, the tehsil headquarters, was stoned and vandalised. Houses of eight Christian families in the little town were consumed by mob fury. In Punyawad, another tribal hamlet, people arrived in jeeps and trucks and began attacking Christian homes and institutions. The Amkhut church itself came under renewed assault, this time by stone-pelting hordes led by the local BJP MLA, Nagar Singh Chauhan.

The speed and focus of the counter-offensive had been stunning. It was as if the saffron-shirts were ready and waiting in the neighbourhood for a signal to swoop. Amkhut lies in a remote, underfed corner of an extremely backward district. Roads are poor, communications erratic. To have organised a multi-pronged counterblast within an hour in this famished wilderness must have taken some doing.

But then, that is what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its front organisations have achieved in Jhabua over the past two decades-a network and following that is now geared to "reclaim" Jhabua from "Christian occupation". There is scarcely a large village in Jhabua today where the Sangh hasn't left its signature-a Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra unit, or a Sewa Bharati, or a Dharam Jagaran Manch activist, or, as in a nondescript office in Meghnagar close to Jhabua, the RSS itself. "We work with specific aims and objectives and one of them is to work for a strong and proud Hindu Bharat," says Vaibhav, an RSS backroom boy credited with the obvious success of the saffron counter-offensive in Jhabua at both social and political levels.

SERIAL CARNAGE: the charred homes of Christians in Alirajpur

Till not so long ago, Jhabua-85 percent tribal-was a Congress pocket borough, a district the party took for granted. In the recent assembly elections, the Congress was wiped out. Seats like Thandela and Alirajpur, which had never gone against the Congress barring 1977, fell. Both to BJP candidates. "This is a sign that tribal society is waking up, that it is realising the power of Ram and his soldiers," says Kal Singh Bhabhar, newly- elected MLA from Thandla. "Christians have been fooling the tribals for too long, now is the time for us to correct things." I had caught up with Bhabhar in Pipalkhunta, a temple-mound on the Madhya Pradesh-Gujarat border. They were holding a "Sangh Karyakarta Shivir" (RSS cadre camp) in the temple premises, just one of many get-togethers to take stock of their campaign to "rid Jhabua" of "outsiders". The verdict of the recent elections, Bhabhar said, was clear - "log swachha Hindu rashtra chahte hain aur hum us udyeshya ke liye ladenge." (People want a pure Hindu rashtra and we shall fight for that.) And with sadhvi Uma Bharti in the saddle in Bhopal, men like Bhabhar are doubly enthused and emboldened.

Guess, for instance, how the chief minister reacted to the January 16 outrage in Jhabua? She arrived for an inspection a few days later, ordered her chopper to land on a hilltop well away from the Amkhut Church, spoke to local BJP and RSS workers, concluded that they had been fired on from inside the church, and lifted off. If anyone should have a grievance in Amkhut, she said, it is poor Hindus whose "non-violent procession" was met with fire.

The story of firing from within the Amkhut Church-like a lie repeated a thousand times-has become the unquestionable truth for some. One among the saffron demonstrators on January 16, a young man called Arjun Pal, did die of bullet injuries that day. But he was hit at Punyawad, some 15 km and three undulating hills away from Amkhut; there is no way a shot fired from the Amkhut Church could hit someone in Punyawad. But then, such is the stuff of convenient and destructive myth-making. Rev Emannuel Ariel, pastor of the Amkhut Church, and Theophilis Stephen, principal of the Masihi Madhyamik School, are in jail on charges of murder and attempt to murder. The remains of Arjun Pal, who probably just got caught in the pirouette of confrontation, are doing incendiary rounds of Jhabua in flower-bedecked pots; they needed a martyr to give that edge to the cry against Christ and Christianity. They've made one of Arjun Pal.

Melvyn Christopher is a small man with a huge heart. Else we would not have met him where we did-in the church at Alirajpur, a town that has almost entirely been cleansed of Christians now. Christopher, a doughty five-foot nothing, chose to stay. "Who would have looked after our church? It has been here for more than 90 years and it would be unfair to just let it go away."

A retired government clerk who has been treasurer of the Alirajpur Church for the last five years, Christopher was sunning himself on the afternoon on January 16 when he heard excited, angered voices heading his way. "My wife is a nurse in the local hospital so everybody respects us. I never thought they were coming for me. I just went to look." The tiny tide flung him aside, invaded the church and, by the time it exited, the ruin had piled high. A devastated mantle, broken chairs and benches, torn curtains, burning mattresses. They also entered the private rooms and broke the Christophers' little colour television, their fridge and their gas stove. "They left the cylinder nozzle open, thank God there was no fire nearby, the church would have exploded."

Last week, he raised enough money-"I have a meagre pension, nothing else"-to have cast-iron gates installed where the church doors once stood. "It looks ugly, I know," he said a little sheepishly, "but it is more secure. You don't get help here, not from anyone."

Various parts of Alirajpur were aflame that afternoon and nothing happened other than the flames running their ruinous course through the homes of Christian families. Not a furlong away from Christopher's church is a block of government houses reduced to burnt shells. Besides them is a three-storeyed private house, also owned by a Christian family, also reduced to ash and soot. "They came and selectively burnt," says Mukul, who is overseeing the construction of his own house in the neighbourhood. "The Christians had no choice but to run away with whatever they could. I don't think they will ever come back. It's a shame, they were good people and this was their home."

A few questions:
• Where have Christians of Alirajpur run away?
Most of them to settlements in Jobut and Indore where their numbers are larger.

• Why did they have to run?
Because there was nobody to defend them there, least of all the administration. They feel let down, betrayed; they have no faith in the system.

• Why didn't the State intervene?
Bluntly, because it is now in the hands of those who are collaborating with the outlaw. In Amkhut, in Alirajpur, in Kathiwara, in Punyavaad, in all the places hit by organised violence on January 16, a police post or station was no more than a 100 metres away. In all cases, nobody intervened. Why? It isn't a question that usually fetches honest answers in this country.

But there are a few clues to why the police and the administration held themselves back. In Amkhut as well as in Alirajpur, among the men leading the hoodlum gangs was Chauhan, BJP MLA from Alirajpur. A senior police officer in Jhabua told Tehelka: "When ruling party leaders are going on the rampage themselves, it is often difficult to intervene. It is an Indian reality. The message in Jhabua was clear that day and it still is: do not touch the saffron brigade."

When he first heard reports of what had happened in Amkhut and Alirajpur, Bishop Lakshman Maida, head of the Indore chapter of the Diocese of Bhopal, went to the district administration to seek help. "They said they had only got preliminary reports and they would have to wait. I asked why the police had not stirred even though it was within a stone's throw from most places hit by violence, they just shrugged. Our priests have been arrested for a fraudulent case of firing, nobody from the other side has even been questioned, let alone arrested. Can't you draw your own conclusions about what is happening in these parts after Uma Bharti came to power?"

Bishop Maida left for Amkhut the next morning but was disallowed from reaching there. He was advised by the police that it was not "safe enough in the surcharged atmosphere". He wonders what has happened in Jhabua overnight for the atmosphere to get suddenly surcharged. "The church has been working
among the people of this particular part of the country for more than a century. There has never once been a problem. What is new? That the BJP is in power. That Uma Bharti has become chief minister of Madhya Pradesh? What can we expect from her and her government?"Very little, if you were to believe the likes of Melvyn Christopher. "I have spent all my life here and I cannot leave now but I am almost tempted. The next time they come, I may not be as lucky," Christopher says.

And he is certain there is going to be another time sooner than later. "They are not doing all this to sit back and relax, they are going to take their campaign forward, here, there, everywhere if they get a chance."

As we drive back from the line of devastated Christian homes towards the Alirajpur Church, Melvyn Christopher points to the writing on a passing wall.