Manoharpur (Keonjhar), Mayurbhanj: On a sultry Sunday afternoon, a group of villagers, Bibles tucked under their arms, trickle into the white building at the remote Manoharpur village in Odisha’s Keonjhar district.
Inside the bare room, the villagers, all members of the Santhal and Munda tribes, sit on a thin carpet on the ground. Soon, the thick air is filled with their singing, punctuated with the occasional Hallelujah.
The Sunday mass at this church in Manoharpur passes off as it has for close two decades — uneventfully. But this nondescript building in this village of barely 1,000 residents stands in front of a patch of land that once witnessed one of the country’s most horrific instances of communal violence targetting Christians.
In 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines was burnt alive, along with his two young sons, by Bajrang Dal extremists right outside the village church. They were asleep in their station wagon. The men were protesting the alleged forced conversion of tribals to Christianity.
Now 20 years on, the main accused in the case, Dara Singh, is serving a life sentence while the village, which still remembers the murder, has moved on.
The old church has been abandoned because of a shortage of space and has made way for a new one, which was constructed beside it two years ago.
“The only good thing that happened since the incident was that the area saw some infrastructure being developed,” said Rodia Soren, 53, a local who converted to Christianity when he was a 13-year-old. “A road connecting Anandapur to the village has come up, a primary school was constructed.”
Anandapur is the assembly constituency under which Manoharpur village falls. The village also falls under the Keonjhar Lok Sabha constituency, which voted Tuesday. Assembly and Lok Sabha elections are being held simultaneously in Odisha.
Influence of Bajrang Dal, VHP has only declined
Although conversions, albeit in smaller numbers, have continued even after 1999, civil society groups working among the tribal communities in the region say that even the limited presence that Right-wing organisations such as the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) had here earlier is on the decline.
Over 60 per cent of the population in Keonjhar and nearby Mayurbhanj districts are tribal. While Keonjhar voted Tuesday, Mayurbhanj goes to the polls on 29 April.
“It is not that Right-wing organisations were very active in the ’90s despite the Christian missionaries influence in the tribal pockets,” said Nimain Narayan Satpathy, secretary, Unified Action Council, an NGO which works among the tribals in Odisha. “But now, they hardly have any presence here.”
Rodia Soren adds, “There is no one from Bajrang Dal or VHP here now. Villagers are converting to Christianity but of their own free will.”
For the tribal in Manoharpur and other areas in Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj, it’s the conch (symbol of BJD) that resonates the most.
“Nabeen sarkar (CM Naveen Patnaik’s government) has given us rice at Re 1 a kilo, free education and hostel facilities for our children. We can’t eat his rice and go vote for another party,” says Dukhiya Soren, a 35-year-old farmer in Manoharpur.
The road leading to Manoharpur from Anandapur is mostly dotted with the green coloured BJD flags, with a few BJP flags in between.
Besides Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj, there is a sizeable tribal population in Sundargarh, Kandhamal and Koraput. The BJD won all the Lok Sabha seats in the tribal areas in 2014 barring Sundargarh from where BJP’s Jual Oram won. Oram was the lone winner from BJP in 2014 with BJD winning 20 of the 21 seats. BJD won 117 of the 147 assembly seats too as against 10 by BJP. The Congress had won 16 assembly seats.
BJP increases presence but BJD’s organisation far superior
Although the coastal districts, including the tribal-dominated Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj, are BJD bastions, the BJP has also managed to increase its influence here.
In the 2017 panchayat elections, the BJP gave a strong fight to the BJD in Mayurbhanj. In the 2014 assembly elections, while the BJD won all the seven assembly seats here, the BJP finished second in five of the seats. In four of these seats, the difference between the two parties was under 18,000 votes.
In Keonjhar too, of the seven assembly seats, all of which the BJP won, it came second in four with the maximum defeat margin being 13,551 votes.
Rajkishore Das, the BJD’s candidate from Mayurbhanj’s Morada assembly seat, agrees that in both the Lok Sabha and assembly elections, the BJP is the ruling party’s closest rival. “The contest here is mainly between BJD and BJP,” Das told ThePrint.
Das should know. He was with the BJP for 25 years before switching to the BJD recently, after he was denied a ticket. He was the Odisha Bajrang Dal coordinator and Mayurbhanj district’s VHP general secretary. Das contested on a BJP ticket in 2014 assembly polls from Morada but lost.
He says he has worked on the ground for 25 years to increase BJP’s footprint in the region.
“BJP ’s vote will now shift to BJD after I joined the party but they still have a presence here and are our main opponent,” he added.
Das said that though BJP has a presence in Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj, they can’t match the BJD’s organisation and structure on the ground. “Our organization is very strong with penetration upto ward level while BJP’s organisation is limited to the panchayat level,” he said.
The Congress has almost been relegated to the sidelines except in two to three assembly seats.
For instance, in Keonjhar’s Ghasipura where Odisha Pradesh Congress chief Niranjan Patnaik is contesting, it will be a triangular fight between the BJD, BJP and the Congress.
“Similarly, in one or two Santhal dominated constituencies in Mayurbhanj, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, which has an alliance with Congress, will have an edge,” Das said.
Also read: BJD says opposition to CBI action in Kolkata not a sign of shift towards grand alliance
Y do white missionaries dome to India ? Is it the Jesus Kamikaze syndrome ?
Allow me to present the “words of St Francis Xavier” (which should be framed in gold, in the Liber Pontificalis), of the land of the Goan filth, the “Dindoo evangelium”, as under :
The Brahmins are the “most perverse” people in the world…. They “never tell the truth”, but think of nothing but how to “tell subtle lies” and to deceive the simple and ignorant people… They are as “perverse and wicked” a set, as can anywhere be found, and to whom applies the Psalm, which says: ‘From an unholy race, and wicked and crafty men, deliver me, Lord’.,
This is what Francis Xavier said about the Hindoos of Goan Fenee land – who claimed to be offspringed from Parshooram.dindooohindoo
Y do snow whites come to India – for conversion ?
They should just support the Naxals
What is the lesson of History ? dindooohindoo
According to the “apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas” , the apostles drew lots and the Apostle Judas Thomas, who was a carpenter, got India. When Jesus appeared to him, in a vision that night,Thomas said, “Whither soever Thou wilt, our Lord, send me; only to India I will not go.”.
Allow me to present the “words of St Francis Xavier” (which should be framed in gold, in the Liber Pontificalis), of the land of the Goan filth, the “Dindoo evangelium”, as under :
The Brahmins are the “most perverse” people in the world…. They “never tell the truth”, but think of nothing but how to “tell subtle lies” and to deceive the simple and ignorant people… They are as “perverse and wicked” a set, as can anywhere be found, and to whom applies the Psalm, which says: ‘From an unholy race, and wicked and crafty men, deliver me, Lord’.,
Mr Yadav is as usual half baked in his opinions. Elections in India are won on the basis of divide and rule. This is based on communak, caste and religious affiliations. Guess he is hardly aware that mahaganthbandhan is cobbked up precisely with communal calculations. Incidently Congress had planted the seeds of divide and rule with its greedy politics. It may be worth noting that tertor accused is not same as teror convicted. There plenty who have criminal allegations with bail and standing for elections. Ask Rahul Gandhi!