Brinda Karat writes: Harassment of tribal youth, nuns raises urgent questions about minority rights

Indian Express

2 days ago

The arrest of two nuns, Sisters Preeti Mary and Vandana Francis, and Sukhman Mandavi, an Adivasi youth belonging to the Christian community in Chhattisgarh, has been widely reported in the media. I was part of a delegation of Members of Parliament and political leaders who met them in Durg central jail. The cases against them are of forcible conversion and human trafficking. They were released after being granted bail by an NIA court on Saturday.
On July 25, three adult Adivasi women accompanied by Mandavi, their family friend, reached Durg station from their village in Orchha, Narayanpur. This was the first time they were travelling outside their district, and were understandably nervous. They were on their way to an Agra hospital to get trained as kitchen help to be employed in institutions run by the nuns. They were waiting at the railway station for two nuns who were to escort them to Agra. They had heard of the jobs through Mandavi's sister Sukhmati, who had worked at the Agra hospital for several years. Mandavi had not bought a platform ticket and was questioned by a passing inspector. This attracted attention and soon a crowd gathered, led by the local Bajrang Dal, who insisted that the group of Adivasis and the nuns, who had arrived by then, should be taken into police custody on charges of trafficking. The Adivasi women showed their Aadhaar cards, which proved that they were not minors. Their parents spoke to the police on the phone, assuring them that their daughters were travelling with their consent. They offered to make the journey from their village several hours away to make written statements to this effect. Thus, no charge of human trafficking was made out. They also stated clearly that they and their daughters had been Christians for several years. There was, therefore, no question of forcible conversion. These are the facts.
But it is not facts that mattered. The police control room at the railway station became an arena for open hooliganism. There is video evidence of Bajrang Dal memebers, led by a woman, humiliating, intimidating and shouting at the nuns in filthy, sexist, abusive language. The video shows them beating Mandavi, threatening him to make him 'confess' to being part of the nuns' 'conspiracy'. The young women were taken one by one into an adjoining room and beaten and bullied into changing their statements and agreeing that they were being forcibly taken away. The police stood by while the Constitution, rule of law and the norms of human rights were shredded. Without any independent inquiry, on grounds of 'suspicion' on a complaint filed by a Bajrang Dal leader, the nuns were booked and arrested along with Mandavi. The terrorised Adivasi women were taken to a government home where they were isolated, and when their anxious parents arrived, they were not permitted to meet them. There has been tremendous pressure on the women and the parents to give statements against the nuns and the Church. The women were released after a week of what is termed 'counselling' by the government. Statements given under custodial pressure have little legal value.
There are several issues that arise, apart from the utter lawlessness and targeting of Christians by Hindutva outfits backed by the BJP government. This is an attack on the constitutional right of a citizen to travel and work anywhere in the country. Does a young Adivasi woman who belongs to the Christian community have to get a passport stamped by a Sangh Parivar outfit to travel to another state? Why should adult Adivasi Christian women have to show evidence as to why and with whom they are travelling? This case establishes a terrible precedent that directly impacts the lives and livelihoods of young Adivasi women travelling out of their villages for work. A second issue is the nature of the attack on the nuns and the Adivasi women. Can anyone, man or woman, use language that amounts to verbal sexual assault against those in custody and not be prosecuted? This was also a sexist attack that concerns the rights of all women. Then again, the only time the brave Sister Preeti Mary broke down was when she narrated that she was accused by the hooligans of being a 'foreigner' and called a 'deemak' (termite) working against national interest: 'After all my years of work for the poor, for the leprosy-afflicted, in the most remote areas without any facilities, am I to be termed an anti-national termite? My religion inspires me to work for the poor — am I to be punished for that?'
We have heard words like 'termites' used by the Home Minister to abuse Bengali-speaking Muslims routinely, as being 'illegal migrants'. Here, we have Christian nuns being called termites. The words we heard joined the dots between that cell in Durg jail and the bastis of Delhi and elsewhere, where Indian citizens are being harassed and tortured in the name of detecting of illegal immigrants: Anyone and everyone who does not fit into the framework of Hindutva can be termed a 'foreigner' and their rights curtailed. The deletion of lakhs of voters in Bihar — mainly the poor, Dalits and marginalised communities — in the Special Intensive Revision to 'purify' the electoral lists is also being done in the name of detection of foreigners. The number of foreigners detected is negligible, but the EC's demand for documents, impossible to procure, has basically robbed the poor of the fundamental right of every Indian to vote in an election.
Join the dots of what is happening across India. The horrific aggression and arrest of the nuns and Adivasi Christians is not an isolated incident. To paraphrase what Pastor Martin Niemöller had said, 'If we stay silent today, there will be no one to protest when they come for us tomorrow.'
The writer is a member of the CPI(M) Politburo