View: Orissa poll process leaves Christians out in cold

Barring a miracle, there will be no Christian candidate chosen by any political party to contest the Parliamentary and State Legislative Assembly Elections in the troubled State of Orissa which goes to the polls mid-April 2009.

This speaks amply about how the various parties – the ruling Biju Janata Dal, its erstwhile coalition partner and otherwise minority-baiting Bharatiya Janata Party, the new allies in the Left, and the old Opposition Congress Party – think of this hapless religious minority as someone to project and strengthen politically.

Patently, Christians do not matter when it comes to elections in India. But even if they had chosen a Christian candidate or two as a concession to tokenism, it remains a moot question if he or she would have won, given the acute communal polarisation in the state in the wake of the anti Christian violence of 2007-2008 that singed and scalded half of the state's thirty districts.

For the Christians in the Kandhamal district, which was the epicentre of the violence, in fact, the chances are quite dim that they will ever get a chance to exercise the Constitutional right of universal franchise. Three thousand of them are in government refugee camps, the rest are basically homeless, destitute, disenfranchised. Tens of thousands remain internally displaced persons, as a group of them had famously told the United Nations office in New Delhi last year.

My own organisation, the All India Christian Council, which has been deeply involved in the Orissa issue, is considering approaching the Election Commission of India in a legal memorandum, and the Election Commissioners individually, urging them to take a close look at the Kandhamal situation to see if free and fair elections are possible, and to take remedial action to make it possible for the people to exercise their democratic rights. We are not sure at this early stage of seeking a deferment of the elections in the Kandhamal region is the possible solution.

Democratic norms are not really the strength of Orissa. The Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata party alliance which had ruled the state eleven years – in religious bigotry at other times – broke up when the partners fell out on the sharing of seats.

Patnaik, the butt of jokes and attacks through the crisis of the last two years, suddenly found new friends, even in the Left, and won a voice vote in the State Assembly after the Bharatiya Janata party left him crying betrayal!

Patnaik is yet to take action against the BJP and its friends of the Hindutva Parivar for killing, maiming and raping Christians, and for monumental arson amounting to a sort of genocide. Probably he never will, even if he returns to power in May 2009.

The words of Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cutack-Bhubaneswar sum up the situation. Said the archbishop March 11, "Alliances and elections do not matter when life and security is under threat! My primary concern is the people of Kandhamal, not only the Christians but everyone there. Who is concerned about the affected people in Kandhamal? It is more than six months now and still the life and security of the people in Kandhamal is under threat. The state is trying to project peace by sending the people out from the camps. In some villages there is social boycott and the people are still living in fear. The Dalits and adivasi of Kandhamal feel that they have become victims of the narrow political interests of the political parties, whether BJD, BJP or Congress.

"The culprits have not been arrested and they continue to pose threat to peace. No reasonable compensation has reached the people. Every move of the political parties and opportunistic alliances are keenly being observed by the people and I am sure that they will teach an appropriate lesson to all of them."

John Dayal is the secretary general, All India Christian Council and Member, National Integration Council.