BHARAT BALLOT 09: SIX MONTHS LATER, RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 CHENNAI 000098

SENSITIVE

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KIRF SOCI IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: SIX MONTHS LATER, RELIGIOUS MINORITIES
STILL NERVOUS IN MANGALORE

REF: A) CHENNAI 25, B) 08 CHENNAI 350, C) 08 CHENNAI 315, D) 08
CHENNAI 326, E) 08 NEW DELHI 2513


1. (SBU) Summary: Nearly six months after the anti-Christian
violence that drew international media attention (refs C-E),
Christian groups in the seaside town of Mangalore, Karnataka are
still nervous. While the media attention has died down and
large-scale violence like what transpired in September 2008 has
abated, Christian leaders in the town describe other incidents that
they believe point towards a continuing atmosphere of religious
intolerance. They condemned Karnataka's BJP government as negligent
at best and possibly even complicit in the violence and harassment
toward the Christian minority in the state. While acknowledging the
BJP national leadership's condemnation of attacks on religious
minorities, our interlocutors expressed dismay for their community
should the BJP win the upcoming national elections. End Summary.

Mangalore Christians feel under pressure
--------------


2. (SBU) Although Mangalore (350 km west of Bangalore, on
Karnataka's west coast) has not experienced large-scale violence
against Christians in the six months since the clashes that rocked
the area in September 2008, local Christians are still nervous.
During a mid-March visit to the town, Christian leaders of various
denominations told us that incidents of harassment and vandalism
occur with some regularity. Reverend Aloysius Paul D'Souza, the
Roman Catholic Bishop of Mangalore, told us that two Christian
shrines were vandalized in February, for example. He also contended
the incidents received scant coverage in the media because no one
was injured. He described another incident where a Church-run
hospital was mobbed by several dozen people following the death of a
Hindu woman and another where an ambulance from a Church-run
hospital came under attack while picking up an Hindu man. A major
problem, he emphasized, is that local police are reluctant and slow
to follow up on complaints about these types of incidents.


3. (SBU) Pastor D. P. Menzez of the charismatic (evangelical) New
Life Fellowship in Mangalore told us Mangalore had seen various
levels of harassment against Christian groups in the past, but that
it had become more prevalent since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
came to power in Karnataka following the May 2008 legislative
assembly elections. He said that groups of young Hindu radicals
seek out congregations -- particularly of evangelical churches who
often meet in rented premises or homes -- and harass them. He also
noted, however, that during the September 2008 clashes, the police
actually helped his own congregation, contacting him repeatedly
throughout the day to provide updates on the situation and check on
the security of his fellow churchgoers.

Interchangeable radicals
--------------


4. (SBU) Mangalore has seen a variety of violent incidents in recent
months that involve groups of Hindu extremists targeting
mixed-religion couples. Our interlocutors identified the
perpetrators of these anti-minority incidents in the area as members
of the Bajrang Dal or Sri Ram Sena, and tended to use the names of
these groups interchangeably. A local reporter familiar with both
groups told us that many members of these organizations actually
belong to both groups, making it difficult to determine which group
was actually responsible for a particular incident. The Bajrang Dal
is a national organization that began as the youth wing of the
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP),a member -- along with the BJP and
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) -- of the Sangh Parivar, a loose
"family" of Hindu nationalist groups. The Sri Ram Sena, however, is
more of a local organization led by Prasod Muthalik, a former
Bajrang Dal convenor who left that group to found the Karnataka
chapter of the Shiv Sena (a Maharashtra-based group promoting a
Hindu nationalist agenda) in 2005. The current head of Mangalore's
VHP chapter, M.B. Puranik, told us that Muthalik was a "renegade."

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(It is not clear if Muthalik is still with the Shiv Sena or not. We
had a meeting scheduled in Mangalore with a lawyer representing the
Sri Ram Sena to discuss the group's views, but he stopped answering
our phone calls.)

Hindu extremists attempting to segregate communities
--------------


5. (SBU) A local reporter for a major Indian daily told us that many
bus drivers in the area sympathize with the radical Hindu groups,
and alert them when they find mixed-religion couples on their buses.
Groups of thugs then board the buses and harass or assault the
couples. In one case that received national media coverage in
February, a group dragged a young male Muslim and female Hindu off a
bus near Mangalore, assaulting them both and holding the male for
several hours.


6. (SBU) In another case, a 14-year-old girl from Mangalore
committed suicide after being taken to a police station by a group
of Hindu radicals who found her and a friend on a bus with a Muslim
man. Both Christian and Muslim interlocutors told us that these
headline-grabbing incidents are only the tip of the iceberg, and
that such incidents occur often, only attracting press attention
when the incident involves a noteworthy personality or a
particularly egregious act of violence. (In the February bus
incident, for example, the female victim was the daughter of a
member of Kerala's legislative assembly.)

Karnataka's BJP government: part of the problem?
--------------


7. (SBU) Our contacts laid varying degrees of blame for these
incidents on Karnataka's current government. Both the Bishop of
Mangalore and the Principal of St. Aloysius College blamed the
state's BJP government directly for the problem, particularly
stressing the complicity of the police. The Principal told us of an
incident following the church attacks in which the VHP called for a
general strike ("bandh"),requiring all schools and businesses to
close. The Rector did not want to close the college, but feared
reprisals, and requested police protection. He said that the police
refused to send officers to the college, telling him "they had
orders not to intervene." A professor at the college, echoing
sentiments we heard from other religious minorities in Mangalore,
told us that he believed many in the government (and particularly
within the police) have "a fascist mindset."


8. (SBU) The Bishop's public relations officer argued that the
government's different approaches to Hindus and Christians who broke
the law during September's violence illustrated the government's
biases. He said that the Hindu extremists (and police officers) who
actually attacked people at the churches and damaged property were
charged -- if at all -- under minor sections of the law carrying
only mild penalties. Most of those arrested, he said, were released
within hours. The arrested Christians, however, who blockaded roads
and threw rocks at the police, were charged under more serious
provisions of the Indian Penal Code, which could lead to far longer
prison sentences and fewer opportunities for pre-trial bail.

Reaping what is sown?
--------------


9. (SBU) Other interlocutors blamed government passivity or
political machinations, and mentioned that Hindu vigilante groups
may believe that having a BJP government gives them significant
freedom to pursue their goals, at least up to a point. A
Bangalore-based journalist for a national daily told us he believed
the violent episodes were orchestrated for political purposes, to
drum up enthusiasm among the BJP's core supporters. Other local
journalists said the government's other priorities made it reluctant
to bother itself with Hindu vigilantes and their activities. A
Bangalore editor of one of India's major dailies told us, however,

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the state government was growing increasingly concerned about these
groups. He said that Chief Minister Yeddiyurappa told him that
vigilante groups like the Sri Ram Sena were "little Frankensteins."

Mangalore's volatile mix
--------------


10. (SBU) Our interlocutors generally agreed that a combination of
factors in Mangalore made for a particularly volatile set of
circumstances. First, religious minorities make up a far larger
proportion of the population than in most other parts of India. The
Christians we spoke with estimated that their community comprises
some 20 percent of Mangalore's population, compared with just over 2
percent in India as a whole. More than 10 percent of the population
is Muslim. This, a political science professor told us, ensures
that these groups are not only visible, but that they can be
presented as a numerical threat by Hindu vigilantes.


11. (SBU) The second important factor is that these religious
minorities are more likely than Hindus to have had at least one
family member work abroad, bringing or sending home remittances that
allow their families to have what amounts to a conspicuously
prosperous existence by local standards. For example, many Muslims
from India's southwest coast take jobs in Middle East countries.
This trend, we heard repeatedly, has been particularly noticeable in
the last ten years and has created resentment among some Hindus
toward these religious minorities. When discussing the Sri Ram
Sena's January 24 attack on a Mangalore pub (ref A),a Mangalore
hotel manager told us that the pub had been open only for a couple
of weeks, and was very upscale. He speculated that some of the
attackers were undoubtedly fueled by jealousy, and their inability
to have the kind of money that allowed one to "buy drinks for girls
at nice bars."


12. (SBU) A third factor, applicable mainly only to Christians, is
that the area has many different types of charismatic (evangelical)
churches that are aggressively proselytizing, an activity seen as
particularly offensive by many observant Hindus. (We will report
more on this phenomenon septel.) Pastor Menzez told us that
Mangalore has no fewer than 25 evangelical churches. Although he
stressed that they are all independent, he noted that many Hindus
tend to refer to all of them as "New Life" congregations. These
congregations, we heard repeatedly, are relatively new and are
generally seen as more foreign to Indian culture than the more
established Roman Catholic, Church of South India, and Syrian
Orthodox churches.

Nervous about upcoming elections
--------------


13. (SBU) Our Christian interlocutors uniformly expressed their
nervousness about the possibility of a BJP government coming to
power in New Delhi as a result of the upcoming elections. As one
top church official put it, "if the BJP comes to power in the
national elections, we're done for." Others expressed their anxiety
with less hyperbole, noting that the national-level BJP leadership
consisted of far more capable administrators and politicians than
Karnataka's BJP cohort. They noted especially that Karnataka's BJP
leaders failed to react quickly or effectively to denounce either
the September church attacks or the pub attack, while the party's
national leadership was quick to criticize both incidents. They
also emphasized that the state-level BJP leadership has a very
parochial outlook and was unable to comprehend the international
opprobrium heaped upon it in the wake of the church attacks.


14. (SBU) This nervousness has galvanized the Christian community,
and church leaders are doing their utmost to encourage their flocks
to make their votes count on election day. Bishop D'Souza told us
that he had sent a letter to all churches in his parish to get its
members to register with the election commission to ensure that they
can vote in the elections.

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Comment
--------------


15. (SBU) While some of the tension between religious communities in
Mangalore may be an inevitable mix of demographics, economics, and
even the clash between modernization and tradition, there is also
the unmistakable whiff of politics in the air. Attacks on religious
minorities may bring international condemnation, but they are also a
tried-and-true method for firing up political support in some
quarters. Groups with strong pro-Hindutva agendas feel increasingly
comfortable operating in Karnataka since the BJP was elected to
power in the state's government. This makes many of the state's
religious minorities nervous about the prospects of a BJP-led
government coming to power in New Delhi. Although previous BJP-led
governments did not have any obvious ill effects on Mangalore's
Christians, they have not faced a situation before where both their
state and national governments are BJP-led. Their misgivings about
Karnataka's current BJP government only enhance their anxiety about
a prospective BJP-led regime at the center. However, our contacts
in the BJP's national leadership have told us that ensuring the
security and prosperity of Karnataka is critical for the party
because the state is the first BJP-ruled government in South India,
making it important to the BJP's strategy of expanding its political
base further in the South.

SIMKIN