{"id":31720,"date":"2014-04-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/csw-yeo.1wp.site\/magazines\/violence-against-minorities-2105\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T20:21:02","slug":"violence-against-minorities-2105","status":"publish","type":"magazines","link":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/magazines\/violence-against-minorities-2105\/","title":{"rendered":"Violence against minorities"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">ISWAR&#8217;S STORY<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><span style=\"background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255)\">Iswar Digal had a few minutes to talk to us before rushing off to work, washing bricks for a local builder. He was once a rich man, with a garage, welding workshop, and grocery shop, which he had built up through his own hard work in the rural Kandhamal district of Odisha (formerly Orissa) state. But, when communal violence broke out in August 2008 against the whole Christian community in the area, his home and his businesses were looted and burnt to the ground. He received a little compensation for the loss of his home, but nothing whatsoever for his businesses his stable source of income in a very poor part of India.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"344\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0beCD2QbBsE?rel=0\" width=\"425\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9985741e7d24c78c7da73d8fa005486b.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kandhamal saw the worst episode of communal violence against Christians in the history of independent India. We have just arrived at the fifth anniversary, and as I have written previously, almost the worst sting of the violence was in the years afterwards, as the unresolved suffering of victims is slowly forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Iswar and his family saw their best option as fleeing to the slums on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. His mother became deeply depressed and died. Five years later, he is not happy to be there, but feels he has no choice: \u201cEverything is dark in Kandhamal. We have no home, no income, no money, nothing to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At least here in Bhubaneswar his children can be educated, and he can live in relative peace with his neighbours, with an income of sorts. For the tens of thousands of victims who remained in the area, even those most basic aspirations are often far from realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">tHE THREAT OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As Iswar\u2019s story shows, communal violence in India has a very long tail. It is also a long time in the making. We tend to concentrate our attention on the drama of physical violence, but this is fundamentally to misunderstand the nature of communal violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One scholar on political violence in India, Gyanendra Pandey, writes sagely, \u201cThe routinization of violence occurs (&#8230;) not only in the unashamed display of spectacular and brutal acts of aggression\u201d, such as this one, \u201cnor yet in the mundane, banal and everyday exercise of power over women and children, politically disadvantaged communities, and the poor. It occurs also in the construction and naturalization of particular categories of thought, in history and in politics\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, communal violence begins with the process of forming and popularising particular ways of thinking about the target community. It begins with whispered rumours and allegations, with subtle distortions of history, with a gradually rising crescendo of violence. It gains sympathy from the local government (communal violence rarely gets off the ground without this) and results in small acts of discrimination. It leaches into school classrooms. Small episodes of violence begin to happen, and go unpunished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then comes the spectacular violence, and we act surprised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We need to see a shift in thinking about communal violence, from a near-exclusive focus on attacks to recognising the long genesis and long aftermath of violence. In order to describe the Kandhamal violence as it truly is, we are therefore working with local activists to create a digital archive of records going back to the 1960s when the process of communalisation began, and presenting them in the form of a timeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1986, the Catholic Archbishop wrote to the district administration about threats and small-scale violence against priests: \u201cunless the hostile and irritant elements that daily threaten the communal harmony are brought to books (sic), we Christians are forced to live in constant fear and anxiety\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two years later, he wrote about another attack, \u201cthis incident (&#8230;) should not be seen only as an isolated event, but should be seen as part of a pre-meditated and well organised plan to harass and demoralise the Christians\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A year later, another Christian leader wrote, \u201cthe local administration did not show any sincerity for the protection of the minority group (&#8230;) as a result of which the communal forces and elements hostile to the Christian community encouraged (sic) to carry on their anti-social and anti-communal activities\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">lOOKING TO THE FUTURE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So it continues. Early intervention by the state could have forestalled the tragedy of 2008 and all that followed. It is the same story for many other episodes of violence against Christians, Muslims and Sikhs in India, and indeed similar for violence against Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus and Shias in Pakistan, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus in Bangladesh, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While much remains to be done to address the situation in Kandhamal, perhaps the best way to honour its victims would be for the government of India to introduce a bill, drafted in collaboration with human rights activists, to prevent, control, and deal with the aftermath of communal violence. The Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill is a creative and pioneering piece of legislation which seeks to hold local government accountable for its role in the instigation and execution of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sadly the bill languishes in the legislative process, never introduced in the face of strong opposition, and with the government showing no political will to see it through. CSW has lobbied extensively to see the bill enacted. We were encouraged to see that several of the countries we had briefed raised it during India\u2019s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If it is ever passed and implemented, maybe one day the Iswars of the future will not be yearning for rehabilitation and the chance to make a decent living in peace, because their businesses would never have been destroyed in the first place. That is at the heart of our vision for India.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When communal violence broke out in the Kandhamal district of Odisha (formerly Orissa) state, Iswar Digal, a local businessman, lost his livelihood. He took some time to speak to CSW about his experience.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19880,"template":"","regions":[],"class_list":["post-31720","magazines","type-magazines","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazines\/31720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazines"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/magazines"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazines\/31720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41493,"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazines\/31720\/revisions\/41493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"regions","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csw.org.uk\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions?post=31720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}