On 2 January Kunika Kashyap was admitted to the Government District Hospital in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh state, in a serious condition following a violent attack by tribal leaders in her village. Kunika, who was six weeks pregnant at the time of the assault, received treatment for her injuries but sadly miscarried later that day.
The attack occurred when Kunika, a 25-year-old Christian woman from Bade Bodal village, went to visit an ill cousin who lived nearby. Tribal headman Ganga Ram Kashyap, the brother-in-law of the sick woman and also the cousin of Kunika Kashyap’s husband, saw her entering the house and followed her. When Kunika was sitting at her cousin’s bedside, Ganga Ram began filming her on his mobile phone, as he suspected she would pray with the sick woman and wanted to record this. Kunika told him to stop filming her, but Ganga Ram ignored her.
“When he continued filming even after my protests, I swatted his hand away,” Kunika recalled from her hospital bed. Immediately the tribal headman began kicking Kunika in the abdomen, strangling her and beating her repeatedly. His wife and daughter joined him in the attack and used a thick bamboo stick to brutally beat Kunika. She was able to escape and her husband, Mandu Ram Kashyap, rushed her to the hospital in Jagdalpur in serious pain. He said : “The initial ultrasound showed that the foetus was alive, but by 6.30 in the evening she suffered a miscarriage.” Kunika remained in hospital until 6 January and was still receiving medical treatment two weeks later.
Mandu Ram and Kunika belong to the local Episcopal Methodist Church and are second-generation Christians. Together with church elders, Mandu Ram filed a written complaint against Ganga Ram Kashyap on the day of the attack, but he thinks it is doubtful that the police officially registered the assault as he did not receive a copy of a First Information Report (FIR).
Of the 120 families living in Bade Bodal village, fifty are Christians. Mandu Ram told Morning Star News that other Christians in the village have been targeted in recent years. “We have been facing strong opposition for the past few years from the tribal village headman and the villagers”, he said. “Christians are not allowed to draw water from the same site as other villagers, nor are we allowed to bury our dead in our private property.”
Increased repression in Chhattisgarh
On 18 January the Supreme Court of India ruled in favour of the family of a pastor who had been refused permission to conduct a Christian burial for him in a tribal village in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar province. The body of Pastor Subhash Baghel had remained in the mortuary since 7 January, as his family was refused the right to bury him in the section of the graveyard designated for Christians in Chhindawada village. Several villagers protested aggressively to the burial in the village graveyard and also objected to the family burying the pastor’s body on their own private property. When the family contacted the police, they were threatened with legal action, if they performed Christian burial rites in the village.
After exploring several other options, Pastor Subhash Baghel’s son Ramesh Baghel filed a written petition with the Chhattisgarh High Court on 9 January. The High Court dismissed his petition two days later stating that the family could bury the pastor in a Christian cemetery around 25 kilometres from their village. The cemetery in question is located in Karkapal, which is actually almost 50 kilometres from Chhindawada village. Unhappy with this verdict, Ramesh Baghel appealed to the Supreme Court of India which ruled in favour of the Baghel family and reproached the local authorities for their actions.
Another example of life becoming increasingly difficult for Christians in Chhattisgarh is the fact that the state government has started the process to amend its existing anti-conversion law in order to make it more difficult to change one’s religion. The proposed amendment would prescribe serious punishment for those who are found to be conducting “forced conversions”.
Large numbers of indigenous people have been converting to Christianity in recent years in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh, especially in the provinces of Bastar, Jashpur and Raigarh. These conversions have caused controversy and even led to violent attacks on Christian converts. Chhattisgarh is being ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and one of its leaders recently stated that “religious conversions are rampant in the state”.
(Morning Star News, International Christian Concern)
Photo: Morning Star News