Many homeless after India violence

Original Trackback URL

By Dan Isaacs BBC News, Kandhamal

Violence has now abated in the region

Hundreds of families in a remote region of the eastern Indian state of Orissa remain homeless after a wave of violence swept the region last month.

Four people were killed in the fighting between hardline Hindus and Christians in Kandhamal district.

Tension erupted over the issue of Hindus converting to Christianity.

Orissa, which is mainly Hindu and has a tiny Christian minority, has seen violence between the two communities in the past.

The minority Christian community in Kandhamal district, many of whom are forest tribal people and low-caste converts to Christianity, say they have been targeted by Hindu nationalist organisations seeking to put an end to the church and its activities in the region.

Parts of the district have remained under night-time curfew since the tensions erupted, and has been largely inaccessible to foreign journalists.

Blame game

Village after village along the forested roads of this remote highland district lie in ruins.

Shops and houses have been gutted by fire and churches ransacked.

The frenzied violence has now largely abated, but the plight of the people affected is severe - living in the shells of their burnt out homes, all their possessions lost.

Police units, deployed from outside the area, are enforcing a night-time curfew in the worst affected towns.

No side is left blameless in this conflict.

After the initial attacks on Church institutions, and the homes of Christian families, Christian mobs took up the struggle and responded in kind.

There have been widespread protests against the violence

Christian groups in the area firmly blame extreme Hindu nationalist organisations, stirring up trouble.

And it is certainly true that the mobs that attacked the churches were chanting Hindu, as well as anti-Christian, slogans as they did so.

But talk to the tribal Hindu community, and they will tell you that the Christians are to blame: with their provocative demands for the same preferential access to jobs and education that the tribal and low-caste Hindu communities receive.

The dynamics of conflict are rarely easy to dissect.

But what is evident in the weeks following the outbreak of this crisis, is that the response from the state government has been both slow and extremely limited.

The people of Kandhamal, many still without adequate food and shelter, face a very difficult few months ahead.