In the electoral politics of Tamil Nadu, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is nothing more than a fringe player. The same cannot be said for the Hindutva ideology of the saffron party which appears to be growing deep roots in the state that prides itself on its Dravidian brand of politics. According to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the Supreme Court by a group of Christian organisations in August this year, Tamil Nadu has been witnessing an alarmingly high number of hate crimes against Christians and their institutions since 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed power.
When TNM decided to hit the ground and investigate the claims of anti-Christian violence in the state, we not only found strong traces of the ideology of hate in the interior parts of the state but also discovered cases where the police and bureaucracy are also hostile to the missionaries.
In 2019, Tamil Nadu was second only to Uttar Pradesh when it came to hate crimes against Christians, (see table) according to statistics compiled by the United Christian Forum (UCF), one of the petitioners in the PIL. A bulk of the hate crimes were recorded in BJP-ruled states or in states where the party has a strong presence. Tamil Nadu presents the only exception to this trend.
According to UCF, there were 227 instances of hate crimes in Tamil Nadu between 2014 and 2022 in which Christian communities, pastors and churches were targeted by Hindutva extremists. The reports are based on the information collected by the UCF helpline, a toll-free number that was launched in January 2015 to help victims with legal remedies. The UCF report compiled a range of incidents involving disrupting prayers and attacking believers, attacking/abusing pastors and their family members, and vandalising churches.
Nearly half of the incidents (117) were reported from the Kongu region and nearby, made up of Coimbatore, Erode, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Salem, Namakkal, Karur, Dindigul, Tirupur as well as parts of Madurai district. This region, which is dominated by the landed and politically influential Gounder and Thevar castes, is otherwise notorious for atrocities against Dalits.
We met pastors who shared that they have been evicted from the spaces they rented for prayer meetings, and attacked on accusations of conversion by Hindutva forces, chief among them the Hindu Munnani. The playbook in many attacks in the region is almost identical: identify a church or prayer service, incite the neighbouring residents by claiming conversion, surround and attack the churches, pastors, their families, and prayer halls, get the police involved, and force the landlord to evict them from the premises by threatening further violence.
While it wasn’t difficult to access the victims of the anti-Christian violence, we were more keen to hear from the alleged perpetrators. Our quest led us to Coimbatore, the Hindutva laboratory of Tamil Nadu and stronghold of the Hindu Munnani. Coimbatore topped the Kongu region with 42 incidents of hate crimes, according to the UCF report. While the city has traditionally seen extreme communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, anti-Christian violence is a relatively new phenomenon in Coimbatore. And the Munnani is at the forefront of this campaign, police sources said.
The Hindu Munnani
A militant affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which started in the early 1980s, the Munnani grew exponentially in the early 1990s by organising Vinayaka Chaturthi festivals with the tacit support of the then All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government of J Jayalalithaa. These festivities, which involved taking out massive public processions, often degenerated into riots as organisers insisted on passing through neighbourhoods dominated by Muslims. But in the last decade, the Munnani has started focusing their attention on Christians, a top police official in Coimbatore said on the condition of anonymity.
The Munnani has one person designated to keep a watch on the Christian community in every neighbourhood of the city, said the organisation’s Coimbatore South district secretary, Govindraj Natarajan. “We have designated Hindu Munnani members in all the 100 wards in Coimbatore. We immediately get to know when a non-Hindu takes residence in any ward in the city. We know if they are involved in conversion or just leading normal lives.”
The police, who are aware of these ward-level watchers, say that they are highly trained. “You will rarely see them in the forefront when violence breaks out. They are not in it to become leaders of agitations. Their role is to work quietly in the community and provoke violence rather than participate in it,” said the senior police officer in Coimbatore.
Meeting Govindraj Natarajan at his home in Myleripalayam was a peculiar experience. He made us wait for two hours at a roadside tea stall even as it rained heavily. When TNM was finally allowed to enter his residence, the Hindu Munnani leader asked for a photo and a video of this reporter, and had already informed his superiors in the organisation about the reporter’s arrival. The Munnani members at Govindraj’s residence were highly suspicious and seemed nervous about an English news outlet seeking an interview about the Munnani’s mobilisation against Christians.
However, when we finally came to face each other, Govindraj was surprisingly amiable and eager to talk about his group’s campaign against Christians. “This area is filled with members of the Gounder caste, you cannot see caste discrimination here,” he said.
“In our locality there were only two to three Christian families until a few years ago. But now, more than 40 families believe in Christianity, and in recent years the number of conversions has increased and conversions are peaking in the DMK regime,” he said. Govindraj, who has been with the Munnani for 17 years, denied that the group was involved in attacks against the minority community. Instead, he claimed that they worked among Hindus to create awareness about threats to the religion. He said that the group restricted itself to filing complaints to the police against illegal churches.
Reacting on instances of anti-Christian violence, he said that it was the result of ordinary Hindus reacting spontaneously. “We cannot deny there is tension between Hindus and the people who are trying to convert people to Christianity. Hindu Munnani leaders have never been involved in any of this violence. But how can ordinary Hindu people sit and watch pastors insulting Hindu deities?” he asked.
“We educate people about Hinduism and ask them to believe and practise traditional prayer methods. We give more awareness to the Dalit community by issuing pamphlets listing the goodness of our religion,” Govindraj said, justifying the violence. “Now after having awareness they have started to ask questions against the pastors. When they insult Hindu deities, Hindus are giving them a befitting reply.”
When we met Govindraj’s superior, Jeyashankar, the powerful Coimbatore general secretary of the Hindu Munnani, he immediately sought to counter the impression that the group was against all Christians. He said that the Munnani had no problem with mainstream Catholics and Protestants but were out to check the spread of evangelical groups such as the Pentecostal mission. To prove his point, he brought along his protestant Christian friend for the interview.
“Look here, see my friend Stalin, he is also Christian and we have been friends since our childhood. He invites us for Christmas and we invite him over for Deepavali and Pongal. He or his sect is never involved in any sort of conversions,” Jeyashankar said. Stalin sat through the interview and enthusiastically agreed with his childhood buddy as he launched a diatribe against evangelists.
This story was originally published in thenewsminute.com. Read the full story here