Nun’s Rape and Black Hole of Calcutta

The Times of India news service has already given the verdict. A nun was raped and paraded naked by a crowd shouting ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ in Kandhmal. The state must round up that invisible crowd and hang the culprits now. Where is the need for an investigation and a proper trial?  This facility is extended only to terrorists.  The Times of India news service has all the evidence and has taken upon itself the responsibility of prosecuting and judging the case. The ‘guilty’ verdict has already been delivered.

Who is this nun? She has been whisked out of Orissa by the Church. She has not even filed a formal complaint and refuses to cooperate with the investigating agencies. The two local doctors who conducted her medical examination have submitted a report that indicates that the missing nun MAY have been raped. Was the test done at the official request of the police? Nobody knows.  Why should we trust the doctors who independently examined the alleged victim of rape?  We must because their report corresponds to the worldview of the TOI News Service and the Church. The TOI editors have already concluded that the Bajrang Dal is a terror outfit and must be banned. They have joined the chorus that was started by the secularists and the Islamists to take the focus away from the cowardly bomb blasts carried out by the Indian Mujahideens across the country.  

There is another news item in the TOI of 5th October, 2008. A priest named Father Peter in Orissa has alleged that a Hindu orphan girl who was mistaken to be a Christian was raped and burnt alive by a fanatic mob in Kandhmal violence way back in August, 2008. Why is he complaining now, after more than a month? He says he had mentioned about it to some human rights activists earlier. Why didn’t he go to the police then? He had no answers. Did the TOI investigate the matter? No. It based the front-page story on a random statement of a Christian priest with the headline ‘Hindu orphan raped, murdered in Orissa’.  Now, another priest says that he is not sure if the girl was raped. However, Father Peter maintains that he had heard about the incident from some eyewitnesses and he cannot present them to the media since it may endanger their lives. An unconfirmed allegation of doubtful veracity is projected as fact without any qualms. Is it because Anglo-Indians dominate the TOI News Service and the editorial staff of other leading English newspapers and TV News Channels?

Should we check out the antecedents, motives, and religious affiliations of a journalist before taking any news report on its face value?  We must. It will be stupidity not to do so in the present circumstances when Christian celebrities are being seen on TV fuming about Hindu organisations in most derogatory terms and making wild and unfounded allegations. They have joined hands with the Islamists in equating all Hindu organisations with those who have waged a war of attrition against the Indian nation. The TOI and the editors of leading English papers are acting irresponsibly by blowing Orissa’s sectarian violence out of proportion and hyping up the unconfirmed stories of rape and killings.   

I am reminded of a similar allegation of rape in Orissa a few years ago, around the time the Staines were killed by a mob. There was a nun who had complained of being raped by a couple of Bajrang Dal activists at a bus stop. The story was broken to the media by the local padre who did not even present the victim to the newspersons. There were no witnesses to the incident. The sole evidence adduced was a bundle of torn clothes. The police investigated the case. The nun refused to submit herself to medical examination. The padre continued to thwart the attempts of the police to question, record, and verify the nun’s story. In the meantime, the media had already gone into a hysterical overdrive to project the Bajrang Dal as a gang of marauding rapists. The persistent effort of the police to get to the bottom of the nun’s story produced a shocking result. The nun and the priest had actually lied. The whole story was a concoction.

A number of reports were going round at that time about attacks on Christian priests and nuns. A media frenzy was created. Many of these reported acts of violence against the Christian community were found to be baseless. There was this news of an assault on a firangi Christian priest in Allahabad. The so-called priest turned out to be a student of Hinduism. He strongly denied the report. However, the Church had gone hammer and tongs against the VHP and the Sangh Parivar, and had succeeded in projecting these outfits as consisting of dangerous and menacing villains. Stock photos of young fierce-looking men in saffron head bands, carrying small tridents in their hands, with red vermillion marks on their foreheads, were splashed on the front pages of the newspapers like TOI that did not feel the need to verify the facts. They were clearly furthering the agenda of the Church to defame the Hindu organizations even at the cost of journalistic integrity.

It is part of a predictable pattern. The propaganda blitzkrieg of the Church is invariably followed by outraged, extremely excited, and self-righteous celebrity figures of the community fuming and fulminating in TV debates against Hindu organizations. They go further. They seek the intervention of the UN, the EU, the US, and the Vatican. These world bodies act promptly, and in unison. They issue statements condemning the reported incidents of violence, and urge the Government of India to act. The GOI that normally terms such an advisory from foreign entities as an interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, behaves differently here. It endorses the complaint of these external forces and calls these incidents a national shame and asks its executive arms to act. They act on hearsay and motivated complaints of the padres and pick up the Bajrang Dal and the VHP activists without solid evidence.  Tutored eyewitnesses are produced out of thin air. The Anglo-Indian media presents these arrests as a vindication of its stand. The Indian judiciary acts tough, goes to extra-ordinary lengths, twists and turns the interpretations of various laws and proclaims these activists guilty in the absence of credible evidence. We have the Best Bakery case where the judiciary turned the law of the land upside down to put the accused, who were once exonerated, behind bars.

It is an old script played out since times immemorial by the proselytizing arms of the Church to justify the intervention of its political benefactors, i.e., the western powers, the white race, and the Christian laity. The objective is to create a ‘simple, peace-loving and civilized Christians vs. dangerous, demonic, and villainous pagans’ divide. Not so surprisingly, ‘allegations of rape’ seem to be a constant element in these stories. It is the ultimate salvo to be fired against the brutes and pagans and lowly natives by the proselytising padres to invoke the anger and outrage of the civilized world. They use these deceitful tricks and stratagems to denigrate and demean the native tribes and populations. They exaggerate, fabricate, and concoct horrific stories of barbarism, rape, and plunder to garner wider sympathy and support for their devious mission.

Do you know the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta that was used as an excuse to establish early British rule in India? It was a highly exaggerated and spiced-up account of the death of some British and Anglo-Indian soldiers who were supposedly trussed up in a tiny jail cell and eventually died of suffocation. This was presented to the British people as a heinous and barbaric act of the then ruler of Bengal Sirajuddaula. Outraged, the British crown gave a free hand to the East India Company to civilize the barbarians, using all its money and military power, thus paving the way for the subjugation and colonization of India.

India’s 1957 War of Independence that started with the sepoy mutiny was also a war against the Church and wily padres who had arrived in droves to save pagan souls and create an army of converts who would forever be loyal to the British Crown. Stories of rape and murder and inhuman brutalities were spread to muster the support of the British people. The highly exaggerated stories of burnt churches, the abduction and rape of white women by barbarian sepoys, and the brutal killing of non-combatants like children and women, were deliberately spread. These were later used to justify indiscriminate massacre of civilians, rape, plunder, and heinous acts of retribution by the British forces.

The Church has always played these dirty games with simple and trusting folks. It has done it across continents from Africa, to America, Australia, China, India, and all over. It has wiped out local tribes and indigenous people and their cultures. It can stoop to disgusting levels in its enthusiasm to harvest wayward souls to the path of Christ. Here is a contemptible piece of fact. During the time of Partition, a number of Hindus and Sikhs took shelter in local Churches of Pakistan to save themselves from the marauding Muslim mobs. The padres played a cheap and despicable trick with them even in these extremely tragic and despairing circumstances. They expressed their inability to stop the mobs and suggested the option that the Hindus and the Sikhs convert to Christianity to save their lives. Many did. You don’t have to trust me on this. It is all in the records of the Church as its proud achievement. After all, it had saved the poor pagan souls.

Here is one more fact. The Church always acts as the vanguard of western powers. It is one of their instruments like the World Bank and the Trans-National Corporations, to control the political, economic, and socio-cultural affairs of the world. It played a key role in the dismemberment of the erstwhile Soviet Union. It works in tandem with deadly espionage agencies like the CIA. It helps the special forces of the US in their covert missions. It also hobnobs with the mafia as and when it feels the need to do so. That is why Muslim and other nations like China keep a close watch over its activities and monitor and restrict its influence. It is the weak nations of the African continent, the ones heavily dependent on western aid for their survival, who allow free access to the missionaries of the Church. Even Indian governments of the past have been wary of the Church’s activities in the tribal regions and had a number of laws in place to control them. Things have changed, however, after Sonia Gandhi’s advent on India’s political scene.  

We should judge the recent media reports in the light of these facts and must not get swayed by the mischievous propaganda of a few. We must also ask ourselves as to why the point of view of those who are being targeted by the padres is being so effectively suppressed by the media. There is a definite design at work here.

RKS