A public event honouring a Hindu nationalist leader remembered for his campaigns against Christian missionary work became a platform for calls to remove churches from an eastern Indian state. Odisha’s top elected official was seated in the audience alongside a former Cabinet minister who had resigned days earlier amid the largest protests against India’s Hindu nationalist government in years.
The gathering was held in the state’s Kandhamal district that endured one of independent India’s most severe outbreaks of anti-Christian violence. Senior political figures were in attendance, giving weight to rhetoric aimed at ending a religious minority’s institutional presence.
The statements were made on 28 July at the Railway Auditorium in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha state, during the launch of a biography of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, a Hindu nationalist leader known for his opposition to Christian conversion.
Presence of top officials lends political significance
Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, equivalent to a US state governor, attended the event alongside Dharmendra Pradhan, a former federal education minister. Also present was Dattatreya Hosabale, general secretary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent organization of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member.
The chief minister’s official website confirmed his attendance at the launch of the book, titled “Vedanta Kesari Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati: Works and Personality”, published by the Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati Memorial Trust.
An unidentified speaker called for Odisha to be made free of churches before Majhi addressed the gathering, according to a detailed report by a local newspaper, Indo Asian Times.
Members of the assembled Hindu religious leadership also demanded restrictions on the activities of people they termed “vidharmis”, a derogatory word used in Hindu nationalist circles for those who follow a religion outside the Hindu fold.
The presence of Majhi, Pradhan and Hosabale, their own remarks and their public silence on the call gave the event a political significance well beyond that of an isolated religious gathering.
Swami Jeevan Muktananda Puri, who delivered the welcome address, said fulfilling Lakshmanananda’s “unfinished dream” was the responsibility of every member of society, and he called Kandhamal, the Odisha district where Lakshmanananda worked, a “laboratory” for the country whose experience should be followed nationwide.
Speakers asked Hindu religious figures to visit every village in Kandhamal to organise society and spread religious and cultural awareness, and participants were urged to contribute “one rupee and one hour in the name of religion”.
The gathering adopted a resolution to carry Lakshmanananda’s ideals and unfinished work to the public.
A district scarred by violence
Kandhamal’s proposed status as a model carries troubling implications because the district experienced one of independent India’s worst episodes of anti-Christian violence.
Lakshmanananda, a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, a Hindu nationalist group accused of violence against Christians and Muslims), was killed along with four associates at his ashram on 23 August 2008. Maoist (extreme Marxist) insurgents later claimed responsibility for the killings, but Hindu nationalist organisations blamed local Christians, and the accusation was followed by weeks of attacks on Christian communities in the district.
Official figures put the death toll at 39, while Christian and human rights organisations estimate that close to 100 people were killed. More than 54,000 people were driven from their homes, about 5,600 houses were looted or burned, and hundreds of churches and Christian institutions were damaged or destroyed. Kandhamal’s Christian population stood at nearly 149,000 people, or 20.3 percent of the district’s population, according to India’s 2011 census.
A declaration that a state should be made free of churches points toward the removal of Christian institutions from a state where Christians hold the same constitutional right as other Indians to profess, practise and propagate their religion. Article 25 of India’s Constitution protects freedom of conscience and religious practice.
State resources for a contested legacy
Majhi told the gathering that “Hindutva”, the term used in India for Hindu nationalism, or the political ideology asserting the primacy of Hindu identity in the country, was the “soul of India”. He alleged that a conspiracy was underway to weaken Hindutva and alter its identity, adding that this would not be tolerated.
The Odisha chief minister announced that the Government Medical College and Hospital in Phulbani, the administrative headquarters of Kandhamal, would be renamed after Lakshmanananda, and his government approved 130 million rupees, about $1.5 million, to develop Lakshmanananda’s Jalespata Ashram, construct a 300-bed girls’ hostel and provide other infrastructure.
Majhi said programmes on Lakshmanananda’s life and philosophy would be organised at universities and that his biography would be placed in public libraries. This means state institutions and public money will be directed toward the legacy of a religious leader whose campaigns against Christianity remain tied to Kandhamal’s history of communal violence.
An anticonversion narrative from a former cabinet minister
At the event, Pradhan said former Odisha Chief Minister Harekrushna Mahatab had grown worried about large numbers of Kandha tribal people converting to Christianity and had asked a senior RSS official to send a Hindu religious figure to Phulbani urgently, warning that otherwise “Phulbani and Kandhamal would slip out of our hands”.
Pradhan praised Lakshmanananda for devoting his life to the defence of Sanatan Dharma, a term for the Hindu religious tradition, and Indian values, and called him a freedom fighter and revolutionary. He urged religious leaders and the public to follow the ideals of Lakshmanananda who he had previously said was his idol.
Pradhan’s appearance came three days after he resigned as India’s federal education minister following weeks of nationwide protests over leaked examination papers, failures in the national testing system, student suicides and unemployment. The protests were led by a group called the Cockroach Janta Party and grew after police used force against demonstrators in New Delhi.
Pradhan resigned on 25 July, saying he respected the “legitimate expectations” of young people while warning that “anti-national forces” could exploit the unrest, a resignation rare among ministers under Modi that led protest organisers to end a 36-day agitation.
His return to Hindu nationalist mobilisation in his home state within days of leaving office indicated that the protest movement over accountability in education had not affected his standing within the BJP or the RSS.
The gathering left three questions unanswered: who will be held accountable for the 2008 violence, why state resources are going to a figure tied to anti-conversion campaigns, and why a public call to remove churches drew no response from the officials on stage.
