Bhubaneswar: Tension continues to grip Sambalpur, western Odisha’s political and cultural nerve centre, as the town remained under curfew for the second day on Sunday (April 16) in the wake of violence during and on the eve of Hanuman Jayanti, a religious festival celebrated on April 14, coinciding with Mahavishubha Sankranti, popular known as Pana Sankranti.
With police patrolling every nook and corner of the town, curfew was relaxed for a few hours to facilitate conduct of National Defence Academy (NDA) and Assistant Section Officer (ASO) examinations. Internet services remain suspended in Sambalpur till Monday to prevent the spread of malicious rumours. However, it has added to the misery of people who can neither move out of their homes nor access the internet to communicate with others. “People are facing all kinds of problems,” said local journalist Subrat Mohanty.
Curfew was imposed in Sambalpur on Saturday following incidents of arson and a murder in the town during the Hanuman Jayanti procession. The deceased Chandra Mirdha was attacked while returning home after taking part in the procession. Though Sambalpur superintendent of police B. Gangadhar said the murder was not related to Hanuman Jayanti celebrations, curfew was clamped on areas falling within the jurisdiction of Town Police Station, Dhanupali Police Station, Khetrajpur Police Station, Ainthapali Police Station, Bareipali Police Station and Sadar Police Station which are considered most sensitive. “All possible measures to ensure peace are being taken,” said Gangadhar. Odisha director general of police Sunil Bansal also visited the town to assess the situation. He appealed to the people to cooperate with the police and the administration, and said normalcy would be restored in the town soon.
Sources said police have made as many as 85 arrests so far in connection with violence in the town which began on April 12, when a motorcycle rally was organised by the local Hanuman Jayanti Samanvaya Samiti. Some people allegedly pelted stones on the rally when it was passing through Motijharan Chhak. The rallyists retaliated and people on both sides sustained injuries. Several policemen including an officer were also hurt in the stone pelting when they intervened and tried to bring the situation under control.
In the wake of the violence, prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPC were imposed in several areas and the district administration held talks with various stakeholders to ensure that the Hanuman Jayanti procession was held peacefully on April 14. Though heavy police arrangement along the route of the procession that day ensured that there were no untoward incidents in the areas through which it passed, incidents of arson were reported from other parts of the town and a murder also took place. “There have been stray incidents of violence,” said Sambalpur SP B. Gangadhar, but the seriousness of the situation can be gauged from the fact that the administration was forced to clamp a curfew on the town and internet services had to be suspended till Monday.
State BJP president Manmohan Samal was unrelenting in his attack on the state government which he held solely responsible for violence in the town. “Members of the minority community (Muslims) attacked a peaceful religious procession in the town but the police remained a mute spectator. State government has completely failed to maintain law and order. If the state government is not capable of tackling the situation with the help of its police they should call central forces,” said Samal, a former minister.
The war of words between the BJP and ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has escalated, with the latter accusing the saffron party of trying to make political capital out of a sensitive situation. “State government is doing everything within its powers to control the situation. Arrests have been made and the police are doing their job. The BJP is making politically motivated charges because it is in the habit of seeing everything through a communal prism,” said BJD MLA Rajkishore Das, who was earlier with the BJP.
Sambalpur has always been a sensitive area as far as Hanuman Jayanti celebrations are concerned. In 2015, BJP stalwart and present leader of opposition in Odisha assembly Jaynarayan Mishra was arrested by the local police for brandishing a sword during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in Sambalpur, in violation of the prohibitory orders clamped by the administration to restrain devotees from displaying sharp weapons during the celebrations. Mishra, who is now the sitting MLA from Sambalpur, had described his arrest as politically motivated.
But it is not just Sambalpur which remains prone to communal violence on such occasions. Many other areas in the state, especially the tribal-dominated districts of Kandhamal and Mayurbhanj, have seen communal incidents in the past. The Kandhamal riots of 2008, triggered by the killing of controversial Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati and his four disciples at his Jalespeta ashram in the district, had left behind a trail of death and destruction. It left more than 30 members of Christian community dead while more than 600 villages were ransacked and 54,000 people rendered homeless. Kandhamal, which has a sizeable Christian population, had seen riots in 2007 as well but the scale of violence that took place after Saraswati’s murder was unprecedented and shook the conscience of the entire nation.
The confrontation between extreme Hindutva forces and minorities, especially Christians inhabiting the tribal belt, started taking a serious form in the late 1990s. In 1998 some Christian-dominated villages in the Ramgiri-Udaygiri area of Gajapati district bordering Andhra Pradesh were allegedly attacked and houses torched. But the most gruesome communal incident in the history of Odisha took place in Keonjhar district’s Manoharpur village in 1999. Australian missionary Graham Staines (58) and his two minor sons were burnt alive in the village by a mob that believed that he was engaged in religious conversions through dubious means. This was followed by the murder of a Catholic priest Arul Das at Jamabani in nearby Mayurbhanj.
However, for the sheer scale of violence Kandhamal riots of 2008 will always remain etched in the memory of people of Odisha. It also proved to be a turning point in the political history of the state, leading to the breakdown of ruling BJD’s 11-year-old alliance with BJP in 2009. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik sought to salvage his secular credentials by ending the partnership as BJP was widely seen as being sympathetic to the forces which had authored the pogrom in Kandhamal.
Since 2009, incidents of communal violence in the state have been few and far between and none comparable with what happened in Kandhamal in 2008. But political observers, who see the recent disturbances in Sambalpur as an ominous sign, would like the government to be on the alert and deal with troublemongers strictly. “The government must act promptly in all such cases. The message must go out that trouble makers won’t be spared. This is the only way we can prevent the repeat of Kandhamal,” said political analyst Shashi Kant Mishra.
Ashutosh Mishra is an Odisha-based journalist.
