The attack on the American missionary Joseph William Cooper and subsequent developments point to the increasing strains on the secular fabric of Kerala.
in ThiruvananthapuramJOSEPH WILLIAM COOPER is safely back home in the United States. A bishop in the New Jerusalem Universal Church, a Pentecostalist fellowship with its headquarters in Marietta, Ohio, he was the target of a communal mob in Kerala in mid-January.
On arrival at New Castle on January 23, Cooper told hometown newspapers that his hand was "healing nicely" from the machete cut he received in Kerala while returning from a church service, that he still had a valid visa and that "if the Lord wants him to return, he'll still go back" to India.
Cooper, a civil engineer by profession, sold a construction company to become a missionary 25 years ago because he felt "God had called him to the ministry". His critics in the Sangh Parivar accuse him of "insulting Hindu deities" and of "attempting to convert Hindus" (allegations which Cooper has denied), while denying their role in the attack, which nearly severed his hand.
Cooper was the unsuspecting victim of an unprecedented attack on a foreign missionary in Kerala, well known for its atmosphere of religious amity and, as yet, for not providing a foothold to Hindutva forces. But the Hindutva combine is hell-bent on changing the situation through a multi-pronged offensive on the social, religious, cultural and political fronts as recent events demonstrated - such as the vilification campaign against secular writers and intellectuals ("A saffron offensive", Frontline, December 6, 2002), the burning down of a Pentecostal church at Sultan Battery in Wayanad district and the attack against a local preacher at Payippad in Alappuzha district.
On January 16, by around 9.30 p.m., a mob wielding clubs and machetes attacked Cooper, Benson Sam, a local pastor, his wife and children and two gospel singers, while they were walking along a paddy field embankment after a service at the Friends Bible Church at Puliyam near Kilimanoor in Thiruvananthapuram district. Cooper was seriously injured. Police arrested 10 persons, whom they described variously as "RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) sympathisers" and "regulars at RSS shakhas". Chief Minister A.K. Antony refused to name them as "RSS cadres".
Cooper spent a week in hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. As the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) made shrill demands for his arrest for what they described as his "illegal missionary activities", the State police ordered him to leave the country.
The leadership of the RSS denied that the organisation had anything to do with the attack, claiming in the same breath that the incidents involving religious conversions and attempts made "to denigrate Hindu gods" had caused deep resentment in the Scheduled Caste colony and its neighbourhood where Cooper had sought to do missionary work. A report in Janmabhoomi, a newspaper run by the BJP, alleged that Benson Sam was involved in the molestation of a young S.C. woman and that there was deep resentment about this in the locality - suggesting perhaps that Cooper was not the real target of the attack.
In an interview to an American newspaper, Cooper denied the allegation, saying that "the story is false". He said: "The girl, a member of the highest Brahmin caste, converted to Christianity and was disowned by her family. She subsequently reverted to Hinduism and was reconciled with her family. She then made charges of rape against Benson Sam, his father, P.K. Sam, and two other Christian leaders. But Benson Sam was in Canton, Ohio, when the alleged rape was supposed to have occurred, so the police dismissed the complaint against him."
PENTECOSTAL groups have been active in several parts of Kerala, especially in rural areas and the outskirts of cities and towns. And there is a sort of competition among Christian groups seeking to win over "human souls". In fact when mediapersons met him at the hospital in Thiruvananthapuram Cooper said his work was among the "neglected Christians". Another fact that did not go unnoticed was the absence of any immediate protest from the Christian community in Kerala in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
The rivalry among Christian groups has been more pronounced after the widely reported power struggles within certain prominent episcopal churches in Kerala. The struggles, often in the form of court battles and street fights between the followers of church leaders, have forced large sections of the general laity to look elsewhere for their spiritual needs. The proliferation of meditation centres, charismatic centres, small churches and Pentecostalist initiatives in the State in recent years is an obvious outcome of this process. It is in this context that the competition among Christian groups and the attempts of the Hindutva forces to gain a foothold in Kerala, in the name of guarding "faithfuls in the Hindu fold" from "the threat of missionary activity", have intensified.
But more striking in the context of the attack on Cooper were some coincidental events that took place in its wake. For one, the attack occurred a day before the RSS launched an ambitious `All-Kerala Vanavasi Sangamom', a conference of tribal people in the State, at Mananthavaadi in Wayanad district. The theme of the conference was the "need to oppose Christian missionary activity and religious conversions", especially among the tribal people and other backward communities in the State.
Wayanad district, with one of the largest tribal populations in Kerala, and which had been the scene of operation of a large number of Christian missionary groups and institutions obtaining funds from abroad, has for some years now been also a region of focussed social and communal activity by the RSS cadres. The RSS had been offering competitive health care and education facilities for Adivasi families in an effort to counter the activities of Christian missionary groups.
The two-day `Vanavaasi Sangamom', which was preceded by orchestrated events by other Hindutva organisations such as the VHP to "celebrate reconversion of (a few) Adivasis back to Hinduism", was one of the largest such events organised by Hindutva groups among Adivasis in the district. The conference, inaugurated by the RSS sarsanghchalak K.S. Sudarshan and addressed among others by the Bharateeya Vichara Kendra Director P. Parameswaran, was later described by Sangh Parivar publications as "an event that proved to the vanavasis that they are not alone and that the entire Hindu samajam was with them". The all-India Hindutva gameplan of "Hinduising" the tribal people in order to counter the influence of the Church and Christian institutions was in full flow in Wayanad, a day after the attack on Cooper. Even though it denied any role in the incident, the RSS utilised it to focus attention at the conference on the demand for an anti-conver<147,2,1>sion law in Kerala.
The second "coincidence" was that the attack on Cooper occurred but two days before the arrival of Prime Minister A.B. Vajpaee in Kochi to inaugurate the Antony government's flagship event, the Global Investor Meet, organised to attract much-needed financial investment in productive ventures in the State, which is facing a serious financial and investment crisis (Frontline, February 14). The stakes were, therefore, high for the Congress(I)-led UDF government, which was then indeed seeking the pleasure of Vajpayee's government and his party for more Central investment in the State telling investors from India and abroad that Kerala was indeed a safe destination for them and that the atmosphere in the State had at last turned peaceful and conducive for private investments. Given the circumstances, the Cooper incident was but something to be pushed under the carpet as quickly as possible. The Antony government promptly chose to ask Cooper to leave the country and delay the arrest of those involved in the crime. Significantly, it was at this juncture that the Sangh Parivar chose to launch its State-wide campaign demanding the enactment of a law to ban religious conversions in Kerala.
On January 31, even as the campaign began all over Kerala and as the Sangh Parivar pegged the demand conveniently on the attack by "concerned local people at Puliyam" on the "erring" missionary, Antony, bowing to consistent pressure from BJP-RSS leaders, including Central Ministers, declared in the State Assembly that his government would take strict action against foreign missionaries who come to Kerala on tourist visa and thus illegally engaging in religious activities. Antony said that the law of the land did not permit it.
(Visa rules and regulations issued by the Consular Passport and Visa Division of the Ministry of External Affairs indicate that eight types of visas are available for foreigners from Indian missions abroad. Of these, visas issued to missionaries are valid for a single entry only and the duration of the stay will be as permitted by the Government of India. The issuance of such a visa requires as a precondition a letter in triplicate from an organisation which sponsors the missionary, indicating his/her intended destination in India, the probable length of stay and the nature of duties to be discharged, to be submitted to Indian authorities along with a guarantee for the applicant's maintenance while in India. A tourist visa, on the other hand, is given for six months normally, or more depending on the country of residence. The only requirement for such a visa is that the applicant should submit proof of his financial standing.)
Yet, visa rules have never been strictly enforced in India and as in the case of several other foreign missionaries involved in religious activities in India, Cooper too was on a tourist visa. The latest visit was his 14th to Kerala and he has been spending about four months each year in India for the last 10 years.
THE third "coincidence" was that the attack on Cooper occurred barely a fortnight before the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam - the social (and increasingly political) organisation of the Ezhavas, one of the largest Hindu communities in the State - organised a `Malabar Sangamom' at Kannur, to announce formally its foray into north Kerala.
For historical reasons linked to the growth of the Communist Party of India(Marxist) (CPI(M)) in Kerala, a majority of the Ezhava community members of north Kerala (known as Thiyyas) were traditionally CPI(M) supporters and the SNDP Yogam has a strong presence only in south Kerala. Following its alienation from the Left Democratic Front during the previous government's rule, the SNDP leadership had formed a symbiotic, yet-to-be formalised alliance with the BJP and tried to wean away Ezhavas among the CPI(M) cadres into their common communal fold. Through such a strategy, the SNDP Yogam perhaps expected to find new members to boost its fortunes in north Kerala, which in the BJP's reckoning would weaken the party's most powerful enemy in the State, the CPI(M), in its northern stronghold. For the BJP, which finds the communal divisions within the Hindu vote bank in Kerala the major factor for its failure to win even a single Assembly seat, it also meant one more step forward in its goal of uniting Hindus under the saffron umbrella. The highlight of the Malabar Sangamom, despite the debatable response it evoked, was the presence of some of the State leaders of the BJP and the call given by the conference for "Hindu unity" and "a ban on religious conversions".
The Antony government is now under fire for its decision to deport Cooper and subsequently to refuse permission to several other foreign missionaries on tourist visas to engage in religious activities. It is also at the receiving end for its failure to punish the culprits in the Kilimanoor incident.
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