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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 CHENNAI 000098 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KIRF SOCI IN
SUBJECT:  BHARAT BALLOT 09:  SIX MONTHS LATER, RELIGIOUS MINORITIES 
STILL NERVOUS IN MANGALORE 
 
REF: A) CHENNAI 25, B) 08 CHENNAI 350, C) 08 CHENNAI 315, D) 08 
CHENNAI 326, E) 08 NEW DELHI 2513 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary:  Nearly six months after the anti-Christian 
violence that drew international media attention (refs C-E), 
Christian groups in the seaside town of Mangalore, Karnataka are 
still nervous.  While the media attention has died down and 
large-scale violence like what transpired in September 2008 has 
abated, Christian leaders in the town describe other incidents that 
they believe point towards a continuing atmosphere of religious 
intolerance.  They condemned Karnataka's BJP government as negligent 
at best and possibly even complicit in the violence and harassment 
toward the Christian minority in the state.  While acknowledging the 
BJP national leadership's condemnation of attacks on religious 
minorities, our interlocutors expressed dismay for their community 
should the BJP win the upcoming national elections.  End Summary. 
 
Mangalore Christians feel under pressure 
------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) Although Mangalore (350 km west of Bangalore, on 
Karnataka's west coast) has not experienced large-scale violence 
against Christians in the six months since the clashes that rocked 
the area in September 2008, local Christians are still nervous. 
During a mid-March visit to the town, Christian leaders of various 
denominations told us that incidents of harassment and vandalism 
occur with some regularity.  Reverend Aloysius Paul D'Souza, the 
Roman Catholic Bishop of Mangalore, told us that two Christian 
shrines were vandalized in February, for example.  He also contended 
the incidents received scant coverage in the media because no one 
was injured.  He described another incident where a Church-run 
hospital was mobbed by several dozen people following the death of a 
Hindu woman and another where an ambulance from a Church-run 
hospital came under attack while picking up an Hindu man.  A major 
problem, he emphasized, is that local police are reluctant and slow 
to follow up on complaints about these types of incidents. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Pastor D. P. Menzez of the charismatic (evangelical) New 
Life Fellowship in Mangalore told us Mangalore had seen various 
levels of harassment against Christian groups in the past, but that 
it had become more prevalent since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 
came to power in Karnataka following the May 2008 legislative 
assembly elections.  He said that groups of young Hindu radicals 
seek out congregations -- particularly of evangelical churches who 
often meet in rented premises or homes -- and harass them.  He also 
noted, however, that during the September 2008 clashes, the police 
actually helped his own congregation, contacting him repeatedly 
throughout the day to provide updates on the situation and check on 
the security of his fellow churchgoers. 
 
Interchangeable radicals 
-------- 
 
¶4. (SBU) Mangalore has seen a variety of violent incidents in recent 
months that involve groups of Hindu extremists targeting 
mixed-religion couples.  Our interlocutors identified the 
perpetrators of these anti-minority incidents in the area as members 
of the Bajrang Dal or Sri Ram Sena, and tended to use the names of 
these groups interchangeably.  A local reporter familiar with both 
groups told us that many members of these organizations actually 
belong to both groups, making it difficult to determine which group 
was actually responsible for a particular incident.  The Bajrang Dal 
is a national organization that began as the youth wing of the 
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a member -- along with the BJP and 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) -- of the Sangh Parivar, a loose 
"family" of Hindu nationalist groups.  The Sri Ram Sena, however, is 
more of a local organization led by Prasod Muthalik, a former 
Bajrang Dal convenor who left that group to found the Karnataka 
chapter of the Shiv Sena (a Maharashtra-based group promoting a 
Hindu nationalist agenda) in 2005.  The current head of Mangalore's 
VHP chapter, M.B. Puranik, told us that Muthalik was a "renegade." 
 
CHENNAI 00000098  002 OF 004 
 
 
(It is not clear if Muthalik is still with the Shiv Sena or not.  We 
had a meeting scheduled in Mangalore with a lawyer representing the 
Sri Ram Sena to discuss the group's views, but he stopped answering 
our phone calls.) 
 
Hindu extremists attempting to segregate communities 
------ 
 
¶5. (SBU) A local reporter for a major Indian daily told us that many 
bus drivers in the area sympathize with the radical Hindu groups, 
and alert them when they find mixed-religion couples on their buses. 
 Groups of thugs then board the buses and harass or assault the 
couples.  In one case that received national media coverage in 
February, a group dragged a young male Muslim and female Hindu off a 
bus near Mangalore, assaulting them both and holding the male for 
several hours. 
 
¶6. (SBU) In another case, a 14-year-old girl from Mangalore 
committed suicide after being taken to a police station by a group 
of Hindu radicals who found her and a friend on a bus with a Muslim 
man.  Both Christian and Muslim interlocutors told us that these 
headline-grabbing incidents are only the tip of the iceberg, and 
that such incidents occur often, only attracting press attention 
when the incident involves a noteworthy personality or a 
particularly egregious act of violence.  (In the February bus 
incident, for example, the female victim was the daughter of a 
member of Kerala's legislative assembly.) 
 
Karnataka's BJP government:  part of the problem? 
------ 
 
¶7. (SBU) Our contacts laid varying degrees of blame for these 
incidents on Karnataka's current government.  Both the Bishop of 
Mangalore and the Principal of St. Aloysius College blamed the 
state's BJP government directly for the problem, particularly 
stressing the complicity of the police.  The Principal told us of an 
incident following the church attacks in which the VHP called for a 
general strike ("bandh"), requiring all schools and businesses to 
close.  The Rector did not want to close the college, but feared 
reprisals, and requested police protection.  He said that the police 
refused to send officers to the college, telling him "they had 
orders not to intervene."  A professor at the college, echoing 
sentiments we heard from other religious minorities in Mangalore, 
told us that he believed many in the government (and particularly 
within the police) have "a fascist mindset." 
 
¶8. (SBU) The Bishop's public relations officer argued that the 
government's different approaches to Hindus and Christians who broke 
the law during September's violence illustrated the government's 
biases.  He said that the Hindu extremists (and police officers) who 
actually attacked people at the churches and damaged property were 
charged -- if at all -- under minor sections of the law carrying 
only mild penalties.  Most of those arrested, he said, were released 
within hours.  The arrested Christians, however, who blockaded roads 
and threw rocks at the police, were charged under more serious 
provisions of the Indian Penal Code, which could lead to far longer 
prison sentences and fewer opportunities for pre-trial bail. 
 
Reaping what is sown? 
------- 
 
¶9. (SBU) Other interlocutors blamed government passivity or 
political machinations, and mentioned that Hindu vigilante groups 
may believe that having a BJP government gives them significant 
freedom to pursue their goals, at least up to a point.  A 
Bangalore-based journalist for a national daily told us he believed 
the violent episodes were orchestrated for political purposes, to 
drum up enthusiasm among the BJP's core supporters.  Other local 
journalists said the government's other priorities made it reluctant 
to bother itself with Hindu vigilantes and their activities.  A 
Bangalore editor of one of India's major dailies told us, however, 
 
CHENNAI 00000098  003 OF 004 
 
 
the state government was growing increasingly concerned about these 
groups.  He said that Chief Minister Yeddiyurappa told him that 
vigilante groups like the Sri Ram Sena were "little Frankensteins." 
 
Mangalore's volatile mix 
------------------------- 
 
¶10. (SBU) Our interlocutors generally agreed that a combination of 
factors in Mangalore made for a particularly volatile set of 
circumstances.  First, religious minorities make up a far larger 
proportion of the population than in most other parts of India.  The 
Christians we spoke with estimated that their community comprises 
some 20 percent of Mangalore's population, compared with just over 2 
percent in India as a whole.  More than 10 percent of the population 
is Muslim.  This, a political science professor told us, ensures 
that these groups are not only visible, but that they can be 
presented as a numerical threat by Hindu vigilantes. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The second important factor is that these religious 
minorities are more likely than Hindus to have had at least one 
family member work abroad, bringing or sending home remittances that 
allow their families to have what amounts to a conspicuously 
prosperous existence by local standards.  For example, many Muslims 
from India's southwest coast take jobs in Middle East countries. 
This trend, we heard repeatedly, has been particularly noticeable in 
the last ten years and has created resentment among some Hindus 
toward these religious minorities.  When discussing the Sri Ram 
Sena's January 24 attack on a Mangalore pub (ref A), a Mangalore 
hotel manager told us that the pub had been open only for a couple 
of weeks, and was very upscale.  He speculated that some of the 
attackers were undoubtedly fueled by jealousy, and their inability 
to have the kind of money that allowed one to "buy drinks for girls 
at nice bars." 
 
¶12. (SBU) A third factor, applicable mainly only to Christians, is 
that the area has many different types of charismatic (evangelical) 
churches that are aggressively proselytizing, an activity seen as 
particularly offensive by many observant Hindus. (We will report 
more on this phenomenon septel.)  Pastor Menzez told us that 
Mangalore has no fewer than 25 evangelical churches.  Although he 
stressed that they are all independent, he noted that many Hindus 
tend to refer to all of them as "New Life" congregations.  These 
congregations, we heard repeatedly, are relatively new and are 
generally seen as more foreign to Indian culture than the more 
established Roman Catholic, Church of South India, and Syrian 
Orthodox churches. 
 
Nervous about upcoming elections 
------ 
 
¶13. (SBU) Our Christian interlocutors uniformly expressed their 
nervousness about the possibility of a BJP government coming to 
power in New Delhi as a result of the upcoming elections.  As one 
top church official put it, "if the BJP comes to power in the 
national elections, we're done for."  Others expressed their anxiety 
with less hyperbole, noting that the national-level BJP leadership 
consisted of far more capable administrators and politicians than 
Karnataka's BJP cohort.  They noted especially that Karnataka's BJP 
leaders failed to react quickly or effectively to denounce either 
the September church attacks or the pub attack, while the party's 
national leadership was quick to criticize both incidents.  They 
also emphasized that the state-level BJP leadership has a very 
parochial outlook and was unable to comprehend the international 
opprobrium heaped upon it in the wake of the church attacks. 
 
¶14. (SBU) This nervousness has galvanized the Christian community, 
and church leaders are doing their utmost to encourage their flocks 
to make their votes count on election day.  Bishop D'Souza told us 
that he had sent a letter to all churches in his parish to get its 
members to register with the election commission to ensure that they 
can vote in the elections. 
 
CHENNAI 00000098  004 OF 004 
 
 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶15. (SBU) While some of the tension between religious communities in 
Mangalore may be an inevitable mix of demographics, economics, and 
even the clash between modernization and tradition, there is also 
the unmistakable whiff of politics in the air.  Attacks on religious 
minorities may bring international condemnation, but they are also a 
tried-and-true method for firing up political support in some 
quarters.  Groups with strong pro-Hindutva agendas feel increasingly 
comfortable operating in Karnataka since the BJP was elected to 
power in the state's government.  This makes many of the state's 
religious minorities nervous about the prospects of a BJP-led 
government coming to power in New Delhi.  Although previous BJP-led 
governments did not have any obvious ill effects on Mangalore's 
Christians, they have not faced a situation before where both their 
state and national governments are BJP-led.  Their misgivings about 
Karnataka's current BJP government only enhance their anxiety about 
a prospective BJP-led regime at the center.  However, our contacts 
in the BJP's national leadership have told us that ensuring the 
security and prosperity of Karnataka is critical for the party 
because the state is the first BJP-ruled government in South India, 
making it important to the BJP's strategy of expanding its political 
base further in the South. 
 
SIMKIN