Not long ago, comparing Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik as an individual to his predecessor Giridhar Gamang would have been an easy job. It would have been like differentiating cheese from chalk. The suave and sophisticated Naveen is Doon-educated while a rustic and tactless Gamang had his education in village schools and district colleges. And when it comes to commanding respect in Orissa, Gamang is no match for Naveen. Of late, however, the communal violence in Kandhamal district has blurred the difference between the two. Naveen is now being equated with Gamang, who infamously abdicated his responsibility after the 1999 super-cyclone.

For the first time in his eight-year-long chief ministership, the Biju Janata Dal chief is facing the biggest crisis of his political career and a tag of an incompetent leader. Having failed to provide adequate security to slain VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati at his Kandhamal ashram and his subsequent failure in stopping the communal violence that has kept the backward district on the boil, Naveen is caught in a deep wedge as he is being pilloried by one and all. His condition can be gauged from a simple indicator — in the past 15 days after the killing of Laxmanananda, not a single BJD leader has jumped to his defence, which they normally do.

As the minister heading the Home Department Naveen should have been in the thick of things. Conversions by missionaries, which has raised the Christian population from 19,128 in 1961 to 1.17 lakh in 2001, kept the district communally charged as the battles between conversion and reconversion zealots picked up pace. Though it has remained largely peaceful, communal tension is no stranger to Orissa — it swept through the state in the aftermath of the killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two children in January 1999 by Dara Singh. In December 2007, Dalit Christians and Hindu tribals fought with each other leading to three deaths and burning of homes in Kandhamal. Minor skirmishes between Hindus and Christians started in June this year.

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