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| Kandhmal, Odisha |
Beautiful
railway station that I have ever seen in India! That is none other than
Bhubaneswar station. I arrived early in the morning of 8th December.
After spending two days in the train, I was indeed physically exhausted. Never
mind! I had had enough rest in pastor Ullas Pani’s apartment. After a while, we
headed for Kandhmal in a hired cab, accompanied by the team. Life was quite
challenging in the Kandhmal. I had heard a lot about the Christian persecution in
the Kandhmal. In fact, the news captured the attention of the whole world.
People poured out their sympathy towards the Kandhmal victims. The brutality of
fundamental groups were criticized and condemned from every corners of the
world. Nevertheless, the ground situation could not turn into betterment.
Pastor Ullas Pani was kind enough to show us the route for Kandhmal. He even
showed us a Christian colony which was completely demolished by the fundamental
groups during the attack in 2008. Now, there were few huts which were
re-constructed through the government’s relief fund.
This led me to think about another
incident while discussing about the Odisha persecution. Coincidently, I had an
encounter with a friend of Graham and Glady. I was quite shattered hearing from
her. She even didn’t want to remember about the incident that took place in
1999. I bitterly cried in the heart that Lord, why it is difficult to
understand the secret of your love that even drives your people to the point of
death? She said to me, “Janak! Graham was not a kind of person who could
provoke others through his works and speech. I am not portraying his humility
just because he was killed, but if a truth be told, he was a humble man.” The
person, with whom I was chatting, was so close to Graham, even before Graham
was engaged to Glady. I asked her whether she has read a book “Burnt and Alive” which talks about the
whole episode of Stain’s life and tragedy that happened in Odisha. She simply
said, “Please, do not ask me about this. I do not want to read that book. The
day he was brutally killed, I rang up to Graham’s home in the morning whether I
could visit him. In response, I could hear a crying and shouting, “‘Mam! He has
been burnt alive....burnt alive...burnt.’ I literally fell down and could not
even believe. In fact I was in touch with Glady and now it’s been many days
that I lost contact with her after she left Odisha.”
Our main job in Kandhmal was to
construct a literacy primer for Kui people. Kandhmal accumulates of ten lakhs of
population, including the majority of kui speaking people. Out of the total
population, 80% of people come from the Kui tribe which is one of the major tribal
languages in the state of Odisha. Kui people do not have their own literature
as we could find in Odiya. Most of the Kui finds difficulty to understand Odiya
though they use the same script. Taking this into consideration, Chrystella and
friends from LEI took up the burden of constructing a primer for the Kui people
that these people would have get an access to read the Bible into their own
language.
Odisha is known for the land of
persecution and militancy, where common people have been brain washed by the
other fundamentalists and extremists. I presume that the lack of education could
be one of the reasons for the rise of these disturbances. After couple of days
of the workshop, the participants became much acquainted to me. They started to
share their stories that had happened in 2008 persecution. Most of them were
the local pastors who come from the Kandhmal areas. Jagannath was a pastor who is
from the Kandhmal areas. He is gifted in music and singing. He told me the
story of Kandhmal riot:
Nothing was left. Looting and
shooting was the normal. Fundamentalists didn’t even bother anyone who confessed
Christ as their Lord. Either you had to join the group or you would have to die.
We as a family ran away to jungle in different directions when the mob came
roaring from another village. I peeped from a far, burning my house and
properties. They took away some of the things from the house. They took away
all my musical instruments that I loved much more than my life. Everything was
turned into ashes after few minutes. They destroyed whole Christian village,
and killed some of my friends as well. The old and women, who could not run
away, were caught and killed brutally. Most of the villagers were scattered to
the jungles. We could spend days and nights without food and have to survive by
drinking water and jungle fruits. We didn’t even feel hunger due to the fear
and anxiety. We were just anxious about our life.
Persecution
and Church’s response have to be re-articulated and evaluated in order to
understand a clear road map. I would highlight two major factors that have
hindered God’s kingdom in Odisha. After meeting a couple of leaders, I could grasp
a part of the fact of the ministerial approach and their understanding about
Evangelism. Correct me if I am wrong! Nevertheless, I strongly stand with the
biblical teachings. Nowhere in the Bible, I have seen any significance about the
conversion without repentance. A true Christian cannot be a Christian if he
has not repented his sins. I think we still hold some of the foggy idea of
evangelism that we give much priority to the conversion than the repentance. I
could sense this feeling in Odisha that a notion of conversion is higher than
confessing the sins and accepting Christ. I doubt on the People Movement
Approach of McGavran which he has widely articulated in the book Understanding
Church Growth. In fact he defends this not as a theory rather a sober
recital of easily observable facts. Nevertheless, I do not accept this fact
that numerical growth without reaching the core of the matter does not give any
significance, therefore, may lead the people towards more to the conversion,
forgetting the repentance.
The
other hurdle is our Approach towards the ministry. I wonder why this fact is no
more widely known by the Christian leaders. Soon after the persecution, the
relief and aid came to Odisha from all over the world. The saddening part is
that many people, who are the real victims, have hardly been benefited. The lack
of the fund management and accountability has been a part of the setback of the
Christian leaders in Odisha. In a simple term, we could see that leaders have a
difficulty in sharing to others what they have. Instead of this, they easily
can look up to the foreign help. I am sure that this is the cancer in Christian
ministry that is not going to help God’s kingdom at any cost.
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