By John Dayal

New Delhi, Jan 15, 2020: It will be 21 years on January 21 since Graham Stuart Staines, an Australian missionary working with the lepers of Orissa, was burnt to death with his young sons Timothy and Philips.

They were sleeping in their jeep parked in a forest opening in Manoharpur village in the Kendujhar district, about 400 kilometers north of Bhubaneswar, the state capital.

Earlier in the evening, they had taken part in a festive prayer meeting of the local tribal population with whom they had worked for many years. As the flames engulfed them, the three tried to get out of the jeep, but were pushed back with wooden staves wielded by the murderous group led by a man called Dara Singh. The three died.

Many days later, Dara Singh was trapped by the police, exposed as a member of the Bajrang Dal and leader of a group that had terrorized animal traders, Tribals and Muslims, in that part of the state. Their victims included a Muslim cattle trader Shaikh Rahman.

A Catholic priest Father Arul Das had also been killed in the region. This was long before the self-styled Gau Rakshaks, or cow worshippers, enforced their will in large tracts of north India during 2018 and 2019.

Gladys Staines, Graham’s young wife, and their surviving child, a daughter, said they had forgiven the killers, said they loved India, and affirmed their desire to continue to work with the country’s ill, its deprived and marginalized people.

The Australian family’s brutal murder brought the international media, diplomats and human rights activists to Orissa, taking a close look at the persecution of Christians and Muslims. They also had a look at the Bajrang Dal, the militant wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which itself was a creation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), collectively called the Sangh Parivar.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which ruled at the Centre and was a friend of the state’s Biju Janata Dal government, distanced itself from the murder. The RSS and Bajrang Dal disowned Dara Singh – not that they keep registers of membership anyway. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sent his only nominally Christian cabinet minister, George Fernandes, to Orissa. George did what Atal expected of him. He declared that there was a “Foreign Hand” in the whole thing, out to malign the BJP government and India.

Alas, seven years later, the Sangh struck again. In 2008 in Orissa’s Kandhamal district, after the murder by Maoists of the local VHP vice president Lakshmanananda Saraswati, there was a massive pogrom against Christians. Over 6,000 houses, 320 or so churches, dozens of clinics, schools and institutions were burnt down. More than 60,000 children, women and men fled to nearby forests, over 30,000 stayed up to a year in government camps, and 120 or so were killed.

Many women were raped; among them a Catholic nun whose gang rape remains one of had darkest marks in the register of crimes against women in India.

Not many have been punished for any of the many mass crimes evidenced in Kandhamal. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who had led a coalition government with the BJP, ultimately admitted in the state assembly that the Sangh Parivar was involved in the violence against tribal and Dalit Christians in Kandhamal.

For Christians, that horrendous one-sided targeted violence brought about a new understanding of what sort of an India the Sangh wants. Little wonder the Christian community was among the early ones to be alarmed when the citizenship laws were changed, and its name was mentioned as one of the beneficiaries.

The Islamophobia of the government, and using Muslims in silent preference to Partition of India in 1947, makes clear the game to arouse a Hindu vote bank with the bogey of an insider enemy.

By now, the highest authorities in the Church in India have said they oppose the amendment to the existing law. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) communalizes the very concept of citizenship, charity and safe haven for refugees. Three prominent senior Catholic human rights activists were the first ones to be arrested, Father Anand Mathews in Uttar Pradesh, Father Cedric Prakash in Gujarat and me in Delhi.

The government says they will give haven and citizenship to Christians fleeing violence in Pakistan. Modi’s government had maintained silence when Asia Bibi was sentenced to death by Islamabad’s highest courts. Christians are the only community persecuted in all countries of South Asia, the Indian neighborhood. Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal all have a terrible record of persecuting Christians physically and by their communal laws.

The situation of Christians in India remains only marginally better. There were over 300 cases of violence against churches, pastors, congregations in India in 2019, including illegal arrest and threats. The police have been entirely partisan. In the first fortnight of 2020, there have been eight cases of violence against Christians.

The Christian community wants India to show its humane face of the world. India should offer haven and refuge for Chins, Karens and Rohingyas of Burma, Tamils from Sri Lanka and Christians from any country of the neighborhood. And it should sign all international covenants and treaties against torture, persecution and use of force against refugees. Dare it?

(John Dayal is a senior journalist and human rights activist)