By Fr F. M. Britto
Raipur, Oct 11, 2021: Just two years after my priestly ordination, having served as an assistant in rural Pithora parish, our then Raipur Diocesan Administrator Monsignor Francis Werner Hunold appointed me as the first priest in charge of a new town parish Kawardha in a new area in 1981, to care the three employed, migrant Catholic families and to expand.
Visiting the neighboring Mandla district of Jabalpur diocese, I was enchanted by their many flourishing missions among the tribals, begun some 40 years back.
Learning from a nearby Christian that a Gond Catholic tribal family lived in our area of Tharaigaon jungle, I cycled 20 km through the muddy road, at the end of the monsoon, with his son, to meet Badhua Singh Netam in Amera village.
Resenting against his new Faith, his Harratola tribal villagers persecuted him and he moved down to survive in Amera. Though no Catholic priest visited him in Amera, Netam continued practicing his faith. He admitted all his four daughters in the neighboring Kurela parish school (Jabalpur diocese), which gave him an opportunity to attend the Mass now and then.
My constant visits to Amera from the 40 km away Kawardha town made the local tribals to request me to open for them a school and a health center. No child from Amera and the neighboring villages was going to school. Because their only panchayat primary school in Bhonda was five km away, for which the children have to cross the flooded rivers in monsoon and the only teacher there was often away. Only three Amera youths then knew to sign their names. Since the nearest health center was 20 km away at Bodla town, the tribals here depended on herbal medicines and the local quacks, who charged them exorbitantly.
After a year of my visits to them, the diocese allowed me to pioneer that new mission. Though initially I built a mud house, the forest department people would not allow me to have the wood for my roof while the monsoon was fast approaching.
When I moved to stay there before the monsoon, the first day I wept at my stupidity of my zeal to evangelize in that jungle. No other Catholic family lived there; no electricity throughout my stay in Amera; due to the muddy road in the monsoon, I had to cycle 20 km, removing the mud-guard, to come out of the jungle; and poisonous snakes and scorpions frequently visited.
After two – three days of my stay over there, one evening the villagers came to ask me to open the school. Opening the school, so soon? But then, why not teach literacy to the kids, I pondered.
My young cook Paradesi’s wife was a 5th grade failed girl. Susheela became the first teacher for the first batch of nine boys and three girls. My front veranda of the little mud hut became their school. The boys arrived there wearing towels and the girls their short saris up to their knees.
After a week, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) people came there on tractor trolleys with loudspeakers, forbiding the villagers sending their wards to our school and not to have any association with me lest I convert them. And they opened for them a Van Vasi Ashram School opposite to ours.
That evening a group of our villagers came to me and declared, “Swamiji, we invited you. And we will stand with you. If you are scared to sleep alone here, we will come in pairs to guard you.” I felt both divine and human protection.
But the area got divided. While some villages supported me, many sided with them. Those who continued sending their kids to our school, were ostracized by the tribal community and even their proposed marriage alliances were broken.
Every summer the VHP organised gatherings to motivate the tribals to get rid of me, staging Hindu skits. In the fourth year a local Gonds’ leader from Kui village arrived there with his men. They challenged the VHP leaders, “You Bunyas pay fees and get your children educated in their (Christian) school. But, you don’t want us adivasis to come up in life by benefiting their free education. First, you shut down their (Christian) school in Kawardha. And then we will pull out our children from this school.” With that slap, they stopped coming further.
But the government opened a Tribal Girls’ School cum Hostel (Adivasi Kanya Chatravas) in our village, offering the tribal girls free education with residence. In the village where there was no school for generations, now there are three schools.
Malaria, dysentery, scabies and typhoid were the common diseases among them. No medicine was easily available there. I knew nothing about medicines and the symptoms of various diseases. Getting written down the various medicines and the symptoms of the common diseases from a Salesian (SMMI) nun running a health center in the neighbouring Kurela mission, I became their doctor.
A month after my arrival there, my neighbour Itwari was stung by a cobra on the local Hariyali festival. Since he was fully intoxicated with mahua liquor, people suspected his survival. But the snake stone which I had purchased from a priest from Kerala helped to cure him and many villagers from the poisonous snake bites. Next day he went and proclaimed to the opposing villages that if I were not there, he would have been dead.
During summer the villagers busied since early morning plucking beedi leaves from the jungle. After lunch they would tie them in small bundles and carry to sell them to the forest guards in the evening. But the illiterate villagers always complained that less payment was done to them since they knew nothing about accounting. My accompanying them a few times only invited the guards’ wrath. So also was my interference in the manipulation of the tribals’ account in felling huge trees.
When I contacted so many Religious Congregations, with the consent of our Ordinary, none of them was interested to serve there. Finally came there the Trichy St. Anne’s Sisters – to run a health centre, to teach the kids and to visit families.
After eight years of pioneering there, came my transfer in 1989. As I was leaving, I thanked the Lord feeling happy and proud of sowing His seed, constructing the priests’ residence, convent and school (later turned to hostel). But the villagers, who gathered that morning to bid good-bye with tears said, “Swamiji, now who will come to visit our homes?” What these simple tribals valued most was my daily evening visits to their huts, talking, laughing and guiding them.
After some 30 years, whenever I visit Amera, I feel delighted to see some of our former students teaching in our High School; some studying Medicine, Engineering, higher studies in Raipur; and being tribals, getting easily employed in various government jobs as teachers, patwaries, forest guards, private jobs and running their businesses.
Now hundreds of students from far away villages are studying in our well-built, two storied school, wearing smart uniform, and many students come to reside in our hostel. The Van Vasi Ashram School and the Kanya Chatravas still continue there – but only up to 8th grade, with fewer students, in spite of providing the students all the government benefits of free food, uniform, educational materials and no fees. Electricity reached the jungle after my departure; broad, tarred roads with bridges have been laid to cart away the local minerals from there; and buses began to ply.
In a small room I used to say my daily Mass all alone; and on Sundays came my cook, his wife and either Badhua or his wife, since one of them had to guard their door-less hut. But now they are building a church.
(Father F. M. Britto is the priest in charge of Catholic Church, Parsahi (Bana), Pandaria P.O, Akaltara Via, Janjgir- Champa Dt, Chhattisgarh 495552, Mob: 9826151328; email – francismbritto@gmail.com)
Thank you Fr Britto for this inspring account of your mission. I can see that you continue to carry the same spirit even now.