During a recent visit to the headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Father Ajay Kumar Singh of the Odisha Forum for Social Action advocated for the suppressed Christians of his eastern Indian state. “After 10 years there is hardly any justice for these communities,” said Father Singh.
The Catholic priest declared that the attacks of 2008 were the worst the country has seen in 300 years. “The violence claimed 101 lives, more than 350 churches were destroyed, 7500 houses were reduced to ashes, scores of convents, presbyteries, dispensaries and 13 humanitarian organisations were also attacked and vandalised. The riots spread to 450 villages in Kandhamal district alone.”
As time moves on buildings are rebuilt; the news headlines change, memories fade. But what is the state of the Christian community in Odisha and around India 10 years on?
In 2014, six years after the Kandhamal attacks, the “secularist” Indian National Congress party was voted out of power, in favour of the nationalist party the Bharatiya Janata Party.
