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This is an important event to mark one of the most horrific incidents of communal violence that has taken place in India in the recent past. They say that those who do not remember the past, are bound to repeat it. This is precisely why we must remember what happened in Kandhamal so that such incidents are never repeated. Kandhamal, in Odisha, among the poorest districts in India, was home to one of 21st century India’s most gruesome riots in December 2007 and August 2008. The trigger for the violence was ostensibly the killing of a Hindu religious leader, which, after hate propaganda by Hindu right-wing forces quickly descended into a spiral of attacks against Dalit and Adivasi Christians in the district. My association with Kandhamal lay primarily in heading the National People’s Tribunal. We brought out a report which unequivocally concluded that “the carnage in Kandhamal is an act of communalism directed mainly against the Christian community, a vast majority of whom are Dalit Christians and Adivasis; and against those who supported or worked with the community.” What exactly happened in Kandhamal? After Swami Lakshmananda Saraswati, a Hindu priest, was killed, a sense of “collective guilt” was imposed on Christians in the district, inhabited by tribals and Dalits. The two main communities are the “Kandhas” and the “Panas”, and neither community was left untouched. Scores of people were killed, h
The objective of Teams of Our Lady is to help couples discover the riches of the sacrament of marriage and to live out a married spirituality. The married life leads to family which consists of husband, wife and children. Naturally children form the essential part of the family. Without children the family is not complete. In the west, especially in U.S.A many are not interested to expand the family and in some cases, the so called family consists of husband and wife only. This is a selfish attitude. Family is the social group of society consisting of the man, woman and their offspring. Evidently children form an essential ingredient of the family. The children brighten the world. One can imagine a sky without stars, a villa without flowers, a necklace without pearls, but a house, a town or a world without children is something unimaginable. Children are the gift of God. They brighten the world like flowers in the flower bed. A home without children is like a nest without birds. Wordsworth had said that, ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. A house without children is the sad kingdom of selfishness. There are many parents who have a dozen or even two dozen children. By God’s grace in most such cases the children get well placed in their life. It is not just because the grand parents have left behind large acres of yielding landed properties. The parents who have begotten these children sacrificed their
I would like to begin this letter by congratulating you for the excellent July 15—31st issue of Light and Truth which was largely devoted to the persecution and eventual death of Fr Stan Swamy S.J. Your Editorial too was equally impressive.In this letter, I would like to highlight how the government machinery tried and succeeded to suppress the voice of this fearless man and through him the cries for justice of the poor and exploited people of Chhattisgarh. A few elements of the judicial establishment, knowingly or otherwise became party to this persecution, abetted by some police personnel at different levels.. How many times the members of the higher judiciary have initiated su motto proceedings against governments for misuse of laws, especially against individuals. I think Fr Stan’s was a fit case for the higher judiciary to intervene to meet the ends of justice. Well, it did not happen and I do not know why.The Indian Constitution has provisions to ensure the protection of the fundamental rights of all people, even non citizens. Fr Stan and his colleagues worked within the framework of the Constitution. Yet trumped up charges were levelled against them by those who were oath bound to protect even those citizens who struggle for justice and the rule of law. One consoling aspect of this entire episode was that Fr Stan was rarely accused of conversion activities.So far I have only touched upon the insensit
“Many things...can wait. The child cannot... To him (her) we cannot answer ‘Tomorrow’, His (her) name is Today” - Gabriela MistralWe live through trying times. The hapless poor in India have been bearing the brunt of the lockdown – undernourished, unemployed, impoverished, debt-ridden – languishing in penury and despair. The rich and the influential merrily commit irresponsible social, economic and political offences, accelerating the pace of the spread of the virus.Worse still, our households are being infected with an even more lethal virus. It has been permeating our fragile society, that has fast been losing its moorings, sapping its vitals. Thanks to the plummeting of our value system, and the consequential tenuous support mechanism, suicides (homicides?) in the name of dowry have become a daily event, too many, as the real Covid-19 deaths.Charged media discussions skip the fundamental issue of all-pervading degeneration of our age-old values. They focus only on the illegality of the hydra-headed dowry that assumes ingenious forms to penetrate through invisible routes, like the virus that mutates its features to infect protected humans.Desperately, we go on enacting more stringent laws, even as we lose battles, and the war, beating funeral marches to the grave. An inverse correlation between the stringency of our laws, and their efficacy! Despite our frustrations, the fight should contin
In Kerala, Islamophobia among Christian community has increased in the recent years. Unprecedented animosity is slowly boiling between the two communities that were living in amity for several centuries. Several social and religious issues have developed between the communities in the recent past like chopping off the hand of P.J. Joseph, a college professor, by the Islamic extremists; preaching by some Salafi scholars against the Biblical revelations; and the marrying of Christian girls by Muslim boys with pretended love (popularly known as love Jihad) to mention a few.However, the present rift is not merely reduced to religious differences, but stretches to socio-political as well.Some political issues blown up disproportionately are not really locally relevant but are international such as conversion of Hagia Sofia into a mosque; religious violence against Christians in some African countries; and the recent tussle between Israel and Palestinian Hamas.Lastly, a court verdict (apparently favouring Christian community) on the issue of scholarships for minority students as well as reservation for economically weaker sections has fractured the friendship further.It is only with a sense of shock and turbulence can we perceive this growing unrest between the two religious communities that claim their ancestral lineage to the biblical figure Abraham. The tensions have slowly been developing to a level which at
