Tormentors of Christians embrace Christ in India’s Kandhamal

The district has turned out to be a vibrant vocation garden for Christian denominations

During the height of the Kandhamal violence in India, the burnt face of nine-year-old Namrata Nayak conveyed the horrific, orchestrated violence heaped on a hapless Christian community in 2008.

A crude bomb left behind by assailants disfigured the face of the innocent girl in Raikia village. However, Namrata recovered her genial look and has matured into a lovely young woman. 

The pathetic sight of a bleeding Junos Nayak, a retired policeman, being carried and dumped on the floor at the Udaigiri health center did not enthuse hope. Yet Junos survived miraculously unlike his elder brother, Lalji, who died a day later.

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Many ask me about a 28-year-old nun who was raped during the violence. She was raped publicly with two people standing on both her hands as if she was crucified. She was then paraded semi-naked along with a bleeding Father Thomas Chellan in his underwear on the Nuagam market road in the presence of police.

“God gave me the grace to forgive and confidence to face life positively and lead a normal life with the full support of the Sisters of my Congregation of Handmaids of Mary,” the nun told me this August. She has completed her law degree recently and enrolled as a lawyer.

A trusted lieutenant of Swami Lakshmanananda for decades, Niladri Kanhar had embraced the Christian faith in 2005 under the influence of Pastor Pavitra Kata, who himself had been once a disciple of the Swami. A series of deaths in his family had drawn Kata to the Christian faith in 1999.

“We sensed something wrong and this experience made us gradually embrace Christianity”

Both Kanhar and Kata were lucky to survive an assault for embracing the Christian faith. In the bloodshed unleashed in the aftermath of the mysterious murder of the Swami, Kanhar was almost killed by his former saffron colleagues who even poured wood resin into his eye in case he survived. That scar was evident five months later when I met him first in January 2009.

When I traced him months later, he was struggling to pay rent for his slum house in Phulbani town and was on the verge of starvation with his wife and children who looked famished. But look at his family in June 2023, they are cheerful and relaxed.

Indeed, through thick and thin, Kanhar whom I have named “St. Paul of Kandhamal” for his outstanding witness, has remained an inspiration for many fresh entrants to the Christian faith over the years.

Like him, Bijay Kumar Pradhan was a former disciple of the slain Swami from the late 1980s. In 1992, he along with his friend Trilochan Pradhan was assigned to shoot a prominent pastor at a Christian convention in Raikia.

“Though we had been trained in shooting and given a good gun, the trigger did not work when my friend tried to shoot the pastor. We went to a nearby jungle and tried it on the trees and it worked. We sensed something wrong and this experience made us gradually embrace Christianity,” Pradhan recounted.

He recalled the Swami used to tell them to destroy churches and banish Christianity.

Standing in front of the new Christ Church at Piserama, he also recalled accompanying the Swami in the 1990s. “Swami had laid the foundation for a temple to be built here. But now I am the manager of this church,” Pradhan said.

There are over 200 Christians in this church and 90 percent of them are Hindu converts.

“They have fooled us with this conspiracy theory”

“Several of those who have attacked Christians in the past are now Christians and spreading the message of love Christ has preached,” Pradhan said.

He recalled approaching a Christian school teacher with a special request for a ‘Bible tuition’ as a college student after he started becoming interested in the gospels given to him by a friend.

In fact, several people involved in the Kandhamal violence have confided to me over the years how they were misled into joining the attacks against Christians under false propaganda that the Swami’s murder was a “Christian conspiracy.”

A Hindu lawyer told me rather frankly, “They have fooled us with this conspiracy theory.”

Indeed, Kandhamal has not remained a tragedy. The sorrow of 2008 has been turned into joy by the valiant Christians.

Children who lived the nightmare of fleeing for their life to the jungles, living in refugee camps and slums have not turned into despondent Christians. Instead, many of them are opting to become priests, pastors, and nuns irrespective of denomination.

Kandhamal has turned out to be a vibrant vocation garden for Christian denominations, literally fulfilling the famous dictum of church historian Tertullian: “Blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

This is part two of a two-part article (read part one here) by Anto Akkara, a journalist and author who has published three books on the anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal in Odisha state. It is drawn from his documentary ‘Good News of Kandhamal’ released on the 15th anniversary of the riots. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

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