Fwd: prashanti Archbishop Raphael Cheenath
prashanti
Archbishop Emeritus Raphael Cheenath
Saint of the Persecuted
AJ Philip
There are persons whom the more you know the more you respect. Archbishop Emeritus Raphael Cheenath (December 29, 1934-August 14, 2016) was one such. The last time I met him was on a Kochi-Mumbai flight.
I was going to Jaipur as the guest of a university there, while he was returning to his 'home' at a Mumbai suburb. He said he spent his time in prayers and reading.
I remembered the few days that I spent at the Archbishop's house at Bhubaneswar when I could interact with him over breakfast and dinner. When I heard the news about his passing away at a hospital in Mumbai where he was under treatment for colon cancer, I could not but soliloquise, "what a splendid way of going!"
A few days earlier, i.e., on August 2, had come the news that a two-member bench of the Supreme Court, consisting of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice U.U. Lalit, had ordered the Odisha government to pay additional compensation to the victims of the 2008 violence in Kandhamal district.
What a great news it would have been to Archbishop Cheenath who filed the complaint in the apex court!
It is said that a person can be judged by how he deals with a crisis in his own life or in the lives of the persons close to him. He can either face it boldly or run away from the situation on one pretext or another.
For the Christians of Kandhamal, the crisis arose when on August 23, 2008, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was killed by unidentified assailants.
The Swamiji was not exactly a friend of the Christians, as he used to trouble them a lot. He was not exactly a friend of the tribals, either, as I realised when I visited his "ashram" where he was shot in his Western-style bathroom. When I asked his successor to show me the toilets for his girl students, he showed me the plain land behind the ashram-cum-hostel for such a facility did not even exist.
Be that as it may, when I asked Archbishop Cheenath how he felt when he first heard about the assassination, he said he was thoroughly saddened. "I as a Christian believe that God alone has the power to take away the life from a person. Like anyone else, he too deserved a full life".
Archbishop Cheenath who completed decades serving the dioceses of Sambalpur and Bhubaneswar, including the district of Kandhamal, knew for sure that the Sangh Parivar would exploit the killing to subserve its own agenda. How did he have the foreboding? "I knew the ground situation better than anyone else".
I realised how close the Archbishop -- born and brought up in Kerala -- was to the people of his diocese when I found him eating baked fresh corn for breakfast. I had expected a better breakfast. Of course, he made arrangements to serve me toast and omelette, while he ate corn sprinkled with common salt. "This is the food that most of my people eat in this diocese at this time of the year".
That one sentence -- at once spontaneous -- helped me gauge the Archbishop. To come back to the crisis he faced in his bishopric, the body of the Swamiji was taken for cremation not as the crow flew. Instead, a circuitous route that touched several churches on the way was deliberately chosen. The vehicle carrying the body would stop in front of the churches and fiery, sanguineous slogans would be shouted. There would be some instant pelting of stones too!
The procession was aimed at engineering violence like in Gujarat. And heading the foot soldiers of Hindutva was a medical doctor from Gujarat who recently had the audacity to question Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his statement that most of the Gau Rakshaks (cow protectors) were rank anti-social elements. He went around instigating violence.
And the result was there for all to see. Nearly 60,000 people were forced to leave their hearth and home with little in their hands. Nearly 6,000 villages were cleared of their Christian population. Over a hundred people were killed, some of them most brutally. Many girls and women, including at least one nun, were raped. A Catholic priest was lynched to death. Nearly 200 Christian churches and worship places were razed to the ground.
What's worse, every effort was made to deprive the refugees in their own land of some relief. Christian agencies were physically prevented from distributing relief material among those who took shelter in relief camps. The terrorised people were told that they would be able to return to their villages only if they forsook their religion and reconverted to Hinduism.
Never before had Christians in India faced persecution of this kind. The only other time they had a similar experience was when the soldiers of Tipu Sultan wielded the swords against them. The victims of the anti-Christian pogrom had only one person to look up to.
I remember one head of a Christian Church writing in his church's mouthpiece that "some unexpected incidents happened in Orissa and a couple of our own churches were affected."
Archbishop Cheenath could not or would not dismiss the worst episode in the history of Indian Christianity as just "unexpected events". First and foremost, what they needed was leadership. Of course, he did not have the money to feed so many and give them relief material.
That did not, however, mean that he was totally helpless, either. He worked day and night to ensure that relief materials flowed to Kandhamal. He did not want a single person to remain food-less or roofless. He knew that the victims were not all Catholics. There were Protestants and Pentecostals among them. He did not want to discriminate one against the other. He saw in a victim a human being, not a Catholic or a tribal or a Scheduled Caste.
Archbishop Cheenath did not want the Odisha government to go scot-free. Of course, he knew the government's attitude as he narrated to me an episode.
Once he met the Chief Minister who asked him to start a new school at Bhubaneswar. He also offered him land at concessional rate. What really shocked the bishop was the Chief Minister's comment, "Why do you start schools in such God-forsaken places as Kandhamal, instead of the Capital where many good schools are needed?"
The Archbishop could not shy away from the responsibility of bringing the guilty to book. It was not an easy job to put pressure on the government to set up two fast track courts to hear cases against the accused.
Most of the witnesses were so poor and uneducated that they could not have withstood questioning in a court of law. So they had to be given some training to depose before the court and tell the truth, however unpalatable it might have been to those in power. He himself showed great courage in deposing before an inquiry commission that went into the Kandhamal killings. All this was not an easy task.
As he told me in an interview, the ecclesiastical and theological training he had received had not equipped him to offer the best solutions. Every day, every moment, posed a challenge and he had to respond to it as quickly as the challenge arose.
His first task was to instil confidence among those who took shelter in relief camps to go back to their villages and rebuild their lives. Only a few had their own resources to do so. Others had to be provided assistance. While some in the church gave more importance to rebuild the church buildings, his primary concern was to rebuild the destroyed houses. Some of the churches were used as godowns to store materials for rebuilding houses. Some might have seen it as priorities turned upside down.
No, Archbishop Cheenath had no doubt at all on this score. He went around like the Carpenter of Nazreth checking whether the houses were being rebuilt. Law was not his strength but while helping the people he was forced to learn the law so that he could effectively get justice for them.
With many of the legislators and the executive and sections of the judiciary arraigned against the victims of the pogrom, he used the law to demand compensation for the people who lost everything. He had to face stonewalling at every stage but that did not deter him. It was the result of his dogged pursuit of justice that the Supreme Court ordered the Odisha government to increase the amount of compensation.
During my travels in Kandhamal district, one question that nagged me was why the Christians fled and not resisted at least in areas where they were relatively stronger. The Archbishop had a very clear answer. Let me quote him:
"Today nobody says a single Christian retaliated to the violence unleashed on the community. All that they did was to run to the forests to save their lives. They cannot show a single Hindu house destroyed by the Christians. Or, for that matter, a single Hindu attacked or injured.
"We are not afraid of the truth. Some people may say that the Christians are not brave. Let them say that. I do not want them to say that the Christians are brave and can hit back with as much ferocity as their tormentors. Our superiority is in facing adversities with courage and fortitude".
For once I felt the power of the moral courage he wielded. I also felt that he was following the Biblical prescription, "Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword".
I asked him what advice he would give if they were to face such an organised attack in the future. "Save your life, don't retaliate and run to safer places". Nothing mattered to him more than human life.
One of the most depressing news he had was about the martyrdom of Fr Barnard. He had left the security of the Bishop's House to check the situation in his village, about 300 kms away. "It takes decades to train a priest and I am yet to reconcile myself to his loss". He said this nearly an year after his martyrdom. He took pride in the fact that not one Christian abandoned his/her faith in the face of adversities.
As he said this, I remembered my visit to the priest's house and my meeting with his sister and other relatives. It was one of the most painful incidents during the pogrom.
A few months later, I met the Archbishop again. This time he had sent in his resignation from the post of Archbishop. He explained to me the system.
"Before a bishop turns 75, he will get a letter reminding him about his impending superannuation. It is a gentle reminder to send his resignation". In his case, many expected that he would be given an extension. He himself told me that he would have been happy if he was allowed to continue for one more year.
He told me the number of houses built and the number of houses yet to be built. He wanted to complete certain work he had begun. The extension he wanted was not to enjoy the power and the prestige of the post. In the end, he also told me that he had no regrets whatsoever as he would bow to the decisions of his superiors.
Archbishop Cheenath was already busy choosing the minimum number of items he wanted to carry to his new home in Mumbai, built by the church for retired bishops and priests.
As I took leave of him that day, I realised how appropriate the headline of a profile of the Archbishop my friend John Dayal had written in this very journal: "Hero Of The Faith". I hope that he will, sooner than later, become a Saint of the Persecuted.
The writer, a senior journalist, can be reached at ajph...@gmail.com
Courtesy: Indian Currents
From: AJ Philip <ajph...@gmail.com>
Date: 20 August 2016 at 00:21
Subject: prashanti Archbishop Raphael Cheenath
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