Nuns are ordinary women challenged to do extraordinary
deeds. They voluntarily identify themselves entirely with the fate of
the poor and marginalised who are at risk of losing life, liberty or
dignity. Some of these religious sisters pay for this with their lives.
Sister Valsa John of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Jesus
and Mary (SCJM) was brutally murdered in her room in a rented house in
Pachwara, in the Pakur district of Jharkhand, late at night on November
15, 2011. She was attacked by a group of about 45 men armed with swords,
axes and other weapons. Her head was nearly severed from her body. Some
Maoist literature and a spade were left behind. The immediate suspicion
was that she was killed because she had sided with the local tribals in
their long-standing confrontation with the corporate sector that was
mining the area for coal.
Sr Valsa John’s death is a challenge for both the church
and the state.
The state, which is accountable especially because one
of the partners in the mining group is the state electricity agency of
Punjab, has its work cut out. It has to unravel the conspiracy and
arrest the culprits, bring them to trial and punish them. It must also
assure the safety of other activists and whistle-blowers. As of November
18, seven persons had been arrested for the murder of Sr Valsa John.
Arun Oraon, inspector-general of police of Santhal Pargana, has said
that it appears that Valsa had been killed as part of a conspiracy
involving alleged Maoists as well as villagers. The police claim that
some of the killers were in fact her former colleagues who had a vested
interest in the benefits coming from the mining company. There was also
the matter of a case she had taken up in support of a raped girl, in
which the police had refused to register a first information report. And
the Maoists found Valsa to be a stumbling block in the expansion of
their activities. That is the police theory, and may or may not be
believed.
The challenge for the church is not so simple. “Jesus
knew he would be killed because he dared to challenge the powerful in
favour of the poor. The church certainly manifests a mature faith
response in the death of Sr Valsa John who loved the poor and defended
their rights for a dignified life at the cost of her life. May those who
are involved in similar struggles find the strength to carry forward
their mission with faith, hope and love,” says Sr Jyoti of the Bethany
Sisters, from Greater Noida near New Delhi.
This is a thought repeated by many, especially women in
religious orders. Sr Mary Scaria, an advocate in the Supreme Court of
India, an activist and a member of Valsa’s congregation, recalled that
her life, work and death were in keeping with the motto of the
congregation, founded on November 4, 1803 in a little village called
Lovendegem in the diocese of Gent in Belgium by the parish priest, Fr
Peter Joseph Triest, in the aftermath of the French revolution which
left so much poverty and misery. “No challenge was too great, no request
too trivial and no one too precious. Every milestone has seen the
deepening of the threefold dimension of the SCJM life of love – Love for
god her father, love for one another and love for all peoples,
especially the poor, the abandoned and those who are deprived of love
and dignity in the world.”
For the church and the Christian community, the murder
does have a critical mission dimension. After being battered into some
sort of submission to the will of the state during the seven-year regime
of the pro-Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic
Alliance, and the last eight years of an insipid United Progressive
Alliance, the church has to do a great rethink.
The state has betrayed the church on the issue of rights
for Dalit Christians. The state has also shown no signs of reversing the
notorious Freedom of Religion laws enacted by many Congress- and BJP-ruled
states. The government is also playing an insidious game in using the
Right to Education Act to “tame” the church institutions.
These are clear signals as much as the central
government’s silence on the call from Dr Praveen Togadia of the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad for the beheading of anyone who converts a single Hindu.
Any other person would have been in jail for saying less. In Kashmir,
his Islamist equivalents have unleashed their fury on Christians. The
most recent is the victimisation of Reverend Khanna, a Church of North
India pastor arrested for his work with Muslims. Right-wing
propagandists, politicians and a section of the media have joined hands
to demonise the church. The situation in Orissa, Chhattisgarh and
several other states demands fortitude and courage.
The church cannot afford to retreat or to be frightened
by this increasing pressure. Some murmur that the church must focus on
faith and leave social action to others. Some want to focus on
institution building. An influential section wants to stress its
“nationalistic” credentials to save themselves from the right-wing
Hindutva element. Hopefully, this is not the majority opinion.
The church cannot retreat. A strong spine is visible in
all denominations of the church. The recent mass movement which the
church supported in Tamil Nadu is an indication of this. Following
Valsa’s spirit are the bishop and priests who participated in the
movement against an ill-conceived nuclear power plant in Kudankulam
together with villagers of Idindakarai.
The church will get courage from the luminescence of her
sacrifice and go deeper into the territories of human rights still
uncharted – obeying the demands of caritas in veritate, charity,
love in truth, underpinning the social teachings of the church.
Sister Valsa John was laid to rest in the Christian
cemetery at Dudhani, in Dumka district, on November 17 after a mass at
St Paul’s Cathedral. About 600 to 700 people were present for the
funeral, 200 of whom were from the village of Pachwara where she lived.
Valsa, the second child of her parents, was born on
March 19, 1958 in Vazhakkala, a village in Edappally taluka in Kerala’s
Ernakulam district. A good student, she went on to become a teacher in
her home town’s St Pius School. But her life still felt unfulfilled and
one day Valsa decided she would live and work for the poor and exploited
people of our country. She approached the Sisters of Charity of Jesus
and Mary who had a convent in her village, joined them and asked to be
allowed to work in the hinterland. She was assigned to Jharkhand’s
Palamu district. In 1993 she moved to Sahibganj district and worked with
the Jesuit fathers at Koderma. She was transferred to the Jiyapani
mission in 1995. She came to Pachwara in 1998 in the midst of important
developments – the issue of rights over the coal in that mineral-rich
region.
The district has large reserves of good quality coal
whose main users are now the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) and
the private sector Eastern Minerals and Trading Agency (EMTA) –
collectively called the Panem Coal Mines Limited. Pachwara Central Block
was allotted to the PSEB for captive mining of coal to be supplied on an
exclusive basis to its own power plants together with EMTA.
The people knew that elsewhere in Santhal Pargana,
collieries had displaced and decimated tribals and most of the promises
of rehabilitation remained on paper. Sr Valsa John also knew this. Her
leadership of the sustained resistance of the people forced the PSEB to
work out a rehabilitation package which included monetary compensation,
employment against land in exceptional circumstances only to fill
vacancies, jobs for one member of each family that had lost three or
more acres of land. She was jailed in 2007 for protesting against the
forcible acquisition of tribal lands but eventually helped forge a more
comprehensive agreement assuring alternate land, employment, a health
centre and free education for the children. The company agreed to fill
in the pits of the opencast mines and give back the land to the people.
It agreed to crop compensation. Patently, there were many who had been
angered by these developments. It appears that they bided their time
until the night of November 15.
For civil society, Sr Valsa’s murder is also part of
another chain. Three other social activists have been killed this year.
Among them are 2002 riot witness and Right to Information activist
Nadeem Sayed of Gujarat, environmental activist Shehla Masood of Bhopal
and social activist Niyamat Ansari of Jharkhand. India’s civil society
has been demanding new legislation to protect activists who have
received threats after filing petitions demanding crucial information
affecting the livelihoods of local communities. This demand must be
addressed today.
