On 22nd.January this year the Supreme Court has delivered its verdict over the killing of Graham Stuart Staines which had taken place in the very heart of India exactly 12 years ago. The death sentence of the monster who had killed the Australian social worker so mercilessly has been converted into life imprisonment. Nobody should have a problem with that,especially who knew Graham as a person,who would have pardoned his killer anyway.
What is shocking,to say the least,is the rejoinder that has come with the verdict. Subjectively speaking it delivers two essentially different statements.
1)The court has observed,as if in a mode which justifies the change in the nature of punishment,that the killing doesn't fall in the category of "the rarest of rare cases" that actually demands capital punishment.
An obnoxious thought itself that outrages the moral values of the common Indian,the entire avoidable rejoinder couldn't have been more improper,shaming the nation's pride and modesty.
A Supreme Court verdict isn't just a legally binding decision. It represents the set of values that guides the code of living of an Indian in front of the entire world. It sums up the sense of the good and the bad,of what is proper and what isn't for the average Indian. It represents the set of values that guides India to live and let live the way it wants,peacefully co-existing with all other nations.
If burning a man and his two sons alive inside a station-wagon in full consciousness and in cold blood isn't a rarest of rare cases in the eyes of an Indian,I wonder what is. The entire world is watching us.
2)The Chief Justice of India has come down heavily on forced religious conversions. Was it necessary for the Supreme Court to make this observation while passing the verdict in Staines' case? Graham Stuart Staines was not a missionary zealot who made religious conversions. It seems that the highest chair of Justice in India has made a correct decision for all the wrong reasons.
January 23rd. 1999 was just another chaotic day in Kolkata.There was nothing irregular about it.When I reached The Oxford Book Company in Park Street,it was past midday. I remember waiting for 3 long weeks before I decided to pick up a copy of the unabridged King James' version of The Bible.
The Old Testament used to be(it still is) one of my most favourite books,being one of the most brilliant books of history,and a wonderful mixture of sociology & anthropology too. As I waited for the busy traffic to slow down a bit so that I could cross over from Flury's to the opposite footpath that bordered Park Hotel,I frowned up to look at the sky. It was a dull grey,so typical of the outgoing winter that used to keep Kolkata enwrapped in a thick,depressive smog in the month of January.
Trying to read into the January sky,I couldn't understand what was disturbing me on that day. What I didn't know was that it was a day which witnessed religious extremists brutally murdering Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons, burning them alive inside a station wagon - one of the most brutal,heinous killings Independent India had ever witnessed. Nothing could have been so ironic. There I was,a Hindu Indian,holding the Old Testament in my hand because I loved to read it.And a few hundred miles away an Australian Christian was being burnt alive,right in the heartland of tribal Orissa. His "sin" - he loved tribal lepers and wanted to make their lives beautiful.
Soon after that,the brutal killing had snowballed into a political warfare,with political parties taking sides and the newspapers screamed hoarse everyday as they covered the high-pitched political rhetoric that the two sides slung at each other. So politically Indian.
I remember standing a few paces behind Gladys Staines as she stood in front of the entire world to softly declare that she had forgiven the brutes who had killed her husband and her two sons so mercilessly.
Graham Stuart Staines was a father-figure to me. Though I have no intention of going into the details of the seemingly "blasphemous relationship" of which I had been accused of once upon a time - how did an Australian Christian Missionary who ran a leprosy rehabilitation camp in Orissa ever bond with a 29 year old Indian doctor that was me, born unto a Bengali middle-class Hindu family(because such an act today will degrade the memory of Graham),I remember
weeping bitterly as I read the headlines of The Telegraph,trying to withstand the onslaught of the morbid helplessness that took me in,going into the gory details of how Graham had been burnt alive a day before on the day that marked 102nd.birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose.
It was going to be the first of the serial personal losses that struck me so suddenly and quickly,as life unfolded itself over the months of '99. Though I was devastated,the memory of Graham and everything he stood for helped and guided me away from the borders of reckless self-annihilation that had threatened my sanity over the year that saw me across to the new millenium,and a new life too.
The murders had shamed the entire nation. Graham had been accused of forced religious conversion by those who mocked to justify the gruesome act. Yet when I made that trip to Manoharpur,Orissa 12 years back to stand by whatever was left of the Gladys family-my last, I didn't find a single religious convert in the entire missionary camp that Graham ran like an angel,with Gladys by his side. And I hung my head in shame as I watched her reading out to reach out to the entire world that she knew Graham would forgive his killers as she did too.She prayed for her two sons too,and silently returned to her life without any cheap fanfare,back to the camp that loved and helped Oriya tribal lepers who had been ostracized by their own society,and by those who were "supposed" to show them the "Path to Salvation".
Life has moved on since then. India has moved on too to a possible redemption,that part of her that loved and understood Graham Stuart Staines has learnt to live out of the shame that had once belittled its own self.
But the pathetic malady that is eating away into India's humane face every day,hurling her into a hellfire of corruption,money laundering,sex-scandals and brutal rapes of minors,just doesn't seem to go away. And on the eve of Graham's 12th.death anniversary,as I watched the newscaster reading out the Supreme Court verdict on primetime news on television,I hung my head in shame once again.
I knew Graham personally. I have been fortunate enough to have felt his love - the love that he had for one and all,cutting across countries,beliefs and religions. He took his inspiration from a man called Christ,but was gentle enough to have never forced his faith upon anybody. Yet the blind fanaticism that cuts the world into bleeding pieces today in the name of a highly dispensable folly called Religion took this man away. Maybe it's time for some real introspection for those of us who think that they care and understand. To stop lying to our own selves once and for all,and to listen to what our hearts tell us silently every single day that witnesses the rape and murder of a brother or a sister somewhere out there.And we just look the other way.
Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
With Regards from :
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri,
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
What is shocking,to say the least,is the rejoinder that has come with the verdict. Subjectively speaking it delivers two essentially different statements.
1)The court has observed,as if in a mode which justifies the change in the nature of punishment,that the killing doesn't fall in the category of "the rarest of rare cases" that actually demands capital punishment.
An obnoxious thought itself that outrages the moral values of the common Indian,the entire avoidable rejoinder couldn't have been more improper,shaming the nation's pride and modesty.
A Supreme Court verdict isn't just a legally binding decision. It represents the set of values that guides the code of living of an Indian in front of the entire world. It sums up the sense of the good and the bad,of what is proper and what isn't for the average Indian. It represents the set of values that guides India to live and let live the way it wants,peacefully co-existing with all other nations.
If burning a man and his two sons alive inside a station-wagon in full consciousness and in cold blood isn't a rarest of rare cases in the eyes of an Indian,I wonder what is. The entire world is watching us.
2)The Chief Justice of India has come down heavily on forced religious conversions. Was it necessary for the Supreme Court to make this observation while passing the verdict in Staines' case? Graham Stuart Staines was not a missionary zealot who made religious conversions. It seems that the highest chair of Justice in India has made a correct decision for all the wrong reasons.
January 23rd. 1999 was just another chaotic day in Kolkata.There was nothing irregular about it.When I reached The Oxford Book Company in Park Street,it was past midday. I remember waiting for 3 long weeks before I decided to pick up a copy of the unabridged King James' version of The Bible.
The Old Testament used to be(it still is) one of my most favourite books,being one of the most brilliant books of history,and a wonderful mixture of sociology & anthropology too. As I waited for the busy traffic to slow down a bit so that I could cross over from Flury's to the opposite footpath that bordered Park Hotel,I frowned up to look at the sky. It was a dull grey,so typical of the outgoing winter that used to keep Kolkata enwrapped in a thick,depressive smog in the month of January.
Trying to read into the January sky,I couldn't understand what was disturbing me on that day. What I didn't know was that it was a day which witnessed religious extremists brutally murdering Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons, burning them alive inside a station wagon - one of the most brutal,heinous killings Independent India had ever witnessed. Nothing could have been so ironic. There I was,a Hindu Indian,holding the Old Testament in my hand because I loved to read it.And a few hundred miles away an Australian Christian was being burnt alive,right in the heartland of tribal Orissa. His "sin" - he loved tribal lepers and wanted to make their lives beautiful.
Soon after that,the brutal killing had snowballed into a political warfare,with political parties taking sides and the newspapers screamed hoarse everyday as they covered the high-pitched political rhetoric that the two sides slung at each other. So politically Indian.
I remember standing a few paces behind Gladys Staines as she stood in front of the entire world to softly declare that she had forgiven the brutes who had killed her husband and her two sons so mercilessly.
Graham Stuart Staines was a father-figure to me. Though I have no intention of going into the details of the seemingly "blasphemous relationship" of which I had been accused of once upon a time - how did an Australian Christian Missionary who ran a leprosy rehabilitation camp in Orissa ever bond with a 29 year old Indian doctor that was me, born unto a Bengali middle-class Hindu family(because such an act today will degrade the memory of Graham),I remember
weeping bitterly as I read the headlines of The Telegraph,trying to withstand the onslaught of the morbid helplessness that took me in,going into the gory details of how Graham had been burnt alive a day before on the day that marked 102nd.birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose.
It was going to be the first of the serial personal losses that struck me so suddenly and quickly,as life unfolded itself over the months of '99. Though I was devastated,the memory of Graham and everything he stood for helped and guided me away from the borders of reckless self-annihilation that had threatened my sanity over the year that saw me across to the new millenium,and a new life too.
The murders had shamed the entire nation. Graham had been accused of forced religious conversion by those who mocked to justify the gruesome act. Yet when I made that trip to Manoharpur,Orissa 12 years back to stand by whatever was left of the Gladys family-my last, I didn't find a single religious convert in the entire missionary camp that Graham ran like an angel,with Gladys by his side. And I hung my head in shame as I watched her reading out to reach out to the entire world that she knew Graham would forgive his killers as she did too.She prayed for her two sons too,and silently returned to her life without any cheap fanfare,back to the camp that loved and helped Oriya tribal lepers who had been ostracized by their own society,and by those who were "supposed" to show them the "Path to Salvation".
Life has moved on since then. India has moved on too to a possible redemption,that part of her that loved and understood Graham Stuart Staines has learnt to live out of the shame that had once belittled its own self.
But the pathetic malady that is eating away into India's humane face every day,hurling her into a hellfire of corruption,money laundering,sex-scandals and brutal rapes of minors,just doesn't seem to go away. And on the eve of Graham's 12th.death anniversary,as I watched the newscaster reading out the Supreme Court verdict on primetime news on television,I hung my head in shame once again.
I knew Graham personally. I have been fortunate enough to have felt his love - the love that he had for one and all,cutting across countries,beliefs and religions. He took his inspiration from a man called Christ,but was gentle enough to have never forced his faith upon anybody. Yet the blind fanaticism that cuts the world into bleeding pieces today in the name of a highly dispensable folly called Religion took this man away. Maybe it's time for some real introspection for those of us who think that they care and understand. To stop lying to our own selves once and for all,and to listen to what our hearts tell us silently every single day that witnesses the rape and murder of a brother or a sister somewhere out there.And we just look the other way.
Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
With Regards from :
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri,
• • • • • • • • • • • • •
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