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Who was this Staines really?
November 9, 2003, 12:00 pm
CHITRANJAN MAHOPADYAY
News Today
The case is almost closed now.
Dara Singh has been convicted, Graham Staines is widely regarded as a martyr. The first one is seen as a symbol of communal Hindu mind while the other as an innocent do-gooder for the tribals.
But is the truth really so? Was Staines just a simple-minded social worker working amongst the tribals of Orissa for leprosy eradication and Dara Singh a rabid communalist?
Nobody denies that Staines was involved in leprosy treatment. But, as many tribals in the area point out even today, Staines was involved in something more sinister too: Converting to Christianity innocent and gullible tribals who accepted him and his family readily.
It is easy and almost facile to glorify Staines in the aftermath of his gory death. There is no justification for his killing, yet very importantly he was no saint out to merely help the tribals.
Right from 1965 when he came to this sleepy village Mayurbhanj, Staines was just a simple missionary out to add numbers to his religion. The leprosy eradication work was plain incidental. This is a fact that can be verified even today with the tribals. Staines was the Secretary of the Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj (EMSM).
Locals say that as a missionary, Staines was primarily preaching the gospel and spreading the tenets of Christianity in jungle camps held in different tribal belts in the district of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar.
Many such camps were held very close Hindu festivals. Tribals say that during such camps the talk and focus would be around belittling Hindu festivals and Gods. This led to tension and unease in the locality.
But Staines seemed prepared for confrontations, and whenever some angry tribals accosted and took him on the subject, he would not retaliate in angry words.
His reaction was a practised silence. It is easy and almost natural to interpret this as example of his essential simple and peace-loving attitude. But the actual truth was Staines was striking two mangoes with one stone: Getting the tribals converted even while stoking the anger of others to show them as the villains of the situation. Machiavelli could not have bettered this.
It is a classical ploy, and it worked it works even today.
Staines efforts at conversion paid rich dividends as he managed to get the entire Ho and Santal tribes to Christianity. The tribals converted to Christianity distanced themselves from the non-Christian tribals and adopted anti-tribal customary practice of eating beef and ploughing land during Raja festival (when according to the tribal custom the land was to be kept fallow).
In a show of brinkmanship, they also played Christian audio cassettes in marriage functions to the chagrin of tribals.
As because of this, tension and unease was a constant in the locality. Innocent tribals who had lived together in peace and harmony for long were now ranged up against each other.
It is in such a scheme of things that an angry young man from Auriya in Uttar Pradesh named Rabindra Kumar Pal alias Dara Singh came to the area. He was young and volatile, and hence could not stand what was happening around. But his mental make up was such that he was not ready for the nuanced psychological warfare that his adversaries were waging. Like his words, Dara Singh's action were also blunt.
Some of the non-Christian tribals of Manoharpur and nearby villages seething at the behaviour of tribal converts in shunning tribal traditions found a Messiah (if that is the word) in Dara Singh.
Soon enough, the inevitable happened.
Staines and his sons were set ablaze.
It was a heinous crime no doubt, but in a sense it was waiting to happen. Staines was courting disaster with his extremely provocative actions.
Perhaps that was the plan, after all.
After such a high-profile event which the media also jumped on to, there was nobody to really understand what had really happened. Worse, there none to ask the question 'why'.
The case that the media built was: 'Dara Singh was so communal that he could not tolerate the good work of the Christian Staines'.
The truth alas, as the locals say even today, was totally different.
Like many things in Indian history, the story of Staines is also being written with an ink dipped in falsehoods and sweeping generalisations.
Note: The views expressed on this site are those of the respective authors and not necessarily those of IACA. This organization is in no way anti-Christian but rather anti-conversion. For more information about us, click here.
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