Book Review on "The Violent Sight on a Silent Night"

A Violent Sight on a Silent Night: Missiological Discourses in the Context of Violence against Christians by Raj Bharath Patta, Delhi: ISPCK, 2009. pages 144

Rev. Raj Bharat Patta, the writer of the book is a young ordained minister from the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church and currently serves as the Executive Secretary for Commission on Dalits in NCCI. The author is an alumnus of Gurukul and his primary interest is in the field of cross-cultural and contextual theology.

The book is a painful, contextual reflection on the horrendous violence on Dalit Christians of Kandhamal district in Orissa during the advent season in the year 2007. The author had been to the affected area many times as part of the NCCI fact finding and solidarity Delegations. The book differs from most of the common Christian responses to religious violence in the manner that it does not blindly and solely find fault with any agency outside the church. Instead the author finds this time of crises in the life of the church in Kandhamal in particular and the church in India in general as an opportunity to contextualize its witness. Hence for the author, the time of persecution in the church’s life is not a time to switch to defensive strategies, but rather a time to contemporize its witness.  

                                               

The reflections on the witness of the church are dealt with in three parts; each one deals with different dimensions of Christian witness namely; Proclaiming witness, Public witness and Prophetic witness.

The section titled “Proclaiming Witness” is an attempt to draw energy from the available Christian resources to propel the church’s witness forward. This is a search for the life affirming biblical resources to stand against the impending violence. The contextual re-readings of the biblical passages are intended to inform the dalitness, marginality and liminality of the dalit Christians of Kandhamal and to instill ‘hope against hope’ in them. This section also deals with the interplay of various factors such as the business interests of the high caste business men, the age old rivalry between the dalits and tribals sustained through the carefully crafted fantastic “histories” (without any real historical grounds), male chauvinism, casteist hegemony and bad governance to engender a greater catastrophe with indescribable proportions for the Christian population. The riots emerging out of economic, ethnic and religious fundamentalism should not encapsulate the Christian community; instead the church has to give out its witness as “peace makers” and responsible citizens “fasting unto justice.”

The second part of the book is the compilation of author’s responses to the violence, intended to be read by the general public of the country, written and published during and immediately after the days of the violence. It is an invitation extended to the public, without any discrimination between their religious belongingness, to sensitize their conscience of the perilous human disaster happening at Kandhamal and other Christian pockets of Orissa. The public witness of the church must not delimit itself at organizing protest rallies and fasts, even though they bear symbolic significance in some way or other. It further urges the solidarity of responsible citizens from all walks of life to come together in condemning religious, ethnic and economic fundamentalisms, upholding the rule of the law, affirming religious freedom, acknowledging the cultural diversity of the country and asserting the basic human rights of all people. It in short is a call to strengthen the democratic foundations of the country to overcome all sorts of coercions on human freedom on the basis of any form of parochial ideology.

The third section of the book titled as the prophetic witness is again a compilation of appeals and statements on the issue by NCCI and other ecumenical partners. It is an appeal to all citizens of the country with clear conscience to join the chorus in pressing on the government to act promptly to ensure the safety of its citizens against all forms of violence. The statements and appeals are deliberately crafted in such a way to make the responses comprehensive by incorporating the aspects of solidarity, immediate intervention, emergency relief, advocacy, affirmation of hope and even protest. Most of them are attempts to update the ground reality at relief camps and forest dwellings of people to expose the false claims of the government agencies the situations are getting back to be normal. The statements also stress the need to be mindful of the livelihood issues, lack of law and order and other gross deprivations through which the people of the place were going perennially. The author being a dalit activist makes it a point to look at the issue in a dalit perspective. He looks at it as another instance of explicit violence against the dalits, in response to the efforts to assert their identity. The issue is also looked at from the women’s perspective, as women bore the brunt of the attacks. The statements in principle argues for a “common vision and united action” against all sorts of violence without differentiating it in religious, ethnic, racial or casteist lines.

The message of the book is very cogent and the proposals towards the solution of the problem are much realistic. The church should not waste its energy and resource base in simply lamenting over its unfortunate predicament. She has to turn the crisis in her witness as an opportunity to contextualize it in the changing world. The church must also be wary of the danger of falling into a tunnel vision in understanding the violence that she experiences. She has to rise up over the present sufferings to develop a broad perception of reality, which she may be able to share with all the concerned citizens of the country to resist the parochial ideological formations of any kind. The violence against the Christians should not be dealt with in isolation; it has to be linked with the struggles of the dalits, tribals, women and other subaltern sections for liberation. The author calls for an unbiased governance ensuring peace and security for the citizens, tribal-dalit interface to get rid of the frequently recurring conflicts and finally unconditional solidarity cutting across all sorts of divisions in the civil society. The simple language and the use of imageries (the use of the familiar slogan Jai mata ki to correlate with goddess Diana is an example) in re-reading biblical passages from the familiar communal discourses in prevalence are very much appealing and communicating. The reading of the book quenches the queries of the academician and the common man alike to be led by the insights to a better understanding of Christian witness in a context of abounding violence.

Reviewed by Rev. Jacob P. Thomas, who served as a missionary priest of the Mar Thoma Church in Orissa for six years, and currently is a student at Gurukul in the MTh (Missiology) program