News Entry
Father Jagat Santra in Pune
Date Posted: Sunday 13 January 2008
Father Jagat Santra was formerly our curate at Old Saint Paul’s and we enjoyed tremendous warmth and exchange with him and his family. His son, Jubin, is still here in Edinburgh at university and is one of our team of servers. We have been helping the campaign for facilities at Orissa for a few years now. Father Jagat send us the following message:
“We wish you all a very happy and peaceful new year. We just returned from Orissa after our Christmas and New Year holidays spent with family members, both mine and Jyotsna’s. The weather was cool but hot at times in what was India’s mid-winter. There is visible prosperity in terms of city expansion and new roads extending even into many of the villages. The new wealth that is generated today - mainly through foreign investments - are pocketed by the mullahs of modernisation, though the village of Oriya continues to be behind the plough. It can harvest only very little as the per capita land is very, very, small and cultivation is traditional. People here continue to be poor.
“Village Christmases are different from those in the city. In Orissa, perhaps as it is in other places, it is so good to see Christmas has remained the same over the years (except for new elements like e-mail/SMS greetings). I was invited to preach the Christmas sermon in Cuttack, the nearby city, almost put on the spot (I was asked the night before) and I obliged. The average Christian in Orissa is a believer but ironically the ecclesiastical establishment, mission organisations, and the clergy are invariably weak in leadership and busy defending themselves against many allegations of corruption. However, the church in Orissa is growing as Dalits are willing to become Christians to escape stigma, indignity and atrocities committed against them by the upper castes.
“The Christian community in Orissa in many parts is persecuted. Last Christmas Eve trouble broke out in the highlands (in the Kondhmal district. Its Kui people are the subject of my thesis) where there is a sizable Christian population, mostly tribal and poor. This was part of a systematic plan of attack by extremist and fundamentalist Hindu groups. From unconfirmed sources about 50-60 churches were destroyed and 3 or 4 Christian villages were completely burned down. One Hindu village was also burned as some Christians have retaliated. A few lives have been lost and many people are in makeshift shelters put up by the government. There is no outside agency: churches, NGOs or activist groups are not yet allowed to enter the area on the pretext that it would cause politicisation of the incident.
“OLIVE is continuing its quiet work and its building work is complete. I have attached here pictures taken during our visit. It still needs about Rupees 1,50,000 or about £2000 pounds for the centre to become fully operational.
“Once it is ready, OLIVE will start a regular clinic for outpatients. Through a small user fee and voluntary help from a retired doctor friend, we plan to operate the clinic. The doctor has his own pharmacy and would like to open an extension counter at the OLIVE centre. The official inauguration of our new building is postponed until the visit of a team or individual from OSP, hopefully in the coming year. The entire cost of the building is from the donation by OSP and the land on which it stands is donated by the Santras.
“We hope and pray the Lord will enable this money to be raised which we need to complete the project. Thank you.
Yours in Christ, Jagat and Jyotsna.”
Would you like to help OSP to make this building into a working clinic?
Category: General, Groups, Overseas Giving Group
