I do, but you have to delve a little more. What happened there was frightening; old ghosts and phantoms were invoked and the situation was far more complex than it seems.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS NOT A JUSTIFICATION; IT SEEKS TO EXPLAIN THE HORROR. PERHAPS THROUGH EXPLAINING IT, BY FIRST UNDERSTANDING IT, WE MAY PREVENT ANY RECURRENCE, BEYOND ANY PREVENTION TO BE ACHIEVED BY STRONG ENFORCEMENT OF LAW AND ORDER ALONE.
First, there was no pastor. Graham Staines refrained from preaching, and confined himself only to medical service.
Second, he and his children were attacked by a tribe, a group, a sect that was peculiar. The missionary work (of others) had affected the tribals, and they had shown their acceptance of the preaching. The group that reacted, the Konds, were the remnants of those that provided military service to the small rajas and the Pathan nawabs of the region. They were sent away once the British took over the administration, and were suppressed when they broke out in military resistance.
Third, the main instigator, Dara Singh, was from Bihar, but he obviously knew the ethnography of the area like the back of his own hand. He knew enough to tap into the resentment over the killing of a Hindu sectarian leader immediately before, by Naxalites, who had nothing to do with Christian preaching, or with Christian medical missions, to tap into the resentment of the non-tribal at the new attitude of converted tribals, and to tap into the bitter memories of the Konds at their suppression by the white man.
This is my reconstruction. You are encouraged to dig further.
He combined these toxic elements, the conversions, the killing of the Hindu leader, and the pent-up hatred of white people, into that act of horror.
Please try to understand why I am telling you all this. The Christians in Odisha are not dead. Far from it. The missionaries continue to preach, and they continue to convert. The Sangh Parivar continues to oppose them. In those borderline places between tribal and settled farmer, the tension continues, and will continue, and, just to complicate matters, the ultra-left, the Naxalites have a role to play. Mainly against the Konds, or rather, the leadership of the Konds, to detach the followers from the old leadership and convert them into leftist guerrillas.
That act of savagery should be flung into the face of the Sanghis, but nobody will do that. The Sanghi depends on the frailty of human memory, and depends on the prudence of an individual human being when faced by a mob, as is the case on PDF, to brush this and others like these under the carpet.
