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The Great Tribal Quirk of Fate.

Br. Rohit Noel Philip (Juniorate)

It started as a simple 4 month community experience opportunity for me landing me in the land of rich history, culture and languages. 11th of Jan 2022 after a long journey of 3 days from Palamner, Chitoor by train and several busses I finally reached our Friary (St Anthony’s) at Malom Noatoli a village in Jharkhand surrounded by rivers, mountains, jungle terrain and many other villages. I reached late around 8:30 PM and it was dark and cold with no street lights and absolutely no sign of electricity in any of the villages that I passed at that time. Upon asking Friar Br. Robin I was told; that electricity is just a guest of couple of single digit hours in the double digit hours that we live. With just a bike headlight travelling in the pitch dark made me think of all the challenges people might be facing, even in the year like 2022 where many parts of India are well advanced at least to a certain good extent.

In the 4 months that I experienced and served in the friary and at the mission school I made many acquaintances right from the religious in that area to common villagers - youth, children and adults. Many things caught my attention as I learned about them as well as taught me too forcing me to share a bit about them.

Lack of common rights!

Deprived of knowledge!

Exploited in the name of development!

Alienating of value!

The Tribal’s here also known as Adivasi’s are one of the highly politically played communities. They are innocent and are highly victimized and manipulated. Some who thought this can be settled with violence gave birth to “Maoist/naxalite groups” and the ones with Love “The Church” dealt in ways that it saw fit. Their history yells many stories of journey through oppression which are to be written in Red and bold. Some of the recent ones are not only how the Adivasi’s were targeted but also how Fr. Stanswamy was a victim to this vicious game.

Some common amenities like food and water which is available in abundance for them makes this not such a big issue however when it comes to trade, they never get the rightful share and all the process of complex ever changing laws confuses the common uneducated farmer making the ones who fiddle with it monopolists who make a good share for them out of someone else’s hard work. In some cases the ones who deceive are their own who were elected to help them but sadly that doesn’t happen.

In these four months the mortality rate that I experienced in the parish as well as read from some local newspaper sources and heard by word of mouth left me in awe as to how high it was. Most of them were preventable and curable but sadly due to no good medical facilities available and their trust in local quacks the villagers choose to stay helpless and accept the bitter fate. The local best hospital was 2 hours of travel or more from the village and the local clinics with government doctors are available 10 to 20 kms away from the villages with high chances of unavailability of doctors as they are fewer doctors appointed and more clinics to be attended.

One case that left me really sad was a young government teacher who was teaching in a local education body fainted due to heat and exhaustion and she was declared dead upon arrival at the hospital which was 3 hours away and the local clinic was unable to treat her with no one available and lack of good equipment. She was one of the few educated, educating their own and now the light of hope and the future of kids from the villages is short of one good lamp that always shined for them showing them the path to walk.

Most of the village heads also known as Panchayat heads or Sarpanch, are elected by the people through voting system but this is mostly rigged and this whole election in most cases is orchestrated by the local government body heads who use the candidates as puppets to just fulfill the obligation of laws. The Mind and game behind them are the officials often using the government aid to fill their needs and of these puppets and often depriving the people of the actual fruits. And this is sadly happening from a long time mostly by domination, deception, intoxicating and providing the voters with some temporary attractive and small monetary gains and depriving them all from knowledge in order to easily get away and keep many in the dark for their own selfish gains. In some cases the elected Sarpanch is of a pure motive and elected by awakened people however they don’t stand a chance in front of well funded and corrupt servants who find a way to keep them always at bay with their law manipulation, confusion and executing skills. They promise transportation but offer license to private vendors who operate and make transportation costs high and roads are never built as per sanctioned, for example the road close to the friary was never built but recently when an armed forces officer of an higher cadre expired and in order to get his body home they made the road which is now a blessing to many villagers but not something which was done by the government based on a sanction. A local teacher from the village while speaking to me said; Br. Rohit I had once travelled to other states in the south in 1997 as part of an educational tour and saw the villages there and now recently when I travelled again, I saw that they did not lose their beauty but also looked developed and it made me sad that all the hard work never pays in our own land and it is a constant struggle.

The people here are deprived of their common rights of voting as per their own decision with no knowledge given to them, they are deprived of good trade practices and basic necessities i.e. medical, roads, transportation etc. They are exploited in the name of development and government in most cases takes over their lands forcing them to sell so that some foreign companies or some projects can be done which really makes no good for the people.

These people are identified as low and mostly taken for granted, kept uneducated and controlled, and alienating them from equal respect. Many words and laws state the opposite but the reality is violation of every bit of human rights.

Now as a church and as people of faith many fathers and sisters are constantly working and serving here from many long years but the question is:

How do we fix this? How much more suffering and sacrifice will it take?

And after some thought I found the answers in the words of St Francis and Fr Livens i.e. Build my broken church and let the fire keep burning!

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