Graham Staines – The Australian Missionary

Graham Stuart Staines (18 January 1941 – 23 January 1999) was an Australian Christian missionary, who along with his two sons, Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6), was burnt to death in India by members of the Hindutva nationalist group, Bajrang Dal.

In the wee hours of January 23, 1999, a senseless act of brutality shook the very foundations of humanity, as Graham Staines and his two innocent children, Philip and Timothy, were callously incinerated in their station wagon in Orissa's Keonjhar district. He had dedicated his life to caring for leprosy patients in Odisha's rural areas. A politically motivated mob blocked the doors of their ancient Willy’s station wagon where they were sleeping, poured gasoline on the vehicle, and shouted political slogans as the father and two sons were burned alive.

The haunting memories of that ill-fated night continue to sear the collective conscience of the nation, serving as a heart-wrenching testament to the ravages of unbridled hate and intolerance.

Reportedly the murderers were led by political activist Dara Singh, who belongs to a radical Hindu activist group, the Bajrang Dal, which is opposed to religious conversions of Hindus to Christianity or Islam. They fear that such conversions will change the political structure of India. Presently the high caste politicians have political and economic control, and many of the members of the ruling party, the BJP, have been members of the RSS, which lends support and protection to the Bajrang Dal. This radical group is responsible for encouraging persecution of Christians in India by rhetoric blaming Christians for India’s social and economic turmoil. Repeatedly they have called for the expulsion of Christian missionaries from India.

Graham Staines cared for the poor. He came to India from Australia in 1965 and became involved in the Leprosy Mission work of treating lepers in Daripada, Orissa. He married his wife Glades in the ‘80s, and together they became very involved in ministry to the poor and helpless. He began outreach into villages with the message of the cross, lifting up Jesus among the tribal people of that area. He had gone to Manoharpur village for an evangelism campaign and was sleeping in the station wagon outside the local church building when the attack by a mob numbering more than one hundred came.

Gladys Staines and her daughter, Esther, are determined to continue the work. Gladys sang the song “Because He Lives” at the funeral of her husband and two sons. She announced her forgiveness of those who had murdered her family. Because of these events, Christ has been proclaimed from the front pages of the newspapers of India. In the face of persecution, many are coming to Jesus from families that have rejected the gospel for years.

The official census of religious preference in India shows only about three percent of the population to be Christians, but no one knows how many Christians there are in India. Christians have refused to identify themselves to the government for many years because conversion to Christianity changes their political and social status, depriving them of government programs designed to lift up the poor. Christianity has a strong appeal to the very poor masses of India, because it offers them hope and teaches them that they have the ability to rise above their conditions through hard work and helping each other.

The Christian community in India was brought together by the tragic death of Graham Staines and his sons. Many marches and speeches were organized in support of freedom of religion. Both secularists and Hindu rationalists are crying out against the intolerance of the radical movement.

The action of the radicals has increased the awareness of Christianity among the people, and more are looking to see what is there to make a man expose himself and his family to danger, and what would lead someone to publicly announce forgiveness of people who had burned alive her beloved family. In a culture where people are used to selfishness, the light of forgiveness and care is shining brightly. The burning shame of religious intolerance and political fascism is being overcome by the love of Jesus.

Born in Brisbane, as a young boy the Australian became a pen friend of one Santanu Satpathy of Baripada with whom he shared his birthday. The long-distance friendship bloomed, and Staines visited Baripada to call on his friend. That was in 1965, and he never returned. Besides the idyllic landscape of the region, what touched him was the Leprosy Home run since the last century with help from the Leprosy Mission of Australia. Having barely finished school, Staines finally found his mission in life. He devoted himself to the Home -- eventually becoming its superintendent -- and also immersed himself in preaching the Bible by virtue of also being the convener and treasurer of the Evangelical Missionaries Society.

His dedicated service won him many hearts. Fluent in Oriya and the local Santhali dialect, Staines and his wife Gladys, whom he married in the '80s, were pillars of the local society. In 1996, a devastating fire in Baripada left at least a 100 dead and scores horribly burnt. The local hospital failed to cope and the Staines couple -- Gladys who is a trained nurse -- spent nights nursing the injured. Elected president-designate of the local Rotary chapter for 2001, Staines was a leading light in the Pulse Polio immunisation drive in 1998. He distributed leaflets enthusiastically while Gladys drove the jeep that led the procession for creating awareness in Baripada.

But it was his role as a Christian preacher that contributed to his grisly end. Overwhelmed by epidemics, malnutrition and illiteracy, Orissa is low on general expectations but high on religious fervour. Roads may be non-existent and starvation deaths not uncommon, but Orissa has become the battleground involving Christian and Hindu missionaries in a war for the hearts and minds of the tribals. 1998 witnessed at least 30 Hindu-Christian clashes in 10 of the state's 30 districts. According to Defence Minister George Fernandes, who was part of the cabinet team to Manoharpur, there were at least 60 attacks on churches in Orissa between 1986 and 1998, "the highest number in any state".

In organising another four-day jungle camp in Manoharpur, Staines was courting trouble. For the past 14 years, he visited the village during the annual jungle camps instructing tribals on a range of subjects from public hygiene to the Bible. Says Reverend Pradeep Kumar Das of the Orissa Church of God Association: "Jungle camps are one big step towards development, including emotional upliftment ... Our commandment lays it down for us to preach the Bible and we preach it." A dusty inaccessible village of 150-odd Santhal families, Manoharpur too had been afflicted by the distrust sweeping the rest of the state. With 22 families having converted to Christianity over the years, the village stood clearly divided on religious lines when Staines arrived on January 20 with some fellow preachers and his two sons.

Graham was never into conversions. All he did was to spread the message of the Lord," insists widow Gladys. Others, however, believed that his preaching often led to conversions.

Graham Staines was born in the Sunshine Coast suburb of Palmwoods in the Australian state of Queensland. He visited India for the first time in 1965 by joining the Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj (EMSM), and work in the remote tribal area of Odisha state, which had a long history of active Christian missionary style work. He took over the management of the Mission at Baripada in 1983 after helping to establish the Mayurbhanj Leprosy Home as a registered society in 1982.

Staines met Gladys in June 1981, while they worked together taking care of leprosy patients on the mission field. Not too long after that they decided to get married, in 1983; they worked together until his death. Together they had three children: a daughter, Esther, and two sons, Philip and Timothy. During the course of his work Staines had managed to assist in the translation of part of the Holy Christian Bible into the language of the Ho people of India, which included his crosschecking the work with the entire manuscript of the New Testament, though it is largely believed his main focus was on his ministry to the lepers. It was reported that he could speak the Odia language fluently and was popular among the patients whom he had managed to cure. In addition to this it was also reported that he used to teach people how to make mats and baskets out of rope, sabai grass and tree leaves.

On 22 January 1999, Staines attended a jungle camp in Manoharpur, which was an annual gathering for Christians in the area to congregate for a conference and discuss their beliefs in a social setting. The camp was on the border between the tribal villages of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar, which is located within the district of Odisha. He was travelling to the village of Kendujhar with his sons, who were on a break from their schooling in the hill city of Ooty in southern India, when they decided to take a break from the journey towards the jungle camp, and elected to spend the night in Manoharpur, sleeping in the vehicle due to the severe cold at the time. His wife and daughter did not accompany them on the journey, having decided to remain behind in the town and municipality of Baripada.

A mob of about fifty people, armed with axes and other implements, attacked the vehicle while Staines and his sons were fast asleep, and set the station wagon alight, trapping them inside and burning them to death. The current BJP MP Pratap Chandra Sarangi was also believed to be a part of this murder as he was Odisha State Unit Chief of the Bajrang Dal during this planned murder.

Staines and his sons had awakened and apparently tried to escape but were prevented from doing so by the angry mob of vigilantes.

The murders were widely condemned by religious and civic leaders of the time, along with politicians and journalists. The US-based Human Rights Watch group accused the Indian government of failing to prevent violence against Christians, and for exploiting the sectarian tensions that existed at the time for their own political gain. Then-prime minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a leader of the BJP, condemned the "ghastly attack," and called for swift action in catching the killers.  Published reports stated that the church leaders alleged the attacks were carried out at the behest of hard-line Hindu organizations seeking revenge for what they perceived to be forced conversions of the tribal poor into Christianity.  

Dara Singh, who was convicted of the murders, was treated as a hero by the hard-line Hindus and reportedly protected by some villagers. In an interview with the Hindustan Times, one of the accused killers, Mahendra Hembram, stated that the killers "were provoked by the 'corruption of tribal culture' by the missionaries, who they claimed fed villagers’ beef, and gave the women brassieres and sanitary towels."

In her affidavit before the commission on the death of her husband and both sons, Gladys Staines stated: The Lord God is always with me to guide me and to help me try to accomplish the work of Graham, but I sometimes wonder why Graham was killed, and what also made his assassins behave in such a brutal manner on the night of the 22nd/23rd of January 1999. ... It is far from my mind to punish the persons who were responsible for the death of my husband Graham and my two children. But it is my desire and hope that they would repent and be reformed.

Gladys continued to live and work in India caring for those who were poor and were affected by leprosy until she returned home to Australia in 2004. In 2005, she was awarded the fourth highest civilian honour of India, the Padma Shree, in recognition for her work in Odisha. In 2016, she received the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice.

In a remarkable display of Christian love, Gladys Staines, the wife of Graham Staines, exemplified the true spirit of her faith by forgiving the murderers of her husband and sons. Despite the unimaginable trauma and grief, she endured, Gladys chose to respond with love and mercy, rather than hatred and vengeance. Her act of forgiveness was a powerful testament to the transformative power of Christian faith and forgiveness.

Sources

1.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Staines

2.    https://www.ibsresources.org/articles/staines.shtml