Nun’s murder puts Catholics on edge

BY ANTO AKKARA

The name “Valsa” means “dear one”. By laying down her life in defence of the poor, Sr Valsa John has literally become dear to the whole Church as well as social activists in India.

Sr Valsa was brutally murdered on November 15 for her dedicated work for impoverished tribal people against exploitation by the coal mining industry in the eastern Jharkhand state.

Early reports had it that the 53-year-old Sister of Charity of Jesus and Mary had been shot. The truth was even more gruesome. The nun was beaten up by a group of about 50 men and then hacked to death in the remote village of Bachuwari.

“Sr Valsa is a precious gift to the Church in India,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of Catholic Bishops Conference of India, told mourning family members at her home at Vazhakkala near Kochi in the southern Kerala state.

Even Hindu and Muslim leaders joined the memorial services for the slain nun in several cities.

Sr Valsa had been staying in the jungle village since 1995, living in a hut. She took up the cause of poor tribal people who were being exploited and treated like slaves by the coal mining industry.

After years of tribal protests, led by the bold nun, the coal mining firm had to concede all the demands of the impoverished tribals who had been displaced by coal mining. This included return of their lands, royalties for the mining, and building houses and even a school for them.

The nun might have won a historic battle against the coal mining lobby, but Stephen Marandi, former deputy chief minister of Jharkhand, confirmed that the nun had told him about repeated threats against her. Mr Marandi was a signatory to the agreement the tribals made with the coal mining company in 2007.

After Sr Valsa’s victory, her superiors asked the nun to leave the “dangerous” region. But she stayed, sharing a mud hut with a tribal family while most of the community lived in the concrete houses the nun had made the company build for them.

The police arrested seven people in connection with the brutal murder of the nun, saying that some of the villagers who were part of the nun’s movement for tribal rights had turned against her.

It is said that these people sided with the coal mafia when they turned greedy and started taking money for themselves from the tribal funds the nun had won as royalty from the coal mining company.

The final straw might have been a rape case. While Sr Valsa was away in August to visit her family in Kerala state, a young woman whom she had worked with was raped, allegedly by the same people who were collaborating with the coal mining industry.

Sr Valsa’s insistence that police open a rape case infuriated her adversaries who prevailed on the police to hush up the rape.

The murder of Sr Valsa has caused concern for some Catholics. “This [murder] will make the religious more cautious in their work,” said Holy Family Sister Prasanna Thattil, president of the women’s section of Conference of Religious India, which includes 80000 nuns. But, she added, the “many determined nuns and priests” serving the poor and the vulnerable in remote areas in northern and eastern India, where Christianity is unknown, will continue their mission.

Though the brutal killing of Sr Valsa is not a missionary murder, it exposes the dangers faced by those who stand up for the voiceless poor and oppressed people in India especially in hinterlands where notions of “might is right” prevail.