IT HAS been described as the biggest moment for Indian Christians in centuries. On Sunday, as I write, the Pope should have elevated a Kerala-born nun who died more than 60 years ago to sainthood. The only other woman from India on the path to sainthood is Mother Teresa who was beatified five years ago.

Sister Alphonsa`s journey to sainthood has been marked by growing attacks on her fellow Christians in India, not always without the quiet consent of the state. Many of the nuns who followed her footsteps were raped and murdered in recent weeks in different parts of India, thousands of impoverished Dalit and tribal Christians were assaulted and driven from their homes and scores of churches burnt to ashes. The mayhem continues unabated.

We are told that it was the miraculous cure of a 10-year-old boy Jinil Merin Shaji from Kerala that eventually led to the Canonisation of Sister Alphonsa. “On May 5 this year, I turned 10 and I do not even remember I had a club foot once,” says Jinil. “I was born with a congenital defect in my ankles and I could not walk. Having lost all hopes, when I was a one-year-old boy, my parents had taken me on a first Friday of 1999 to the tomb of Alphonsamma at Bharanaganam. All the doctors had said that I had an incurable disorder. My parents laid me on the marble surface of the tomb of Alphonsamma and prayed relentlessly to cure my disability. I learnt from my mother that small changes were noticed in my feet within no time and all were amazed. By evening prayer time, I was almost back on my feet.”

On the face of it such miracles are common in almost all religions. India`s Hindus go to the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and there are stories of intractable illnesses being healed, women finding the right groom or getting a male child and so forth after making the journey. Muslims and Hindus, among others, visit the shrine of Hazrat Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer to seek similar boons. But Indian Christians do need a higher miracle at this point in time, more so if that miracle would get them justice, as nothing else seems to work. It looks unlikely for now, of course, for the simple reason that the state itself is complicit in precipitating their misery, which includes humiliation at the hands of Hindu zealots who wield significant political clout.

And talking of miracles there is this moving story by Harsh Mander, one of the icons of the fight for secular space in India, about a Muslim boy from Gujarat. A police bullet pierced right through the 10-year-old boy`s forehead, and flew out from the other end, near his neck. This was in the communal convulsions of 2002. But Azharuddin walks to his school across the streets of Ahmedabad today, a little wobbly on his feet, his one hand bent permanently like a spastic, but coherent in his mind and ready to often smile. “It is a resplendent miracle of love,” wrote Harsh. To add further shine to the wonder, his mother Shakila Bano also survived a bullet that penetrated her chest, just inches away from her heart. The ire of Azharuddin`s tormentors has currently shifted to the Dalit Christians of Orissa and Karnataka.

(As I write this, an agency report says that amid a renewed focus on religious conversions after the violence in Orissa where Dalit and tribal Christians were massacred, nearly 10,000 Dalits embraced Buddhism near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. “From today, we will not worship any Hindu god or goddess. We will abide only by the principles of Lord Buddha. This is my new birth,” said Shakuntala Kamal of Rura village after Thursday`s ceremony. President of Bhartiya Dalit Panther Party, Dhani Rao, said the ceremony was conducted in accordance with the teachings of B.R. Ambedkar. Point to ponder is why are Dalits and tribes-people leaving the Hindu fold, if they were ever part of one.)

The Vatican has taken more than 50 years to scrutinise Saint Alphonsa`s life and work before conferring one of church`s highest spiritual honours on her. It is indeed a moment for the entire country and not just its small Chrisitian community to rejoice. For my friend Sankarshan Thakur, who has been rummaging through the burnt remains of Orissa`s churches in Kandhamal to find clues to the religious madness, it seems too early to celebrate. For a country that allows its politicians to hop from one party to another, often for a fee, it seems odd that religious migration between groups, which really should be a completely personal matter for each individual to pursue, should invite not just scrutiny but severe reprimand from rightist groups.

At any rate, Sankarshan`s revelations in The Telegraph last week should be an eye-opener as it reveals how Hindu zealots and not Christian missionaries are forcing people to convert to their religion.

If there is a thing worse than being driven out of home, says Sankarshan from Kandhamal, it is not knowing when or how to return; it is to have to confront the prospect of conversion from oustee to refugee.

He met Pradyumna Pradhan, a victim who was `prescribed` the only way he could return home he should “shave his head, consecrate himself with a gulp of cow urine and a bit of dung, fling a stone at the church, curse Christ and home will be your peaceful abode again”. This is what the Telegraph dispatch said quoting Kandhamal`s Christian refugees.

Pradyumna lost his younger brother, Rasananda, to the mayhem that descended following the killing of a Hindu priest by suspected Maoists. “In front of me, as I pleaded, in front of me, they emptied a can of kerosene on him and he became a torch. I don`t know how we got away but I don`t know why I should change my faith. I was born a Christian, I will die one, I never asked a Hindu to change his faith or curse his gods, why me?”

Nudged by French President Nicolas Sarkozy during their interaction with the media recently, who described the killings of Indian Christians as a massacre, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too has expressed his outrage at the national shame. He has company. The leader of the opposition, Mr Lal Kishan Advani, is not far behind. He held a meeting with representatives of the Christian community and expressed his sorrow at the violence in Kandhamal. He demanded that the victims be given justice. However, if he means all that, Mr Advani should distance himself from the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad if not from the RSS, which controls both.

It has been more than a month now that Pradyumna and his family of eight have camped in a bare, ramshackle hall at the YMCA in Bhubaneswar. Given the ordeal confronting them neither Pradyumna nor Sankarshan may have found the occasion to celebrate the sainthood of the former Sister Alphonsa. Yet, I suspect, they would truly wish for her to work some miracle for India`s traumatised Christians so that they find justice and peace, which they are entitled to as equal citizens of India.

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