The grant of £20,000, given last October to Asia Pacific Baptist Aid (APBAid), is in response to attacks on Christians by Hindu nationalists in the Indian state.
The violence escalated last August by the killing of a Hindu swami, leading to tens of thousands of people being displaced and many hundreds of homes, churches and shops damaged or destroyed.
DistributionAPBAid set up the Baptist Consultative Forum for Orissa Relief, which represents seven local Baptist groups.
It has already been involved in two phases of relief work in Orissa, with a third distribution now underway to help 600 families, and trauma counselling and legal aid training planned shortly.
In December, 400 blankets were distributed in Gajapati district, and more than 5,000 sets of clothes given to people in Kandhamal and Bolangir districts.
Then, six weeks ago, the relief team visited Raikia, in Kandhamal, to provide over 700 families with food items such as rice and daal (lentils) to last them two to three weeks as they moved back to their own village, rebuilt huts for shelter and searched for employment.
OrdealsIn a report, Mr Sushil Narzary, Project Officer for APBAid, states that, whilst Christians in Orissa are slowly returning to their own villages, people are still experiencing many difficulties.
He says, “Villagers from Mondakia, Bakingia and Tiangia, who suffered most, are still living in makeshift camps – partly out of security reasons and partly since their homes were not reconstructed till then.
“During the distribution of relief, one man narrated the ordeals of his people as to how the neighbours used to tell them: ‘Convert to Hinduism and stay in the village’.
“They were not allowed to harvest their own paddy, rather the people from [the] neighbouring village forcefully harvested and took [the crops] away. They were also threatened to prevent them tilling their lands in the coming season as well”.
The elderly tribal lady pictured below, who we will simply refer to as ‘S’, lives with her two grandchildren (aged 21 and 15), her husband and son having died, and the mother of two grandchildren having remarried and left the family ten years ago.
The grandchildren discontinued their studies and now work as daily wage-earners in order to support and sustain the family.
When the mob attacked her village in August 2008, ‘S’ fled to the jungle to escape.
She spent two days in the jungle, along with some villagers, until they were rescued and brought to the relief camp at Raikia, about ten kilometres from her village.
Last month, ‘S’ received the relief package of daal and enough rice to last about 20 days for the family.
A dozen Christian families in Badabanga were attacked last September and their homes destroyed. They first stayed at a relief camp at Daringbadi before relocating back to the edge of Badabanga village in the temporary settlement shown here – makeshift tents of polythene just four by five foot in size. The families received relief packages in February and clothes donated by the Baptist Church of Mizoram.