SHOOTING PRIEST

[Guest guest]

 Shooting priest

by A.J. Philip

PUT down the Bible and pick up the gun” said one of the dacoits to the late Fr

Thomas Chakalakkal when he was in their custody somewhere in the jungles of West

Champaran in Bihar. By then the Jesuit priest had become close to his

kidnappers, who realised that they could easily kill him but not extract even a

penny from his family or the order to which he belonged.

Because of the extensive coverage the now defunct The Searchlight and the

Malayala Manorama were giving to his kidnapping and the political pressure

mounted on Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Bihar Chief Minister Chandra Shekhar

Singh, the dacoits found it pointless to keep him in prolonged captivity.

The priest, who lived like a villager at Ratanpurva near Bettiah, became so

friendly with the dacoits that they gave him the best portion of the chicken

they cooked. They were as curious about the ordinariness of his life as he was

about the dangerousness of theirs. It was while discussing his “mission” that

they made bold to suggest that he pick up a gun and join their ranks. He just

laughed away their suggestion.

I recalled Fr Chakalakkal’s abjuration of the gun when about a year ago, a tall,

bearded, fair-skinned person came to meet me at The Tribune. He introduced

himself as Fr Mark Barns. What brought him to the office was a report we had

carried about an incident in which a Subdivisional Magistrate was arrested for

killing the national bird. He said the story had certain inaccuracies. How did

he know? He was with the SDM that day, though he was not caught by the forest

guards.

From the conversation it transpired that he was an erstwhile English Capuchin

priest, who now belonged to the Jalandhar diocese as a diocesan priest. He was

Canadian in origin and had his upbringing at Ajmer in Rajasthan. He had chosen

Gumtala at Ajnala in Amritsar district as his karmabhoomi. He could stay in the

village for over four decades because he cared two hoots for transfers and

postings issued by his superiors.

A sharpshooter, he was a great hunter too. Small wonder that the local people

called him “shikari padri”. It was the first time I had come across a priest,

who hunted, rather than “fished”, to use a Biblical expression. I could not

resist asking him why he associated himself with “poachers” and “hunters”. He

did not seem to take the question seriously and went away, nonetheless, thanking

me for giving him a patient hearing.

It was only after he left that I came to know a lot more about this colourful

sprightly septuagenarian, who was on first-name terms with Captain Amarinder

Singh. Stories abound about his bravery and chivalry.

Once he drove a rugged Land Rover all the way from England to Punjab. On the

way, an armed group tried to rob him of his belongings. After they were beaten

black and blue, they wondered whether the blue-eyed man was James Bond in

disguise.

For the people of Gumtala, he was a Jim Corbett whom they adored as much for his

simple living as for his love for the gun. As providence would have it, on

Tuesday he succumbed to the injuries he suffered when a cartridge he was making

exploded at his home.

It was a measure of the respect he commanded that the people of Gumtala insisted

on having his body buried in the village, rather than in a cemetery as is the

custom in the Catholic Church. In the process, he was denied the last rites that

befitted an ordained person. Very truly it is said “those that live by the

sword, die by it”.

www.tribuneindia.com/editorial page/18.02.05.