ICC Note:

In 2008, anti-Christian violence swept across India’s Odisha state displacing over 50,000. For three months, mobs of Hindu radicals attacked Christian homes and institutions in the Kandhamal district of Odisha state after Christians were falsely accused of killing a radical Hindu leader. This violence continues to be considered the worst anti-Christian violence in India’s history. Within this larger story of persecution, a single child’s birth in the jungle has come to symbolize the suffering of the entire Christian community at that time. 

09/27/2016 India (Crux) – When Father Madan Singh was recently appointed the director of Jana Vikas, a grassroots organization based in the eastern Indian region of Kandhamal, the very first thing he did was to visit a young girl named “Jungle Rani,” whose mother gave birth to her in 2008 when tens of thousands of Christians took refuge in a forest during ferocious anti-Christian riots.

A project of the Indian Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneshwar, Jana Vikas works among the most marginalized communities of the country, including the Dalits, meaning the “untouchables” under the ancient caste system, and the Tribals, meaning members of India’s indigenous groups, with the aim of empowering them for economic and social progress.

Singh was appointed director of Jana Vikas Sept. 15 in Bhubaneshwar, and he shared the story of his visit to the girl whose story symbolizes the suffering that often faces the people he serves.

Rani was born in the forests of Kandhamal, where her heavily pregnant mother fled to escape murderous mobs during the worst anti-Christian riots of the early 21st century. The violence exploded in the summer of 2008, when militant nationalist Hindus attacked Christian targets, leaving more than 100 people dead, 6,500 houses burned and looted, and 350 churches, 45 health and education institutes destroyed.

Minakhee Digal, Rani’s mother, was one of the Christians caught up in the chaos, fleeing deep into a nearby forest to save her life and that of her unborn child. She says her pain and agony increased with every step, yet she had to be in the jungle in spite of heavy rain.

She delivered her first girl child in the jungle, despite having no spare clothes into which to change, and no way to clean herself up after the birth. She had no clothing for her new-born child, and no way to start a fire to warm herself and the infant.

Although her daughter’s actual name is Chinmayi Digal, everyone knows her as “Jungle Rani,” which literally means “Queen of the Forest,” because that’s where she was born.

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