By dawn, Christian homes in the village were smoking heaps of burnt mud and concrete shells. Churches were razed, their wooden doors and windows stripped off.
A Reuters first-hand account of the continuing pogrom against Christians in eastern India -- "Christians cower from Hindu backclash in Orissa" -- captures the horror unfolding in that state, where Hindu fundamentalists, egged on by nationalist politicians, are doing to the Christians there what scapegoating mobs have done throughout history.
There is a social law, identified by students of these things, that the fewer the victims and the larger the mob, the greater will be the violence. Orissa is a homogeneously Hindu state where Christian numbers are very small indeed. Krittivas Mukherjee’s harrowing story, says Tom Heneghan, religion editor of Reuters, "comes from a hamlet so small it doesn’t show on web maps."
The saddest thing about this is that it is hard to see who can help them.
