By: A.J. Philip, Indian Currents 13 Novenber 2011
It is easy to level charges of abuse against anyone who runs an orphanage for girls. This is precisely what seems to have happened at the orphanage run by P.P. Job in Coimbatore from where girls were “rescued”. None of the children in question ever made any such allegations.
A British NGO, a Christian lady and some spurious social activists were behind the “rescue” of the girls who were being fed, clothed and educated so that they could stand on their own legs. Words like “trafficking” were bandied about to drive Job to the wall. The “rescuers” have taken away 23 girls from the orphanage, who could have become engineers, doctors, teachers and nurses if they had remained at Coimbatore. What will happen to these children now? That is what bothers me.
I have read a post-rescue report on a Nepalese website. The girls belong to poor families, which cannot afford to teach them, let alone provide the kind of comfort they were used to at the orphanage. Their parents are cursing the rescuers who have done the greatest damage to them.
The poor children might have been enthused when they saw their “relatives” at Coimbatore beckoning them to Nepal. But they could not have imagined at that time what hell they were being led to.
Job might have wondered aloud like Lear, “Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand for lifting food to it?” The British NGO has nearly washed its hands off the hapless girls and the venomous anti-Christian letter-writers who wrote to the website praising the noble sons of the soil for going all the way to rescue the Nepalese children from the evangelist are not there to help them continue their studies.
It is easy to level charges of abuse against anyone who runs an orphanage for girls. None of the children in question ever made any such allegations. If they are given an option, they would all return to Coimbatore to continue their studies. Alas, that does not seem to happen.
It is one of the most tragic and bizarre stories that I have ever come across.
It is one of the most tragic and bizarre stories that I have ever come across.
I hope better counsel would prevail and the “rescuers” would take the initiative to take the children back to Coimbatore with all the requisite documents. And Job would be compassionate enough to accept the children and educate them to become good human beings who will glorify their creator, no matter whether they have Christian names or not. But then wishes are seldom horses.
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Some confusion here prompts me to add: The above article is written by AJ Philip not by myself. Here’s his short Bio:
AJ Philip is the Editor and Publisher of The Herald of India. He has been a journalist for 36 years, and has held numerous senior positions in regional and national news organizations in that time.
Philip is also Director of the Pratichi (India) Trust set up by Nobel-laureate Prof Amartya Sen and President, Deepalaya. He currently resides in New Delhi.