Basil Fernando

One day
I would like to take
Both my hands
(For I consider life
Itself too dear to lose)
Dip them in petrol
Then set them alight
With a candle flame
And dedicate them
To those who acted
While I wept and wrote.

- Maimed Jamal (Pakistan)

So it happened. Someone rose to make his ultimate protest. A bishop for 17 years, 66-year-old John Joseph knew how his people wept. There was those who protested, and he was one of them. He had engaged with others like him to push the protest to its ultimate limits but that was no use. The state authorities did not move a bit. The pressure of fundamentalist was at its height.

What the protesters asked for was what people in most countries had and took for granted. They asked that the country’s blasphemy laws incorporated in the Penal Code to be removed, and thus pure and simple murder couched in legal language under religious pretext not to be allowed.

Protest went on for years but cases under the blasphemy law continued. Sometimes victim went into hiding, and ones like Bishop John Joseph helped them to survive. But not everyone could be saved. The mobs acting under the instructions of manipulators attacked and killed some. It was just few months back that two people were attacked in front of a court and that one of them was killed. It was at the very spot where this man was killed that Bishop John Joseph sacrificed his life.

Some seem to find it difficult to understand the bishop’s final action, though they claim that they do sympathise with his cause. This is a convenient way to try to forget the very challenge posed by this great bishop.

As a bishop for 17 years, a priest for much longer time and a Christian all his life, he knew his theology well. He knew the Catholic teachings on suicide. When decided to ignore these he would not have done so lightly. His was not a decision that quickly arrived at. He had waned about it indirectly. He had warned the government that unless the blasphemy law was repealed he would protest in an astonishing way. At international gatherings he had said that the people would protest and the protest would take different forms. His thus was a long contemplated deliberate act of protest.

Would any other form of protest have mattered? There had been many years of letter writings, seminars - national and international, prayer meetings, publications and everything else that usually goes under the name of protests. But nothing mattered. Cynical game of harassment, intimidation and cruelty went on, and even used the courts for such purposes. On 27 April the court sentenced another man, Ayub Masih, to death. There were no due process rights to victim in this case as also in other cases.

The challenge was then either you did something that mattered or just bowed down to the situation. Of course one could have gone on with the ritual protests knowing well that such protests would not produce any results. Bishop John Joseph was no hypocrite. He was a loved leader of his people. For over a decade he had been the chairperson of the National Justice and Peace Commission. He was well-known for his human rights activism.

Instead of the poor and the weak been allowed to be attacked, it was time for a leader to come face to face with the challenge. He would take the suffering of his people on himself. His master Jesus has taught that no greater love a man has than to lay his life down for another. Thus on 6 May Bishop John Joseph, an Asian bishop, offered his life on behalf of those he led. He did not seek revenge from his enemies but braved to do an act that should open the eyes of anyone whom had some sanity left.

This great man who will surely be remembered by the posterity has also challenged the leaders of the Christian community in his own country and outside. The simple question he left is, will you just sit and watch or engage only in gestures that really do not matter? Or will you do something that really matters for the people who are so unjustly treated? He did what he thought he had to. Can anyone in Pakistan sit easy any more?

Dawning of the full meaning of the bishop’s action will take time. One thing clear is that whatever humbugs may say, his people in Pakistan will remember him as a saint.