The Horror in Orissa Continues

We have had little to say about the recent violence between Christians and Hindus in India, principally because it is so painful.  The opening lines of this Times of India story may be all you need to hear:

Rajani Majhi, a 20-year-old girl, was gangraped before being burnt alive by a mob at the church-run orphanage in Orissa's Bargarh district where she worked, says a senior priest. They mistook her for a Christian.

The article goes in in considerable detail, and is not for readers weak of heart or stomach.  The priest is quoted, several times, as saying that he is ready to testify in court, and the terrible possibility is that he may be called to testify, because so many attacks of this sort go unpunished.  

We realize that, as in all communal violence, there is another side to the story, that the Hindus blame the August assassination of a political leader upon Christians, that the Christians deny it and that the real problems have to do with the conflict between modernity and tradition.

But still.  This has to stop.