In the morning, I was painstruck to read in the Sunday Times of India newspaper that the authorities have asked Sister Jacqueline Jean MacEwan who has been serving the leprosy patients selflessly and with utmost devotion for 3 decades, to leave India by Monday. The high-handed and heartless authorities did not renew her permit to stay in India this time (without furnishing any reason to her) and ordered her in typical Indian bureaucratic style to leave the country within 48 hours.
The Bangaloreans must be aware that Sumanahalli Society has been serving the leprosy patients for more than three decades and Sister Jean has been its part and parcel, devoting a major chunk of her life in selflessly serving the physically aggrieved whom the commonfolk avoid like anything. The leprosy patients and the people of the society were all into tears upon getting this news and everybody is damn sure that Sumanahalli Society will never be the same again without Sister Jean. Sister Jean herself was into tears as, quite naturally, this kind-hearted daughter of God had got an attachment with the patients. She will go back to U.K. which she had left only to serve the humanity and it's the good fortune of India that she served here for three decades.
Sumanahalli Society was established in 1978 in West Bangalore (off Magadi Road) by the then bishop of Bangalore at the request of the then Karnataka CM - Devraj Urs himself and it has done a yeoman's service to the mankind during the past 33 years. Will anybody ask the high-handed and heartless authorities whether they are going to serve the aggrieved patients now in place of the kind-hearted Sister Jean (or the people behind them are going to do it) ? Is this the reward of selfless service in our country ? I have been hearing a noise of Videshi Videshi against some individual for more than a decade in India but what are the (so-called) Deshis doing then ? Is this country meant for power-hungry (and money-hungry) politicians and bureaucrats only and are the chairs of duty (containing even the tiniest power) meant for showing off the might to the innocents only ? No reason has been given behind this abrupt order thrown at Sister Jean. What does it mean ? Are the authorities not answerable to anyone ? I am afraid, with such kind of things going on in our country, the day may come when some future generation (in India) won't believe in human values at all.
