Graham Staines, among the most prominent Christian martyrs of the twentieth century in South Asia spent 34 years in India’s remote tribal district of Mayurbhanj, Orissa state, nursing the wounds of lepers, promoting self-reliance by teaching rehabilitated patients how to make mats and baskets out sabai grass, and tree leaves, and editorially assisting the translation of the New Testament into the language of the Ho people – an indigenous tribal community.

Staines death is particularly poignant in that his two sons, Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6) were burnt to death along with him, in a station wagon, while they slept, on a cold January night in Orissa’s Manoharpur village.

Staines was born in the Sunshine Coast suburb of Palmwoods in the Australian state of Queensland, on January 18, 1941, the second child of William and Elizabeth Staines. Staines’ tryst with Mayurbhanj began in the year 1956 when he started corresponding with a pen friend, Shantanu Satpathy, who lived in Baripada, the district headquarters, with whom he shared his birthday. The flora and fauna of their homelands was often a topic of interest in their letters.^[1]

A competent student at school, Staines always secured an A grade. After finishing school, Staines worked at the office of a local garage and attended night school to learn accountancy. ^[2]

As a teenager, fifteen year-old Staines, attended a presentation by a visiting missionary. A photograph of a Mayurbhanj boy, Josia Soren, of approximately his age with severe leprosy deeply moved him.  According to Gladys Staines, Graham’s wife of fifteen years, Staines felt an unexplainable empathy and wanted to help him. The specific call to serve the leprosy patients in India came two years later. A devotional reading about Christ, coincided with a missions meeting, where the speaker challenged the congregation to serve people with leprosy, and Staines responded.^[3]

The Evangelical Missionary Society of Mayurbhanj (EMSM) was established in 1895 at the invitation of Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo, the then Maharaja of Mayurbhanj state, by Kate Allenby of the Queensland Baptist Missionary Society.^[4]

Staines visited India for the first time in 1965, on his 24^th birthday and joined the EMSM. Very soon Staines learnt Oriya, Santhali and Ho. Such was his proficiency that the local administration asked him to compose a song in the Santhali dialect, as part of a campaign to popularize a polio immunization drive.^[5]

A sun-hat propped Staines riding his bicycle was a well-loved and respected figure in Baripada town, also the site of the leprosy home run by the Society.  

In June of 1981, Gladys Weatherhead of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia visited Baripada as part of a youth mission outreach. A trained nurse, she volunteered at the centre. Graham Staines and Gladys married in 1983. The couple made their home in an old house within the mission compound in Baripada. They had three children, Esther, Philip, and Timothy. Over the next few years Graham Staines and Gladys were involved in a wide range of activities including literacy, church planting and social development.

Staines was instrumental in registering the Mayurbhanj leprosy home as a society under Indian laws in 1982. In 1983, he took over the management of the mission. The leprosy home became a haven for the outcastes. Between 80-100 inmates were housed and treated. Part of the mission included rehabilitating the recovered patients to integrate with the community. They were taught weaving. But when a recovered inmate had nowhere else to go, Staines found opportunity and a home for him within the compound.

A dairy farm run by the mission had many takers for its fresh milk. This is testament to Staines ability to de-stigmatize the disease from its prevailing untouchability.^[6]

Staines was not just a missionary within the seclusion of a compound. When a devastating fire in Baripada left at least a 100 dead and many horribly burnt, the local hospital failed to cope; and the Staines couple spent nights nursing the injured.

Elected president-designate of the local Rotary chapter, Staines was an active campaigner for the Pulse Polio drive. He distributed leaflets enthusiastically while Gladys drove the station wagon that led the procession for creating awareness against polio in Baripada.^[7]

Under Graham Staines the mission thrived, with the leprosy home caring for 70 residents, a rehabilitation community and farm that housed ten families, two compounds, and around 27 churches. Staines had a vision to develop the leprosy centre into a full-fledged hospital so patients wouldn't have to travel for reconstructive surgery.^[8]

Staines played a vital role in cross checking the Ho language translation of the New Testament, which was published in 1997, and was also instrumental in church planting among the tribe. Staines is remembered as an engaging and compelling preacher.

As part of the outreach, the mission conducted camps in the surrounding jungles. For the past 14 years, Staines visited the village during the annual jungle camps instructing tribals on a range of subjects from public hygiene to the Bible.  
According to Reverend Pradeep Kumar Das of the Orissa Church of God Association: “Jungle camps are one big step towards development, including emotional upliftment... Our commandment lays it down for us to preach the Bible and we preach it.” One such camp was organized in a dusty inaccessible village of 150-odd Santhal families, Manoharpur. With 22 families having converted to Christianity over the years, the village stood clearly divided on religious lines when Staines arrived on January 20, 1999 with some fellow preachers and his two sons.^[9]

The converted Santhals refused to follow the tribe’s customs. During the “Raja Sankranti” festival, while the earth is believed to be menstruating – the converts violated custom by continuing to till the land. This led to heated exchanges between the traditionalists and the converts. Tensions rose when Christian carols were publicly played at a marriage in the village.

Right-wing nationalism was sweeping across the country since the demolition of  a 16^thcentury mosque in 1992, and many organizations, often populated by disaffected young men fighting unemployment and low self-esteem sprung up at the grass roots, to militantly assert a right to the hearts and souls of the nation. One such fanatic, Rabindra Pal Singh who “re-christened” himself after Bollywood strongman Dara Singh to pitch himself to the tribals as a “Robin Hood”, from distant Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah, was active along the Mayurbhanj-Keonjhar district.   

On the night intervening January 22-23, 1999, Graham Staines and his sons slept in their jeep outside the village prayer hall to escape the biting cold. Philip and Timothy who studied at Hebron International School, located far south in the picturesque hill-station of Ooty, were visiting home for the winter vacations and had accompanied their father on his jungle adventure.

Just 100 metres away a group of Santhal boys and girls were dancing a traditional Dhangiri to the rhythmic beating of drums to celebrate their “coming-of-age”.

In the dead of the night, the mob led by Dara Singh descended on the unsuspecting Staines' father and sons with cans of petrol and flaming torches. Within minutes the jeep was up in flames and the father’s frantic attempts to protect is sons were thwarted by sticks and axes. The Santhal dance eerily continued unperturbed as if providing a backdrop to this macabre triple murder.

In the aftermath three charred bodies were found clinging to one another.

A heartbroken Gladys is recorded as saying on affidavit before the government appointed enquiry commission, "The Lord God is always with me to guide me and help me to try to accomplish the work of Graham, but I sometimes wonder why Graham was killed and also what made his assassins to behave in such a brutal manner. It is far from my mind to punish the persons who were responsible for the death of my husband Graham and my two children. But it is my desire and hope that they would repent and would be reformed".^[10]

Dara Singh, who was sentenced to death by a sessions court in the capital Bhubaneshwar, was granted relief by the High Court and Supreme Court, and his sentence commuted to life in prison.^[11]Fourteen persons who were part of the mob were sentenced to punishments that ranged from death to 14 years in prison. Of these, 11 were acquitted by the Orissa High Court in 2005. Chenchu Hansda, then a student in a local primary school, the only minor in the deadly cabal, was acquitted in 2008. Released from prison but unable to study or find work, Hansda got married. Circumstantially he lost his parents and his wife. In 2021, a desperate Hansda followed the advice of a pastor and became a Christian.^[12]

Gladys continued to live and serve in India until 2004, when she returned to Queensland. A 15 bed Graham Staines Memorial Hospital was opened in 2004, the Philip and Timothy Memorial Hostel for 40 boys in 2003, and the Kate Allenby Girl Child Care Centre with seven girls, in 2013.^[13]

In 2005 Gladys was awarded the prestigious Padma Sri ^[14]by the Government of India. Now living in Townsville, in the north-eastern coast of Queensland, Gladys continues serving as the Honorary Secretary of EMSM.

On January 22, 2024, the 25^th anniversary of Graham Staines, Philip, and Timothy’s martyrdom; described by then President K.R. Narayanan as a deed “belonging to the world’s inventory of black deeds”; around 500 people including 38 year old Chenchu Hansda gathered outside the asbestos-roofed church for a memorial prayer. This has been an annual practise for the grateful 50-odd Christian families of Manoharpur to gather and reminisce about their “Saibo”^[15], the name they fondly used to address Staines. 120 kilometres away, a small gathering held a remembrance service at the gravesite in Baripada.^[16]

While reports cite a dispute between the Graham Staines Memorial Hospital and the State, leading to a pause in its functioning^[17]; the life and love with which the Staines' family served the "least of the brethren" have left a continuing sense of gratitude and sorrow in the soul of a nation.