thanksgiving in india

Thanksgiving in India from Peter Yunho Chung on Vimeo.

Truthseekers Promo

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link to their website.

the shot

attempting to get a shot of the sign and then pan to the entrance -

take 1


take 2


looks like we're close to having a cut for the promo piece..

what are you doing?

article and update

Hello everyone, we hope you had a blessed holidays. We just wanted to let you know that we are making progress. We had a rough assembly of interviews, and we finally exchanged our faulty hard drive. Hopefully our hardware problems are over.

Even after our eye opening experience in India, it is still easy to forget the horrors that still exist in India. here's an article from the Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal

UNTOUCHABLE
Brutal Attack in India Shows How Caste System Lives On

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
December 27, 2007; Page A1

KHAIRLANJI, India -- Not long ago, the Bhotmange family was a showcase of how Dalits, the former "untouchables" at the bottom of India's caste ladder, are improving their lot amid the nation's economic boom.

Forgoing his ancestral occupation of handling rotting cow carcasses, Bhaiyalal Bhotmange set up a tiny wheat and rice farm in this village. The income enabled him to buy a cellphone and educate his three children. His 17-year-old daughter learned English, a rarity here. A son studied computers and enrolled at a local college. "I knew that only through education can we uplift our status," Mr. Bhotmange says. "This was my dream."

Last year, the dream ended. A mob of higher-caste neighbors, angered by the family's refusal to accept their destiny as the lowliest of the low, attacked their home. Mr. Bhotmange's wife and children were dragged out and murdered, their bodies dumped in a canal. Mr. Bhotmange, who had managed to flee, is now a refugee in a nearby city, afraid to venture into Khairlanji.

The killings and their fallout show how the rising aspirations of India's most downtrodden can exacerbate age-old social tensions. A prolonged economic boom has improved the lot of millions of the nation's poorest, including Dalits. Still, despite a ban on "untouchability" and decades of affirmative-action aid to Dalits, the rigid stratification imposed by the Hindu caste system is proving resistant to change, sometimes violently so.

In parts of rural India, in particular, the upward mobility of some is causing tension along caste fault lines. "The actual practice of caste is strengthening, and the [Dalits] are still the main victims," says Buta Singh, an official who heads a federal commission on Dalit issues. The murders at Khairlanji ignited weeks of Dalit rioting that further deepened the divide.

Following the protests, India's federal government took over the investigation late last year. It is only now, as a murder trial moves ahead, that a full picture of what happened here on a rainy fall afternoon is beginning to emerge.

Mr. Bhotmange moved to Khairlanji from a nearby village almost 20 years ago. He claimed a five-acre plot that belonged to his relatives and that, until then, was illegally farmed by higher-caste villagers.

Unwelcome From the Start

Most of the 800 people in this remote village, set on a dirt road amid palms and tamarind trees, hail from the farmer and trader castes known as "kunbi" and "kalar." Pegged below Hindu noble castes such as the priestly Brahmins and the Kshatriya rulers and warriors, they are considered "backward" by the government and entitled to affirmative-action benefits. Their standing, however, is well above that of the Dalits, who are viewed as unclean by the Hindu tradition and who have been confined for millennia to the most demeaning of occupations.

Mr. Bhotmange's family, one of only three Dalit households in Khairlanji, was made unwelcome from the start, he says. The village council refused to recognize him as a resident and barred him from building a permanent home. His hut at the village edge is made of bricks piled atop each other without mortar.

Villagers, he says, usually addressed him as "mahar," a caste slur meaning carcass handler. "I would tell them, 'Please don't call me this way, I have a proper name,'" Mr. Bhotmange says. The village chief, Hasan Dhande, says Dalits are treated with respect here.

Mr. Bhotmange's little farm was a good earner, bringing in almost $2,000 a year, a hefty sum in this area. His wife, Surekha, earned some more by rolling homemade cigarettes. This success and the children's schooling aroused dark envy from higher-caste neighbors, he says: "I earned more from my five acres than they did from 10-acre farms, and they were jealous. They couldn't forgive me."

Worse, his plot lay on the way to some other villagers' holdings. Instead of using a roundabout access road, many drove their tractors and bullock carts straight through his property, and through his crops. He lodged several complaints with the police but got no help. As the dispute escalated, Mr. Bhotmange finally asked a relative of his wife from a nearby village to intervene.

The relative, Siddhartha Gajbhiye, embodied Khairlanji villagers' worst fears about Dalits upending India's age-old social order. A bulky man with thick, meaty fingers, Mr. Gajbhiye had become one of the wealthier local figures, accumulating 47 acres and even employing some higher-caste villagers. He was the "patil," or auxiliary policeman, responsible for settling small disputes in his own village.

Riding his motorcycle into Khairlanji, Mr. Gajbhiye became a frequent visitor to the Bhotmanges, checking on them and arguing with villagers on their behalf. "I never wanted any quarrel," he says. "But what the other villagers wanted from the beginning was to drive them out and to take over their land."

Things came to a head on Sept. 3, 2006. As Mr. Gajbhiye passed through Khairlanji that evening, he was attacked by several men armed with thick bamboo sticks used as cattle prods. The reason is in dispute. Some villagers testified at the murder trial it was retribution for his slapping one of them during an argument over unpaid wages. Mr. Gajbhiye says there was no provocation and that the attackers hurled caste insults and said it was because of him "that Bhotmange has become so arrogant."

Hearing the commotion, Mr. Bhotmange's daughter and wife ran out and confronted the attackers, using the family cellphone to call Mr. Gajbhiye's brother for help. Two weeks later, out of the hospital, Mr. Gajbhiye filed a complaint against the villagers under the Scheduled Caste Prevention of Atrocities Act, which prohibits bail for those accused of crimes against the Dalits.

The local police station, however, registered the incident as simple assault. The officer in charge is now on trial for allegedly taking a bribe to do so. According to witnesses in the murder case, higher-caste villagers told Mr. Bhotmange's wife, Surekha, that the men who beat up Mr. Gajbhiye had the backing of police and politicians, and warned her against testifying.

She defied the threats. The morning of Sept. 29, 2006, 13 village men named by her and her daughter were arrested and taken to court. All were quickly freed on bail. As they set out for home in a tractor-drawn cart, one of them called a Maharashtra state legislator representing a nearby district, Madhukar Kukde.

Mr. Kukde says he was told the villagers believed Mr. Gajbhiye was organizing a gang who would avenge his beating. Mr. Gajbhiye says he had no such plan.

By the time the released villagers reached Khairlanji, they were ready for battle. Unable to find Mr. Gajbhiye, they turned their fury on the Bhotmanges, whose testimony had caused their arrest. The rampage began just as Mr. Bhotmange returned from his field about 6 p.m. Converging at his hut, the gang yelled, "Let's finally cleanse our village of the mahars," according to neighbors interviewed.

Mr. Bhotmange escaped out the back. "I thought that if I weren't in the house, they wouldn't touch the womenfolk," he says ruefully. From Khairlanji, he ran to Mr. Gajbhiye's home in the nearby village. Mr. Gajbhiye says he quickly phoned the police and asked them to rescue the family.

The crowd around the Bhotmanges' hut swelled to some 60 villagers, who by now bayed for blood. Trying to scare them off, Mr. Bhotmange's wife, Surekha, went outside waving a torch and set a cattle shed on fire, according to trial testimony. This only further enraged the mob. One man pulled her by the hair and smashed her head against a drain wall, according to the prosecutors' charge sheet. Then the crowd closed in, pounding her with bamboo sticks, bicycle chains and axes.

'Save Us!'

"First there were shouts of, 'Save us! Save us!' and then just, 'Kill them! Kill them!'" says Gayabai Khandate, a woman whose hut is a few dozen yards away.

The Bhotmange children were dragged out next. "I didn't do anything to you -- do not beat me," 21-year-old Sudhir pleaded before he was bludgeoned at the cow-dung pit, according to witness testimony. After killing him, the mob turned to his brother Roshan, 19, cracking his skull.

The 17-year-old daughter, Priyanka, who tried to hide in the burning cattle shed, was the last to be discovered. After the first few blows of bicycle chains, she lay on the ground, calling out, "Mamma, they killed me," according to witnesses' testimony. "Mamma, I am dead."

Suresh Khandate, in front of whose hut some of the killings occurred, says the frenzied villagers shouted that they had to find and kill Mr. Bhotmange, too. When they noticed that Mr. Khandate -- who, as a member of an aboriginal tribe, falls outside the caste system -- was watching, he says one told him: "Go indoors and keep your mouth shut or you will be next."

As darkness fell and a downpour began, the mob piled the four bodies in a bullock cart and took them to an irrigation canal. The next morning, according to trial testimony, one villager asked a tea-stall vendor for free tea. He explained that he had accidentally destroyed some of his money when he burned a shirt stained with the Bhotmanges' blood.

Mr. Bhotmange returned before dawn to search for his family. Finding only a ransacked hut, he went to the police station. In late morning, while he was waiting, the police received a phone call: The body of a young woman, naked and with the name Priyanka tattooed on her arm, had been spotted floating in a canal. The three other bodies, partly nude, were retrieved from the canal the next day.

Even though Priyanka was found naked, a doctor who performed a post-mortem exam didn't check for signs of rape. Local politicians played down the slaughter. "It had nothing do with caste. It was just a small village conflict about a road. There is no problem between Dalits and others here," says Mr. Kukde, the legislator.

But as the news filtered out, often exaggerated with even more gruesome detail, Dalit neighborhoods exploded throughout the state of Maharashtra. The big industrial city of Nagpur was brought almost to a standstill as protesters set vehicles and storefronts on fire, and at least three people were killed in the area. Days later, Dalit mobs stopped a train between Mumbai and the city of Pune, forcing passengers out and torching the cars.

As Dalit activists from all over India arrived in Khairlanji, they accused the state government of complicity, citing the lack of police response to the Bhotmanges' complaints and the flawed post-mortem. Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil rejects the accusation. He says that, while at least five law-enforcement officials in the Khairlanji area have been suspended for alleged misconduct related to the case, there's no reason to believe their actions were caused by caste prejudice. Some of these officials, he says, are of Dalit origin themselves.

The riots died down only after the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's equivalent of the FBI, took over the case. Its agents had a hard time collecting evidence as a pall of silence descended over the village. The CBI filed charges against only 11 of the 47 villagers arrested by local and state police. Ranging in age from 21 to 56, most had lived all their lives in Khairlanji, seeing the Bhotmanges every day. The other suspects, including Mr. Dhande, since elected village chief, have denied wrongdoing and are back in Khairlanji.

The trial has been going on for six months in a dingy, cream-colored room in the district capital of Bhandara, an hour's drive away. On a recent morning, a session in an empty courtroom was quickly adjourned at the request of witnesses who said they needed to work their fields. Lawyers for the 11 defendants say the investigators have charged the wrong men. That's a view partially shared by some Dalit leaders, who contend the main conspirators have escaped because of their political connections. A verdict is expected in around three months.

No Apologies

Mr. Bhotmange has been given a government job as a watchman at Bhandara's Backward Boys Home. He spends his days by a broken window, guarded by a plainclothes policeman who also rides on the back of Mr. Bhotmange's bicycle when he pedals home. Not a single villager from Khairlanji, Mr. Bhotmange says, has come to see him to express regret about the killings. "I think they're happy. They got what they wanted," he says.

Back in the village, dozens of policemen camp in tents around the Bhotmanges' hut, looking out for the property and for the few villagers who testified for the prosecution. Still visible at the hut's door post are pencil marks that recorded the changing heights of the children. Tattered pictures of their favorite Bollywood stars, Sanjay Dutt and Aishwarya Rai, are still on the wood.

Otherwise, life in Khairlanji has returned to normal. "The village is very peaceful these days," says Krushna Titirmare, whose bullock cart was used -- without his knowledge, he says -- to dispose of the bodies. "There are no quarrels anymore."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

urgent prayer request from India

When the Newsong LA film team was in India, one of our greatest blessing (besides the crazy delicious food) was the wonderful beautiful people of India and the ministry workers we became friends with there. Unfortunately, it is common that the workers of our Lord's ministry of Love is met with resistance. The Sardar family have face persecution in the form of repeated Visa denials. Here is their urgent prayer request. Please pray for them and God's ministry in India.

Dear Beloved Who Pray,

It has been an eventful season for us...Thanksgiving in India was amazing! The Truthseekers family along with 68 guests from the U.S. washed the feet of the lower caste. We gave them a moment where we could look up into their faces and express the love of Christ. We caressed the feet of those who, in some places, are not allowed to wear their shoes. Not allowed to touch a cup. Not allowed to walk a path or enter a door or study in school. This is simply by means of their birth. It is impossible to describe the evil of this system on paper. When you come, you can see it.

In the midst of the joy of the season as we celebrate the birth and life of our Saviour, we are experiencing evil of a different kind. I am including an excerpt from my last letter, so I won’t have to re explain, but just give you an update for prayer.

My Visa Battle

continues to rage. Upon our return to Indiana, it became clear that the Indian government was not going to give me a visa without much prayer and persistence. This has been a decade long battle, and we are weary. My name is on the blacklist, so it is always a complication for me to enter and exit India. I was told at my departure that I would not be able to re enter, so it cast a shadow over our entire summer. However, through much prayer and persistence, I was granted a 3 month tourist visa. We are in process of applying for an extension as we work with the home ministry department and our dedicated friend and lawyer to get my name removed. No one that we know in the history of this list has ever been removed. Also, no one has been placed on it that is married to an Indian national. Above all else, this situation needs to be bathed in prayer. The case the government has “built” against me is absolutely false. We believe it has been one of Satan’s deepest strongholds, and we also believe God has his purpose for not releasing it until now...even if we don’t understand. We also believe the spiritual climate is shifting and we are on the winning side!

Above is the history...the update is on December 18^th a brief letter was delivered to me by the Home Ministry.

It said, “Your request for an extension of visa has been considered and denied. You are therefore advised to go back within the validity of your present visa, December 20, 2007.” I wrote a rebuttal letter stating the impossibility of my return by that date and the reasons why. For the last 2 days, Sunil has been meeting with high profile government officials. We had a meeting with the President’s personal secretary and others. Phone calls and inquiries have been made, but yesterday Sunil was told that I would need to buy a ticket to leave until the case is settled. We still have hope to settle it without my departure as that would be an incredible emotional trauma for our family for a myriad of reasons. Sunil says about the only people who could make a decision to reverse the order are the Home Minister or the Prime Minister. The personal secretary of Sonia Gandhi is also involved.

In the meantime, we have Christmas festivities and friends coming abroad to celebrate the New Year with us. We feel a cloud over our celebrations, but we are, as I said above, on the winning side. Whatever the outcome, God is bigger than all these authorities combined. It is in HIS Hands! However, our contribution is fervent prayer, and Friends, we are asking you to mobilize whatever prayer you can on our behalf.

We will keep you informed!

May the beauty of His presence rest with you in this season!
Pam for us

yes, there will be updates

and yes, please keep checking this site for those updates on our editing process.

Just wanted to say another heartfelt thanks to those who supported us. If you are new to this blog, feel free to relive our trip by reading the old posts.

Also, please keep praying for the post production. We had a minor hiccup with a hard drive failure. We didn't lose any India footage, just man hours...and by man, I mean Peter. But from now on, a continued speedy and flowing post production would be nice.

If you would like to support TruthSeekers, you may do so here.

as for the editing process, we're sifting through hours of footage and thousands of photos, simultaneously capturing tapes and converting files. A lot of computer processing at this point (aka waiting for the solid bar to move from left to right).

I guess if our editing process had a solid bar moving from left to right, it would be closer to the left side.

thanks for reading!

preview

we were asked to show something for our return from India.

India for the Eyes

(mostly) non project related pictures (from jenny and gary). All the project related ones are on a hard drive somewhere.

postpartum

I miss India.

It's great to be home. It really is. But I can't help but feel a bit of postpartum anxiety being separated from India. I miss the vibrant colors of the sarees and the great Indian food at the truthseekers office. I miss our new friends and I miss my teammates. Most of all though, I miss being part of His plan 24/7. I miss being inspired by the great men and women of India who work for His Kingdom with reckless abandon.

It was always our intention to bring the mission back home. Not to leave the mission-mindedness behind in India. But it's hard to come back to your life and not settle back into the old way of doing things. You begin to rely on yourself again. In India, being so dependent on God and on your teammates made things so real. So simple. I miss that.

50 hours of footage. Thousands of photos. I know that our mission begins now.

Please continue to pray for us as we continue our mission. That we don't settle back into the comfort of our lives, but remain focused on God and His Kingdom.

fyi - we're back

that's all. more later. pray for peter's health. I think it's all hitting him now. Exactly what is hitting him? Not sure.

Happy Thanksgiving

here are some pictures that show more of us in action.



Action packed, aren't they? as you can see in the first picture, our crew was huge.

The last picture is of this guy who wanted his picture taken (this happened a lot at the events, esp with kids) but then he wanted a copy. Hard to do without a polaroid or email. So I wrote down this blog address and maybe he'll find it. Not sure if he understood what I was telling him . But if you do end up finding this, man in green, Happy Thanksgiving!

We're all sick but Jenny might have some minor food poisoning. Two 5 hour train rides yesterday didn't help esp. the one back (roach infested). So me and her are spending Thanksgiving in as the other groups dine together. Hopefully the pizza will get here soon.

Sheer Skill

One more post,

So here in Delhi, you can imagine with the amount of people here the traffic is a nightmare. However, we don't have a problem with traffic when you have a driver like Diol (spelling). This guy has an ability to squeeze an SUZ between a bicycle ricshaw and a cow with only inches of clearance. We get through traffic with a cut off of a cow here, narrowly passing between small autos, and other cars. The level of skill is astonishing.

Bravo

What the heck?

I find that the level of inhumane treatment that the Dallits get in India just sickens me. To treat an animal better than that of a human is just insane. The treatment here is like as somebody here put it, "as long as you have somebody below you, you're ok". People here live out their life according to what caste you're in, do it well so that when you die, and you get reincarnated you can come back at a higher caste so that you can dish out the crap to somebody below you. People are so fearful to come back in a new life thats even less than the caste they are in now. Sounds insane huh? Its reminds me of a hazing thing in fraternaties.

That thing about "don't believe everything it says in print or in history books"?? Well its true for India. The west has such a distorted picture of India. If you were to ask which country has more human rights violations between India and China, I guess people would ordinarily pick China. However I would say they're the same. India's treatment of the lower caste here is almost satanic.

Picture this, about 70% of the population here is of the lowest caste. The rest are either the highest castes and foreigners. Now with 1.2 billion people here in India that makes it about 800 million people living in conditions that we as westerners would consider demeaning. Thats about 15% of the worlds population.

I guess if after this experience with my trip to India and Thailand is that there is so much to do about the injustices of people here in the world. Who's gonna do it? Don't know. Hopefully messages like ours will start to put an end to it.

Sorry for the rant, I guess i'm just pissed.

no photography

there was this sign at the Taj but pretty much everyone ignored it. When we got to the entrance, there was a nice single file line which seemed odd for India. About a minute later, some people pierced the queue and beelined for the entrance, causing a mad rush to enter. So... we had to wait in a mob and squeeze through to go in.


McDonalds has the sign too. Not sure why. Maybe b/c they have different menu items. Contextualization. Marketing. Segway - a lot of what Sunil's ministry does is contextualize the gospel into Hindu culture, possibly rubbing evangelicals the wrong way. Basically, God has been revealing Himself to the Indian people in their language and he's just continuing the process. Westerners don't need to bring the gospel to these people. God is already working here. It just needs to be pointed out to them.. if that makes sense.

Lately, we've been eating more McDonalds. Peter loves the Tiki burger? McTiki? but we miss the office food.


The last picture is of us on a chai break in the office. Office food usually consists of some daal, tasty veggies, rice and something like naan.

The first 2 footwashing events went well. Was a tad chaotic last night due to the swarms of people, but today it was better. One more tomorrow. We have to take a 5 hour train ride there but anything's better than the 5 1/2 hour rollercoaster ride to the Taj. Complete with intermittent 5.0 richter scale bumps, tailgating within a foot of huge trucks at 50 mph, constant honking, slow vehicles, tractors pulling into traffic, scooters going the opposite direction in the shoulder and random sudden merging. I think there were 2 wrecks on the road home. Exciting stuff.

some of us are sick and allergic to stuff. Continue to pray for our health, for the footwashing events and for India.

untitled

What a(n incredible) day!

We started our day at 5:30am to see the Taj Mahal. Most of us seem to be still jet lagged so getting up at 5am seems to not affect us much. Besides, various types of noises on the street seem to wake us up; like firecrackers, then there's SUPER loud fire crackers that sound like there's a war from a distance, music playing at 3:30am, dogs barking, pigeons hooting, street vendors chanting, and so on but... all this makes up the beauty of India.

Two other teams also joined us to see the Taj, one of them we are staying with now.

I was under the impression the drive was only two and a half hours away-it was roughly 5 hours. It was quite a bumpy ride-I think it was a combination of bad road and the bad suspension of the bus. What was most interesting on this journey to Agra (city of Taj Mahal) was to see cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and wheel carts being pulled by either horses/camels or cows all being shared on one road. Truly amazing. The funniest thing I saw today was a cow pulling a wheel cart while the driver was sleeping.

India has absolutely no safety regulations. It's completely normal to see three to four on a motorcycle, a women sitting sideways on the back of the motorcycle holding her baby or 11 people in a typical 5 passenger vehicle.

Anyhow, orientation begins tomorrow for the Truthseekers International footwashing event. Although we are not actually participating in the footwashing, please pray that God will help us capture the right moments (whether it be through interviews and/or the actual event) to expand his kingdom.

The people of India are truly amazing. I have learned so much about this country by being here. Please also pray for the people of India-especially for those that don't know Jesus as their savior.

One more thing, we are all now addicted to "Chai" tea. We look forward to the twice daily compulsory chai.

Sunday 11/18-

Praise God, He has blessed us again with a wonderful day. This morning we had an interview session with Sunil Sardar. It went very well and it was very informative. Afterwards, he prayed for us which was a blessing. Sunil is truly a servant of God and we have great faith that He will use him in mighty ways.

Today was orientation in which all the teams gathered. There are approximately 70 of us. We were told double from last year! Hallelujah!

Tomorrow will be our first foot washing event. Please pray that not only will we be able to capture the right moments but the people of India will come to know Christ through this incredible event. We interviewed a caste leader who said last year's event caused him to come to know Jesus. He saw the westerners washing the feet of lowest people and this caused him to wonder why they would do this. Anyway, pray for more stories like that.

Well it's early Saturday morning. Were getting ready to head down to the Taj Mahal. Apparently, its a tourist trap for not only tourist from America and all over but millions of Indians go there to visit as well.

Were taking a much needed day off and taking a 3 hour bus ride down to the Taj Mahal. The week previous has been hard and rewarding. Hard because we're working constantly and having to endure the incredible noise, air, everything else pollution. It is incredible polluted here, going outside is like striking up a cigarette every minute.

Well pray for us.

a few select photos

this might be the last post for awhile.. we're changing our place of stay and don't know the internet situation at the new place..

today, we went out to visit some of the footwashing sites. If you read the last post, you would know this. A lot different than where we're staying. Lots of animals roaming, cows, pigs, dogs, et cetera. It's hard to put into words.







here are some pictures. Not from today.. but I didn't look at them too carefully..just wanted to get something visual up here. Yooch on the balcony of TruthSeekers, some food, Peter trying on some new clothes, us taking pictures and the back of my head...

we're off to the Taj tomorrow for our day off. no big deal..if you do a web search on Taj Mahal you might be able to find some photos of it. Good luck.

some answers to your questions

thank you thank you thank you for all your prayers. Our stomachs are fine so far and the food is good. The TruthSeekers office prepares lunch for everyone everyday so since the last few days, we've been doing interviews there, we get lunch. Have I mentioned that it's superb?

The day after our lights blew, someone showed up with some old movie lights. They didn't have plugs on them, but wires and he would use a screwdriver to jam the wires into the outlets. Maybe that's what we should've done.

The interviews have been going well for the most part. Good stories. God is good (But you know that). Tomorrow we'll be traveling out and about to the sites of the footwashing to try and get some pre-interviews and other footage.

We continue to be humbled by the hospitality and love of our hosts. There's a delay in pictures b/c we're shooting RAW and have to convert them. Sorry. I can tell you that the color scheme of the environment is mostly browns. Apparently, we smoke 2 packs a day by breathing the air here. Some of us might get addicted.

In the next few days, other teams from the US will be coming in to participate in the footwashing. Pray for their safe arrival with all their bags. A few flights have been delayed. Is the weather bad over there?