Leaders of various national women’s organizations and human rights activists in India have requested the Vatican to advise Pope Francis to remove Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar from his post at least until an investigation was on his alleged sexual harassment of a nun. The women leaders on July 25 submitted a memorandum to Apostolic Nuncio to India Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro.

A member of the Missionaries of Jesus congregation in June filed a police complaint against the bishop alleging that he had sexually abused her several times during 2014-2016.

One of the women leaders, Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, said an impartial inquiry could be conducted only if the bishop stepped down. The activists have already taken up the matter with the National Women Commission, which has assured all help to the aggrieved nun.

During a recent visit to the headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Father Ajay Kumar Singh of the Odisha Forum for Social Action advocated for the suppressed Christians of his eastern Indian state. “After 10 years there is hardly any justice for these communities,” said Father Singh.

The Catholic priest declared that the attacks of 2008 were the worst the country has seen in 300 years. “The violence claimed 101 lives, more than 350 churches were destroyed, 7500 houses were reduced to ashes, scores of convents, presbyteries, dispensaries and 13 humanitarian organisations were also attacked and vandalised. The riots spread to 450 villages in Kandhamal district alone.”

As time moves on buildings are rebuilt; the news headlines change, memories fade. But what is the state of the Christian community in Odisha and around India 10 years on?

In 2014, six years after the Kandhamal attacks, the “secularist” Indian National Congress party was voted out of power, in favour of the nationalist party the Bharatiya Janata Party.

As many as 2.52 crore minority students, half of them girls, availed three scholarship schemes being offered by the government, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said today. Naqvi said in Lok Sabha that scholarships are being given for the education empowerment of minority students, including girl students all over the country.

All the three scholarship schemes are implemented through the National Scholarship Portal and the disbursement of scholarship is made under the Direct Benefit Transfer mode, which eliminates duplication and leakage, he said during the Question Hour.

Naqvi said so far 2.52 crore students belonging to minority communities have availed the scholarships, 50% of whom were girls.

Jayant Sinha is a Celtics fan. He graduated from Harvard. He worked for McKinsey. Born and raised in India but minted in the United States, he found wealth and success in the Boston area. His American friends say his politics were moderate, maybe even progressive.

Then he returned to India.

He ditched the suits he had worn as a partner at McKinsey & Company, an elite management consulting firm, in favour of traditional Indian kurtas. He joined the governing Hindu right political party and became a member of Parliament and then a minister, leading Hindu parades and showering worshipers with flower petals from a helicopter.

This month, he also feted and garlanded eight murderers who were part of a Hindu lynch mob that the authorities said beat an unarmed and terrified Muslim man to death. His embrace of the convicted killers has become the political stunt that Indians can’t stop talking about.

Across the country, the images of Mr. Sinha draping wreaths of marigolds around the men’s necks have started a conversation about whether the state of Indian politics has become so poisoned by sectarian hatred and extremism that even an ostensibly worldly and successful politician can’t resist its pull.

Abp Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta on Sunday reacted strongly to author Taslima Nasreen’s controversial tweet criticising Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity founded by her. Missionaries of Charity spokesperson Sunita Kumar told PTI that such comments “hurt her.” “I will not speak anything on this but it hurts me to hear such things,” Ms Kumar told PTI. The controversial Bangladeshi author had tweeted, saying “Mother Teresa charity home sells babies, it is nothing new.