Catholic bishops in southern Indian Kerala state have petitioned a parliamentary panel seeking justice for over 600 families, the majority of them Christians, after a Muslim body claimed that their land and homes were once donated as charity for Muslim welfare. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference, petitioned the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which is studying amendments pro-posed to a 1995 law meant to manage donated properties of the Muslim community across India. Father Michael Pulickal, who heads the bishops’ Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, said the Waqf Board’s claim, first made in 2019, has caused “severe hard-ship” to hundreds of families in the coastal villages of Ernakulam district. The board claims an area covering some 1,000 land titles currently occupied by 600 families of various religious backgrounds was donated as Waqaf land for Muslim charity. These families face the threat of being vacated from the land “they have legally purchased,” the priest told on Sept. 25. “Our aim is to ensure that no one shall be displaced from their rightful properties,” Pulickal, who has conducted extensive study into this dispute, told on Sept. 25. “This situation has led to serious human rights violations, infringing on their constitutional rights to live and own property,” he said. The Cardinal in his Sept. 10 petition, a copy of which was made available on Sept. 25, said the government must “take immediate and decisive action to resolve this issue.” The Waqf Board’s claim has no legal validity and once such a claim is made on any land, “it will go through extremely complicated legal procedures. If necessary judicial and government inter-vention is not done in time, the land will be permanently vested in the Waqf Board,” Pulickal said.

A petition seeking a special probe into shelter homes, including those run by the Missionaries of Charity (MC), in a central Indian state has been dismissed by the country’s top court. “Yes, we are aware of the case; but don’t want to comment on it,” said a nun from the Mother House, the headquarters of the congregation started by St. Mother Teresa, in the eastern Kolkata city, on Sept. 25. The petition was filed by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) in 2020, two years after MC sisters were accused of selling babies from their shelter homes in the central state of Jharkhand. In 2018, a raid was ordered by the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state. That same year, Jharkhand police arrested a nun from the Kolkota-based congregation and sent her to jail for close to three months following a complaint from a couple over payment made while adopting a child. The NCPCR said it approached the top court after the new state government made continuous attempts to sabotage its probe. Its counsel said the child rights panel wanted a “court-monitored, time-bound” probe into all shelter homes in Jharkhand. The Supreme Court on Sept. 24 dismissed the petition saying it “is totally misconstrued.” “Don’t drag the Supreme Court into your agenda,” a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh told the child rights panel, which reports to the federal government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The ruling BJP used the allegations against the MC nuns to target other shelter homes and sought scrapping of the congregation’s license to receive foreign funds. In 2019, the right-wing party lost power and a secular regional party came to power in Jharkhand.
“It is shocking to learn that a federal statutory body like the NCPCR can file a frivolous petition before the top court,” said A. C. Michael, a Catholic leader based in the national capital New Delhi. On the other hand, the court should appoint a special team to probe the NCPCR as it often oversteps “into areas beyond its jurisdiction to harass Christian institutions,” added Michael, a former member of the minority commission in the Delhi government. Christian leaders have accused the NCPCR under its current chairperson Priyank Kanoongo of conducting raids on their institutions in violation of the laid down norms and registering false cases against bishops, priests, and nuns.

The sensitive border state of Manipur “is engulfed in violent anarchy,” says M.G. Devasaha-yam, a retired bureaucrat from India’s elite civil service cadre, who previously served as an army officer seeing action in war and engaging in internal security matters. Devasahayam, a guiding force of an exceptionally influen-tial group of retired civil servants and judges who have taken on the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this week cau-tioned that the decision to arm police with mortars and machine guns is not the way to a “Manipur solution.” He quotes another retired army officer living in the state, Lieutenant General L. Ni-shikanta Singh, saying Manipur is now “stateless” where life and property can be destroyed by anyone at any time, “as it happens in Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sy-ria.” “It seems that Manipur has been left to dissolve in its own juice. Is anyone listening?” he adds. Among those not listening is the Indian prime minister, who was in New York recently to add-ress the United Nations General Assembly. He attends such inter-national events regularly and torus other pasts of India but has not visited Manipur once. He has also failed to announce any action program on restoring peace and providing relief to the more than 60,000 people living in refugee camps in the state or scattered elsewhere in the country without any livelihood, and often with little food or medicines. The fact that most of the 250 or so dead are Christians and over 400 churches have been destroyed in the state has helped consolidate the argument that the persecution is both ethnic and targeted against Christians.
All the Kuki-Zo-Hmar are Christians, of Catholic and several Protestant denominations. The government says it is just ethnic strife. Amnesty International in a recent report on Manipur found “a picture of a state missing-in-action” despite the claims of “timely intervention” and a promise of financial aid. The London-based rights group accused the state government of a “violation of UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.”

Abp Linus Neli of Imphal has requested Pope Francis to pray for the people of Manipur state in north-eastern India. The archbishop made the plea on September 21 during an audience with the Pope. He was in Rome to attend the September 15-22 formation course for newly appointed bishops organized by the Dicastery for Evangelization. In a message shared with the people of Manipur via social me-dia, Abp Neli expressed his heart-felt prayers for his community, emphasizing the urgent need for God’s intervention to restore peace in the troubled region. He conveyed to the Pope the dire si-tuation in Manipur and requested the pontiff to pray that the people there might live in harmony, em-bracing forgiveness and recon-ciliation. Ethnic violence, raging in Manipur since May 3, 2023, has led to the deaths of at least 220 people and driven thousands to relief camps. “It is difficult, yet forgiveness and love for ene-mies are the only ways forward, as our divine Saviour Christ tau-ght us on the cross at Calvary,” Abp Neli stated, urging people to recognize their shared huma-nity amid the ongoing turmoil. The unrest in Manipur started after the Manipur High Court directed the local government to study the possibility of extending the reservation for tribal commu-nities to Meiteis, the largest ethnic group in the state. The special economic advantages and quotas in government employment and education is currently enjoyed by the Kuki community. The ruling has intensified pre-existing ten-sions between the two groups, deepening ethnic divides and triggering widespread turmoil.
The unrest has had serious repercussions for Manipur, which borders Myanmar. Around 60,000 people have been displaced, with numerous families compelled to abandon their homes in search of safety. Reports suggest that thousands are still living in precarious conditions, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the area. Archbishop Neli became the head of the Catholic Church in October 2023 during the challenging time for the community. Many homes, buildings, and churches have been destroyed, impacting both the local people and the church. In response, many supporters have stepped up to help those affected by the violence. Archbishop Neli’s request for the Pope’s prayers highlights the urgent need for peace and reconciliation in Manipur. The 67-year-old prelate has encouraged the Catholic community to keep Manipur in their prayers during October, the month of the Rosary. In a separate message to Matters India, the archbishop said he also appealed to the Pope to pray and bless for Myanmar in civil war, Bangladesh in political instability. The Pope “showed great concerns of such gravity and he encouraged us not to lose heart,” Archbishop Neli said.

The top court of India’s Maharashtra state has, for an eighth time, refused to hear a plea seeking to clear late Jesuit Father Stan Swamy from an anti-terror case that includes a plot to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Justice Revati Mohite-Dere of the Bombay High Court recused herself from hearing the plea on Sept. 20 that wanted to remove Swamy’s name from the seven-year-old Elgar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case filed against 16 leading activists in the country. The legal term recuse means that a person is unqualified to perform legal duties because of a potential conflict of interest or lack of impartiality. The judges have rescued themselves from hearing the case on seven earlier occasions. However, a lawyer following the case told that these judges have not explicitly expressed their potential conflicts of interest in the case. Petitioner, Jesuit Father Frazer Mascarenhas, based in Mumbai, Maharashtra’s capital, said “this was the eighth bench in the high court refusing to hear the case.” No bench in the high court is willing to hear the case “because it is clearly in our favour,” said Mascarenhas, whom the Jesuits appointed as a delegate to file the case in December 2021 after Swamy’s custodial death on July 5, 2021. “We still do not know why eight benches refused to hear this case. It is a clear case of justice being denied to Father Swamy,” Mascarenhas said. The judges fear “retribution from the government,” Father Mascarenhas told on Sept. 23. The 84-year-old Swamy was arrested on Oct. 8, 2020, from his residence in Ranchi in eastern Jharkhand state. He was accused of offenses such as sedition, having links with the outlawed Maoist group, and being part of a conspiracy to kill Modi. He died in a Mumbai hospital as a prisoner on July 5, 2021, after being denied bail on medical grounds despite suffering from multiple age-related ailments.
Rights activists say Swamy was arrested because he opposed the policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in his state and marshalled tribal people to oppose them. A recent report by Massachusetts-based Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensics firm, disclosed Swamy was arrested based on evidence planted on his computer’s hard drive by hacking it. Along with 15 others, Swamy was accused of a role in instigating mob violence in Bhima Koregaon in Maharashtra on Jan. 1, 2018, which left one dead and several others hurt. All the accused persons in the Bhima Koregaon case are leading academics, writers and human rights activists like Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj, Anand Teltumbde, Gautam Navlakha, and poet Varavara Rao. In 1818, the battle of Bhima Koregaon was fought between the Maratha confederacy and the British East India Company, whose forces included members of the Dalit community. The celebration of the 200th anniversary by Dalits turned violent as they were opposed by pro-Hindu groups.