Mizoram has once again become a “completely dry state” from Tuesday following a new liquor law that prohibits the sale and consumption of alcohol, a Minister said here.

“The Mizoram Liquor (Prohibition) Bill, 2019 was passed unanimously in the state Assembly on March 20. The Bill, that received Governor JagdishMukhi’s assent before the parliamentary polls, replaced the four-year-old Mizoram Liquor (Prohibition and Control) or MLPC Act, 2014,” the state’s Excise and Narcotics Minister K. Beichhua told IANS in a telephonic interview.

He said that the laws in the new Bill could not be implemented immediately after Mukhi’s assent due to the model code of conduct (MCC) in force for the 17th LokSabha polls and Assembly by-elections.

“The Election Commission on Sunday afternoon lifted the MCC. The Mizoram Liquor (Prohibition) Bill, 2019 was notified today (Tuesday),” Beichhua said.

The Minister said that the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) was committed to fulfilling its pre-poll promise made to the people before the November 28 Assembly polls.

The Indian bishops’ office for education and culture has for the first time conducted a nationwide quiz involving about 30,000 Catholic school students.

The event marked the 10th anniversary of the All India Catholic Education Policy.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s ‘Education Mastermind’ quiz culminated in the capital, New Delhi, on May 15 following a series of state and regional rounds that began in December.

Some 200 people — including priests, principals, teachers and parents — attended the final, which was presided over by Indian bishops’ spokesperson Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas.

Making students better citizens was one of the objectives of the competition, he said.

Quiz master Nath Mubayi noted that subjects covered ranged from India’s Constitution to the teachings of various religions.

Father Joseph Manipadam, secretary of the Indian bishops’ office for education and culture, said the quiz promoted general knowledge as well as an understanding of social justice, media culture and political systems.

It also sought to get students to reflect on whether their schools are properly following the ‘All India Catholic Education Policy’ goal of bettering the nation and its citizens.

Father Manipadam said the policy stresses provision of a holistic, inclusive and empowering education that respects the rights of children and helps them experience Jesus’ love and compassion.

Concern’s growing for Christians in India over the potential of a change to the country’s constitution.

There are fears that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) want to change the law to make India a Hindu theocratic state.

Bishop Nazarene Soosai of Kottar, southern India, says that would be a disaster and that Christians “fear the day.”

He’s been speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need as the final round of voting is beginning in the nation’s marathon election.

It has consisted of seven rounds over six weeks.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is seeking re-election for another five years.

Bishop Soosai said: “They say there is no other Hindu nation, so India must be the Hindu nation.

“They say we need to be a Hindu state in opposition to Pakistan which is Muslim and they think all the western countries are Christian – although they are really secular – and so they say we need a Hindu country.”

Over 700 attacks against Christians were recorded in India in 2017.

The bishop says that will only get worse if the constitution is changed.

“Broadly speaking, religious minorities are under attack,” he said. “Minority rights are under threat and much infringed.

“And when you raise your voice for human rights they say you’re not a patriot.”

The election results are expected later this week.

A seminarian of Karnataka’s Bhadravathi diocese died in road accident near Shimoga, some 300 km northwest of Bengaluru, the state capital. Deacon Varghese Kannappilly died on the spot on May 27 when his motorcycle was hit from behind by a speeding jeep. The 26-year-old deacon, also called Vivin, was returning home after dropping a neighbour at the bus station in Shimoga. The incident occurred at 10 pm. Kunnappally’s ordination was scheduled for December this year.

Ratna Devi, who lives in a shanty home alongside the Yamuna River in New Delhi, remembers vividly how she and her husband were brutally assaulted by her family because she had married a socially poor Dalit man.

The 33-year-old woman fell in love with the Dalit man in her home state of Haryana and married him discreetly because she knew her family would prevent her from doing so.

“For high-caste families, it is not only a crime but also a sin to marry someone of lower caste in India. I committed that sin and faced my family’s wrath,” Devi told ucanews.com.

The family attacked Devi and her husband with wooden sticks to save their honor. Only the timely intervention of police saved the couple from death. They later moved to New Delhi. “Life is good here. We have children and my husband has a decent job with a private firm,” Devi said.

The head of the Catholic Church and general secretary of Muslim theologians in India on May 4 proposed to send a high level interfaith delegation to Sri Lanka to explore ways to help the island nation struggling to recover from terrorist attacks.

“The most ghastly serial bomb blasts in Sri Lanka’s churches and hotels on Easter Sunday have shocked the entire civilized society all over the world. We …condemn unequivocally these dastardly acts,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias and Maulana Mahmood A. Madani said in a joint press statement issued in Mumbai expressing solidarity with the terror victims.

Cardinal Gracias is the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and Maulana Madani is the general secretary of Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind or the Council of Indian Muslim theologians.

On April 21, Easter Sunday, seven suicide bombers targeted three churches and three luxury hotels in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. At least 253 people were killed and more than 500 wounded. As many as 42 foreign nationals, including more than a dozen Indians, also died.

“Sri Lanka being our closest neighbour, we are ready with an offer of help to enable the victims to get over the unprecedented crisis in their lives. We propose to depute a high level delegation of various faiths to Sri Lanka to explore the possibilities of cooperation and also to offer our sincere condolence to the bereaved families,” says the statement from the cardinal and the maulana.

The Islamic State, a terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The Supreme Court of India on May 9 granted bail to Gornath Chalanseth, one of the seven innocent Christians languishing in jail for a decade due to the alleged Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a hard-line Hindu group, fraud on Kandhamal, on bail application led by ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) legal team.

The New Delhi-based ADF, a Christian rights’ group and an advocacy organization, protects fundamental freedoms and promotes the inherent dignity of all people.

Gornath along with six others including mentally challenged Munda Badamajhi had been convicted to life imprisonment by a third judge in 2013 abruptly after two judges had been transferred.

While their bail pleas had been twice rejected by the Odisha High Court, Cuttack, last in December 2018, their appeals against the conviction by subversion of the judicial system has been dragging on for over five years in the Odisha High Court, said Anto Akkara, a senior journalist and author, who has been advocating help for releasing those seven innocents, among others, including ADF.

A group of South Asian Jesuits has expressed the joy of rediscovering the richness of an Ignatian spiritual tradition.

President of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia, Father George Pattery, called the ‘spiritual conversation’ as “a rare fruit.”

Some 200 Jesuits from 19 provinces and regions of South Asia attended the April 25-28 assembly on ‘Interculturality for Reconciled Life and Mission,’ held at the Jesuit philosophy-theology center, Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, the cultural capital of the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Father Pattery said that the Jesuits continue to rediscover the Ignatian treasure that is always present.

He said that the technique of ‘spiritual conversation’ conserved energy. There was no arguments, no fighting, and everyone was listened to, with deep respect for one another’s culture, he added.

He invited the Jesuits to sharpen and nuance the tool of ‘spiritual conversation’ and use it in their communities.

Father Pattery, a member of the Calcutta Jesuit province, said the Ignatian tool for discernment introduced ‘respectful listening’ providing a true democratic space for those engaged in it.

The ten-year-old gender policy of the Indian Catholic Church has proved to be a failed promise, women theologians say.

A great majority of women’s servitude betrays male privilege that is normalized in the families and in the Church. “This situation makes us interrogate whether the ‘Gender Policy of the Catholic Church in India’ acclaimed as the first of its kind, has remained a failed promise even after 10 years of its existence,” the Indian Women Theologians Forum said in a statement.

The forum’s April 28-May 1 annual meet at Good Shepherd Convent Bengaluru deliberated the theme, “Towards a Gender Just Church.”

The participants said they are pained at the indifference and silence of the Church leaders to sexual abuse survivors, including religious women.

“We are deeply disturbed by the double standards with which the survivors and their supporters are further victimized while the alleged offenders are sympathized and defended in various ways,” said a statement issued by the forum after the meeting.

The statement also noted that the notion of gender justice still remains an ambivalent concept or, a mismatch within the framework of the institutional Church.

“While the Christian doctrine affirms equality between women and men on the biblical foundation of the creation of humans ‘in God’s image’ (Gen.1: 26-28), women’s experience of discrimination, silencing and exclusion within the ecclesiastical structures point to the contrary,” the statement said.

A Catholic nun died on the spot and another suffered serious injuries on May 12 when their scooter collided with a truck near Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.

According to Jabalpur Church sources, Sisters Manju Sisodia and Agnes Surin were traveling from Sagar to Rimjha, some 135 km southeast, when a truck hit their Activa scooter from behind. While Sister Surin died on the spot, Sister Sisodia was admitted to a hospital in Jabalpur.