Category: From The States

Catholic religious women joined more than 25,000 people of Bihar to undertake 72 hours of fast to demand security for the daughters of India.

Nine women and men fasted continuously during April 18- 20 while others joined them in relay fast, Rupesh, (goes by one name) of the Bihar forum of ‘Right to Food,’ one of the organizers of the program, told Matters India.

The program was held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna, a historic ground near the Ganges River in Patna, the state capital.

Politicians from different parties and the administration also attended the program, which, Rupesh claimed, has helped awaken the people of Bihar in many ways. “Our hope is that the government also wakes up to bring law and order in our nation,” he added.

Rupesh said the Bihar Women’s Network and the members of ‘Right to Food’ forum are organizing protests at various parts of Bihar dema- nding accountability from the government machinery and the people’s elected representative.

Neelu Devi, convener of Bihar Women Network, another NGO, termed as irony that the government on one hand coins slogans such as ‘save daughters, teach daughters,’ while on the other protects the perpetrators of crime against the same daughters.”

India’s central government is a threat to the poor and minorities, this according to Mgr Thomas K. Oommen, moderator of the (Protestant) Church of South India.

Msgr Thomas K. Oommen is the moderator of the Church of South India. With 4.5 million members, it is the second largest Christian denomination in the country. For him, “the current government [. . .] follows the Hindutva supremacist ideology,” and the federal administration is “pro-corporate and unkind to the poor.”

The Anglican bishop wrote an open letter addressed to all citizens dated 6 April, anniversary of the Salt March, the non-violent demonstration led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 against the British colonial government.

According to Msgr Oommen, living in India in the last four years, since the Hindu nationalist government of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by premier Narendra Modi took office, “has become a nightmare to the poor and the minorities in India.”

He wants to share his fears “As an Indian Citizen and the head of the second largest Church in India, with more than 4.5 million members, most of them being Dalits, Adivasis, poor farmers and fisherfolks.”

“It is true and sad fact that the current government that follows the Hindutva supremacist ideology seems to have consciously discounted what is stated in the Preamble of our Indian Constitution that declares liberty, equality, and fraternity as its ideals and assures social, economic and political justice to the citizens of India.” Hindutva promoters want to turn India into a Hindu state.

According to the bishop, the government has proven “to be pro-corporate and unkind to the poor by waiving [. . .] loans of rich people and corporate [interests] while not waiving [. . .] the loans of the poor farmers, not giving Minimum Support Price (MSP) to them, not addressing the issues of economic distress, joblessness, price rise by forcefully implementing policies like ’demonetisation’ and GST,” the Goods and Service Tax. “In fact, corruption and scams/scandals have become a hallmark of this government.”

Nine Hindus converged on the 17th century Se Cathedral in Old Goa and recited prayers from ancient Hindu scriptures to pay their respects to Jesus Christ on Good Friday, when Catholics commemorate his death on the cross.

The five women and four men sang verses from an ancient Narayana Upanishad text of Hindu scriptures acknowledging the superiority of God. The text stresses the unity of all gods and teachings as a way of attaining salvation.

The nine are members of the Swadhyay Parivar (self- study family) group that was founded in 1954 by Pandurang Sashtri Athavale (1920–2003), a social revolutionary and philosopher. The group has been associated with peace movements. Inside the cathedral, they quietly paid obeisance to the suffering Christ, away from the attention of the Catholic faithful sitting in the pews.

Following the five-minute recital at the rear of the cathedral, a group member read out a brief message from the pulpit through the sound system a few minutes before the start of the pious ritual.

Leaders of six major reli- gions in India have made a joint call to end branding people as patriotic or unpatriotic based on religion amid increasing attempts to exploit religious sentiments for political purposes ahead of a crucial election.

Leaders of Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Muslim and Sikh communities gathered on April 5 in the western state of Goa to express their distress at communal tension in several areas of the country.

Sister India, a documentary produced by Irish film-maker Myles O’Reilly and currently being screened at a number of film festivals in Ireland and India, is the story of an Irish Presentation nun who has spent 70 years teaching in India.

Sr Loreto Houlihan, born Peg Houlihan in Ireland’s Co Tipperary in 1927, reached India in 1944. Recently she celebrated her 91st birthday at St Joseph’s Anglo-Indian School in Perambur in north Chennai where she has spent most of her life as a primary school teacher.

O’Reilly said that he is not very religious but was invited to follow Sr Loreto Houlihan, and found her deep love of India and its people absolutely heart- warming and deeply resonant. “I learned from her that India and its culture retains more of the life she left 70 years ago in Ireland than the country of her birth today, and so she chooses to live the rest of her days in India for that natural famili- arity,” he said.

The idea for the film was sparked by another Irish woman, Áine Edwards, who has been living in India since 2003 where she runs a business consultancy service. “The adults I meet nowadays who attended schools, where Irish brothers and sisters were teachers, talk fondly of them and their education. The late chief minister of Tamil, Nadu Jayalalitha, has spoken of her school days at Church Park as being the happiest of her life,” she added.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and Odisha Bishops have urged people of Sundargarh district not to give in to divisive forces.

On 1, April 2018, in the late night of Easter Sunday, some miscreants vandalized a grotto outside the compound of St. Thomas Church, Salangabahal in Raurkela diocese, Odisha, mutilated the statue of Our Lady, and broke the head of the statue of Child Jesus in the grotto. They smashed a statue of Our Lady in another Grotto in Gyanpali village and attempted to burn the Church of the Victory of the Cross in Bihabandh.