A rebel-turned-politician from Meghalaya said the BJP would reduce the price of beef if voted to power in the state while insisting that the Centre should take the public’s view before putting any restriction on the sale or consumption of beef. Bernard Marak, who is BJP’s Tura unit president, said the beef ban should not apply to states with a Christian-majority.

“Meghalaya has a huge demand for beef but the prices are not regulated. Neither is there any slaughter house nor is the meat certified by doctors. As such, sometimes old meat is mixed with fresh meat. If BJP is voted to power, it will look into the issues and regulate the prices so that people don’t have to buy meat at a high price,” Marak told the New Indian Express.

“The Centre wants to ban beef consumption but it should not apply to the Christian-majority states where most people consume meat including beef. Any ban has to be on public consensus.

Meghalaya being a tribal State, we want the sentiments of the people to be respected,” he said. Marak, who co-founded insurgent group Achik National Volunteer Council, said any restriction on beef consumption in Meghalaya would create a big impact. Rival political parties are criticising the BJP by calling it a “Hindu party,” he said.

Unidentified mis-creants vandalized a church in West Bengal in the early hours of June 6.

Police said they have launched search to find the culprits who attacked the 127-year-old St Luke’s Church at Dayabari Mission Gate in Ranaghat in the Nadia district. The miscreants stole old religious items and 3,000 rupees, the church authorities said.

“The Holy Sacrament was torn to pieces by miscreants. The other religious items, like the chalice and bronze candle stands were damaged and a few were taken away along the cash. They took the cash after breaking open a cupboard,” pastor Kishor Mondal told reporters.

“The stolen and damaged articles are very old. It is a blow for us,” he added.

A Christian leader in Chhattisgarh alleges that the eastern Indian government’s move to protect primitive tribes infringes personal freedom.

On May 26, the Chhattis-garh government passed an order amending the 1979 rule passed by then undivided Madhya Pradesh to protect primarily vulnerable tribal groups.

The amendment “is an attack on the free thought of an individual,” Arun Pannalal, president of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum, told Matters India June 6.

The new rule stipulates tribals who want sterilization should apply for permission from their subdivisional magistrate.

While making the law in 1979, the government officials said the order was necessary to protect primitive tribes that had extremely low health indicators. The tribes also showed a negative rate of growth and there was fear of them dying out.

The state has seven primitive tribes that are on the verge of extinction.

The Chhattisgarh govern-ment officials say the amend-ment is a “step forward,” but Pannalal and other activists denounce it continu-ation of an inhuman practice of denying the tribes “autonomy over their own bodies.”

“It is up to the individual or the family to decide whether they want to procreate or not. There should not be any interference from anybody from outside,” the Christian leader asserts.

If the government is serious about primitive tribes’ welfare, it should provide them better health care and educate them to improve their living conditions to enhance their population, Pannalal says.

Attacks against Christians are increas-ing in India, with 260 incidents recorded in the first five months of 2017, according  to Persecution Relief, an ecumenical Christian forum that monitors incidents of persecution. The organization counted 348 incidents last year, an average of 29 incidents per month, while this year the monthly average, 52, almost doubled. The offences reported include murder, physical violence, destruction of churches, threat and harassment, social boycott, hate campaigns, abduction and attempts to murder. “It is an alarming situation for us,” said Shibu Thomas, founder of Persecution Relief, who started the organization in 2015 to provide support to the victims of persecution in the country.

A Catholic bishop is the first religious leader to join community efforts dealing with water shortages in Jhabua district in the central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh. Bishop Basil Bhuria of Jhabua, four priests and nearly 80 Catholic community members worked on Hathipava Hill May 21 to fill hundreds of pits prepared for planting saplings with black soil. The prelate was respond-ing to a call for religious leaders by police superintendent Mahesh Chandra Jain in Jhabua district to support community efforts to tackle water shortages.

“People in many villages in my diocese have to walk several kilometres to fetch water during summer. It is difficult for people to source enough water to drink, for agriculture, cattle and other needs,” Bishop Bhuria said.

Two Missionaries of Charity nuns, who celebrated 25 years of religious life, say serving the poorest of the poor continues to thrill them.

“I find real peace and joy in serving the downtrodden and under privileged following the footsteps of our founder, Saint Teresa of Kolkata,” Sister Selena Toppo, one of the nuns, told Matters India after the jubilee Mass on May 20 in Bhubaneswar, capital of Odisha State in eastern India.

Both the nuns expressed gratitude to God for accompanying them in their religious life.

Suspected Hindu nationali-sts in Tamil Nadu burned down a church and the home of its pastor after some high “caste” Hindus converted to Christia-nity and joined the church.

Pastor John Muller and his pregnant wife were out when their home and adjoining church were set ablaze May 3 in Attipattu village in Cuddalore District.

“Recently, some villagers belonging to Vanniyar, a caste-based Hindu sect, came to Christ,” Pastor Muller was quoted as saying.

“The same caste group opposes conversions in the village because they treat Christianity as a religion of lower castes. They don’t want anyone from Vanniyar to convert to Christianity,” he added.

The pastor said that he had been threatened by five people three days earlier who asked him to “get out of this area, or we will see your end.”

However, no arrests have been made in the case.

Human rights abuses against India’s social and religious minorities have been on the ascendance since the BJP government came to power.

This grim reality is already being acknowledged within India as well as internationally, says the Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA) of the United States.

The AJA report launched in Washington DC came nearly two months after the United States Commission on Inter-national Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared that religious freedom in India was at stake.

At the launch of the latest report the panellists such as Jennifer Prestholdt (Deputy Director, The Advocates for Human Rights), veteran journa-list Kannan Srinivasan, and Ajit Sahi (Advocacy Director, Indi-an American Muslim Council) briefed the press.

AJA talks about the inability of Indian government in dealing with the anti-minority violence and said that “government action seem to actually protect the perpetrators.” It said, “The Government of India has not demonstrated a sense of urgency to adequately investigate and effectively prosecute perpetra-tors of human rights violations against members of minority groups,” the report said.

Guwahati: A Darjeeling hills Mukhia tribal scholar presented his doctoral study on the impact of Christianity on his fellow hills tribal commu-nities of Lepcha and Tamang at Assam Don Bosco University Guwahati, 18 May 2017.

The Ph.D. thesis by Assistant Professor at Salesian College Sonada Mr Terence Mukhia is entitled “Impact of Christianity on the Lepcha and Tamang Tribal Communities in the Darjeeling District (1841-2017): A Philosophical Pers-pective.”

The research was under-taken at Assam Don Bosco University under the super-vision of Salesian Father Dr. Mathew George of Kolkata.

The four year long research was funded by Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi from where the research scholar, Terence Mukhia, passed Junior Re-search Fellowship (JRF).

The thrust of the thesis says Mukhia, “is on the impact of Christianity on the Lepcha and Tamang tribal communities in the Darjeeling District from a philosophical perspective.”