The top court in southern Indian Kerala state has asked its communist-led government to remove illegal religious structures on public land. The Kerala High Court’s order “will have a widespread implication if implemented in letter and spirit,” said a Church leader who did not want to be named. He told that the forceful removal of illegal religious structures might lead to opposition. Encroachment on government land is prohibited under the Kerala Land Conservation Act. However, religious structures, including Christian crosses, can be seen across public lands in Kerala. “Nowadays, it is a trend to erect stones or crosses in public places and thereafter to start worshipping these stones and crosses with religious col-or,” said Justice P V Kunhikrishnan of the Kerala High Court. People need not encroach upon government land “to construct religious structures,” Justice Kunhikrishnan told the Kerala government, led by the Communist Party of India, in his May 27 order. Justice Kunhikrishnan has directed the state government to set a deadline for executing the order to re-move illegal structures from public land.

Christian leaders have urged India’s newly sworn coalition government to change the leadership in strife-torn Manipur where ongoing sectarian violence since May 3 last year has claimed around 220 lives and displaced over 50,000, mostly tribal Christian people. Their appeal came in reaction to the call by chief of the parent organization of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to find a solution to the escalating violence in the remote northeastern state. A C Micha-el, a New Delhi-based Catholic leader, said Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh (RSS or national volunteers’ group), holds considerable influence over the ruling BJP. Bhagwat addressed a gathering in Nagpur city, the RSS headquarters, on June 10 and said, “It is important to re-solve the conflict as a priority.” Michael said, “Merely saying so is not enough.” The Christian leader said Bhagwat should take steps to remove federal Home Minister Amit Shah and Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh from their offices. “They [Shah and Singh] are responsible for the current plight of the people of Manipur. If they continue to be at the helm of affairs, no justice could be expected for the suffering people,” Michael added. Tribal Christians and majority Meitei Hindus in Manipur have been fighting since May 3 last year over granting tribal status to the Meiteis to avail educational and job benefits under India’s affirmative action program.

The Christian community in an eastern Indian state has taken a cautious “wait and watch” approach after the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a landslide in the state, where anti-Christian violence claimed around 100 lives over 15 years ago.
The BJP pulled off a stunning victory in the just concluded Odisha state elections. It defeated the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), a secular regional party that ruled the state uninterruptedly for 24 years. The BJP won 78 seats in the 147-member Odisha State Assembly and se-cured 20 of the 21 parliamentary seats in the simultaneously held state and parliamentary elections. The results were declared on June 4. Mohan Majhi, a four-time BJP legislator, was sworn in as the chief minister on June 12. The 52-year-old politician was a teacher in a school run by the powerful Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS—National Volunteer Corps). The RSS is considered the mother organization of the BJP and an umbrella body of all hardline Hindu organizations in the country that are blamed for attacking religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims. “The change of guard is a matter of concern for us Christians as our people have not yet fully reco-vered from the shock of the 2008 Kandhamal riot,” said Father Ajay Singh, a priest from the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, based in the state capital Bhubaneswar. It is the first time the BJP has come to power on its own strength in the state. The new chief minister Majhi is regarded as “a strong and firebrand tribal leader” from the mineral-rich Keonjhar (now Kendujhar) district, which hit headlines in early 1999 for burning to death Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. “We will wait and watch how the new government will run the state as we cannot judge a new government based on the record of a political party or its affiliate groups,” Singh, who is an activist-lawyer, told. The Catholic priest said the only relief was that the BJP failed to garner the 272 seats required for a majority in the parliament.

A Catholic diocese in a northwestern Indian state has joined government agencies in providing relief to people reeling under severe heatwave conditions that have reportedly claimed over 120 lives. Local media reported 122 deaths in Rajasthan state due to the extremely hot weather, with nearly half of those occurring between May 23 and May 30.
The India Meteorological Department issued a red alert on May 30 for Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, and Madhya Pradesh in the northwest and central parts of the country. Experts cautioned against heat-related illnesses and suggested that state governments take adequate preventive measures to protect vulnerable people. The mercury surpassed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rajasthan’s Churu town and neighbour-ing Haryana’s Sirsa town. A part of the national capital New Delhi recorded the country’s highestever temperature: 52.9 degrees Celsius (127.22 de-grees Fahren-heit). “It is very disturbing to learn that so many people have lost their lives in the extreme weather conditions,” said Emeritus Bishop Oswald Joseph Lewis of Jaipur diocese in Rajasthan. He told that volun-teers at the diocese’s social service wing are reaching out to people to help and guide them. “Our people are going house to house to make people aware of the extreme weather conditions, suggesting precautions to be taken and giving them medicines,” the prelate said. Lewis said most casualties were reported among daily wage laborers compelled to work under the hot sun. “Our volunteers are providing them free lunch and water” to compensate for the lost daily wages, he added. The prelate said theirs was a small effort to help the government agencies deal with the situation. Shashi Dharan, the public relations officer of the Delhi Archdiocese, said they have made arrangements for drinking water outside churches in the national capital.

His Holi-ness Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Archbishop Felix An-thony Machado (76) from the pastoral governance of the diocese of Vasai on June 6, 2024. He was the bishop of Nashik (2008-2009) and Vasai (2009-2024). He was the Secretary General of the CBCI (2020-2024). Archbishop Felix Anthony Machado was born on June 6, 1948, in the parish of Remedy, then Archdiocese of Bombay. He received priestly ordination on October 30, 1976; initially incardinated in the Archdiocese of Bombay; with the erection of the Diocese of Vasai, in 1998, it passed to the latter. From 2000-2008 he has been Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. He was appointed Bishop of Nashik on 16 January 2008 and ordained Bishop on 8 March 2008. He was transferred to the diocese of Vasai on 10 November 2009. He was elected the Secretary General of the CBCI in 2020 and re-elected in 2022.

Adv. Roshan Melwyn Lobo from the diocese of Mangalore has been elected as Secretary General of the International Young Catholic Stu-dents (IYCS), a global Catholic action movement recognised by the Holy See and the United Nations. He will operate from IYCS headquarters in Paris. He was elected as the Secretary General in the 17th IYCS World Council, held from May 16 to 26, 2024, in Jordan.
Roshan, born on January 28, 1998, holds a B.Com. from St Aloysius College, an LL.B. from St Joseph’s College of Law, an MBA in International Business from Pondicherry Central University, and an LL.M. in Constitutional and Administrative Law from Christ University, Bangalore. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at St Joseph’s College of Law, Bangalore. He has extensive involvement in the Catholic youth movement, including roles such as President of the Diocesan Executive Committee (DEXCO) of the Young Students’ Movement, Member of the National Executive Committee of YCS/YSM India, Edi-tor of the National YCS YSM News-letter ‘The Search”, and representing India in international forums like World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, Poland, and the World Youth Parliament 2017 in Beijing, China.

Catholic activists have refuted a claim by a leading pro-Hindu party leader that large-scale religious conversions are taking place in an eastern Indian state known for its tribal population.
“I am one hundred percent sure that there has been no religious conversion from Hinduism or any other religions to Christianity,” said Ratan Tirkey, a former member of the tribal advisory committee of eastern Jharkhand state where indigenous people constitute more than 26 percent of the population. We are in touch with the local administration as rules stipulate a prior nod from it to change religion, he said. Hindu groups like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (world assembly of Hindus) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent party of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been accusing Christian missionaries of religious conversions among Jharkhand’s 33 million people. “It is just a claim, there is no truth in it,” said Tirkey, a tribal activist. Jharkhand, currently ruled by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, enacted a draconian anti-conversion law in 2017 and joined 11 other Indian states where the sweeping law is in full force. Tribal people, who follow their traditional worship practices, are grouped as Hindus under India’s census, a practice started by colonial British officials for practical administrative purposes. They make up nearly 9 percent of the South Asian nation’s mammoth 1.4 billion population. To prevent conversion among tribal people and the Dalits, the RSS runs a nationwide campaign called Ghar Wapsi (homecoming). While campaigning for polls in Jharkhand on May 22, Himanta Biswa Sarma, chief minister of north-eastern Assam state from Modi’s party, alleged massive conversion by Christian missionaries in Jharkhand. “Missionaries are blamed for interfering in the life of tribal people. But I would say because of missionaries’ tribal people are able to safeguard their culture,” the Christian leader said.

Twenty persons, including principals of Church-run schools, have been arrested by police in a central Indian state for allegedly charging exorbitant fees to students, in what Christian leaders called a targeted action. The arrested are among the 51 persons connected to 11 private schools charged with flouting the Madhya Pradesh government’s guidelines on fees to be charged by private schools, said Aditya Pratap Singh, superintendent of police in Jabalpur district. According to Singh, the case has been registered against 11 private schools, three of them belonging to the Catholic Church and Church of North India. Five priests from Jabalpur diocese have been named but were not among those arrested on May 27. However, one of the priests was called for interrogation. The arrested persons have been remanded to judicial custody. “The police action is biased and targeted to damage the reputation of Christian schools,” said a priest from Jabalpur diocese who did not want to be named “Jabalpur district has 1,037 private schools that charge much higher fees than Church-run schools. But police found fault with only our schools that charge nominal fees,” the priest told Madhya Pradesh is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janta Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has enacted a sweeping anti-conversion law.   The state has witnessed increased harassment of Christians, including attacks on clergy, places of worship and educational institutions. 
The collector, the top administrative official in the district, has asked the schools to refund the excess amount within 30 days or face administrative action. The district administration has also imposed a fine on schools. As per the law, an annual fee hike above 10 percent needs the collector’s nod and for a 15 percent hike, the sanction has to come from a state-level committee. However, a private school is free to hike fees up to 5 percent on its own. If the rise exceeds the 5 percent cap, the school must inform the district administration.

Indian Church bodies have opposed the communist-led government’s plan to boost the availability of liquor in IT parks to target youths in southern Kerala state. The Kerala government is planning to allow “unrestricted flow of liquor to benefit the liquor lobby at the cost of public health,” warned Father Antony Vadakkekara, spokesperson of Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Church. When the communist government of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan came to power eight years ago it promised to reduce consumption of liquor. Now it is planning to dilute laws, alleged the Vincentian priest. The pro-posed changes to the liquor policy came to light after an audio clip of a bar owner went viral, hinting at the govern-ment’s alleged willingness to favour bar owners for a bribe to the tune of 200 million Indian rupees (US$24,06,082).
In the clip, he is heard saying that the government was ready to allow liquor shops to function on the first day of every month which is a dry day in the southern state. He further claim-ed the government was willing to allow liquor outlets to remain open after 11 p.m. and open more liquor outlets in IT parks across the state. Kerala, known for its highest literacy among India’s 28 provincial states, has nearly 90 well-known IT parks. Technopark, based in the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, employs around 72,000 professionals and houses a diverse mix of multinational corporations. In the central Ernakulam district, InfoPark employs over 63,600 staff. Kerala is the only Indian state where communists are in power.

Led by a Church group, warring tribal Christians and Hindus in India’s northeastern Manipur have met for the first time to end the one-year-old sectarian strife that claimed over 220 lives. “We had seven representatives each” from both the communities, said a Church official associated with the meeting held in the neighboring Assam state on May 17. Over a dozen influential leaders from the Meitei Hindu and Kuki-Zo Christian communities were party to the first-ever meeting held at Bosco Reach Out, a Salesian house, in Guwahati in Assam. Observers say the state administration, led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of PM Narendra Modi, has failed to end the violence that started on May 3 last year.
“The leaders spent almost a day discussing ways to restore peace after the government failed to make any headway,” a Church official who attended the peace meeting told. He described the meeting as a “significant breakthrough” as the leaders of both sides agreed to reach out to their respective people “with a positive mind.” “Surely, their efforts will yield positive results,” said the Church official who did not want to be named.