Chhatar Singh Katre, a teacher in a small village school run by the government in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district organized a get-together and a prayer meet on January 27. The occasion, his daughter said, was to celebrate her college admission.
Before the program started, the police reached the spot, and detained Katre, and his friends Mahendra Nagdeva J Nathan; all three were taken to the police station for interrogation, and subsequently arrested for luring and coercing people for conversion.
All three remain in jail, their bail pleas having been rejected by the Balaghat sessions court.
Katre’s daughter Kalyani Katre said, “My father organized the meet for me and now he is in jail for no reason. The case was registered against him and two others on the complaint of a person who was booked 10 years ago for assaulting and harassing my father and others for participating in a religious program.”
Raghunath Khatarkar who is investigating the case at Lalbarra police station of Balaghat district, said the complainant Hemant Thakre recorded his statement before the court and accused Katre and two others of offering him 10,000 rupee for conversion. “In the name of God, they also tried to scare people that something bad would happen to them.”
In a month since the enactment of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance to regulate interfaith marriages and conversion, 28 people have been booked and at least half of them are Christians, according to police records.
The ordinance, which replaces the MP Freedom of Religion Act 1968, came into force on January 9. State home department data shows that eight cases have been registered in eight different districts in a month, and 28 people named. While four cases are against nine Muslims for allegedly forcing women to change their religion for marriage, another four were against 19 Christians for luring and coercing people to change their faith through prayer meetings, police reports showed.

Ahead of state elections in Kerala state, Catholic bishops have cautioned people against misleading political campaigns that polarize people on religious lines in this Indian southern state. The bishops’ warning came after a political leader justified the takeover of the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Turkey and turning it into a mosque.
“It is true. The efforts are on to create a Christian-Muslim divide in the state ahead of the elections with fake, misleading and maligning campaigns,” said Bishop Joseph Pamplany, chairman of the media commission of Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC).
The KCBC urged political leaders to abstain from any act that polarizes voters on communal lines in a statement issued on Feb. 5.
State elections are due in Kerala in April-May to elect 140 legislators for the state’s 33 million people as the current government’s five-year term ends on June 1.
The state is set to see a fierce battle for power as the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the federal government, tries to find a foothold in Kerala.

Residents of a remote village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district have mark-ed the silver jubilee of becoming Christians with the blessing of a new church.
Hetlong village under the diocese of Miao has 30 families belonging to the Tangsa tribe. The community conducted worship in a bamboo structure with tin roof for quarter of a century. They marked the 25th year of receiving the Catholic faith with a new concrete church on February 10 in the presence of guests and dignitaries from around the district.
Blessing the church, Bishop George Pallipparambil of Miao congratulated the community for staying strong in their faith for the last 25 years. He invited them to have a stronger faith along with the new church. He also encouraged them to keep alive the flame of faith to withstand possible threats to it in future.
“In the Bible we see several letters of St Paul addressed to the Corinthians and Philippians. These communities do not exist today because they did not live according to the teachings of the faith they received. This could happen to us too if we are not fervent in the faith we celebrate today,” the Sales-ian prelate cautioned.

A national body of Catholic and Protestant women leaders has urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to heed the protesting farmers’ demand and repeal the three recently enacted farm laws.
“Our farmers have never failed our nation through the last 71 years. Please do not fail them now,” pleads a letter from the Indian Christian Women Movement addressed to the prime minister as the farmers’ pro-tests on the Delhi borders entered 70th day on Feb. 3.
At the same time, the women says they watch with horror how the protest sites outside Delhi’s borders are being fortified with barbed wires, cement barriers and spikes on the roads. They also point out that wooden batons in the hands of the police have been replaced with steel batons.

There is a need for Christians to close ranks with the protesting farmers who are fighting for justice, says Father Y.T. Vinayaraj, theologian, writer and chief editor of the Malankara Sabha Tharaka, the organ of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church head- quartered in Thiruvalla.
“The Christian faith is essentially anti-imperialist and the Church is duty-bound to join forces with people’s resistance movements,” says Dr Vinayaraj, who took to Face-book the other day to make a fervent appeal for support to the farmers.
According to him, the Centre is colluding with neo-liberal capitalist forces to divest the farmers and other ordinary people of their rightful share of resources. “This government relies on religious nationalism to gain political legitimacy and deals with an iron hand democratic protests seeking justice. We have had so many instances of this: the attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University, the anti-CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] protests, the justice for Rohit Vemula movement and now the farmers’ agitation. It is time subaltern and democratic forces came together to offer resista-nce,” Dr Vinayaraj, who also teaches at the Mar Thoma seminary told.
He feels let down by the leaders of a section of the Catholic Church who he thinks “are only trying to push their vested interests by joining hands with the undemocratic forces.”
“What are they trying to strike a deal for? Mere representation in minority forums or for some personal gains? When asked if they discussed the farmers’ protest during their meeting with the Prime Minister, one bishop said they had not discussed any political issue. But isn’t solidarity with the suffering and the deprived classes, the Dalits, at the heart of Christianity? It is a fake religiosity without that,” argues Dr Vinayaraj, who wants the Church to be a reformist force.
Images of the exodus of migrants, the protesting farmers, imprisonment of human rights activists, persecution of women, Dalits and sexual minorities and a government that was increasingly becoming authoritarian were all invoked by the editorial of the Mar Thoma Church organ in its December 2020 issue, ask-ing what these signs portended for the Church.

Dalit Christians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu held a protest march in Kumbakonam Diocese against the discrimination faced by Dalits.
The protesters from eight Dalit Christian groups marched on Feb. 6 to submit a memorandum to the bishop and other diocesan officials stating their demand for a Dalit bishop in the diocese.

The wealthy in India grew richer during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, while millions went to bed without food, says the latest Oxfam International report.
The annual report, published just ahead of last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, noted that Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 35 percent in 2020 when the world struggled against the pandemic.
During 2020 wealth increased globally to make the world’s billionaire elite richer, said Oxfam, a confederation of 20 independent charitable organizations based in Oxford, England.

The Madras High Court has directed the Registrar of Companies to inquire into allegations of misuse of the assets of the Church of South India (CSI) Trust Association that has properties worth several trillions of rupees across southern India.
In his order, Justice R Mahadevan directed the registrar to conduct the inquiry strictly in accordance with law by giving the church association an opportunity to be heard between February 17 and 22. The Court also asked the registrar to file a detailed report with the federal Ministry of Corporate Affairs for deciding further course of action in two weeks.

A nationwide law to ban religious con-versions or interfaith marriages is not being planned since it falls under the dominion of states, the central government said in parliament on February 2.
The assurance came amid a renewed drive for such legislation in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), that heads the federal coalition government.

Three Indian cardinals on January 19 met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested him to invite Pope Francis to the country.
Talking to reporters after the meeting in Delhi, the cardinals said the prime minister agreed to their request and promised to take a decision soon.
The cardinals are Oswald Gracias, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Confer-ence of India, George Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar Church, and Syro-Malankara Church leader Baselios Cleemis.
The meeting was part of the prime minister’s interaction with heads of various church, initiated by Mizoram Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai, a native of Kerala where assembly elections are due this year.
Cardinals said they have been asking for an invite to the Pope for quite some time and expressed the hope that it would be realized soon. In 2018 there was a growing demand for the Pope to be invited to the country when he visited two Asian neighbors, Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Pope Francis had expressed a desire to visit India during his flight back from a trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan on Oct 2, 2016. He said he would “almost certainly” visit India and Bangladesh in 2017.
On February 7, 2017, three Indian cardinals, including Cardinal Gracias, had met Modi in New Delhi, to discuss the possibility of a papal visit. A bishops’ press release following the meeting said, “The government holds a favorable attitude toward the Pope’s visit to India.”
However, despite efforts by the bishops, the 2017 visit never materialized because of foot-dragging by the federal government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“It is overdue. We expect a decision from the PM soon,” said Cardinal Alencherry after the latest meeting with Modi.
(See Focus)