The top court in a southern Indian state has ruled that education institutions of minorities, including Christians, do not have to implement reservation quotas, which are part of the country’s affirmative action program.
In its order,  the Madras High Court in Tamil Nadu said that the government cannot compel educational institutions run by religious and linguistic minorities to provide the reservation quotas.
The quota system, commonly called “reservation” in India, is a means of compensation to address the historic oppression, inequality, and discrimination faced by some communities like the Dalits or former untouchables and tribal people among others, as promised by the constitution.
India recognizes Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians (Parsis) as religious minority groups. They can run educational institutions of their choice with financial aid from the government but without interference under Article 30 of the constitution.
“We have no hesitation to hold that the concept of communal reservation or reservation for Scheduled Castes [Dalits], Scheduled Tribes [tribal people] and Other Backward Classes of citizens would not apply to minority institutions,” Chief Justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice P.D. Audikesavalu said in their Sept. 29 order.
The court upheld the right of minority institutions to admit students from religious and linguistic minorities up to 50 % of the sanctioned intake.
The judges ruled the government had no right to restrict the minority status of an institution to a particular period.
The status, once granted, would continue until the state-run National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions cancels it, they said.

Sept 6, 2023: Father Ebi Poruthoor is the latest Catholic priest in the southern Indian state of Kerala to donate one of his kidneys.
The 31-year-old priest of the diocese of Palghat on September 4 donated the kidney to Sister Bini Maria, his sister.The 27-year-old member of the Holy Family congregation required dialysis thrice a week for several years, reports Shekinah News.
The surgeries on the siblings were conducted at the Rajagiri Hospital, managed by the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate in Aluva, a major town in Ernakulam district, some 30 km northeast of Kochi.
Father Ebi, who was ordained a priest on December 27, 2017, and Sister Bini are the children of Anto and Ruby Poruthoor, parishioners of St Antony’s Forane Church in Melarkode.
Father Ebi is currently the vicar of St Antony’s Church Kozhinjampara in Palakkad district.

An Indian Catholic nun has won accolades with an award-winning short film and photographic documentation of tribal life in one of the last few surviving forests in the financial capital of the country.
For Sister Josefina Albuquerque, from the congregation of Religious of Jesus and Mary in Mumbai, it’s a dream come true after a 20-year stint teaching in top-ranked schools and being the principal of two high schools.
Her zero-budget movie titled, “D for Dumbo,” which was shot on a simple mobile phone, won the first prize awarded by the St Paul’s Communication Centre in Bandra, Mumbai, on Aug. 14. The seven-minute film about a fourth grader who has difficulty learning math but excels in storytelling has also been selected for screening at the online ALP International Film Festival, showcasing independent films on Sept. 23-24.
“I am very humbled by the award and recognition,” the 45-year-old Goan nun told UCA News.
Albuquerque, who is dressed in the traditional Kurta Churidar like most Indian women, says she always wanted “to reach out to and touch a wider, diverse audience with Gospel values rather than limiting herself to a classroom.”
She continues to serve as the principal of St. Agnes High School in Mumbai, which also serves as the headquarters of the popular Bollywood film industry.

Police in a central Indian state have registered a fresh case of cheating and forgery against a Protestant bishop, who was dismissed from service last year following his arrest on charges of corruption and money laundering.
The Economic Offences Wing of the Madhya Pradesh state police registered on Sept. 3 a fresh case against P. C. Singh, former bishop of Jabalpur diocese of the Church of North India (CNI), a union of Protestant churches based in northern India.
The special wing dealing with economic offenses charged the former bishop and his aide Prem Massih with criminal breach of trust, cheating, forging documents, and criminal conspiracy while transferring the government land given on lease to the CNI.
The land in the heart of Jabalpur town reportedly carries a market value of 30 million Indian rupees (some US$361,000).
The CNI owns extensive land and properties across India inherited from the Anglican Church of the British era. The CNI was formed in 1970, uniting all the Protestant denominations active in northern India.
The CNI is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion and a member of the World Methodist Council.
In India, there is no fixed time frame for completing the trial. So, Singh’s case may take years to complete.
“Church leaders must stay above suspicion so that followers are not demoralized during the long trial,” said Daniel John, a Christian leader based in Madhya Pradesh.

The top court in a central Indian state has granted bail to seven Christians, including two pastors and a pregnant woman after they spent close to two months in jail for the alleged violation of the stringent anti-conversion law.
The Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Sept. 4 granted bail to Pastors Anil Chouhan and Suresh Dawar and five others, including 28-year-old Durga Mangilal who is pregnant.
“They were trapped in a totally false case,” Pastor Jayakar Kristi, who is following the case, told UCA News on Sept. 6.
The pastors visited a village in the state to conduct a meeting, but “it was dubbed as a case of religious conversion,” he observed.
“Their arrest and incarceration is totally in violation of the provisions of the anti-conversion law,” Pastor Kristi explained.
The pastors and other Christians moved the High Court after two lower courts rejected their bail applications, he added.
Advocate Umesh Manshore, who appeared for the Christians, told the court that under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, the case has to be filed by the person who was being converted or by his/her close relatives. “Whereas in this case, the case was filed by a stranger,” Manshore told the court.
The High Court in its order said, “It is a fit case to grant bail to the applicants.”
The court, however, asked the Christians to furnish a personal bond of Rs.50,000 (US$607) each. “This is a clear case of gross violation and misuse of the anti-conversion law,” said Daniel John, a Catholic leader based in Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh.

Representatives of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s Synod of Bishops met  with clergy opposed to the introduction of a new liturgy, in a renewed effort to settle a dispute that eluded resolution for decades.
Vicars forane and members of the presbyteral council of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese meet with representatives of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Synod of Bishops in Kochi, India, Sept. 7, 2023.
The Sept. 7 meeting in Kochi, southern India, brought together members of a committee appointed by the Synod of Bishops — the Church’s authoritative governing body — and senior priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, who reject the new “uniform mode” of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy.
The meeting addressed differences over the uniform liturgy, which the Synod of Bishops endorsed in 1999 as a compromise between the Syro-Malabar Church’s ancient liturgy, in which the priest faced east, and post-Vatican II celebrations in which the priest faces toward the people.
Tensions have surged since 2021, when the Synod of Bishops called for the new liturgy’s adoption by all the Syro-Malabar Church’s 35 dioceses worldwide.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese — the largest and most prominent of the 35 — was the only diocese where the majority of priests and lay people rejected the change, insisting that after more than 50 years of use, the liturgy facing the people was an established practice that should be recognized as a legitimate variant.
But supporters of the new liturgy — who include Pope Francis — argue that its universal adoption would enhance the unity of the Syro-Malabar Church, the second-largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Pope Francis sought to kickstart the introduction of the new liturgy in the archdiocese — which has around 500,000 members — through the appointment of an apostolic administrator in 2022 and a papal delegate, Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, in July this year.
Vasil’, a Slovak Jesuit who previously served at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, made a stormy visit to the archdiocese Aug. 4-22, during which he issued an ultimatum to opponents of the new liturgy, which they defied.

Catholics in India are urging the papal delegate to not weaponize Eucharist to enforce obedience among the dissident priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly arch-diocese in Kerala.
As Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil’s threat of excommunication looms large on those dissident priests, Catholics in other parts of the country want the delegate to practice synodality promoted by Pope Francis to resolve the dispute over the mode of offering Mass.
The delegate, who landed in the southern Indian state of Kerala on August 4 to help resolve the decades-old dispute, ordered the dissenting clergy to offer Mass approved by the Syro-Malabar Synod in all parishes of the archdiocese or face excommunication. The deadline to implement the order is on Sunday, August 20.
Archbishop Vasil “seems to weaponize the Eucharist with his latest warning on the Syro-Malabar liturgy under the guise of obedience,” laments Father George Pattery, former president of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia.
Father Pattery, who is currently in Kolkata, urges the papal delegate to employ Jesuit expertise on discernment to help the Syro-Malabar Church discover true synodality and, if needed, revise its earlier decisions on liturgy, as “purity and pollution theories are questioned in the New Testament.”
“For Jesus, the eucharist should lead to washing one another’s feet, and not in ritual purity/pollution theories – something that Jesus strongly interrogated,” said the Jesuit, a native of Kerala.

The Delhi high court has ordered Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) weekly Organiser to take down an article alleging that the principal of a Delhi-based Christian minority school was exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men and was involved in sexual activities with students, staff members and chefs, Bar and Bench reported.
The article titled ‘Indian Catholic Church Sex Scandal: Priest exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men exposed’ was published in Organiser and another news plat-form, The Commune, in June.
Justice Jyoti Singh directed both publications to remove the defamatory article from their platforms.
It takes years to build a reputation, and therefore, the right to reputation has been recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution, the bench observed, per the news report.
“No doubt, Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution provides the right of freedom of speech and expression to all persons, how-ever, it cannot be overlooked that the same is subject to restrictions under Article 19(2) which includes defamation.
The right to freedom of speech and expression cannot be taken as an unfettered right so as to defame and tarnish the reputation of another person. It has been repeatedly held by Courts that fundamental right to freedom of speech has to be counterbalanced with the right of reputation of an individual.”
The high court said that prima facie, Organiser and The Commune published the articles “in a reckless manner without any factual verification”, the report said. Additionally, the court said that the news coverage was harm-ing the reputation of the school principal. The principal is a well-regarded individual within the country and has affiliations with multiple educational establish-ments, it added. It noted that the school principal has presented a strong case in his favour. The principal said that as long as these articles remain in the public domain, there is a high likelihood that they will keep causing harm to his reputation.

As India celebrated its 77th Independence Day marking freedom from colonial British rule on Aug. 15, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) asserted the patriotism of Christians and called for “resolving internal challenges with empathy, understanding, and unity.” “India’s journey to freedom was not solely forged on the battlefield but also through unwavering determination, sacrifices, and visionary leadership from those of diverse backgrounds, including the Christian community,” the CBCI said in a press release. Though British imperialism spread in India when the East India Company began trading there in the 17th century, the British Parliament took total control over the Indian subcontinent in 1858.
Following the massive freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi – the prophet of nonviolence – the British ended their rule over the Indian subcontinent in August 1947, dividing it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Hindu nationalist outlets, under the influence of the ruling BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress), have called into question the patriotism of India’s 34 million Christians.

A Catholic bishops’ body has appealed the United Nations (UN) to intervene and stop the targeted attacks against Christians in India and neighbouring Pakistan. “Christians are increasingly becoming the target of riots and mob attacks in India and Pakistan,” said an Aug. 19 statement from the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) based in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The call for UN intervention comes as Manipur state in northeast India is gripped by sectarian violence since May 3 while mobs targeted Christian homes and churches at Jaranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Aug. 16 following allegations of Koran desecration.
In Manipur, violence has reportedly claimed close to 200 lives and displaced over 50,000 people, many of them now staying in relief camps and jungles. Two Christian women were paraded naked and one among them was gang raped.
Over a dozen cases of atrocities again women had been registered during the violence but the number of such cases could be higher and victims may not be able to register complaints fearing retaliation, Church leaders said. The violence also led to the torching of hundreds of Churches and other Christian institutions including schools.