The return of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to the Indian Parliament 135 days after his disqualification has reassured people’s faith in the Indian judiciary, say some Christian intellectuals.
Gandhi, who represented Kerala’s Wayanad constituency in the Lok Sabha, was reinstated August 7 after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction in a criminal defamation case.
Gandhi was disqualified as a Lok Sabha member on March 24, a day after a Gujarat court convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail.
A punishment of two years or more automatically disqualifies a lawmaker.
While Jesuit social scientist Father Cedric Prakash says Gandhi’s reinstatement “is a step in the right direction,” his confrere Father Stanislaus Alla, a moral theology professor in Delhi, says the apex court’s action reassures that the Indian judiciary is willing to uphold the laws instead of succumbing to pressures.
Father Alla says people become sad, frustrated and angry when they see justice denied, helping falsehood to prevail.
“However, our sacred books, including the Bible and the Upanishads declare that ‘Truth’ alone should prevail and not falsehood,” he explains.
Father Cedric says Gandhi’s conviction by various courts in Gujarat, his expulsion from parliament and subsequent stay by the Supreme Court “throw up many important lessons which could have an important bearing on the future of democracy in India.”

Catholics, including priests, in an archdiocese in southern India say they will not cooperate with a Pontifical Delegate who arrived to help find a solution to the decades-old liturgy dispute in their eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church.
A five-member delegation of some 400 priests in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese on Aug. 8 met Pontifical Delegate Archbishop Cyril Vasil of Slovakia to communicate their decision.
“We have informed our difficulty to engage with him any further,” said Father Jose Edassery, who was among the five-member delegation.
The prelate, a former secretary of the Office for Eastern Churches and head of the Greek Catholic diocese of Kosice in Slovakia, arrived on Aug. 4 at the Church’s base in southern Kerala state.
Vasil in an Aug. 5 pastoral exhortation asked Catholics in the archdiocese to pray for the success of his mission. It said the pope appointed him to implement the “synodal decision on the uniform mode of celebration.”
A memorandum the priests handed over to Vasil, a copy of which was made available to UCA News, said they cannot cooperate with him for such a mission.
“We hereby reiterate our loyalty to the Holy Father Pope Francis. But, we have reservations to put into practice the exhortation regarding the uniform mode of celebration of Mass,” the memorandum stated.
The priests and laity in the archdiocese have rejected the order of the Mass approved by the Church’s synod, saying they cannot agree to its archaic demands to turn to the altar during Eucharistic prayer. They want to continue to celebrate Mass facing the people throughout, as they have been doing for the past five decades.
The memorandum said the Jesuit archbishop is adamant about implementing synod approved mode of Mass in the archdiocese without having any dialogue with those opposing it.
“You have categorically stated that there is no room for dialogue and that you have no mandate to report our requests and concerns to the Holy Father. It is felt that your language and approach are at times of threatening rather than of dialogue,” the priests said in the memorandum.
“By doing so, we feel that your mission has become ineffective even before it took off.”

Charred walls, collapsed tin roofs and smashed windows in a burned Kuki community church illustrate how deadly ethnic violence has led to brutal sectarian attacks in India’s troubled Manipur state.
At least 120 people have been killed since May in armed clashes between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki in the northeastern state.
The ruins of the Kuki church in Imphal are just one among the more than 220 churches and 17 Hindu temples destroyed in the months of vigilante violence, according to a report by India Today news magazine.
Across the street from the burned church, Baptist priest Zuan Kamang Damai led a service on Sunday with a congregation just a third of its usual size of about 800 after many of his Kuki parishioners fled.

“After this violence erupted, they moved to different places to save their lives,” he said.
“They want to come back, they want to resettle, they want to live with my family,” Damai said. “This is what they responded to me, and I comfort them. God is there.”
Damai is himself a Naga, another major tribal group in the area who have largely been spared in the cycle of revenge attacks.
But many of his regular worshippers are staying away, fearful of the possibility of violence.
“We have to respect each religion — regardless of Christians, regardless of Hindu, Muslim, whatever,” the 55-year-old said.

A top team of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India that visited the conflict-ridden areas of Manipur has criticized the prolonged silence and apathy of the law enforcement agencies in containing violence in the northeastern Indian state.
“It is our earnest appeal that the governance system should uphold the secular fabric of our country, reinforce constitutional values and cultivate an environment of peaceful co-existence of various communities,” asserts the team led by the conference president Archbishop Andrews Thazhath of Trichur.
The team that visited various places in Manipur July 23-24 included the conference’s deputy secretary general Father Jervis D’Souza and Father Paul Moonjely, executive director of Caritas India, humanitarian response organization of CBCI.
It was the first CBCI official team to visit Manipur where clashes between Kuki tribal people and Meitei people erupted 82 days ago, killing more than 160 people and rendering thousands homeless. As many as 349 churches and institutions have also perished in the violence.
The visit also took place five days after a video surfaced on social media showing two women being paraded naked and later gang raped. The 26-minute video triggered national outrage prompting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak about Manipur for the first time. The incident occurred on May 4, but the world did not know about it until because of a ban on the internet in Manipur.

With India and observers elsewhere in the world stunned by a viral video of the naked parading and public rape of two Christian women in simmering Manipur state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had little option but to break his widely deplored silence on the bloodshed there.
“The video showing atrocity against women in Manipur is the most shameful,” acknowledged Modi while entering the Indian Parliament on July 20 for its monsoon session, reacting to the shocking May 4 video. Amid the national outcry, Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  government has banned viewing of the video in India.
“The Manipur incident has shamed the entire humanity and [1.4 billion] people of the country are feeling shamed,” added Modi.
Modi’s delayed response was criticized by Catholics leaders.
“The Prime Minister’s reaction has come too late. He should have spoken out when the bloodshed started but just kept quiet all through,” Archbishop Dominic Lumon of Imphal, who heads the Catholic Church in the strife-torn state, told the Register.
“Fear is pervasive even now [after 79 days] and peace remains a dream for us. Everyone is living in fear as violence keeps erupting in the [Imphal] Valley and its peripheries frequently,” added Archbishop Lumon, who heads the 100,000-member local Catholic Church in the tiny state in northeast India, which has a total population of less than four million people.
“On some days, there is relaxation of curfew. But yesterday it was strict curfew due to fresh violence.”
Reports of tribal Kuki attacks on ethnic Meiteis circulated immediately after the protest, which in turn plunged the Imphal Valley that accommodates 90% of Manipur’s population into an outburst of violence against Kuki tribal Christians. At the same time, ethnic Meitei settlements in the Kuki-dominated hills surrounding the valley also were the targets of violence.
While the official death count now totalling around 150, with the overwhelming majority of the victims being Kuki Christians, human rights observers estimate the figure to be underestimated.

Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoti, a Catholic missionary abducted in the west African country of Mali, describes her five-year-captivity as “spiritually transformative” and a blessing in her life.
The Colombian nun was abducted in February 2017 in Southern Mali by what was later discovered to be a jihadi group.
She narrated her experience in the Foreword of the 2023 edition of the Religious Freedom in the World Report, which Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) published on June 22.
“Undoubtedly, it was one of the most spiritually transformative experiences of my life. Today, looking back, even though it sounds paradoxical, it was perhaps one of the greatest blessings that God has given me,” Sister Gloria said in the report on Christian persecution, which painted a grim picture of Africa.
She said that writing the Foreword of the report was an opportunity to speak out against religious intolerance and Christian persecution.
“I am aware of the importance of speaking about this fundamental right – religious liberty – to ensure that it is protected, especially within a polarized society where attempts are made to sweep under the carpet the abuses committed against the freedom to profess religious beliefs,” Sister Gloria said.
The member of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate added that her mission in Mali and her experience with jihadists in the West African country had taught her the importance of love and respect regardless of one’s religious affiliation.
She narrated having shared her captivity with two women: a Muslim and a Protestant, and added, “I learned that if we love, accept and respect one another, we can live as brothers and sisters.”
Accepting one another, she clarified, does not mean giving up one’s beliefs, “for true respect, is about listening, welcoming, and acknowledging everyone for who they are.”

A workshop in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad has asserted the rights and well-being of taxi drivers employed in various platforms
The July 10 workshop, held at the Montfort Social Institute and organized in collaboration with the Bengaluru-based National Law School of India University, addressed various challenges faced by these drivers.
Brother Varghese, director of Montfort Social Institute, described platform work as a new and complex phenomenon for modern civilization. He emphasized the unprecedented situation where employees are uncertain about their employers, the source of their income, and whom to approach in case of issues. He stressed the need to identify and fight for the rights of platform workers, both from the platforms as well as from the government.
Babu Matthew, a speaker at the workshop, emphasized that platforms often employ eloquent language to shift the liability of assets onto the workers. This practice places an immense burden on the drivers, subjecting them to physical, mental, and economic strain.
The workshop was attended by 20 workers representing well-known companies such as Ola, Zomato, Uber, Rapido, and Swiggy. “Their presence lent authenticity to the discussions as they courageously shared their daily struggles and voiced their concerns,” Brother Theckanath said.

Prayers and protest marches by India’s small but socially influential Catholic community were staged across the country July 2 in response to ongoing violence against Christians in the country’s northeastern state of Manipur.
Called by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, the protests highlighted that more than 100 people, largely Christians, have been killed so far in Manipur, with the carnage unfolding just ahead of the August anniversary of an anti-Christian pogrom in 2008 in the state of Orissa.
The conflict pits the largely Hindu Meitei ethnic group against the mostly Protestant Christian Kuki people, each of which represents roughly forty percent of the state’s population of four million, but the Meitei enjoy the support of regional and national political forces dominated by the Hindu nationalist BJP party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Since the violence began on May 3, estimates are that some 50,000 displaced persons are now living in 300 refugee camps, though with larger numbers expelled from their homes and villages who haven’t moved to any formal settlements. Over 5,000 structures, including churches and private Christian homes, have been burned, and some local observers claim that as many as 120 people have died.

Christian community in India has suffered as many as 400 incidents of violence in the first half 2023, says the United Christian Forum, an ecumenical group.
A press statement from the forum titled, “Atrocities against Christians in India increasing drastically year on year,” says the incidents have occurred in 23 of India’s 28 states.
A forum official told Matters India July 11 that they have not included the northeastern Indian state of Manipur where ethnic violence allegedly targeting Christians has raged since May 3.
During the same period last year, the forum recorded 274 such incidents against Christians in India. January topped last year’s chart with 121 incidents (almost 4 incidents a day), followed by 40 in May, 31 in February, 29 in April, 28 in March and 25 in June.
However, the Indian government disputes the figures as wrong data used to sully the image of the country abroad.
On April 13, the government said this while responding to a public interest litigation filed by Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore Reverend Vijayesh Lal of Evangelical Fellowship of India, and others who claimed violence against Christians in the country.
Archbishop Machado and others in their petition had told a bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud that from 2021 to May 2022, 700 cases of violence against Christians were reported and a majority of those arrested were followers of the faith.