A Christian group in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is mulling a protest after the state government prevented construct-ion of a church because it says it was illegal.
Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF) has asked the state govern-ment run by the pro-Hindu Bha-ratiya Janata Party (BJP) to qui-ckly resolve the issue in Buddhist-majority Tawang town.
“The present government says that the church is illegal as it is on public land, referring to the Supreme Court order that bars construction of religious structures in public places, but that is not the case here,” Father Felix Anthony, spokesman for the Catholic Church in north-eastern India, told.
“People here who are for or against the construction of the church are not for disturbing the peace of the community that has been prevailing for years. People want the issues sorted out ami-cably. There is no question of disobeying the law written in the constitution.”

Several bishops in Kerala held a day-long hunger strike October 20 to protest the state govern-ment’s withholding of funds from Catholic schools.
The hunger strike was held October 20 in front of the Kerala state secretariat. The prelates participating were Bishops Jo-shuah Kizhakkeveettil of the Syro-Malankara Eparchy of Mavelikara, chair of the Kerala bishops’ education commission; Paul Mullassery of Quilon, the vice chair; and Thomas Tharayil, an auxiliary of the Syro-Malabar Archeparchy of Changana-cherry.
Archbishop Maria Callist Soosa Pakiam of Trivandrum said the state government “curtails our rights as a religious minority to run education institutions through arbitrary orders and amendments to the existing laws,” UCA News reported.
Christians run about 5,000 of Kerala’s 13,000 schools. The government is required to provide financial aid to over half of these schools to support teachers’ salaries.
Father Charles Leon, secretary of the Kerala bishops’ education commission, told UCA News that “it is an indefinite protest.” Protests were held in each of Kerala’s 14 districts.
He also said the state government tried “to meddle in the appointment of teachers in the state-aided schools.”

A special court of the National Investigation Agency on October 23 rejected the bail plea of Jesuit Father Stan Swamy a tribal rights activist arrested for his alleged involvement in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence in Maharashtra.
The 83-year-old, who is under judicial custody, had sought bail on health grounds. He is now lodged in the quarantine ward at Taloja Jail, near Mumbai.
Father Swamy was picked up from his home in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on October 8 by a team of NIA officials from Delhi. His arrest had sparked an outrage across the country, evoking criticism from several circles. A court had sent him to judicial custody until on October 23.
“It (the NDA government) crossed all limits today when someone like Stan Swamy was arrested. He is someone who has been working in Jharkhand for years, in the remote faraway villages, wandering in the jun-gles, just so that the Adivasis, Dalits, and minority populations here could be reached,” Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren had said.

Archbishop Felix Toppo of Ranchi on October 16 joined priests, nuns and lay people to form a 5-kilometer human chain to denounce the arrest of an octogenarian Jesuit priest for alleged Maoist links. Many of the more than 1,000 protestors, who lined up in the Jharkhand State capital of Ranchi lit candles, terming it a symbol of hope against the attempts to silence intellectuals and rights activists such as Father Stan Swamy. The 83-year-old priest was arrested on October 8 from his residence near Ranchi by the National Investigation Agency, the federal body to counter terrorism. The priest was taken to Mumbai the following morning.

The arrest and imprisonment of an 83-year-old Jesuit priest in a two-year-old case have led to massive protests by people’s organizations, activists, intellectuals and concerned citizens from across India.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), a federal body to counter terror activities in the country, on October 8 arrested Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy from his residence at the Bagaicha Campus near Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand State in eastern India.
According to the latest information, the agency on October 9 took the priest to Mumbai, in western India, and presented him before a court that sent him to judicial custody until October 23.
The arrest of “Stan Swamy is a gross violation of human rights and democratic norms,” says an October 9 statement endors-ed by more than 2,000 people representing various groups in India.
They have appealed Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren to oppose the priest’s arrest. The statement hailed Father Swamy as “a valued and public spiritedness citizen who has worked for Adivasi rights since decades in Jharkhand” and decried the “inhuman and insincere act of the NIA authorities.”
The priest’s arrest, it adds, “stands out for its sheer vindictiveness” since the priest had “fully cooperated with the investigating officers” who questioned him at his residence for more than 15 hours in July and August.
“Stan has consistently denied any link with extremist leftist forces or Maoists. He had also clearly told the NIA that some so-called extracts allegedly taken from his computer shown to him by the NIA were fake and fabricated and that he disowned them,” the statement explains.
NIA officials reportedly said investigations established the priest was actively involved in the activities of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). The agency also accused him of receiving funds for CPI-Maoist activities.
The agency said they had seized documents and propaganda material of the Maoist and literature from the priest and that he was in contact with the other accused in the Koregaon-Bhima case that dates back to January 1, 2018, the day of the bicentenary celebrations of the Bhima Koregaon battle.
The celebration was marred by violence leading to death of one person and injuries to several others. Dalits and higher-caste Maratha people clashed in several parts of Maharashtra.

“In every democratic country, politicians’ freedom and power are defined by the constitution and, of course, their ability to be credible. After a special court ordered the acquittal of hardline Hindu leaders from a conspiracy charge of bringing down a 16th-century mosque in 1992, most opposition leaders went silent or were guarded in their reactions.” Wrote Nirendra Dev in New Delhi
In India, a multi-faith and multi-language country, secularism took a beating on Dec. 6, 1992, when Hindu zealots demolished the Babri Masjid. They argued they were undoing the act of 16th-century Muslim ruler Baber, who built it after razing a temple at the spot in Ayodhya town, the birthplace of their Lord Ram in present-day Uttar Pradesh State.
Starting in the 19th century, there were several conflicts and court disputes between Hindus and Muslims over the mosque. The disputes came to a flashpoint in 1992 when L.K. Advani of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began a roadshow demanding the mosque’s demolition and the building of a temple at Ayodhya.
Following the demolition, Hindu-Muslim riots followed in which some 3,000 people died. Advani, as leader of the opposition in India’s parliament (Lok Sabha), took the moral high ground and resigned. The Congress party, which was running the government in New Delhi then, dismissed BJP governments in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Fast forward to Sept. 30, 2020: Advani and a host of other hardline BJP politicians were acquitted by a special court that heard the conspiracy case…..”

A group Christian women theologians in India has expre-ssed shock and pain at the increasing incidents of sexual assaults on young Dalit women in the country.
“We strongly condemn these acts of violence and call upon the state machinery to ensure a free and fair probe into these crimes so that the guilty are brought before the courts of law and justice ensured to the victims/survivors,” says the Indian Women Theologians Forum (IWTF).
In an October 7 press release, the forum deplores the rape of four young Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh districts of Bulandshahr, Azamgarh, Balrampur, and Hathras in September. On Sept-ember 18, another Dalit teenager was set on fire in Telangana state’s Khammam district for resisting the rape attempt of her employers’ son.
“It is time for every right-thinking Indian to raise their voice and demand justice for the Dalits in our country. It is time for each of us to examine our own attitudes and behaviour that continues to treat Dalits as second class. It is time for India to change,” the Christian women theologian assert.
“We are deeply pained that even 70 years after the birth of India’s egalitarian Constitution framed by Dr. B R Ambedkar… Dalits continue to be treated as sub human,” the forum statement bemoaned.
Ambedkar, an eminent jurist, economist and politician, who had himself suffered caste discrimination, ensured that his strong views on social develop-ment, communal harmony and eradication of caste are spelt out in the various articles of the Indian Constitution.

Hindu groups in India are planning to launch a nationwide campaign to curb religious conversion, which they claim is a form of violence and a crime.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliate Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) say religious conversion is rampant in tribal-dominated areas and they plan to bring those converted back to the Hindu fold.
But their claims brought a swift rebuttal from Christian leaders.
“The Catholic Church in India does not promote or propagate religious conversion and, as the RSS and VHP claim that it does, then let them prove it,” Father Nicholas Barla, secretary of the Indian Catholic bishops’ Commission for Tribal Affairs, told.
“From time to time, those groups blame us for conversion, but there is no record of any religious conversion where the Church is involved, so there is no question of reconversion.
“Everybody knows that the Church is engaged in many charitable works. Our main concern is that any charitable work can be construed as allure-ment to conversions, but it is not true. We should do our work and should not give heed to RSS and VHP propaganda.”

Christian families in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh had their houses vandalized after refusing to follow the local Sarna religion.
A mob attacked houses in five villages in Kondagaon district of Bastar division on Sept. 22-23, PTI news agency reported.
“There was an incident of clashes between tribal groups and tribal Christians as the villagers wanted the Christian group to follow the traditional tribal Sarna religion of worshiping nature, which the Christian groups refused to do,” Bishop Joseph Kollamparampil of Jagdalpur told.
“The situation was quite tense as some vested interest people were trying to give it a communal color, but the administration was very alert and the situation is under control now.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has introduced a bill in India’s parliament to tighten the rules of overseas funding in a move that could adversely affect thou-sands of social workers including Catholic organizations. The government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sept. 20 proposed certain amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FRCA), which critics say aims to help the government tightly monitor organizations and silence criticism.
The amendment proposes to decrease an organization’s administrative expenses from foreign funding to 20% from 50%. It also proposes to link leaders of all organizations to their biometric identity cards called Aadhaar.
The proposal also wants to empower the government to stop the utilization of foreign funds by an organization by ordering a “summary enquiry.”
Opposition lawmakers and social workers see the move as a major step to crush dissent and give government unbridled powers to harass certain voluntary organizations in a country where religious minorities continue to complain of being sidelined.
The amendments are expected to sail through parliament because of the BJP’s majority in the house. But it aims to “crush dissent,” opposition Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said in the lower house of parliament.
His party colleagues and another opposition member belonging to Trinamool (Grassroots) Congress supported him.
“This is an example of big brother watching — that is, the central government keeping an eye on all those receiving foreign contributions. It is mainly directed at minority organizations or institutions,” said Saugata Roy of Trinamool Congress.