Category: National

Madhya Pradesh State in central India has replaced its more than 50-year-old anti-conversion law with a new and more stringent one that can criminalize even conversion for marriage.
The law notified on Jan. 9 says any attempt to convert a person from one religion to another through misrepresentation, allurement, use of threat or force, undue influence, coercion or by marriage is a punishable offense.
Violators can be jailed for up to 10 years under the new law called the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance 2020. Those abetting or conspi-ring such conversions can also be punished.
The new law replaces the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion act of 1968. However, it allows the reconversion of a person to one’s parental religion without violating the law’s provision.
Leaders of the state government-run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hold that Hinduism is the parental religion of religious minorities in the country such as Christians and Muslims.
In effect, the law allows Hindu groups to convert Christians and Muslims to Hinduism. But those Hindus who convert to Islam or Christianity for marriage can be punished along with their spouses, who can be accused of abetting and conspiring the con-version.
“This law is one-sided and against fundamental rights guaranteed in the Indian constitution,” said Father Maria Stephan, public relations officer of the Catholic Church in Madhya Pradesh.

Police in an Indian state have directed officers to keep a watch on prayer gatherings after five Christians were arrested on a charge of religious con-version. Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a hard-line Hindu group, handed the five Christians to police in Shahjahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh State, which is run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“It is just an allegation from the fanatic groups and if they are sure about it, let them prove it. People are free to express their views in a democratic country,” Father Harold D’ Cunha, vicar general of Bareilly Diocese, told.
“As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, it does not promote or propagate religious conversion in the diocese as well as in the country.
“Occasionally, these groups blame us for conversions, but until now there is no record of any religious conversion where the Church is involved.”
He said the Church is engaged in many charitable works that can be construed as allurement to conversions, “but it is not true.”
S. Anand, superintendent of Shahjahanpur police, told the Press Trust of India that after the alleged religious conversion activities, officers have been asked to keep a watch on religious gatherings.
“We have directed concerned police officials to take strict action if anyone is found guilty of religious conversion activities,” he said.

But in recent weeks, jail authorities in India have been called out for being especially cruel to prisoners, particularly the govern-ment’s critics who are described as “human rights defenders” by international rights groups.
Earlier this month, the Bombay High Court reminded officials of Mumbai’s Taloja jail that they needed to show some “humanity” while dealing with the needs of inmates.
“We need to conduct workshops for jailers. How are such small items denied? These are all human considerations,” Justices SS Shinde and MS Karnik said.
The “small items” here were spectacles that jailed activist Gautam Navlakha had been denied.
The judges’ comment came after his family told the press that his spectacles were stolen in prison and that when they sent a fresh pair, the authorities refused to accept them.
“He was allowed to call me on 30 November, three days after his glasses were stolen. He’s 68, he needs a high-powered lens and without them, he’s nearly blind,” his partner, Sahba Husain, told me.
Since the start of the pandemic in mid-March, India has stopped all visits by family or lawyers to jail. Inmates are not even allowed to receive parcels.
Husain says Navlakha told her that he had spoken to the jail superintendent and had been assured that he would receive his spectacles.
Husain, who lives in Delhi, quickly got a new pair made and posted them on 3 December.
“I checked three-four days later and realized that the parcel had reached the jail on 5 December, but had been refused and returned.”
It was only after the judges read out a lesson in “humanity,” and subsequent outrage on social media that jail authorities provided a new set of spectacles to Mr Navlakha.
A former secretary of the non-governmental organisation People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Navlakha is no ordinary prisoner. He’s spent a lifetime working for civil liberties and is respected globally.
He’s been in jail since the middle of April in connection with what is known as the Bhima Koregaon case.
He’s among 16 activists, poets and lawyers who have been arrested over the past two years on charges of instigating caste violence at a Dalit rally in Bhima Koregaon village in the western State of Maharashtra on 1 January 2018. They all deny the charges against them.

With differences between Orthodox and Jacobite factions in widening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will talk to both groups to find a lasting solution to some issues, said Mizoram Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai. The governor, also hailing from Kerala, said he had briefed the Prime Minister about all issues and sought his intervention to help solve them. He said leaders of both factions will be met separately and later to joint meeting will be called. Pillai also said he will also discuss the issue with Home Minister Amit Shah.
The growing friction between the two factions has invited enough embarrassment for the community and often created big law and order problems in the state. Earlier Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also tried to broker peace between two but failed to make much headway as both sides stuck to their stands.
“There is a complaint that central funds for minority welfare are not distributed proportionately between different communities in the state. The Church has been raising its concern in this regard for quite some time. So the PM will hear their woes also,” Pillai said.
“We hope the PM’s intervention will help us get justice,” said Jacobite Church trustee Joseph Mar Gregorios. “We are ready to go by any agreement that is bound by law of the land and decision of the apex court,” said Orthodox Church secretary Biju Oommen. Recently, a tiff between the two spilled over to the streets inviting enough embarrassment for believers.

Dalit Christians in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have held a protest in march against discrimination faced by Dalits in 45 Catholic parishes of Pondicherry-Cuddalore Arch diocese.
Protesters submitted a memorandum to parish priests on Dec. 20 and requested them to forward it to Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, India’s apostolic nuncio. “The memorandum contains Dalit Christians’ long-standing common demand for equal rights for all,” M. Mary John, president of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM), told UCA News.
“They fervently appeal to the nuncio and the Holy See for their urgent intervention to secure them justice and equal rights. DCLM has been vigorously pursuing these demands with the Catholic hierarchy in India as well as with the Vatican for years.
“The current protests follow a peaceful sit-in by 40 Dalit priests at the archbishop’s house in Puducherry from Nov. 29 to Dec. 4 demanding a dialogue with the archbishop and the administrators.”
John said Dalits have long faced caste discrimination and continued denial of key administrative posts in the archdiocese and in leadership of ministries.

The Church in Goa has urged the state chief minister to urgently intervene to resolve meat shortage that has severely affected people’s protein intake and tourism industry.
The Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) wrote to Pramod Sawant that the western Indian state started experiencing the shortage after neighboring Karnataka State passed a bill to ban cattle slaughter.
The Goa archdiocese’ social action wing says its December 15 memorandum is sent on behalf of meat traders and consumers as well as in the interest of the tourism industry in the state.
“This intervention is requested on behalf of the vast majority of beef consumers as well as for the benefit of the culinary business in Goa and for the benefit of tourism in the state,” says the letter signed by the council’s executive secretary Father Savio Fernandes. The Church body wants the Goa chief minister to “urgently intervene in the matter with Karnataka on behalf of Goa asking it not to notify the bill in their state in order to safeguard the livelihood of hundreds of meat traders who along with their employees are totally dependent on this trade for their survival.”

The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India has appointed Maria Francis from the Archdiocese of Bangalore as the new national director of YOUCAT India.
She will coordinate the ministries of the Youcat India Missionary Movement and will guide its members in India.
Youcat, short for Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, also styled as YOUCAT, is a 2011 publication that aims to aid youth to better understand the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Francis is an engineer by profession and a member of the Holy Redeemer Parish, Hennur, Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka State in southern India.

The Church in India has never been under such stress as in the Christmas season of 2020.
Starved of finances under a harsh law that regulates inter-national donations and the near absence of worshippers in the Covid-19 curfew, the Church cutting across denominations is pummelled by accusations from political foes and the seething anger of a section of the faithful outraged at exposes of corruption and moral turpitude, sometimes in the highest echelons of the clergy.
As the largest denomination, claiming a full 60 percent of the Christian population of about 30 million among 1.25 billion Indians, the Catholic Church gets more than its share of the torment from within and outside.
For the Episcopal, Evangelical, Pentecostal and independent churches, while some of the bigger groups have leaders facing serious charges of financial bungling and alienation of property — the polite word for selling off churches, graveyards or institutional lands — the main threat remains from the laws against religious conversion, once confined to a mere six states but now rapidly legislated in many more provinces by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] which rules the country and controls two-thirds of the states. It does not seem too far away when it will be operational across the country.

A 6-year-old Dalit girl has been found dead in Kampur (Uttar Pradesh). The little girl had disappeared on the eve of the Deepavali festival (last November 15) from the Ghatampur area. She was found with signs of torture, rape, with an open ribcage and stolen lungs. Police say the little girl’s lungs were removed to perform some magical rituals, with the belief that this could help a woman give birth to a son. The suspects – Ankul Kuril, 20, and Beeran, 31, were arrested and confessed to giving the victim’s lungs to Parshuram Kuril to perform the ritual. The latter’s wife was also arrested because, despite knowing about the murder, she said nothing to anyone.
India is considered one of the country’s most at risk for women. According to official statistics, there is one rape every 15 minutes. In 2019, crimes against women grew by 7.9% compared to the previous year. But it is above all little girls who fall victim.
On November 16, also in Uttar Pradesh, in the district of Fatehpur, the bodies of two Dalit sisters aged 8 and 12 were found in a pond. Their family claims that their daughters went to the fields in the afternoon to pick vegetables, but they never came back. They were killed after a failed rape attempt. Both bodies have eye wound marks.
“These unspeakable attacks on girls have become a ‘chronic disease’,” says Msgr. Felix Machado, Secretary General of the Indian Bishops. “Our girls – he continues – are the most vulnerable in society and our Dalit girls are the most exploited and weakest in society and these violations are extremely worri-some.  This is a Spiritual failure.”

The registration of Christian marriages in Mumbai has come to a halt after the retirement of the marriage officer in July.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, newlywed couples are forced to travel to Pune to get their marri-age certificates stamped by state government authorities. Activists Godfrey Pimenta and Nicholas Almeida of the Watchdog Foundation have urged the state government to appoint a new officer in Mumbai at the earliest. Advocate Vivian D’Souza, Rita D’Souza as well as Tulip Miranda, president of the Bombay East Indian Association, have signed the request.
Pimenta said, “Mumbai has a Catholic popu-lation of 10 lakhs (1 million), and every year, thousands of couples get married in the 100-plus Catholic Churches that are located in Mumbai alone. The post of marriage officer remains vacant ever since the previous incumbent Ashish Lopez retired a few months ago.”
Pimenta explained the procedure saying, “Couples are required to procure their marriage certificate from the local church where the nuptials were solemnized. The certificate is then attested by the chancellor attached to Archbishop House in Colaba, and subsequently by a notary public. Later, it is to be stamped by the state home department and finally by the marriage officer whose office is in Mantralaya.”
In the absence of the Mumbai appointee, couples are required to travel to Pune to get attestation done through the Commissioner of Social Welfare. Almeida said, “This is a matter of concern since Pune has a high number of Covid-19 cases. More-over, the journey is tedious. The state government should immediately fill the vacancy in Mumbai.” The archdiocese of Bombay expressed concern as well. Spokesman Fr Nigel Barrett said, “The situa-tion of having no registrar of Christian marriages is indeed true. It has been communicated to the government about the urgency to appoint a registrar and we are hopeful it will be addressed soon.”