Church leaders in India have reacted cautiously to the demand of an organization representing indigenous people that the government remove the reservation for tribal people to Christianity or other religions.
A March 26 rally organized by the Janajati Dharma Sans-kriti Suraksha Mancha (JDS SM) in Assam’s Guwahati city also demand a ban on religious conversion of tribal people in Assam. Hundreds of Boro, Karbi, Tiwa, Dimasa, Rabha, Mising and other tribes from 30 districts of Assam report-edly attended the rally.
“Conversion of tribal peo-ple in Assam and elsewhere in India to foreign religions has been a threat to indigenous faiths and cultures for decades. The rate of conversion has in-creased and the ST people fall prey to communal theocratic foreign religious groups,” alle-ged JDSSM working president Binud Kumbang.
He said conversion could be checked if the converted tribal people are stripped off the Scheduled Tribe list. “The converted people completely give up their original tribal culture, customs, rituals, way of life, and traditions,” he alleged.
Allen Brooks, spokesper-son of the United Christian Fo-rum of Assam, says Christians would respond to the issue, but would to do it collectively tak-ing all denominations together.
Church commits to welfare of India’s tribal peoples
Each morning, 46-year-old Shailaja rises at 5 a.m. Before 8 a.m., she has eaten breakfast and walked a mile up a mountain to an Indigenous village, where she tutors 22 teens in grades 8 to 10 in math and the Marathi language. Before the students begin attending the government school at 10 a.m., she also tries to help them with any other problems they have encountered.
Shailaja, who has been a teacher for 14 years, is one of a group of animators – teachers, health workers and social workers – trained and paid by the Archdiocese of Bombay to work with Indigenous, or tri-bal, villagers. She works out of the mission station in Alibag, a beach town about 60 miles south of Mumbai.
Tribals, sometimes referred to as Adivasis, make up nearly 9% of the Indian population. The Indian Constitution ensures their educational interests, provides economic safe-guards and takes steps for political empowerment. The 2006 Forest Rights Act empowers forest dwellers to access and use the forest resources in the manner to which they were traditionally accustomed and aims to protect forest dwellers from unlawful evictions — much of their land is mineral rich, and corporations have exploited the lack of documen-tation of ownership.
Church cautious to demand to end reservation for converted tribals
Church leaders in India have reacted cautiously to the demand of an organization representing indigenous people that the government remove the reservation for tribal people to Christianity or other religions.
A March 26 rally organized by the Janajati Dharma Sanskriti Suraksha Mancha (JDSSM) in Assam’s Guwahati city also demand a ban on religious conversion of tribal people in Assam. Hundreds of Boro, Karbi, Tiwa, Dimasa, Rabha, Mising and other tribes from 30 districts of Assam reportedly attended the rally.
“Conversion of tribal people in Assam and elsewhere in India to foreign religions has been a threat to indigenous faiths and cultures for decades. The rate of conversion has increased and the ST people fall prey to communal theocratic foreign religious groups,” alleged JDSSM working president Binud Kumbang.
He said conversion could be checked if the converted tribal people are stripped off the Scheduled Tribe list. “The converted people completely give up their original tribal culture, customs, rituals, way of life, and traditions,” he alleged.
Allen Brooks, spokesperson of the United Christian Forum of Assam, says Christians would respond to the issue, but would to do it collectively taking all denominations together.
Catholic theology students attend Muslim’s iftar party
A group of students of theology from Delhi’s Jesuit-run Vidyajyoti Institute of Religious Studies on March 26 attended an iftar program, the ritual of breaking the fast during the Ramadan month.
They were invited by Syed Muhammad Nizami Sahib to the iftar at the dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya on the fifth day of Ramadan.
Muslims throughout abstain from eating and drinking during the day and end the fast at sunset during Ramadan month. Many Muslims and their groups use the iftar to build and promote interfaith relations.
Reminding the relevance of such interfaith engagements, Jesuit Father Joseph Victor Edwin, who teaches theology and Christian-Muslim Relations at Vidyajyoti, said: In the light of post-modernist thought which takes shape as abhorrence of uniformity, universality, and absoluteness, the Church has a new task of discerning her identity in the context of many religions.”
He reminded the students of the message of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue addressed to ‘Muslim brothers and sisters,’ that urged Muslims and Christians to strive to promote together a ‘culture of love and friendship’ in the context of ‘the culture of hate.’
The Vatican message said the culture of hate is nurtured through the numerous “negative attitudes and behaviors towards those who are different from us,” including “suspicion, fear, rivalry, discrimination, exclusion, persecution, polemics, insults, and backbiting” through social media.
Father Edwin said the message encourages both Muslims and Christians to nurture respect, goodness, charity, friendship, and mutual care for all in the context of negativity.
Syed Muhammad Nizami Sahib said that Sufis emphasize the importance of experiencing God in one’s life. He further said every human is created to love God and love his/her neighbour.
Summit highlights women’s role in Northeast India
A two-day summit of delegates from 15 dioceses of northeastern India stressed the important roles women play in society.
“It is time that we stressed the equal importance of women in society, family and in the Church,” said Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati, the president of North East India Regional Bishops’ Council, said at the opening of the March 18-19 summit at the Jubilee Memorial Hall, Guwahati.
The women empowerment summit was organized by the Regional Women Commission of Northeast India.
“In Indian society including the Church, women play a secondary role. They are subjugated by father, husband, in-laws in the families and their bosses at the workplace,” the archbishop told some 450 delegates from the dioceses.
Women empowerment, he explained, “basically means treating men and women equally and giving equal freedom to women to develop her. Such gatherings are an impetus for women to assert their position in the family and to teach the society that wo-men have their rights and they are able to carry out their responsibilities well.”
Auxiliary Bishop Dennis Panipitchai of Miao, the commission chairman, said women empowerment means to increase and improve women’s social, economic, political and legal strength. “Em-powering women will ensure that her entire family receives better healthcare, nutrition, access to education, employment, economic justice and sustainability. The Northeast Region with all its uniqueness should lead and be the harbinger of the change that our country and the world is need of,” he added. The event included input sessions, animation and panel discussion on topics pertinent to women and daily challenges and discrimination they face in the society.
Camillian nuns bring hope, community to girls with HIV
Maria was 9 and a fourth grader in a convent school when she tested positive for HIV.
She had lost her mother when she was just 3; her father, also an HIV patient, died last month in February.
Maria (name changed) recalled her father and the hostel warden bringing her 17 years ago to Jeevadaan (Life giver), an HIV/AIDS rehabilitation center managed by the Daughters of St. Camillus in the outskirts of Mangaluru, a southwestern Indian port city. “I was shocked and crying for leaving my friends,” she told Global Sisters Report.
Now married with a 2½-year-old son, Maria thanks the nuns for providing her care and support when everything seemed bleak.
“We are now positive about our life and our son keeps us occupied,” said Maria, who, with the intervention and support of Jeevadaan, married an HIV-positive young man.
The Catholic woman is among more than 400 HIV-infected women and children whom Jeevadaan has helped and who have settled into lives with jobs or marriage.
That’s because of the hope and confidence Jeevadaan teaches its beneficiaries, Maria said.
“With proper care and support, we could bring them up as normal children, giving them education at a public school and helping them settle with good education and jobs,” said Camillus Sr. Shiji Madathithazhe, who is in charge of education and has served the center for seven years.
“Our children have become smarter and healthier as they began interacting with the other children in the school,” she said.
Kanpur Christians meet police commissioner on conversion arrests
A delegation of Christians of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 21 met city Police Commissioner P. Jogdand regarding a spate of accusations and arrests for alleged forcible conversions.
The UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversions of Religion Act 2021 aims to stop conversion through allurement, coercion, force or fraudulent means. The law was implemented with retrospective effect from November 27, 2020.
Under the law, even an assurance of a “better lifestyle” or threat of “divine displeasure” is considered an offence. The act defines “mass conversion” as that of two or more persons. So even if a married couple converts it becomes a case of mass conversion.
Unfortunately, the provisions of this Act have been used to harass Christians across the State. Members of certain fundamentalist organizations have been complaining against prayer meetings being held in houses and pressurising the police to arrest those conducting such services.
Kerala archbishop’s assurance to BJP irks Christians
Catholics across India have reacted angrily to an archbishop in Kerala, who has offered condi-tional support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the federal coalition government.
Archbishop Joseph Pamplany of Tellicherry on March 18 assur-ed the BJP at least one seat from the southern Indian state if the federal government raises the price of rubber to 300 rupees.
The Syro-Malabar prelate was addressing a farmers’ rally at Alakode, a village in the east-ern region of Kerala’s Kannur district where rubber is the main crop.
The Hindu nationalist BJP currently has no parliamentary or legislative seat in Kerala, where Christians form more than 18 percent of 35.77 million.
Archbishop Pamplany’s statement “cannot be accepted as the stand of Christians in Kerala, though there have been attempts by Christian leaders to align with the BJP,” says Father Suresh Mathew, editor of Indian Currents weekly.
Indian bishops get back power on properties
India’s Supreme Court has restored the powers of Catholic bishops in Kerala to transfer diocesan properties and quashed a state court’s order that restricted them to dealing only with spiritual matters.
“The Supreme Court order setting aside the high court observations is a matter of great relief to bishops and the entire Christian community in the state [Kerala],” said Father Jacob G Palakkappillly, spokesperson of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, a regional Indian Bi-shops’ Conference.
The Supreme Court on March 17 said the state High Court’s order was “unwarranted and de-serve to be quashed and set aside, and are accordingly quashed and set aside.”
Kerala High Court in August 2021 held that Catholic bishops, notwithstanding their canonical powers, had no powers to alienate landed assets of their dioceses because their “powers are con-fined to religious and spiritual matters.”
‘State can regulate fees’ in minority colleges in India
In a verdict that will have far-reaching implications for minority Christian-run higher educational institutions in India, the country’s top court has ordered that while a minority educational institution is free to devise its own fee structure, the state has the power to regulate it.
The Supreme Court ruling came while hearing a petition that challenged the authority of a committee set up by the central Indian Madhya Pradesh state to regulate fees and admissions in minority-run higher education institutions in the state.
In its March 17 order, the Supreme Court said the minority institutions of higher education “should not claim complete immunity” in admissions and fee structures and “seek exemption from any interference” from the government.
The state established the committee in 2007 to fix the fees and supervise the admission process in the state’s private higher education institutions following complaints that these institutions were charging exorbitant fees.
The Church “accepts the verdict with mixed feelings,” said Father Maria Stephen, the Church spokesman in Madhya Pradesh.
He said Church institutions “do not fix admission fees and other fees with the intention of making a profit. Our aim is to provide excellent structures and modern facilities. The fee regulatory committee should not compare private institutions with government-run colleges,” he said.