The demand for a separate Rite for Dalit Catholics is gaining momentum with many supporting it as a solution to caste-based discrimination in the Indian Church.
“If this can bring about much needed respect for the Dalit Catholics and wipe out that invisible line of casteism, I am for it. In fact, I will join the movement wholeheartedly and help in attaining the status being demanded,” says AC Michael, a former member of the Delhi Minorities Commission.
Michael shared his thoughts with Matters India March 11, a day after the National Council of Dalit Christians (NCDC) urged Pope Francis to create a Catholic Rite like the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches.
A press release from NCDC coordinator Franklin Caesar Thomas says, “We urge the Pope to recognize the Dalit Catholic Rite like Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Rites with all divine rights and property. According to Thomas, who is also a Supreme Court lawyer, the Rites in the Catholic Church are based on orientation and rituals.
Thomas also points out that Christianity does not have one cultural expression. “It also reflects different faces of the cultures and peoples that received the faith and allowed to take roots “with unwavering fidelity to the Gospel and the Church’s tradition.” If the Pope approves a new separate Dalit Catholic rite, he says it would show to the world that each group of people can pray to the God of Jesus Christ from their cultural riches and expressions without altering the unity of the Catholic faith.”
The new rite will adopt the character and traditions of various Dalit Catholic communities, the NCDC leader asserted.
Dalit Catholics in India are currently spread over Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches in the Catholic fold.
The Catholic Church is comprised of six different liturgical rites, and within them exist 24 particular Churches. These sui iuris (autonomous or self-governing) Churches are all in communion with one another in the Catholic Church and recognize the primacy of the pope.

For Christians trying to care for the poor in India, there is always a need for more prayer, more hands, and more money. Much of that money comes from donors in other countries. Recently, though, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has tightened regulations on foreign funding to nonprofits, including Christian groups that feed or-phans, run hospitals, and educate children.
Since Modi took office in 2014, the Indian government has revoked permission for more than 16,000 nongovernmental organizations to receive foreign funding, using the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA).
“It is deliberately an assault against the nonprofit sector,” said Vijayesh Lal, the general secretary of the Evangelical Fellow-ship of India, “and that includes the churches.”
In one recent round of revocations, six nonprofits lost the license allowing them to receive money from abroad. Four of those were Christ-ian organizations. A search of the FCRA website reveals more than 450 revocations from 2011-2019 of groups with the word church in their name alone.
While the FCRA is not designed specifically to target Christian groups, experts say its cumbersome regulations have been used by the ruling parties in India to stifle political and religious dissidents since the law’s adoption in 1976.
“It has always been used as a tool,” Lal said. “The thought behind it is very clear. They don’t want to encourage dissent. They don’t want to encourage empowerment.”
The law was first passed in a period of Indian history called “the Emergency.”
“It’s going to be very difficult,” said David Babu, the founder of Sunshine Ministries in Hyderabad. “What can you do with 20 percent?”
Sunshine provides schooling and housing to about 240 students. Eighty percent go on to receive more education after graduating, many of them becoming teachers, police officers, and health care workers.
“These are the kids that are the leaders of tomorrow,” Babu said, “and we believe that when they plant the seed of equality and oneness, things will change.”
Sunshine has 20 staff members, and its main expenditures are salaries and the costs of maintaining buildings and property. The ministry has not yet deter-mined how it can cut administrative costs to maintain its FCRA license.

Father Rodney Borneo, a popular priest of Calcutta arch-diocese, on March 9 joined the Bharatiya Janata Party that heads the federal coalition government, according to a video clip circula-ting in social media platforms.
The video shows Father Borneo coming to a stage where he is given the BJP flag and asked to chant, “Bharat Mata ki jai” (victory to mother India).
The news of a Catholic priest joining the BJP, the political arm of the Hindu nationalists, has sent shock waves among Catholics in West Bengal. The eastern Indian state is all set to elect its legislative assembly through an eight-phased poll starting March 27.
Given below is the reflection of Father Francis Sunil Rosario, a senior priest of the archdiocese of Calcutta, on Father Borneo’s decision.
A competent priest is lost to Calcutta archdiocese
Who should be blamed for the loss of a very competent and promising priest, for whom thirty pieces of silver was more preferable, than to stick to priesthood.
Rodney trained in psychology and counseling, who was a gold medalist in 2016 from Guwahati University, was unable to cope with the pressures and some of the inconveniences created for him to function as the principal of Loyola School, Kidderpore. This is certainly not an isolated case in the ministerial priesthood. There could be others who try hard to survive despite many hardships, inaction and such administrative ‘silence’ and pressures. It could be taken as a case study to understand the issue at a deeper level and thus helping the younger clergy through supervision, counseling and guidance.

Madhya Pradesh High Court in central India has granted bail to five of nine Christians arrest-ed a month ago on charges of violating a law that criminalizes religious conversions.
The court on Feb. 4 granted bail after state police failed to substantiate the charges filed against the five.
“The other four in jail are also expected to get bail this week as they have moved the High Court against a trial court that denied them bail,” said Pastor Patras Savil, who is helping those arrested to secure their legal rights.
Police in Indore city on Jan. 26 charged 11 Christians with violating Madhya Pradesh’s stringent anti-conversion law following complaints from right-wing Hindu activists. They could arrest only nine as two were reported to have absconded.
The Hindu activists forced their way into a Protestant prayer service inside Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra, a Catholic media center owned and managed by the Society of Divine Word.
When police arrived, the Hindu activists complained that the Christians were involved in mass religious conversion in violation of the law implemented in January that criminalizes religious conversion through allurement, force, coercion and marriage.
“We are very happy that five got bail. They were falsely implicated in the case and put behind bars for more than a month,” Father Babu Joseph, director of the media center, told.