Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has reiterated that Dalit people who converted to Christianity or Islam will not be allowed to contest elections, shattering the hopes of this socially poor group once again.
Church leaders say the adamant stance of the government run by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will only add to the social and economic backwardness of Dalit people, the former untouchables.
“It is unfortunate that the government has reiterated this position,” Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak, chairman of the Indian bishops’ Office for Scheduled Caste and Backward Classes, told.
Of the 543 seats in India’s parliament, 84 are reserved for 200 million Dalit people, officially known as scheduled castes, and 47 are reserved for 104 million scheduled tribes.
Election rules allow only Dalit or tribal people to contest seats reserved for them. A 1950 constitutional order denied social and political benefits meant for Dalit people to non-Hindus.
The order was later amended twice to include Buddhists and Sikhs in the benefits, but Christians and Muslims are denied these benefits on grounds that their religions do not follow the caste system.
Dalit Christian leaders were expecting a positive response from the government to their complaint pending in the Supreme Court since 2004. Federal Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told parliament on Feb. 11 that Dalit converts to Islam and Christianity cannot claim reservation benefits to contest parliamentary or state elections in seats reserved for scheduled castes.
Bishop Nayak told on Feb. 16 that Christian leaders have been fighting the 1950 order since it was enacted but successive governments ignored the demand because Christians are politically insignificant as they form only 2.3 percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people.
Dalit Christian leaders claim 80 percent of about 30 million Indian Christians are of Dalit origin, but official government estimates say 33 percent of Indian Christians are socially poor Dalits, with disadvantaged tribal Christians forming another 33 percent.

Police in India’s Madhya Pradesh state have charged a Catholic nun with violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law after she was accused of trying to allure a Hindu teacher to Christianity.
Police registered charges against Sisters of Destitute Sister Bhagya, principal of Sacred Heart Convent High School in Khajuraho of Chhatarpur dist-rict, on Feb. 22, according to local church officials. “It is absolutely a false charge,” said Fr Paul Varghese, public relations officer of Satna Diocese, which covers the area of the nun’s school.
He said the case was the latest in a series of such cases filed against Christians after the state’s pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government implemented a new anti-conversion law in January.
The case against the nun is based on the complaint of Ruby Singh, a Hindu woman who joined the school as a teacher in 2016. The school management terminated her services last year during the Covid-19 lockdown after complaints about her teaching from parents and students.
Singh complained to police that she was terminated because she refused the nun’s pressure to abandon her Hindu faith and become a Christian.
The 45-year-old woman’s complaint accused the nun of violating the law enacted in January. It criminalizes any force, allurement or fraudulent means to change a person’s religion for another religion.
“Sister Bhagya is innocent and she is falsely accused by [someone] taking advantage of the loopholes in the new anti-conversion law,” Father Vargh-ese told on Feb. 24.

The Kerala High Court has dismissed the plea of Robin Vadakkumchery, a former Ca-tholic priest convicted of raping a minor, to grant him bail so that he could “marry the survivor.”
The court said it could find no merit the petition.
Dismissing the plea, Justice Sunil Thomas stated that granting the plea would be like giving judicial approval for the marriage.
A POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) court convicted Robin and sentenced him to 20 years in prison for raping and impregnating the minor girl.
The High Court also said it cannot allow a compromise or take a lenient view in matters related to sexual offences. The court reportedly cited the trial court’s finding that the survivor was a minor during the time of the assault, stating that it still remains and that granting bail to Robin and allowing them to get married would be like giving it legal sanctity.
In 2016, the survivor, a 16-year-old girl was studying in the eleventh grade in a church-backed school in Kannur district where Robin was the manager. He sexually assaulted her, who gave birth to a child in February 2017. Initially, the accused and the church had immensely pressurized the family of the survivor and had even forced her father to confess that he was the one who raped and impregnated his daughter. But later, the survivor’s family alleged that were pressurized and threatened by the Church.

Amid protests by the Opposition, the Uttar Pradesh Legisla-tive Assembly on February 24 passed by voice vote a Bill aimed at curbing religious conversions by fraudulent or any other undue means, including through marriage.
The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Bill, 2021 seeks to replace the ordinance promulgated in November 2020 that provides for imprisonment up to 10 years and a maximum fine of 50,000 rupees for violators.
The Bill was passed in the House even as Aradhana Misra, the Congress Legislative Party leader, and Lalji Verma, the leader of BSP in the Assembly, protested.
Under the Bill, a marriage will be declared “null and void” if the conversion is solely for that purpose, and those wishing to change their religion after marriage need to apply to the district magistrate.
The Bill mainly envisages that no person shall convert, either directly or indirectly from one religion to another by use or practice of misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means or by marriage nor shall any person abet, convince or conspire such conversion.
The onus to prove that the conversion has not been done forcibly will lie on the person accused of the act and the convert, it said.
An aggrieved person, his/her parents, brother, sister, or any other person who is related to him/her by blood, marriage or adoption may lodge an FIR about such conversion, according to the Bill.
BJP leaders had said the legislation intends to counter alleged attempts to convert Hindu women to Islam in the guise of marriage, which right-wing Hindu activists refer to as ‘love jihad’.

The Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council has asked the state government to withdraw all steps it had taken on deep sea fishing off the coast. The act of the Kerala government to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with a foreign firm without consulting the fishermen community or heeding the coastal people’s concerns is objectionable, says a statement the bishops’ council issued on February 23.
The bishops, however, welcomed the government move to retract the agreement that brought great relief to the coastal community.
Although the government has withdrawn the agreement amid public protests, all the steps it had taken since 2018 to implement the project remain in force, the bishops point out.
Bishops’spokesperson Father Jacob G Palackapilly, who signed the press release, says fishermen community fears that the company would implement the project in some other way.