The accused were charged with protesting against laws that expropriated their lands. Hemant Soren defeated the incumbent administration led by the Bharatiya Janata Party in recent elections. For local Catholic sources, his victory hails a new dawn for the Indian state. Jharkhand’s new Chief Minister, Hemant Soren, has dropped charges of sedition against tribals in his cabinet’s first decision following the swearing-in ceremony yesterday. In 2017, charges were laid against some 10,000 people for opposing state legislation by the then ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which would have led to the expropriation of land and forest resources held by tribal communities for centuries. Soren, who was elected last week, formed a coalition government that includes the Congress party and two regional parties: Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), based in Jharkhand, and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), whose stronghold is Bihar. The in-coming chief minister beat the incumbent, Raghubar Das (BJP), with his coalition taking 47 seats out of a total of 81. The BJP won 25. For experts, the decision by the new head of the state government highlights his sensitivity to the suffering of tribal people, who had taken to the streets to assert their rights. Catholic sources told AsiaNews that his election represents a new dawn for Jharkhand, where the

The alleged leader of the attack, Kanai Lal Das, is the husband of a BJP functionary of the local gram panchayat Three persons were arrested on Sunday night for an alleged attack on a community hall dedicated to Jesus Christ in an East Midnapore village on Saturday afternoon when around 800 people from 28 villages gathered for the inauguration of the building. Police have said the three arrested men are BJP activists. An FIR was filed by pastor Anup Kumar Ghosh, the organiser of the event at Uttar Shibrampur village near Bhagabanpur. The alleged leader of the attack, Kanai Lal Das, is the husband of a BJP functionary of the local gram panchayat. East Midnapore police chief V. Solomon Nesakumar said the preliminary probe revealed that “people affiliated to the BJP and the RSS” had carried out the attack. The complainant said throughout the attack — allegedly with bombs and sticks — the mob of 20 men raised Jai Shri Ram slogans. They allegedly planted triangular saffron flags with “Om” written on them at the 1,200sqft single-storey community hall, called Jishu’r Aradhona Griho (Jesus’s Prayer Home). “Four people, including two children, suffered injuries,” said Ghosh, a resident of Jadavpur in Calcutta. “Of the 800 people who

Law on unregistered medical practice invoked for healing prayer. Christians arrested in central India after Hindu nationalist, tribal villagers disrupted their worship service spent Christmas in jail before they were released on bail after 11 days – accused of illegally practicing medicine. Pastor Mukam Kiraad, 35, along with two members of his church, 40-year-old Lalsingh Tomar and 38-year-old Nanliya Rawat, were shocked to learn that they were charged under a Madhya Pradesh state law prohibiting unregistered medical practice, punishable by up to three years in prison. Their attorney, Rahul Parihar, said he also was stunned. “Their next hearing is Jan. 8,” Parihar told Morning Star News. “They will have to come for each hearing, which might fall once every 15 days, and the case may prolong for many years.” The three Christians were initially arrested after more than a dozen tribal villagers radicalized by Hindu nationalists in Vadi village, near Alirajpur, intruded into their house-church worship service on Dec. 10 wearing blankets that concealed guns and locally-made sharp weapons, Pastor Kiraad said. “Some of them began to film the worship service while others went out and locked us in from outside, so that we would not escape,” Kiraad said. “They disrupted the service and

A leading Christian activist in India is warning about a “heightened intolerance towards the Christian faith” after anti-Christian incidents in the country in late December. On Dec. 28, several men were arrested after being accused of posing for a photograph with their Bibles outside a Hindu temple in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, while on the same day in Bengal, a Christian church was vandalized. “Two anti-Christian incidents in India on the same day, in two Indian states, on the last few days of the year, are indicative of the heightened intolerance towards the Christians faith,” said Sajan K. George, the President of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), a Bangalore-based Christian advocacy group. The four people arrested in Srisailam, Andhra Pradesh, were reading the Bible at a park close to the Mallikarjuna Temple, a popular tourist destination. The state police charged them with violating a 2007 law forbidding the propagation of other religions in places of worship or prayer. According to local news reports, the four men were spotted by security guards opening the Bible and posing with it for photographs. The guards then brought the men to the local police station. After appearing in court, they were released on bail.Father

Protests against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) continues across India as the country welcomed New Year Yesterday. Activists and students in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, challenged the government by marching and reading out India's Constitution in the cold evening. The new law passed by the BJP government provides citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian and Parsi refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the law intentionally omits Muslims from the illegal immigrants list. Since the bill was passed in December, several protests have erupted across the nation. In major cities like New Delhi, Hyderabad and Lucknow, many protesters have been injured and killed because of the violent response from authorities. Many claim that religious intolerance and persecution against religious minorities in the country has soared after the BJP government came to power in 2014. Incidents of violence against Christians in the country has more than doubled under the pro-Hindu government. According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), there were 147 incidents of violence documented against Christians in 2014. Within four years of BJP rule, the number of incidents went up to 315 in 2018. Looking at the increasing violence in the name of religion, as many claim, it can only be hoped that 2020 will be a

Former Foreign Secretary and NSA Shivshankar Menon, speaking at an event hosted by Constitutional Conduct Group and Karwan-e-Mohabbat, said that nothing good could come from the CAA The impact of the CAA, the NRC and other recent internal decisions on our external decisions, on our image abroad and our foreign policy (cannot but be adverse). Because what has happened as a result of the last year or so specially is that we are increasingly isolated. There has been no meaningful international support for these series of actions that we have been discussing apart from a few committed members of the diaspora and a ragtag bunch of Euro MPs from the extreme right. This isolation is really increasing if you look at what is happening abroad. The list of critical voices abroad is quite long, from President Macron to Chancellor Merkel to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to visitors like the King of Norway and so on, who would normally be polite. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for instance, has condemned the CAA calling it fundamentally discriminatory in nature. But it is actually the cumulative effect of a series of actions. The same UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had also expressed

Addressing press conference at Congress headquarters in Delhi, the senior Congress leader criticised BJP government, union home minister Amit Shah and Delhi police for failing to perform their duties A day after hundreds of unidentified masked men allegedly belonging to the RSS and its student wing ABVP, unleashed terror on JNU by mercilessly beating up students and teachers, former Home Minister P Chidambaram termed the situation in India as the “rapid descend into fascism.” Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, the senior Congress leader criticised BJP government, union home minister Amit Shah and Delhi police for failing to perform their duties. Calling the attack “the gravest act of impunity, shocking and shameful” Chidambaram asserted, “This incident is perhaps the most clinching evidence that we are rapidly descending into anarchy. It happened in the national capital in India’s foremost University under the watch of the central government, home minister, lieutenant general and police commissioner.” Demanding the arrest of those involved in the attack within 24 hours, the former union minister said Commissioner of Delhi police must be held responsible for failing to stop the attack. “Buck starts with the Commissioner of Delhi police and stops with Home Minister…The duty of the police

Police in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state work in tandem with Hindu extremists to treat Christians and other religious minorities especially harshly, sources said. “The UP police force is very different from the rest of India,” Dinanath Jaiswar, a volunteer with legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom-India, told Morning Star News. “They are very brash in their dealings with Muslim and Christian minorities, and there have been several cases of violence in police custody, but by God’s grace we have tried our best to reach them on time, and even while in the clutches of the enemy, God protects His people.” From April 2017 to February 2018, India’s National Human Rights Commission registered 365 cases of judicial and custodial deaths in Uttar Pradesh, according to The Indian Express; the next highest amount was 127 cases in West Bengal state. “It does not take long for a police officer here to lose his temper and thrash a person in custody,” Jaiswar said. https://youtu.be/U64i0u3-jqM Most cases reported against police stations in several Uttar Pradesh districts fell under the categories of torture, infliction of injury and grievous hurt, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. “It has become a trend that a batch of Hindu extremists barge inside Christian homes

Church officials in India have said the nation will not host the 2021 Asian Youth Day as planned, ucanews reported Monday. “Our country was given the responsibility of hosting Asian Youth Day … After consultations with higher authorities, it was decided that it was better to call off the event as the present scenario does not allow us to hold the program,” Bishop Nazarene Soosai of Kottar, head of the Indian bishops' youth commission, told ucanews Jan. 6. India's ruling political party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has been increasingly hostile to religious freedom for minorities. Bishop Soosai commented, “We had hoped that there would be a change of government in 2019, but that did not happen and the present situation does not look good either. The BJP came to power in 2014, and strengthened its majority in the 2019 general election. Asian Youth Day is an event held for young Catholics in Asia every few years. The first Asian Youth Day was held in Thailand in 1999. The most recent iteration took place in Indonesia in 2017. At the conclusion of that event, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay announced that India would be hosting the following Asian Youth Day, which was then anticipated to take

Over 30 injured students are hospitalized with cuts, lacerations and burns. The university is among the most prestigious in the world. Pupils are on strike against rising fees. For experts, the attack is a revenge for protests against the citizenship law started by universities. A crowd of men and women covered in masks and armed with sticks, knives and hammers has attacked the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (Jnu) in Delhi, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The attack took place on the night of January 5 and resulted in over 30 injuries among students and teachers. For witnesses, the attackers are said to be militants of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that rules the country. The reason for the attack would be a retaliation against the protests taking place in the faculty where the pupils are on strike against the increase in university fees for student accommodation. However, experts highlight the attempt to silence intellectuals inside Indian universities, where the most resistant protests against the new citizenship law that excludes the Muslim population have been taking place for about a month. Most of the wounded are hospitalized in the capital's All-India Institute