Indian bishops say Manipur riots targeted tribal Christians
Bishops' body in Kerala says the 'well-orchestrated' violence in the northeastern state exposes BJP’s ‘double standards’ A man walks past a house that was set on fire and vandalized by mobs in Khumujamba village on the outskirts of Churachandpur on May 9 in a violence-hit area of the north-eastern Indian state of Manipur. The sectarian violence in Manipur state in north-eastern India was "well-orchestrated" and "targeted the Kuki tribe," 90 percent of whom are Christians belonging to different denominations, alleged a Catholic bishops’ body from southern Kerala state. “It is true that the normal conflict between the majority local Hindu community representing Meiteis and indigenous people, mostly Christians, was communalized and used to destroy tribal Christians,” said Father Michael Pulickal, secretary of the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, which carried out an inquiry into the Manipur riots. Father Pulickal told UCA News on May 29, three days after releasing a report of the commission, that “the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) changes its colors for power” and the violence “has exposed the double standards” of the party. The BJP rules India and Manipur state. The priest, a member of Carmelite of Mary Immaculate, said the commission had gathered inputs from reliable
Minority body demands India uphold constitution guarantees
National Conference for Minority also calls for an equal opportunities commission at convention in New Delhi Minority body demands India uphold constitution guarantees P. Wilson, a member of the Indian Rajya Sabha, or Upper House of parliament, addressing a convention of the National Conference for Minority in New Delhi on May 27. A national body of Indian minorities has demanded the federal government guarantee them the constitutionally protected right to practice and profess their religion and protect them from hate speech, intimidation, attacks and killings. Some 100 members of the National Conference for Minority and invitees including politicians, activists, writers and students made the demands at a gathering on May 27 at the Constitution Club in the national capital New Delhi to discuss the situation of religious minorities across the country The one-day convention also demanded the setting up of an equal opportunities commission to ensure a proportional share in the nation’s finances and resources, besides fair representation in electoral politics of the country. P. Wilson, a Christian member of the Rajya Sabha, or Upper House of the Indian parliament, said Christians had contributed immensely to nation building, especially in the fields of education and health, but instead of acknowledging it they were being falsely blamed
No letup in harassment of Church-run orphanage in India
Inmates of the orphanage were shifted in violation of an order by the Madhya Pradesh High Court, says its director A government-run child welfare agency in central India has defied a court order and asked a Church-run orphanage to move out its children in an alleged move to close down the institution. Ten children from St. Francis Sevadham Orphanage in Sagar diocese in Madhya Pradesh state, ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, were moved out in violation of a high court order against such a move. “Our 10 children were moved in the past week in different batches,” Father Sinto Varghese, director of the orphanage, told UCA News. More universal than Catholicism? Mary among Asian religions “The district Child Welfare Committee (CWC) asked us to produce the children before it and we complied with it,” Father Varghese said on May 25. The shifting, according to the priest, “is in violation of a January 2022 order of the Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court" that restrained the CWC from moving inmates of the orphanage. The CWC had on May 10 issued an order to shift the children from the orphanage to government-aided facilities in gross violation of the high court order. The orphanage had filed a contempt
Indian Christian leaders stress peace in Manipur
At least 71 have died in sectarian riots with tribal Christians in a standoff with the majority Meitei Hindu community Christians on May 21 attend an ecumenical prayer meeting for peace in Manipur in front of Sacred Heart Cathedral, New Delhi, which was visited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Easter Holy Week Christian leaders have urged people in the riot-hit northeastern Indian state of Manipur to maintain peace after sectarian violence claimed over 71 lives and close to 1,700 houses, including places of worship, were burnt. “In solidarity, we grieve with our brothers and sisters who have fallen victims to violence and have suffered immensely in consequence. We also convey our deepest condolences to all those who have lost their near and dear ones to this human carnage,” Archbishop Emeritus Thomas Menamparampil of Guwahati and chairman of the Joint Peace Mission Team (JPMT) said in a statement. The Joint Peace Mission Team comprising the Nagaland Joint Christian Forum and Concerned Citizens for Peace noted that the situation “in Manipur is very frightening and escalating to proportions of a huge humanitarian crisis.” The statement, signed by Archbishop Menamparampil and JPMT spokesperson, Allen Brooks, called on people in Manipur “to explore constructive ways of easing
Rise in attacks on Christians coincides with enactment of anti-conversion laws, petitioners tell SC
The petitioners also alleged that groups linked to the Union government are behind the communal attacks. The attacks on members of the Christian community increased after 2021 and they coincide with the enactments of anti-conversion laws in several states, petitioners told the the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Live Law reported. Anti-conversion laws have been enacted by BJP governments in nine states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh. The laws require prior permission for religious conversions for marriage. The states have either passed new anti-conversion laws or updated existing ones after 2017. The new versions of the laws put in place stricter punishments and newer grounds for restricting conversions, such as conversion “by marriage” – where a person who adopts another faith to enter into a marriage would be deemed to have been forcibly converted. The Supreme Court is hearing pleas filed by Bengaluru Archbishop Peter Machado, the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India alleging an increase in attacks on Christians in India. The Centre has maintained there is no merit in the pleas. “It is a recent trend that certain organisations start planting articles and preparing self-serving reports themselves or through their associates, which
2 Indian priests arrested during raid on orphanage
St. Francis Sevadham Orphanage, located on a prime 277-acre plot of land in Madhya Pradesh, is constantly targeted Two Catholic priests have been arrested in the central Indian Madhya Pradesh state for allegedly obstructing government officials when they came for a surprise raid of a Catholic orphanage. The priests were, however, released on bail by a court on May 8, hours after they were arrested for allegedly preventing the members of the state's child rights panel during the raid on St. Francis Sevadham Orphanage in Shyampur in Sagar diocese. “We were charged with false case after we objected to the inspection team, which wanted to climb on the altar,” said Father E. P. Joshy, youth director of Sagar diocese, who was picked up by the state police along with Father Naveen B. Joshy came to the campus of the orphanage following information that a team from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, led by its chairperson Priyank Kanoongo, was conducting a flash raid. “The team besides inspecting the orphanage also searched the church, convent, presbytery, and two hostels of children,” the priest said. “Father Naveen and I tried to tell them that the altar of a church for any Catholic is divine. But they
Manipur violence portends fires in India’s tribal belt
The ruling BJP backs tribe status for the state’s Hindu Meitei but wants to deny it to tribal Christians in other states By all accounts, the violence in India’s northeastern state of Manipur has been a long time coming. If anything, the governments—both in the state and in New Delhi—led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took no steps to defuse tension or forestall violence. Manipur borders Myanmar and having a previous history of insurgencies has a heavy presence of the Indian army and paramilitary forces. It is also covered under the notorious Armed Forces Special Protection Act (AFSPA) which gives unfettered powers to the military and puts many of its actions, including the deaths of civilians at its hands, beyond the purview of the law. A conflict between two ethnic groups over constitutional status as tribes with reservations in jobs, education and elected bodies was allowed to turn anti-Christian. Christians, including Catholics, of all three or four communities in the region, the Meitei on the one hand and the Kukis, Hmars or Mizos, and Chins, on the other have been victims. The churches destroyed were creeping up towards the 100 mark as relief workers entered the troubled areas. Tens of thousands are homeless,
Rubber sap may fail to bond PM Modi with Indian Christians
Narendra Modi’s visit to the southern state of Kerala may let in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh fox in the church chicken coop Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi possibly saved a few thousand rupees in aviation fuel for his high-security airplane, mixing his election campaign trip to Kerala with an official visit to launch a ferry and a metro train. But his meeting in his hotel with a bunch of heads of the different Christian denominations in the southern state may not bring him the political dividend his Malayalam-speaking assistants have promised him. Mercifully for the church delegation, the Latin Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kalathiparambil carried with him a written memorandum listing, among other issues, the concerns of the larger Indian Church outside the tiny but populous state of Kerala. Before the meeting, the media had widely reported that the bishops, largely representing the central Kerala faithful, were especially going to voice the concerns of the economically elite plantation owners and big traders. These include the demand for the federal government’s base support prices for natural rubber, which often faces international market fluctuations resulting in big losses to plantations and rubber traders in Kerala and Chennai. The other demand which has hit the headlines is for
Indian court remands 5 Christians on conversion charges
Critics say police acted on Hindu activist complaints although law says such complaints should only come from relatives A court in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state has remanded five Protestant Christians in custody, a day after police arrested 10 of them, including an 18-month-old baby, for allegedly violating a state law that criminalizes religious conversions. State police on April 23 detained several Christians attending Sunday services at two different churches in Kasimabad town in Ghazipur district following complaints from right-wing Hindu activists, who said the gatherings were attempting mass religious conversions. “The detained Christians were interrogated inside the churches. The Christians denied the accusation and asserted that the gatherings were part of routine Sunday services,” Pastor Dinanath Jaiswal, a local cleric and social worker, told UCA News on April 24. The police later took them to the police station and continued the interrogations. However, the women and children among them were released but 10 people were charged with violating the provisions of the state’s anti-conversion law. The detained — including a pastor who only goes by the name Kirubendra, his wife and their one-and-half-year-old daughter — were locked up in the police station for more than 24 hours, Jaiswal said. Later on April 24, the police
Christians to vote for change in southern Indian state
Karnataka ruled by the pro-Hindu BJP has seen a rise in attacks on Christians and their institutions Christians in the poll-bound southern Indian state of Karnataka are looking to usher in change as they say they have been left despondent living under ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “The BJP has alienated Christians with its discriminatory policies and open hatred towards us,” T Vellankanni Paul Raj, a Catholic leader based in the state capital Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), told UCA News on April 20. Christians form 1.87 percent of Karnataka’s 61 million people and the community has faced increasing harassment for years. But attacks against Christians saw a notable surge since the BJP assumed power by unseating a Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition government in July 2019. A state anti-conversion law that came into effect in May 2022 led to a further uptick in violence against Christians and their institutions like schools and hospitals, he said. “We never indulge in any illegal or violent activity. Rather we work for nation-building. But still, the BJP government targeted us by enacting a stringent anti-conversion law ignoring our pleas against it,” Raj said. Discontent among Christians was aggravated further when Munirathna Naidu, the state minister for horticulture, at a public meeting in
