A Catholic priest in western India sought police protection for his non-governmental organisation (NGO) after his staff members were attacked on a running train by Hindu nationalists who claimed they were missionaries involved in conversion activities.

A crowd of roughly 15 Hindu youth assaulted seven teachers of a Catholic NGO working in Dhule district in the western state of Maharashtra while traveling by express train. On January 16, the night of the attack, the team was on an education tour when the mob surrounded and attacked them at the Sangli railway station.

GunilalPawara, supervisor of a team of 42 teachers including 14 females who work for the NGO named Shirpur Vishwa Mandal Sevashram, stated that he was yanked from his bunk and hit on the head with a steel object until blood began to pour from a cut. As reported by the UCA News, Pawara further provided that the Hindu mob accused the team of attempting to convert indigenous tribal people, and had repeatedly asked for Father Constancio Rodrigues, the NGO’s director.

On January 20, Father Rodrigues told UCA News that he was supposed to accompany his team but was unable to do so at the last minute. He further asserted that the attackers knew the exact berth numbers of the team members, so it was a well-planned attack, but the mob clearly intended to target him.On January 21, a complaint was sent by the victim group to the Superintendent of Police, Belagavi and the Office of Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

Brief account of the attack

The group were going to Belagavi for an exchange of educational and social work experience there with the village level animators of Jana Jagaran Sanstha, Belagavi. Accordingly, on the morning of 16th January 2023, they started their journey from Shirpur District Dhule, Maharashtra to Belagavi by Goa Express (Nizamuddin Vasco Express) at 11.40 am.

As has been provided in the complaint, the group was sitting in coach number S6. Around 9.30 pm to 10 pm, near the Sangli railway station, some young men suddenly entered their coach, and started beating upthe group members while they were sleeping. They were asking questions such as, “Are you going for conversion?”. They were also repeatedly asking after Father Rodrigues.

As the mob got to know that the group members were a part of the Adivasi community, they started abusing them and uttering slurs. In addition to verbal abuse, the group members were also subjected to physical abuse. The mob used a walking stick, belonging to a disabled teacher Tara Singh ChaitramPawara, and steel kadas (bangles) to hit the group members.

Immediately after reaching Sangali railway station, the mob dragged some of the group members out of the train and took GunilalPawara to the railway police stationed standing at platform of Sangali Railway station. The police asked whether any quarrel had taken place. After getting to know the reason of the quarrel, the police questioned the mobregarding who they were, to which they replied they were locals. Post this, the culprits ran away from the spot.

The group then boarded the train again. On reaching the Belagavi railway station at around 1 am, the catholic group was surrounded by forty young men and was detained by the Belagavi railway police after getting down from the train. The railway police brought the group out of the station to the compound and handed them over to the Belagavi police. The police made all the member sit on the ground and questioned them. The questions ranged from asking where the group was travelling from, the purpose of their travel and the kind of education they were engaged in.

The police then gave protection to the group while they travelled to the premises of the Jan Jagran Training Centre within the St. Paul’s campus at Camp, Belagavi. As the group was travelling, they noticed that one of the teachers, BansilalShikarsingPawara, was missing in the group, and the group members claimed that he had been abducted by the mob that had attacked them. As the member informed the police that were accompany them, a police car went in search of the missing teacher. About half an hour later,Bansilal was dropped by two unknown men on a motor cycle, who then fled from the spot.

The district police inspector, who was accompanying the group, questioned Bansilal about his disappearance. Bansilal then informed that some men had closed his mouth and dragged him to a dark place after taking away his bag and shawl. The mob had then placed a sword on his throat and pointed a knife tohis stomach with the aim of forcing a false narrative out of him that the group members were being brought by force for conversion while the mob recorded the same. Bansilal had refused to give a false statement. He was then driven to a dark place near a bridge, close to the railway station, and threatened to be kill off if he did not comply, but Bansilal did not change his statement. After that, two members from the mob took him on a motor cycle and dropped him near the catholic group and fled away.

Action taken against the attack

As has been provided by Father Rodrigues, complaint against the above-mentioned incident have been sent to the Superintendent of Police, Belagavi and the Office of Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

The complaint can be read here.

To the said complaint, the Chief Minister’s office has sent their acknowledgement to the complaint sent by the group. The reply is provided below.

Father Rodrigues further provided that no arrests have been made yet. On being asked why no member of the attacking mob was arrested when they had approached the railway police at the Sangali Railway station, Father Rodrigues said that the police seemed as if they were siding with the culprits. Referring to the abduction of the member of the group, Father further said that the police took no action there too and it seemed as if they were either involved and knew everything or were protecting the ones who were responsible for the attack. Father had also added that even after returning, the group had to seek police protection at the NGO as they noticed some unidentified people keeping a watch on their activities.

The bogey of conversion and rising attacks on Christians

Christians account for 2.3 percent of India’s population of over 1.3 billion people, the majority of which are Hindus. Pro-Hindu organisations in India have intensified their enmity toward Christians by erroneously characterizing their institutions, such as schools and hospitals, as a front for religious conversions.Every time the issue of someone embracing the Christian faith comes up in India, the prevalent opinion is that the individual in question converted under duress or with some incentive. At one level, the illusion spun by the anti-Christian brigade that mass conversions will result in a sizable proportion of Hindus joining Christianity is the basis for such a notion gaining traction. On the other side, such a viewpoint implies a casteist perspective, wherein the upper caste Hindus are assuming the responsibility of “protecting and stopping” the tribals, Adivasis and Dalits from converting to Christianity, while having subjected them to systematic oppression, violence and exclusion since time immemorial. The rising attacks against Christians, can thus be safely described as attacks on Dalits and the marginalised of this country. 

Extremist Hindutva outfits have lately been involved in disrupting churches, prayer halls, and Christmas and Easter celebrations. The specter of mass conversion has been utilized repeatedly to harass Christian communities, indicating collective distress and uneasiness among Hindutva movements over the perceived insult to and abandonment of the Hindu faith by certain converts.

In the majority of these situations, the police and other authorities side with the perpetrators. The simple fact, however, is that Christianity in India offers no challenge to Hinduism’s demographic or philosophical might.

Related:

Chhattisgarh: 1,100 Christians converted to Hinduism in “gharwapsi” ceremony, by BJP Sec

Chhattisgarh: A dead woman’s ‘gharwapsi’ before final rites were allowed

Over 300 attacks on Christians reported this year, over 2000 women, Adivasis and Dalits injured

Ambedkar and the call to Conversion!

How diverse and inclusive is the Indian judiciary?

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Pope Francis will not ordain women to priesthood. L’Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo Via AP

However, Francis has drawn the line at extending full priesthood to women. Devout Catholics have spoken out boldly on both sides of this issue. But, that door, Francis has repeatedly said, “is closed.”

As a scholar specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I believe Francis’ refusal comes from his unwillingness to challenge a foundational Catholic doctrine known as “apostolic succession.”

The Catholic Church has historically been unwilling to violate this doctrine.
 

Development of the priesthood

Based on the Gospels of Mark and Luke, it is apostolic succession that specifies how the Catholic Church acquired its authority and its ability to save souls. God gave the power of salvation – to “bind and loose” souls – to Christ who shared it with 12 male apostles. When the apostles chose their successors, the first bishops, they passed the power of salvation to those bishops through the sacrament of ordination. Through ordination, bishops have endowed priests with God’s authority up to the present day.

The origins of apostolic succession can be traced to the first centuries A.D. – a time when Christianity was illegal. Jesus had left his followers with no obvious blueprint for any type of formal church or priesthood. Christians were, thus, free to worship in their own ways, trying not to get caught.
This troubled Christian leaders such as Clement, a first-century bishop of Rome, and Irenaeus, a second-century bishop of Lyon. They believed it unlikely that such a diversity of practices could lead to heaven. Jesus, they wrote, must have left one true path to salvation. In the absence of clear direction, they traced this one path through the apostles and their recognized successors, the bishops.

This became a pivotal development in early attempts to organize a uniform Christian “church,” creating a formal clergy. Only ordained priests were authorized to celebrate the sacraments, a key source of God’s grace.

Anyone, for example, could pronounce ritualistic words over bread and wine, but unless that individual had been given the authority of the apostles through ordination, that bread and wine would remain mere bread and wine. There was no true sacrament, no saving grace. Such unauthorized persons, Irenaeus charged, were thieves, stealing the chance of salvation from the Christians they duped.
 

A matter of divine will

The Catholic Church excludes women from priesthood. Here, Pope Francis during his audience with bishops. Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

Approximately when and under what circumstances certain disciples were designated as the only “apostles,” numbered as 12, and selected as all male is a subject of much historical and theological debate. The church’s justifications for excluding women from apostolic succession have varied over centuries.

Before the 20th century, explanations for refusing women a place in the hierarchy of apostolic succession ranged from women’s inherent sinfulness to their divinely created inferiority to man.

Although the church no longer supports such reasoning, it does still exclude women from the priesthood by virtue of their sex. In its 1976 declaration, “Inter Insigniores,” the church proclaimed its loyalty to the model left by Christ to his followers – in other words, apostolic succession.

Since Christ was incarnated as male and all 12 original apostles were male, the church declared that God meant for males alone to exercise the priesthood. The church, in other words, does not consider the extension of ordination to women to be an issue of human rights but one of fulfilling the divine will, with which there can be no compromise nor accommodation.
 

What change-makers say

Representatives of the Women’s Ordination Conference. AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito

Many devout Catholics, even priests, disagree. Women’s Ordination Conference and Women’s Ordination Worldwide, two of the largest global organizations advocating for women’s ordination, count clerics, monks and nuns among supporters of their cause. As Benedictine nun Joan Chittister charged,
 

“The Church that preaches the equality of women but does nothing to demonstrate it within its own structures … is … dangerously close to repeating the theological errors that underlay centuries of Church-sanctioned slavery.”

These Catholics allege the refusal to ordain women is not God’s intent, and neither scripturally justified nor the original practice of the church.

These modern change-makers point to a body of credible scriptural, archaeological and historical evidence that women served as priests, deaconesses and even bishops alongside Jesus and during the first centuries of Christianity. Indeed, reputable evidence exists that it took centuries for male clerics to gradually exclude women from these positions.

This evidence suggests it could actually be a return to tradition to welcome women to the priesthood. The fact is that the church has changed its position on women and church roles in the past, such as when, in 1900, the church reversed its 600-year old mandate that nuns live and worship isolated behind convent walls. This freedom made new and diverse forms of religious life and service possible for women. The church could alter its position on women again, critics argue. As Roy Bourgeois, a priest defrocked for his support of women’s ordination, maintained, “There’s always the opportunity to change.”
 

What the pope can do

Yet the field on which such battles are fought is far from level, and those on the side of apostolic succession have the upper hand.

Pope Francis. Alberto Lingria/Reuters

Although Francis is unlikely to allow women into the priesthood, it is within reason that he could lead in ordaining women to become deacons, as this would not necessarily violate apostolic succession. Deacons – along with bishops and priests – are one of the three ordained “orders” of ministers in the Catholic Church. Deacons are not priests, but they may preach, teach and lead in prayer and works of mercy.

The diaconate is often a stage on the road to ordination to the priesthood for men. During the Vatican’s Synod on the Family in 2015, Canadian Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Quebec encouraged his colleagues to expand women’s opportunities for leadership, including ordination to the diaconate, “to clearly show the world the equal dignity of women and men in the Church.”

Pope Benedict XVI suggested this almost a decade ago. Durocher, like Benedict, was careful to clarify that deacons are directed “non ad sacerdotium, sed ad ministerium,” meaning “not to priesthood, but to ministry.” While Francis has been firm in protecting doctrines such as apostolic succession, this is a move he could legitimately make.

Lisa McClain, Professor of History and Gender Studies, Boise State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Catholic Bishops from UP meet CM Adityanath

Photo opportunities don’t always create a buzz. In normal times, the photo would make no news at all – a Sadhu in his saffron robes meeting other religious heads, in this case Catholic Bishops in their cassocks and kurtas and heavy Crosses on silver chains. Interfaith dialogue makes little news.

It was the posture. The saffron robed one sitting imperiously, the others facing him just a little distance too far for convivial dialogue.
UCAN, the Catholic news agency, told us the Catholic bishops of Uttar Pradesh called on the state's new chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, on April 21. The Yogi, said UCAN, “assured his government’s support and protection to practice Christian faith in the state”.

That was mighty kind and magnanimous of the chief minister. “He sounded very protective and welcoming,” UCAN quoted Metropolitan Archbishop Albert D’Souza of Agra, who led his sufragans.

This was the first such meeting after the Bharatiya Janata Party government took office riding a historic and sweeping victory in elections to the state legislature, defeating a coalition of the then ruling Samajwadi party and the Indian National Congress. The Dalit-focussed Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati sank, almost without a trace.

The Lucknow meeting, of course, was not meant to discuss any issue “but was a courtesy visit”. The Catholic Bishops Conference in high level delegations has often met the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Give unto Cesar what is due unto the ruler. It always makes for a nice photograph, a keepsake for one group, a propaganda tool for the ruler. Understandable.

One cannot live in a situation of a perpetual confrontation, specially if it is an entire, albeit microscopic, community of a bare 27 million in a national population of a billion and a quarter, with about 50,000 or so educational and medical institutions on the ground.

The chief minister told the bishops to contact his office directly in case of a problem.

The bishops seemed satisfied. “Christians have nothing to worry,” the chief minister had said.

Christians are a mere 0.18 percent of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most populous state, not even a blimp on the radar, and concentrated in the old railway and military towns of Allahabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Bareilly and Meerut, and in recent years, Noida which is home to migrant corporate workers from all over the country, including Kerala.

There was nonetheless some consternation among a section of the community, among them clergy, women religious, or Nuns, and lay persons, Catholic, and protestant.

There were also voices, fewer perhaps, but voices, supporting the bishops, welcoming the meeting. This is right and proper in a democratic society and a democratic community, although many would not agree to my definition of democracy in the Catholic church because of their own experiences with bishops in their dioceses, or priests in their parishes. I hold the Church is democratic, and that the Catholic church, specially under Pope Francis, offers a rare ray of hope not just to the denomination he leads from the Vatican near Rome, but to all mankind at this critical juncture when we seem on the brink of a nuclear confrontation.

But what worried me was a letter from a friend, a senior theologian specialising in finding common grounds between Indian culture and Christ’s message. Out of my abiding respect for him, I sanitise his mail, removing names, places and designations so that only close friends and acquaintances can venture a guess at his identity, and no other.

The operative part of the mail, after the salutations is:
 

This letter has scared me, I must admit.

I was reminded of a chapter I read in a text book of psychology, or was it sociology, that I read some 55 years ago as part of the history of science paper we had to read together with compulsory Hindi as the other requirement in Nehru’s India.

This was reverse of the well-known, and popular, thesis on How Not To Become Frog Soup, the one about frogs swimming in cold water put on the stove. They swim merrily till the water is at a certain temperature. They wriggle and try to scape. It is too late. The water boils. The frogs turn belly up. Other frogs in a control experiment are dropped in hot water. They feel the heat, instinctively jump and are clear of the pot, and the stove. They live.

The experiment I remembered was abut mice, in a cage. They were immersed in tub of water. Slowly. The mice took a sip, and started to swim. All animals can swim at birth, barring humans. The water rises. The mice swim a tad more vigorously. The water is now near the top of the cage, with barely a centimetre of air. The mice, now frantic in the crowded space and with no place to even swim, turn on each other. They bite with their sharp incisors. Some die even before they all drown.

Catholicism is a part of Christianity, which is so named after Jesus Christ whose command we all heed, loving each other as He loved us.

Religious minorities are patently under pressure. Not just Muslims. All.

And Christians are feeling the pressure. The Holy Week, in fact the ending fortnight of Lent, was traumatic in many areas. Police asked churches in some areas not to stage public processions on Palm Sunday and to keep all celebrations within church premises. As it is, Easter and Christmas in Delhi have been held under heavy police protection. Every church is guarded by razor wire, glass shards and close circuit TV. Private guards sit at the gates of most churches.

The divisions of dogma and doctrine between Catholics and Protestants, and between various groups of Protestants, were just an inner point of friction, ever a political instrument.

We seem to be entering a time of private negotiations, bilateral agreements of peace with the ruling dispensation and its political masters. This sort of a negotiation is usually, in other contexts, centred on buying individual or group peace.

There is a trade-off

In some cases, it is material. The ceding of some rights, the promise of silence, or overlooking some intransigence.

In other cases, it is leaving some weaker sheep to the wolves. There are too many folk tales from the old Russian masters narrating the flight of horse driven sleds on the frozen Siberian tundra with a pack of wolves chasing them. I will not complete this script.

But I think there is a ray of hope. There is a strong section that makes common cause with others on the margins, with other communities, and with civil society.

I quote from another letter, by another senior friend, shared on a catholic forum. This too will be unnamed.
 

UCAN did not cover this point.
 

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