The start of the year was characterised by an important series of events for the Indian Catholic Church, which organises 1.5 per cent of the population: 20 million faithful who follow three different rites: Latin (the majority), Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara.

On 8 February, the bishops, gathered for their biannual plenary session in the southern city of Bangalore, elected Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Latin Archbishop of Mumbai as president, a post the 74 year-old cardinal had formerly held and which was entrusted to him as a replacement for Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum for the Syro-Malankara Church who had led the CBCI for the last four years in two terms of office.This entrusted important responsibilities to the Archbishop of Mumbai, an expert in Canon Law and President of the Federation of Bishops Conferences of Asia (FABC), who also holds various Vatican posts. He is, therefore, someone who is not only qualified but who enjoys notable personal prestige and will guide the Church in a year with elections that can only increase the already substantial pressures on religious minorities.

This year is the tenth anniversary of the start of the wave of anti-Christian persecution that, from the district of Kandhamal, part of the eastern state of Orissa (Odisha), spread in the following months to other areas of the country and that has not yet abated. It was sparked off by the assassination, on 23 August 2008, of Laxmanananda Saraswati.
Responsibility for his murder and that of some followers of the supposed spiritual master but in reality a ground breaker of intolerant and xenophobic Hinduism of the region on behalf of economic and political interests, was taken by Maoist guerrillas, self-proclaimed ‘defenders’ of the tribal and aboriginal communities from which the majority of converted Christians come.
In the days and weeks following the death of Saraswati, a planned and executed strategy was carried out with the arrival of a great number of activists from outside the district and even from outside the State of Orissa, which brought terror to the scattered Christian communities. The baptised, priests and pastors were massacred, in many cases burned alive in their homes and churches.Rape and the destruction of property accompanied the campaign of violence with the substantial inaction of the authorities, at least in the initial stages.

To give an idea of the vast extent of the violence, apart from the deaths and thousands of wounded, there were 55 thousand refugees, of whom at least 10 thousand have not yet returned to their villages due to the high risk involved. To complete the picture, it is estimated that 6,500 houses and 395 places of worship were destroyed or burned down.
Up to now the law has not brought justice, handing down light sentences to most of the accused, while witnesses, the lawyers of the victims and activists working for them were subjected to pressure and intimidation.

The local Church has set in motion the procedure of recognizing the fallen Christians as martyrs, but for the seven baptized people condemned to death for the assassination of Laxmanananda Saraswati, it is an uphill struggle despite the legal initiatives and internal and international pressure.
From a distance, the tragedy looks like a strategy put together to leave room for the work of important economic interests in the region and to further discredit a community of baptized people falsely associated by the Hindus with Sonia Gandhi: an Italian by birth and for many years a naturalized Indian, President of the Congress Party almost permanently in power since independence and who, in May 2014, conceded the majority to the Hinduism parties.

Stefano Vecchia

On 11 October 2017, the Supreme Court of India deliberated that sexual relations with a minor between 15 and 18 years of age within matrimony is yet to be seen as sexual violence and asked the government to promote an initiative accordingly.

According to the Court, a sentence of ten years to life imprisonment, as already foreseen by the penal code for sexual crimes against minors, would be applicable. It is still a crime if those involved are spouses under 15 years, also because the law does not allow cohabitation before that age, not even if it is approved by the parents.
Such a sentence, since it makes no anagraphic distinctions regarding rape, ought to counter the practice of infant marriage, a ‘plague’ of Indian society forbidden more than a decade ago. So much so that 20 per cent of marriages in cities involve child-brides (even more in the countryside). Official national statistics indicate that 39.1 per cent of women between 20 and 24 years of age were married before the age of 18. The practice has been gaining ground in recent years, helped also by the consolidation of political power with ties to militant Hinduism.

“The Sangh Parivar is working to protect Indian culture polluted by western influence rather than defending the women of India”, the Indian Carmelite Fr. Jacob Peenicaparambil recently noted. “We may well ask why the Sangh Parivar which has launched a violent movement for the protection of cows at national level has not started a movement against child marriage and atrocities against the Dalits”.
There are still many dark areas in the laws for the protection of women and even more in their application. For example, rape is not considered a crime unless it results in serious illness or death. Neither is domestic violence condemned. The prenatal selection of the sex of children with a preference for males is continuing with dramatic consequences for present and future Indian demography and even if the Supreme Court has suspended the use of Indian women as surrogate mothers for foreign singles or couples, this perhaps has more to do with dominant nationalism than the real protection of women. To demonstrate this, there is a law specifically about surrogating and other assisted procreation practices that remains parked in Parliament.

A tradition in discriminatory facts also calls into question the Indian Church. An important document has been issued by the Commission for Women of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) aimed at showing up sexual discrimination in the workplace which has broad consequences both on access to jobs and the physical and psychological conditions of the workers. In the CBCI Guidelines to Deal with Sexual Harassment at Work Place, issued in September 2017 that gives the results of a meeting organised by the CBCI on the same theme a year previously, not only reaffirms the traditional position that, ‘the Catholic Church in India recognises and considers violence against women and children as a special area of commitment and promotes zero tolerance of all acts involving them’. With this document, the Church intends to promote ‘a mechanism to prevent all forms of abuse’ and ‘to set out the procedures to deal with cases of abuse and seek to protect persons against false accusations’.

The women condition is linked to the difficulties found in Indian health and education and to recent protection measures which, however, do not touch the essence of that equality which, before it is defined by law, should be recognised by society. For example, the medical-health sector shows how access by women is by far inferior to that by men. Besides, three widely debated factors have, in time, placed at risk the health of many Indian women citizens: the sterilisation campaigns incentivised by awards in money or goods a couple of years after a great number of deaths or abuses, selective abortion that has deprived the country of millions of children and the testing of medicines on human beings.

These initiatives appear to have no connection with the considerable financial difficulties of the public system which, in turn, indicates the growing gap between income and possibilities for Indians. For example, for many years now, the resources assigned by the government to health have increased less than population growth, one of the highest in the world with at least 15 million births per year. The budget percentages for this crucial sector have varied from 0.9 and 1.2 per cent, now reaching 1.4 per cent. However, this is still insufficient, given the lack of medicine, beds, well-trained personnel, reception centres and services, while funds are directed mostly to structures of excellence, leaving rural clinics and intermediate structures with a chronic lack of resources. The medical-health system is therefore capillary but inefficient and, in the final analysis harmful for a great number of citizens. It is increasingly flanked by the private sector which, for some time now grown as an alternative and especially complementary to the state sector, shows a lack of professionalism and a growing commercial attitude while still remaining inaccessible to the majority of the population. (S.V.)

In the Hindu concept is taken up by its present proponents, connected to the political experience of the Bharatiya Janta Party and the groups of militants that refer to it to carry out their programme of Hinduisation of the country (hiduttva), ought to be that of an integrated society to be found in the complex caste system and in a reality marked by profound unease and deep divisions.

Abandoning a practice that for decades was that of the Congress Party, up to the defeat of 2014, the Bharatiya Janta Party turned to a sort of nationalism that, by its Indian nature, is inevitably connected to the faith of the majority.It is the sort of Hinduism that not only sees itself as central to history but one that sees in other present faiths either incidental deviations (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) or competing religions, foreign in origin and connected to experiences of conquest like Islam and Christianity.
Therefore, it is not possible to integrate them. This is the cause of the reconversion of the many people who opted to join different faiths even as a means to find a way out of a socio-religious system that relegated them to poverty and discrimination.

This situation is reflected in the reality and principles of the ‘largest democracy in the world’. It is no accident that in the Global Democracy Index (GDI), published each year by the British Economist Intelligence Unit, in 2017 India went down ten places, reaching the unflattering 42nd place among the 89 countries covered. ‘The authorities there have restricted freedom of the press, closed down several newspapers and strictly controlled mobile internet services. Several journalists were murdered in India in 2017, as in the previous year’, the report reads.
Widespread concern is caused by sectarianism and vigilantism by Hindu extremists with the minority religions paying the highest price. “Something terribly wrong is happening to the country” and “it is worrying that various investigations are bringing it to light”, was the comment of Subhash Bhatnagar, leader of the national Committee for the campaign for non-organised workers. Bhatnagar also asked the government of New Delhi to control the sectarian forces that are worsening the image of a nation where all religions are respected.

This is an especially difficult task due to the mutual support between government forces and radical movements. A union of intent that has led the BJP to control 19 States and the Territory of Delhi and, de facto, to have no credible rivals at national level, even if strong regional parties still have faithful electorates, especially in the East and the South. Speaking of electorates, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the religious factor (and the socio-religious factor) has acquired political (and electoral) weight, perhaps as much as in the past. This places the minorities, including Catholics, in a difficult position, torn between the need to cooperate with the powers at the centre and in various States held by the pro-Hindu parties and, at the same time, claiming their own identity and their own role.

Fragmented society

Each year, on 15 August, India celebrates its independence from British dominion and unfailingly remembers the traumatic separation of Moslem Pakistan. It is a hard lesson for a people divided by rancour and conflicting interests and by faith, followed closely by many personal ties. But 15 August is also a moment for India to reflect upon its recent history and, today more than ever, on its potential and its limits. Born in division and blood, India also questions itself as to its fragmented society, the injustice and discrimination that once again always have the faith and the caste uppermost in mind.

The caste system may be weakening but it continues to remain the strongest framework that defines the life of Indians. This starts with politics where we find perhaps the greatest paradox of Indian democracy: discrimination is outlawed but it is legal to recognize its existence and act to limit its consequences.
One State that, in the name of democracy and equality, fights against discrimination and prevarication, administers a complex system of Registered Castes and Tribes and other backward groups, distributing civil service jobs, parliamentary seats and university places.
“Many believe that change, greater social mobility and more information will bring about the disappearance of castes but this is far from true. Instead, new reforms are proposed. The system of caste sanctions is perhaps slowly weakening but, overall, the system of discrimination propagates itself automatically”, comments Father Nithya Sagayam, Capuchin and Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Indian Episcopal Conference. “If in the villages discrimination is written into the places themselves and into human activities, sanctioned by ceremonial necessity, perpetuated together with the ever present underlying interests, that which causes concern is the way it moves into the city outskirts and how it links up with new divisions, political, economic and opportunistic.”

Discrimination is located deep in the Indian psyche, in the claim that Indian society is not one that is ‘divided’ (much less discriminatory, according to western concepts), but ‘integrated’. With a role for each one established from birth and with each one placed in condition, through adherence to Dharma, the eternal and divinely inspired law, to free themselves from an original load of negativity while going through existences, there can be nothing else apart from this.
If, in many ways the caste system challenges catholicity, itself often the object of persecution initiatives that tend to underline its foreignness to the Indian environment, the much larger Moslem community is in a similar situation: a backward community, heir to a great tradition of political and cultural domination and quite differentiated internally. Like the Christian community, it too is excluded from the benefits that the government has granted over the years to the majority of the population belonging to the lower castes, Hindu or tribal outcasts. In this way every request has so far remained unanswered for the 140 million followers of Allah, people in great poverty and a low standard of education.

The Moslems find it hard to make their voice heard and even though they have a representative in parliament, their vote is always used opportunistically. In a context of social backwardness and few prospects for the future, the attraction of religious radicalism inevitably grows. There is a feeling of insecurity among the Moslems who are accused of supporting Pakistan while under the pressure of demands to follow international Jihadism. Certainly, the majority of Indian Moslems do not regard Pakistan as an enemy, if for no other reason than that of a shared majority faith (Up to 15 August, 1947, there existed only one India, then divided along confessional lines). (S.V.)