Political Issues Archives - The Christian Observer

TCONEWS ADMINNovember 28, 2018

By Manasi Inamdar

Christian Institute of Management (CIM) jointly with the Board of Theological Education Senate of Serampore College (BTESSC) and Asia Theological Association (ATA) conducted consultations for the leaders of Theological Institutions/Bible Seminaries in the five regions of India – South, West, East, North Western and Northern region consultations were held recently.

The regional consultation for Western India was held at Hotel Samrat, Pune on Monday 19 November 2018. Representatives from leading theological Institutions and well wishers attended the programme. CA Raja B. Singh (Chartered Accountant) , Mumbai in the key note address titled ‘Legal and Managerial Scenario of Churches and Missions in India’, spoke about the ignorance of the tax system of the country, and discussed financial laws applicable for Institutions and churches. He particularly talked about and lack of awareness on GST and FCRA by Christian organisations . Rev. Dr. Praveen Paul, Principal of Union Biblical Seminary, Dr. Aby Alexandar, CIM and Dr. Reji Samuel took various sessions.

Regional consultation for Northern India was held at Navajeevan Renewal Centre, New Delhi, on Wednesday 21^st November 2018. Key note address was presented by Dr. (CA) Sanjay Patra, (Exec. Director FMSF), on ‘Emerging Legal and Managerial Scenario of Churches and Missions in India.’ He highlighted on the challenges faced by organizations and institutions from externally and internally. He also encouraged Christian community to be prepared to respond positively and be a good model to the nation. Mr. Anand Joshua , Executive Director, CIM and Dr. Reji Samuel took various sessions.

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TCONEWS ADMINAugust 4, 2018

Ram Nath Kovind, India’s new president who took office today, represents an unusual case of a little-known politician from the country’s lowest caste, the Dalits, rising to power.

However, as others champion his victory, India’s Christian minority—the majority of whom are Dalits themselves—know that a Hindu nationalist politician from the Dalit caste is still a Hindu nationalist politician.

Like the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that nominated him, Kovind represents a continued threat to non-Hindus in India, including its estimated 25 million to 60 million Christians. (As CT has noted, that’s a tiny minority amid 1 billion Hindus, but still sizable enough to rank among the 25 countries with the most Christians, surpassing “Christian countries” such as Uganda and Greece.)

If Indian officials were to move forward with anti-conversion legislation or other policies directed at Christians, “he would be a good rubber stamp for the government,” said Sandeep Kumar, a church planter and principal of Mission India Bible College, in an interview with CT. “There is no room for Christians in his understanding.”

Since 2014, India has been led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a BJP leader notorious among Christians for permitting religious freedom violations to spread unchecked. Meanwhile, the position of president is mostly ceremonial and selected by lawmakers.

Kovind’s election this month indicates that the BJP is gaining support among Dalits (once called “untouchables”) with its polarizing vision of India as a nation whose religion, language, and culture is solely Hindu, an ideology known as Hindutva that originated among the higher castes.

When he was a party leader back in 2010, Kovind had remarked that “Islam and Christianity are alien to India” and said that they do not deserve the benefits and quotas assured to others from lowest castes, officially designated as “Scheduled Castes.”

India’s constitution has extended scheduled caste benefits to Buddhists and Sikhs, but not to any other religious minorities, officially leaving Dalit Muslims and Christians out. Most estimates suggest that at least half of India’s Christians are Dalits.

Z. Devasagaya Raj, a priest who oversees Catholic outreach to Dalits, said “the idea of appointing a Dalit person for the coveted post is largely positive but not if ‘the person holds a [pro-Hindu] right-wing ideology,’” according to a UCA News report. Though Modi endorsed Kovind as a representative for the poor and oppressed, Christians have reason to believe that won’t include them.

Samuel Jaykumar, who defends Dalit Christians as a leader with the National Council of Churches in India, told the Catholic news source that he was concerned that Kovind’s presidency would make things worse for Dalit Christians and Muslims.

Kovind’s election on July 17 followed weeks of protests from Christians and Muslims angered by attacks on religious minorities for eating beef, which angered Hindutva extremists due to Hindus’ veneration of cows. (The sale of cattle for slaughter was declared illegal in most of India this spring, until the Supreme Court suspended the ban.)

Kovind’s opponent from the United Progressive Alliance, Meira Kumar, also came from the Dalit class and had a “good track record” in foreign affairs, according to Sandeep Kumar. Regardless of the candidate, it’s uncommon for presidential politics to come up in Indian churches.

“We don’t preach on if someone has been elected and how that could benefit us,” the pastor said. “But we do pray for our country.”

K. R. Narayanan, India’s first Dalit president since the country’s independence, was a better advocate for tolerance for religious minorities when he held office from 1997 – 2002. Having grown up in the disproportionately Christian state of Kerala in southern India and studied at a church-run school, Narayanan condemned the Hindu nationalists thought to be responsible for violence against Muslims and resisted efforts to shift the secular education system.

Catholic and Protestant leaders have joined to pray for their new president.

The next general election in India will take place in 2019. There aren’t promising signs for an alternative that would be friendlier to Christians than the current administration, led by Modi, so most expect that the Hindutva ethos will continue to rule.

Though India is the biggest democracy in the world, its Hindu norms have increasingly restricted Christian freedoms. Open Doors rates the persecution level in the country as “very high.”

Christians will join in demonstrations next month designed to draw attention to the plight of Dalits. According to Asia News:

This August 10th will be a “Black Day” to highlight the discrimination suffered by Dalit Christians in India for 67 years. It is the initiative launched by the Indian Bishops’ Conference (CBCI) Office of Dalits and the Disadvantaged Classes. In recent days, the bishops expressed their solidarity with the new president, Ram Nath Kovind, of Dalit origins. They also want to remind people that the country implements a constitutional-based discrimination against those Dalits that embrace Christianity.

Due to a regulatory crackdown on foreign NGOs, Compassion International was forced to end its child sponsorship operations in India in March, pulling $45 million in funding from its Indian church partners.

Courtesy:- Christianity Today

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TCONEWS ADMINJuly 20, 2018

“We want to be honest with you, there is very little hope.”

So wrote Compassion International to its 130,000 sponsors of Indian children this past Friday.

One week after sharing the good news of four nations no longer needing child sponsors due to the passion of millennials, the ministry shared the bad news of another nation that will probably not need child sponsors due to government interference.

A little more than a year after the Indian government told Compassion that it could no longer receive funding from outside the subcontinent, the humanitarian organization will likely be closing its last operations there.

“Since we can no longer distribute funds to our field offices, we have just had to notify our India country staff that we must formally close our field offices in India by March 15,” Compassion told sponsors by email. “Should nothing change, that means an end to our sponsorship program in India in the next 60 days.”

Compassion, which has been working in India for more than 48 years, said it has tried everything in the last 10 months to stay afloat. The email listed its efforts, which include:

Seeking the advice of legal experts in both the US and India
Leveraging influential relationships, including US representatives and senators, the former US Secretary of State, the former and current ambassadors to India and the White House Office of Faith-based Affairs, as well as members of Parliament in the United Kingdom
Asking Compassion sponsors to pray and to write Congress (more than 35,000 letters were sent)
Testifying in front of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee
Leveraging personal relationships within the US and India

Compassion’s 580 Indian-staffed development centers care for more than 145,000 children. That’s only about 8 percent of the 1.9 million children assisted by Compassion worldwide, but also more than any other of the 25 countries where it works.

The Indian government objects to Compassion’s Christianity, according to the ministry’s testimony to US lawmakers. Hindu nationalists have put increasing pressure on Christians in India since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. The subcontinent has been steadily moving up Open Doors’ list of places where it’s hardest to be a Christian, from No. 28 in 2014 to No. 15 this year, the highest rank it has ever held.

“An average of 40 incidents were reported per month, including pastors beaten, churches burned and Christians harassed,” stated Open Doors. “Of the 64 million Christians in India, approximately 39 million experience direct persecution.”

There doesn’t appear to be a government plan to pick up Compassion’s care for Indian children. More than 1 in 3 of India’s 1.2 billion people are children, yet India spends less on health and education than comparable emerging economies.

Of India’s roughly 472 million children, 33 million are child laborers, 80 million are out of school, and 97 million are undernourished, according to a recent petition asking Modi’s administration to spend more on children.

But while the government may not have a plan in place, that doesn’t mean the children will be abandoned entirely, said Compassion spokesperson Becca Bishop.

“[The children] may have lost Compassion’s support, but they haven’t lost the support of their local church,” she said. “Those churches, if they have the funds, may still be able to carry out a lot of the services.”

World Vision, which sponsors more than 245,000 children in India (about 6 percent of its global total), also partners with local churches, though not exclusively, spokesperson Amy Parodi told CT. So far, World Vision isn’t having problems getting foreign funding into the country, she said.

CT covered Compassion’s cash crunch in December, including how the Indian government squeezed off its foreign funding. With no way to pay for materials or staff, the organization began paring down programs last summer.

“Our staff in the India field offices have stretched every last penny beyond what we thought possible to extend the programs for our children, while we in parallel explored alternative delivery methods to provide funds, yet a solution has not been discovered within the needed timeframe,” stated Compassion’s email to donors.

The news comes on the heels of Compassion’s largest surge of sponsorships, when students attending the 2017 Passion Conference eliminated the list of children waiting for sponsors in four countries.

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TCONEWS ADMINJuly 20, 2018

Panaji: The Catholic Church in Goa on Jan 29 issued an advisory to citizens, urging them not to have a casual and careless approach towards their moral duty of voting, saying the “quality of seeds sown during elections determines the quality of legislations and policies in governance that will follow”.
The advisory also cautioned citizens to be aware of the reality that any “oppressive, discriminatory and destructive legislations proposed at the national level require the collaboration of state governments for enactment and their cooperation for implementation… One cannot be blind to the larger thrust that is being placed in recent times at the national level to undo the Sovereign, Socialist, Secular and Democratic fabric of our nation as enshrined in our Constitution.”

“The undue intrusion and interference of governments in the judiciary or educational and financial institutions cannot be a sign of good governance,” the statement issued by the Centre for Social Justice and Peace read, adding that “the terror unleashed by state and non-state actors to silence dissent or diverse opinions about governance by labelling them as anti-national or unpatriotic cannot be ignored by responsible citizens.”

The church also took a dig at the government’s recent push towards digitisation saying “the shift from the social policy of ‘roti, kapdaaurmakan’ for uplifting the poor sections of the society to an emphasis on digital and cashless policy involving smart phones, ATM cards and apps as the basic requirement for every citizen to avail of government benefits and purchase their basic needs is a worrisome phenomenon.”

With about 26 per cent of the population in Goa following the Christian faith, the church has, for years, been instrumental in guiding its voters before the election, especially in South Goa, which has a strong catholic presence. Goa goes to polls on 4 February and will see the BJP fighting to retain power in a three-way contest with Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party.

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TCONEWS ADMINJuly 19, 2018

An Indian pastor and wheelchair user, Pastor Ageshwar Verma, 26, is the latest Indian Christian to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and injustice because of his faith.

“He was arrested on purpose just one day before the National Holiday, the Republic Day, and Ageshwar will not be able to secure bail,” said a spokesperson for the Evangelical Fellowship of India.The minister from the village of Gorah in Chhattisgarh, only came to faith some 20 months ago. He was arrested by police under local laws which ban ‘witchcraft’.

Ageshwar was sent to the Bemetara jail and held for eight days until 1 February.

Born in a Hindu family, Ageshwar suffered waist-down paralysis when he fell from a five-story under-construction building on October 2014, where he worked as a mason and was unable to walk again. His wife abandoned him due to his disability. This sudden change in life caused depression in him and Ageshwar attempted suicide thrice.

“God had different plans in stored for me…my suicide attempts always fell unsuccessful,” said Pastor Ageshwar Verma in an interview with Global Christian News after his release from jail.

Ageshwar received a phone call, which he says was of a man who identified himself as Mahesh. “I had never known this person before and how did he get my number still remains a mystery to me.

“The moment I received the call, the voice on the other end said that Jesus loves me and that He cares for me,” said Ageshwar. The voice on the other end of the phone asked him to go to a Church. Surprised and shocked, Ageshwar attended a church and heard about Jesus for the first time. Later Ageshwar went to Bilaspur (about 100 kms. away) to Pastor Ajit Daniel – a Pastor of Assemblies of God Church – where he stayed for a year.

Ageshwar who was expecting strong opposition from his father and brother’s family for becoming a follower of Christ, was amazed at God’s work. “After spending a year in Bilaspur, I returned to my village and shared about my new-found faith with my family. I left once again for Bilaspur to receive baptism and on my return I found that my elder brother Sanjay Verma, his wife, my father Puniram Verma and my mother had all become followers of Christ.

“We started to meet and pray together every day,” added Ageshwar.

Soon Ageshwar started to tell people around him, of the saving grace of Christ.

In the span of eight months, Ageshwar today has a congregation of about 10,000 people gathering every Thursday and Sunday for worship. Ageshwar sits on his wheel-chair and preaches to this crowd that comes from all the surrounding villages.

“As the crowd is huge, I have divided the crowd into two parts and have requested them to come on any one day in a week and not repeat themselves on the other. At any given day, I have not less than 4000 people to hear God’s word,” said Ageshwar.

Local Hindu extremists in the village got very jealous of the popularity and the attention Ageshwar was gaining, “Healing were taking place in these services. People brought their sick to be prayed and deaf could hear, born lame could walk, and several others were healed,” claimed Ageshwar.

After Ageshwar’s arrest on 25 January, he was kept in the police lock-up for more than a day. His bail application was rejected by the lower court. He then approached the sessions court where he was finally granted bail on the eighth day after furnishing a bond of 10,0000 Rupees and after depositing 10,000 Rupees in cash.

Excited about his stay in the jail Ageshwar told Global Christian News today (2 February) that those eight days were “blessed days”. He disclosed how the jail staff and the high officials favored him and he not only shared the saving grace of Jesus with fellow prisoners but also started a prayer fellowship inside the jail. He said, “Indeed, ‘….we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28 NIV)’.”

He disclosed that for about 8 meetings before his arrest, policemen and the Hindu extremists were not letting people come to worship. “They surround the area carrying wooden sticks in their hands every Thursday and Sunday and blocked the entrance to the worship place,” said Ageshwar. He also revealed that, “Today being a Thursday, policemen and Hindu extremists blocked the entrance and threatened all who wanted to come for the meeting. People were made to flee the place to avoid being beaten by them.”

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TCONEWS ADMINJuly 19, 2018