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Christian priests raise concern over security

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The alter of the St Sebastian Church that was gutted in Delhi. (Source: Express photo by Ravi Kanojia)

The alter of the St Sebastian Church that was gutted in Delhi. (Source: Express photo by Ravi Kanojia)

Mathura: Christian priests in Mathura on Friday raised security concern after an attack on the 95-year-old St. Mary’s Church in Agra on Thursday.

The priests fear that they, too, could be attacked by anti-social elements.

“The desperate elements could easily target any. Under the new government at the Centre, the attacks have become more frequent,” said Father Saji, a priest at a church in Jait village in Mathura district.

Father Saji said the district administration made no security arrangements even after the recent spate of churches being attacked.

Mathura district has around a dozen churches and educational institutions run by different denominations, but their security is lax.

In Agra, Christians marched with candles on Thursday evening to protest administrative indifference. Protests will continue till the culprits are nabbed, community leaders said.

Rajesh Modak, senior superintendent of Agra police, said investigations were on with four teams on the job and that the suspects would be arrested soon.

Father Moon Lazarus, parish priest, demanded arrest of the attackers who, he said, were “mentally diseased.”

A group has threatened to close down Christian missionary schools in Agra, if the culprits were not booked soon.

(IANS)

Hindu Mahasabha leader calls for forced sterilisation of Muslims, Christians to restrict growing population

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Hindu_Mahasabha

Jind: A leader of Hindu Mahasabha on Saturday stoked a controversy saying Muslims and Christians must undergo sterilisation to restrict their growing population which was posing a threat to Hindus.

“The population of Muslims and Christians is growing day by day. To rein in this, Centre will have to impose emergency, and Muslims and Christians will have to be forced to undergo sterilisation so that they can’t increase their numbers,” vice president of All India Hindu Mahasabha, Sadhvi Deva Thakur said.

She also exhorted Hindus to have more children and increase their population so as to have an effect on the world. In another controversial remark, she said idols of Hindu gods and goddesses should be placed in mosques and churches.

(PTI)

No voting right if people do not go for family planning: Sakshi Maharaj

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Sakshi Maharaj

Unnao: Known for making controversial statements, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj has demanded that a strict law for family planning be brought in for all to check population growth and those who do not follow it should be stripped of their voting right.

“When Hindus go for sterilisation, Muslims should also opt for it. There should be one law for everyone. There will be no appeasement of any section in our regime,” he said on the sidelines of a function here.

“I don’t say Muslims and Christians should be sterilised. But there should be family planning and a uniform law for all. When we talk of four-child issue, there is a lot of hue and cry, and when they have 40 children from four wives no one says anything,” the saffron-robed MP said last evening.

Stressing that population growth was a major challenge before the country, he said the issue has to be addressed through family planning.

“There should be family planning. When the country gained independence, the population was only 30 crore. Today it is 130 crore. Who is responsible for it?…There should be one law for everyone be it Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians.

“Whether for one, two, three or four kids… unless we have a common law for everyone, the country will not benefit…So both the government and the opposition should come together to bring a strict law and those who do not follow it should be stripped of their voting right,” the 59-year-old MP from Unnao said.

“You cannot discriminate between women of different communities,” he said.

His remarks come after Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut in an editorial demanded scrapping of voting rights of Muslims, saying they are used as vote bank.

“Balasaheb had once said withdraw Muslims voting rights. Owaisi brothers are doing politics of Muslim votes. They are threat to the nation,” wrote Raut in the party mouthpiece ‘Saamana’.

Asked about Raut’s statement, Sakshi Maharaj said he had not gone through his statement.

Sakshi was earlier at the centre of a controversy when he asked Hindu women to have at least four children, sparking condemnation from the opposition which alleged that the ruling party was trying to polarise the atmosphere.

BJP on its part had distanced itself from the remarks of Maharaj, who was also served a show cause notice, and urged its workers and public representatives to refrain from making such comments.

Sakshi had also drawn flak for describing Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a “patriot” and was forced to apologise in Parliament.

(PTI)

Show equal importance, respect to sacred days of all religions: SC judge to Narendra Modi

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Justice Kurian Joseph

New Delhi: Miffed over scheduling of three-day long judges conference during the holy period for Christians, a sitting Supreme Court judge has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and declined a dinner invitation, scheduled to be held on Saturday.

In his letter dated April 1, Justice Kurian Joseph wrote: “Your good self would kindly appreciate that no important programmes are held during sacred and auspicious days of Diwali, Dussehra, Holi, Eid, Bakrid, etc, though we have holidays during that period as well.”

Underlining that the Indian model of secularism is based on the principle of sarva dharma sambhava, Justice Joseph cautioned that the country needs to safeguard its credentials.

Justice Joseph added that though it is “too late to reschedule the events. But being the guardian of Indian secularism, I request your honour to kindly have in mind these concerns while scheduling events and benevolently show equal importance and respect to the sacred days of all religions which are also declared as national holidays. I have shared these concerns with the honourable Chief Justice of India as well.”

The apex court judge has also written a letter to Chief Justice of India HL Dattu objecting to the holding of the conference of 24 high court chief justices from Good Friday to Eastern Sunday.

“I may with deep anguish bring to your kind notice that such an important conference should not have been held when some of us, otherwise expected to be part of the event, or otherwise committed on account of the holy days when we have religious ceremonies and family get-together as well,” he said in his letter to CJI HL Dattu.

Maintaining that he was not striking a communal note, Justice Joseph said such serious programmes were not held during Diwali, Dussehra, Holi, Eid, etc.

However, Justice Dattu hit back, saying the question the justice had to ask himself, as he cannot ask the judge, is “whether it is institutional interest or individual interest that one should preference to”.

Justice Dattu, in a letter to Justice Joseph, said assuming that religious ceremonies and family get-togethers were important, then he could ask his family to join him in Delhi.

“Several other participants are coming from distant places, leaving behind families,” the CJI said.

The CJI got support from a former apex court judge Justice KT Thomas asking why Christians cannot work on Good Friday.

“In America, where 98 percent are Christians, Good Friday is a working day. Christians can attend Church service and go to work. But in India we are obsessed with holiday culture. I am totally opposed to this holiday mania that we suffer from,” Justice Thomas said.

Chief Ministers of various states would join the judges on third day of the conference when Prime Minister Narendra Modi would address them and the legal luminaries.

Top judges from across the country led by Chief Justice of India HL Dattu on Friday began brainstorming to find solutions to critical problems like ensuring speedy trials to tackle over three crore pending cases and lack of infrastructure in courts.

(Agencies)

India to have largest Muslim population by 2050; Hindus to be third largest in world: Report

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indians-muslims

Washington: Hindus will become the world’s third largest population by 2050, while India will overtake Indonesia as the country with the largest Muslim population, according to a new study.

According to the Pew Research Center’s religious profile predictions assessed data released today, the Hindu population is projected to rise by 34 per cent worldwide, from a little over 1 billion to nearly 1.4 billion by 2050.

By 2050, Hindus will be third, making up 14.9 per cent of the world’s total population, followed by people who do not affiliate with any religion, accounting for 13.2 per cent, the report said.

The people with no religious affiliation currently have the third largest share of the world’s total population.

Muslims are projected to grow faster than the world’s overall population and that Hindus and Christians are projected to roughly keep pace with worldwide population growth, the report said.

“India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia,” it said.

“Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion,” according to the report.

The report predicted that by 2050 there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30 per cent of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31 per cent), possibly for the first time in history.

There were 1.6 billion Muslims in 2010, compared to 2.17 billion Christians.

“The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world,” it added.

If the trend continues, Islam will be the most popular faith in the world after 2070, it said.

By 2050, Muslims will make up about 10 per cent of the Europe’s population, up from 5.9 per cent in 2010.

Over the same period, the number of Hindus in Europe is expected to roughly double, from a little under 1.4 million (0.2 per cent of Europe’s population) to nearly 2.7 million (0.4 per cent), mainly as a result of immigration, it said.

In North America, the Hindu share of the population is expected to nearly double in the decades ahead, from 0.7 per cent in 2010 to 1.3 per cent in 2050, when migration is included in the projection models. Without migration, the Hindu share of the region’s population would remain the same.

Buddhism is the only faith that is not expected to increase its followers, due to an ageing population and stable fertility rates in Buddhist countries, such as China, Japan and Thailand.

The projections considered fertility rates, trends in youth population growth and religious conversion statistics.

(PTI)

Nun rape case: Four suspects detained in Ludhiana

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Nuns demonstrate against gang rape, church attack in Nadia of West Bengal on 15 March 2015 (Photo - IANS)

Nuns demonstrate against gang rape, church attack in Nadia of West Bengal on 15 March 2015 (Photo – IANS)

Chandigarh: Four Bangladeshi nationals were detained in Ludhiana in connection with the gang rape of an elderly nun in West Bengal’s Ranaghat town last month.

DCP Navin Singla told the media here Wednesday that four Bangladeshi nationals were detained from Ludhiana’s Motinagar area.

Punjab Police additional DGP Dinkar Gupta said that the suspects were being questioned.

The suspects were detained following their photographs being made available to police authorities in various states.

The 72-year-old victim, a sister superior in a convent school in Ranaghat town, was gang raped by the accused who had entered the school premises to commit dacoity on March 14.

(IANS)

Four held in Navi Mumbai church attack case

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Navi Mumbai church attack

Navi Mumbai: Three days after the attack on a church here, police today claimed to have cracked the case with the arrest of four persons.

“Four persons have been arrested in connection with the attack on the Saint George Catholic church,” Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner K L Prasad told PTI.

The IPS officer, however, refused to share further details at the moment.

Under fire from the opposition, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis yesterday had set a 48 hour deadline to police to nab the culprits.

The Opposition members had yesterday walked out of the Assembly in protest against the incident.

Police had announced a reward of Rs 10,000 for any information leading to the arrest of the accused.

Fadnavis is likely to make a statement in the House later today.

According to Khandeshwar police, the attack was carried out by two masked persons, who were riding pillion on a motorcycle at around 1.30 AM on Saturday when they hurled stones at the Saint George Catholic church located near a bridge in New Panvel.

In the incident, the covering glass outside the statue of Saint George got damaged.

The trio, comprising the biker and the two pillion riders, were covering their faces, a police official said.

An offence has been registered against the unidentified men under sections 295 (injuring or defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class) and 427 (mischief) of the IPC, police said.

The church was built in 2007 and can accommodate over 800 people for prayer.

(PTI)

Documenting hate and communal violence under the Modi regime

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Photos: Gufran Khan

Photos: Gufran Khan

by John Dayal

The rape of a 70 year old Nun in West Bengal in an attack on a convent and school in February 2015 sent shock waves throughout India, and the world. “Protect not just Cows, but human beings also,” said Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference. At least 43 deaths in over 600 cases of violence, 149 targeting Christians and the rest Muslims, have taken place in 2014 in India till March this year, marking 300 days of the National Development Alliance government of Mr. Narendra Modi. The number of dead is other than the 108 killed in Assam in attacks by armed tribal political groups on Muslims. Desecration and destruction of churches, assault on pastors, illegal police detention of church workers, and denial of Constitutional rights of Freedom of Faith aggravate the coercion and terror unleashed in campaigns of Ghar Wapsi and cries of Love Jihad. Since May 2014, there has been a marked shift in public discourse. There has been a relentless foregrounding of communal identities, a ceaseless attempt to create a divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The BJP leaders guaranteed to abuse, ridicule and threaten minorities. Hate statements by Union and state ministers, threats by Members of Parliament, state politicians, and cadres in saffron caps or Khaki shorts resonate through the landscape. But most cases go unreported, unrecorded by police.

The Prime Minister refuses to reprimand his Cabinet colleagues, restrain the members of his party members or silence the Sangh Parivar which claims to have propelled him to power in New Delhi. Mr. Modi calls for a ten-year moratorium on communal and caste violence. His government soon declares Christmas to be a “Good Governance Day” in honour of the BJP leader and former Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee. There are fears at a severe whittling down of the 15 Point Programme for Minorities, a lifeline for many severely economic backward communities, and specially their youth seeking higher education and professional training. Anyway, Mr. Modi’s “assurance” to religious minorities is challenged and countered by Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, who asserts, repeatedly, that every Indian is a Hindu, and minorities will have to learn their place in
the country.Speaking at the 50th Anniversary of foundation of its religious wing, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghchalak bluntly stated that “Hindutva is the identity of India and it has the capacity to swallow other identities. We just need to restore those capacities.” In Cuttack, he asserted that India is a Hindu state and “citizens of Hindustan should be known as Hindus”. Sadhvi Prachi, a central minister, Members of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj and Adityanath are among those urging measures to check Muslims, including encouraging Hindu women to have from four to ten children each. In Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and other states, the terror, physical violence and social ostracizing of Dalit and Tribal Christians, in particular, continues.

The 300 days have also seen an assault on democratic structures, the education and knowledge system, Human Rights organizations and Rights Defenders and coercive action using the Intelligence Bureau and the systems if the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act and the Passport laws to crack down on NGOs working in areas of empowerment of the marginalized sections of society, including Dalits, Tribals, Fishermen and women, and issues of environment, climate, forests, land and water rights. This report is focused on issues of communally targeted violence and the politics of hate and divisiveness that emanates from a thesis of religious nationalism.

PDF - 1.6 Mb300 DAYS Documenting Hate and Communal Violence under the Modi Regime
(With inputs from Kiren Shaheen, Liris Thomas, Mansi Sharma, Shabnam Hashmi, Shahnaz Husain, Tehmina Arora, and Vijayesh Lal)

"Stop killing our Christian brothers"

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by Dawn

Horror and anger dominated protests across Pakistan on Monday, as members of the Christian community took to the streets in Faisalabad, Lahore, Gujranwala and other urban centers following Sunday’s Taliban attack on two churches.

The protests turned violent in Lahore when demonstrators clashed at different points during the day with dozens of baton-wielding policemen. One protester was killed while several were injured when a car hit them at Ferozpur Road.

People from the Christian community attend a protest, to condemn suicide bombings which took place outside two churches in Lahore, in Peshawar. — Reuters

People protest holding placards which asks for peace in Pakistan.— Reuters

Policemen carry bamboo sticks during a protest by Christians mourners in Lahore.— AFP

Christians chant slogans during demonstration to condemn the suicide bombing attack on two churches.— AP

People from the Christian community attend a protest, to condemn the suicide bombings.— Reuters

Members of the Pakistani Christian community chant slogans during a protest rally in Peshawar. — Reuters

People from the Christian community attend a protest to condemn suicide bombings.— Reuters

Christians pray for victims of suicide bombings that struck two churches the day before, in Lahore.— AP

Christians pray for victims of suicide bombings that struck two churches the day before, in Lahore.— AP

Protesters blocked roads Monday in protest over the bombings that killed more than a dozen people in the latest attack against religious minorities.— AP

Dozens of Christians abducted by ISIL in Syria

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Activists say at least 70 people seized after ISIL captured Assyrian villages from Kurdish forces in Hassakeh province.

Egyptian Christians mourn for 21 Coptic Egyptian killed by ISIL in the Libyan city of Sirte [AP]

Egyptian Christians mourn for 21 Coptic Egyptian killed by ISIL in the Libyan city of Sirte [AP]

by Al Jazeera

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group have kidnapped dozens of Assyrian Christians in northeast Syria, according to activists.

The exact number of Assyrians missing remained unclear on Tuesday, with estimates ranging from 70 to 150.

The abductions were reported after ISIL fighters seized two Assyrian villages from Kurdish forces along the Khabur River in the province of Hassakeh on Monday.

The Syriac National Council of Syria, a group representing several NGOs inside and outside the country, told Reuters that it had verified at least 150 people missing, including women and elderly people.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 90 people had been abducted, while Nuri Kino, the head of an group called A Demand For Action, said between 70 and 100 Assyrians were taken captive.

About 3,000 people fled and have sought refuge in the cities of Hassakeh and Qamishli, he said, adding that his activist group based its information on conversations with villagers who fled the attack and their relatives.

“Have they been slaughtered? Are they still alive? We’re searching for any news,” an Assyrian Christian woman originally from the affected area who now lives in Beirut told the Associated Press.

The woman said she has been trying to find out what has become of her parents, her brother and his wife and their children, but could not reach anyone in the village.

The Assyrian Network for Human Rights in Syria said on its Facebook page that the fighters had moved the captives to the village of Umm al-Masamir on Mount Abdulaziz, about 25km south of the town of Tel Tamr. That raised fears, the network said, that ISIL could use them as human shields against Kurdish militiamen.

Kurdish offensive

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from Amman, said the kidnapping appeared to be in direct response to recent gains made by Kurdish forces in Syria’s northeast.

Much of Hassakeh is divided between Kurdish and ISIL control.

Fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have been on the offensive in the province in recent days.

They have taken 24 villages and hamlets as part of an operation to try to recapture the town of Tal Hamis and surrounding areas, the AFP news agency reported. Tal Hamis lies to the east of the villages taken by ISIL.

Kino told the Associated Press that about 3,000 people fled from ISIL’s onslaught in the area.

YPG forces have also been on the offensive in Raqqa province, which neighbours Hassakeh, seizing 19 villages as they advance following their recapture of the strategic border town of Kobane last month.

The Kurdish forces have been backed by US-led air strikes launched by the international coalition fighting ISIL.

Northeastern Syria is strategically important in the fight against ISIL because it borders territory controlled by the group in Iraq, where last year the armed group attacked the Yazidi community.

ISIL has destroyed churches and Christian shrines in Syria, and demanded that Christians living under its rule pay a tax known as jizya.

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