Many would like the Catholic Bishops Conference of India to once again regain its voice, as also its eyes
A bird flies over a Christian cross silhouetted against the rising sun on top of a church on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India, on March 12, 2022. (Photo: AFP/ UCAN files)
By John Dayal
The ignorant in the media and the more ignorant on social media have presumed that it was a delegation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, or a representative delegation of Catholic prelates who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently in his hotel room in Kochi during the political leg of his visit to Kerala. The presence of two senior Catholic cardinals and an archbishop among the eight may possibly have conveyed this wrong message.
The apex body of Catholic Bishops, indeed, has been remarkably quiet on Christian persecution in the country, and other burning issues that beset India. Its silence has intrigued civil society, and disheartened human rights activists among the clergy, men, and women, religious, and the laity, especially outside Kerala.
With parliament muted, if not enslaved and overwhelmed by an extreme right-wing religious nationalist ideology — worse, violent, and often armed cadres roam the cities and countryside as if on patrol — it is civil society that has stood guard against dictatorship.
Civil society reaches out to the more concerned amongst citizens, and in fact is at the heart of the alternate media that is holding aloft the banner of a free media though its most rich and powerful TV and newspapers have become lapdogs, or Godi Media, as they are now called.
The Church, irrespective of faith or denominational identity, has been an important pillar of civil society. It was integral to the struggle against social evils and political tyrants, colonial forces among them.
The Christian church and individual Christians have been at the heart of movements in education, health, emancipation of women, and in sparking the renaissance in the subcontinent. This has been forcefully brought out in an important recent book, “Christianity’s Contribution in the Shaping of Modern India,” authored by Joseph Gathia and Sanjay Gathia and distributed on Amazon and other platforms.
"The CBCI fulfilled a major, even historical, role in the nineties and the first years of the 21st century"
It is not for nothing that a priest, in the cassock of an Anglican parson, is immortalized in the statues of Gandhi’s Dandi March in the Indian freedom struggle.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India, famous with its acronym CBCI, as the supra ritual organization is correctly looked upon as the representative of the Catholics of the country in articulating their views on matters of freedom of faith, and important social matters as they arise.
Its voice was listened to by the government in the early decades after independence. So much so that it has often put into the shadows its Protestant equivalents, the National Council of Churches, an omnibus clutch of “mainline” ecumenical, Presbyterian, and orthodox churches, and the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the collective of the independent, evangelical, and others that do not fit into any group.
The CBCI fulfilled a major, even historical, role in the nineties and the first years of the 21st century in reviving the movement of the Dalit Christians to regain their constitutional rights, which had been snatched from them by the notorious Presidential Order of 1950.
The CBCI led agitations, rallies and moved the Supreme Court of India. Its writs are still before the court, together with those of other individuals and groups. It also played a role in interrogating the then prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, from the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on the persecution of Christians.
The CBCI president, in fact, was at the forefront of the movement to assert the personal laws and call for their updating, and in challenging the government when it talked of bringing forth a Common Civil Code. This code is at the core of the BJP and its parent Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s political plank as they see it as the only way to negate the Islamic laws. In passing, they also want to override Christian personal laws.
All that, alas, is a thing of the past. Many in civil society, and among the Catholic community, fear that the apex body has not only lost its observation and vocal faculties but has been more inward-looking and insular than ever in the past. Is it fear, many ask. Or is there some other reason, they wonder?
Everyone is of course aware of the power that is being wielded, almost in an extra-legal manner by central agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigations, the National Investigations Agency, the Intelligence Bureau, the Enforcement Department, and many other organizations that are controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office, and the ministries of Finance and Home affairs. Civil society is itself a major victim of the pack of government hounds, and they will therefore not hold this against the Church.
"The CBCI keeps no data at all on the persecution of the Christian Church in India"
It also does not have too much to do with the creation of the two sui juris oriental Rites with their own code of Canons. The fact that laity, gender issues and similar arms are now being managed individually by the three Rites, has indeed weakened the collective strength of the Catholic Laity, and with that of the entire Christian community. There seems no mechanism to bring lay and clerics of the three rites together on common national issues.
The CBCI has done away with the powerful office of the official spokesman, once held by men such as Father Dominic Emmanuel SVD, a consummate communicator, and his successors. The CBCI secretary-general, a bishop or archbishop, is ex-office the spokesman. It is not the same thing at all, as anyone in the realm of communications, will affirm.
And the CBCI has done away with its legal wing, CLAP as it was called till about five years ago. The legal consciences, and interventions, have been outsourced. Various business models of law organizations do not have the clout or coverage that the CBCI could have had.
Above all, the CBCI keeps no data at all on the persecution of the Christian Church in India. This involves not just violence against churches and education and health institutions, the rape of nuns, or the imprisonment of Catholic clergy on fake charges of sexual abuse, but the dark cloud that is now choking religious freedom in the country.
With its system of parishes and dioceses, the Catholic Church was in fact the best equipped to collect and collate social data, including persecution and violence. It has not done so. If it were not for the work of some of the religious congregations working in matters of labor, education, and health, and groups agitating with the fishermen, there would be no social data either.
Many would like the CBCI to once again regain its voice, as also its eyes, the ears that could be close to the ground and listen to the murmurs and loud explosions when human rights are trodden upon and constitutional rights are snatched or smashed. Not doing so is leaving the victims to their fate. Not very Christian.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
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