Former Foreign Secretary and NSA Shivshankar Menon, speaking at an event hosted by Constitutional Conduct Group and Karwan-e-Mohabbat, said that nothing good could come from the CAA The impact of the CAA, the NRC and other recent internal decisions on our external decisions, on our image abroad and our foreign policy (cannot but be adverse). Because what has happened as a result of the last year or so specially is that we are increasingly isolated. There has been no meaningful international support for these series of actions that we have been discussing apart from a few committed members of the diaspora and a ragtag bunch of Euro MPs from the extreme right. This isolation is really increasing if you look at what is happening abroad. The list of critical voices abroad is quite long, from President Macron to Chancellor Merkel to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to visitors like the King of Norway and so on, who would normally be polite. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for instance, has condemned the CAA calling it fundamentally discriminatory in nature. But it is actually the cumulative effect of a series of actions. The same UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had also expressed

Addressing press conference at Congress headquarters in Delhi, the senior Congress leader criticised BJP government, union home minister Amit Shah and Delhi police for failing to perform their duties A day after hundreds of unidentified masked men allegedly belonging to the RSS and its student wing ABVP, unleashed terror on JNU by mercilessly beating up students and teachers, former Home Minister P Chidambaram termed the situation in India as the “rapid descend into fascism.” Addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, the senior Congress leader criticised BJP government, union home minister Amit Shah and Delhi police for failing to perform their duties. Calling the attack “the gravest act of impunity, shocking and shameful” Chidambaram asserted, “This incident is perhaps the most clinching evidence that we are rapidly descending into anarchy. It happened in the national capital in India’s foremost University under the watch of the central government, home minister, lieutenant general and police commissioner.” Demanding the arrest of those involved in the attack within 24 hours, the former union minister said Commissioner of Delhi police must be held responsible for failing to stop the attack. “Buck starts with the Commissioner of Delhi police and stops with Home Minister…The duty of the police

Police in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state work in tandem with Hindu extremists to treat Christians and other religious minorities especially harshly, sources said. “The UP police force is very different from the rest of India,” Dinanath Jaiswar, a volunteer with legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom-India, told Morning Star News. “They are very brash in their dealings with Muslim and Christian minorities, and there have been several cases of violence in police custody, but by God’s grace we have tried our best to reach them on time, and even while in the clutches of the enemy, God protects His people.” From April 2017 to February 2018, India’s National Human Rights Commission registered 365 cases of judicial and custodial deaths in Uttar Pradesh, according to The Indian Express; the next highest amount was 127 cases in West Bengal state. “It does not take long for a police officer here to lose his temper and thrash a person in custody,” Jaiswar said. https://youtu.be/U64i0u3-jqM Most cases reported against police stations in several Uttar Pradesh districts fell under the categories of torture, infliction of injury and grievous hurt, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. “It has become a trend that a batch of Hindu extremists barge inside Christian homes

Church officials in India have said the nation will not host the 2021 Asian Youth Day as planned, ucanews reported Monday. “Our country was given the responsibility of hosting Asian Youth Day … After consultations with higher authorities, it was decided that it was better to call off the event as the present scenario does not allow us to hold the program,” Bishop Nazarene Soosai of Kottar, head of the Indian bishops' youth commission, told ucanews Jan. 6. India's ruling political party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has been increasingly hostile to religious freedom for minorities. Bishop Soosai commented, “We had hoped that there would be a change of government in 2019, but that did not happen and the present situation does not look good either. The BJP came to power in 2014, and strengthened its majority in the 2019 general election. Asian Youth Day is an event held for young Catholics in Asia every few years. The first Asian Youth Day was held in Thailand in 1999. The most recent iteration took place in Indonesia in 2017. At the conclusion of that event, Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay announced that India would be hosting the following Asian Youth Day, which was then anticipated to take

Over 30 injured students are hospitalized with cuts, lacerations and burns. The university is among the most prestigious in the world. Pupils are on strike against rising fees. For experts, the attack is a revenge for protests against the citizenship law started by universities. A crowd of men and women covered in masks and armed with sticks, knives and hammers has attacked the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (Jnu) in Delhi, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The attack took place on the night of January 5 and resulted in over 30 injuries among students and teachers. For witnesses, the attackers are said to be militants of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party that rules the country. The reason for the attack would be a retaliation against the protests taking place in the faculty where the pupils are on strike against the increase in university fees for student accommodation. However, experts highlight the attempt to silence intellectuals inside Indian universities, where the most resistant protests against the new citizenship law that excludes the Muslim population have been taking place for about a month. Most of the wounded are hospitalized in the capital's All-India Institute

Bangalore, India, Jan 9, 2020 / 12:37 am MT (CNA).- Catholics in India are seeking to erect the nation’s tallest statue of Jesus, over objections by Hindu groups who say one of their gods lives on the hill designated for the project. Work began last week on the statue, planned to be nearly 100 feet tall, on 10 acres of land owned by the Archdiocese of Bangalore. If completed, the statue would be almost as tall as Poland’s 108-foot Christ the King statue, completed in 2010. Poland’s statue is believed to be the tallest statue of Jesus in the world. Hindu groups have opposed the project, objecting that the Kapalabetta hilltop is the abode of their deity Kapali Betta. They said Christians cannot set up a statue there. Father Cyril Victor Joseph, chairman of the archdiocese’s media commission, told UCA News that the controversy is unnecessary and due to misleading media coverage. He said the land in Ramanagara district has long been in church possession. “We used the same land for decades and conducted the Way of the Cross during Good Fridays,” he said. “A cross was there, and we wanted to replace it with a statue of Jesus after the land was donated

American Pastor Bryan Nerren, a US citizen, was arrested and has been detained in India for three months because of his faith, his attorneys say. Nerren, 58, was facing the Siliguri Court on Thursday, which may finally release his passport and allow him to return home to the US and his family, according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) which is representing Nerren.  After more than 17 years ministering to the people of Nepal and India – training Sunday School teachers – he was stopped on his way to a conference in India. He was questioned about his Christian faith and whether funds he was carrying would be used to support any Christian work; he was subsequently arrested and has been detained in India since October 5, 2019. As CBN News reported in October, Nerren, the leader of the International House of Prayer Ministries in Shelbyville, TN, was initially detained on October 4 along with two other pastors. Nerren's supporters believe this was part of a coordinated action by law enforcement. Earlier, in New Delhi, police had taken issue with Nerren's carrying of a large amount of cash, intended to cover the expenses for two large conferences with over 1,000 attendees booked. "Pastor Nerren explained what

Christians want Scheduled Caste status to be granted regardless of religious affiliation. Changing religion does not end the discrimination imposed on the Dalit community. For years, the Church has asked for the revision of a 1950 presidential order that excludes converts to Christianity from quotas in public administration. India’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear a petition filed by Franklin Caesar Thomas, a lawyer representing the National Council for Dalit Christians (NCDC), seeking inclusion of Dalit Christians in the category of Scheduled Castes The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde with Justices BR Gavai and Surya Kant will hear the petition and issued a notice to the federal government about the matter. In India the caste system was formally abolished by the country’s constitution, but it continues to be practised at the expense of the people formerly known as “untouchables”. The Scheduled Caste policy is aimed rebalancing the unfairness and improve the lives of poor people. For years, the Catholic Church has called for an amendment to the 1950 presidential order that includes Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits in public sector quotas but not those who convert to Christianity. India’s Christians represent 2.3 per cent of the population, that is 27.8 million out of a

A Tennessee pastor is still being barred from leaving India three months after his arrest even though a customs case against him for allegedly not paying duty on the money he brought into the country has been resolved, according to a lawyer representing the family.  Cece Heil, senior counsel with the American Center for Law and Justice, told The Christian Post that pastor Bryan Nerren was scheduled to have a hearing before a court in Siliguri on Thursday morning as his case has gone back and forth between customs and the court system. There was some hope, even though small, she said, that Nerren — the founder of a nonprofit that serves in Nepal called the  Asian Children’s Education Fellowship — could be given back his passport and allowed to leave the country since he paid a fine related to what advocates say is an unfair charge of evading duty payment. However, Thursday’s scheduled hearing in Siliguri was postponed, Heil said.  Nerren, the pastor of International House of Prayer Ministries in Shelbyville, was arrested on grounds that he brought $40,000 with him upon his entrance into India in early October 2019. The money was to be used to pay for his two-week trip to India and Nepal to

Hindu nationalists view Jawaharlal Nehru University, where a mob rampaged last weekend, as “a symbol of everything that is bad in this country,” one analyst said. For decades, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party and its affiliates have struggled to control one of India’s most fertile ideological recruiting grounds: university campuses. That project erupted in violence last weekend, as masked men and women stormed the New Delhi campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of India’s premier liberal institutions. Witnesses said police officers stood by as students were attacked with rods and bricks. Some assailants shouted slogans associated with Mr. Modi’s governing party and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or R.S.S., which for decades has aspired to turn India into a Hindu nation. “They pelted stones at us, stones half the size of bricks,” said Sucharita Sen, a geography professor, who was struck in the head and needed stitches. She was bleeding profusely, she said, adding: “I saw the face of terror.” Mr. Modi’s government initially condemned the violence. But some ministers, along with others in the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, tried to justify it. “For too long, Leftists have been treated with kid gloves,” the party’s branch in the state of Karnataka said on Twitter. “No