Hindu Nationalism Exposes the Bankruptcy of Conciliar “Religious Liberty” in India
The National Catholic Register (EWTN News) reports that the High Court of Chhattisgarh, a state governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, dismissed a challenge to a government order mandating Hindu prayers — Saraswati Vandana, Gayatri Mantra, Bhojan Mantra — in state schools, dismissing the petition as “premature.” The conciliar “Archbishop of Raipur,” Victor Henry Thakur, alongside Protestant and “civil rights” groups, decried the ruling as a betrayal of “secular democracy,” “fundamental rights,” and “constitutional guarantees” for minorities under Article 30. The “Archbishop” lamented that children must not be forced to “wage legal battle against the system” and pleaded that schools not become “communal battlefields.” Protestant leaders decried a “coercive atmosphere” and “Hindutva agenda.”