A handful of newspapers reported last week that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will call on Pope Francis in the Vatican during his Rome stopover for the first of two multinational meetings in Europe.
There is still no official confirmation of the meeting. And chances are still even that it may not take place at all, considering the busy schedules of the Indian leader and the head of the global Catholic church.
The spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs has not gone beyond saying Modi will be travelling to Rome, Italy and Glasgow, United Kingdom from October 29, 2021 to November 2, 2021 to attend the 16th G-20 Summit and the World Leaders’ Summit of COP-26. Modi then goes to Glasgow for the UN Climate Change summit of leaders of 120 countries on November 1-2, 2021.
In his seven years in office, Modi has refused to invite the head of the global Catholic church to India, home to almost 30 million worshipping Christians, about 60 per cent of whom are Catholics.
The Pope has been the most persistence in his call for peace, including peace between religions in all parts of the world, and dialogue between peoples. His dialogue with the top clergy of the Islamic world and with world religious leaders invited to the many interfaith meetings he has hosted in the Vatican are noteworthy landmarks of the Francis Papacy.
This has triggered speculation in the Indian capital of resistance from the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, RSS, the organisation with its religious nationalism, which Modi served as a senior official till the turn of the century when he was deputed to be chief minister of Gujarat State.
The RSS had opposed Pope John Paul II during his last visit to India where he released the church document Ecclesia In Asia, which the Sangh said would trigger mass conversions in India in the 21st century.
Party strategists would like to hope that a Modi-Francis summit, however brief it may be, will be great optics, and will help the Bharatiya Janata Party retain office in the State of Goa. A quarter of Goa’s population is Christian with a 500-year Catholic tradition and its votes are vital for any party seeking political power in the State.
It is not the same thing as Pope Francis coming to India. While Indian Catholics had been hoping for an India visit in the first few years of the Francis papacy, the Pope himself first expressed a desire to visit India two years ago. During his flight back from a trip to Georgia and Azerbaijan on Oct 2, 2016, he said he would "almost certainly" visit India and Bangladesh in 2017.
On February 7, 2017, three Indian cardinals, including Cardinal Gracias, met Modi in New Delhi, to discuss the possibility of a papal visit. The government did not clear the visit. Early this year, in another meeting by the cardinals, brokered by a high official of the government and the ruling party, another formal request was made. Modi seemed in no hurry to assent to a Papal visit.
The Covid lockdown, with its accompanying crackdown on human rights and civil liberties also saw a free reign to the most extreme elements in the RSS. Members of the Modi cabinet, top ranking ministers in State governments, ranking religious leaders have been targeting Christians and Muslims.
Prayers are routinely disrupted, with States such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh competing with each other in the viciousness of action by mobs with the consent and sometimes participation of the police force.
The death of an ailing 84-year-old Jesuit activist priest Fr Stan Swamy of Ranchi in Jharkhand, who was repeatedly denied bail after his arrest on trumped up charges of conspiracy against the State, made United Nations officials, and various international human rights groups express their concern at the violation of human rights and religious freedom in India. India’s human rights and freedom of faith ranking has been among the lowest since its Independence in 1947.
In his recent low key visit to the United Nation, a trip in which he also met US President Joe Biden and Indian-African origin vice President Kamala Harris, this was politely brought to his notice. Kamala Harris reminded him that “democracies around the world are under threat, it is imperative that we defend democratic principles and institutions within our respective countries.” She particularly singled out the work that needs to be done “to begin to imagine, and then actually achieve, our vision for democratic principles and institutions.”
A recent memorandum that the Christian community gave to the Indian Minister for Minority affairs, said that out of 28 States in India, at least 16 States regularly witness attacks on Christians. Violence and incidents against religious minorities include physical assaults, damage to churches, spying on prayer services and refusal to allow new church buildings.
The most vicious is social exclusion which is also commonly used as a tactic to victimise minorities, notably by denying them basic human rights and services such as access to water and electricity, as well as employment, thereby increasing their vulnerability. Violence against religious minorities is further compounded by the failure of the police to investigate and prosecute mobs and perpetrators. Modi has remained silent.
Modi’s words in the Vatican, if the summit with Pope Francis materialises, could be an important step in reversing this trend in India.
(John Dayal, author and editor, lives in New Delhi.)