John Dayal
Why is the Pope’s Visit to India thwarted?
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 07-Dec-2024
The prophetic Monsignor, Benny D’Aguiar, wrote in The Examiner, India’s oldest newspaper which he edited, of Pope Paul VI’s visit to Mumbai in 1964 to attend the International Eucharistic Congress: “There has never been anything like it within living memo.....
India: An ailing nation, a sick society
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 24-Aug-2024
Sometime later this year, if all goes well in India and the United States, India will send its second citizen into space. The first one, fighter pilot Rakesh Sharma, was on board a Soviet spacecraft in 1984. The next, also an air force pilot, will be on b.....
Under Attack from Hindutva Forces, 'Convent' Schools Fight for Survival
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 13-Apr-2024
Well into the liberalised economic order, matrimonial advertisements in north Indian newspapers had parents of eligible men seeking brides who were fair, accomplished, homely and ‘convent educated’. The last qualification was an omnibus one, ensuring that.....
Government onslaught on Christians: The Church in India has a Task cut out
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 05-Oct-2022
Supreme Court order on Sept 26 seeking a government response to a petition that pleaded for strict action against “religious conversion through fraud and intimidation” will not translate immediately into a national law against conversions to Christianity .....
Cardinal Poola: The first Dalit Cardinal has a task cut out.
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 02-Sep-2022
Cardinal Poola: The first Dalit Cardinal has a task cut out. India has just elected a tribal woman as the republic’s president. And this week, it will see its first Cardinal from a group that was, till 1947, considered untouchable — whose very shadow wou.....
Dialogue, With Care
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 10-Jul-2022
Dialogue, With Care My heart goes out to Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune. An apology has been wrested out of him for his remarks at a public function which were carried by the local media. “The Christian Community accepts RSS ideology and principles. We n.....
The Loudness of Selective Silence
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 15-Mar-2022
The Loudness of Selective Silence To me, as a reporter and human rights activist for more than half a century, a marker of individuals, groups and societies has been not their loud protestations in support of what they hold dear, but the loudness of th.....
Bishops, Pawns and Politics: Indian Church loses friends and makes new enemies
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 15-Oct-2021
No boat on a choppy Sea of Galilee would have been tossed as violently as the Church in India finds itself shaken today, trying to negotiate its way between competitive political space with Muslims and Hindus in distant Kerala, rampant persecution by non-.....
The Horror stories of Kandhamal riots lingers in memory of Indian Christians
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 15-Sep-2021
Exactly 13 years since brutal violence scarred an eastern state, victims are still waiting for justice Feb. 24, 1784, was the day the Christian community in India shed its innocence, discovering its vulnerability in a land where social, religious and o.....
Persecution peaks amid impunity in pandemic-era India
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 15-Jun-2021
The absolute sense of impunity generated in the administrative apparatus of India by the pandemic lockdowns, and the consequent absence of civil society on the streets and in the courts, has aggravated targeted hate and violence against Christians by non-.....