CHRISTIAN NEWS MAGAZINE FOR KERALA MALAYALEE CHRISTIANS FROM INDIA AROUND THE WORLD
APRIL 2011 WORLD NEWS & EVENTS
VOL:10 ISSUE:04

DECLINING RATIO OF WOMEN IN INDIA A CHALLENGE, CHURCH LEADER SAYS


ENI-11-0141

By Anto Akkara

Bangalore, India, 18 March (ENInews)--Responding to a recent prediction that gender prejudice and sex-selective abortion in India will result in 20 percent more men than women by 2030, a prominent church woman leader says the church should address these issues. There are 929 women for every 1000 men, according to the 2001 national census, which also reported that among Christians in some parts of the country, there are more women than men. "Christians cannot be complacent about our better sex ratio and ignore the steady decline in the ratio of women in the larger society," the Rev. Nirmala Vasantkumar, president of the Women's Fellowship of the Church of South India (CSI), told ENInews on 18 March.

Vasantkumar was reacting to a study published 14 March in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Led by Dr. Therese Hesketh and members of the UCL Centre for International Health and Development in London, it said that easy access to sex-selective abortions has led to serious imbalances in the male/female population of China, India and South Korea. In India, the preference for boys is rooted in the Hindu belief that one cannot attain "moksha" (liberation) unless he has a son to perform his last rites. Families are often expected to provide expensive gifts, or dowries, when their daughters marry. Worried about the burden of a dowry, couples often abort a second pregnancy if the fetus is a girl.

Pratibha Devisingh Patil, the first female president of India, also expressed concern on 17 March over the report. If it continues, it will have "a negative impact on the society," cautioned Patil, who is Hindu, in an address at a university convention. The federal government had earlier estimated that 10 million female fetuses have been aborted over the past two decades, despite a ban on sex determination tests. "The situation is very bad. We need to make use of our schools and colleges to change the deep-rooted gender bias," said Vasantkumar.

Education is the biggest activity of the Indian Christians who account for 2.3 percent of India’s 1.2 billion people. Three-fourths of the nearly 20 million students on the rolls of 30,000 Christian educational institutions are non-Christians. Though Christians have a higher female-to-male ratio, Vasantkumar said "it is time for churches to take up the challenge to fight the (gender) prejudice in the larger society." [479 words]

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]

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CHURCHES IN INDIA CHALLENGED TO SUPPORT INDIGENOUS PEOPLE


ENI-11-0081

By Anto Akkara

New Delhi, 21 February (ENInews)--Churches in India have been urged to stand up for indigenous peoples who have been affected by such development projects as dams and mines. A conference organized by the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) said in a statement that "(indigenous people) are rendered more helpless when the churches choose to remain silent spectators and sometimes themselves (become) the instruments of violence." The NCCI, which includes 30 Orthodox and Protestant churches, held the 13-16 February conference to examine violence and violation of human rights affecting indigenous people.

"More than 55 percent of the people displaced by development projects are tribals (indigenous peoples)," said the Rev. P. B. M. Basaiawmoit, NCCI vice president, addressing the conference, which was attended by more than 60 delegates and social activists from across India. Basaiawmoit, said the Christian ideal of human endeavour and development has led to the exploitation of tribals' areas, displacing them from their habitats in the name of development. "So, we have a greater duty to undo this damage and stand up for them," added the Presbyterian church member from the tribal majority north-eastern state of Meghalaya.

Acknowledging that indigenous people in the mineral-rich mountain areas are displaced by development projects, the conference urged the churches "to establish structures" to take up the causes of the indigenous who have become "refugees in their own homelands." "They are subjected to new forms of violence like state repression. The state, instead of being the protector, monopolizes and perpetrates violence with scant regard for human lives, livelihood and dignity," said the conference declaration.

Hundreds of people have died at the hands of security forces that have been trying to crush a rebel insurgency in the mineral-rich indigenous belt known as the "red corridor" that comprises 170 of the 626 districts of India. The conference urged the churches "to use the pulpits" to speak up for the indigenous, who number about 100 million of India’s 1.2 billion people. The conference expressed alarm over the "displacement in the name of development, exploitation of natural resources, ruining biodiversity and the symbiotic relationship between land and (indigenous) people" and the consequent "disappearance of indigenous art forms and cultural practices."

Agelios Michael, NCCI vice president (representing the youth) told ENInews that "the big brother attitude" is visible even in the development programmes churches run for the tribal people. He said that churches have run a major development programme in Orissa for three decades, and said that "the control of the project is still with the non-tribals." He added that "they should have been trained in leadership and the project should have been entrusted to them." Michael is from the Lutheran church.

Hrangathan Chhungi, secretary of the NCCI Commission for Indigenous Peoples, told ENInews that the declaration from the conference will be placed before the NCCI executive to finalize a policy on indigenous peoples.

[COURTESY TO ENI AS SOURCE]

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