In East India, a Marian shrine draws in Christian, Hindu and Muslim pilgrims

(RNS) — The historic Catholic minor basilica attracts thousands of pilgrims annually — the majority of them Hindu and Muslim — seeking what they call the power of the divine feminine from the Virgin Mary.

Devotees pray at the Basilica of the Holy Rosary, locally known as the Bandel Church, on May 30, 2026, near Kolkata, India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

Priyadarshini Sen
July 9, 2026   

RNS

BANDEL, India (RNS) — Each week for the last 13 years, 28-year-old Rimpa Chowdhury, who describes herself as a devout Hindu, has visited the Basilica of the Holy Rosary — a historic 16th-century Catholic church on the banks of the Hooghly River in eastern India with a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

For Chowdhury, the Bandel Church, as it is known locally, is more than a place where her prayers have been answered. Its vast riverside grounds, 50 miles north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, are where she has found community and peace.

“There’s something about this place,” said Chowdhury, wearing a loose green tunic. “A shrine becomes something else when a woman has power over it.”

Over decades, thousands of pilgrims — the majority of them Muslims and Hindus — have been visiting the basilica for feast days every year, led by what they call the “power of the divine feminine” — their belief in the power of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The Basilica of the Holy Rosary in Bandel, India, near Kolkata. It was declared a minor basilica by Pope John Paul II in 1988. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

Against its grand façade, featuring soaring arches and a vaulted-ceiling nave of ancient murals, a statue of Mary, “Our Lady of Happy Voyage,” stands out as the main attraction. Sailors and travelers visit her shrine frequently, praying for protection from danger. In 1988, Pope John Paul II declared the historic sanctuary a minor basilica, recognizing the church’s spiritual significance.

According to historical records, Catholic Augustinian friars and Portuguese traders settled in this region of Bengal in the late 16th century. Portugal’s monarchy tied Marian devotion to their colonial conquests, placing their outposts under the protection of the Virgin Mary.

An entrance to the Basilica of the Holy Rosary, locally known as the Bandel Church, on the outskirts of Kolkata, India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

Although the original church, built in 1599, was destroyed during an invasion by Muslim rulers of the Portuguese outpost in 1632 and again by an earthquake, legends say the rescue of Mary’s statue from the depths of the Hooghly River cemented her place as a divine protector.

“In Bengal, the goddess is revered as the ultimate primordial force in the universe,” said Father John Chalil, lead priest of the Bandel Church. “Devotees from all over India come here seeking sanctuary, and the nuns cater to their various needs.”

Since the 1950s, Chalil says, nuns from five congregations have been serving at the shrine and building social harmony in an area dotted with terracotta temples, mosques and churches. Local communities lean on each other, often transcending religious differences.

India’s Christian leaders work to convince Modi government to curb attacks

The shrine community around the church stretches across several villages — each village informally named after Marian apparitions, including Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Vailankanni (Good Health).

People pass through Bandel, India, on May 30, 2026, near Kolkata. 

(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

The harmony is historically rooted. Though once a vital Portuguese outpost on the Hooghly River, the town of Bandel has evolved into a shared space where people of all faiths venerate local shrines. The church’s community programs reach non-Christian populations.

“We go to the surrounding villages to educate the masses about women’s rights and tribal welfare,” said Sister Nirmala, a nun involved with spiritual work at Bandel for more than 15 years. “Religious differences have not interfered with people’s faith in Mary.”

The nuns have been offering spiritual nourishment to the devotees and smoothing sectarian differences despite the growing religious polarization in India.

Those with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity provide vital care and health services in the nearby areas. The Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate offer retreats and counseling to pilgrims, and the Auxilium Convent Sisters run a boarding home for young, underprivileged girls, providing them an education and assistance to live independently after graduation.

Nuns pray at the Basilica of the Holy Rosary, locally known as the Bandel Church, on May 30, 2026, near Kolkata, India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

Sister Philomena Mathew, a nun with the Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians, another Catholic order in the local community, is concerned about the growing attacks on Christians across the country.

“We’re willing to confront anyone who obstructs the peace and harmony in this region,” she said.

Anti-Christian violence spearheaded by Hindu nationalist mobs has escalated across India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. Vigilante groups have disrupted prayer gatherings, vandalized church properties and assaulted pastors and nuns, accusing them without evidence of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity.

“Last year there were 831 attacks against Christians in India,” said AC Michael, the national coordinator for United Christian Forum, a New Delhi-based human rights coalition that advocates for the rights of religious minorities. “From isolated localized incidents, the violence has become systemic, operating through a network of persecutions.”

Even though West Bengal has in the past been a safer state for religious minorities compared to the rest of the country, the recent election of a BJP state government has sparked apprehension, with attacks against Christians rising in the region.

Why anti-Christian persecution demands our collective action

Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, a global Catholic order founded in Kolkata, has been coming under severe scrutiny from Hindu nationalist organizations, which claim its charitable work is aimed at converting vulnerable Hindus to Christianity. In December 2021, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs revoked the organization’s license, but reversed its decision after weeks of pushback.

Mother Teresa shown with an Indian child in 1977. (RNS archive photo)

“If nuns from the Missionaries of Charity were able to fend off attacks from religious extremists, I’m sure nuns at Bandel will also keep the community safe,” Michael said.

Mother Teresa visited Bandel Church in 1995, two years before her death. Her work in the region was centered on maintaining a mutually supportive relationship with the local Salesian order.

The town of Bandel has not been a focal point of targeted minority violence, but the broader region has occasionally witnessed political and festival-related communal clashes. On July 5, a mob barged into a newly constructed church south of Kolkata, threatening the congregants and vandalizing crosses.

“It’s the vision of the great saints that we are carrying forward,” said Sister Jesline Rose, a nun with the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate who serves at the church. “No doubt the political landscape in Bengal is changing, but we’ll keep our pluralistic spirit alive.”

Rose and her fellow nuns regularly visit Hindu and Muslim families in the neighborhood to offer spiritual support and solace to individuals facing personal and medical hardships.

The altar and interior of the Basilica of the Holy Rosary near Kolkata, India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

The pilgrims, aided by the nuns, write down their prayer intentions on small slips of paper that are dropped into the wish box located near the statue of the Virgin Mary.

During festivals and winter walk pilgrimages, the nuns manage thousands of devotees — mostly Muslims and Christians — who congregate on the grounds to unite in thanksgiving.

The church is the unifying cultural monument for the devotees, and the nuns, its custodians.

They believe the power of the divine feminine in Bengal — from the Virgin Mary to Hindu goddesses Kali and Durga — will help them fight off threats from religious extremists.

“We look to the nuns for hope,” said Chowdhury, who lives in the narrow alleyways behind Bandel Church, a neighborhood of mostly Hindu and Muslim families. She’s anxious about the rising religious intolerance in the country, which she believes could trickle down to Bengal. The nuns “embody the power of Mother Mary, who is the protector of all devotees at our church,” she said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

What Does Hindu Rashtra Mean?

Prabhat Patnaik | 20 Jun 2026

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A Hindu State, unlike what its name suggests, is nothing else but a dictatorship of monopoly capital, which is being unabashedly promoted by Modi.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with leading industrialists of the country.

The objective of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is to establish a Hindu state (“Hindu Rashtra”) in India. But what exactly does a Hindu State mean? The obvious and immediate answer would be that instead of the present Constitutionally-guaranteed equality for all citizens irrespective of religion, there would be in such a State a superior status of the Hindus compared with those belonging to other religions, especially the Muslims who constitute the largest religious minority in the country.

Such an inequality, however, cannot be sustained without a specifically repressive State; all states in a class-oppressive society are repressive but a state that institutionalises inequality in this manner would have to be even more specifically repressive. Would a Hindu State then mean a dictatorship of a collectivity, called the  Hindus, exercised over those belonging to other religions?

The moment this question is posed, the answer is obviously “no”. A rickshaw puller would remain a rickshaw puller no matter what his religion in a Hindu state; a peon would remain a peon no matter what his religion in a Hindu state; a gig-worker would remain a gig-worker no matter what his religion in a Hindu state.

The so-called Hindu State does not promise and would not achieve any change in the material condition of life for the majority of the Hindus; then in whose interests would the dictatorship, the form with which such a State would necessarily be associated, be exercised? The obvious answer is: in the interests of monopoly capital. A Hindu state, unlike what its name suggests, is nothing else but a dictatorship of monopoly capital.

There would, of course, be a veneer of Hindu rituals and Hindu religious practices before State functions, and there would no doubt be a preference for Hindus compared with others in selections for jobs; but new jobs themselves would not just be as non-existent as they are today, but there would even be a disappearance of existing jobs owing to the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the corporates. While the Muslims and other members of religious minorities would face severe and multiple oppressions, the Hindus would not experience any alleviation of their oppression.

The class whose power would be greatly strengthened is monopoly bourgeoisie, and even within this class the new group of monopoly bourgeoisie. A Hindu State, in other words, would be a State lorded over by the Indian big corporates in general, and the Adanis and the Ambanis in particular.

This is reminiscent of the situation in Germany in the 1930s where the Nazis claimed to be giving effect to “Aryan superiority” by victimising “non-Aryan” populations like the Jews (the Nazis considered it impossible for a person to be an “Aryan Jew”) and the Gypsies (an “Aryan Gypsy” was likewise considered impossible).

The Nazi State, however, was not an “Aryan state”. The dictatorship it set up was, in the words of Georgi Dimitrov, President of the Communist International, at its Seventh Congress in 1935, the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”.

The description of the State by those who lead it does not necessarily correspond to its reality; the question to ask is: which is the class that is using the State to further its own interests, and all States that claim in contemporary times to be furthering the interests of some ethnic or religious or linguistic group by scuttling democracy and reducing other groups to the status of second-class citizens, are in reality furthering the interests of monopoly capital by instituting its dictatorship and seeking to divide the working people along ethnic, religious or linguistic lines. The imposition of a sectional State in a modern, multi-sectional society amounts in reality to a dictatorship of monopoly capital.

The question may be raised: since even the existing “secular” State is already dominated by monopoly capital, why should monopoly capital need, and hence aid the coming into being of, a new, and altogether different, Hindu-supremacist, State that embodies its dictatorship? The need for such a change obviously arises only when the earlier form of the State faces a serious threat; and that happens in a period when the economy runs into stagnation and greatly increased unemployment. The current move toward a dictatorship of monopoly capital, under the guise of a Hindu State, reflects the dead-end of the neo-liberal regime that has brought stagnation to the economy, and greater unemployment and acute distress to the vast mass of the working people.

Democracy provides greater scope for resistance and struggle to the working people, because of which in any period of crisis efforts are made to attenuate democracy, so that the threat to the hegemony of monopoly capital is kept in check; but when the crisis is protracted and the threat to its hegemony is persistent, monopoly capital adopts more extreme measures. It forms an alliance with whatever force is most capable of dividing the people, in order to generate an alternative distractive discourse, to prevent the working people from launching a united fight, and to justify the scuttling of democracy in the name of instituting a sectarian State, which in the Indian context is the promised Hindu State.

The distractive nature of the RSS-BJP discourse is absolutely obvious at present. When the country’s workforce, especially its youth, is weighed down by unemployment, when the incidence of educated unemployment is extremely high, the country’s rulers have not a word to say on this pressing problem; instead, they are crying hoarse about infiltration from Bangladesh! Ironically, since by the BJP’s own reckoning a nation’s per capita gross domestic product is the index of its progress, Bangladesh, which according to the IMF has a higher per capita income at present than India, should be considered more advanced than India; how then can the BJP explain such massive infiltration as it claims from a more advanced to a less advanced country?

Liberal opinion has been trying to explain for some time why there has been such an upsurge of Hindutva in India of late. But it fails to notice that the rise of Hindutva in India is part of an upsurge of neo-fascism all over the world, because of which no India-specific explanation of this rise would be adequate. The rise of Hindutva in other words is not a sui generis phenomenon; to a significant extent it is orchestrated by monopoly capital through financial and media support, in India, as elsewhere in the capitalist world from Argentina, to the US, Italy, France, Germany, and the UK, in the context of the dead-end that neoliberal capitalism has brought to the world economy.

The RSS recently celebrated its centenary; the fact that it suddenly finds itself ensconced in power while for a hundred years it had been nowhere near it, and can boast today to be the “richest political party” in the world, is to be attributed to the massive support it receives from monopoly capital at present.

But it is not only monopoly capital that has become well-disposed toward Hindutva. The Hindutva elements, too, have changed their attitude toward monopoly capital. The main support base of the RSS had originally been among shop-keepers, small capitalists and the urban middle class, and it had enjoyed the financial backing of certain feudal elements. It had never, of course, adopted an anti-monopoly rhetoric, unlike, say in Germany, where the Nazis had adopted an outwardly anti-monopoly stance before coming to power; but the RSS had not been exclusively pro-monopoly capital either. There had been alternative voices within the Hindutva camp regarding economic policy, though economic policy itself had not been explicitly an area of great concern to the Hindutva forces.

The contribution of Narendra Modi has been to change all this. His importance in the Hindutva hierarchy arises because he became an architect of the corporate-Hindutva alliance; and it is by forming this alliance that Hindutva came to power. Indeed, the very idea of promoting Modi as the Prime Minister of the country was mooted at a gathering of capitalists at an “Investors’ Summit” in Gujarat when Modi was the Chief Minister of that state. And Modi became an unashamed, no-holds-barred, promoter of monopoly capital, especially of the newer elements within it.

In the process he also became a promoter of international finance capital with which Indian monopoly capital had become integrated in the neo-liberal era. In the era of stagnation of neo-liberal capitalism, Modi with his neo-fascist agenda has become a particularly useful asset to Indian monopoly capital.

The writer is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

Should RSS be Accountable to People of India?

Ram Puniyani | 19 Jun 2026

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The time has come to give importance to our Constitution and Indian nationalism and demand registration of not only RSS but all such organisations that take donations and spend hugely.

After the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-trained pracharak (propagator) Nathuram Godse pumped three bullets in to the lean chest of ‘Father of the Nation’, Mahatma Gandhi, because Gandhi held that the nation belongs to people of all religions, Godse and his parent organisations, RSS-Hindu Mahasabha held that the nation is only for Hindus.

A hate propaganda was spread against the Indian national movement and Gandhi, leading to his assassination at point blank range. Due to this Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minster, banned the RSS. “All their speeches were full of communal poison,” he wrote after banning the Sangh in 1948. As a final result of this poison, the “country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji." The ban on RSS was lifted after it gave an undertaking that it will have a written constitution and will work only as a cultural organisation.

As a matter of fact, RSS became a “supra political” organisation in the garb of culture. It had already founded Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and was later instrumental in the formation of Bharatiya Jansangh, the predecessor of Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, which is currently in power at the Centre and many state governments.

The RSS claims that it is run by money from ‘Guru Dakshina’, collected on the day of Dasara festival. The Income Tax tribunal somehow has exempted this source of income from taxation. However, RSS has been spending infinite money in its programmes, running shakhas (branches) even on public land. The expenses involved in its route marches are not disclosed. The value of the RSS head office in Delhi is reported to be above Rs 100 crore. All these massive expenditures are above State scrutiny.

This ‘cultural organisation cover’ was accepted by the State and people at large at face value and it has been merrily expanding itself to lakhs of shakhas and lakhs of swayamsevaks. Nehru had understood the nature of RSS quite early. But till a few years ago no political party, including the Indian National Congress (INC), raised any questions on the issues such as how this organisation has been enjoying a free ride, ignoring the laws and morality of the State.

But better late than never, from the past few years, the INC and Rahul Gandhi, in particular, has been raising logical and legal questions on RSS. Rahul Gandhi had stated that it was RSS people who had killed Mahatma Gandhi, for which he is facing a legal case.

In the line of confronting RSS, now Priyank Kharge, the Home Minister of Karnataka, has ask RSS to get itself registered and be accountable to the State of India.

In a letter (June 13, 2026) to RSS supremo, Mohan Bhagwat, Kharge sought details on the organisation’s legal status, finances, office-bearers and tax compliance. The Karnataka Home Minister also details and type of activities, which has RSS officially claimed that it had over 60,000 shakhas and crores of swayamsevaks across India and abroad.

Kharge outlined in this in his publicly released communication, saying that registration was not simply a legal requirement but also a moral issue. He wrote, “It is precisely because of this scale, influence and reach that the RSS must be held to the highest standards of transparency, accountability and constitutional compliance.”

In response to this letter, the RSS Sarsanghchalak, Mohan Bhagwat, said that he was ignoring the letter and would not reply to it. This smacks of Bhagwat thinking that he and his organisation are above the law and Indian Constitution.

As such, RSS does not believe in the Indian Constitution. Three days after the Indian Constitution was implemented, the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, in its editorial, stated that this Constitution coming from the Indian Constituent Assembly and drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar was not fit for our country as the glorious values of Indian holy books were not there. RSS chief Rajendra Singh had said that it should be scrapped.

K. Sudarshan, another RSS chief, went on to say that this Constitution was based on Western values, so it should be replaced by the Constitution based on an Indian holy book. Changing the Indian Constitution was one of the undercurrents of BJP’s slogan of ‘400 paar’ in the 2024 general elections.

Bhagwat’s feeling that his organisation is above the Constitution may also be stemming from the fact that though he does not hold any official position in the government of India, he enjoys security on par with the the Prime Minister.

In response to Priyank Kharge, Bhagwat said, “We are not secretive; we are working on open ground. We are calling people and telling them about us. This is politics, and all kinds of gimmicks are being tried… Hindu Dharma is not registered, and many other entities are not registered.” So, did they discuss the demolition of Babri Mosque in the open?

One recalls that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recently recommended that the US government impose targeted sanctions on RSS. The proposed measures include freezing the organisation's assets and denying visas to its members.

One of the arguments proffered by Bhagwat for non-registering is that even Hindu religion is not registered! This statement equating Hinduism with RSS is an insult to Hindu religion in a way. Hinduism has many streams of thought-- Nath, Tantra, Shaiva, Siddhanta and Bhakti. The Hinduism which RSS projects is Brahmanism, the one based on caste and gender hierarchy. This argument does not hold water in the least.

The surprise is not that the demand for registration of RSS is coming up. What is surprising is why this demand did not come up earlier. Many officials sympathetic to Hindu nationalist ideology are there to protect the RSS. But the simple rule of donations and expenditure needs to be the major reason for registration. Similarly, political activities in the name of culture need to be admitted. Also, how RSS is violating the commitments it gave while requesting for lifting of ban need to be kept in mind.

The time has come to give importance to the Indian Constitution and Indian nationalism and demand registration of not only RSS but all other organisations fulfilling such conditions.

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.

Iran war drives India’s cockroaches out, but can Modi crush them?

LONG READ


When an Indian student at a US university used AI to create the “Cockroach Janta Party (CPJ)”, a parody political party, it sparked a viral sensation, hitting the zeitgeist in a country that has been particularly affected by the Iran war. As India's youth circumvent bans to express their economic discontent online, it could pose a threat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.


Issued on: 28/05/2026 
FRANCE24
By: Leela JACINTO
Video by: Vedika BAHL

An AI-generated illustration shows the parody Cockroach Janta Party’s logo. © AI-generated image/ Cockroach Janta Party
05:46


Barely three weeks after he launched a parody political movement that took India by storm, Abhijeet Dipke is being hunted and hounded by trolls, facing online extermination by the government, and his AI-generated satirical mascot, the cockroach, is as reviled in ruling party circles as the real thing is in kitchens across the country.

The movement was sparked by Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant’s controversial statements comparing the country’s unemployed youth to cockroaches. “Disheartened by those comments, I made a tweet on X that, what if all cockroaches come together? And on that personal X post, I received tremendous traction,” explained Dipke, an Indian political communications strategist and student at Boston University, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

SPOTLIGHT © FRANCE 24
13:28

Soon, a spoof party, the "Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)", or the People’s Party of Cockroaches, was born online. The name, a parody of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was digested immediately – and gleefully – by netizen critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies.

The satirical party hit the zeitgeist in a country that has been particularly impacted by the fallout of the Iran war. The Middle East conflict has also put a spotlight on Modi’s policies, exposing India’s vulnerabilities, highlighting New Delhi’s lack of clout on the diplomatic stage, and increasing the squeeze on significant sections of the population that have been overlooked in the Hindu nationalist government’s “economic miracle” discourse that has dominated India’s political stage for over a decade.

As millions flocked to the cockroach satirical cause, the movement’s social media accounts broke records, gained national and international media attention and even saw demonstrators don cockroach masks and display the parasite mascot at street protests.

It wasn’t long before the cockroach social media accounts came under attack, with Dipke alleging hacking and threats to his family. “I have been getting death threats for the last three days. Now, even my family is getting death threats,” said the 30-year-old native of the western Indian state of Maharashtra who is currently enrolled in a Master’s programme in the US. As digital rights groups condemned the violation of free speech, Dipke claimed there was a “full-blown attack against us to suppress this movement”.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, India has been slipping down press freedom indexes, with NGOs such as Reporters Without Borders warning that the Indian media “has fallen into an unofficial state of emergency”. But with the latest crackdown generating new waves of media coverage, the lid on the discourse of discontent has been prised open, and the scuttling cockroaches may be hard to contain.
Rising youth unemployment, falling US university admissions

While Kant has clarified that his observations from the bench slamming “youngsters like cockroaches” were misquoted and directed only at people obtaining "fake or bogus degrees”, his explanation failed to contain the uproar primarily because his remarks touched wounds that have been festering for years. But they have been suppressed by India’s political elites, according to analysts.

“There's been a lot of anger among the youth the world over,” noted Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University. “But I think fundamentally the trigger was the safety valves of the Indian state – which is the Supreme Court and the parliament and the Indian media – are no longer acting as safety valves or speaking when the executive overreaches. They're not providing the kind of correction that they're supposed to provide, which is where the frustration is building up in a certain sense among the youth.”

India has the world’s largest youth population, with about 65% of the 1.4 billion population under the age of 35, making youth unemployment a major issue for policymakers. Joblessness among India's urban youth stands at 14%, which is far higher than the overall unemployment of about 5%, official data ⁠show. That figure soars among graduates, with nearly 40% among those below 25 years unemployed, according to the 2026 State of Working India Report by the Azim Premji University.

The world’s most populous nation produces around 8 million graduate students a year, a hefty figure for the job market to accommodate. India also accounts for the largest percentage of foreign students in US universities, which in turn has supplied the US economy with a highly skilled workforce and an aspirational goal for students and their families back home.

But the American Dream in India is fading fast in President Donald Trump’s second term.

The Trump administration’s student visa restrictions, increased visa revocations often linked to minor infractions such as speeding tickets, and an atmosphere of intimidation – including threats to deport international students over pro-Palestinian speech – have seen foreign admissions in US universities fall by 17% in the 2025 fall semester, according to the Institute of International Education. In India, that figure plummeted to 75%, according to Indian media reports, with around 8,000 student visas revoked before December 2025.

From India to US detention: Trump's campus crackdown sends warning to foreign students

“The kind of people who go and study in the US, or who work in the US, are mostly Mr. Modi's staunch supporters because they come from the kind of socio-economic background which staunchly supports Mr. Modi,” explained Singh. “For them, being hurt [by Trump’s immigration policies], and Mr. Modi not being able to prevent the damage to them, is going to in some way damage Mr. Modi.”
A bromance sputters, then dies

While the Trump administration’s policies have sparked alarm in several world capitals, in India, it has heightened the scrutiny on Modi’s foreign policy and its rupture from New Delhi’s historic non-aligned position.

The Hindu nationalist prime minister made a splashy display of his tilt to the US during Trump’s first term, including a massive 2019 “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, where, the New York Times noted, Modi “broke with protocol to campaign for a second term” for Trump.

President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the "Howdy Modi" event in Houston, September 22, 2019. © Evan Vucci, AP


But when Trump returned to the White House, he killed the bromance with a whopping 50% tariff announcement on Indian goods last year. The US president then topped it with his persistent claims of personally engineering an end to a brief cross-border war between India and Pakistan, the latest conflict between the two nuclear armed states over the disputed Kashmir region.

It was a win for Pakistan since it has long sought international mediation to resolve the Kashmir crisis, while India maintains it is a strictly bilateral issue. Islamabad repaid Trump by nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize. Modi, meanwhile, bristled amid persistent news reports of the Indian prime minister avoiding a phone call with the US president, which were denied by both sides.

Iran war makes India ‘irrelevant’

The Iran War has heightened the perception of New Delhi’s sidelining on the diplomatic stage, as Islamabad emerged as a key mediator, with Trump dubbing Pakistan’s powerful military chief General Asim Munir his "favourite field marshal".

China, India’s biggest Asian rival and more threatening neighbour, has also welcomed Pakistan’s efforts to negotiate and renew a shaky ceasefire.

China and Pakistan are historical allies, while India has been viewed in Western capitals as a strategic partner to contain Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific. But the Iran war has rattled the pieces on the Asian geostrategic chessboard, with New Delhi noting Trump’s high-profile state visit this month to China, where the US president proclaimed he held “very successful talks” with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

Earlier this week, Xi hosted Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and praised his guest’s “positive efforts” to bring peace to the Middle East. India, meanwhile, hosted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a visit that was widely viewed as a bid to defuse tensions between the world’s most populous democracies.

At the end of Rubio’s visit, most South Asia analysts concluded that the outcome of the visit was edifying, but not substantive. “There's been a little bit of optics. But I think the real issue is what concretely has been achieved that is in India's favour or which shows that the Trump administration is thinking differently about India. And we haven't seen progress on that,” explained Singh.

The Modi administration’s failure to condemn the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, a historic Indian ally, while forging close ties with Israel has also depleted India’s standing in the Global South and among the BRICS grouping, analysts say.

“India is just missing from the whole geopolitical debate in West Asia or the Middle East. And it’s not that India is just absent. Being absent is fine, but India's absence is not even being noticed. Which means that India is irrelevant,” Singh noted.
A Gen Z – and cockroach – threat

The absence on the diplomatic front is heightened by the serious strains the Iran war has placed on the Indian economy.

The South Asian giant is heavily dependent on fuel imports from the Middle East, and the soaring cost of gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel has put a dent in the Indian rupee, with the currency slumping to a record low last week against the dollar.

“In terms of the shock this has had, not just on energy, but now the ramifications, which are coming on all sorts of fronts, including gold imports, the diamond and all sorts of different industries, that’s not really a good position for India,” said Sandeep Bhardwaj, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS).

The cockroach movement, Bhardwaj notes, is “basically coming out of a lot of this economic anxiety, which is coming out of the persistent job crisis, which has been exacerbated by the economic crisis right now,” he said. “There is a real threat of that economic pressure snowballing into something real in terms of a political cost for the government.”

The political cost of downplaying youth discontent has been keenly felt in India’s neighbourhood in recent years. Gen Z protests have unseated governments in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, leading some to question if India could witness a similar experience.

But Bhardwaj is cautious about predicting a Gen Z replay in the world’s most populous nation. “India is so big. There are so many variations. For a non-political party, led a grassroots movement like this to engulf India, it's going to take a very long time and a lot of things to happen for it to become a major crisis in Indian politics,” he noted.

For the founder of the "Cockroach Janta Party", the meteoric rise of his online protest has led him to question how to take the momentum forward, but he’s taking his time. “None of this was intended. It was born out of satire,” said Dipke carefully. “I think the biggest mistake that all political parties in India have made is that they have stopped engaging with the youth. They no longer have a dialogue. They no longer listen to them. So that's what we are going to do,” he explained. “After getting those ideas and the data from them, that is when we will decide our next course of action.”

Dipke may not be sure of the next course of action for his viral movement, but he’s certain he will not abandon his resilient parasite mascot. “Of course, cockroach is going to be the name of this movement going forward because people are loving it, especially the youth and the Gen Z,” he said. “What was thrown at them as an insult, they are now carrying this name with pride. So, we are going to continue with the cockroach name.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Christians decry persecution in India's heartland

N Hannan in Shahjahanpur

DW

With Christians in India increasingly targeted by Hindu vigilantes, victims say police often side with the attackers.

In Uttar Pradesh, over a hundred pastors were detained (and eventually released) over claims linked with the state's anti-conversion laws

 (file photo)Image: Prabhat Kumar Verma/ZUMA/IMAGO

On a humid Sunday afternoon in July last year, a small gathering of Christians inside a modest home in India's Uttar Pradesh state was interrupted by a mob.

"At least 50 to 60 people associated with a Hindu right-wing organization came when people were receiving a religious message," said Jaynendra (name changed), the pastor leading the prayer.

What followed, he said, was chaos. The mob "created a ruckus and closed the prayer hall," Jaynendra said.

The gathering, held inside his home in the Shahjahanpur district, was not unusual. Like many Christians in northern India, Jaynendra hosts what is known as a house church, a quiet form of worship common among small and impoverished Christian communities. But in recent years, such gatherings have increasingly drawn the attention of Hindu right-wing vigilante groups who accuse Christians of carrying out forced conversions.

India's Christians make up just over 2% of the country's population, compared to around 79% for Hindus and over 14% for Muslims, according to the 2011 census.

Data compiled by rights groups indicates a disproportionate rise in violence against Christians over the past decade. In 2025 alone, local monitoring groups documented nearly 900 incidents across multiple Indian states, including physical assaults, disruptions to church services, and threats targeting worshippers, as per a report by Christian Solidarity International, a global Christian rights organization based in Switzerland.

New laws in India fuel attacks on Christians  03:07

Pastor arrested after attack on home church

Jaynendra's account is one among many that suggest a recurring pattern. Mobs descend on prayer meetings, raise allegations of forced conversion, and then the police are called. Often, victims say, it is the worshippers rather than the violent mob who are detained.

Following the attack in Uttar Pradesh, the police "took around 10 to 11 people to the police station and detained them," Jaynendra said. "They kept my family and others the whole day." Among those detained, he said, was a 13-year-old girl.

"The police questioned them and found out that they had no money or pressure to attend the gathering. Everyone came here to pray with their own will," he said. "But still they kept them."

The pastor himself was later arrested. He spent more than four months in jail under charges related to Uttar Pradesh's anti-conversion law. The law is a controversial state legislation that criminalizes religious conversions deemed to be carried out through force, fraud, or inducement. Critics say the law is often weaponized to target minority communities. Courts in the region have also noted a similar "disturbing trend" in false claims.

"There was no evidence against me," he said. "But there was a lot of pressure." DW did not receive a response from Uttar Pradesh police, despite several requests for comment.

This photo, taken in 2024, shows the grave of a Christian who died when mobs rampaged through parts of India's eastern state of Odisha after the murder of a Hindu priestImage: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP

'They started beating people'

Across northern and central India, similar stories are emerging. In Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara district, Vinay Patil (name changed) described an attack on his congregation during a Sunday service earlier this year.

"About 35 to 40 people came," he said. "They were young boys. They started talking in abusive language and said that 'you are doing forced conversions here.'" Some of the attackers, he said, were intoxicated. Many carried sticks.

"They started beating people. Women, children, everyone," he said. "Someone's shoulder was fractured. Someone's head was bleeding." By the time police arrived, the attackers had fled. But instead of pursuing them, Patil said, officers detained the victims and accused them of carrying out "forceful conversions."

"The police picked us up and took us away," he said. "Our people had made videos. It was visible that they were beating. After that, the police did not take any action."

Patil said that fear has become part of daily life. "Today a Christian, especially a pastor, cannot even sit at another person's house," he said. "We have to think before stepping out. Even going to someone's birthday can become a problem."

Violence rising under Modi's BJP

Rights advocates say such incidents are no longer isolated. Michael Williams of the United Christian Forum said the organization recorded 134 incidents of anti-Christian violence in 2014, the year India elected Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, compared to around 900 in 2025.

"What you can see now, which we could not see earlier, is that the people who are doing these crimes have no fear on their faces," he said. "They are stopping in broad daylight, in public spaces, with no fear. This is a growing trend."

Williams and others link the rise in violence to the political climate following the ascent of the BJP in 2014. The party, which promotes a Hindu nationalist ideology, governs in several states where anti-conversion laws have been enacted.

These laws, intended to prevent forced or fraudulent conversions, have been criticized by rights groups for their vague definitions and potential for misuse.

One of the Easter traditions practiced in India's city of Guwahati is the reenactment of Jesus' crucifixion

Image: Anupam Nath/AP Photo/picture alliance

Attackers act with 'sense of impunity'

Jaynendra was charged under one such law about forced conversions. "They applied the same charge twice," he said, denying the allegation. "We do not have money to pay our own rent. How can we give money to someone to convert them?"

The Indian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, including the right to practice, profess, and propagate one's faith. But activists argue that this right is not being protected.

"People are walking inside a church and breaking things," Williams said. "They have no right to take any law into their own hands."

John Dayal, a veteran human rights activist, said the violence follows a consistent pattern that dates back decades but has intensified in recent years. "The actors involved have consistently stayed the same," he said. "But when the BJP is in control, there is a sense of impunity."

Dayal said the widespread use of cellphones has also changed the nature of these attacks. "Almost all crimes are committed on camera now," he said. "The filming is part of the crime. It is to show power, to get support."

Videos of such incidents have circulated widely on social media, sometimes sparking outrage but rarely leading to swift accountability, victims say.
'The police took their side'

In many cases, police response has come under scrutiny. "There is this peculiar thing that people are attacked and the cases are registered against the victims," Dayal said. Patil echoed that sentiment.

"The mob that had come, their associates came to the police station and talked to the officer," he said. "Our people were thrown out. The police took their side."

AC Michael, another leader of the United Christian Forum, said the lack of action has emboldened perpetrators. "They have no fear of law because they have protection behind them,” he said. "In so many places, no action has been taken."

"Last year, we had close to 900 incidents. That means there are more than two incidents of attacks against Christians every day."

India: Hindu nationalists force religious conversions  04:04

More than 100 pastors in Uttar Pradesh arrested, then acquitted

Back in Shahjahanpur, Jaynendra said tensions in his area were not always so high. "There were small problems over time, but not so big," he said. Now, he said, the message to his community is clear: "There is no freedom for you here. India is only for Hindus."

Government officials have repeatedly said that India remains committed to protecting all religions. They have also defended anti-conversion laws as necessary to prevent exploitation.

But critics argue that the laws have created an environment where accusations alone can trigger violence. "Even serving one cup of tea and two biscuits can be called allurement in some places," AC Michael said. "How can someone convert for that?"

He added that in many cases, those accused of forced conversion are eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence: "More than 100 pastors were arrested in Uttar Pradesh. All of them have been acquitted."

Still, the process itself can be punishing. Jaynendra spent months in jail awaiting bail. "My wife also went to jail on July 25 and was released in October," he said. "I was released on December 13." The case against him is still ongoing.
Christian children stay out of schools

For many, the impact extends beyond legal battles. Patil said fear of violence is now interfering with the education of Christan children.

"My own children are so terrorized that they have not gone to school for 15 days," he said. "Some people were beaten and forced out of their houses. They had to leave their villages."

Despite the risks, both men say they intend to continue their work. "Our job is to spread the message," Patil said. "It is on the people to decide whether they want to listen."

For Jaynendra, the experience has been transformative but not deterring. "The atmosphere has changed a lot," he said. "I have been living here since birth. This is the first time I had to go to jail."

The reporting for the story was supported by a grant from the HRRF Journalism Grant Program.

Edited by Darko Janjevic

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Vance torn apart for insulting his own wife — and a billion other people

Second Lady Usha Vance listens during the St. Patrick's Day breakfast in Washington, U.S., March 17, 2026. Roberto Schmidt/Pool via REUTERS

Matthew Rozsa

May 07, 2026  

ALTERNET

An anti-woke WSJ columnist is taking issue with President Donald Trump’s vice president, JD Vance's demeaning attacks on his own wife Usha Vance and roughly a billion other Hindus all over the world.

“Vice President JD Vance caused an uproar this past fall when he expressed his wish that his wife, Usha, a practicing Hindu, would one day follow his spiritual path,” Avatans Kumar, president and trustee of the nonprofit INDICA, wrote Thursday. “Many in the billion-strong global Hindu community were outraged at his declared hope that Mrs. Vance would convert to Catholicism.”

Kumar is still stinging months later, however, complaining that while the so-called religious freedom movement advocates for proselytizing religions like Catholicism and evangelical Christianity, it seems to deprioritize faiths that do not focus on converts.

“The root of this general dismissal of nonproselytizing religions is the dominance of Christianity and Islam,” Kumar explained. “The former is known for promoting evangelism, as seen in Jesus’ directive in Mark 16:15: ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’ Islam emphasizes dawah, instructing Muslims to invite people to Islam. Muslims ruled large parts of India from the early 13th to the 19th century, and during this era Muslim preachers and Sufi mystics actively proselytized for Islam. The pattern of seeking converts is manifested in the missionary work of both Christianity and Islam.”

He added, “As these forms of faith came down to the present day, they tended to ignore the strain of religions that are mostly nonproselytizing—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto and tribal indigenous traditions. In these nonproselytizing religions, actively seeking new converts serves no theological purpose.”

From there Kumar asserted that Americans who wish to promote religious freedom should not zero in on the conversion-focused faiths to the neglect of others. Not only did this leave certain individuals feeling excluded, but it reeks of the West’s imperialist past.

“Colonialism is closely linked to religious conversion, as British missionaries sought to convert Hindus,” Kumar wrote. “Many British Christians believed their religion was more advanced and enlightened than those of the people they ruled, motivating their missionary activities.”

Kumar’s advocacy of Hindu representation arguably conflicts with his previous opposition to what he described in India Currents as “wokeism.” In his 2024 editorial, he argued that supposed “woke” culture contributed to President Donald Trump’s reelection that year.

“The Democrats, the U.S. legacy media, and wokeism have become synonymous with each other over the past few years,” Kumar wrote. “When the 2024 US election results came out, they all ended up on the losing side, individually and collectively. The thrashing was so comprehensive that it left the Democrats and their surrogates in US media, as well as the out-of-touch Hollywood celebrities, in a state of shock.”

Like Kumar, the Second Lady has publicly associated with right-leaning views. As The Verge’s Gaby Del Valle reported in April, Vance’s recent podcast “Storytime with the Second Lady” seemed to subtly reaffirm conservative gender roles.

“She’s … the latest conservative spouse to pivot to content creation,” Del Valle wrote. “It’s a new front of the ongoing culture wars: Instead of trying to win back supposedly liberal institutions, the right is hell-bent on creating its own. And if these institutions reinforce conservative gender norms, that’s all the better.”

SATANISTS DONT PROSELTYZE

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism