BANGALORE, India — A dispute over a nuclear power plant nearing completion in a southern India fishing area has put the Catholic Church in the spotlight.
The federal government, alleging that the Church was diverting foreign funds to support agitation against the power plant, has frozen a bank account the Church uses to receive foreign donations.
But the Church, which has rejected those allegations, is not backing down.
“This is not a political protest. We are standing with the poor people fighting for their rights,” Bishop Yvon Ambrose of Tuticorin said March 8 after a news conference in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state. “No pressure tactics can stop us from taking side with the affected people. We cannot disown our people.”
The government also froze bank accounts of three other action groups who have been protesting the plant, which is in Koodankulam, part of the diocese’s territory.
At the news conference, led by Archbishop A.M. Chinnappa of Madras-Mylapore, president of the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council (TNBC), the Church reiterated its unequivocal support of the protests.
“It is an open secret that the [federal] government is taking these actions against the Diocese of Tuticorin and other Christian NGOs, in the wake of the debate and dispute on the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant,” the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council pointed out. “The people are agitating not because they are Christians, but because this plant is situated in their village. The Hindus and Muslims who live in that village also are agitating.”
The statement further noted that more than 200 Hindu women recently marched to the local Hindu temple carrying pots of milk in a local tradition “to seek divine intervention to stop the project.”
“They are not in any way connected with the Church. It is false to say that Christians alone are objecting to this project and they are against public interest and national development,” the bishops’ conference said.
Our Lady of Lourdes Church at Idinthakarai, five kilometers from the nuclear power plant, has been the nerve center of the protests since August.
The protest drew national headlines in September when as many as 127 people — 15 Hindus and 112 Christians, including four Catholic priests and three religious sisters — went on a hunger strike, demanding that the $3-billion nuclear plant be scrapped.
The protesters point out that construction of the plant has not followed safety norms and would harm people living and fishing in nearby villages. The majority of the more than 45,000 fishermen residing within three miles of the plant are Christians.
The hunger strike ended after 11 days, when two dozen strikers were hospitalized and after the government invited the protesters for dialogue on Sept. 21. The fasting protesters were given lime juice by Church leaders, led by Bishop Ambrose, who had met Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalita, along with local Protestant leaders and secular activists spearheading the agitation.
The path for this dialogue was paved by the reconciliatory statement of V. Narayanasamy, federal deputy minister in the Indian prime minister’s office. Narayanasamy visited the venue of the fast at the Church compound and declared that the federal government was “ready to reconsider the [nuclear power] project.”
“People’s safety comes first. Power comes later,” declared the federal minister. However, the government soon changed its stance and said the nuclear power plant cannot be dropped after reaching completion.
The sudden change in the government’s stand evoked more protests with simultaneous sits-in and rallies in several areas — even in far-off places. Realizing the active involvement of the churches in the anti-nuclear protests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed to Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), to help stall the protests.
Following its failure to dissuade the churches from supporting the people’s protest, the government filed 76 criminal cases to break the protracted protest by mid-November.
“Only if I am guilty, I need to be afraid,” said Bishop Ambrose, when he was asked for his reaction to police filing cases against him and diocesan priests for supporting the protest and letting a “religious place” be used for anti-government demonstrations.
“The question is why India should commission a new nuclear plant in a thickly populated area when the developed nations are dismantling their nuclear structures,” said Bishop Ambrose, who was director of Caritas Asia for seven years.
“The people have been against this project right from the beginning, in 1990s. But the government just ignored the protests and went ahead with it, as it was remote fisher people’s area,” said S.P. Udayakumar, a Hindu and the coordinator of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE).
After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan following the March 11, 2011, tsunami, Udayakumar pointed out, “the protests gathered momentum.”
While the people’s protests continued unabated, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a sensational allegation in February in an interview with the American journal Science, expressing suspicion that NGOs in the United States were behind the massive protests.
Following this allegation, various agencies of the federal government launched simultaneous investigations against NGOs supporting the campaign and froze the foreign-donation accounts of four NGOs, including the social-service wing of the Tuticorin Diocese.
“An all-out campaign is on now to discredit the anti-nuclear protests led by the fisher people’s community,” pointed out Redemptorist Father Thomas Kochery, one of the advocates of the people’s protest against the nuclear plant.
“By targeting the Church, the government is communalizing the people’s struggle as Christian conspiracy,” pointed out Father Kochery, one of the founders of the World Forum of Traditional Fisher People.
His fear came true, with Hindu groups and their sympathetic media outlets dubbing the Koodankulam protests as Christian propaganda.
Quoting government sources, Organizer, an English publication of Hindu nationalists, claimed that more than 75% of NGOs that received foreign funds in India are Christian groups.
“There is a vilification [process] by some forces to project the Christian community as if it is anti-national, working against public interest. This process has not only tarnished the image of the Christians, but has greatly pained the Christian community,” said Archbishop Chinnappa, head of the Church in Tamil Nadu, in a press statement.
“Since the nuclear project has made the people insecure with regard to their life and livelihood, the Church is only extending its solidarity to them in their hour of anxiety,” reiterated the Tamil Nadu Church in its statement. “This is our only moral involvement with the people. If the government is able to convince them and allay their fears, the Church in no way will stand against any decision.”
Register correspondent Anto Akkara writes from Bangalore, India.
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First, these energy concerns are very complicated. I am involved in one right now, in our local community where Industrial Wind Turbines, which are shown to cause health issues, if they are placed too close to homes, are indeed being sited in my community. Nuclear energy, in the United States, has been around for many years and has not injured or killed one person. It is by far, the cleanest, most reliable, most economical and safest form of electrical energy production.
I think, however, placing these so close to people is not advised. Although I am a nuclear proponent for the production of electric, I don’t advocate putting any of these energy producing facilities like nuclear, coal, natural gas, wind or solar, near homes. This is the entire reason we have zoning laws. Industrial, commercial, residential, etc. I realize this article is about India, but human rights are human rights.
What concerns me most is that the article implies that safety is not being followed, yet it gives no details on what safety protocols are being violated. I, for one, don’t want to see any safety violated for two reasons. 1 – because they could harm humans and the environment and 2 – because if this is done improperly, it gives nuclear energy facilities a bad reputation globally. Again, the plants in the U.S. have been running for some 40 years without issue. Even the founder of Greenpeace has had a change of heart realizing nuclear power, IF DONE RIGHT, is safe. But if this is not being done properly and sited too close to people, that is a problem.
I don’t exactly see, from this article, what the Catholic Church is doing wrong or right. I am not sure the Church should be involved in any formal way. The only connection would be the human rights angle, which this article fails to prove or call out, what that might be. I would say the Church and priests should NOT be protesting in these events. Again, my reasoning is that these are complicated matters, and the Church getting involved makes it look like there is some evil being done. If that is the case, that is not at all spelled out in this article and I think this gives the Church a bad name as well.
This is why it took me thirty years, even after a miracle, to convert to the Catholic Church. The ‘world’ has a a restless, angry, shifting, satanic and impassioned quality to it. I can smell it a mile away, especially IN the Church.
ninov - well reasoned comments. I, too, noticed the article never identified any safety hazards, just spoke of people’s “concerns.” Nor did it discuss the benefit of jobs being created during the plant’s construction or permanent jobs after it is up and running. I would have thought it would have been better if the church would have coordinated discussion groups with the state and residents to discuss the safety concerns citizens had rather than being in “solidarity” with the opponents who didn’t want the project in the first place. I’m reminded of seeing an anti-nuclear protest outside a nuclear power plant in up-state New York many years ago and thinking how ridiculous the demonstrators were protesting the safety of nuclear power while at the same time trying to climb over the fence to get onto the plant grounds. The fears of what happen in Japan are not justified in that the damage was caused more by the 30 foot tsunami after a category 9 earthquake. Lessons were learned from that that will lead to even more safety upgrades making nuclear power plants even more safe then ever before.
@ digdigby – I’m a cradle and I hear ya about people ‘in the church.’ But remember, that smell, that nasty rancor, is called original sin. Only Jesus and Mary didn’t have that smell. The Pope’s even have it, they are just protected when teaching on faith and morals. It didn’t just change man, it changed the entire world. It disrupted our relationship with animals, with each other and even with the dirt. In Genesis, prior to the fall, Adam was to work the soil, but after the fall, it’s going to be hard, clay, nasty soil that gives him a hard time. Prior to the fall, we were in complete communion with the animals. Imagine Deer and snakes coming up to us, talking and communicating to them in some way, now, snakes bite us, poison us and deer won’t come anywhere near us. They are born with an innate fear of everything. There is no justifiable reason for a baby deer to be skittish of a human, but I have come across them in our woods and they run like the wind, even if just born. Makes me sad that I no longer have this connection with God’s creation. We can never fully close this rift until eternal salvation. Darwin likely lost his faith because of seeing all the animal on animal violence. How could God create creatures that must eat other creatures to survive? It’s a good question, but one answered by the disruption of the world through original sin. The church should not take a position on these types of issue but act as facilitator for better dialog. The problem is, we can’t really dialog, because original sin gets in EVERYONE”S way, even if they don’t want to acknowledge it. Our fears, our pride, our greed, get in my way!!!
“The question is why India should commission a new nuclear plant in a thickly populated area when the developed nations are dismantling their nuclear structures,” said Bishop Ambrose, who was director of Caritas Asia for seven years.
The answer to your question your Excellency as to why “developed nations are dismantling their nuclear structures” is those that are doing so do it because “they” know that cheap abundant electricity will allow human populations to flourish something that they abhor. “They” are the racist elites who run the ZPG entities; the “Greens” etc. that now dominate all these developed countries and especially the US State Department. If you can keep the poor of India cooking over smokey fires ... if you can keep fewer Indians from having a thriving Chemical and Manufacturing base etc. then there will be fewer of them.
Nuclear Power is proven, it is safe and if it were not persecuted then it would also be cheap.
By the by the good Bishop should visit France and see this Nuclear Miracle at work ... they have used JFK’s Phoenix breeder reactor to solve the waste problem. As Charles Dickens had the Ghost of Christmas past say: “The boy is ignorance the girl is want; beware them both but most of all beware this boy.”
Nuclear Plants are just silent killers of man and Nature created by the GOD. In nature the Uranium ore contains 99.3% of Uranium-238 and the remaining 0.7% is Uranium-235. Uranium-238 and Uranium-235 in nature are least harmful. But business people and other vested interests dig the iron ore and convert the least harmful Uranium-235 into the fuel form of Uranium-235 by purifying it to make a fuel by enriching it to about 4% of Uranium-235 that is packed in pellets and inserted into the core of the nuclear reactor for producing both electricity and material for making the bombs. The reactor when the nuclear atom is given a blow by a neutron, enormous heat and other poisonous Radio-active atoms like Xenon, Baerium, Ceasium, Strontium, Plutonium and other dangerous radioactive substances are produced. These radioactive substances are discharged into the air and water by several ways and when they enter into the environment consisting of air, water and soil and foods like vegetables, fishes, prawns they ultimately get into human beings and produce cancers and birth defects in generations of people for many decades to come. These poisonous radioactive substances destroy natural and human life and culture and convert lands upto hundreds of kilometers into permanent nuclear burial grounds for ever.
How harmless Uranium ore materials in nature are converted into destructive and killer materials by man can be understood by the following simple example. For instance king cobras live in nature in anthills in forestsand lead their normal life peacefully by catching their prey for food during nights But greedy people go and poke their iron rods into their abodes and disturb the Cobras when they become angry and bite the trespassers to inflict death over them by their poisons. Similarly, the selfish people are mining the harmless Uranium and converting it into harmful Enriched Uranium and then using it to produce electricity by means of the Nuclear plants and in the process they are producing Radioactive pollutants that poison man and nature slowly due to routine releases of radioactivity into the environment .In course of time if an accident occurs in the Nuclear plant due to several reasons like in Fukushima or Chernobyl, the poisonous pollutants are thrown into the atmosphere and they kill thousands of people slowly and inflict cancer to millions of people living downstream upto hundreds of Kilometers as in case of Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents. The Nuclear plant operators are misleading the public by stating that Nuclear power is safe and cheap just like the medical representatives of various pharmaceutical companies praise before the doctors about the virtues of their medical tablets and tonics as part of their sale promotion activity the nuclear authorities are praising the nuclear plants as safe and cheap energy producers which is wrong. This misinformation is dangerous to public health and welfare because in European states almost all people agree that safety of Nuclear (power is a Myth as accepted by Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. She had consulted the genuine experts on nuclear plants and realized that nuclear safety is a myth and ordered for gradual closure of all the nuclear plants in Germany. If Indian Prime Minister and Union Cabinet Minsters including the Chief Ministers of the state want to know the truth about the safety of the nuclear power plants they must go and visit advanced countries like Germany and Japan and discuss the issue with foreign experts so that they can refrain from promoting nuclear plants as is done by the peoples leader like Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal. For more scientific details see the above web sites on this topic prepared by independent experts.
Environmental Impact Analysis report are fabricated by consultants according to the national Green Tribunal and also according to the Chief Justice of India, S.H.Kapadia who said “If you leave report preparation to the project proponent, I am sorry to say the person who pays will get the answers he asks for” and hence he called for a change in the system of preparation of EIA reports for the development projects. See website: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2886141.ece
The Tamilnadu people are against the nuclear plant because they fear that their life in the neighbourhood will not be safe. It is necessary that we should have more energy to progress in industrial and agricultural growth. So the guarantee of the Government should be accepted by the people. In case any trnd is seen as harmful for the populace around, immediate action to settle the whole neighbourhood in any other suitble location should be taken. The unemployed persons in the area can be given suitable employment and the economy of the area can improve. The propaganda about the Church involvement, the finance utilisation etc are simple propaganda of some vested interests who may not be qualified as patriots.
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