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As many of us are aware, one of the contentious political issues in some parts of  India (e.g, Assam) at the moment is that of citizenship. This article explains the basic elements of India’s territory, division of states and laws on citizenship.

In the previous issue, we learnt that the constitutional values are nothing but human values which are both cherished principles and spiritual norms.  The Constitution of India (CoI), especially the Preamble, enumerated certain values for the life of citizens as well as for the governance of the country.  Now we shall focus our attention on the territory of India and her citizens as enshrined in Part I and Part II of CoI.  Territory and citizenship issues may become the bone of contention and take away peace and harmony in the country.

INDIA & HER TERRITORY

Part I of the CoI (Art 1 – 4) describes the territory India.  The first article names the country as India, that is Bharat, and states that it is a union of states and (union) territories.  At present, under this article, 29 states and 7 union territories are listed in the First Schedule.  The Parliament by law admits into the Union or forms a new state by separation or uniting two or more states or parts thereof or from the territory of any state.  Being an indestructible union of destructible states, it can also increase or diminish the area of any state by alteration of the boundaries as well as the names of the states.

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Fr Ravi Sagar SJ

All of us owe so much to doctors, nurses and hospitals, as well as researchers who invent medicine (just think of surgery before the development of anaesthesia!). There are genuine heroes and saints and other noble souls in the medical profession (just as there are money-minded and uncaring practitioners, as in every other profession.) Here is a quick look at some of the medical heroes I have personally known. Each of them does far more than the little I can highlight here.

A Legend While Still Alive

“A legend in his/her lifetime” is an expression about famous people with dazzling achievements.

Dr T J Cherian of Chennai was one such legend. There was always a long queue of patients waiting to see him, including several with complicated medical histories that puzzled other doctors. Dr Cherian was, without doubt, a wizard for diagnosis. Many (including me) found that whatever he said without doing any tests was generally more accurate than what tests showed, or what other doctors opined after tests.

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Fr Joe Mannath SDB

The year was 1992. Two women, one from Europe and the other from North America, landed in Asia for the first time.

Arriving in India, the first challenge we met was communication. Sr Rosaria knew only Italian and I knew some English. From the time Sr Rosaria had started her schooling in Italy, language had been her ‘bete noire.’ As if that weren’t enough, a medical condition had left her with hearing only in one ear. If you expected these two major ‘limitations’ to silence her, you couldn’t be more wrong!

At first, I became her ‘interpreter.’ I confess that, as time went, I started finding wearisome the task of being the mouthpiece of one of the most communicative and expressive persons I know. She too longed for autonomy.

Soon, Sr. Rosaria’s thirst for communication became stronger than her aversion for foreign languages or her difficulty in hearing.

What I remember most from our first years in India is her studying languages relentlessly, any time of the day, and sometimes of the night, even falling asleep with headphones and tube light on. She would even go to the English class conducted for our aspirants and ask a thousand questions: “How do you say this? What’s the meaning of this? Why should we say or write this way?” Fearlessly, too, she would make use of her broken English, more concerned about communicating and learning than about making mistakes.

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Sr Marie Gabrielle Riopel SCSM

Fr Stephen, a young priest, was on heavy medication. He told me doctors had put him on such a treatment after he collapsed one day and was rushed to the hospital. The attending doctors told the people who took him there, “His condition is serious. He should have received treatment long ago. Now, he will have to be on medication for years.”

What had happened?

As a young religious, he told his rector that he had sharp pains in one leg. The rector, who considered himself a psychologist, did not take it seriously, and told Stephen: “This is nothing. Your pain is more from psychological reasons.”

So, Stephen went on without treatment, until the day he collapsed and was taken to the emergency ward of a hospital.

This is where a principle St Francis de Sales gave for bishops and religious superiors comes in handy: “When in doubt, better to be extra kind than extra harsh.”

What did he mean?

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Fr Joe Mannath SDB

Midlife is the time when the shadow makes its presence felt. Carl Jung used the term “shadow” to describe that part of our personality that is repressed because it conflicts with the way we wish to see ourselves and be seen by others. It is that part of our personality we are now unaware of, because it was deemed incompatible with our ideal personality and has been conveniently forgotten.

Shadow Formation

Our real self consists of both light and shadow, goodness and ugliness. We have our angels and demons –aspects that we admire and appreciate and feel good about and their opposites. Goodness and evil are both residents of our psyche and soul. As writer Henry Nouwen loved to remark, “Where God appears, the evil one is also present.”

However, we tend to hide our demons and would like to appear all angel. So, we create our “persona.” In our effort to conform to social expectations, we try to present ourselves to the world in the way the world wants us to be. To live up to an idealistic self-image we suppress aspects of our personality that do not fit the self-image. This image of ourselves that we consciously cultivate and project in order to be and seen in a particular way is our persona.

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Fr Jose Parappully SDB

CRYSTAL

For the last five years, I have been a member of the “Women at the Well Prison Ministry” team, helping to lead Christian retreats for women prisoners. Over two days, we witness to the women prisoners with stories of how we encountered the person of Jesus in our lives and how that made a difference in our understanding of God’s love and mercy. The team leaders have always recognized that two of the most crucial talks are entitled “Healing of Memories” and “Forgiveness.”

Most are victims; some have committed terrible crimes

Most of the imprisoned women are victims themselves of either physical or sexual abuse, extremely dysfunctional families and/or mental illness.  Before God’s love and mercy are able to be real for them, before they can be truly healed and made free, they must recognize the impact of the hurt that has been imposed on them, and be willing to forgive those that were responsible.

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Crystal and Kevin Sullivan

Here are the statutory compliances required of a registered charitable society.

Registered charitable societies play a very vital role in the social development sector of the country.  Hence, recognizing their role in public life, the government has given them many privileges.  However, there are certain rules and regulations to be followed. These rules may be from the points of view of the income tax, GST, FCRA, social security schemes (like the PF and Gratuity, etc.).  This article limits its scope to the income tax.

From Income Tax Point-of-view:

The taxation of charitable societies is governed by  Chapter III of the Income Tax Act, which contains sections 11, 12, 12A, 12AA and 13.  Section 12A/12AA contains the provisions concerning the registration and the registration procedure under the Income Tax Act.  Sections 11 and 12 contain the provisions concerning the conditions to be fulfilled by the charitable societies in order to claim exemption from income tax.  Section 13 stipulates the provisions concerning the trusts which are not eligible for exemption u/s 11 and 12.

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Fr Alex Gnanapragasam SJ

Was she a nun? Yes, she was not merely a nun. She went on to found a religious congregation.

Was she married? Yes, not once, but twice.

How did she become a nun? Both marriages ended in a divorce.

Did she have children? Yes, three from the first marriage, and five from the second one. Therefore she had eight children to look after.

These details are enough to show that the person we will look at this time is an extraordinary woman in whose life several apparent contradictions merged. She is now referred to as Mother Antonia Brenner. But her baptismal name was Mary Clarke.

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Fr M A Joe Antony SJ

23 August
The Slave Trade: Its Cruelty and its Abolition

 For over 400 years, more than fifteen million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic transatlantic slave trade. About one out of every eight slaves died on board those cramped ships. These slaves were sold and made to work on sugar plantations and gold mines.

In the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, men and women, torn from Africa and sold into slavery, revolted against the slave system, to obtain freedom and independence for Haiti. This uprising was a turning point in human history and marked the beginning of the destruction of the slave trade and colonialism. The success of this rebellion led by the slaves themselves is a deep source of inspiration today for the fight against all forms of servitude, racial discrimination and social injustice. Their courage has created obligations for us.

This date also pays tribute to those who worked hard to abolish slavery throughout the world, and to honour and remember those who suffered and died at the hands of this brutal system.

It would be a mistake and a crime to cover it up and forget it. The slave trade and slavery in all its forms exist even today: human trafficking and exploitation, racism and prejudice, bonded labour. These are crimes against humanity and affect the most marginalized, vulnerable and oppressed.

According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index, there were 40.3 million people in modern-day slavery in 2016, including 24.9 million in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage. However, these statistics are limited. Due to lack of data, the practices of recruiting child soldiers and trafficking persons for removal of their organs are not included in these statistics.

Be vigilant to see and brave to speak up!

29 August
Day against Nuclear Tests (DANT)

Nuclear weapons testing began on 16 July 1945, when an atomic bomb was used at a desert test site in New Mexico, USA. Since then, nearly 2,000 such tests have taken place. There are general Atmospheric, Underwater or Underground tests.

In the early days of nuclear testing, little consideration was given to its devastating effects on human life, let alone the dangers of nuclear fallout from atmospheric tests. History has shown us the terrifying and tragic effects of such tests. An example is the Chernobyl (Ukraine, USSR) accident of 1986, ending in tragedy, long-term radiation poisoning and atmospheric damage.  These are compelling reasons for the need to prevent further nuclear weapons testing and thus to achieve the goal of a safer world.

• The USA, the Soviet Union and France have carried out 1032, 715 and 210 nuclear tests over the past six decades.
• The first nuclear bomb is estimated to have cost $20 billion.
• The total number of nuclear missiles built from the year 1951 to the present is 67,500.
• There are an estimated total of 16,400 nuclear weapons on the earth today.

“So long as nuclear weapons continue to exist, so will the temptation to threaten others with overwhelming military force” (Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist philosopher and anti-nuclear activist).

The Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear devices over a period of 40 years at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, the world’s largest nuclear testing facility, in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. The site was closed on Aug. 29, 1991.

DANT commemorates the closure of this site. This International Day serves as a reminder of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that the UNO adopted. But it has not yet entered into force. The treaty would ban all nuclear testing or explosions in any setting. But eight states in the world have not signed or ratified it yet: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, N. Korea, Pakistan and USA.

Every effort needs to be made to ensure the entry into force of the CTBT so that all nuclear weapons will be eliminated, thus ensuring both disarmament and non-proliferation.

Until then, we observe the International Day against Nuclear Tests as we work towards promoting peace, security and a nuclear-weapon-free world.

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Sr Esme da Cunha FDCC

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The Doctor
Director: Randa Haines, Cast: William Hurt, Christine Lahti, Charlie Korsmo, Elizabeth Perkins  (1991, 122 minutes)

Based on Dr Edward Rosenbaum’s memoir, A Taste of My Own Medicine, the movie recounts the story of Dr Jack McKee, a celebrity cardiac surgeon. McKee is efficient, arrogant and emotionally distant from his patients and also from his family. For him “caring is all about time,” not about emotions. In his view, a surgeon was to be “quick and decisive” and has no business to attend to the needs of the patient. Caring for the patient’s emotional needs can be paralysing for a doctor. Competence and efficiency is all that matters.

McKee’s world falls apart when he is diagnosed with throat cancer. The doctor becomes patient, and that too in his own hospital. He has to undergo the humiliation of being treated with unsympathetic professionalism as a patient even by his former colleagues whom he had treated with disdain.  Jack is shocked out of his complacency when his colleagues subject him to the same impersonal treatment he had given to his patients. He comes to know how patients sometimes become victims of callousness and errors on the part of the health care system.  He is forced to see the medical system from the receiving end.

Once, while waiting for his radiation treatment in the hospital lobby, he encounters a fellow brain tumor patient with whom he connects emotionally. His attitude changes. He learns the art of empathy. He learns to be humble and compassionate. Healed of cancer, Jack returns to his professional life a totally changed man. He insists on compassion and empathy towards patients and trains his interns to put themselves in the place of patients so that they would learn the basic ethics of medical care. He is reunited to his family emotionally. The movie is a convincing critique of medical care without a heart.

Gifted Hands
Director:  Thomas Carter, Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr, Gus Hoffman, Jaishon Fisher, Kimberly Elise, Aunjanue Ellis, Angela Dawe.  (2009, 86 minutes)

Based on the true story of Dr Benjamin Carson, one the world’s celebrated pediatric neurosurgeons, the film is a deeply inspiring story of faith, determination and perseverance that makes miracles possible. Abandoned by their father in childhood, Ben Carson and his brother grew up in a violent black ghetto in Detroit in the 1960s. But their illiterate mother knew the value of education and faith in God that she instilled in her children. The violent-tempered Ben bore the stigma of being the dumbest boy in the class. Racial prejudice also stood in his way.

Ben’s mother refused to give up on him. She believed that he was a smart boy, telling him: “You can be anything you want to be in this life.” She taught her boys the power of imagination.  As a cleaning woman in the house of a professor, she sees the large library which makes her realize the value of reading. She encourages the boys to read books, developing in them a passion for knowledge.

Her sacrifices slowly bear fruit.  Ben’s grades improve dramatically and his outlook changes. He wishes to be a missionary doctor. Blazing a brilliant academic career in Yale University, Carson is selected by Johns Hopkins University to study neurosurgery. The divine gift of his extraordinary eye and hand coordination makes him the best among neurosurgeons. In 1985 he performs a hemispherectomy, in which he removes half the brain of a four-year-old who convulses 100 times a day and restores her to health, while his wife is recovering from a serious miscarriage.

 Carson performed the first successful surgery on occipital-cranio pugus twins (Siamese twins joined in the head) in 1987 after four months of preparation. In a touching scene in the movie, he declares: “It’s my belief that God gives us all gifts, special abilities that we have the privilege of developing to help us serve Him and humanity.” His story is also the story of two heroic women—his mother Sonya and his wife Candy who stood by him through the hardest trials of his life.

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Dr Gigy Joseph

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