The Catholic Church in India express a felt need to dialogue with the Government on the Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill. This proposed legislation represents a severe threat to the Church’s work of service to the poor, the sick, the uneducated, and the marginalized. Far from promoting transparency or national security, the Bill arms the State with sweeping powers that undermine constitutional freedoms, destroy decades of charitable work, and strike at the heart of religious liberty.
For generations the Catholic Church and other Christian have poured its energy and resources into building schools, hospitals, orphanages, homes for the aged, and centres for rural development across the length and breadth of India. Much of this work has been made possible by contributions from fellow Christians overseas who share the same Gospel commitment to human dignity. These funds have never been used for political agitation or for any purpose contrary to the law of the land. They have been directed solely toward the uplift of the weakest sections of society, often in regions where government facilities are scarce or nonexistent. The Church has always welcomed legitimate regulation that ensures honesty and accountability. What it cannot accept is a law that transforms regulation into weapons of confiscation and oversight into opportunity to harassment and derecognition.
The most dangerous provision of the Bill is the creation of a designated authority empowered to seize control of funds and of every asset created with foreign contributions the moment an organisation’s registration is cancelled, surrendered, allowed to expire, or simply not renewed. Schools that have educated generations of children, hospitals that have healed the sick without regard to caste or creed, and shelters that have protected the abandoned would suddenly become subject to government disposal. The authority may run or repuporse the functioning of the institutions . Such a measure is nothing less than expropriation without the safeguards of due process. It violates the principles of natural justice and places the property rights of citizens at the mercy of administrative discretion. No democratic society should tolerate a system in which the mere delay in renewal of a licence can result in the permanent loss of institutions built by the faith and sacrifice of countless ordinary people.
Equally alarming is the breadth of discretion granted to officials. The Bill and the accompanying rules allow authorities to decide what constitutes acceptable activity, to impose geographic limits, to demand purpose specific registrations for every category of work, and to cancel registration if foreign contributions fall below an arbitrary threshold. Organisations working across several states must obtain separate registrations, multiplying costs and administrative burdens. Social media accounts and publications must be disclosed, and any expression judged political can invite severe penalties. The inclusion of the undefined term proselytization opens the door to selective interpretation and harassment. Charitable service, moral instruction, and the simple proclamation of the Gospel risk being branded as conversion activity. This vagueness is not accidental; it is a tool of control.
These measures are presented as necessary for national security and transparency. The Church does not deny the State its duty to prevent genuine misuse of funds. Yet the existing law already contains ample provisions for investigation, audit, and prosecution. The new Bill goes far beyond those legitimate needs. It creates a climate of permanent insecurity in which institutions must live in fear of sudden cancellation and seizure. Several non-governmental organisations have already lost their registrations in recent years. Many of them were Christian bodies engaged in quiet, faithful service. The pattern is clear: regulation has become a means of attrition.
The injustice is compounded by the selective impact on minority communities. The Catholic Church does not claim special privilege. It claims only the equal protection of the Constitution. Article 25 guarantees freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practise, and propagate religion. Article 30 protects the right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions. Article 19 and Article 21 safeguard association, expression, and the right to livelihood that flows from the ability to carry on charitable work. The Bill places all these rights in jeopardy by subjecting them to the unbridled will of the executive. When the State can take over the physical fruits of religious charity, the freedom to practise religion itself is hollowed out.
The human cost will fall heaviest on the poor. Rural clinics that treat tuberculosis and malaria, schools that give tribal children their first chance at literacy, hostels that keep girls safe from early marriageand other atrocities, and programmes that train the unemployed for dignified work, all depend on a steady flow of support. When foreign contributions are choked and assets threatened, these services collapse. The poorest citizens, who have no political voice, will pay the price for a law framed in the name of the nation.
The Church has repeatedly appealed for dialogue and for a law that balances legitimate oversight with respect for civil society. It has asked that any new measure apply only prospectively, that adjudication be placed in the hands of an independent judicial officer, that minor procedural lapses not trigger catastrophic consequences, and that the undefined language that leaves possibilities of innocents be unjustly judged for wrongs they never truly committed be rectified. These requests spring from a desire to continue serving India, not from any wish to evade accountability. The refusal to address these concerns reveals an intention not to regulate but to constrain and ultimately to silence.
A law that places the property of citizens at the disposal of the State without fair hearing, that multiplies bureaucratic obstacles until genuine work becomes impossible, and that brands the ordinary expressions of faith as suspect is both draconian and unjust. It contradicts the constitutional vision of a plural and compassionate India. It betrays the memory of those missionaries and local believers who built institutions of mercy long before the modern State existed. And it wounds the very people the Constitution pledges to protect.
The Catholic Church will continue its ministry of education, healing, and solidarity for as long as it exists. It will do so in obedience to the Gospel and in fidelity to the people of this land. At the same time it must speak the truth: this Bill is an assault on the freedom of religion, on the autonomy of civil society, and on the dignity of the poor. Justice and the common good demand that it be withdrawn.
