Reflection - Dostana Trip October 2024 - Not Quite As Planned

Reflection by Andrew Solomon

“You are not being allowed into India”. When the man at the immigration counter at Delhi airport said this we though he was joking. Our tourist visas were valid and we had already used them to visit India back in February without incident, so why were we being denied entry now, in October?

The other six participants on the latest Dostana visit were waved through with no issues while Catherine and I were stuck at our counter for ages. After some back and forth between several immigration staff and supervisors we were ushered to a bench outside the deportee holding area – not a good sign. No interview, no explanation and hence no opportunity for us to even respond. Things got decidedly suspicious as the person sitting with us pointed to some other guy over in the immigration office area and said he could answer our questions – then he just disappeared!

Two months on and we are still no closer to knowing why we were refused entry. Repeated emails to the Indian Consul General have gone unanswered, as well as emails to the Foreigners Registration Offices in Amritsar and Delhi. We have even met with our local federal member who has written to the Indian Consulate on our behalf, and even offered to shirtfront the Consul General for us at a function at Parliament House for the Indian cricket team. The only feedback we have is from our contacts in India who made their own enquiries and were just told our removal had been done “discreetly’.

Winding the clock back to our earlier visit in February, we were invited to attend the platinum jubilee celebrations for the Church of North India, Diocese of Amritsar. We attended a concert, went to a church service, and did most of the usual tourist sightseeing stuff in and around Amritsar. Our hosts in the Diocese are outstanding, as the other Dostana travellers (who were allowed into the country) experienced during this last trip. Each trip is a blend of regular sightseeing with visits to see many of the projects being run by the Diocese in villages around Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. But our recent immigration experience only serves to highlight the underlying tension that exists between the Christian church and Indian government.

Whilst persecution of other religious groups like Sikhs and Muslims often makes the western news, persecution of Christians in India is more low key. It has been explained to me that Christians are generally viewed by the government as “not a threat”, so the low level harassment they experience takes the form of administrative obstruction and general discouragement rather than burning down churches or jailing church leaders. Our denial of entry, we can only assume, is due to our connection with the local church and is just another example of how this harassment can manifest itself. Despite still having no formal explanation from the Indian authorities, we believe our attendance at the church’s jubilee concert or church service may have been witnessed and reported as an activity not conforming to our tourist visa conditions. Whatever other category of visa it would fall under is a mystery.

It is in this environment that the Church of North India has to operate. Many of their projects are funded in partnership with international church aid organisations. Funding by foreign religious organisations must be done within a rigid framework under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act where the local church recipients apply for a permit to receive funds. Failure to adhere to the FCRA rules can, in extreme situations, result in church assets being forfeited to the state. So our friends there walk a fine line and there is immense work needed to making sure the funding for supported projects or activities dot every I and cross every T.

One specific example is the village education projects which afford children the opportunity to level-up their school studies whilst remaining at home. Local landholders in these rural areas generally desire a compliant and uneducated workforce, so helping to raise the level of education in the rural population sometimes results in pushback. Again this is the mildly hostile environment that the church operates in. Our friends there often say how much they enjoy our visits as they want more people from outside to see and know what they are doing and the difficulties they face. They need our prayers, and they need our support. But if things ever turn really nasty they will also need our advocacy.

The Dostana Group is a recognised activity of the Queensland Synod which operates exchange immersion visits to north-east India and from time-to-time hosts visits from members of the Church of North India to Australia. Please stay tuned for the next instalment which will detail the more successful part of the most recent trip.