Major Christian Charity Is Closing India Operations Amid a Crackdown
A Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, following diplomatic protocol, said
that Compassion International’s partners were violating Indian law by engaging in religious activities, and that the organization declined a government offer to re-register as a religious organization, which would have allowed it to continue its work in India.
Mr. Mellado said that I told them, instead of having all your partners Christian, have some Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sikh organizations.
Through Mr. Prabhudoss, Mr. Tiwari put forward a proposal: The government might view Compassion International more favorably if the charity routed a portion of its $45 million in annual charitable donations away from churches
and through non-Christian aid groups, including Hindu ones.
Mellado said that What we hear from our friends in India is
that it would be tragic if they were successful in shutting down Compassion, because that would leave other ministries very vulnerable,
The shutdown of the charity, Compassion International, on suspicion of engaging in religious conversion, comes as India, a rising economic power with a swelling spirit of nationalism, curtails the flow of foreign money
to activities it deems "detrimental to the national interest." More than 11,000 nongovernmental organizations have lost their licenses to accept foreign funds since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014.
As it came to an end, he said, a Home Ministry official suggested
that Compassion International re-register its Indian partners as religious entities, a step that the charity’s legal team discouraged, saying it would lead to further paralysis.
Indian learned that We said we teach moral values; we do not force anyone into religion.
In early January, Mr. Oakley, the general counsel, went to New Delhi to plead his case to India’s foreign secretary,
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in a meeting also attended by the second-ranked United States diplomat in India.
