A top Indian bishops' conference official has asked political parties in Goa not to interfere in the activities of the church as controversies over education and taxation continue.
Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary-general of the national bishops' conference, recently addressed a 10,000-strong crowd after the feast day Mass of St. Francis Xavier in Bom Jesu Basilica in old Goa.
"Please give us the freedom to live our faith. Please don't interfere in our education, activities and work. This is our request, whichever political party you belong to," the bishop said addressing the crowd that included Laxmikant Parsekar, state chief minister, and several other ministers and leading politicians.
"The Catholic community is a peace-loving community. It is involved in nation building. Probably it is the most patriotic community in the country," Bishop Mascarenhas said.
"We are requesting you to provide something that the Constitution of India offers us," he said.
Some locals have seen his comments in the light of a school-funding controversy.
In Goa, some Hindus have been demanding that only schools using the local Konkani and Marathi languages should be given state funding. Christians want funding for schools that teach in English, almost all of them run by the church.
The controversy deepened after the Bharatiya Janata Party, considered as having a pro-Hindu agenda, came to power in the state in 2007. A government committee is currently studying the issue.
Another issue was so-called "interference" from the tax department. Officials asked the Goa Archdiocese to give a cash balance report from every parish after the federal government withdrew two high-value banknotes causing a cash crisis.
As Bishop Mascarenhas only made a general request without naming any political party, no-one issued an official response.
However, Chief Minister Parsekar later said that Goan people know "to respect each others' religion and each others' faith. This age-old communal harmony needs to be preserved in changing times."
The politically influential Christians, almost all of them Catholics, form some 25 percent of Goa's 1.4 million people, according to a 2011 census. A Portuguese colony until 1961, most Catholics there follow an Indo-Portuguese culture which sometimes clashes with local Hindu culture.
