Campaigns Against Persecution

Octogenarian Jesuit Stan Swami lived and died — in 2021 in police custody — for the rights of the Adivasis, the indigenous people of India, over their lands, forests, and water.
But the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, or PESA, which he advocated to underpin this right, has become the bane of church work in villages of central India, and impinges on the rights of tribal people who converted to Christianity beginning in the late 18th century and picking up momentum after 1813.
This February, Supreme Court Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta upheld the supremacy of this law and asked senior advocate Colin Gonsalves and his clients, the tribal people, to go back to the village governance systems, the Panchayats (village councils), to redress their grievances.