Indian bishops pull back from anti-nuclear protests: The Church of England Newspaper, March 16, 2012 p 6.

Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant

The House of Bishops of the Church of South India will not back its bishops of Tamil Nadu in their fight against the construction of the Koodankulam nuclear power plant .

Speaking to the Times of India last week, the moderator of the CSI, Bishop G. Davakadasham said that while CSI bishops from the far South had joined with the Roman Catholic Tamil Nadu Bishops Council in protesting government support for the project, the House of Bishops declined to endorse their stand at their 14 Feb 2012 meeting following the meeting of the general synod.

On 27 October 2011 the CSI Bishop in Thoothukudi-Nazareth, the Rt Rev JAD Jebachandran and approximately 100 clergy from his diocese joined local Roman Catholic leaders at the construction site of the Koodankulam nuclear power station. They gave their blessing to the anti-nuclear protestors, saying the Russian-built plant was a danger to the community.

Construction has slowed to halt at the power station in Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd and the Russian state corporation Atomstroyexport are building two 1 Gigawatt reactors at a projected cost of £2.2 billion. When completed the water-cooled reactors will be the largest atomic power plant in India.

However, local residents have opposed the programme blocking highways to construction traffic and staging hunger strikes to halt the building. In September the executive committee of the CSI’s General Synod issued a statement expressing “her deep solidarity” with the protestors and said the “huge radioactive accumulations at the plant site could become the principal causes of environmental and health hazards” in the event of a disaster.

Last week the Catholic bishops’ conference protested moves by the government to tighten restrictions on church-affiliated NGOs.  Bishop A M Chinnappa told reporters the Catholic Church had requested the “PM to stop harassing the Christian minority”.

The government has expelled a number of overseas church workers and blocked the visas of a group from the Japanese city of Fukushima – the epicenter of the 2011 Eastern Japan Earthquake that led to a crisis at that city’s nuclear power plant.

However, the CSI declined to follow the Catholic lead.  At the last House of Bishops meeting, the moderator said that the bishops agreed that “both the public and nation’s interest should be protected.”

A second bishop confirmed to the Times of India that “we discussed the on-going protests against the Koodankulam project. Bishops from south Tamil Nadu expressed their support for the protestors. But few other Bishops did not accept the argument. So we did not take any stand on the issue.”