Stories from India

How a Trans Activist and a Priest are Creating Inclusion in India’s Catholic Church

Twenty years ago, Inba Ignatius felt she didn’t belong in her Catholic church in suburban South India. Ignatius, who is now 48 and a transgender activist, recalled that during a Christmas midnight Mass, a priest at her asbestos-covered church refused to administer Communion to her and three of her transgender friends until they “repented.”

Members of the transgender community take part in a prayer service at a trans chapel in the suburbs of Chennai, India, June 12, 2026. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

In East India, a Marian Shrine Draws in Christian, Muslim and Hindu Pilgrims

BANDEL, India (RNS) — Each week for the last 13 years, 28-year-old Rimpa Chowdhury, who describes herself as a devout Hindu, has visited the Basilica of the Holy Rosary — a historic 16th-century Catholic church on the banks of the Hooghly River in eastern India with a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

Devotees pray at the Basilica of the Holy Rosary, locally known as the Bandel Church, on May 30, 2026, near Kolkata, India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

Survivors of Hindu-Muslim Riots Find Healing in Women’s Empowerment

DELHI, India (RNS) — Five years after riots swept through her neighborhood in northeast Delhi, the region around India’s capital, 18-year-old Anam Sa still wakes up in the middle of the night flushed, breathing fast, arms shaking.

Girls attend a tailoring class at Sabaat in Delhi, India, on Nov. 16, 2025. Photo by Priyadarshini Sen for RNS

How a Tibetan Buddhist Nunnery is Shifting Gender Norms

DHARAMSHALA, India (RNS) — When the nonsectarian Dolma Ling Nunnery transitioned to female leadership earlier this year, for the first time in its three-decade history, it marked a radical shift in the landscape of Tibetan Buddhism in exile.

Buddhist nuns during evening prayers and mediation at the Dolma Ling Nunnery in Dharamshala, India, Sept. 1, 2025. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

Devotees of Krishna Bridle at Updates to India’s Ancient Pilgrimage Town

VRINDAVAN, India (RNS) — When the protests against a state government plan to redevelop a world-renowned Hindu temple began in May, Varsha Otwani, a 64-year-old homemaker, joined the women’s chorus, donning her sequined red veil, lining her eyes with kohl and smearing her hands with henna.

Traditionally-dressed women read from religious texts and chant slogans to protest the government’s demand to build a corridor at the centuries-old Banke Bihari Temple, dedicated to the Hindu god Krishna, in Vrindavan, India, August 20, 2025. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

“Drag Is My Devotion”: The Sacred Power of Queer Faith

Wearing an off-white sari with a red border, a motif of the Hindu goddess Durga on her cotton blouse, 33-year-old drag queen Patruni Sastry capered across the dance floor. She was full of energy, her bright red wig flowing about her while onlookers clapped as the curator…

Sastry dressed as another of the ten Hindu Tantric goddesses. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

“Sacred-Centered Work on the Margins: A Nun’s Mission from the Tea Gardens of Assam to the Borders of Mizoram”

Three years ago, Sister Rose Paite had an important task. Tribal teenager Romila Murmu had been abducted from her village surrounded by acres of tea gardens in the remote Kokrajhar district of Assam. She was then ferried through mountainous terrain to Nagaland, 550 miles away in Northeast India.

Sister Paite at her Peace Home for vulnerable women and children in Mizoram in northeast India. (Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)

The Transgender Priestess of Chennai Who Built a Temple for the Excluded

When the fisherwomen in their bright cotton saris make their way to the Kasimedu harbor to haul up creels of fresh fish from the sandy shores every morning, Sowndharya Gopi offers an urn of water to the Hindu goddess Kali. Kali, the divine feminine…