In Ayodhya this summer, ordinary Hindus have been coming forward one by one to ask where their gold went.
They had carried it to the Ram Temple — jewelry, ornaments, bricks of silver — and pressed it into the hands of the men who run the place. They were given no receipts. “We have been betrayed,” one Ayodhya man told Al Jazeera. The management, he said, “have looted our faith, nothing less.” This fraud at the Ram Temple is said to be the largest in a temple since independence.
I am a Christian archbishop, and I write with no quarrel against that temple or against the men and women who gave to build it. Hindus gave their offering in pure devotion. I am moved as I hear story after story of devout Hindus who gave everything to build a house for Ram. It is their devotion that was betrayed — and betrayed by the very outfit that claims to represent the interests of all Hindus, a claim the sadhus and sants themselves have disputed.
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I write because what has happened to them could happen to the Church in India in a different way. We can be looted too — not by theft, but by law. Parliament has reconvened, and the deferred and deeply contested FCRA amendment bill is likely to return.
The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust is no private charity. Twelve of its 15 members were nominated by the Government of India. It has received over $380 million in donations. Later, in June 2026, a member of the temple’s cash-counting team, himself an RSS man, was arrested with eight others. One of those arrested, Champat Rai, a lifelong RSS worker who rose to be international vice-president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, resigned on July 9.
A special investigation team reported that the trust issued no receipts for significant quantities of donated gold and silver, and that its officials worked by verbal instruction, leaving little on paper. No financial statements for this very large public project have been forthcoming.
On June 14, the Uttar Pradesh government ordered an inquiry at the trust’s own request. It appointed three of its own serving officers. No serving judge sits on the team. Their report went to an additional chief secretary who is himself a trustee of the temple trust.
The body accused of losing the gold asked the government to investigate it. The government appointed its own men. They reported to a member of the accused body. Who exactly is holding whom to account?
On Oct. 18, 2023, the Home Ministry granted this same trust a license under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to receive money from abroad. It is now July 2026, and not a single public accounting of those foreign receipts has appeared, though millions of dollars are reported to have come in. On June 17, an opposition member of parliament had to serve a legal notice on the trust demanding its audited accounts and FCRA records. Nobody serves notice for documents that have been published.
Every foreign rupee entering every registered organization in India — Hindu, Muslim, Christian, secular — must pass through a single bank branch in New Delhi. Every transfer is recorded. The government watches the money land. The state does not need new powers to see. It already sees.
What it does not have under the Constitution is the power to take over religious institutions and their assets. That is what the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill 2026 would give it. A government-appointed “designated authority” may seize the foreign-funded assets of any organization whose license is canceled, surrendered, or simply allowed to lapse. If the license is not restored, the property vests permanently in that authority, to be transferred to a government department or sold. No court order. No hearing. No accountability to donors at home or abroad. The Rev. Asir Ebenezer of the National Council of Churches called it “intrinsically unconstitutional — none of the due process we extend even to those accused of tax violations.”
Since 2010, some 22,000 FCRA licenses have been canceled. More than 10,000 Christian organizations have lost theirs since 2011 — World Vision India and Compassion International among them. The government decides who holds a license. The bill decides that whoever loses one loses their property.
Every man arrested at Ayodhya will have a judge, a hearing, and an appeal. I do not begrudge him any one of the three. Why does my country propose to deny all three to Christian schools, hospitals, and orphanages whose licenses lapse? Why make the amendment retrospective? Neither the donors nor those who built these institutions were ever told that a change in the law could hand them to the state.
I have spent 50 years insisting that Christian institutions be scrupulous with money given in God’s name. Any religious body facing allegations should go through the due process of law, transparently. But transparency demanded of the weak and waived for the strong is not transparency. It is a weapon wearing the clothes of transparency.
To my brothers and sisters in the West: much of what is about to be taken was built with your sacrificial gifts. Do not frame this as merely Indian Christian grievance. This amendment will reach every registered charity in civil society. Many Hindus and other faith leaders stand with us here.
The devotees of Ayodhya are not our opponents. They are our first witnesses.
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The man who pressed silver into a stranger’s hand in Ayodhya was no fool. He trusted that money given to God would be handled as if it were given to God.
That trust is owed to him. The same trust is owed by this government to every donor, foreign and Indian, who gave sacrificially to build Christian institutions. Now that Parliament has reopened, we hope it will be honored.
Archbishop Joseph D’Souza is an internationally renowned human and civil rights activist. He is the archbishop of the Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India and serves as the president of the All India Christian Council.