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The All
India Christian Council has refrained from commenting on
the Manifestos of various political parties in General
Elections 2009, or on statements of their leaders. The
Council however can no longer maintain its silence after
reading newspaper reports of former Deputy Prime
Minister and BJP leader Mr Lal Krishan Advani’s mixing
of religion in politics, first in the Election manifesto
of the party, and then in his letter to heads of various
Mutts, or abbeys of Hindu sects, and arch communal
advisers of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. These twin acts
are fraught with dangerous consequences for peace and
harmony in secular India.
The electoral environment has already been vitiated by
hate speeches and communal propaganda. Mr Advani may
have made his moves as an electoral strategy. But coming
from an important party and its prime-ministerial
candidate, they collectively expose the BJP’s appeasing
an extreme section of the community, as well as those
organisations which have been directly involved in
violence against religious minorities in Punjab,
Gujarat, Maharashtra and other states in the past, and
Karnataka and Orissa in the present.
This is coupled with the fact that Mr Advani’s BJP,
which pilloried the Congress for backing politicians
suspected of fomenting violence against Sikhs in 1984,
has in 2009 given tickets to people such as persons in
Kandhamal, Orissa, as M Pradhan who is in jail in on
charges of mass murder of Christians. The Election
Commission’s notice to BJP Lok Sabha candidate Ashok
Sahu, and an Rs 50 Crore criminal suit against him for
spouting hate against Christians which could again
trigger mass mob violence against the micro minority, is
proof of the party’s playing the communal card in the
elections. It is not surprising that neither Mr Advani
nor his party manifesto even make a passing reference to
Kandhamal carnage and to the trauma suffered by the
Christian community. Neither does he offer any hope to
Dalit Christians in their long struggle for their just
rights.
Mr Advani’s `Shashtang pranam” or greetings from a
prostrate position of humility and reverence, may be a
figure of speech, but is symptomatic of his party’s
capitulating absolutely to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh and its daughter organisations. As a leader of
national stature, a former deputy premier and with hopes
of leading s secular nation at a future date, he should
have maintained a distance from groups of people whose
“advice” and active participation in Dharam sansads,
religious parliaments, in the past were major
contributory factors to the demolition of the Babri
Masjid and subsequent national tragedy of long drawn
communal bloodshed.
Once again, in his letter, Mr Advani wants to set up
mechanisms to be guided by their advice. As a secular
democratic republic and not a theocracy, India has a
separation of religion and State, if not in the western
sense then certainly in neither government nor religion
meddling in each other’s affairs. Mr Advani promises to
reverse this trend. Religion has its place not at the
levers of power, in State mechanisms or as political
engine, but as a conscience keeper on civilisational
issues and ethics. The Christian community certainly,
even through its own Canon laws and other denominational
mechanisms, gives religious heads powers to guide the
flock on issues of faith, morality, dogma and doctrine,
but leaves it categorically to the lay citizens, the
community at large, to take part in national life,
ideological issues and political affairs guided by their
own reason on matters of security and the welfare of
their brothers and sisters. This is why the Christian
community does not believe in floating politica
l parties of its own, but banks on democratic processes
and forces to protect its rights and Constitutional
guarantees.
The All India Christian Council has no comments to offer
on the BJP’s right to pack its manifesto’s preamble with
its own construct of India’s past. We are also familiar
with the thesis of Hindutva. But the Council reads into
the BJP’s so called offer of a dialogue with the
Christian community nothing short of reopening issues
settled in the long and learned debates of the Founding
Fathers of modern India in the Constituent Assembly
after which they enshrined in the Constitution the
fundamental rights of Freedom of Religion, to profess,
practice and propagate one’s faith. That is a sacred
right, and cannot be negotiated if India is to retain
its plural culture and its secular and democratic
integrity.
The party’s pillorying of State mechanisms for minority
security, including the Ministry for Minority Affairs
and national commissions, howsoever impotent they may
have been in the past, cannot but beget apprehensions in
the community. The party’s own record in subverting
Human rights and minority commissions in States that it
governs shows the scant respect it has for such
institutions.
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