Sangh Parivar’s protest plan during Pope’s visit lands Govt in a soup

NEW DELHI, OCT 14: The Sangh Parivar's decision to hold protest marches and pujas during Pope John Paul II's visit to India in November i...

NEW DELHI, OCT 14: The Sangh Parivar’s decision to hold protest marches and pujas during Pope John Paul II’s visit to India in November is threatening to blow up into a major embarrassment for the BJP-led government.

With the RSS joining hands with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on its proposed protest march from Goa to Delhi, the Catholic church has turned to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to stop the Hindutva organisations from disrupting the Pontiff’s visit.

For the just-sworn in Vajpayee government, the significance attached to the Pope’s visit cannot be underscored. As head of the world’s Roman Catholic community and a global leader, the Pope’s visit to India at the end of the millenium will earn more than the usual share of media attention.

And with the Vajpayee government having declared the event a state visit, any attempts at disrupting the proceedings would surely earn the country global opprobrium.

Church leaders, who have largely maintained a stoic silence over the repeated allegationslevelled against them, today lashed out at the mischievous and systematic propaganda’ unleashed by the Sangh Parivar against the Christian community.

Referring to recent statements by VHP president Vishnu Hari Dalmia, who is demanding an apology from the Pope and a denouncement of conversions to Christianity, the Archbishop of Delhi Alan de Lastic expressed fears that such statements were vitiating the atmosphere.

Senior leaders of the Sangh Parivar have chosen the occasion of the Pope’s visit to launch a mischievous and systematic propaganda constructed on half-truths, lies and disinformation’, de Lastic said.

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The Catholic church has also appealed to Vajpayee that he should ensure that the visit is not marred by the activities of the Sangh Parivar. The Archbishop has written to the Prime Minister earlier this week about the demands being made by the VHP and the RSS.

A number of other Christian organisations have also appealed the Prime Minister to stop the hate campaign’ that has been unleashed bythe RSS and the VHP.

With the sharp rise in the number of attacks on Christians and missionary-run schools and educational institutions in the last 18 months, Church leaders feel that their community is being targeted since they are viewed as a soft target’.

The fact that numerically Christians are too small to be of any significance as a vote bank has also meant that the community has been largely ignored, and the attacks faced by them did not figure as a major election issue.