By: Dominic Emmanuel
The media, particularly print, went on an overdrive after the speech of US President Barack Obama at the Siri Fort auditorium last week, especially with his reference to Article 25 of the Indian Constitution. In this paper, BJP leader Balbir Punj wrote about this speech (‘Dear President Obama’, IE, February 4), joining issue with his warning on the dangers of a “splintering” along religious lines. I had the privilege of sitting in one of the front rows during his brilliant 35-minute speech, whereupon he touched several relevant and urgent issues concerning both the oldest and the largest democracies of the world.
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As a person from the minority community and being one of the targets of the Togadias and the Bhagwats for the ghar wapsi that seeks to turn all Indians Hindus, I did relish the cherry picking by the media of the portion of “Barack’s” mention of “splintering” the country on religious lines. All the excitement generated by Obama’s reference to Article 25 and President Mukherjee’s address evaporated into thin air on Monday morning after hearing about yet another attack, the fifth, on a Catholic church in the capital, right under the nose of both the prime minister and the home minister.
Their silence on the issue is deafening. They probably perceive that these churches belong to those “nasty missionaries” bent on converting the poor illiterate gullible masses. Since the Hindu Rashtra may still be some distance away, the VHP on February 3 at the end of its two-day conference in Solan, passed a resolution demanding that Himachal Pradesh be declared a Hindu state. The resolution also said that the VHP, “alarmed by increased cases of ‘love jihad’, conversions and activities of Bangladeshi nationals”, will hold a Vishal Hindu Sammelan on May 9 in Shimla to discuss such threats. At another VHP virat sammelan in Badaun, Sadhvi Prachi justified her previous statement that Hindu women must give birth to four children and added that “those having 40 children were trying to convert Hindustan into Darul Islam”. Not to be outdone by the sadhvi, a day later, Sakshi Maharaj, mimicking the rowing of a boat in Rishikesh, reminded the PM, “Modi will have to be a boatman: one oar must focus on economy, and the other must concentrate on the Hindu agenda”.
Modi, of course, has taken maun vrat (oath of silence) because the talk concerns the powerless minorities and not those aligned with the Hindutva project, who catapulted him to power. Being a former RSS pracharak, how can he speak up? After all, without the green signal from the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, he could not have got the endorsement to be PM. Need he be reminded that he is the PM of us all? No sooner the eventual goal of the Hindu Rashtra is achieved, the plan to have a temple dedicated to Nathuram Godse, the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, will be executed in every Indian district. The Bhagavad Gita will become the national book and Saraswati vandana made compulsory in all the schools, not to mention Sanskrit as the national language. All of us had a glimpse of the future Indian Constitution, described as the “Holy Book” by Modi in his speeches, when in an advertisement on Republic Day, the essential words, “secular” and “socialist”, were conspicuous by their absence. And, even if one forgets the outbursts of the bigoted Shiv Sena leader who justified it, the shocking part was Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad defending it.
The one great stick to beat the Christians with is the false propaganda of conversion. For all the rhetoric, no one is able to answer one basic question I ask at various fora: “How come in a poor country like ours with 2,000 years of Christian presence and with all the allurements on offer, we are reduced to 2.33 per cent (2001 Census) of the population, down from 2.6 per cent in 1971?” Ram Madhav, the former RSS spokesperson, said in a TV debate that was because Hinduism was a strong faith. His statement in itself is proof that the alleged “allurements” were not working. Why then spread false allegations and attack our places of worship?
My fellow countrymen and women, do you feel the same excruciating pain we as a community feel?
The writer is director, Sadbhavana, Institute for Communication and Inter-religious Dialogue.
