Delhi polls: Churches being vandalised are not accidental
The already fifth attack on a church in the capital city of India within two months, right under the nose of the prime minister and home minister is enough evidence to show how emboldened the communal elements have become ever since the Right-wing Hindu nationalists have brought the current government to power. Also, so many attacks within a short span of time on five different Catholic churches cannot be described as isolated incidents and be brushed aside as cases of robbery or drunkenness.
What is most intriguing is the silence of Prime Minister Modi on these! True, it is these cadres who have brought him to power and he is a former RSS "pracharak", but now he is the PM of all the citizens. While we do support the PM in his agenda of development, we would like to state that his agenda will get terribly derailed, particularly of inviting FDIs in various sectors, if certain sections of the Indian society are constantly targeted and attacked just because they belong to a particular religion.
Ever since the BJP has come to power, incidents such as the "ghar wapsi" campaign, plan to introduce an "anti-conversion" law, declaring Christmas Day as "Good Governance Day", proposal of making the Gita as a "National Book", describing the followers of Ram as legitimate and the others as "illegitimate", are just a few of those things which make the Christian and Muslim minorities increasingly insecure.
On several television debates, I have been told that this is already a "Hindu Rashtra", disregarding completely the basic tenets of the Constitution. It is in this context that a deliberate attempt was made to use the old preamble of the Constitution where important words, "secular" and "socialist" are absent.
The RSS, which until some years ago hoisted only the saffron, rather than the tricolor flag in Nagpur and who dream of hoisting a saffron flag on the Red Fort on August 15 one day, as reported in a section of media, is indulging in anti-minority rhetoric which then drives its affiliates to physically attack places of worship belonging to minority groups, particularly the Christians’.
One of their stated grouses against the Christian community is the reason to bring in the "anti-conversion" law is that Christian missionaries "convert" the poor illiterate lot by offering them allurements. Nobody has so far been able to give me an answer as to why, in a country where nearly 50 per cent of the population, for decades, has been living below the poverty line, have the numbers of Christians gone down from two point six per cent in 1971 to two point three three per cent according to 2001 Census. Why indeed?
We as Christians fail to understand that if the Census of India does not support their case, why do they keep propagating a lie so vociferously which inspires the uninformed cadres to go on a rampage? It is also the misfortune of the Christians that the majority in the police, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the media do not feel the pinch as painfully as the Christians themselves do.