Author:
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: March 12, 2001
The Poor Christian Liberation Movement
has criticised the reported move of the Church to keeping the converted
Christians in the Dalit category.
R L Francis, President of the PCLM
said that 'It is notable that Church organizations have been demanding
that people who converted from SC/ST to Christianity should be kept in
separate category in the Census of India.
Alleging the Church leadership for
misguiding the converted Christians Francis, said that the Church is not
ready to give the reservation in their own organizations, which they have
demanding from the Government. If the church is honest about the welfare
and development of converted Christians, there is no reason for more than
one and half crore Christian population to remain backward, Francis said.
He said that while on the one hand,
the Church leadership in collusion with World Council of Churches (WCC)
has been spending crore of rupees on programmes like PCR for putting an
end to casteism, on the other hand it has been trying to divide the converted
Christians into caste system and category by demanding Reservation for
them.
He expressed the apprehension that
Church is demanding inclusion of converted Christians in the Census of
India as separate category with an eye to infiltrate into other SC classes
of other communities. But, the converted Christians are not ready to accept
the label of, casteism on them. The Church leadership is, in fact trying
to do business of casteism in the name of Christianity, he alleged.
