Author: Radha Rajan
Publication: Vigil
Date: September 11, 2005
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/news/plain_speak/ps_view.asp?plainSpeakId=90
Hallelujah, Allah be praised, the unthinkable
has finally happened. The Union Home Ministry is finally showing some signs
of waking up from the sleep of the dead; it has acknowledged at long last
that religious conversions of Hindus - Vanvasis, Adivasis, Brahmins, caste
Hindus, Harijans and the small Sikh and Jain communities - by rabid evangelizing
churches of all denominations is a major cause of social unrest and communal
disharmony. It has specifically pointed to the activities of Christian evangelists
in Kota, Rajasthan and attempts to convert Hindus by Muslims in Dakshin Kannada,
Karnataka.
This was stated bluntly by the Home Ministry
in the agenda paper that was prepared for the meeting of the National Integration
Council on August 31, 2005.
(http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=STATES&file_name=state18%2Etxt&counter_img=18)
Not surprisingly, no English newspaper except the Pioneer and no 'secular'
satellite TV news channel carried the report about this momentous waking up
which acknowledged Hindu concerns with regard to Christian missionaries and
their blatant abuse of the constitutional provision of their right to 'preach
and propagate' their religion through a bizarre interpretation of this right
notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling in this regard that the right to
preach and propagate did not mean unchecked license to undertake religious
conversion. N Ram of The Hindu is one of the members of this re-constituted
council and his paper while dwelling at length on the Prime Minister's valedictory
address and a Nehruvian wooly-headed in-the-realm-of-the-future law to prevent
communal violence (how?!) maintains a stoic silence about the contents of
the agenda paper. (http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/01/stories/2005090110580100.htm)
(http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/01/stories/2005090116831400.htm) .
That the Union Home Ministry's agenda paper
for the meeting of the NIC raised the issue of religious conversion and religious
extremism causing communal unrest when the focus of the agenda for the NIC
meeting was reportedly to discuss media and education, in turn raises a couple
of intriguing questions. Why this turnaround by a government that embodied
anti-Hindu Nehruvian secularism and which put the minorities on the back-foot
particularly when the composition of the NIC was loaded against discussion
of any issue that would put the Muslims and Christians on the defensive? .
To quote the Government press release, "The
National Integration Council (NIC) was reconstituted in February this year.
The reconstituted NIC, headed by the Prime Minister, has 141 Members comprising
of Union Ministers, Chief Ministers of all States and Union Territories which
have legislatures, Leaders of National Political Parties and Regional Political
Parties, Chairpersons of National Commissions, Media Persons, Eminent Public
Figures and Representatives drawn from Business, Labour and Women. The main
objective of NIC is to review all matters pertaining to national integration
and to make recommendations on it." .
Except for Narendra Modi and perhaps other
Chief Ministers of BJP ruled states and Advani and Vajpayee all of whom find
place automatically in the Council notwithstanding their 'Hitlerite' and 'fascist'
proclivities, there is no person representing the Hindu community in any of
the other categories dominated overwhelmingly by Marxixts, Nehruvian secularists,
Muslims and Christians; let me re-phrase it this way, there has been a deliberate
attempt not to have individuals espousing the Hindu cause in the NIC, which
is completely in keeping with Nehru's intention for creating it in the first
place;and that is why this question keeps coming back to my mind - why did
the Union Home Ministry place this agenda paper before such a council? (http://pib.nic.in/release/rel_print_page.asp?relid=6883)
.
Let us first look at the history behind the
National Integration Council. The NIC was consequent to the National Integration
Conference of 1961 which was convened by Nehru in the aftermath of the Jabalpur
Riots of 1961 and had its first sitting in June 1962. Both Indira Gandhi and
Atal Bihari Vajpayee were members of the first NIC. The NIC was constituted
by Nehru as an antidote to what he perceived with typical Nehruvian wooly-headedness
to be India's ills - "communalism, casteism, regionalism and linguism"
- all of which are features of Hinduism's celebrated diversity and Hindu understanding
of the role and place of State and social institutions. Nehru saw the writing
on the wall and understood the Jabalpur riots to be Hindu resistance to Muslim
provocation and rather than dealing with Muslim intransigence, with typical
Nehruvian flourish he conjured up the NIC as state response to communal disharmony.
.
It is not clear what Nehru meant by national
integration, not after he put in Article 370 into the Constitution nor did
he specify what he thought the NIC could do to effect it and whether the implicit
task entrusted to the NIC was to end the ills, as perceived by him, obstructing
the integration - "communalism, casteism, regionalism and linguistic
chauvinism." It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to understand Nehru's
prescription for national integration; he wanted to neutralize at the least
and do away completely if he could, with these perceived ills only to de-Hinduise/de-nationalise
the country so that ultimately the westernized state would remain but nationalism
(read Hindu nationalism) would have been throttled to death.
Not surprisingly, none of the Prime Ministers
after Nehru attached any great importance to this unpractical idea with an
amorphous agenda and the NIC except for sporadic breathing exercises, lay
dormant for the greater part of its life. Even in recent times, the NIC had
not met since 1992 and the UPA government convened the newly constituted NIC
for its first meeting on August 31, 2005, barely 10 days ago. So, the most
intriguing question of all - why was the NIC re-constituted and convened by
the UPA government after a gap of 13 years and why did the Home Ministry,
in spite of the ostensible reason cited for the convention (to discuss media
and education), place the agenda of religious conversion and religious extremism
before this Nehruvian secular agency? The agenda paper not only did not raise
any issue with regard to education and the media, it linked the Gujarat riots
to the Godhra carnage.
The agenda paper was circulated to all members
of the newly constituted NIC well in advance of the scheduled meeting on August
31. Predictably, the agenda paper drew hysterical responses from the Christian
and Muslim components of the NIC - from John Dayal National President, All
India Catholic Union and Secretary-General, All India Christian Council and
Navaid Hamid General Secretary, Movement for Empowerment of Muslim Indians
(MOEMIN)
(http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/0050831a.htm)
(http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050902-minorities-rights.htm).
http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/2005/20050831.htm
I would request all readers of this Vigil
Plainspeak to read the letters written to the Prime Minister by these two
minority gentlemen and the text of the statement made by the Archbishop of
Delhi in the inaugural session of the meeting "to present to this august
assembly of the National Integration Council a Christian Perspective of National
Integration. This is rooted as much in the Gospel values of Truth, Justice
and Love, as in the rights and duties of a Citizen of a Democratic, Socialist
and Secular India dreamt by social reformer Mahatma Phule, Mahatma Gandhi,
and the Constitution's Founding Fathers Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr Babasaheb
Ambedkar. Christian members of the Constituent Assembly such as Fr Jerome
D Souza rejected separateness in favour of a nurturing integration based on
an abiding faith in the Rule of Law, Justice and Equity, fundamental ingredients
of abiding Peace in the land. This went far beyond affirmative action, reservations,
or doles." And then, in the same breath, the three Eminences go on to
demand at the meeting, affirmative action, reservations and doles for Dalit
Christians.
The well organized and well-funded Muslim
and Christian communities have come to take it for granted that Nehruvian
secularism owed it to them as a matter of constitutional right that all government
commissions, agencies and councils, statutory or not, must be constituted
only to serve their interests with the covert implication that these bodies
must be explicitly or implicitly anti-Hindu. This expectation has been fueled
and fanned by successive governments, the judiciary, the National Human Rights
Commission and the National Commission for Minorities besides the secularists
in academia and media. The Marxists are the new and willing entrants to the
club of the faithful worshiping at the altar of Politics of Minority-ism.
Besides an impressive wish-list wanting more and more of this and that by
both minority communities, The Archbishop of Delhi, in his address also makes
reference or is it a veiled threat to the NIC about the world (read US State
Department) keenly watching the proceedings of the NIC.
This brings me back to the start, to all those
intriguing questions. The NIC is reconstituted after 13 years by the UPA government
in typical Nehruvian secular style and substance.
1. Why was the NIC reconstituted after 13
years unless this Congress ritual was meant to send the reassuring signal
to the minorities about the return of the Congress to power at the center?
2. If that were true why was religious conversion the theme of the agenda
paper for the very first ritual meeting of the reconstituted NIC after 13
years instead of the usual Congress/Marxist/Minority style Hindu-bashing agenda?
Considering that there was more than enough grist for their Hindu-bashing
mill.
3. Why did the Union Home Ministry feel compelled to raise the issue of religious
conversion and why did it link the Gujarat riots to the Godhra massacre, for
the first time, let me add, since 2003, in the agenda paper knowing full well
that this would be labeled an RSS or NDA agenda?
4. Why did not any of the eminent media persons and journalists nominated
to the NIC, and who were present at the meeting, make any mention of the agenda
paper of the Home Ministry in their newspapers or in their TV channels?
5. Why, in spite of the strongly worded protest letters from John Dayal and
Navaid Hamid, did the Prime Minister's valedictory address not reflect any
of their reservations and objections and why did he not make soothing, reassuring
noises about their concerns or demands?
6.The Home Ministry's agenda paper would have been cleared by the Home Minister
who for his part would not have sent advance copies to members without the
Prime Minister's consent and approval of the agenda paper. Now the million
dollar question is, Was Saint Sonia consulted on the agenda paper? If yes,
why did she permit raising the issue of religious conversion and the new tone
on the Gujarat riots knowing that Narendra Modi would be present at the meeting
too? If she were not consulted, then there is a whole new series of other
even more intriguing questions that I have lined up for future use.
7.It is almost certain that the senior officials in the Home Ministry who
probably drafted the agenda paper for the NIC meeting are deeply worried about
the rapidly changing religious demographic profile in a growing number of
districts in India. The Center for Policy Studies (CPS), a research organization
in Chennai published the path-breaking book, 'Religious Demography of India'
in 2003, a book that created a furore among the secular academics, including
demographers and other op-ed intellectuals who denounced this monumental research
findings as being communally motivated, alarmist, amateur and worse. But the
Union Home Ministry, notwithstanding the public posturing by secular politicians
and academics ridiculing the idea of alarming religious demographic imbalance
that is emerging, knows to the contrary. It has intelligence reports affirming
not only the rapidly changing religious demographic composition in certain
well-defined pockets and districts but also the growing anger and frustration
of the victimized Hindu community against continuing jihadi terrorism and
brazen religious conversion undertaken by Christian missionaries and churches.
And that is why reference was made to the rabid evangelical churches in Rajasthan
and other parts of India and to communal tension in Dakshina Kannad.
8.Reference to Dakshina Kannad is significant for the following reason. I
am open to correction but bifurcating districts to create new districts falls
within the purview of the Union Home Ministry. If my surmise is right then
let us look at the role of the Union Home Ministry of successive governments
at the center in the creation of new districts with a high presence of Muslims
and Christians. I am not going into J&K and the North-East, Kerala and
Goa where the two large minority communities are in a dominant position but
to the rest of India where the population of the Indian religionists is still
in the majority. In the last 10 years alone, between 1991-2001, sharp and
unusual changes have taken place in the religious profile of several pockets
in this region:
In Orissa the districts of Phulbani and Ganjam
have been bifurcated to create pockets of high Christian presence. (18% and
33.5% respectively)
In Karnataka, the district of Dakshina Kannad
has been bifurcated to create a Muslim dominant pocket. (22%)
Indian religionists are declining in almost
all districts of Karnataka on the western coast losing ground to Muslims and
Christians
In the Dangs district of Gujarat Christian
population has risen from 5.43% to 9.51% in the last decade
In Maharashtra the district of Akola has been
bifurcated to create a Muslim dominant pocket. (18%)
Greater Mumbai now has 18.5% Muslims; Mumbai
suburban has been separated from it and the proportion of Muslims in the remaining
Mumbai district is 22%.
Besides this startling Home Ministry complicity
in creating new districts with dominant presence of the minority religionists,
Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gurgaon,
Yamunanagar, Panipat, in Haryana, Alwar and Bharatpur in Rajasthan, Sangrur,
Ludhiana, Patiala, and Rupnagar in the Punjab have all shown unnatural and
sudden increase in the population of Christians or Muslims and in some pockets
increase in the population of both Christians and Muslims as in the Punjab.
(Source: Religious Demography of India, Updated
up to 2001, Center for Policy Studies, Chennai 2005)
Home Ministry complicity in the activities
of rabid evangelists has been proved in another case; this one involving a
White Canadian, Ronn Watts and his wife Dorothy Watts belonging to the Seventh
Day Adventist Church. This man and wife team were issued deportation orders,
asking them to leave the country by the Union Home Ministry in July 2003.
LK Advani was the Home Minister then. The order was not served to the couple
until four months later. But getting wind of the deportation order, the couple
apply for extension in August but rejecting the application the TN state government
in September 2003, two months after the deportation order was issued by the
Union Home Ministry, issues orders to the District Collector, Dharmapuri to
execute the deportation order.
But getting wind yet again of the TN government
order, the couple leave the country of their own volition before they can
be deported which would have stigmatized their passports forever, and travel
to the US. In the US, without disclosing information about government orders
for their deportation, they procure new visas to travel to India, visas valid
until 2008. Armed with these new visas the couple saunter into the country
at the end of October 2003 and soon thereafter the district SP serves the
deportation on the couple after they have left the country and entered it
again with new visas!!!
It is alleged that Ron Watts was a part of
a group of church leaders who met LK Advani in November 2003. Now this must
take the cake for monumental blunders or something much worse and more suspicious.
How could the Home Minister have received a delegation which had in their
midst a man ordered to be deported for his proselytizing activities? A man
whose deportation order was signed by the Home Minister himself? This question
beats all other questions raised before. And as the crowning insult to Hindus,
Ron Watts meets Sonia Gandhi after the UPA government is formed at the center
and has his photograph with her plastered in their church journal.
(Time line of this disgraceful episode is
available at http://dharmabhoomi.blogspot.com/)
With this degree of state complicity and encouragement
for evangelists and foreign missionaries, and with the kind of alarming growth
in the minority population in several pockets of the country, I am not at
all surprised that patriotic Home Ministry officials felt compelled to draft
the agenda paper for the NIC meeting with an agenda that, for the first time,
put the minorities on the defensive. I thank God for small mercies named Manmohan
Singh and Shivraj Patil. They have done their little bit for the Hindus which
is more than can be said about LK Advani. Singh and Patil had better watch
their backs.
Correction: I have been informed by a scholar
in the Center for Policy Studies that the decision to bifurcate districts
lies with state governments alone. Which means Hindu nationalists may have
to study in great depth the issue of bifurcation of districts from the beginning
of the process. That bifurcation of districts was undertaken in Jammu and
Kashmir by successive Sunni Muslim governments causing grave harm to the Hindus
was well-known but that other states too have bifurcated districts creating
pockets where the numbers of the mionority religionists are in the ascendant
is cause for even greater worry. This bodes ill for communal harmony and national
security, there is no doubt. It is obvious that the Christians and Muslims
do not want to spread themselves thin but are aiming to capture power and
wield influence in well-defined pockets. If Hindus do not wake up even now,
they may find that they have been crowded out of their habitat when they finally
do. The Home Ministry officials who drafted the agenda paper have done us
a signal service in drawing the attention of the country to the undesirable
activities of a section of the minorities. If Hindus have any sense of self-preservation,
they will begin to act now.
