ISSUES BEFORE THE COMMUNITY

Dr. John Dayal’s speech at 2 December 2007 meeting of the CATHOLIC COUNCIL OF INDIA at Ranchi, Jharkhand



Puny they may seem in the face of the overwhelming and flagrant violation of Human right in India, but issues of Persecution, anti Conversion Laws and full Constitutional Rights for Dalit Christians remain critical for the Church and the Community as erosion of Constitutional Guarantees

A million human beings were reportedly butchered in the Partition riots of 1947, almost an equal number of Hindus and Muslims. No one kept a count. There was no effort at determining the truth, and feeble efforts at reconciliation. That was then. More accurate counts have been kept since then. Over 3,500 Sikhs were killed, most of them torched alive, in 2004. Over 1,000 Muslims died in Ahmedabad in the early seventies and over 2,000 more in Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat 2002. Mr. L K Advani’s Rath Yatra and it inevitable finale of Bari demolition, the Mumbai blasts which followed and the Mumbai riots thereafter in 1992-93 remain as known for their intensity as for the fact, like other acts of hate, the perpetrators remain unpunished. As they indeed also remain unpunished in cases of violence against Dalits, the situation only theoretically better than it must have been in the Dark ages.
The State, which should mean means the Government and Civil society, also remains culpable, by what it has done and what it has failed to do. We cannot even begin talking of recent revelations of the scale of suicide by farmers in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh, every death that could have been avoided by State intervention in the processes of agricultural loans. There has never been a discussion of any strength in Parliament on matters of Military and Police impunity in the killings in Kashmir, the North East, and the Punjab. Fake encounters, mysterious disappearances of activists, custodial deaths.
I participated in a recent exercise to prepare the Civil Society document on India’s Human Rights situation to be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Council, which will report directly to the UN General Assembly, recently replaced the old and tooth-less UN Human Rights Commission. India is in the first batch of country’s whose records will be examined by fellow UN members in what is called a Universal Periodic Review to be held in April 2007. Indian will come up for review again in 2012.
The Civil Society report to the UPR meeting makes a depressing document. Gender, labour, Tribals, Religious minorities, displacement, Impunity – you name the issue and India has much of which it needs to be ashamed. Marginalised people have not been given the protection they deserve. The State and its brutal agencies have gone scot free, not just in Gujarat and Nandigram-SEZ, Kashmir and Nagaland, Punjab and Orissa.
India’s 10 per cent growth is not reflected on the ground. The growth of its middle class apparently has been at the cost of the hidden multitudes below the poverty line. The ideological inclinations of parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, the political label of the hyper nationalist Hindutva group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which ruled the nation for six years and continues to rule a third of the country’s states, in fact, have taken state impunity and hostility to new depths.
I leave it to the Church to introspect and realize if they have stood up to be counted in the struggle for human dignity and Constitutional rights, or if they have been satisfied with whatever development efforts they have contributed to in FCRA-assisted programmes. Articulation and empowerment remain matters on which the Church can be interrogated. This begins with the empowerment of the Catholic Laity in the three Catholic Churches, conscientising them to act as individuals and as a community.
We could begin with home, so to speak, in raising the bar to protest the denial of human rights on three issues that remain contemporary.
The first is the matter of Rights for Dalit Christians.
The second is the proliferation of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills in both BJP and Congress rules states.
The third is the matter of economic and development deprivation of Christians, especially rural landless, tribals without ST rights, and Dalits.

THE DALIT CHRISTIAN ISSUE:
The established Church and its hierarchy and institutions are not direct participants in the legal, or court, struggle of the Dalit Christians, though the Church is an active litigant in protecting Article 30 Minority rights of Schools and colleges, particularly in the management of the high-end sector. The Dalit Christian matter is in the Supreme Court because of the action of a Civil Society group, called the Public Interest Litigation Centre which was set up by the Janata party [1977-79] Government’s Union Law minister Shanti Bhushan and his son, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan who have challenged the 1950 presidential order which reduced affirmative action programmes for the former untouchable castes to only those who wanted to remain in the Hindu faith. The PIL by the Bhushans has subsequently been supported by similar PILs by individuals and various groups. Not surprisingly, the RSS and its activists have also filed PILs in the court. The CBCI and its SC-ST-BC Commission has been in the forefront, however, of mobilizing mass support in collaboration with other Church groups. Small but persistent demonstrations have been held in New Delhi, larger ones in Tamil Nadu and Andhra, and petitions have been taken to the Prime Minister, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and various chief ministers. The delegations are often led by Bishops, I am happy to note. I must also put on record, here, the pioneering role of the All India Catholic Union in this struggle, a role AICU continues to play.
But Church unity on the Dalit Christian issue still remains a matter of doubt. It does seem often that Dalit Christians have been left to their own devices, and that it is a matter of concern only to a section of the Latin Church, specially in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Punjab. Congregations of the so called Indian National Churches, and the leaders and congregations of the tribal groups from the North east and Central India, and the middle class groups along the East and West coasts seem not to relate to this matter As much as they would relate to an assault on their Article 30 rights.
For their own reasons, many of which relate to the conditions of their funding and some to their ideological or religious biases, the so called Secular Dalit movements have distanced themselves from the struggle of Dalit Christians. Dalit Christians were not allowed a voice even in the UN Conference in Durban in the beginning of this Century, and major Dalit movements, national and international, Hindu, Neo-Buddhist or even Church-led, do not focus as much on Freedom of Faith as a Dalit right and Dalit Christians as a part of the crisis on which they are focusing.
I am not saying that the lack of universal Christian unity on the Dalit issue is singularly responsible for the delay in persuading the Government to amend the law, as it did to benefit Sikh and Buddhist communities. But a more united Christian community and more concerted effort would have been useful. We need to answer a simple question – Even when the Archbishop of Delhi personally calls upon the clergy and congregation to come to a rally, only a handful do so, and very few of them are priests. In the Nineteen Nineties, the Church could bring a lakh of people to Delhi from Punjab and other areas. Even today, in Madurai or Trichi or Hyderabad, it is possible for Church to mobilise lakhs. Nowhere else -- for this cause, though lakhs can still collect for pious or other political and commercial matters. I deeply regret that controversies and dissensions, tension and an acrid environment created in the wake of the Rites issue in various parts of North India including Delhi, has not helped the Dalit Christian campaign.
[For the record, I must say that the rally organised by the CBCI and National Council of churches in New Delhi on 29th November 2007 did see about 10 Catholic Bishops and an equal number of protestant Hierarchy, about 200 priests and nuns and another 200 activists from Tamil Nadu and other states staged a three hour protest in New Delhi. As current president of the All India Catholic Union, which has always played an active role in the Dalit struggle, was not taken to a part of the organisation of the rally. If it is just to be church leaders, then the pitch will have to be higher, for Bishops cannot create large numbers. People in Parliament and government have often told me that if a single Dalit Christian Member of Parliament and some church leaders were to go on an indefinite hunger strike near the Gandhi statue in Parliament house, the matter would be settled in short order. It is not that Christian members of Parliament have not agitated in front of the rally. Women MPs have done so for gender rights. And several men MPs have been enthusiastic participants in sit-in protests for coconut and rubber prices. These are of course important and concern large number of plantation workers and workers, but so is the Dalit Christian issue, and it has no takers beyond lip service.]
The tortuous course of the Dalit Christian struggle has exposed political parties and Government even more. They support the cause when they are not in power. Even current chief ministers such as those of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, who have supported the cause, do not say it with the same vigour as they do other local matters when negotiating with the Central Government which depends on them for its survival.
The Congress Government in New Delhi has failed to give any cheer to the disempowered community. The BJP could perhaps have been excused for not helping us. It says rights to Dalit Christians will lead to an exodus from Hinduism, and by supporting the existing rule, it is preventing mass conversions. That is the plea its leaders have taken in the Supreme Court. Prime Ministers HD Deve Gowda, even before his alliance with the BJP in Karnataka, and Inder Kumar Gujral, long before he sought BJP support in Punjab, perhaps did not have the ideological or political will to act.
But surely the Congress has the numbers and the stability. Its allies, the Marxists and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, have written their support in letters to the Prime Minister. Even Miss Mayawati has written such a letter. What then is the explanation or the hidden reason for this pathetic lack of political will? I understand that the Congress, despite its pretensions of inner party unity and ideological commitment, has not been able to prevent a large chuck of the Hindu leadership of the party, especially of the Dalit segment, from being swayed by the Hindutva argument. They have made it into a Hindu Dalit Versus Christian Dalit confrontation. These leaders argue that Christian Dalits, because their marginally better standards of education, will take away the benefits given to scheduled castes. They say their cake of jobs and vacancies in professional colleges is too small and they cannot share it with Dalit Christians.
They of course make the mistake, perhaps deliberately, of confusing Dalit rights with just Government jobs. Dalit rights are for dignity, for political empowerment, for self employment and for participation in Panchayati raj. Here the cake is very large. Everyone can share. The Congress party and the United Progressive Front Government which it heads has so far made mo effort ton educate its cadres and MPs etc. Instead, it has left advocacy with MPs to members of the Church. The Church, really speaking, is in no way outfitted or trained to lobby with politicians. If it could have done, it would have done right in 1950, and this crisis would not have happened in the front place. Nor, for that matter, would it have come into conflict with the Marxist Governments in Kerala, for instance. Politics is not Church business!
The Government continues in its refusal to act. When it comes to speaking in the Supreme Court, high Government lawyers waffle, and pass the buck. First the Government passed the buck to the National Commission under former Chief Justice Rangnath Mishra Commission which was looking at the development issues of religious and linguistic minorities.
The Mishra Commission long completed its report [though its surveys were loaded in favour of the Hindutva argument]. Its full report is not published, but it has published the recommendations in favour of giving Dalit Christians, and Dalit Muslims. The Commission has since then been wound up, and its full documentation, which we all contributed rare documents, is now lying in some Government godown.
Since the Union Government had been telling the Supreme Court that it was waiting for Justice Misra to submit his report, it should rightfully immediately given the court its decision – speaking out whether it was accepting the report, the best course, or rejecting it, the worst case scenario from the Christian point of view. It did neither. Using an obscure provision in the revised National Commission for Scheduled Castes [which is a statutory Commission] the Government said it was mandatory for it to refer the matter to the SC Commission now headed by former Union Home minister, and late Bihar governor, Dr Buta Singh. The Government has still not said it will respect the recommendations of its own Commissions. It merely refers the matter to them. It forgot that even when the pro-Hindutva PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, and Mr. Sitaram Kesri the Welfare Minister, they introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha to grant Dalit Christian their well deserved rights. The cabinet had agreed. That the Bill was not taken up because the Lok Sabah was dissolved, is another matter altogether.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes has a terrible record. Under past Congress and BJP chairpersons and members, the Commission has taken a very Hindu attitude to most matters. It has not been true even to its charter relating to Dalits of the Hindu faith. The last few chairmen have been very hostile to the Christian cause and have publicly announced their rejection of the rights.
Dr Buta Singh is a Dalit himself, of course, but as a Dalit from Punjab, he has lived in close proximity with Christians, and even has a few Christians in his near and extended family. In my meetings with him, he has assured me he is very sympathetic to the Dalit Christian cause and his report will be very positive. But he has also made it clear that rights for Dalit Christians will be available only once the Government changes the rules and gives additional quotas for Muslims and Christians in the SC list. This reservation now stands at 15 per cent. Unless the Supreme Court Okays it and the Government shows the political will, there is no Constitutional method through which the additional 2 per cent or so reservation for Christians and maybe more then 7 per cent additional quota for Dalit Muslims can be created. This affectively means another stalling for many more years, and for us, a grim future of continued struggle.
The matter came up once again before the Supreme Court on 28 November 2007, and as predicted, Government once again sought two months time before it came up with the response. Senior counsel and former Law Minister, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, questioned the government as to what was stopping it from hurrying up with its report. And an annoyed Chief Justice of India, Mr. Justice Balakrishnan, told the government’s additional Solicitor General Mr. Gopal Subramaniam that he would have to hurry up and tell the court in four weeks time.
But even if the Government were to tell the Supreme Court that it has decided to give the quota, there are only two ways it can become a reality. The Government has to issue a Presidential proclamation by way of an Ordinance adding the word Christians in the law where it covers Hindus, Buddhist, and Sikhs. The second option is all but mandated. We will have to continue with proceedings in the Supreme Court. Senior advocates tell me that even if the Supreme Court admits the Writ Petitions, the actual hearings and legal calisthenics may take months, if not years. National and international advocacy will also have to continue, as also mass mobilisation in the national capital, state, and district headquarters and everywhere elsewhere possible.
The matter of course is also before God. Everything is possible when the Holy Spirit moves. Together with advocacy in Government and with political parties and their leaders, we also must continue united with prayers and supplications before God. Perhaps this will also unite the community for larger gains in the future.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BILLS AND THE POLITICS OF HATE AND MAJORITY APPEASEMENT
The second issue, of the so called Freedom of Religion Bills, also speaks of political perfidy, lack of political will among those who rule us, and an assertion that though the Constitution may speak of a Secular state with equal distance from, and equal respect for, all religions, in actual fact Hinduism is the default religion of India, and the State and Government follow it with diligence and enthusiasm. I am not referring to the obvious heavy public exchequer financing of religious festivals, the media abuse in favour of one religion and so on. I speak of issues of Constitution.
As we all know, despite the caution of the first, and best, Prime Minister, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Madhya Pradesh Chief minister, Pandit Ravi Shankar set up the notorious Niyogi committee to investigate Christian work in his then undivided state. Ravi Shankar and Niyogi where both pathologically hostile to Christianity. Their target was the Catholic Church, working among tribals who they and their group had been exploiting for decades. The All India Catholic Union’s associations in the state, really active Catholic Associations gave extensive documentation. As did the Church. But the report was a forgone conclusion. Acting on it Madhya Pradesh passed the Religious Freedom Act affectively banning all conversions, and as effectively coercing the Tribals to espouse the Hindu faith, a practice the Sangh Parivar codified in its criminal Ghar Wapsi programme. Ravi Shankar was a Congressman. Later SVD and other Governments in various states followed suit. In short order, Orissa and Arunachal joined the fray; Arunachal after a violent suppression of whatever Christianity then existed in that remote state. Since then Gujarat, Rajasthan and Himachal have passed the law. Tamil Nadu passed the law, but the chief minister, Jayalalitha who had first bowed to her Hindutva allies, leant her lesson and quickly rescinded the ugly act.
The shenanigans in Himachal Pradesh are the ones I find the most obnoxious, and the most inexplicable.
When the Rajasthan State Legislative Assembly had become the latest State to pass such an Act, I was among those who approached the noted Constitutional lawyer Dr Rajeev Dhawan to study the Constitutional validity of such legislation. You would recall that many decades ago, Rev Fr Stanislaus had challenged these laws in the court, as also others who moved the courts on the Orissa laws. The Supreme Court in a strange decision, upheld both the Christian faith’s right to profess and propagate the faith, but said they did not have the right to convert. The absurdity inherent in, and the contradictions between, various court pronouncements on religious faith as a fundamental right has been subject of much debate, but no one has yet gone to court to challenge the Stanislaus judgement in its entirety and in a coherent holistic manner.
Dr Rajeev Dhawan, senior advocate Indira Jaisingh and even the Solicitor General of India, in his own legal opinion to a State Governor, have held that this law is ultra vires of the Constitution for a long list of reasons.
The then Governor of Rajasthan, and today President of India, Advocate Pratibha Patil, agreed with the logic of our protest, and withheld her consent to the Bill, sending it to the then President Dr Abul Kalam in New Delhi. He too withheld his signature. In Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jhakkar has also refused to sign certain amendments to the Act into law.
When this was taking place, I wrote to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party. President. She replied in a signed letter. She said she and her party were against any restrictions to freedom of expression and faith, a and they would stand against it both inside legislatures and outside, if required.
And yet, the Congress Chief Minister of Himachal, Vir Bhadra Singh, one of an anachronistic group of princelings, who is facing a serious Hindutva challenge in the State Legislative Assembly elections, brought such a law into being, and the State Governor promptly signed it into law. Singh told media he was trying to prevent threat to local religion and culture. No one asked him just how many Christians there were in the state – barely measurable in census operations – and how many fraudulent conversions – none in reality.
I went to the National Commission of Minorities, headed then by the scholar-diplomat, Mr. Ansari, now Vice President of the Indian republic. Mr. Ansari, former ambassador to West Asia and a former vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University wrote to many states to find out how many fraudulent conversions to Christianity and taken place to merit such laws. The reply he got was startling to him, but not to me. Every state that responded had to admit there were no cases of forcible and fraudulent conversions to Christianity or Islam.
There have been large scale conversions to Buddhism, and people join the Sikh Panth in Punjab and Delhi almost on a daily basis. But the law never takes notice because for some peculiar reason never fully explained the official system agrees with the Sangh Parivar that these are not individual religions but parts of Hinduism. In effect, the Indian legal system, denies these religions, which they call Indic religions the right to an independent identity.
But I digress.
I, the All India Christian Council and the Christian Legal Association are challenging the Himachal law in the Shimla High Court. The preliminary work has been done. An application ahs also been filed under the Right to Information to force the Government to disclose just how many Christians exist in the state, and what provoked it to go in for such a barbaric law.
And the law is really barbaric. As we all know, these laws are directed only against Christianity, and to a lesser extent, against Islam. Even if the police do not arrest Priest and pastors, the existence of the law on the Statute books, encourages widespread and well organised hate campaigns, and criminalization of genuine religious activity. They also mislead even senior police officers to believe they can move against religious personnel of the Christian Church and even against the laity. The acts create a tinder box situation which leads eventually to widespread persecution of Christians on the one hand and a coercion of Dalits, Tribals and marginalised who are terrorized by provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act to remain silent in the face of great exploitation.
For the record, the salient parts of the Himachal Religious Freedom Act are:
1) A person intending to convert from one religion to another shall give prior notice of at least thirty days to the District Magistrate of the district concerned of his intention to do so and the District Magistrate shall get the matter enquired into all by such agency as he may deem fit: Provided that no notice shall be required if a person reverts back to his original religion.
(2) Any person who fails to give prior notice, as required under sub-section (1) shall be punishable with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees.
Section 5. Punishment for contravention of the provision of section 3 : Any person contravening the provisions contained in section 3 shall, without prejudice to any civil liability, be punishable with imprisonment of either description which may extend to two years or with fine may extend to twenty five thousand rupees or with both: Provided that in case the offence is committed in respect of a minor, a woman or a person belonging to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribes, the punishment of imprisonment may extend to three years and fine may extend to fifty thousand rupees.
Section 6. Offence to be cognizable: An offence under this Act shall be cognizable and shall not be investigated by an officer below the rank of an Inspector of Police.”
It is obvious that the district civil and police authorities are now arbiters of fundamental rights, including freedom of faith!!
Many in the Catholic Church believe that the law will not impact on them, and that radical Church groups have brought it upon themselves because their wild ways in evangelization. There maybe a problem of ultra evangelical groups failing to evolve an appropriate vocabulary to articulate the teachings of Christ, bur the law eventually is directed against social work and social action, the empowerment programme of the Church in which the Catholic Church is the ;leader. This patently calls for a wide spectrum unity among Church groups. People from Madhya Pradesh have told Open Court hearings organised by human rights groups that in the Jhabua region for instance, it has now become difficult for pastors, nuns and clergy to even move about after sunset, reducing the faith to a “Daylight” reality.
The last major issue that radically impacts on the everyday life and the very future of the Christians is the delay in economic empowerment of the large number of tribals, Dalits, and landless peasants who constitute the bulk of this minority community in most of the states. Most Tribals working outside the state of their birth do not get Scheduled status and therefore do not have any educational and employment privileges. For the same reason, they are also denied benefits under the area plans and the special component plans under the Five Year plan system. The Christians among them also lose out on traditional sharing of forest produce and cultivation. The vast landless peasantry and Dalits of Andhra ands Tamil Nadu seem to be entirely outside the development pail if they do not live in metropolitan cities and Stare capitals.
The Justice Mishra Commission, now dissolved, had to speak on this issue when it was also saddles with the matter of determining the legitimacy of the demand of Dalit Christians and Muslims to Scheduled status. No details have been made public of the main report of the Mishra Commission.
The Government has systematically refused many requests from representative organisations, including the Catholic Union that the economic and development matters of the community should also be enumerate so that Government aid is properly channeled to such micro communities instead of being focussed only on the numerically largest of the minorities.
When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up a high powered committee under former Delhi Chief Justice Rajinder Sachchar to define Muslim development parameters. I wrote to him and others that Christian could also fruitfully be studied for their needs by the same committee. The Government refused. It also ahs not bothered to set up a panel just for Christians.
The result is that after Sachchar committee gave its report, the Government has announced a slew of development measures and special emphasis on thud Muslim community. But these measures do not focus on Christians at all. Also, when it comes to discussions, the Government even denies there are marginalised sections in the Christian community, and farcically enough, cites the fact that there are no reports and studies to prove the Christian need for special development efforts. It does not see the viciousness of the argument – there is no study, therefore no data, on Christian deprivation, and since there is no data there can be no relief, and because the Christians are apparently not deprived, there is no need for a fact finding committee!
For the sake of every hotel waiter who can never dream to own a hotel, every mechanic who will never own even a small tin-shed garage, every ayah and tribal maid working as a hugely exploited domestic servant, and every starving landless peasant, it is time for all of us to unitedly raise our voice.
In face, new islands of underdevelopment are being created. A development wedge is being driven between Christians and the minorities which are either developed already, or will receive the bounty of the Government. Such a mutually suspicious minority conglomeration can hardly be expected to unitedly fight the force of majoritarianism in the country.
The threat, therefore, is the democratic state and the republican way of life in India.
It is time we acted.
The hierarchy and clergy of the established Church must join this struggle.
Before it is too late.