ALL INDIA CHRISTIAN COUNCIL
PRESIDENT: Dr Joseph Dsouza Secretary General Dr John Dayal
PRESS STATEMENT
New Delhi, 16 May 2009
[The following is the text of the Press Statement issued on behalf of the All India Christian Council by its Secretary general, Dr John Dayal, on the results of the General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the House of the Peoples of the India Parliament. The results were declared today after five rounds of voting which began on 16th April and ended 13th May 2007, involving an electorate of over 714 million. The results gave the Congress, currently in power, 203 seats in the 543-member House, and its United Progressive Alliance 260 seats, with the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata party getting 163, the BJP itself scoring, 121, and the Left Front 24.]
The All India Christian Council salutes the people of India for the consummate and decisive manner in which they have rejected divisive, communal and sectarian political forces in the General elections results for which have been declared today. Their vote, for secularism, stability and development, imposes on the party they have trusted with their mandate, the Indian National Congress, and the architects of its victory, party president Mrs Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and general secretary Mr Rahul Gandhi, the important responsibility of restoring national political discourse and governance to its pristine values inscribed in the Constitution and articulated by the country’s founding fathers.
We hope the national leaders of the party and the Government will correct the aberrations that crept in after 1991 leading to the demolition of the secular fabric of the country, untold misery to the people, unprecedented bloodshed and massacres of religious minorities. We also hope that the government will build on its policies to wage a winning war on poverty, to ensure food, clothing and shelter to the vast number of people below the poverty line. This will also demand an unceasing war on corruption and graft, and sincerity in devolution of resources to the countryside and for urban regeneration.
The lessons have been learnt by winners and losers alike, we hope. India’s billion and a quarter people want human dignity and progress, brotherhood and justice. They abhor hate-mongering, and narrow self interest under the pretext of ideology. Above all, the people, especially women and youth, across the country have shown that they share a hope in the nation’s future. shunning despair and cynicism in the midst of an economic cataclysm.
We therefore hope we will never again have to see a Gujarat 2002, or a Kandhamal 2007-2008, that farmer’s suicides will cease and that women will be safe in their home and on the streets of our cities.
For the Christian community, hope increases that the rapists, killers and arsonists of Orissa’s Kandhamal and Karnataka will be brought to justice, that our cry for development – articulated in the manifestos we gave to the political parties on the eve of the general elections -- will be fulfilled. The Christian community needs special economic and development resources from the government, and should not be relegated to the margins because of its unwavering commitment to peace and because it does not always articulate politically its genuine needs. Dalit Christians look forward to a realisation of their 50 year old search for equal rights, promised often but yet to be given.
The All India Christian Council warmly congratulates the Congress and the new government that will take shape in the next few days. The Council extends its full cooperation in efforts at National Integration, Human rights, the emancipation of Dalits and Human dignity. It also congratulates those who have won for the BJP, the Left and the Third and Fourth Fronts. Each Member of Parliament has a God given Duty to work for the common man. We pray God will bless them abundantly.
God bless India.
Released to the Media by Dr John Dayal
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