Mumbai: Even as the Dalit Christians are stepping up their demand for special constitutional privileges granted to Scheduled Castes from other religions, the Sangh Privar has decided on an aggressive campaign to educate SCs to oppose the demand.

According to dependable reports, Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) at its recently concluded national executive in Dharwad decided to go into “an aggressive mode” to educate Schedule Caste people to struggle for their rights.

A report in the Daily News and Analysis said RSS was “heading for a direct confrontation with the Church and the United Progressive Alliance government on proposed reservation to Schedule Caste converts to Christianity.”

RSS, the report says, believes the Government is planning to implement the Ranganath Mishra Commission’s recommendation that SC status be “completely delinked from religion”. The Mumbai newspaper says, “The move has infuriated the Hindutva organisation and it is all set to take up the battle both on the ground in the hinterland, where it is pitted head to head against the Church, and also at political level.”

The RSS resolution on the issue has “cautioned the Government that any effort to implement the recommendations of the commission, which are against the Constitution, is fraught with serious consequences. We call upon the Government not to succumb to the pressure tactics of the Church lobby in politics and outside and to stand steadfast on the path carved out by the leaders in the last several decades by rejecting the demand for inclusion of such converts into the Scheduled Castes category.” It said these recommendations were an aggression on the welfare of the Scheduled Castes.

Senior RSS functionary Ram Madhav was quoted as saying, “The Government is shamelessly agreeing against the proclaimed tenets of Christianity and is going by the false promises made by the Church merely to harvest a few more souls. Let the Pope first declare that there was a caste system in his religion.”

He was critical of the “brazenness of the petitioners”, who have gone to the Supreme Court with the demand of inclusion of the Christian converts in the SC category, with the contention that Dalits remain Dalits even after converting to Christianity.

Meanwhile, the National Coordination Committee for Dalit Christians, a joint programme of CBCI and NCCI, has decided to hold a dharna on 29 November 2007 in New Delhi to press for their demands. “The dharna will highlight the urgency to implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities (NCRLM) chaired by Justice Ranganath Mishra, the former Chief Justice of India, to grant equal rights as Scheduled Castes to the Christians of Scheduled Caste Origin,” the Committee said.

(Source: The Indian Catholic, 12 November 2007)