For more information, contact:
Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General

For Immediate Release

BJP wants to reopen debate on Minority Rights, negate statuary rights given after long debate in Constituent Assembly after Independence

NEW DELHI -- April 12, 2009: The All India Christian Council (aicc) has refrained from commenting on the manifestos of various political parties in General Elections 2009, or on statements of their leaders. The Council however can no longer maintain its silence after reading newspaper reports of former Deputy Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) leader Mr. Lal Krishna Advani’s mixing of religion in politics, first in the election manifesto of the BJP, and then in his letter to heads of various mutts (abbotts or priests) of Hindu sects and advisors of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. These acts are fraught with dangerous consequences for peace and harmony in secular (non-sectarian) India.

The electoral environment has already been vitiated by hate speeches and communal propaganda. Dr. John Dayal, aicc Secretary General, said, "Mr. Advani may have made his moves as an electoral strategy. But coming from an important party and its prime-ministerial candidate, they collectively expose the BJP’s appeasing  an extreme section of the community, as well as those organisations which have been directly involved in violence against religious minorities in Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra  and other states in the past, and Karnataka and Orissa in  the present."

This is coupled with the fact that Mr. Advani’s BJP, which pilloried the Indian National Congress party for backing politicians suspected of fomenting violence against Sikhs in 1984, has given state-level tickets to people such as M. Pradhan of Kandhamal, Orissa, who is in jail in on charges of mass murder of Christians. The Election Commission’s issued a notice to BJP Lok Sabha (national parliament) candidate Ashok Sahu of Kandhamal, Orissa, and he is facing a 500 million rupees ($10 million USD) criminal suit for spouting hate against Christians. Despite this, his endorsement is proof of the party’s playing the communal card in the elections. It is not surprising that neither Mr. Advani nor his party manifesto even make a passing reference to Kandhamal carnage and to the trauma suffered by the Christian community. Neither does the BJP offer any hope to Dalit Christians in their long struggle for their civil rights.

"Mr. Advani’s "Shashtang pranam" (greetings from a prostrate position of humility and reverence) is symptomatic of the BJP’s capitulating to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and its daughter organisations. As a national leader, a former deputy premier, and with hopes of leading a secular nation at a future date, he should have maintained a distance from groups of people whose “advice” and active participation in "Dharam sansads" (religious parliaments) in the past were major contributory factors to the demolition of the Babri Masjid and subsequent national tragedy of inter-religious bloodshed," said Dayal.

In his letter, Mr. Advani wants to set up mechanisms to be guided by advice of religious leaders. As a secular democratic republic and not a theocracy, India has a separation of religion and state, if not in the western sense then certainly in preventing government and religion meddling in each other’s affairs. Mr. Advani promises to reverse this trend. Religion has its place -- not at the levers of power, in state mechanisms or as political engine -- but as a conscience keeper on civilisational issues and ethics.

The Christian community certainly, even through its own canon, laws, and other denominational mechanisms, gives religious heads powers to guide the flock on issues of faith, morality, dogma and doctrine, but leaves it categorically to the lay citizens, the community at large, to take part in national life, ideological issues and political affairs. "Citizens are to be guided by their own reason on matters of security and the welfare of their brothers and sisters. This is why the Christian community does not believe in floating political parties of its own, but banks on democratic processes and forces to protect its rights and Constitutional guarantees," said Dayal.

Dayal concluded, "The All India Christian Council has no comment on the BJP’s right to pack its manifesto’s preamble with its own construct of India’s history. We simply see the thesis of Hindutva. But the Council reads into the BJP’s so called offer of a dialogue with the Christian community nothing short of reopening issues settled in the long and learned debates of the Founding Fathers of modern India in the Constituent Assembly after which they enshrined in the Constitution the fundamental rights of Freedom of Religion: to profess, practice and propagate one’s faith. That is a sacred right, and cannot be negotiated if India is to retain its plural culture and its secular and democratic integrity."

"We are deeply concerned about what appears to be the party’s pillorying of state mechanisms for minority security, including the Ministry for Minority Affairs and national commissions. The party’s record on human rights and minority commissions in states that it currently governs shows the scant respect it has for such institutions."

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