Media Release
Visakhapatnam, Feb 20: The 98-year-old All India Catholic Union (AICU), the apex national Organisation of the Catholic Laity in the country, has condemned the repeated efforts by the National Democratic Alliance Government, as well as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its non-state associates of the Sangh Parivar, for using an “arithmetic of hate” to polarize the people on religious lines. Wherever there are national, provincial or even municipal elections, the party and Sangh cadres chants that religious minorities are “increasing fast” or “entering new areas”. No less a person than the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Karen Rijjiju, is making insinuations against the Christian population in Arunachal Pradesh, his home state. This not only insults the freedom of conscience of the people, which is guaranteed in the Constitution, but also casts aspersions on minority faiths.
Leaders of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, among them members of Parliament, have insulted the Christian presence, specially in the North-Eastern States and parts of central India. These allegations have not been condemned by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The AICU has consistently demanded that the Prime Minster fulfill his promise of security and safety to the community by ensuring a halt to such targeted hate campaigns. These directly encourage violent extremist elements to attack churches, religious persons and institutions. The AICU notes the continuing cases of violence against Christians in various parts of the country.
The AICU leadership has also renewed its demand that the Union government forthwith restore the constitutional rights of the Christians of Dalit origin which were taken away in a dastardly fraud on the Constitution by the Presidential Order of 1950, now called Article 341 [iii]. The AICU is challenging this order in the Supreme Court together with the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and other organisations. This order effectively takes away the freedom of religion from more than about 200 million [20 crore] people of Dalit origin who can retain their affirmative action benefits in education and employment, and their right to fight elections from Reserved seats, only if they remain, or become Hindus.
The AICU has once again called upon the NDA government to focus on issues of employment, ameliorating the plight of farmers, safety of women, and universal health care and housing. A Smart Nation is one where hunger, want, disease, homelessness, vulnerability deceases sharply, and freedoms are strengthened.
The Catholic Union also called upon the government to cease and desist from attempting to force majoritarian Uniform Civil Code. Instead, it should remove religious bias from many central and state laws including in taxation policies, employment and the Dalit issue as in Article 341 [iii]. It must forthwith stop its desperate efforts to saffronised education.
Meanwhile, the AICU has in a letter to the Prime Minister urged him to use his personal rapport with world leaders as well as India’s historic good relations with countries of the Mid-East to expedite the release of Kerala-born Salesian priest Fr Tom Uzhunnalil who was abducted in Yemen by the ISIS in March 2016. In a recent video, which went viral on the social media, the priest has pleaded with the Indian prime minister as well as President Pranab Mukherjee for his release saying while European prisoners were released, he was being kept captive.