Sun Dec 31, 2006
Reviewing 2006, a year of frustration for Dalit,
and deprived, Christians
Time for Dr Singh to put his brave words of
support for Minorities into real action and
real policies for all Minorities -- And spare
a thought for the Dalit Christians, too
The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh - and
with him Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi
who backs him to the hilt -- has to be congratulated
for the fearless manner in which, since the
release of the Sachchar committee report, he
has committed his government to giving a priority
share in the national development process to
Muslims in particular, and to other religious
minorities and other disadvantaged groups in
general. Not since the late Rajiv Gandhi has
any prime minister bid so bold to identify religious
minorities by name in assuring them he will
undo a historic developmental wrong. More so,
that he has chosen purely Muslim fora to make
many of the announcements, challenging right
wing and communal organisations and their political
wings such as the Bharatiya Janata Apart to
see if they can accuse him and his government
of appeasement of the minorities. This is, of
course, in sharp contrast to the tenure to Mr
Narasimha Rao, and then of Mr Inder Kumar Gujral
and Mr Hardanhalli Doda-Gowda Deve Gouda. This
is perhaps no occasion to critique the tenure
of Mr Rao and its impact on the religious minorities.
But both Mr Gujral and Mr Deve Gouda, who came
to power in the wake of the Babri Masjid crisis,
swore by their secularism, but proved to have
feet of clay. It is possibly no coincidence
that while Mr. Gujral later sought BJP help
for his son's political ambitions in Punjab,
Mr Gowda is today a full time political ally
and partner in Karnataka of the same BJP and
RSS he once reviled. And Karnataka is now averaging
the sort of anti Christian violence which was
once the preserve of Gujarat or Orissa.
There never was a case that the development
of minorities should be delayed, or stopped,
for fear of the BJP, or for the impact it may
have on the right wing Hindu electorate. To
believe that would have meant to express no
confidence in the secular moorings of this nation,
and in the guarantees of its Constitution. But
the Rao government was certainly diffident.
Dr .Manmohan Singh has dared challenge the myth
of the BJP and RSS opposition in making his
several recent announcements. When the BJP eventually
did react at its Lucknow annual meeting on the
expected lines, there was very little national
reaction to it. But having shown the political
courage in making these announcements, the Prime
Minister could also perhaps have shown his government's
commitment to political equity and identified
other minorities by name who are equally deserving
of the government's affirmative action. Dalit
Christians, for one, have been in the government's
durbar for decades seeking justice, as have
been tribals, fishermen, boatmen and landless
labour among Indian Christians, who have denied
their share. In fact they have been treated
as an invisible community, ignored by governments,
ignored by courts and victimized by the rich
and the high caste, especially in the southern
states.
There was also perhaps need for another form
of reassurance to the minorities, Christians
as well as Muslims, who feel as if there is
a separate Constitution and a separate rule
of law in states government by the Bharatiya
Janata party. States from Gujarat, Karnataka
and Orissa to the entire tribal belt swathing
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and
Jharkhand, have seen an unprecedented disregard
for the rule of law. That government institutions
such as the state police and even the state
subordinate judiciary has become party to this
violation of minority rights is an issue that
the Prime Minister ran his government must now
give their undivided attention. Activists such
as I who have been struggling to bring to the
government's attention the reality of poverty
among Christians in rural and tribal areas wholeheartedly
welcome Mr Manmohan Singh's statement at Dalit-
Minority International Conference organised
by his cabinet minister Ram Vilas Paswan, that
there is a need to "to come up with universally
acceptable policies that are not viewed as a
zero sum game, but as win-win solutions through
which everyone is better off and no one is worse
off". It was equally wholeheartedly that
we welcomed the reconstitution of the National
Integration Council, the convening of its first
meeting in more than 13 years. The visionary
first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru,
had conceived the NIC as a powerful forum, not
as a substitute of Parliament and the Judiciary,
but to complement their task of strengthening
the secular, socialist and culturally plural
fabric of Indian democracy in constructive,
multi-polar discourse. The NIC was to be where
even the tiniest of minorities, religious, linguistic
or economic, could have its voice heard, and
its interests articulated. Under Nehru, and
later with Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the
NIC did meet intermittently and succeeded to
that extent in spotting, if not entirely healing,
fracture lines in society. It was a tragedy
of our times that the NIC has not met since
1992. History will wonder if it could have made
a difference in healing the wounds of 1992 when
the Babri Masjid was demolished, and later when
churches were destroyed in the Dangs (Gujarat)
in 1998, Graham Stuart Staines and his sons
were burnt in Orissa in 1999, and in the aftermath
of the massacres of Muslims in Gujarat following
the train fire at Godhra in February 2002. The
NIC could also not consider the quasi-judicial
violence of the caste panchayats against Dalits,
the suicides of pauperized farmers, and the
multi-state Naxalite crisis. Understandably,
the absence of the NIC was deeply felt in the
critical decade at the turn of the last Century.
Citizens from all walks of life and cutting
across political affiliations and beliefs indeed
came together in February 2003 to set up the
People's Integration Council to fill the void.
I wonder why the NIC has not been convened a
second time, though there was an understanding
that a meeting at least once a year, if not
twice, would go a long way in helping groups
articulate their needs in a dialogue with government
and the political apparatus. Perhaps it is still
not too late to assure the nation that the NIC
will indeed be convened every six months or
so, and that it will have statutory status with
an appropriate Secretariat and Standing Committee
to take note of our responses to national developments,
and our suggestions to resolve national problems.
The UPA government also took several other steps
to assuage the angst of the minorities. It set
up the Ranganath Mishra National Commission
for Religious and Linguistic Minorities to assess
social and economic backwardness, the National
Commission for Minority Educational Institutions,
and the Prime Minister's High level committee
under Justice Sachchar for assessing economic
condition of Muslims, which as since ten given
it historic report.
The Christian community and other minority groups
of course appreciate these measures and the
new institutions and wish them well. We had
urged that the Sachchar committee also look
at the economic disempowerment of the Christian
community, particularly of the Dalit Christians.
Our request was denied. There is still a raring
need for such a committee to investigate the
poverty and marginalisation of rural Christians,
particularly those of Dalit origin. The results
of such a survey would shock the government,
and those in power in the religious structures
of the community itself, I am sure. The National
Commission for Minorities as also been reconstituted
but not in an empowered Constitutional avatar.
The Commissions, however, cannot take the place
of deeper reforms in Governance to sustain the
Rule of law.
It has been a point with the Christian community
that while it assures every government that
it is their partner in every and all efforts
at reconciliation and healing, justice, and
lasting peace, governments willfully chose to
pretend as if the community does not exist at
all. It is of course not a vote bank, and it
is scattered demographically and geographically,
but it remains a society united in its collective
injury and in its persecution. It seeks of governments
a genuine Perspective of National Integration.
We, for our part, have offered such a perspective
- at the meeting of the NIC and later. The Christian
perspective of National Integration is rooted
as much in the Gospel values of Truth, Justice
and Love, as inthe rights and duties of a Citizen
of a Democratic, Socialist and Secular India
dreamt by social reformer Mahatma Phule, Mahatma
Gandhi, and the Constitution' s Founding Fathers
Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
Christian members of the Constituent Assembly
such as Fr Jerome D Souza rejected political
separateness in favour of a nurturing integration
based on an abiding faith in the Rule of Law,
Justice and Equity. This went far beyond affirmative
action, reservations, or doles.
The confidence of the Minorities, whether religious,
linguistic, ethnic, caste, would be earned in
this commitment of the State to the Rule of
Law, and Equity and promptness in Justice. Implied
is a commitment to the wonderful Plurality of
Indian cultural traditions, State neutrality,
Transparent Governance and the concepts of Culpability
and Accountability. Fifty years after Independence,
this remained the Millennium Goal. Implemented
in arrhythmic patches, and therefore unfulfilled
in reality. To love India is to cherish and
promote her unity and solidarity. But National
Integration cannot be achieved without propagating
a culture of Integration. Therefore integral
to this culture are: Upholding the dignity of
every citizen, including her or his Freedom
of Conscience, Ensuring Quality of Life, including
basic education, concern for the girl child
and the female foetus, Development with a human
face by empowering specially the marginalized
and the twice discriminated, such as women,
Dalit
Christians, urban homeless.
The government must deal with the abiding prejudice,
in schools, in colleges, and civil society.
Communal violence remains a big threat to national
integration. Its causes are well understood.
The State cannot abdicate its responsibility,
or dilute its commitment, in combating Communalism.
Recent examples from several States have shaken
the people's confidence in the commitment to
Rule of law, and have brought India much shame
in the comity of nations. The guilty remain
unpunished. The ideologies that beget and sponsor
communalism go unchallenged, undefeated. Defeated
they must be if the gains of freedom - and we
hold Freedom to be a Divine Gift from God --
are to percolate to the poorest of God's children
in India. Constructive action begins with a
commitment to Truth and to reconciliation. We
admit our mistakes, and learn from them. The
apparatus of governance must admit shortcomings
where due. Government cannot lose time in making
the police, the higher bureaucracy and as important,
the rural bureaucracy in Panchayati Raj, truly
representative of the people. It is a shame
that the Dalits still go unrepresented, or grossly
under represented, in all levers of power. This
is also, of course, relevant for the Public
and Private sectors. Equity is not a monopoly
of Government alone.
The Education and Human Resource Development
system and the Media have a powerful role to
play in all such endeavors at National integration.
We congratulate the HRD Minister for having
taken the steps that he has. The Christian community,
though over 50,000 educational institutions
- 80 per cent of them in rural areas - has sought
to do its mite, but its work, as of others,
is severely eroded in the withdrawal of government
subsidies and other threats. Government must
ensure that these institutions survive, and
thrive.
We commit a Sin if we poison young minds with
exhortations of hate through falsified history.
This must end forthwith. Parliament must devise
structures to monitor Curricula, textbooks and
Pedagogy to ensure an education system that
nurtures Indian values, encourages a scientific
temper and ingrains equality and fairplay. Only
the surface has been scratched in the past two
years. How are our teachers being trained? Who
is monitoring the rural primary schools and
the one-teacher institutions in tribal areas?
We must work towards a culture of national integration
based on Justice, Equality, Dignity, and authentic
Freedom including the freedom of Conscience,
Transparency and Integrity in all spheres of
public life.
The year 2006 has been a frustrating year in
many ways, particularly for Christians of Dalit
origin, and those involved in Civil Society
struggles .Here is praying that 200 will be
a year of hope.
God Bless India and God Bless the Indian People
in the New Year.
[A version of this article is to be published
in the Republic Day Special issue of Secular
Democracy, New delhi]
