It was the second time in as many weeks that US President Obama made a reference, among other things, to the growing religious intolerance in India. His second statement was at the annual White House event known as Prayer Breakfast on February 5. Mr Obama said, “…Remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.
Michelle and I returned from India — an incredible country, full of diversity — but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted simply due to their heritage and their beliefs — acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.”
Not surprisingly, right-wing Christians have gone hammer and tongs after Mr Obama in the media for his reference to “…was often justified in the name of Christ”.
Aren’t fundamentalists, present in all religions, the same all over? The late John Paul II had in all apologised 64 times on different occasions for Christian atrocities wherever it took place. Accepting one’s faults, “confessing” one’s sins, granting forgiveness for the past or present, is something that has been always encouraged in Christianity.
Back home in India, the media did take note of Mr Obama’s Prayer Breakfast address and our home minister Rajnath Singh and finance minister Arun Jaitley were quick to reiterate that India is a “secular” country. But other strident voices from right-wing Hindu groups, like their counterparts in the US, said that Mr Obama had no business to mention religious “intolerance” in India, or Article 25 of the Indian Constitution at the Siri Fort auditorium. He had said, “Our freedom of religion is written into our founding documents. It’s part of America’s very first amendment. Your Article 25 says that all people are ‘equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.’ In both our countries upholding this fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it’s also the responsibility of every person”.
As a citizen and as a person belonging to Christian faith, the words of Mr Obama and President Mukherjee’s address to the nation on the eve of the Republic Day touched a chord. Mr Mukherjee said, “In an international environment where so many countries are sinking into the morass of theocratic violence… we have always reposed our trust in faith-equality where every faith is equal before the law and every culture blends into another to create a positive dynamic… These values, however, need to be preserved with utmost vigilance.”
Both the Presidents spoke of what some of us within the Christian community have begun to describe as “targeted Christian persecution” in India. The late Nineties were rocked by incidents in Gujarat’s Dang district, where several churches and Christian schools were burnt. The attacks that lasted 10 days were followed by the burning of missionary Graham Staines and his two sons alive in Orissa. At that time I refused to join my co-religionists to call it “targeted persecution of Christians”.
Sporadic attacks on Christians continued in the first decade of the third millennium, accompanied by more and more states bringing in anti-conversion laws, including Gujarat, HP Rajasthan and TN. The Rajasthan Bill was not signed by the then governor Pratibha Devi Singh Patil and the Tamil Nadu Act was withdrawn after J. Jayalalithaa faced a terrible defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha election.
But these anti-conversion laws were followed by the terrible situation in Kandhamal in August 2008, lasting 42 days, based on the false allegations that Christians had killed Swami Laxmanand Saraswati. That’s when I began to relook at my own “blindness” and “refusal” to call such incidents “persecution”. It was also around the same time in 2008, when the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in Karnataka, that several churches were attacked and some nuns were beaten black and blue before the public.
Besides the fact that five churches were attacked in Delhi alone, the atrocious behaviour of the police on those who gathered peacefully within the Sacred Heart Cathedral compound, including me, only to express our pain, just went on to confirm, “Yes, we were now under persecution now”. Being an official arm of the government, the police instead of going after the perpetrators who attacked our churches, joined them to heap further atrocity on the nuns and priests gathered in peaceful protest.
What is happening to my country that teaches the world about Vasudhaiva Kutmbakam and Sarve Bhavantu Sukhina?
The writer is a founder-member of Parliament of Religion, can be contacted at frdominic@gmail.com
