Church to issue moral manifesto for election
George Iype in New Delhi
The Church in India is drafting a set of moral guidelines for voters to
follow and for political parties to incorporate in their manifestos for
the coming general election.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India and the Church of North India,
the apex organisations of the Catholic Church and the Protestants respectively in
the country, will draft the moral agenda in January and submit it to
various political parties.
CBCI vice-president Archbishop Alan de Lastic of Delhi says
the Church will ask voters "to choose the right
candidates and vote for them conscientiously."
He said the Church wants political parties to announce their
plans to fight major national problems like poverty, health care,
illiteracy and unemployment.
"We will also put forward the Church's major demands to all the political
parties. We want the coming election to be fought on major
national issues like stability, security and secularism," the CBCI official told Rediff On The NeT.
The archbishop felt instability has plagued the country for the last two
years "because we do not have any credible political party and
charismatic leaders."
He said lack of stability will result in the resurgence of communal
forces. "People should not be swayed by fundamentalism and communalism
when India's priority is to fight poverty, illiteracy and unemployment," the cleric added.
Church groups say they will demand that all political parties include the promise of government job quotas for dalit
Christians in their election manifestos.
"Major parties have always promised us to help get reservation for our
dalit brethren, but the issue is not taken up seriously by any party
because of political instability," Archbishop de Lastic said.
Both the Congress and the United Front have pledged
to enact a law to provide job reservation benefits for low caste
Christians. But the Bharatiya
Janata Party has opposed this demand, arguing that dalit Christians do
not deserve these quotas.
CNI Bishop of Delhi Karan Masih said the Church's plans to draft
moral guidelines for voters and political parties does not mean "we
are taking an active interest in politics."
"Our effort is to take up issues that affect the daily lives of
people across the country," he told Rediff On The NeT.
Though Church officials say their agenda is meant to help parties bring
in a stable and secular government, many see it as an indirect effort to
oppose the BJP from coming to power.
Sources said the Church leadership is worried over the recent attacks
on Christian missionaries in many parts of the country, allegedly by
Hindu militant groups. The most horrific of these cases was Father A T Thomas, who was beheaded in Bihar, allegedly by Hindu militants, in October.
Church leaders know that the BJP's compatriots like the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have consistently
launched campaigns against missionary work,
especially in North and North-East India.
"We are saddened by the efforts at spreading antagonism against the
Church in India," one cleric said, adding that it is "improper
to dub our work in the country as converting Hindus to Christianity."
"We would like to inform voters and the political parties that the
Church in India is responsible for more than 20 per cent of all health
and education services in the country," he said.
How the political parties will respond to the Church's
plans to draft a moral agenda for the body politic is not known, but a
similar initiative in 1996 met with enthusiastic response from an
unlikely quarter: the Communists.
Before that general election, the CBCI urged the electorate not to vote for criminals and corrupt politicians.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Communist Party of India
were the first to hail the CBCI guidelines, describing it as the Church's
opposition to the Congress party.
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