Opportunity for Church to State its Case to Government for Development
of its People
By John Dayal
15 March 2007
If the National Linguistics Survey, to be launched soon, offers various tribes in India’s North East and the Tribal Belt from Gujarat to Jharkhand to assert their identity and thereby save themselves and their mother tongues from eventual Sansrktisation-Hindisation, the Mungekar Inter-ministerial Task Force on civic needs of minorities, set up this month, gives the Christian community a chance to affirm its distinctive growth requirements, or be for ever eclipsed by policies designed only for the Muslim religious group.
The Muslims in India fully deserve every development catalyst they can get. They have been an island of underdevelopment for many reasons, and for many years. So, unfortunately, has been the Christian community, 60 per cent of which is sourced from and still rooted in the former Depressed Classes or Scheduled Castes, and another significant segment in the landless peasantry or agriculture labour. Even the educated and urban section remains in the service sector, with little or no capital and less opportunity, to be genuinely active in capital formation, or to become an employment opportunity provider to its own community.
Both Church and Government need also to be cautioned that continued focus on just one of the several minority communities in the country will inevitably lend credence to the Sangh Parivar’s thesis of appeasement by the Congress government. At another level, it will also create a development divide between communities as funds and opportunities would be denied to silent or voiceless groups, either deliberately, or by default.
The Church, sundered by denominational divides and preoccupied with myopic trivia over the decades, has been singed by the notorious Niyogi Commission. But it has not been able to get the community commensurate benefits from all from major social revolutions in the country since Independence. It failed to prevail on the Government to restore to its Dalit segment statutory rights which are given to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religious groups from the former Depressed classes.
The Church could not agitate properly before the Mandal Commission either, and recently, when the Centre set up the Justice Rajender Sachchar committee under the Prime Minister’s office to study the economic and social developmental reality of the Muslim community, the Church again found itself helpless in urging the government to set up a similar study for Christians, who are equally, if not more, deprived that the Islamic population in India.
The Sachchar Committee’s report has been a historic landmark in India’s democracy history. Its publication and acceptance by the government has been followed, in quick succession, by a series of legal, planning and financial measures designed for an all-round uplift of the electorally important Minority Islamic community. Indian Christian, politically insignificant as vote bank, and socially without advocacy clout, will quite patently pay a heavy price in coming decades for their extraordinary and phlegmatic quiet.
A report in the Hindustan Times New Delhi edition of 13th March 2007 New Delhi by Sutirthe Patranobis, says, inter alia, that the Central government on 1 March set up a high-level inter-ministerial Task Force to look into the civic needs of minority communities in towns and cities where they live in large numbers and which require special attention. The 16-member Task Force is headed by the Union ministry
of minority affairs, but chaired by Planning Commission member Bhalchandra Mungekar. The secretaries of the ministries of minority affairs, urban development, health, human resource development, labour, home and legal affairs are other members. It will submit its report to the Prime Minister’s Office in three months. Prof Mungekar,
the first Dalit Vice Chancellor of Bombay University, is the Planning Commission pointsman on minority affairs and other marginalized groups.
It will formulate plans to provide basic civic amenities such as housing, schools, educational and health facilities and employment opportunities within the identified towns and cities. For example, if there is no school near a locality with a large minority community population or the locality is not well connected by road. It will
point out such anomalies to the authorities so that civic amenities can be developed over the next three-to four years
The Task Force has before it a list of 338 towns and cities with a population of 50,000 and above where minority communities—Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Parsis.—Comprise 25 per cent or more of the population. The Census Commissioner, who is also the Registrar General of India, had identified these towns in the 2001 Census.
The newspaper says minorities are heavily concentrated in the towns and cities of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar: West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. Religious groups, which are a National Minority under law, are however, themselves in a majority in six small States, Punjab [Sikhs], Jammu & Kashmir and Lakshwadeep [Muslims], Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland [Christians].
A preliminary analysis and the choice of the four major States would
imply that the focus is once again on the Muslims. It should not be
forgotten that states which have significant and cogent pockets with
large Christian populations should include Tamil Nadu, Andhra,
Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab,
apart from Goa, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland - even if they
do not quite constitute 25 per cent but are perhaps 15 to 20 percent
of the population.
The Government has remained silent on our demands, repeatedly and
often in the past refusing to give us data on bank loans and other
development indices for the entire Christian community. Such a demand
was first made, I remember, by Archbishop Vincent Concessao and I
during our interaction with the Planning Commission during then
formulation of the 10th Five Year Plan. The same demand was raised
later once the religious data came in from in small trickles from
Census 2001. It needs hardly be said that the Government failed to
oblige us. Thanks to the Sachchar Committee, such data now exists for
the Muslim community.
Similarly there is no data on self-employment, under employment, women
as main wage earners of the family and its consequences on family
life, childcare and family health. There is scanty and only inferred
data on female illiteracy in states other than Kerala. There is no
data on the economic and employment status of youth and new adults in
rural and urban areas.
The release of the Delhi Master Plan and the projects on Special
Economic Zones in Haryana and other states also shows that Christian
concerns are unknown to city and town planners and Urban development
ministries of Central and state government. Spiritual spaces in general, and Christian land needs in particular, are absolutely unheard of in the process of laying down new townships and urban blocks around metropolitan towns, or in Greenfield areas.
I am talking of provisions for such things as Churches and graveyards,
apart from denominational schools. If one were to go by the thought
processes in urban development ministries, the presumption is that Christians do not die, and if they do, they are better of cremated!
This has to be considered while taking into account the large-scale
alienation of church properties for various reasons -- ranging from
corruption in a section to the church to hostile administrations,
bigoted populations, and a totally uncaring police and administrative
structure. It may be recalled that even in the national Capital of New
Delhi, even the established and major Catholic church ahs to watch
helplessly while a small piece of land allot dafter due process and
many years of waiting is taken over by land sharks. In some cases,
work parties which have gone to demarcate the land, or to put a fence
around it, have had to run away from the spot in the face of violence
by local thugs.
So much for spiritual spaces. The situation for secular spaces is even
grimmer. Existing schools are at the mercy of tax and municipal
authorities. Refusal to admit the children of local powerful invites
instant and hostile action against the school. Just to survive,
powerful principals and congregations become meek slaves of local
politicians and bureaucrats - so much to Freedom of Faith and Article
30 protection.
At the level of the governments, there seems to be a thought processes
that development of Christians is a matter of concern strictly of the
Church, implying Hierarchy, Institutional head or clergy. In fact so
vigorously has been this subtle campaign carried out since
Independence that even well meaning Lay leaders, and certainly Church
rebels and dissidents, feel that Christians should not ask anything
from the Government - up to and including Dalit rights - but should
bank on the resources of the Church alone.
I disagree with this thesis in principle.
Even if the collective church was rich as imagined by some lay and
clerics, and even if it were to amortise its entire assets and
distribute it among the faithful, it would not be enough. By that same
argument, even just or two rich Hindu temples such as Tirupathi have
enough assets to make every Hindu in India very, very rich. Life of
course does not work in such economic calculations. First of all,
whatever assets churches have - and here, it must be limited to Church
groups which had the ear of the ruling groups during the British Raj
and in Goa, during the Portuguese regime - are hardly usable as
resources. The lands they have are on lease, and encumbered with
buildings. Most, if not all, have had large chunks eaten away by land
sharks and corrupt officials. Even graveyards have now become slums.
Second of course, despite FCRA accounts, most of the evangelical one-
man churches can hardly be called rich.
But the issue is not this.
The Church cannot allow the state to abdicate its responsibility - in education, health technical and higher education, industrialization and other development activity. That is why I and all law-abiding citizens of India belonging to all religions pay their taxes. It is the State’s duty to asses the needs of its people and ensure that their genius and their talent, their energies and their strengths, are given the resources and the infrastructure, the funds and the opportunities.
Missionaries as part of their faith may open schools and Medicare
units in tribal areas and frontier areas where government teachers and
doctors are loath to go, it is for central and state governments,
district administrations and panchayats to ensure that minorities, and
Christians in our case, have the facilities and the opportunities at hand.
If this is the charter of the Mungekar committee, then it is our duty to assist it by making a proper and detailed demand.
I am going to send this argument as a letter to Prof Mungekar in the
Planning Commission, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi, as my
memorandum
I would appeal to all Church groups and the entire leadership to
consider this in counsel, and make appropriate representations to the
Committee and to the Government. Churches across the country must
asses the needs and demand schools and colleges, ITI units and technical schools, health care units, old age homes, orphanages ...
Above all, it must demand opportunities to become entrepreneurs,
owners of retail units and other employment generating enterprises,
bench test wet-ups and flatted factories, agro industries land-based
development. For landless peasantry and agriculture labour, church must assist the government in devising and inventing appropriate programmes.
Each Bishop is the best assessor of the needs of the community in his
region. Each Parish priest knows the needs of his people like no Sub Collector ever can.
We cannot afford to miss this opportunity. Our grandchildren will not
forgive us if we do.
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