New Delhi, August 22
In a significant development, the RSS and Catholic Church leaders have met and agreed to hold regular dialogue on issues like conversions and attacks on church personnel.
The agreement was reached at a meeting between an RSS delegation led by its chief K.S. Sudarshan and a team of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) headed by Archbishop Oswald Gracias at the CBCI headquarters here yesterday.
The meeting was facilitated by the National
Commission for Minorities, whose member John Joseph was also present on the occasion.
“There was no specific
agenda.
We felt that there was a need to sit together and discuss the issues instead of levelling charges against each other back and forth,” CBCI spokesman Father Dominic Emmanuel told PTI.While the Church representatives stated that the charges of “forcible conversion” made against them by Sangh Parivar outfits were wrong, they (RSS) denied any role in the attacks on Church personnel and said they wanted an impartial and thorough probe into such incidents, he said.
Both sides agreed on the “pluralistic nature” of the Indian society and the need to preserve it as such, Emmanuel said.
“The next meeting will be held at the Delhi RSS headquarters at Keshav Kunj in Jhandewalan, but the date and time have not yet been fixed,” the Church spokesman said adding that with yesterday’s meeting the ball had been set rolling and the process of dialogue begun.
RSS spokesman M.G. Vaidya was not available for comments.
The Minorities Commission for the first time organised a meeting between the Church and the Sangh Parivar outfits such as the VHP and the Bajrang Dal on July 11 last year in the wake of the attack on churches and its personnel, but the former boycotted it saying the latter did not represent the Hindu community at large.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) President Archbishop Cyril Mar Baselius said today the recent remarks of Prime Minister
A. B. Vajpayee about Christian missionaries “might have been borne out of his fear that Christianity posed a threat to Indian culture” and added that such “misgivings could be removed through a meaningful dialogue”.
“Christianity, especially Catholicism, posed no challenge or threat to Indian culture or ethos. On the contrary, it is an enriching factor. Over centuries, the Church has shown that it can co-exist harmoniously with the Indian culture,” the Archbishop told PTI here.
Mr Vajpayee, during a book release function recently, observed that while some Christian missionaries were doing good work in backward areas, some others were engaged in conversion.
The Church had no plan to lead the people away from their culture or traditions. There could be aberrations or exceptions to this, which should not have been there, the CBCI chief said.
AHMEDABAD:
BJP general secretary Narendra Modi today asked all political parties to make clear their stand “on conversions issue”, even as he defended Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s recent remarks regarding the dubious proselytisation methodology of Christian missionaries in the country.
“The Prime Minister had made the remarks while releasing a book authored by me at his residence recently. Mr Vajpayee had not opposed conversions per se but said it was difficult to accept the methodology resorted to by the Christian missionaries in the country,” he said here.
PTI
