Sudarshan's sermon to Hindu women

No one can be as naïve as not to recognize the implications of recent outbursts by RSS chief Sudarshan, particularly his appeal to Hindu women to produce more children, to maintain the Hindu majority in the country’s population. It is at the same true that Hindu women are no longer naive to believe and follow instructions from ideologues of all hues.

How a person like Sudarshan, raising always by patriotic and nationalist slogans, could indulge in such patently communal and anti–national statements. Such thoughtless remarks could only help divisive forces that are out to promote a competitive spirit among communities, deepening the fissures on the basis of religion, caste and creeds. The least the government can do is to bring him to book for his attempt to cause disaffection among different communities and check further damage to the social fabric.

It is true that the rate of population growth among Muslims is higher than other communities as they are slow in adopting family planning methods. But to conclude that they are deliberately trying to increase their numerical strength would be wholly unjustified. The charge of Christians engaging in ‘forcible’ conversion is also fallacious and only repeated to arm twist the minority community.

Minority baiting, if anything, is only increasing as the days pass by. Even the change of government does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the zealots to oppress the minorities by levying one false charge or the other. In states like Madhya Pradesh, pastors and believers are harassed and their meetings disrupted; in several instances the authorities are reluctant to intervene allowing the miscreants to do their worst.

Promoting lawlessness in a pluralistic society will not be to the advantage of anyone. To deny rights to the weaker sections in violation of the principle of equality of all human beings has been the scourge of our caste–based society. It is time to end all discriminations against the minorities in the matter of reservations, in adoption laws and to uphold justice and equality. Christians must be in the forefront raising their voice against the anti–national attitudes of zealots like Sudarshan and mobilize public
opinion for opposing narrow fundamentalism.

It is worth recalling that when Lal Krishna Advani started the Rath Yatra it did not occur to him that someday the communal fervour he had fanned would end in the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Sudarshan is on the same path and is bound to generate only more intolerance and hatred in society.

At the moment we need peace makers not war mongers. Christians, have a mandate to promote peace and harmony, though there will be elements in our society who are interested in misrepresenting their every step.