AICU appeal to Church, Govt. to aid poor and downtrodden

Mumbai - The national leadership of All India Catholic Union (AICU), recently elected for a two year term 2004-06, conducted their first meeting in Mumbai on October 8, to assess developments in several states and to analyse the impact of the recently released religion-based Census report on the national social and political discourse.

At a Press conference convened, Dr. John Dayal, elected National President of the All India Catholic Union and Mr. Dolphy D’Souza, Mumbai’s well known social activist who was elected National Vice President, expressed deep concern at the rash of anti-Christian violence reported from several states following the BJP’s defeat in the general elections. Even states with little record of communal violence such as Kerala had seen within weeks desecration of churches, attacks on nuns of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity and the murder of a Catholic priest, apart from numerous smaller incidents of violence against Catholic and Protestant churches and personnel. In all cases, the suspects were identified as belonging to fundamentalist groups.

Referring to the startling revelations of declining literacy percentages and economic status of the Christian community as revealed in the recent Census report, the AICU leaders said that it exposed the hollowness of claims of development of minority communities since Independence.

“It is time now to go beyond paying lip service to the cause of the Dalits, specially Christians of Dalit origin, and the poor. The Church has to take concrete measures including working for social safety nets, universal health insurance and entrepreneurship programmes. Dalits and landless peasantry must be assured free education. The government must provide and ensure adequate funds towards this,” Dr. Dayal stated.

“The Catholic Union demanded of the Central and all state governments that they highlight the various schemes they already have for minorities so that information is available even in distant parishes through Doordarshan (national television network) and other media,” he added.



Surojit Chatterjee
Ecumenical Press