By Sushil Kutty
With Muslims fasting and generally comatose during the month of Ramzan, authorities in China have told mosques in China to raise the national flag to promote the spirit of patriotism. There are 20 million Muslims in China and they are, apart from the Uyghur, the quietest Muslims on the planet, keeping to the mosque-compound and offering Namaz prayers at appropriate intervals, their lives clockwork and no cow vigilante to fear for. Ideal. Jannat!
In our own ‘we the people’ country, though, religion along with the government calls the shots. Tell mosques and churches to raise the tricolour and there will be three shouts of ‘Down, Down, Down’ followed by the Hurrah! Patriotism in India is not to be worn on the sleeve nor raised on a pole at every vantage though it comes handy to make a call to oust a government and usher in a new one.
In this age and time, it is rarely that the Christian Church comes dressed in Crusade mail. But it seems the times they have changed and “evil” is at the helm. So, the Archbishop of Delhi Anil Couto sends out a letter to all parishes, urging good Christians to pray and fast to see the back of the current regime come 2019. And the Vatican puts the letter on its website. And to think we were all quibbling over the #TwoNationsTheory!
No names have been taken, neither that of man nor party, in the Archbishop’s letter. But the Church’s David versus Goliath slingshot is aimed at the Modi government. That is for sure. Logic says Christians should form a political party and get into the thick of battle political. The Election Commission cannot stop them. And the cross election symbol is still there for the taking, must be.
Forming a party of Christians will be a formality to qualify to make political statements and get away with it. For the sake of opposition unity the party of Christians can like Mayawati’s party for the Dalit lend Christian votes to the strongest opposition candidate in every constituency: to Mayawati from wherever she contests; Rahul Gandhi from Amethi…
But to use the camouflage of religion to make a prayer out of a call to vote is guided by singular opposition to a particular party/front. The Archbishop of Delhi’s residence stands in a grove of greenery and flowers, a sight for sore eyes. No wonder the man only sees “turbulence” all around him. He should know that not everybody can become Archbishop and wear the collar. For the majority in the outside-of-archbishop’s world, it’s a dog’s life with or without the collar.
The Bharatiya Janata Party should rightly be shaking in its pants. The national alliance of the opposition, a glimpse of which will bone show in Bengaluru tomorrow, May 23, 2018, to take it on in 2019 has gone into lanes and by-lanes the BJP never thought the alliance would. BJP president Amit Shah, the other day, laughed at the ‘opposition alliance’ forming, stating that the “same people had been arrayed against Modi in 2014, too, so, what’s the big difference?”
Somebody, who can get close to Shah and that somebody not a ‘yes-man’, should tell him that the difference is that, come 2019, there will be “one single chosen opposition alliance candidate” against every BJP candidate in every Lok Sabha constituency. In other words the 69% that voted against Modi will not be fractured splinters but a single lance thrust straight to the BJP’s heart.
The BJP’s Hindu consolidation is still a work in progress, a lot of the consolidation held up by Hindus themselves, Hindus who answer to the call of the ‘secular’ and are led by an ensemble of leaders in degrees left of centre. Post-Karnataka, a tweet going the rounds of Facebook is a call to Hindus with these numbers: “92% of Muslims voted; 86% of Christians voted; but only 58% of Hindus voted, when will 100% of Hindus vote?”
Definitely not in the next year or less before general elections 2019. The Archbishop’s call to consolidate anti-BJP votes and to Christians to pray for the “dark clouds to lift” places the Christian faith on a pedestal vis a vis the pagan gods of the Hindu pantheon.
If Islam is at the point of the sword, Christianity is all about harvesting the souls of the heathen. And there cannot be no let-up in the harvesting. Souls command a price higher than diamonds, gold and all the silver in the world, titanium! And, what’s that they mined in the movie Avatar, something unobtainable! Like America’s ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Americans the other night, “let’s not go wobbly on truth”. The Chinese would attest to that. They know religion is opium for the masses, dangerous. Can make more than legs go wobbly. (IPA Service)
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