A pro-Hindutva outfit is seeking to push the demand for scrapping welfare benefits to tribal Christians in Tripura state.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Christian leaders and secular parties are upset over the proposed protest rally planned by a hardline supremacist Hindutva organisation in Agartala, the capital city of Tripura, on Christmas Day.
The Janajati Dharma Sanskriti Suraksha Manch (JSM), affiliated to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has planned the rally to demand an end to welfare benefits for tribal people who have embraced Christianity or Islam, reports reaching here on Saturday said.
The organisation, whose name means a forum to protect tribal people’s religion and culture —announced last week that it will hold the rally on Dec. 25.
The hardcore Hindutva group says Christianity and Islam are “foreign-origin religions”, and hence indigenous tribal people converted to these faiths should be removed from the official Scheduled Tribes (STs) list to deny them welfare benefits under the affirmative action programs.
Father Ivan D’Silva, secretary for social communication at Agartala diocese, which covers the entire Tripura state, said he was not aware of “the motive behind the planned rally on Christmas Day, the holiest and most sacred festival for Christians across the world.”
“It looks like it is being done deliberately. We called a meeting of all Church denominations in the state and have decided to oppose the rally”, media reports quoted him as saying.
The priest also said they have also launched a campaign to make tribal people in the state aware of their constitutional rights. More than 50 percent of Tripura’s population belongs to various indigenous tribes.
Father Nicholas Barla, secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s Office for Tribal Affairs, said the planned rally appeared to be part of “a political program ahead of the national elections to be held next year.” “The demand for de-listing tribal Christians from the beneficiaries list for STs is being raised in various states and provinces of India with sizeable tribal populations,” he told UCA News.
Barla called it “a conspiracy to divide tribal people in the name of religion” for the electoral benefit of pro-Hindu parties.
“According to our constitution people are free to practice and profess any faith according to their choice and free will,” he reminded.
Tripura is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is wedded to the idea of India becoming a majoritarian, theocratic state. Opposition parties including the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and regional secular outfits have opposed the rally as “unconstitutional” and “a conspiracy” to foment sectarian divide in the state.
Congress leader Sudip Roy Barman is reported to have said the demand to de-list tribal Christians from the ST list “was floated to disturb the peace and foment ethnic discord and tension in the state.”
He warned that supremacist political parties and their affiliate organisations were “risking mutual co-existence on the lines of Manipur,” where over 170 people have been killed and several hundred injured since ethnic violence first broke out on May 3.
Christians make up 4.35 percent of Tripura’s 3.7 million people. Most of them belong to indigenous tribal communities such as the Tripuri, Lushai, Kuki, Darlong and Halam.
A sizable number of Tripura Christians are Baptists, Presbyterians and Catholics while there are also those belonging to Assemblies of God, Evangelical Church, and other neo-Christian groups.
