At a rally in Jharkhand on the eve of the last of seven elections, the Indian Prime Minister attacked some schools that had adopted Friday as a holiday instead of Sunday, stating that “after Hindus, now Muslims are also fighting the Christians”. On the other hand, he assured that Muslims “will never be entitled to receive subsidies for Dalits and tribals.”
Dumka (/Agencies) – An electoral rally in Dumka, in the State of Jharkhand, in the north of the country, before the last round of political elections in India begins, yesterday became an opportunity for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi will try to sow discord between Christians and Muslims, the two main minorities in the country. To attack the Jharkhand government – led by a local political force allied with Congress, where the Hindu nationalists of the BJP are in opposition – he attacked the results of an investigation that revealed that some schools in Jamtara changed the holiday to Friday instead of Sunday universally accepted in India. “First the Muslims attacked the Hindus. Now they also attack Christians,” Modi declared.
In fact – by reversing the decision made two years ago by 43 government schools to change the weekly day of rest to Friday – the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led government had reinstated Sunday as an official holiday of rest, although some schools of the Jamtara areas – where the Muslim presence is strong – did not comply with this provision. However, local MP Irfan Ansari urged people not to give “a sectarian connotation to a trivial issue.”
At the rally, Modi also reiterated the statement that the INDIA bloc (the group that brings together the opposition forces) will open to Muslims, “on a religious basis”, job quotas and other benefits that the law India reserves for underprivileged categories. “I swear that as long as I am alive, they will not be able to snatch the quota from the tribals, the Dalits, the extremely backward classes and give it to the Muslims who are waging an ‘electoral jihad’…” Modi said. The inclusion of Dalits and tribal Christians in the quota system is a battle that Indian Catholics have also been waging for years but which has always been rejected by Hindu nationalists, the same ones who point the finger at what they call “forced conversions.” And precisely in Jharkhand, at the service of the local tribal populations, Fr. Stan Swamy, the Indian Jesuit who died of Covid in 2021 after almost nine months in prison at the age of 84, lived his commitment for years. years on trumped-up charges of complicity in terrorism, despite repeated requests for Modi to be released.
The Indian Episcopal Conference clearly expressed itself against a sectarian vision of society in the document with which it called for a day of fasting and prayer for March 22, with a view to the elections. That text denounced the spread of “divisive attitudes, hate speech and fundamentalist movements that erode the pluralist ethos that has always characterized our country.”
Add Comment