Christians must join larger fight

This Bill will not appease the hunger of millions of poor in the state. Nor will it alter the declining sex-ratio. Are Christians doing their duty as emancipated citizens by being silent on this other conversion, viz. the conversion into voiceless, marginalised citizens, taking place almost every day? Christians must ask themselves some hard questions. Has their opposition to the forces of marginalisation and pauperisation been strong enough?

For the last three months I have intensively toured six districts of tribal south Gujarat visiting some fifty villages and talking to hundreds of men and women. I have observed a variety of conversions. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, their economic condition, spurred by the ecological degradation, has degenerated at least five fold in the last five years. Displacement due to dams, quarries, land alienation, deforestation, transfer of tribal resources to non-tribal hands, has led to ecological degradation and mining of labour. Not only are masses of tribals unable to find sustenance in their degraded habitat but their labour is mined by vested interests in the waves of seasonal migration one finds in tribal areas. Child labour is on the increase; attaining the constitutional objectives of universal primary education is a far cry. The average food security from own crop production for most tribal households has reduced from 90 days to about 70 days a year. Water has become extremely scarce, thanks to the continuous degradation of forests and the washing away of the top soil. Women and girl children now face additional burdens to procure fuel, fodder and drinking water, even as the violence against them increases.

Inflation is galloping and the terms of trade, with its bias against agriculture, is all the more against the rural poor. Migration in large numbers and for greater number of days is an outcome, a process that leads to the implementation of instruments like the Minimum Wages Act or the Inter-state Migration Act being reduced to wishful thinking.

All of us know how rampant corruption is. Is the government not aware of these things? Are we not aware of what is going on? Why are we silent on these issues? Why do we let ourselves be diverted from focussing on the dismal record of the government? Why are not Bills passed against all these conversions taking place under the canopy of the BJP government in Gujarat?

Through the Freedom of Religion Bill, in a diversionary tactic, Christians are made to engage in only discussion on conversion, freedom of conscience, apologies, foreign money, etc., and be defensive. Christians must continue to fight the Anti-Conversion Bill as it violates personal space. But it is more important to get on to the counter attack, viz. take on the state/government on its miserable record on governance, scams, corruption.

A continuous attack based on facts must debunk the propaganda of the state that is misleading the masses who are increasingly getting converted to misery and wretchedness. It is this conversion that must be battled at all levels and costs. It is time that men and women of goodwill woke up and fought the government on its conversion agenda that is converting and condemning the masses into generations of servitude.