Tags:
Journalism of Courage
CHENNAI, JAN 20: The Centre will ban religious conversions only after a national debate on the issue “crystalises into consensual action”, BJP general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu clarified today.
The BJP leader told media persons in Chennai that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s call for a national debate did not tantamount to taking a decision. “Debate is not a decision”, he made it clear. However he hastened to add that `it is a fact that conversions and re-conversions are leading to social tensions. And there is nothing wrong in calling for a public debate on the issue’. Justifying Prime Minister’s call for a national debate on conversions, Naidu wondered why the Congress and Left parties were opposed to a discussion when the VHP and Christian missionaries were ready for a dialogue over the issue.
Stating that a few Sarvodaya leaders had alleged that the Christian missionaries were promoting conversions through allurements leading to social tensions, Venkaiah Naidu however cautiously remarked:`We have to see whether there are such allurements.” However, he hastened to add that `it is a fact’ that Christian missionaries in India were receiving foreign funds.
Expressing `surprise’ over the high-pitched protests by the Congress against the communal clashes in Gujarat recently, Venkaiah Naidu sought to know why Congress president Sonia Gandhi had rushed to Madhya Pradesh when two nuns of a Christian missionary there were raped. He claimed that a Congress functionary accused in the nuns’ rape case was given a party ticket to contest in the Pethalwada constituency in the recently Assembly elections in the State.
He also claimed that during the Rajiv Gandhi regime, the then Internal Securities Minister Arun Nehru had ordered a couple of missionaries to leave the country and West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had also publicly criticised the activities of a few missionaries. “When they can ask missionaries to leave the country, why can’t we call for a national debate on conversion”, heasked.
Alleging that the Congress and the Left parties were internationalising the issue, he said “it is not in the interest of minorities and the country to internationalise the issue”.
He went on to charge that some of the parties in India and `outside forces’ as well which `could not digest the emergence of a nationalist party as the head of a ruling coalition in India’ were resorting to calumny campaign against the Vajpayee Government, exploiting the Gujarat incidents. In this context, he urged the Centre to come out with the comparative fact sheet on the communal clashes during the erstwhile Congress governments and the present BJP regime.
