Giving to God what is due unto Him

The Curious Case of Mr. Umashankar, IAS

JOHN DAYAL

A day before, and a day after Republic Day, the Presidents of India and the United States of America reminded the Government and People of India  just how important  Freedom of Faith was to the health of democracy in the country.

As Mr. Obama said, “Our freedom of religion is written into our founding documents.  It’s part of America’s very first amendment.  Your Article 25 says that all people are “equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion.… Every person has the right to practice their faith how they choose, or to practice no faith at all, and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.”

The celebratory week would not pass before Article 25 and the promise of the Constitution would be out to test in Tamil Nadu in the curious case of Mr. C Umashankar. He is an officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre of the Indian Administrative Series – the most powerful branch of the civil services -- and is accused of preaching and propagating his religion in public. The state is governed by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, an old friend of the Prime Minister, Mr. Modi, and of his Bharatiya Janata Party.

Mr. Umashankar was born in the Dalit community, and is an ardent speaker in meetings organised by church groups in his home state. He is a Christian.

He has been served a notice to stop his activities, and runs the risk of police action under India’s own blasphemy laws for disturbing the peace, and for converting people ti Christianity. The state does not have laws against conversions, and no one has said he is using force and fraudulent  methods in his church work.. Civil society has not missed the irony that the officer  is being hounded by a state government which thinks nothing of idolizing a convicted political personality, former chief minister Ms. J Jayalalitha, or supporting religious leaders with a criminal past.

His case poses some crucial questions concerning his rights as a citizen of India, the limits of the code of conduct for a government servant or a government person under the law, which includes people like ministers and public functionaries drawing their salaries from the Consolidated fund of India, and on the definition of proselytizing, conversions and issues like public order

Umashankar has every right to profess his faith as a Christian, new or old. He has every right to profess, practice and propagate it in his personal time even if he is a government servant. Most Indians if a certain age would have seen photographs of presidents and prime ministers – from the first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad to the current one, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee -- going to temples bare bodied, and in public, not private, audience under the glare of television lights.  So have prime ministers from Mr. Gulzari Lal Nanda to Mr. Narendra Modi been seen professing their religion in public, giving religious statements, and because they are on national TV while praising their own relgion and its past, they are also propagating it to all those who can hear and see them.

Most police stations and many government offices have idols, calendars and pictures, garlanded and often with incense sticks burning before them, in police stations, government offices, court compounds. A very large percentage of government officials, all the way to the Supreme court, sport religious symbols publicly on their bodies. There are Vinayaka temples inside court campuses. Saraswati pooja is performed in the court.

Umashankar, by all evidence, has never mixed his official and individual identities. There has been no fault found in his official conduct. He believes in his faith, his divinity, his Holy book. He has also taken an oath to protect the condition as an officer of the union of India in an All-India civil service. The charge is that he is converting. He is not a pastor or priest. He is a preacher. If someone asks him to pray for healing, he does so. He does not claim he is a god man. This is a matter of faith. This is not creating a law and order problem. He is not a charlatan, a magic man or a voodoo  or magic medicine seller. He is not a quack. And on the issue of law and order, it is the fundamentalist Hindutva activists who are the ones who are really guilty, who are creating the law and order crisis. One would wonder why the state government and the local police are not taking action against them. It remains to be seen how this case will play out in courts and administrative tribunals.