Cardinal Cleemis speaks for Freedom of Faith in India

In the face of adversity, Cardinal Cleemis speaks words of courage

JOHN DAYAL

He impressive formal religious title, Moran Mor Baselios Cardinal Cleemis Catholicos, is the Major Archbishop-Catholicos, and first Cardinal, of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Sometimes he is also called Cardinal Thottunkal. But in recent times, the youngest person to be named a Cardinal has become internationally known, in media and political circles, as the official voice of the Christian community in India in the face of persecution and violence as a plain-speaking President of the supra-ritual Catholic Bishops Conference of India, and chair of the National United Christian Forum. The NUCF consists of the CBCI, the National Council of Churches in India, and the Evangelical Fellowship of India.

The first one to hit the headlines globally as facing up to  Prime Minsters and political thugs was the late Alan de Lastic, of European and Burmese descent and friend of Mother Teresa,who was Archbishop of Delhi in the 1990s, and president of the CBCI before his untimely death in an accident while on a visit to Poland. Archbishop Alan stood upto the powerful, and very popular, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee at a very critical time in India’s recent history when the Bharatiya Janata party, engine by the aggressive religious nationalism of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, history had formed a government for the first time.

Archbishop Alan faced some serious issues — Nuns were raped in Jhabua and the Sangh Parivar launched a vicious propaganda campaign, aided and abetted by crooks in the administration as much as by right wing supporters in the media, to meddle in the investigation and judicial process, and then to put the blame on the Christians. His firmness and compassion gave heart to the victims, and strengthened the  church and activists. He led the Dalit Christian agitation with a unique peaceful civil disobedience leading to his courting arrest on Parliament Street in November 1997. In 1998 Christmas season, Sangh gangs, some of them infiltrators from Maharashtra, destroyed almost three dozen village churches in the forested South Gujarat region of the Dangs.  The Archbishop despatched a Fact Finding team, and  his complaint to the Central Government forced the then prime minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee to take a helicopter to the Dangs. And when Mr. Vajpayee sought to side track the discourse, calling for a national debate on conversions, Alan told him that while the Church was not afraid of a debate on this issue, the matter had been settled in the Constituent Assembly in a  thorough discussion and brooked no reopening which would seriously  risk injury to the Constitutional  guarantees of freedom of faith. Mfr. Vajpayee dropped the matter.

Cardinal Cleemis will be the first to say he is nowhere close to the stature of Archbishop Alan, but it is a coincidence that he too is called upon to speak when the BJP is again in power after a ten year hiatus,  propelled by a  far more aggressive and pugnacious RSS. Mr. Narendra Modi’s government has reopened the pursuit of a national law against conversions, this time to divert attention from the Sangh-backed hate campaign and violence targetted at the Christian community. There has been a gang-raped, still not satisfactory investigated. There have been two murders, and more than 170 other acts of persecution, Ghar Wapsi and  terrorising of Dalits and Tribals in the months Mr. Modi has been in power.

The Cardinal has led from the front. In the process, he has had no hesitation in using words very different from the polite phrases he used when he made his first formal call on the new prime minister. He had asked for a “chance” for Mr Modi and not to pre-judge him because of his record as the Gujarat Chief Minister or his association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This had created some consternation in civil society, and in the Catholic community which was observing the BJP government trying to coerce  anyone it thought would  be a hurdle in its crony capitalist policies.”The remarks would only help Modi to get more acceptability,”  CPM leader Pinarayi had said in Kerala.

Cleemis proved his critics wrong. He called special meetings at the CBCI, consulted with theorists, lawyers, scholars.  In brilliantly sharp public communications, the CBCI said  “The recent controversies in the name of religious reconversions portray a negative image about India. Communal polarisation and the bid to homogenise India are posing threat to all minorities – women, Dalits, and all linguistic, cultural and religious minorities. Ghar Wapsi is a political process, carried out by the powerful exponents of religious nationalism – much against the principle of Secularism. It does not even have the legitimacy of freedom of political expression.”

It is his punchline that has given hope to civil society that the church will not  be cowed into  silence or submission. Shaken by the gang-rape of a 72 year old Nun in West Bengal in March this year, even while  Maharashtra and Haryana were  announcing laws with harsh punishment for anyone found in possession of beef, the Cardinal said “India should be as concerned about the welfare of its people as it is about its cows.” Archbishop Alan would have approved of the cutting-edge comment.