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[1] PRESS STATEMENT BY Dr. John Dayal in Bangalore, December 11, 2006 Manmohan Statement on Minorities Development welcomed, but Government must also focus on Poor Christians, says Catholic Union AICU demands PM's High Powered Committee on Christians on lines of Sachchar panel for Muslims Support for Delhi rallies by Dalit Christians; Concern at increased anti-Christian violence and targetting of Tribal and Dalit women [The following is the text of the statement by All India Catholic Union President Dr John Dayal, Member of the National Integration Council, Government of India, at a Press Conference at the Bangalore Press Club. The Press meet was also addressed by Bangalore Catholic Sabha president Kutino and South Indian Dalit leader and Christian Council coordinator Rev Kumar Swamy and other Dalit leaders] The All India Catholic Union has welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement at the National Development Council on priority development of Minorities, Dalits and Tribals and his assurance to generate resources for them. But the Catholic Union said this development process must not be confined only to politically powerful Minorities, but must also focus on the Christian community which is as poor and underdeveloped as Muslims but has no electoral clout. It is, in fact, this political debility - that we do not constitute a vote bank - that has led courts and governments to deny to Dalit Christians their basic human rights by using illicit religious grounds to keep them out of the Scheduled Caste list though Sikhs and Buddhist enjoyed the economic and political privileges given by the government to Hindu Dalits. This is tantamount to rank government-sponsored communalism. The AICU urged upon the Government of India to grant Scheduled caste status to Dalit Christians without waiting for the report of the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission which has been delayed for unexplained reasons. Because of the delay in the Mishra Commission, the Supreme Court has also had to adjourn hearing on Public Interest litigation writs on this matter till April of 2007. These delays have dismayed the entire Christian community and led it to doubt the motives of government institutions. The AICU extended full support to Dalit Christian groups now on a long relay hunger strike before Parliament during its winter session. A major rally was held on 11 December led by the All India Christian Council an other groups which partner the AICU in its movement on getting the full rights of the Christians of Scheduled caste origin. The AICU at its Working committee meeting in Bangalore also demanded that the Government set up a high powered Commission on the lines of the Justice Sachchar commission to study the economic and political disempowerment of the Christian minority groups in all parts of the country, among whom are tribals, Dalits, landless agrarian labour, and many others in the unorganized sector who live below the poverty line and have not benefited from State and church educational institutions and development schemes so far. The Sachchar commission has done justice to the Muslim community in highlighting the abysmal condition of poor Muslims. The situation of all minorities must be similarly assessed so that government can make a holistic scheme for all minorities as part of its poverty removal and human development strategies, the Union said. Dr John Dayal also expressed concern at the rising trend once again in violence against the Christian community in both Congress ruled and BJP ruled states. An ominous development was the focussed violence against Christian women, especially in Dalit and Tribal areas. While home churches, nuns and pastors were routinely attacked, there had been many cases where wives, daughters and sisters of pastors and other Christians were dragged out of their homes and gang raped. In almost all cases, the police remained passive witness, inactive, and in several states such s Madhya Pradesh, actually connived with the hooligans of the Hindutva Parivar in the violence. He called upon the government to take suitable legal measures to end anti Christian regulations in states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in particular where the state governments were functioning in a manner that violated constitutional provisions safeguarding minority rights. In the same contest, a few Congress chief ministers, including the Chief minister of Himachal, had sought to support the anti conversion regulations of Gujarat though Mrs. Gandhi herself had come out strongly against such laws that hit India's image as a tolerant and In states such as Chhattisgarh, government had found new ways to harass the community. The ruling BJP with all its others outfits are now bent to curb all the services that the church is rendering to all the people. To implement their agenda of harassment, the Collector, the Sub Divisional magistrates and the Tahsildars, are using the 170 B land regulations indiscriminately only on our Christian Institutions. All the heads of the Institutions are receiving court summons to appear in the court. Priests and nuns are asked very impertinent questions. ---------- [2] From: "P.J. Victor Raj" <pjvraj@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Dec 11, 2006 Subject: Ayodhya's drums of communal harmony Ayodhya: December 6, 1992 was perhaps one of the saddest days for the Indian Republic. On this day, the Babri Masjid was demolished, but as we remember the day, the only Muslim drum-maker in the troubled town of Ayodhya says that communalism is a foreign phenomena and was brought from outside. Zohra came to Ayodhya about 40 years ago from Benaras. All this time she has been unknowingly drumming up a rhythm of communal harmony and hers is a beat that everyone would like to listen to. Her shop is in the lane of Ayodhya that leads to the Hanuman temple. Zohra's quick response to all questions reflects that she is used to the media, but for a town that has a small Muslim population, what does communal harmony mean to her? "I make drums and I have taught my sons kirtan and bhajan (Hindu and Sikh hymns). We play them in Hindu temples," says Zohra. However, she adds that Muslims rarely buy things from her shop. In Hanuman Gadhi, devices that signal Hindu-Muslim unity are sometimes predictable - like the First Punjab Dhol Party owned by Taj Mohammad, Zohra's son. He plays the drums inside temples and the people of Ayodhya respond to this beat in one voice. Murals of Gods in temples could not agree more with that notion of harmony and will never see eye to eye with the votebank politics that the Mandir-Masjid controversy brings with it. The one thing that the people of Ayodhya insist on is that communal violence was alien to their town till 1992. The lane leading to the Hanuman temple where Zohra has been making drums for the last 40 years resonates with that claim. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/drumming-up-communal-harmony-in-ayodhya/27829-3.html --------------- [3] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Dec 11, 2006 Subject: Let's us stand up firm and erect! Let's us stand up firm and erect against the regime of dark terror, and barrageof slander, unleashed in the name of 'people' and 'development'. Please sign the petition condemning the police brutality at Singur. http://www.petition online.com /Singur4/petition. html Sukla ---------------- [4] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Tue Dec 12, 2006 Subject: Indo-US Nuke Deal: Euphoria and Anxiety in India [Apart from the compulsions of competitive and oppositional politics, which impels a political party to oppose a certain policy when pursued by another party and all at the same time doing broadly the same in one's own domain, the allegation of "shifting of the goalposts" as the ground for opposition in the instant case is extremely revealing. It means that there is no basic opposition to the 'Deal'. There is no opposition to the heightened nuclear danger at the global and regional level likely to be triggered by the 'Deal'. Rather the opposition is on the false ground that the new conditions - the "shifting of the goalposts", would delimit India's capacity to augment its nuclear arsenal at will. That's undoubtedly quite dangerous and pretty much opposite the stands taken by the anti-nuke peace movements in India and worldwide.] I/II. http://za.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-12-0\ 9T151727Z_01_BAN955031_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-INDIA-USA-NUCLEAR-20061209.XML Cheers, worry in India as US passes nuclear bill Sat Dec 9, 2006 5:17 PM GMT148 By Mark Williams II. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20061211-0453-india-usa-nuclear.html India government's left allies slam U.S. nuclear deal By Simon Denyer REUTERS 4:53 a.m. December 11, 2006 ----------------- [5] From: Ajay Singh Niranjan <ajay_uor@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Dec 11, 2006 Subject: Build education with value system: Kalam Your children are not your children. They are the sons & daughters of life's longing for itself. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thought; -Khalil Gibran Build education with value system: Kalam "I personally believe, when the nation is progressing towards economic development, it is also essential to build our education system with values drawn from our civilisational heritage," he said. Laying the stone for the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), on the outskirt of state capital Bhubaneswar, the President said youths aspire to live in a peaceful, happy, prosperous and safe nation. "It means that economic prosperity alone is not sufficient. It has to be complimented with the value systems of our civilizational heritage, which has shaped the Indian people," Kalam said. "Though we may have series of problems, billion people have the connectivity that gives us the strength to meet those challenges, and institutions like IIIT have an important role to play," he said. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear Friends, Please read ;Indian Education Matrix; for targeting a big space of right change from top to bottom to;bottom to top simultaneously. Ajay singh Niranjan Blog: http://o3.indiatimes.com/Learning_Creation_Innovation Indian Education Matrix . for more Please visit www.wakeupcall.org ---------- [6] From: Abi Ghimire <abi_ghimire@yahoo.com> Date: Mon Dec 11, 2006 Subject: CNDN Resolution for a Democratic Republic in Nepal CANADIAN NETWORK FOR DEMOCRACTIC NEPAL 639 Madame Street, Mississauga, ON, L5W 1G6, CANADA Press Release December 10, 2006 Resolution for a Democratic Republic in Nepal A meeting of Nepalis and friends of Nepal called by the Canadian Network for Democratic Nepal (CNDN) in Vancouver, BC, Canada, on December 10, 2006 unanimously adopted the following resolution: This meeting hails the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, 2006 signed between Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) led government to end the civil war, establish a democratic government, and elect a constituent assembly. This agreement is truly historic not only in the context of the specific history of Nepal but also in the global history of peoples’ struggle for democracy and freedom. We congratulate the people of Nepal whose suffering and struggle has produced this victory and we congratulate all the parties in this agreement for their wisdom in bowing to the wishes of the people for peace, liberty, democracy, human rights, social justice, and prosperity. The agreement is a document of the noblest aspirations of the Nepali people, and indeed, it could be the expression of the highest desire for social justice and political liberty by any people on earth. It holds the promise of a peaceful, prosperous and modern Nepal governed by the democratically expressed will of the people, in which people fully enjoy human rights and civil liberties, and in which the rights of women, marginalized communities, and other oppressed people are maintained with particular care. We wish the people of Nepal success in achieving the goals set down in the document. There are always many forces, both internal and external, working against the aspirations of a people for liberty, equality, and social justice because the forces that wish to maintain the existing hierarchies of power are very strong. To bring to fruition the aspirations expressed in the agreement will require a great deal of vigilance and determination from the Nepali people. Nepalis living in the diaspora and the friends of Nepali people must stand with the people of Nepal in making sure that the hope that they have achieved, after many years of struggle and thousands of lost lives, is not betrayed. We pledge our support to the people of Nepal in their effort to build a democratic republic that is modern, peaceful, prosperous, representative and just. --------------- |
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| << December09, 2006 - [India Thinkers Net]Sharmila fast ,Caste war ,democracy in Islamic nations etc |
December13, 2006 - [India Thinkers Net] Stoned to death in HP ,Nepal news, Parvez post >> |
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