Marshall Mendonca wrote on Goanet: >>I do not know which Hindu circles, Sandeep is referring to. From the links he provided earlier, I would presume he means hindutva circles. >>Dr John Dayal is no Praveen Togadia or Ashok Singhal or Francois Gauntier. >>He is no ideologue nor belongs to any ideological driven organisation. >>He is a human rights activist. >>If you call that vested interests and consider it a crime, yes then he is >>guilty. >>It is an example of our myopic vision that John Dayal carries credibility >>before the National Human Rights Commission, The National Commission for >>Minorities, the Supreme Court of India, the National Integration Council and >>sundry other institutions but not to some like Sandeep. >>If Sandeep wishes to give greater credence to information and news from RSS >>sources than to John Dayal, so be it. We are all free to believe what we want >>to. But the truth cannot be kept hidden forever. It will emerge one day.
-------------------------------------------------------- My consolidated Response: It is an irony of our Nation that while the propagation of orthodox Hindutva is considered as bad and evil (and rightly so) the propagation of an orthodox intolerant brand of Christianity is considered an acceptable proposition. It is a sad predicament that our major religions continue to be represented by Orthodox leaders who have their own vested agendas and hidden interests. Leaders who have been found to have placed religion above Nation in the past! Maybe John Dayal is a human rights activist, RSS workers are too. But he is also ideologically associated to several Christian bodies like the All India Catholic Union, All India Christian Council, United Christian Action, and Member of Justice and Peace commission Archdiocese of Delhi. That is not per se a crime and I never said it was. But that makes him a Christian activist rather than a secular liberal activist. And India needs more of the latter. While John Dayal has often highlighted the hate-crimes perpetrated by Hindu groups against minorities and nobody should have problems with that, it is his silence against violence committed by Christian groups against Hindu Minorities in the North East that worries me. Or his marked silence and/or even support to orthodoxy, intolerance and abuse of the laws by radical evangelical outfits. Besides, John Dayal has made baseless, religiously motivated and unsubstantiated allegations in the past. He has fabricated stories and communalized law-and-order incidents like the Gang rape of Jhabua Nuns. He has made wild politically motivated allegations like blaming the Sangh Parivar outfits for the series of bomb attacks on churches, even though investigations have revealed the role of Pak-based Deendar Anjuman. He has purportedly made false accusations against VHP-A ( http://www.vhp-america.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5 ). The list would go on. Marshall needs to stop hallucinating when he implies that I cannot see the truth, just as he needs to stop hallucinating when he refers to Santosh as a Sangh Parivar sympathizer. Questioning the motives and credentials of individuals like John Dayal does not mean that one does not recognize the truth of what has happened in Orissa or what is happening in the rest of India. Different people would however analyze the reasons and suggest the remedies differently. Marshall needs to understand and accept this plain simple fact before he lets his imaginations run wild. For the records, some Christian leaders too have criticized John Dayal's credentials and motives. For instance, Mr PN Benjamin, the head of Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) had this to write in his letter addressed to him: "You refer only good old Gandhi and say you cannot be compared with him. No wonder. I respect your honesty because Gandhi never bore false witness against anyone, though he was not a Christian. But, the John Dayal, I know of dishes that out (falsehood) profusely especially when he goes to the US and appears before USCIRF and his Christian evangelist friends there who ostensibly bank-roll his activities both in the US and in India." ( Source: http://hindtoday.com/Blogs/ViewBlogs.aspx?HTAdvtId=2681&HTAdvtPlaceCode=IND ) There are enough valid reasons for being skeptical of leaders like John Dayal, who are known for their one-sided propaganda and even anti-Indian postures. Like placing religion above the Nation and making anti-Indian statements in the past like: "The US government was too quick to remove India from the list of terrorist countries. The AICU is going to make an independent enquiry into this grave incident. [. . .] Anti-Christian violence is escalating in Maharashtra." (Source: http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=3506 ) India faces a clear choice. Either it must grow by weeding out all forms of religious radicalism which is what a secular liberal progressive Nation must do or perish by giving orthodox religious groups and/or leaders a free hand. A Nation that needs to chart a modern path, a path of freedom free from orthodoxy, intolerance and hatred, therefore needs neither a Togadia or Singhal nor a John Dayal. Frederick is well within his rights to quote such people if he wants to and I am well within my rights to observe that facts and figures from a neutral source are likely to be more credible than facts and figures from religiously motivated sources like John Dayal. Cheers Sandeep
