ASIA/INDIA - Commitment for the poor, the voiceless, the marginalised and promoting respect for human rights including religious freedom: programme of India’s Catholic laity

Wednesday, 22 September 2004

New Delhi (Fides Service) - Commitment for the poor, the voiceless, the marginalised and promoting respect for human rights including religious freedom are the main concerns of John Dayal new president of the All India Catholic Union AICU a lay movement formed 85 years ago and since then very active in India in promoting respect for the rights of minority groups and the basic freedoms of all citizens.
During a recent meeting in Goa, AICU leading members, representing India’s 16 million Catholics of three different Catholic rites Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankar, elected a new board of directors with John Dayal as president and vice president Dolphy D’Souza, both well known human rights activists.
“The Union will continue to counter expressions of xenophobia and religious fundamentalism which we saw recently in anti-minority hostility following a recent population count”, Mr Dayal said when he illustrated his programme. Concerned for continuing violence and coercion against Christians in states governed by the Hindu nationalist group Baratya Janata Party BJP, the new president has asked the federal government to take urgent measures to restore harmony and peace.
However he did congratulate the central government for “freeing state offices of fundamentalist attitudes which had infiltrated in the past five years in the judicial system, security forces and public administration”.
One AICU priority, Mr Dayal said, is to side with poor people and tribal communities promoting social and economic development for them helping to guarantee access to health-care and education in rural areas where many of the poorest people live.
AICU, the new president said, will continue to cooperate with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India while strengthening already good relations with other Christians and with leaders and faithful of other religions.
In the 1990s, with the late Catholic Archbishop Alan De Lastic of Delhi John Dayal, journalist and human rights activist, helped establish the United Christian Forum for Human Rights which, as BJP increased its political strength, has since actively denounced persecution of Christians on the part of Hindu extremist groups.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 22/9/2004 lines 28 words 289)


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