Abp Robert D’Souza, Agra

We see less hope for women, girls and religious minorities under the present dispensation. Dalits and indigenous people are under attack. Investigations have revealed that the girl was abducted, locked up in a deserted temple after repeated rape. They killed her by smashing her head with a stone. The girl’s body was found in woodlands on 17 January. It only reveals the tip of the iceberg of the society’s immorality. We now live in a miserable situation. The immorality and indiscipline have got exposed in this case. The image of a perverted community that it reveals is terribly shameful. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India expresses its deep pain and anguish at the incidents of violence against women in Kathua, Unnao and other places in the country. I also join them in expressing the same feelings.

It seems the minds of all in India are perverted one way or the other. The minds of both the old and the young have got enslaved by the ideas of an inhuman environment. Some leaders openly say this is a Hindu country and others have no place here. It provokes their leaders to attack minorities. These things were happening in the past too. But more bragging and physical attacks are happening now.

The dalits, tribals and Muslims have always been victims of caste mentality. They suffer a lot of humiliation. The police and the administration remain mute spectators when they are attacked. The local bodies help the higher class and show a deviated attitude towards the lower castes.

Everyone has a right to live, especially the girl child. The attacks happening on girls are diabolical to say the least. We should hang our heads in shame. How brutally an eight year beti was assaulted, molested and cruelly murdered! What has made the incidents more deplorable is the justification by certain sections of society. There is no justification for rape. It is shame on Narendra Modi and his ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ slogan. The society stands humiliated. These rapists are working as per the agenda of the RSS and the BJP. They are continuously fanning co-mmunal tensions. It seems that the high castes chart the Hindutva agenda.

Slavery had been demolished by the American government, but slavery exists in one form or the other everywhere in humanity. It is being encouraged now in India because of the Hindutva agenda. The high castes even contaminate the drinking water sources of dalits and lower castes. They elected a dalit president and a poor woman’s son as Prime Minister, but the RSS agenda is being rigorously pursued. What response have the church leaders against the RSS agenda, you might ask. A CSI bishop, Thomas K. Oommen, made a daring statement. He said the NDA government has “become a nightmare to the poor and the minorities in India. I agree with him. This is actual reality. The poor have to survive in our country. He is speaking from the South, but it is still worse in the North. I stand firmly with the victims of these horrific crimes. I condemn the violent attacks against women strongly, because such acts bring great shame on our nation. I fully agree with Bp Ommnen who wrote, “While I consider Hindus as my own sisters and brothers, I believe Hindutva, which is totally against the values of Hinduism, is a danger to the age old religious fraternity that this nation upholds. The communalist and fascist ideology of Hindutva promoted by the ruling BJP casts a shadow over constitutional secularism, and the religious minorities are living under threat.”