New Delhi: The Catholic Bishops Conference of India – the apex body of Catholics in the country – on Thursday (January 16) questioned the recent claims by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat about conversions and tribal communities that the latter has attributed to former President Pranab Mukherjee.
“Fabricated personal conversation being attributed to a former President of India and its posthumous publication with the vested interest of an organisation with questionable credibility raises a grave issue of national importance,” said the Catholics Bishops Conference in the statement, reported The Telegraph.
Bhagwat had claimed at an Indore event that when he went to meet Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the parliament had been seeing discussions on the “issue of ghar wapsi“. ‘Ghar wapsi’ – literally, ‘return home’ – is the Sangh Parivar-led programme of religious conversion to Hinduism from Islam, Christianity, and other religions in India. The Sangh’s position is that all Indians were originally Hindus and thus this conversion will necessarily mean a ‘return’.
“Dr Pranab Mukherjee was the president when I went to meet him for the first time. There was huge ruckus in the parliament over the issue of ghar wapsi then. I thought he would ask many questions and I would have to answer them, so I went prepared. But he said, ‘You brought back some people and there was a press conference. Why are you people doing it this way? This creates the ruckus. Because this is politics. Had I been in the Congress, not in the president’s chair, even I would be doing this in parliament.’ Then he said, ‘But this work that you have done, because of that 30% tribals…’ I understood the line he was taking from his tone and I was very happy… I said, ‘—Would have become Christian?’ He said, ‘Not Christian, but anti-national.’ This is what he said,” Bhagwat had said at the event.
‘Is it not the violent Ghar Wapsi programme the real anti-national activity?’
“Is it not the violent Ghar Wapsi programme of VHP and other similar organisations, curtailing the exercise of freedom of conscience of economically deprived tribals, the real anti-national activity?” said the statement of the Conference.
“It also raises the issue whether the alleged statement was in the scheme of things when the former President Pranab Mukherjee was invited to one of their programmes. Why Mohan Bhagwat did not speak when Dr Pranab Mukherjee was alive? The intention seems to be diabolic, sinister and not genuine,” the statement added.
In 2018, Mukherjee attended RSS’s Vijaya Dashami event as the chief guest in a move that attracted significant eyeballs.
‘We do not believe the statement to be true’
“We do not believe the statement to be true and spoken by the former President, because we hold him in great esteem for his contribution to the nation and the respect for pluralistic secular ethos of our motherland,” said the Conference in its statement.
An article on The Wire had noted that in his 2018 speech in Nagpur, Mukherjee had told the RSS that nationalism could not be defined in terms of one religion, language or region. He quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore to drive home the point that secularism and inclusion constitute articles of faith.
“It is unfortunate that the thrice banned organisation, attached with the kind of violent Indian history as has (been) seen over the past several decades, is allowed with impunity to call the non-violent, peace-loving and service-oriented Christian community as anti-nationals,” said the conference in its statement.
“The real issue is the right to exercise freedom of conscience, a fundamental right under Art. 25, by the tribals and other vulnerable who too are entitled to live a life with human dignity as enshrined in the Constitution of India. Calling them anti-nationals for exercising their fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution exhibits the hidden motive and malicious agenda,” the statement added.
