Indian Lutherans Confident of Anti-minorities Laws Repeal under New Government
Elections a Tremendous Breakthrough, Says UELCI Executive Secretary
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia/GENEVA, 15 June 2004 (LWI) – Indian Lutherans welcome the change in government following the surprise outcome of the recent parliamentary elections, said Rev. Chandran Paul Martin, executive secretary of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India (UELCI).
Martin was confident that the repeal of all anti-minority laws would be a top priority for the incoming government. The senior church official spoke to Lutheran World Information (LWI) during the Asian Church Leadership Conference (ACLC), early June in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
A change in government had generally been expected, but the defeat suffered by the former ruling Bharathya Janatha Party (BJP) took many by surprise, Martin said. The emergence of the Congress Party-led coalition follows five years of rule by a fundamentalist regime, he said, referring to the Hindu nationalist BJP. He called the election result a "tremendous breakthrough."
The UELCI executive secretary said action by the new government on anti-minority laws was certain, given the Congress Party's strong support for secularism. He considered the May 19 appointment of Dr Manmohan Singh as Indian Prime Minister as significant, not only because of his experience as a former finance minister, but also because, as a Sikh, he was a member of a religious minority in India.
The BJP's demise was also greeted with relief by ethnic Indian Lutherans in neighboring Malaysia. "With the rise of the BJP government in India, [extremist] Hinduism became very violent in Malaysia," recalled Bishop Julius Paul, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malaysia (ELCM). Pastors were threatened, and other church members lived in fear. "There was a sense of vengeance among Hinduism," Paul said in his formal word of welcome to the ACLC participants.
In the ELCM worship takes place in Tamil, a language spoken mainly in southeast India. Of Malaysia's 24 million population, around seven percent are ethnic Indians, mostly Hindus.
(323 words)
(By Amsterdam-based correspondent Andreas Havinga, reporting on the ACLC on behalf of LWI.)
If you want to edit this article yourself and adapt it to a given format, follow our editing information
