ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

Sangh Parivar welcomes PM's statement on conversions

The RSS and the VHP have welcomed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's suggestion for a national debate on conversion while the CPI-ML said the prime minister was pushing ''the Sangh Parivar's unwritten agenda into its national agenda.''

RSS Sarsanghchalak Prof Rajendra Singh said the prime minister's call assumes special significance in the background of Gujarat incidents which had been ''blown out of proportion'' by the media.

He said the anti-BJP political twist given by the opposition and the US media and Clinton administration's ''arm-twisting tactics'' using this as a pretext, had made such a call all the more relevant and urgent in order to set the record straight and project the true and factual picture of the whole issue of conversions.

Prof Singh urged the heads of all religious institutions and other eminent people in the country to support this ''timely call'' to present the entire issue in its correct form before the world.

VHP working president Ashok Singhal said the situation had become clear and the real picture of the recent Gujarat incidents had come before the people with the prime minister's statement.

However, the CPI-ML said the prime minister's statement implied condoning the attacks on Christians in Gujarat and showed that he had acted as a member of the Sangh Parivar and openly taken up a communal position.

Describing the talk of forcible conversions as ''simple hypocrisy and a ploy to create a fear psychosis to legitimise riots and attacks by communal fascists'', the CPI-ML central committee said in a statement that the prime minister should ''refrain from pushing the Sangh Parivar's unwritten agenda into its national agenda''.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report