My heart goes out to Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune.

An apology has been wrested out of him for his remarks at a public function which were carried by the local media. “The Christian Community accepts RSS ideology and principles. We need to establish communication and coordination between Christians and the (Rashtriya Swayamsewak) Sangh,” the Marathi language newspapers quoted the bishop.  “The Sangh believes in Nationalism, the church also believes in nationalism,” the punchline said.

Bishop Dabre has been on the Pontifical Council for Dialogue and is well known for his meetings with religious heads in his diocese and often in other parts of the country. He is not politically naïve either. He means well by the nation, and certainly by the Church.
The remarks, understandably, remain viral on social media in Christian, secular, Hindu and Muslim circles. These groups, now sharply divided on the basis of either the faith of their administrators, or the ideology of like-minded people, reacted according to their DNA.

There was a sense of glee in the WhatsApp warriors of the Hindu right wing at this unexpected support apparently from such high quarters.

The Muslim and secular groups were aghast. They had successfully formed a very vocal, if not very successful, opposition to the Karnataka Government’s ban on the Hijab and its enactment of an extremely harsh anti-conversion laws that targeted not just conversions to Christianity, but all but criminalised Muslim young men marrying Hindu women. Leading this struggle is the Catholic Archbishop of Bengaluru, Peter Machado, at the head of a very broad coalition of several dozen groups from the state.

Archbishop Machado is also in the Supreme Court in challenge to the anti-conversion law. Such solidarity has seldom been seen in the country in recent decades. The matter is yet to come up for hearing. The law has been operationalised on the ground.

Away from Karnataka, national civil society was deeply concerned at the political and social climate in the country which even now remains on the boil since the Times Now TV debate anchored by Ms. Navika Kumar in which lawyer Nupur Sharma, a senior spokesperson of the Bhartiya Janata Party, the political arm of the RSS, made disparaging remarks on the Prophet of Islam.

The BJP suspended her, and sacked her male colleague, as the government of Mr Narendra Modi took what it hoped was remedial action to prevent a threatened economic boycott of India by Islamic nations’ consolidated demanding an apology. Ms Sharma, however, has been strongly supported in social media by the rank and file of the Sangh.

The silencing of the spokespersons may or may not have mollified the Islamic nations. Barring Pakistan, which India deems a political and military enemy, the countries of the Gulf as also Iran have a complex mesh of mutual economic interests which neither side can really afford to sunder.
But at this moment in time, it is in India’s interests that no country carries out the threat made by some employers to sack employees of a certain religion, or to stop imports from India. It could have cataclysmic impact on Indian states dependent on remittances from the people working in West Asia.

The protests in India continue, however, though in the last two or three days, they have been overshadowed by the burning of trains and railway stations by young men in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar protesting the launch of a military recruitment scheme named Agnipath.

The anti-blasphemy agitation saw the death of two Muslim youth who were killed when the Jharkhand police opened fire. People have been injured at many places in police action, especially in Uttar Pradesh where the police arrested 109 Muslim protestors.

The U. P. Government under Chief Minister Adityanath, now known as Bulldozer Baba, also demolished the home of activist Afreen Fatima who had led a protest against the blasphemy. Afreen called it an “act of vendetta” and “trying to crush criticism of the government.”

Bishop Dabre’s original statement was aggravated by Catholic media interviewers who recorded him saying “I am not an RSS spokesperson or its defender. In truth, I have demanded a dialogue between the Church and the RSS which Indian Bishops had proposed.” “The Christian Community accepts RSS ideology and principles. We need to establish communication and coordination between Christians and the (Rashtriya Swayamsewak) Sangh,” another interviewer wrote.
Dialogue is a great thing. The Second Vatican Council almost sixty years ago, recommended it as a major instrument of peace and understanding in society and to end the sort of confrontation that had been seen in various continents after World War II.

It is of essence to go into any act of dialogue with wide open eyes, with a full understanding of our own needs, as also of the needs of others in our nation. With this must be a set of ground rules of debate and discussion. Above all, there must be a very clear knowledge of the nature of the other wide, be it a religious sect, or a political entity. And, of course, everyone should be using the same lexicon, dictionaries and data, so there is no scope of misunderstanding.

The Church, right from the first general election, has encouraged the laity, and everyone else, to be a sentient elector and to participate in the election process fully. Barring hiccups as happen occasionally in Kerala, the Church leadership also encourages the laity to join the party of their choice. The only stricture, perhaps, is not to be a member of a group that is going into election on a patently bigoted, narrow, or violent agenda.

At its highest level, the Churches -- and that includes every denomination and Rite of Catholic and Protestant Churches -- have not had formal dialogues with national political parties.

There are informal contacts. The formal sessions, more photo opportunity than anything else, are when Bishops call on the President or the Prime Minister, to invite  them to address a meeting, or as in recent years, to persuade them to invite the Pope to India, a visit which has not happened in twenty years and the tenure of two Popes who took office after John Paul II. 

Fortunately, this effort has paid off. Prime minister Narendra Modi, at his request, called on the Holy Father in the Vatican during his last European tour, and invited Pope Francis to India. The visit is yet to materialise, but will happen sooner or later, we hope.

[As an aside, the Francis-Modi meeting has also led to a meeting with the Pope by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He is seeking western investment, blocked since the Kandhamal carnage against Christians in 2007-08 during his coalition government with the BJP. Perhaps he hopes this will cleanse the state’s record and persuade western investments to come to the state once again.]

Coming back to dialogue and lexicons, alas, when the RSS says nationalism, it means a very militant and majoritarian nationalism. The RSS is not a religious body, and it is not a political party. It is a multi-headed and aggressive organisation whose political face, the Bhartiya Janata Party, has been ruling India since 2014 with Mr Modi as Prime Minister.

The RSS, which has persistently opposed all Papal visits to India, had accused Pope John Paul II, now a Saint of the Catholic church, of using New Delhi to launch Ecclesia in Asia. The RSS said this was a master plan for conversions of Hindus in India.

Also, the Church surely knows that the one thing the founding fathers of the RSS held even more vehemently than their supremacist Hindutva was their visceral hatred for followers of Christianity and Islam.

RSS documents are clear that people of these two communities have no place in Bharat, that is India. They would have to accept second class status if they want to live in this Bharat.

This is a sort of combination of apartheid and racism -- a marriage of the worst of the history of Saudi Arabia, Israel, USA, colonial Britain and South Africa. Mercifully Mahatma Gandhi, the legendary Subhash Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru, during the freedom struggle, ensured this would never happen. Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar wove these aspirations of the freedom struggle to build a new secular democratic republic.

Would the RSS want to have a dialogue on the damage such a doctrine of Hindu Rashtra, with no equity for Muslims and Christians, can do to India?