Politics
Did Elections For Mayoral Post In Chennai Make A Mockery Of Social Justice?
- If the new mayor of Chennai is indeed a convert to Christianity, and hence not a member of the SC community, then this is a direct challenge to social justice and Indian Constitution.
New mayor of Chennai (Twitter)
The DMK Government announced that in Priya Rajan (28), Chennai was getting 'a Dalit' as the Mayor of the city for the first time.
However, this claim had been proved wrong as the first Mayor of Madras (Chennai) from the Scheduled Community was Sri. Namasivayam Sivaraj.
But now, even that claims seems to be wrong.
Today, two separate news agencies brought out the revelation that the much highlighted 'Dalit' woman mayor may not be actually Dalit.
According to the Indian Constitution, those from the Scheduled Community who get converted to Christianity are no longer considered as belonging to the 'Scheduled Community.' They lose the benefits of affirmative action. Those of the Scheduled Community, who, despite the social disadvantage, owe their allegiance to Hindu Dharma alone are entitled to the benefits of affirmative action.
This is justifiable because the crime of untouchability is a disease that ails Hindu society.
On the other hand, the propaganda around conversions has always been that Christianity was a religion which was free of such social evils.
But what has happened in the case of Priya Rajan seems to be an explicit violation and not a case of someone claiming to be a Hindu on paper but being a practising Christian in real life.
The truth seemed to have surfaced when the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN), a news agency for Catholics, published a report with the headline 'Dalit Christian woman is the youngest mayor of India's Chennai city.' It claimed that Priya was a Christian and a member of the Evangelical Church of India (ECI).
Incidentally, ECI is the Church whose most prominent face in Tamil Nadu is Ezra Sargunam - a Bishop who is very close to the ruling DMK. ECI has a goal of establishing 10,00,000 churches by 2056. Ezra Sargunam is the same Bishop who had became notorious for his statement that 'Hindus should be punched in the face'.
He had used the term 'denationalise' with respect to conversion to Christianity. So according the benefits of affirmative action to the Scheduled Community is also the recognition of their commitment to the culture and spiritual traditions of this land while fighting against the sin of social stagnation and evils of inhuman practices like untouchability.
