Being a member of the minority community, my fear of BJP coming back to power again is increased. According to the latest information gathered from here and there and of course from unofficial BJP source but from the supporters of the BJP, there may be harassment for the minorities in India in general and in Goa in particular. Up to now neither clearly nor loudly and not openly BJP has officially denied those rumours. But one thing is certain that writers like me will be harassed and minorities and their previlleges will be curtailed, they will be treated worse than what they are treated in Theocratic country like Pakistan. Under the worst communal leadership of Narendra Modi India was burnt escalating worst killing in Gujarat when Modi was its Chief Minister. These worst killings were perpetrated on Muslims for which Modi was held responsible and because of this, America banned Modi's entry in USA.
When there was any injustice against the minorities in Goa for example against Christians, there was no open opposition from any of our Christian MLA’s from the BJP rank. Our Christian MLA's and Montris were cowards and shellfish. When attempts were made to cancel the Good Friday and 3rd December holidays, the so powerful Mathanay Saldanha remained as a silent spectator; when according to one source, Francis D’Souza was made to say something in favour of Hinduism, he totally jumped into Hinduism even by taking his Christianity along by calling himself like a “Pochpochit” a “Hindu Christao”; to please his Hindu leaders Mawvin Godinho even went a step further and wearing a “Puddvem” performed Hindu Pooja. A man without character, a big BLACK MARK on Catholicism.
If inspite of having such powerful persons from the minority Christian community in the BJP rank and even holding important portfolios and yet not raising their voices against the injustice done by their party and government to the interest of Christians, then who will support and protect our interest?
Again elections are coming shortly and before the BJP contestants coming to our feet for begging for our Christian votes, can they assure us that no harm will be done in any way to the interest of Christians? And by the way, how they will assure us and how we to believe them? Is there anything left in our contestants to show us that they are reliable?
Now what will be the role of our religious Gurus to guide us to vote correctly and not on communal lines and not to bad candidates? What are the lessons from the Islamic and Hindu Religious leaders for the Muslim and Hindu voters? Are they not responsible to tell their own religious people to be upright as far as their oting rights are concerned? They are religious duty bound to keep their respective religious people calm and cool during the election. Voting right it is said as “Sacred” and as such we must accept the voting duty by casting our vote.
The Christian Church leaders especially the Catholics are fully geared up to educate the voters as best as they can, they preach from the holy Altar the details of voting except they don’t tell directly the name of the candidates openly. But I feel, the Church leaders more or less are aware what is the quality of the contestant and as such they must also name the candidates to vote.
All the three major religious leaders must, if possible, have a meeting with them and they must come out with certain points that will give them clear lesson to explain it to all their voters. Up to now our minority community is having good resemblance of theirs that they will not do any rubbish to win the elections. But they are very cheap and gullible easily attracted to the money.
A.Veronica Fernandes.