India is not the Vatican

Vaishaka Shukla paksha 5, Kaliyug Varsh 5117

None of us are living on Pluto and neither does it take gargantuan genius on the part of the public to figure out that the worldwide Christian lobby has launched an all-out attack against Narendra Modi trying to strike at him from multiple fronts.

The latest arrow from the Christian quiver is a serving Supreme Court judge, His Honour Sri Kurian Joseph who told The Hindu that “secularism is being tinkered with” because the Supreme Court Chief Justice called for the Chief Justices’ Conference on Good Friday. Using that as an excuse, he skipped attending the Easter dinner called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Which actually serves Narendra Modi right for pandering to the exclusivist demands of a sly minority intent on converting Hindus by force or fraud or both. Hope Narendra Modi or his advisers keep Winston Churchill’s advice about appeasement and crocodiles in mind all the time.

That out of the way, we must indeed be indebted to His Honour Sri Kurian Joseph because he has been open and honest about his definition of secularism on record. Here is the full text of His Honour’s anguish:

“This is my pain, anguish and concern about the way secularism is being tinkered with. Secularism practised in India is unique in the world. A constitutional institution like the judiciary, expected to protect secular ethos, cannot even remotely give any message otherwise,” Justice Joseph told The Hindu on the phone [Emphasis added]

We shall return to this in a bit.

One wonders what motivated His Honour Justice Kurian Joseph to take it upon himself to write those letters to the Chief Justice of India and to the Prime Minister protesting the conference of Chief Justices that was held last Friday—protesting because it was held on a day sacred only to the Christians. Which begs three questions: first, did he write those letters in his capacity as a Supreme Court Judge or did he write those letters as a Christian? Second, did he write those letters as a Christian Judge and not as a judge who has sworn to uphold and protect the Indian Constitution? Third, what motivated His Honour Justice Kurian to share those letters with the Indian media?

In the interest of truth, honesty, and open public debate on this important issue that concerns public interest, His Honour Justice Kurian’s actions can be condemned on several counts.

His Honour Kurian Joseph claims that attending the Chief Justices conference on Good Friday will violate his religious beliefs as a Christian. To put it bluntly, this is utter nonsense.

The secular United States of America does not observe Good Friday as a Federal Holiday. Americans work on that day. The private sector is open. The Government is open. Government schools are open. Important business and other meetings are held. If Christians want to take personal leave on that day, they are welcome to do so. But most do not. This only shows that there is no religious injunction not to work on Good Friday.

More fundamentally, a public holiday is exactly what it says: it is meant for the general public. Leaders of Government and the captains of industry continue to work on public holidays. The general staff have the day off but leaders often continue to work, meet and discuss deals. It is business as usual.

And now we get to the significant part of the whole saga: it was wholly inappropriate for a serving Justice to release his official correspondence to the media. By thus doing, he was engaging in a public and a political debate that contravenes the principles of judicial propriety and protocol and he should be condemned for that. In other Asian/Middle Eastern countries, he would have been impeached.

If we turn the clock back, we learn that similar Chief Justices conferences were held on Valmiki Day in 2007 and on Independence Day in 2009, both under the Sonia regime, a fact that Chief Justice of India, Dattu himself mentioned. There was no murmur of protest then either by Justice Kurian or anybody else in the judicial and legal fraternity.

Now we must return to His Honour Justice Kurian Joseph’s anguish about secularism being tinkered with. With due respect to his anguish and his standing as a Supreme Court Justice, we must also beg His Honour for some full disclosure. This Indian Express report is illuminating on that front:

A member of the Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Roman Catholic Church, Justice Joseph is a regular at church functions, mainly as a representative of the Catholic laity.

In 2012, he was one of the resource persons for an annual conference of the Canon Law Society of India. Its office-bears and members are generally bishops and priests —canon law is the system of laws legal principles enforced by the Pope.

Last year, when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India held a conference on church and media, Justice Joseph was one of the speakers.

On May 27, 2012, when the Faridabad archbishop was consecrated, Justice Joseph, then Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh, did the first reading during mass. While serving as a high court judge, Justice Joseph preached Bible on Christian TV channel Shalom TV. Then, he would religiously read a passage from the Bible and interpret the verses. This weekly programme was held every Saturday evening. [Emphasis added]

In other words, it is incredible to believe that the irony of a sitting Supreme Court Justice being a resource person in a conference on a Papal legal system was not lost on His Honour Justice Kurian Joseph.

That such canon law conferences are held in a large, non-Christian country like India exposes yet another facet of the sinister modus operandi of the global Christian machinery: of infiltrating important Governmental and judicial institutions to push for legislations and garner Governmental influence in favour of Christianity. This exact same modus operandi was used with great aplomb and success in South Korea, a Buddhist country just fifty years ago but is now a Christian majority nation.

Therefore, our humble prayer to His Honour Justice Kurian Joseph is that he abides by that most Holy Book he took oath upon when he became a Justice: the Indian Constitution. As he says, the Indian Constitution is definitely secular but that secularism does not inform the Indian people including Justices and the Prime Minister and the President that important conferences, meetings etc should not be held hostage to religious festivals or the personal religious allegiance of one person howsoever important his/her position might be. Equally, our prayer to His Honour Justice Kurian Joseph is also the fact that the same Indian Constitution is not beholden to or contains papal judicial principles. India is not the Vatican.

Lastly, Christians constitute just 2.34 per cent of India, according to the 2001 census but much, much higher today given the Evangelism explosion under Catholic Sonia Gandhi’s decade-long regime. Therefore, even if we agree to the 2.34 per cent figure, it makes sense to not declare Good Friday as a public holiday. It has no relevance to 97.66 per cent of India’s population.

Source: India Facts