wfn.org | LWI - Indian Lutherans Confident of Anti-minorities Laws Repeal

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Indian Lutherans Confident of Anti-minorities Laws Repeal under New
Government
Elections a Tremendous Breakthrough, Says UELCI Executive Secretary

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia/GENEVA, 15 June 2004 (LWI) * Indian Lutherans 
welcome the change in government following the surprise outcome of the 
recent parliamentary elections, said Rev. Chandran Paul Martin, executive 
secretary of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India (UELCI).

Martin was confident that the repeal of all anti-minority laws would be a 
top priority for the incoming government. The senior church official spoke 
to Lutheran World Information (LWI) during the Asian Church Leadership 
Conference (ACLC), early June in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A change in government had generally been expected, but the defeat suffered 
by the former ruling Bharathya Janatha Party (BJP) took many by surprise, 
Martin said. The emergence of the Congress Party-led coalition follows five 
years of rule by a fundamentalist regime, he said, referring to the Hindu 
nationalist BJP. He called the election result a "tremendous breakthrough."

The UELCI executive secretary said action by the new government on 
anti-minority laws was certain, given the Congress Party's strong support 
for secularism. He considered the May 19 appointment of Dr Manmohan Singh 
as Indian Prime Minister as significant, not only because of his experience 
as a former finance minister, but also because, as a Sikh, he was a member 
of a religious minority in India.

The BJP's demise was also greeted with relief by ethnic Indian Lutherans in 
neighboring Malaysia. "With the rise of the BJP government in India, 
[extremist] Hinduism became very violent in Malaysia," recalled Bishop 
Julius Paul, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malaysia (ELCM). Pastors were 
threatened, and other church members lived in fear. "There was a sense of 
vengeance among Hinduism," Paul said in his formal word of welcome to the 
ACLC participants.

In the ELCM worship takes place in Tamil, a language spoken mainly in 
southeast India. Of Malaysia's 24 million population, around seven percent 
are ethnic Indians, mostly Hindus.
(323 words)

(By Amsterdam-based correspondent Andreas Havinga, reporting on the ACLC on 
behalf of LWI.)

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran 
tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund (Sweden), the LWF now has 136 member 
churches in 76 countries representing 62.3 million of the almost 66 million 
Lutherans worldwide. The LWF acts on behalf of its member churches in areas 
of common interest such as ecumenical and inter-faith relations, theology, 
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aspects of mission and development work. Its secretariat is located in 
Geneva, Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the LWF's information service. Unless 
specifically noted, material presented does not represent positions or 
opinions of the LWF or of its various units. Where the dateline of an 
article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be freely reproduced 
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