New Delhi, Mar 11: A prominent Christian body today alleged that the Gujarat government had been gathering statistics on Christians in the state at the behest of the Centre and demanded an unqualified apology from the Vajpayee government for conducting the ''dangerous and illegal'' surveys.
''The survey, first tried in 1999 and thwarted by the High Court, is patently a precursor to the so-called anti-conversion bill that the BJP has in recent election promised for both Gujarat and the Centre,'' All India Christian Council (AICC) secretary-general John Dayal said.
Dr Dayal said he was not surprised by the Gujarat government's belated admission that it had been collecting statistics on Christians in the state.
''In the BJP-RSS credo, it would have surprised us if the Narendra Modi government had dared to take action, now or in the past, without first clearing it with top BJP leaders in New Delhi and RSS supreme leader Kupahalli Sudarshan in Nagpur,'' he said in a statement.
The Christian leader said the survey was illegal because other than the national census held under Central rules, no one else had the right to ask intimate questions on faith. Even in the decennial national census, no one had the right to ask when one became a Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, theist or atheist, he held.
''These surveys are also dangerous because they equip and arms goons of the RSS and other communal elements with ready-made hit lists of the nature made famous by Nazi cadres of Hitler in Germany in the 20th century,'' he said.
Alleging that there were sinister motives behind the survey, Dr Dayal said it would require all Christians to furnish details like names, Christian institutes in every village, number of people converted in a village in a particular year and details about both born and converted Christians in the village.
Most intriguingly, the survey seeks reasons behind conversions in each and every district,'' he said.
Dr Dayal sought an explanation from the Central government with regard to sudden spurt in violence against the Christians throughout the country.
''A small church was demolished at Panviali village, 30 km from Kanyakumari, in Tamil Nadu...In Karnataka, the Padre Pio chapel in Devgere on Kankapura road, Bangalore, was vandalised on March 9,'' he said.
He said the AICC had already moved the court, as it had in 1999, against the survey. ''in fact, we feel that this is a fit case for the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice, apart from the NHRC doing what they can to end this hounding of an entire community,'' the statement said.
Bureau Report