Thiruvananthapuram: It was on December 31 that culture minister Saji Cherian used a local party function at Punnapra in Alappuzha to publicly ridicule the Christian clergy for attending Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Christmas lunch on December 25. The minister's unrefined language blacked out his actual message, which was that the priests had failed to tell the Prime Minister on his face that he was wrong to turn his back on Manipur.

But the day after Cherian's Punnapra speech, on January 1, a virtual signature campaign using polite but sharp language began against the Christian clergy's participation at the PM's Christmas lunch. In two days, over 3,200 Christians across the country signed a statement that said that community leaders who met Modi at his residence for lunch did not represent them.

The virtual campaign, titled 'Not in our name', was started by Jesuit Fathers Cedric Prakash and Prakash Louis, and lay Catholic leader John Dayal on behalf of United Christian Forum.

Here, unlike in the case of Kerala's culture minister, the language used was the message.

The campaign letter said that the Prime Minister's invitation to the lunch was just the right opportunity "to courteously decline the invite in the light of what has been happening to the Christians in Manipur and elsewhere. Hence, their acceptance of this invite was not in our name." 

The Christian leaders who had attended the lunch had thanked Modi for his leadership. But the campaign letter said: "The hard truth is that Modi and his government have consistently disregarded their constitutional mandate, be it to the minorities, the Adivasis, the Dalits, the backward castes, the farmers, laborers, migrants, etc.  Hence, their gratitude to the Prime Minister was not in our name."

The campaign letter comes down hard on the enthusiastic approval of Modi's leadership by the top Christian clergy. "When these Christian representatives spoke at the reception, they were giving tacit approval to the omission and commission of this government. Hence, their words were not in our name," it said.

The signatories include Christian parliamentarians, legislators, retired bureaucrats and members of the Conference of Religious Indians.

The attendees at Modi's Christmas lunch included Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Latin Archbishop of Bombay; Anil Joseph Thomas Couto, the Archbishop of Delhi; Paul Swarup, the Bishop of Delhi Diocese; Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, Catholic Bishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of Faridabad; and  Thomas Mar Anthonios, the Bishop of the Eparchy of St John Chrysostom Gurgaon  of the Syro-Malankara Church.

Earlier, in September 2023, the UCF had brought out a statement that said that 525 incidents of violence against Christians were reported in 23 states in the first eight months of 2023. It said that violence against Christians had been increasing "sharply and steadily since 2014". Elaborating, the UCF statement laid down year-wise figures of atrocities against Christians: 147 in 2014, 177 in 2015, 208 in 2016, 240 in 2017, 292 in 2018, 328 in 2019, 279 in 2020, 505 in 2021 and 599 in 2022.

The UCF statement also said that besides the inhumanity of mob violence, 520 Christians have been arrested on "false allegations" of "forcible conversions".