Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (NR)

Bangalore, Sep11: A function to inaugurate the Karnataka Christian Federation was organized here on Monday September 10.

After inaugurating the Federation, JD(S) state president Mirajuddin Patel informed the gathering that there was an urgent need to tackle the problems of the Christian community from a different perspective, particularly with reference to the socio-economic and political empowerment of the Christian minorities. 

Patel in the course of his address opined that he was in favor of the Christian minorities having an independent Minority Development Corporation and promised that he would take up the said matter with the JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda and chief minister H D Kumaraswamy. 

Patel lauded the efforts made by the Christian community  for the emanicpation of socially, financially backward classes of the society through their work pertaining to community service. In this regard he stated that the community was more interested in doing community service than dabbling in politics and business or in any other means of becoming economically strong. Hence it was mainly due to this reason that he preferred the Christian Community to get its own Development Corporation, Patel, declared.

Further he even promised the Christian community that he will do his best to get financial support for projects particularly benefiting women and child development, empowerment of poor and the rehabilitation of unemployed youth of the community from the State Minority Development Corporation at subsidized rates. 

Philomena Peres, leader of the women’s wing of JD(S) while speaking on the occasion informed that the Indian Christian community was still a tiny minority comprising only 2.5% of the country’s total population. Hence this statistics, clearly debunks the theory propagated by the fundamentalist groups that there was widespread conversion going on in the country. Moreover Peres informed that eversince independence, the population of the Christian community has more or less been stable and the talk on `conversion’ was merely a bogey raised by the fundamentalist forces having certain ulterior motives.

The president of the SC/ST and Minorities State Federation Hanumanthappa and president of the Karnataka Christian Federation Francis Jackson also participated in the function.