John Dayal

John Dayal (born 2 October 1948) is an Indian human rights and political activist. He is a member of the National Integration Council (NIC) of India, Secretary-General of the All India Christian Council and a past president of the All India Catholic Union. He has been outspoken in opposition to communal polarisation, bigotry and the spread of hatred between religious communities.

Quotes about Dayal

• The report seems more like a work produced by fundamentalist Christian proselytizers than by an independent non-biased organization. Particularly troubling is that John Dayal, a notorious Christian demagogue who throughout the report is referred to as a “human rights activist” is extensively quoted and relied upon for information in the report. Dayal fabricated the story of the rape of nuns at Jhajjar[xv] and said in an online discussion with Rediff that there are no forced conversions in India despite numerous testimonies, police evidence, and above all the Niyogi Commission on Christian missionary activity by the Madhya Pradesh government in 1956. [xvi] Dayal blamed Hindu groups for the church bomb blasts a full month after the confessions by Deendar Anjuman.
  • Arvin Bahl, published in Gujarat after Godhra: real violence, selective outrage by Ramesh N. Rao, Koenraad Elst, 2003, Har Anand Publications. Republished in Politics By Other Means: An Analysis of Human Rights Watch Reports on India, 12 January 2004, South Asia Analysis Group

• John Dayal and his Catholic cohorts are the worst act I've ever seen... Christian activists ... aggressively seek to weaken Hindu society in terms of numbers as well as space.
  • Rediff.com columnist Varsha Bhosle wrote in 2002.[1] Varsha Bhosle (2 September 2002). "Towards Balkanisation, IV: Catholics". Rediff.com. Retrieved 5 March 2012.

• [Dayal] "opens his mouth and wields his pen only to spew venom on the Hindu community".
  • P.N Benjamin, coordinator of the Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue [2] .N. BENJAMIN (13 September 2005). "When Intolerance Begets the Loss of Reason". Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2012.

• These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh.
  • Elst, K. Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

• In each of these cases [of alleged Hindu violence against Christians], the original allegations against Hindus were splashed across the front pages in India and also reported in the world press, whereas the true story, once it came out, was reported on an inside page in India and not at all abroad. Even then, Christian spokesman John Dayal repeated the discredited allegations before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and they keep on reappearing in secularist sources. I am not aware of a single secularist who publicly withdrew the allegations and offered apologies for his slander to the maligned Hindus. Nor of one who has drawn attention to Christian violence against Hindus in the same period...
  • Koenraad Elst: The Struggle for India's Soul A reply to Mira KAMDAR by Dr. Koenraad ELST, in : The Problem with Secularism (2007) by K. Elst

• The misperception of Hindus as bullies and minorities as their victims in turn conditions a distortion of the information flow concerning new instances of communal violence. Thus, when a series of bombs damaged churches in Goa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh between 21 May and 9 July 2000, Christian and secularist fingers were immediately pointed at the RSS.... simply because everybody "knew" that the RSS is that big bad wolf... But then on 9 July, two of the real perpetrators made a technical mistake, killing themselves and exposing their identitites and the Pakistani origin of their equipment... If I hadn't been a reader of the Indian press for professional reasons, I would not have known that the whole bomb campaign had been the handiwork of a Muslim outfit. For, the Christian and secular press worldwide continued to refer to "Hindu bomb attacks on churches", obviously relaying the stories fed to them by Indian Church sources. A full two months later, Church spokesman John Dayal went before an American Congressional hearing... to reiterate the same old allegations of Hindu bomb attacks. The point here is not the dishonesty of Church spokesmen, but the fact that they correctly expected to get away with repeating their calumny against the RSS...
  • Elst, Koenraad (2001). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa. p. 508-511

• Everybody in political circles and in the media knows who these Christian leaders are. John Dayal, who heads three Christian organisations, is the main leader. He is the president and secretary of the All India Catholic Union, the All India Christian Council and the United Christians Forum for Human Rights. Every day, these organisations come out with press statements from every nook and corner of the country.
  • John Joseph, Head of the NCM and a leader of the Pentecost church in India Rediff, 2000