Posted on 03/10/2022 6:21:32 PM PST by marshmallow
Politicians and social media users call it 'unnecessary,' 'crazy' and a 'bad idea'
A Catholic politician’s demand that the state government in Tamil Nadu keep liquor shops closed on Good Friday has triggered a backlash on social media.
Peter Alphonse, the chairperson of Tamil Nadu Minorities Commission, wrote to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on March 3 urging him to close all government liquor shops on April 15.
He said the liquor shops should be closed as a mark of respect and solidarity with the Christian community, which commemorates on Good Friday the passion and death of Jesus Christ with fasting and abstinence.
Alphonse made the letter public on social media on March 9, triggering an immediate backlash from netizens and politicians who described it variously as “unnecessary” and a “bad idea.”
Even the supporters of Indian National Congress, the party to which Alphonse belongs, slammed the idea as “crazy.”
Social media users called his demand for keeping liquor shops closed “arbitrary” and tantamount to “imposing unnecessary restrictions” on other communities who do not adhere to his religious beliefs.
However, Alphonse found support from Savukku Shankar, a prominent political critic.
Shankar, who has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter, told UCA News that “the minorities in this country are pushed to such a situation as they continue to lose faith in the state and look towards religion for safety.”
“This is a failure of the state. Unless they are reassured they will further go into a shell. I understand them, so I have no grievance against Mr. Alphonse’s letter,” he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at ucanews.com ...
“wrote to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on March 3”
Wait is there a Stalinist running an Indian province?
In matters of purely personal choice religions should lead by example and persuasion, not laws and force.
We must have laws against theft, violence, and oppression but not against freedom.
I’m a Catholic who fasts on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday - should I demand that restaurants and grocery stores close on those days?
That state is like 6% Christian and less Catholic.
No, that’s just his name. Tamil politicians have strange names.
And those aren’t provinces. Each of India’s states is a separate nation.
The difference between Tamil and Hindi dislike the difference between English and Japanese. Two completely different language families. And Tamil has a written history dating back 2700 years.
The different languages, they have 28 official federation level languages and most have their scripts.
இது தமிழ் tamil
यह हिंदी है hindi
They have 70% of their population speaking indo European languages like hindi, Marathi, gujarati, bengali, punjabi. Each of those has 100 million speakers or more.
25% speak Dravidian languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu (like the bosses of google or Microsoft).
2% speak Tibeto Burmese like Ladakhi or Khasi.
2% speak mon Khmer languages related to Cambodian, distantly.
0.5% speak language isolates like Andamanese. These are islands in the bay of bengal which were separated from the rest od the world for 30,000 years
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