My dear
brothers and sisters of Singapore and humanity in
general,
We
request your urgent attention!
Madana
Mohan Das (a full-time Hindu Priest, IC No.: S9029832A, serving his
compulsory National Service as a Private at Jurong Camp 1), is a
Hindu Brahmin priest and as a priest, he has to follow strict
dietary principles of our faith by not eating meat, fish, eggs,
onion, garlic and mushrooms. We are not allowed any intoxication
including coffee and tea. Our priests only eat food cooked as
prayer offerings, technically called Prasadam.
When he
was enlisted into Basic Military Training (BMT), he was allowed to
have his food brought in from the temple. Upon completion of his
BMT, he was posted as a driver. The commanding officer then made a
request for him to be posted as a clerk so that he could be allowed
to have his food brought from the temple and perform his national
service without compromising his faith.
However
we were told that this request was rejected and he has been
disallowed to have his meals to be brought to him from the temple.
We have sent a letter dated 15 May 2009 to Mindef about this
situation but they flatly denied providing any assistance. He is
allowed to book out of the camp every Tuesday and Thursday evening
and the weekends. Only then has he the chance to eat a proper meal
at the temple whereas the rest of the days, he is sustaining on dry
ration brought from the temple on Tuesdays and
Thursdays.
In the
meantime, his superiors forced him to eat the food at his camp and
have asked him to cut off his Sikha, the tuft of hair kept by Hindu
priests. They charged him twice; once for food and once for the
sikha. He chose to go for court marshal. He was told that the trial
would be in two weeks%u2019 time. While he was waiting for his
trial, they suddenly charged him again for the same
%u201Coffence%u201D and took him on the 20th of July, 2009, to the
Detention Barracks (DB), the army jail for an indefinite period of
rigorous punishment. But Madana Mohan Das is going on a hunger
strike until death, inside the jail as he would not eat anything
except Krishna Prasadam (sanctified food), being a full-time temple
priest all his life.
Is this
justice? In the national service, the Muslims are given provision
to have Halal food. The Sikhs are allowed to keep their long hair
covered with a turban. Why then can't a Hindu priest be given
facility to practice his religion peacefully? Is it because we are
a minority that we can be played around with? Is this what our
country's much-advertised multi-racial and multi-religious harmony
stands for? We don't think so. But we are confused by this
incident.
The
victim is not against serving his national service, nor are we. We
would like to emphasize that we fully support Madana Mohan Das
serving his national service. But we are very much disturbed by the
insensitivity shown by his superiors towards his religious
faith.
Fervent
appeals to different ministers of influential disposition were to
no avail. So we are appealing to you people for support in a bid to
uphold justice and basic human rights.
Therefore, we are here on a campaign to let everybody know
about the injustice and religious intolerance shown to an 18-year
old Hindu priest. We think that the citizens of Singapore in
general, regardless of race, religion, caste, creed and color,
agree that everyone has the right to practice his/her religion
freely. We humbly request you to spread this word around for the
sake of upholding justice. Please send this to as many people as
possible.
The petition can be
signed on the following website:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/help-save-madana-mohan-das
by the way! tio banned.
