Holy war in God’s Own Country

Christians form over 21 per cent of Kerala’s population and the community’s political and economic clout transcends their numbers. The Kerala Church, unlike the other minority community of Muslims, has never shared objectives or staged parallel struggles with the Communists.

Things are reaching a head. More Church sections are announcing that there could be no more dual identities of a believer and a Communist, asking their flock to make a hard choice. The powerful Inter-Church Council of Kerala has suggested that all Christians send their children only to Christian-run schools henceforth, to help preserve “Christian values under attack”. Several Church groups have vowed not to allow government-appointed teachers to teach in Church-run schools (even in those in which the Government foots the salary bill) to avoid their wards being “injected with Communism and atheism”.

Denominations like the Syro Malabar Church have ordered their parishes to boot out Communists from all positions in Church bodies. Church heads like James Pazhayattil, bishop of the Irinjalakuda diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, have asked the laity to form vigilante squads to physically resist attacks on Church-run institutions. Pastoral letters asking believers to keep away from the Left are being read out week after week in scores of major churches across the state, many influential sections are circulating newsletters and house magazines exhorting the same. Like the Catholic Syrian Church dioceses of Thalassery, Thamarassery and Manantavady, whose eight-page tabloid newsletter, Malabar Vision, recently was devoted entirely to asking the laity to shun Communists completely.

Even the dead are being dragged in, like Marxist MLA Mathai Chacko. In a speech slamming Red “double-standards” on God and atheism, Paul Chittilappalli, the Bishop of Thiruvambadi, claimed Chacko had quietly sought and got the last sacrament on his deathbed. This got the state CPI(M) chief to publicly declare that the Bishop was a “wretched creature”, a liar, and probably drunk too. “A lie is a lie and no lie can become a holy lie, just because a bishop uttered it,” thundered Vijayan.

Ammunition comes from afar too. Vijayan has been asking Church leaders to learn from Pope John Paul II, who famously goes along with Fidel Castro, while the Inter Church Council’s head asked Christian Communists to get out from behind the “Communist iron curtain” and become “human rights volunteers, like Mikhail Gorbachev”.

“We have no intention of attacking the Church. But we do have a responsibility to respond when there is so much of misleading propaganda directed against communists,” maintains Vijayan.

Archbishop Mar Andrews Thazhathu, who issued a pastoral letter to churches under him advising a clear division between Christians and Communists, points out that the CPI(M) itself forbids its workers from doing anything that believers do once they hold party positions. But the Left party sources dismiss this. The party, they said, has instead given the go-ahead to Christian comrades wanting to fight for the right to be allowed into the Church. The Catholic Youth Forum, a body of Communist Christians, has been founded for this cause and is expected to have its units statewide soon.

One man who had foreseen this divide was the state CPI(M)’s tallest ideologue, the late EMS Nambuthiripad. He had always called for mutual acknowledgement and accommodation of the conflicting ideas. But nothing has worked to bridge the rift. Not even Prakash Karat’s closed-door session with the fuming bishops in Thiruvananthapuram a few months ago.