Don’t malign Church in Kerala: Archbishop

THE Marxist Communist party-led Kerala government is at it again – taunting Christians in the State.

A fresh row has erupted over a series of educational CDs published by the State government, which according to Christians portrays the church in bad light.

A CD titled ‘The Wound’ distributed to serve as teaching aids in schools attempted to ‘malign’ the church, a section of the Christians in the state said.

In a statement, the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church urged the Kerala State Education Department to withdraw the CDs which were anti-Christian in character.

“The Church is concerned and pained, and strongly protests, the persecution of one religious community,” Catholicos Moran Mor Baselios Cleemis, head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, said.

“The controversial CDs can be seen only as a continuation of the insult meted out by the Department to the Church during the past two years”, Mar Cleemis added.

Meanwhile, the Director of Public Instructions has ordered a probe and also placed under suspension a teacher based in Kodakara in Thrissur for allegedly distributing the CD.

Education Minister M A Baby however was dismissive of the controversy.

On March 9, he said that the film was not meant as a study aid and that it had made its way mistakenly into a CD while downloading.

News reports said the church has opposed to all three CDs, ‘Murivu’, ‘Typewriter’ which is alleged to be offensive and “The Wound” which narrates the story of a boy who was struck by grief when a lamb gifted to him by a wounded man was run over by a car in which a person dressed like a bishop was traveling.

The CPI-M government has had a several run-ins with the church in Kerala in the recent past. In 2007, politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan and the Syro Malabar Church were involved in a war of words over a former legislator Mathai Chacko. Vijayan called Bishop Mar Paul Chitilapally ‘good for nothing’ and a ‘useless person’ after the latter claimed that Mathai Chacko, a committed Communist, took the last sacrament just before he died. When the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) took Vijayan to task over the ‘unparliamentary words’, he retracted his statement.

Last year, the KCBC and the Communist party-led government in Kerala were involved in a fracas over social science textbooks for 7th class students. The church alleged that the book instilled anti-religious feelings and atheistic attitudes in the minds of children and demanded its withdrawal. In the centre of the controversy then, Education Minister Baby refused to withdraw the textbook but offered a dialogue to discuss the ‘objectionable’ portions.