God146;s Own Battle

About one-fifth of Keralites are Christian, but the financial and political clout of the community8217;s leading denominations has always been way beyond the numerical size of the community, and largely away from Left concerns. In comparison, close to 25 per cent of Keralites are Muslims. They can claim a collective memory of having fought with the early Communists in the state, peasant uprisings included. The Church, in contrast, has remained stridently anti-Communist.

Consider this official newsletter from 1960, of the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade CACC of the US: 8220;It8230; opposes the advance of Communism and promotes the Christian gospel8221; and goes on to explain why the outfit must continue financially supporting the owner of an influential Christian-owned newspaper in Kerala where an election was then due. The Communists were 8220;driving forward with relentless efforts to capture and control8221; and the paper was 8220;an outspoken voice against them8221;.

It was this anti-Communist plank that elevated a young A.K. Antony to political centrestage and got Nehru to sack the first-ever elected Communist government in 1957. The powerful Church backed or owned much of Kerala8217;s private schools and Joseph Mundassery, the first Communist education minister, tried bringing in more state control and more equitable access. The Church yoked itself to the Congress, Muslim League and a bunch of Hindu casteist outfits. Antony and others led their combined 8216;liberation struggle8217;, ensuring enough of a bloodbath to allow Nehru to invoke Article 356.

Such a history does not portend well for Left-Church relations. All the more after exposes of how the CIA had actually funded and directed the effort came out. This was later graphically detailed in declassified documents and biographies of former US ambassadors like Ellsworth Bunker, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and former CIA director, Allen Dulles.

Politically, the Church had consistently been right of the spectrum in Kerala. Except for a few less influential denominations and some rare aberrations, most Christians remained with the Congress-led UDF, ever since K. Karunakaran forged a Christian-Congress coalition in the state.

Interestingly, the Church still commands much of the business of education in Kerala, owning or backing almost three-fourths of the private professional self-financing colleges that Antony, as CM, allowed and even encouraged earlier in this decade.

Reining in the business of private education figured high on the Left8217;s priorities in its election manifesto last time. It went on to sweep the polls. One of the first things the V.S. Achuthanandan government did last year was to trot out a half-cooked regulation, which the courts took no time in shooting down. The comrades hit back with physical attacks and by ransacking some church-supported colleges. It combined these strongarm tactics with assurances of talks. The Church responded by rallying its flock and reading out pastoral denunciations of its antagonists to congregations. This got the state CPM chief to demand that the bishops retract their statements. All said and done, the Left-Church divide was deeper than ever before and CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat had to personally intervene.

Notionally, at least, the relationship between the Church and the Left was less fraught even three years ago, when the Left was in the opposition.

But once the CPM came to power, things changed dramatically. Today, even the space for engagement has all but disappeared.