Storm over minority rights in Kerala

By John Cheeran
Kerala is witnessing some interesting and at the same time ridiculous political moves.
At the centre of the debate is higher education or rather the right to higher education.
A pampered voting community in a vibrant democracy is falsely given to understand and in turn demand that they should have higher education on a platter.
Education is business. Economists always point it out that in any human activity, for things to get done, an incentive is must. Some of the enterprising members of the Kerala -- please read it as Christian missionaries and other assorted Christian establishments -- have understood this economic principle. They realised long time ago that education is business andhigher education is higher business.
Higher the business, higher the profit. This has been an established truth elsewhere in the world and also partially in Kerala. Now the right to higher education and the right to run higher education are clashing against each other in Kerala.
To explain this situation, you have to be familiar with loftier terms such as secularism and minority rights. Now a bit of arithmetic. Christians, all denominations taken together constitute only 1.8 per cent of Indian population. Muslims account for 18 per cent. Except for the decimals, the rest are Hindus.
By this yardstick, Christians and Muslims are minorities and the Indian constitution has given these communities some rights. Minority educational institutions enjoy some assorted privileges in an India that is benighted with the casteist reservations.
All over India there are self-financing medical and engineering colleges. In Kerala, most of the self-financing medical, nursing and engineering colleges are run by Christian managements and they enjoy the so called minority rights.
Now these minority rights give the managements the freedom to run these institutions by the laws they frame. It boils down to the fact the management can determine the course fee structure of the institute. To restrain these managements Kerala's Marxists (read Ezhavas, the ) have come up with a new bill which says that though Christians are a minority in India, in Kerala they do not constitute a minority. Interesting argument indeed!
Marxists can afford to preach high principles since they have won the election and in any event when the next elections come after five years, they are bound to lose it. So Marxists can't care less how the Christian managements may retaliate to the Kerala government move.
The most organized among Kerala's Christians -- The Catholics, the imperial arm of Vatican -- have begun what they call as their fight for justice. The Catholic bishops have taken their sorrows to the door steps of Sonia Gandhi, a born Catholic and the power behind the UPA government at the Centre. Bishops are confident that Sonia will persuade Marxists, strangely, her political allies at the Centre from hurting the sentiments and profit book of the Christian management.
I'm a Christian from Kerala. I'm not a Catholic.
I belong to the Orthodox Syrian Church, India's independent church which owes no allegiance to Vatican and Pope. I have my differences with my priests and Church supremos on a variety of issues. But I'm glad that they have not joined hands with the Catholic mafia in Kerala.
When you think of Kerala's Christians please remember it is not just Catholics out there. There are other Christians as well.
The important point is that All Catholics are Christians but All Christians in Kerala and India are not Catholics. I don't want to delve into Christian factionalism here. That will be too tedious at this point.
My grouse against the Catholic bishops is that why did they supplicate in front of Sonia Gandhi? Why not take their grievance to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?
But then being the smart men they are, the Catholic bishops know where the realpower lies, at the feet of Mother India! (To put the record straight, bishops later met Manmohan Singh and claimed they got the assurance that there will not be any threat to their minority status.)
Instead of pleading with Sonia, the Catholic bishops eager to protect their minority tag should fight the battle at Supreme Court, ready to accept a honourable verdict on this issue.