Discord has erupted among the top clergy of the Catholic Church of Kerala over the way in which a section had supported the left’s agitations against the Central decision to implement certain proposals of the K Kasturirangan committee for the protection of the Western Ghats.
Three of the four Archdioceses of the Church in the State — Changanassery, Ernakulam and Thrissur — were not in favour of supporting the CPI (M)-led Opposition lDF’s shutdowns and other agitations against the Kasturirangan proposals, said sources. Only the Thalassery Archdiocese had pledged total support to the leftist struggle.
A strong section of bishops of the Catholic Church is of the opinion that some had shown undue haste in pledging support to the left even before holding detailed discussions. This group is of the opinion that the support aired to the leftist struggle had created an impression that the Church was turning against its traditional friends, the Congress and the UDF it leads.
Though the Catholic Church as a whole has been against the decision to implement the Kasturirangan proposals, there was no need to act as a B-Team of the left in the struggles, a section feels. The Church had extended support to the agitations sponsored by the left in the settler regions of Kozhikode district where violence had occurred during the stir.
The aggressive position taken by Idukki Bishop Mar Mathew Anikkuzhikkattil against Congress MP PT Thomas over the Kasturirangan report has also come under sharp criticism within the Church. Mar Anikkuzhikkattil had in the past several days unleashed an attack against Thomas saying that the Church would not support him if was made the Congress’s candidate again.
The action of Thamarassery Bishop Remegiose Inchananiyil of meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi along with Congress’s Wayanad MP MI Shanavas and giving a call to the believers to withdraw from the struggle against the Kasturirangan panel report has also come under criticism within the Church.
At the same time, a meeting of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) in Kochi on Tuesday tried put up a united face on the issue of the Kasturirangan committee’s proposals over which the settler regions of Kerala had been witnessing intense agitation in which Church was one of the main participants. It pledged support to the agitations against the Central move.
Meanwhile, the ‘Stay on the Streets’ agitation sponsored by the High Range Protection Committee, an outfit of settler farmers, in Idukki, the district with the largest number of settler farmers in the State, continued for the second day, Tuesday. The 48-hour struggle against the Kasturirangan committee report had started midnight Sunday.
As announced earlier, the agitators led by committee convener Fr Sebastian Kochupurakkal and others tried to lay siege to the power generation facilities in the district but the police, deployed in large numbers at all vulnerable places, blocked them before they could reach the facilities following which they sat on the roads to stage dharna.