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By S. Chandrasekhar
Dr K.N. Panicker had the dubious distinction of becoming the Vice-Chancellor of the Sree Sankara Sanskrit University (established at the birthplace of Adi Sankara in Kalady) allegedly without knowing a word of Sanskrit, thanks to a CPM-Muslim League nexus. Shri Panicker is continuing as its Vice-Chancellor to preside over its extinction.
Not satisfied with his above work, Shri Panicker, who is also Chairman of the Kerala Council for Historic Research, has allegedly embarked upon a project to Christianise Kerala'sculture and history. Leading Christian families are made to write their family history wherein they all come to the conclusion that they were Namboodiris (Kerala Brahmin) who got converted to Christianity when St. Thomas came to Kerala in the first century.
Through this campaign, the visit of St. Thomas to Kerala (which does not stand scientific and historic evaluation) gets legitimised and then whatever remains of Hindu pride in his culture, tradition, religion, etc, gets diluted.
Many Hindu organisations including VHP, Hindu Unity Front and others have strongly attacked this Left-Christian nexus for imposing Christian hegemony on Kerala'scultural history. They have also opposed the move to trace the roots of ?Christian folklore? vis-?-vis Hindu folklore.
Bharatiya Vichara Kendram Director, P. Parameswaran, says that the intention behind all these moves is to establish that Christianity came to Kerala in the first century, Islam later and Hinduism in the seventh century with the advent of Adi Sankara. The crux of the exercise is to establish the fact that Christians were the original inhabitants of Kerala, which Shri Parames-waran considers a calculated and dangerous move.
