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Kerala
By Kumar Chellappan
Aggressive evangelisation and that too at an alarming rate is jolting Kerala state. Gospel and evangelisation teams are storming the length and breadth of the state on a war footing. A Christian Chief Minister whose hatred for the Hindus is quite ?well known? and a pliable administration make the operations easy for the proselytisers. The police force in the state is full of Christian officers who do not have any qualms in acting as preachers. One of the prominent lawyers in the state complained about Siby Mathew, a senior IPS officer, for whom all criminals are equal, but Christian criminals are more equal. This speaks volumes about the state of affairs in the state.
With Sonia Gandhi at the helm in New Delhi, various Church authorities are in an aggressive mood. They build up false cases against RSS activists. The incident at Olavanna where the Missionaries of Charity alleged that they were attacked by the Sangh Parivar came quite handy for the police to implicate innocent RSS activists. Central Travancore area in the state is experiencing proselytisation drive of an unprecedented nature. A Pentecostal leader by the name of K.P. Yohannan has unleashed a reign of terror on the poor Hindus in the area. The tsunami attack along the coastal districts of the state has come as a God-given opportunity for the likes of Yohannan.
Evangelisers are on the prowl all over the state. They identify houses where women are alone during daytime and approach them with Christian literature and other campaign materials.
Evangelisers are on the prowl all over the state. They identify houses where women are alone during daytime and approach them with Christian literature and other campaign materials. The shocking phenomenon is that they are targeting the general wards of the medical college hospitals and other government hospitals in the state. Pastors visit the poor patients and pray near their bed and brainwash them with promises. ?If you convert to Christianity, all your problems would come to an end. It is the Satan whom you worship as God and who creates all problems,? they tell these illiterate villagers.
The new-found bonhomie between the Church and the CPI(M) has come in handy for the evangelisers. The Kerala CPI(M) has two prominent Christian leaders in Thomas Issac and M.A. Baby. Though both of them are marxists, the Church considers them as their representatives in the party. Pinarayi Vijayan, the Kerala CPI(M) secretary, is at the mercy of these two devout Christians. That is the reason why Pinarayi sings paeans to the evangelisers. Pinarayi went to the extent of describing the nuns of the missionaries of charity as angels!
The CPI(M) which spares no chance to attack Mata Amritanadamayi and Shri Ravi Shankar kept a studied silence when Lonappan Nambadan, one of the party MPs, attended a conclave held by the Roman Catholic church. The CPI(M) leadership is in the process of building a flyover between AKG Centre ( the party headquarters at Thiruvananthapuram) and the Bishop Palaces across the state. Moves are afoot to project Baby as the future chief ministerial candidate.
