Leaders of prominent Christian and Muslim social organisations in Kerala joined hands with their mostly Hindu backward class and Dalit counterparts on Tuesday to launch a political awareness campaign in March to protect secular values under the aegis of the government-supported Renaissance Protection Samathi (RPS).
The community leaders met under the stewardship of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The Nair Service Society (NSS), which has consistently opposed the entry of women between the age of 10 and 50 to the Sabarimala temple, was conspicuously absent from the assemblage.
The meeting decided to marshal people through public meetings to counter the right-wing drift that had manifested in Kerala society as a mustering of revanchist forces opposed to the decision of the Supreme Court to allow women of reproductive age to worship at the Sabarimala temple. They pledged to protect the secular unity Kerala had witnessed during the catastrophic floods in August last.
The community leaders who accepted the Chief Minister’s invitation included general secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam Vellappally Natesan, Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha leader Punnala Sreekumar, Gabriel Mar Gregorios, Metropolitan of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, A. Dharmaraj Salam, Bishop, Church of South India, Msgr. Eugene. H. Periera of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, Kadakkal Abdul Azeez Maulavi, president of the Kerala Muslim Jamaat Federation, and P.K. Abdul Gafoor, president of the Muslim Educational Society (MES).
The RPS will form committees in all districts by mid-February. The organisations will launch neighbourhood-level campaigns to muster their supporters to counter divisive propaganda ideologically.
The leaders reiterated that their coming together at the behest of the government was not an election-oriented move but to reaffirm constitutional values and unite the people. The campaign would remind the new generation of the sacrificial struggles of their ancestors to throw off the yoke of an enslaving feudal social order based on the concept of varna and caste supremacy and the need to protect the liberal values the forebears fought for.
