The convenient confederation of communities, formed in the face of proposed reforms in the education sector, is on the rocks.
Communities join hands to scuttle education reforms in Kerala
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The convenient confederation of communities, formed in the face of proposed reforms in the education sector, is on the rocks. Nair, Christian and Muslim groups, which run scores of educational institutions in the state, are at each other’s throats. The immediate provocation is a report submitted by a committee appointed by the state government to look into the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee report on Muslim backwardness.
As soon as the 11-member committee, headed by local governance minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty, submitted its report to the chief minister last week, Nair Service Society (NSS) opposed its recommendations. The committee had recommended the formation of a full-fledged department for the welfare of minorities. It also mooted reservation for Muslims in all government and government-aided institutions.
The mud slinging started with NSS general secretary PK Narayana Panicker, who said that the Sachar Committee recommendations would break down the social balance and communal harmony in Kerala. In retort, Muslim Education Society (MES) president PA Fazal Gafoor, a member of the Paloli committee, threatened to pull out of an agreement reached with the government on the muddled self-financing colleges’ issue if NSS continued to oppose the report.
But it was the remark of Gafoor that Panicker was speaking in the language of a local goon that provoked the BJP. “If MES does not correct its language, it will have to pay the price,” party state president PK Krishna Das said on Monday. He vowed that the party would protest against Sachar and Paloli reports. The NSS found itself isolated in the motley group of communities opposing the Left Democratic Front government’s move to regulate the self-financing professional colleges and reform primary and secondary education sectors, when the Catholic Church backed the Sachar report. “We don’t have any opposition to the Sachar Committee report,” Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil told reporters in Kochi.
“We may not approve of all the positions of NSS. But we would like to cooperate in areas of common interest, as in education,” Vithayathil, who was elected the president of the Catholic Bishops Council of India, said. Leaders of various Christian denominations had reached a pact with NSS in November to oppose the proposed reforms to the Kerala education rules. The 15-point recommendations of the Paloli committee report also moots establishing education institutions in Muslim-dominated areas.
s_don@dnaindia.net
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