
MP K Radhakrishnan lashes out at Adoor Gopalakrishnan
2
Thrissur: CPM leader and Alathur MP K Radhakrishnan has lashed out at director
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
for his controversial remarks. Knowingly or unknowingly, his words have come in handy for those trying to take Kerala society back to the feudal periods, Radhakrishnan said.
Gopalakrishnan has also attacked the workers alleging that they watch films with obscene scenes. He should have actually condemned those who are making such films, saying that those films are a reflection of the decadence that has set in the cinema field, Radhakrishnan said. Anyone familiar with the dynamics of the
film industry
will be aware that only people from the upper socio-economic strata can get an easy entry into the field.
The participation of women, Dalits and tribal people are very limited in the film field. Anyone should have been hailing the initiatives to support the people from the marginalised sections like Dalits and women to come up in the film field, he said.
Such instances of prominent personalities, who are generally considered as progressive, speaking out their inner feudal ideals are not isolated events in the history of Kerala. For instance, Swadeshabhimani Ramakrishna Pillai, who had actually introduced Karl Marx to the Malayali readers, had once said that admitting students from the upper strata and downtrodden, would be like 'tying a bullock and horse on the same yoke'.
He was suggesting that students from the marginalised sections would not be able to reach up to the levels of their counterparts from upper strata, Radhakrishnan said.

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NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
Odisha Government Bans Use Of 'Harijan' Word In All Official Communications
Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has asked all its departments, public and educational institutes and others to stop using the term 'harijan' in communications, officials said on Wednesday. The government suggested the authorities concerned that words like 'scheduled caste' in English and 'anusuchita jati' in Odia or other national languages should be used to "denote persons belonging to scheduled castes as notified under Article 341 of the Constitution", according to a letter issued on August 12 by the commissioner-cum-secretary of the ST and SC Development, Minorities and Backward Class Welfare Department. The letter was sent to all the additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, and commissioner-cum-secretaries, the officials said. "They have been instructed to ensure that the word 'harijan' does not appear in any official communications, records, transactions, caste certificates, publications, departmental names, or any other form of use," one of the officials said. The authorities concerned are also directed to educate their staff and update existing documents and records accordingly, he said. They are also told to submit a compliance report on the action taken on the matter, another official said. The state government's action came in the wake of the guidelines issued by the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC), prohibiting the use of the word 'harijan'. These guidelines will be strictly enforced in all government offices, the official said. In 1982, the Centre had asked all state governments not to use the term 'harijan' to refer to Dalits. Following fresh guidelines prepared by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, a similar order was also issued in 2013 to all the states, directing them to ensure non-use of the 'harijan' word not only in caste certificates but also in official communications, the officials said. The Odisha Assembly has also prohibited the use of the word 'harijan', they said.


The Print
2 hours ago
- The Print
Kerala BJP losing favour with Church. Sangh not on board with Christian outreach
Anoop Antony, the newly-minted general secretary of the BJP – hitherto unknown to most of Kerala – butting in to make the most of the occasion, brought a touch of comic relief to the sombre proceedings. The whole fiasco, however, cast a huge shadow on the saffron party's Christian outreach in Kerala. BJP's Kerala leaders, as well as the Congress and the Left politicians, vied with each other to make it to the frame of the live visuals aired to the living rooms of their home state. It may have been straight out of the climax scene of a Priyadarshan comedy, where typically all characters converge in a chaotic sequence. The event was anything but comical, though: Two Malayali nuns who were lodged for nine days in a Durg prison on trumped-up charges of human trafficking by the Bhartiya Janata Party-led Chhattisharh government were getting freed on bail. On 25 July, the two Kerala nuns – Preethi Mary and Vandana Francis – of the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate congregation were arrested by the Government Railway Police in Chhattisgarh. They were accused of forcibly converting three girls they were accompanying, when Bajrang Dal workers led by Jyoti Sharma pressured the state officials to apprehend them. The FIR added a trafficking angle when it emerged that the girls were adherents of Christianity from a young age, albeit of the Protestant kind. How the case played out Naturally, there was a huge uproar over the development in Kerala, not least because of the BJP's attempts to make political inroads into the community lately. The Congress and the Left were quick off the blocks and dispatched political delegations to Chhattisgarh even as parliamentarians from Kerala protested with placards in front of the Sansad Bhavan in Delhi. Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar also leapt to the defense of the nuns. He sent Anoop Antony as his emissary to touch base with the Chhattisgarh administration. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, however, had already passed his judgment on the matter on social media, accusing the nuns of proselytisation and trafficking, leaving the Kerala unit in an awkward position. In the meantime, a Sessions Court in Durg refused to hear the matter and disposed of it, citing lack of jurisdiction – referring to the 2019 amendment that placed human trafficking cases under the National Investigation Agency (NIA). This sent a chill down the spines of the nuns' relatives and created a sense of panic among the community in Kerala. Chandrasekhar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi to apprise them of the damage wrought by the Chhattisgarh government's action on the BJP's Christian outreach in Kerala. The prosecution finally relented after the political intervention from the Centre by letting the nuns walk out on bail after spending nine days behind bars. The court did not go into the merits of the case, and the charges – that can fetch up to ten years in jail – remain far from quashed. Blowback in Kerala In Kerala, Christians of all denominations took to the streets as dioceses mobilised laity across the cities and census towns. They gagged themselves with pieces of cloth and carried placards protesting the persecution of the nuns. Some marches were led by Archbishop Joseph Pamplany, who famously promised to help the BJP open its account in Kerala if rubber prices were jacked up to Rs 300; Pala Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt, who coined the infamous 'Narcotic Jihad' phrase; and Thrissur Archbishop Andrews Thazhath – all considered sympathetic to the BJP cause. In one instance, Archbishop Pamplany's speech at Angamaly, where he spoke polemically, harked back to the days of the 'Vimochana Samaram'—the church-led Liberation Struggle that dislodged the EMS Namboodiripad-led Communist government of Kerala in 1959. This set off alarm bells for Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who has been engaged in building bridges with the Church since becoming the state BJP president. Factionalism rears head in BJP However, Chandrasekhar not only found himself caught between the hardline position adopted by the Chhattisgarh BJP—represented by the likes of CM Sai and Bastar MP Mahesh Kashyap—he was also facing rebellion from within the Kerala unit for summarily issuing a clean chit to the nuns. No sooner had he issued a statement on social media, senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue K Govindan Kutty publicly commented below his post, counseling him to stick to the party affairs in the state and let the law take its course in Chhattisgarh. On cue, the Kerala BJP bloc led by V Muraleedharan and K Surendran aligned themselves with the RSS position, getting back at Chandrasekhar for cutting their faction to size while naming office bearers. This stance was also echoed by the likes of other Sangh Parivar organisations such as the Hindu Aikya Vedi in Kerala. K Surendran's Facebook post, and leaders of his faction venting their frustration at Chandrasekhar for dispatching Anoop Antony without internal consultation, was threatening to eclipse the delicate 'cake diplomacy'. The issue also exposed a bunch of online media portals allegedly linked to the BJP. While such 'yellow portals' generally thrived by channeling hatred against the Muslim community on the back of issues like Munambam, their true colours stood exposed when they started echoing the Sangh Parivar narrative on the nuns' issue. The BJP-affiliated Christian Association and Alliance for Social Action (CASA) also went on an overdrive for damage control. Christian vote trade-off The RSS position on the issue is hardly surprising, as the organisation has a deep-seated suspicion of the missionary work of the Church. Supremo Mohan Bhagwat cast aspersions on the motives of even Mother Teresa's service years ago. Vishnu Deo Sai is a product of the Loyola School in Jashpur, but being an RSS adherent, he cannot see missionary work through any other spectrum. A veteran leader aligned to the K Surendran faction told me how the BJP cannot afford to lose its core Hindutva vote bank by appearing to appease the Christian community. This development proved an unexpected windfall for the Congress, reeling under the proposition of a slice of its Christian base shifting to the BJP. The issue might also help the Left to prevent some of its 'Hindu vote' transferring to the saffron party on an incremental basis, as 'Christian appeasement' charges have been levelled against the Rajeev Chandrasekhar-led BJP. The split down the middle within the Kerala BJP unit, not to speak of the RSS position, has exposed the Right-wing tactic of targeting Christians in Chhattisgarh to foment Hindu consolidation, while pitting the same community against Muslims in Kerala. The Chhattisgarh police, failing to act against the Bajrang Dal on a case filed by the girls – initially suspected to be victims of trafficking – demonstrated how the Hindutva outfits enjoyed state patronage. Also read: Nilambur isn't Kerala. UDF must look beyond Muslim votes to win 2026 polls Prelates in the dock Another case of a Bajrang Dal gang attacking a couple of Malayali priests and nuns emerged from Odisha soon after—further enraging Kerala's Christian community. in the state. This, following the aftermath of the Chhattisgarh imbroglio, snowballed into an impromptu social media backlash against the Syro-Malabar Church prelates. When Archbishops Andrews Thazhath and Pamplany thanked the BJP for interceding in the release of the nuns, they had to field tough questions on who put the nuns behind bars in the first place. The Syrian Christian Church leaders in Kerala have long held a casteist attitude of supremacy on account of their legacy being traced back to the Common Era. The conspicuous silence or acquiescence on Manipur, as well as in Father Stan Swamy's case, bears heavily on the conscience of the Syro-Malabar Church leadership. They willingly played ball with the BJP on account of their common distrust of the Muslim community. The criticism on social media is mostly targeted at Archbishop Thazhath—whom Kerala's Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan called a 'slippery person' for his role in facilitating Suresh Gopi's win—and Archbishop Pamplany. It was noticeable how bishops outside the Syro-Malabar fold reacted. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis of the Malankara Catholic Church and Baselios Marthoma Mathews III of the Syrian Orthodox Church talked tough against the BJP. They said the party was running with the hares in Kerala and hunting with the hounds in Chhattisgarh. Case of missing MP The BJP representatives in the Union Cabinet from Kerala, George Kurian and Thrissur MP Suresh Gopi, found themselves caught in the crossfire. While there was widespread criticism against Kurian's lack of empathy and running away from the press, citing poor comprehension of Hindi, Suresh Gopi went missing ever since the nuns' arrest until after their release. This was particularly flabbergasting for the Christian community in Thrissur – mostly comprising the mercantile class – who shifted their voting preferences in favour of the actor in 2024. The transactional nature of that support might come back to bite the actor if he were to seek re-election in 2029. Suresh Gopi's vanishing act prompted Bishop Yuhanon Meletius, of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in Thrissur, to quip that perhaps he should file a police complaint to establish the whereabouts of the actor. The state BJP will have to go back to the drawing board on its Christian outreach template and find unity within the party and the Sangh ecosystem before it can aspire to become a larger player in Kerala. Anand Kochukudy is a Kerala-based journalist and columnist. He tweets @AnandKochukudy. Views are personal. (Edited by Ratan Priya)


Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Odisha bans use of ‘harijan' in official records: Govt tells depts to use ‘scheduled caste' or ‘anusuchita jati' instead; move follows OHRC directive
BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government has directed all its departments, public and educational institutions, and other organizations to stop using the term 'harijan' in their communications, officials said on Wednesday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The government suggested the authorities concerned that words like 'scheduled caste' in English and 'anusuchita jati' in Odia or other national languages should be used to "denote persons belonging to scheduled castes as notified under Article 341 of the Constitution", according to a letter issued on August 12 by the commissioner-cum-secretary of the ST and SC Development, Minorities and Backward Class Welfare Department. Officials said the letter was sent to all additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, and commissioner-cum-secretaries. "They have been instructed to ensure that the word 'harijan' does not appear in any official communications, records, transactions, caste certificates, publications, departmental names, or any other form of use," one of the officials said. Authorities have been directed to educate their staff and update existing documents and records accordingly, an official said. They have also been asked to submit a compliance report detailing the actions taken. The state government's move follows guidelines issued by the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) prohibiting the use of the term 'harijan'. These guidelines will be strictly enforced across all government offices, the official added. The term 'harijan' has long been discouraged: in 1982, the Centre instructed all states not to use it to refer to Dalits. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Following fresh guidelines from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, a similar order was issued in 2013, directing states to avoid the word in caste certificates and official communications. The Odisha Assembly has also prohibited its use, officials noted. (With inputs from agencies)