CHURCHES IN the southern Indian state of Kerala issued a joint pastoral letter this week protesting at new legislation by the Communist-led Kerala Government that would take away their right to run Christian colleges independently.
The new law - the Kerala Professional Colleges Act, passed last month - denies "minority" status to medical and engineering colleges run by the Churches. This status is the basis of their autonomy. The Indian constitution accords religious minorities special rights "to manage and administer" their institutions.
Since professional education was privatised in 2001, 70 engineering and nine medical colleges have been established in the self-financing sector in Kerala. These colleges have close to 10,000 seats for engineering and 800 seats in medical colleges. Of the medical colleges, five are Christian, of which three are Catholic, while the others are Muslim and Hindu. The Communists have ruled that if a particular educational sector makes up a large part of the total sector, as the Christian colleges do, then it must lose its rights to minority status. By this means the success of the Christian colleges has been turned against them.
Most significantly the colleges lose their rights over admissions policy. Formerly, 50 per cent of admissions were decided by the college and 50 per cent by the Government. The new law means that the Government determines all admissions.
"We are planning to educate the faithful at the parish level on the danger it [the new legislation] poses to the Christian community," auxiliary Bishop Andrews Thazhath of Trichur archdiocese told The Tablet this week.
Archbishop Joseph Powathil, the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council's education commission chairman, said the act went against the rights granted to the minority communities in the Constitution. Describing it as a move to "nationalise" minority-run institutions, he said it would be strongly opposed.
"This is a deliberate step to deny our fundamental right. It is like punishing us for taking the lead in professional education," said Bishop Thazhath, who is spokesperson for church leaders of a number of different Christian denominations.