KERALA IS ROTTING AT ITS CORE
Valson Thampu
--LAUNCHING MY MEMOIR TITLED "ON A STORMY COURSE: MY YEARS IN ST. STEPHEN'S" PUBLISHED BY HACHETTE INDIA.
WHY KERALA IS BARREN IN HUMAN TERMS...
[The text implies why I provide Monson Mavunkal's picture. He desrves to be at leat an archbishop, going by our present standards.]
Keralites remind me of what Dr. S. Radhakrishnan said about Christians, 'an ordinary people with extra-ordinary claims'. How very true, especially today.
Keralites live in 'God's own land' like subjects of the very Devil himself. God sits on their lips, but Satan rules their hearts.
Kerala is big with claims. It is God's own garden. It has great traditions. But what is the ground reality?
After spending 45 years in the North, I returned to Kerala in 2016. I thought there would be some spark of intellectual keenness in my beloved home state. A modicum of spiriutal interest in my community. I was to be sorely disappointed. And I have been thinking, Why?
Here's what I think on the matter.
Human beings have two categories of achievements. Achievements of the hand and achievements of the mind. Today Keralites value only the former. And that too in a peculiar sort of way.
Kerala has no work culture. Everyone wants to live life king size, but no one wants to work hard. Everyone wants job; but, ideally, without having to work. Yet, Malayalis are good workers. But they work to their capacity ONLY IF THEY are out of KERALA.
So, Keralites go to other countries, work hard, earn well and remit money home in ample measures. Their relatives in Kerala live in laziness and vanity. They spend lavishly and vaingloriously out of the hard-earned money of their relatives.
This has worked to the detriment of Keralites as a society. Not many want to work with the hand. Far fewer want to exercise their minds. Intellectual senility is the hallmark of Kerala. There are, admittedly, some palliative exceptions to this general rot.
What Kerala needs urgently is not a silver line train service, but mental line of intellectual keenness. You can't create a dynamic society with lazy and soporific people. Indulgent life-style, sans work cutlure, is a recipe for disaster.
Consdier the Orthdodox-Jacobite fisticuffs in public. What is it about? Is it not about gaining wealth, without having to work for it? It is amazing that covetousness of a gigantic kind is showcased as religious ferevour in the name of Jesus, who renounced worldly wealth entirely.
The Orthdox Church stands in prospect, if the Supreme Court verdict is implemented, of gaining property and institutions worth thousands of crores, without having to breakj sweat for it. Irresistible, no? Should it bother you that this involves your own brothers and sisters in faith? No! Not at all!!
Kerala is a very religious society. But what is this religiosity about? God? Or, wealth?
We turn to God only for material gains. Godmen and their female counterparts know this. So, they market their wares well and rake in mega crores.
I belive that Godmen are the afflictions that God sends on a covetous people. Their mission is to rob those who want to rob God himself.
The huge attactiveness of religion for us is that it promises to secure for us immense material blessings, WITHOUT OUR HAVING TO STIR A FINGER FOR IT. So, what is the outcome? The more religious we are, the less human and more hard-hearted we become.
The two curses that have killed Kerala over the last half century are: easy money from overseas and covetous religiosity. Both are the same. The Middle East has been our Promised Land for too long.
God is a poor victim in all this.
It is a terrible thing to be God these days!
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