Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

LDF welcomes cardinal’s stand

— Photo: S. Mahinsha

Students strength: A rally taken out by Students Federation of India activists in the city on Thursday as part of the 29th State conference of the outfit.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Left Democratic Front (LDF) has welcomed the recent statement of Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil about managements of self-financing colleges taking money for admissions and for teacher appointments.

The LDF sees this as the stand of the Christian church and the community, CPI(M) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said here on Thursday.

He was inaugurating a public meeting held in connection with the 29th State conference of the Students Federation of India (SFI), here on Thursday.

The words of the cardinal show that neither the managements of self-financing colleges nor their representatives can be considered the representatives of the church or that of the Christian community.

Other Christian priests have spoken about a ‘liberation struggle’ thinking that the Communist government would be fearful of such a struggle.

Such people should understand that the EMS government was not dismissed because of any liberation struggle but because the Congress was then in a position to do so; the party was unstoppable then, Mr. Vijayan said. “The present government at the Centre cannot even dare to think of dismissing our government, let alone actually doing it,” Mr. Vijayan said.

When forces that wished to defeat the LDF government over the self-financing colleges act failed to motivate the people on that issue, the propaganda shifted to the ‘injection of atheism” in the school curriculum and the ‘dangers’ to education in madrassas due to the proposed changed in the school curriculum, he said.

The allegations relating to atheism were made by those who, the faithful believe, would not lie. When leaders of the Muslim community met the Education Minister and when he explained the government’s stand on these matters, the leaders publicly stated that they had been misled, Mr. Vijayan added.

The LDF government is committed to the protection of minority rights, he stated.

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