Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the image of infant Jesus lying among a pile of debris in Bethlehem underscored the need for humanism to prevail over ethnic and religious hate that seemed to swamp the world.
Inaugurating the 91st Sivagiri pilgrimage at Varkala, Mr. Vijayan said that the traditional creche (set up in a Lutheran Church in the West Bank) indicated a world in deep mourning over Israel’s attempt to wipe neighbouring Palestine off the world map.
“Ethnic hatred and not politics is the prime source of genocidal violence. Sometimes, we muse that the world could have avoided such hate-spurred blood baths had the egalitarian message of social reformers and Renaissance leaders like Sree Narayana Guru knocked on the shores of such far-flung religions”, Mr. Vijayan said.
He also reminisced in glowing terms about the struggle of Chattambi Swamy, a 19th-century social reformer and Sree Narayana Guru’s contemporary, to erase social evils like untouchability.
Mr Vijayan said NSS founder Mannathu Padmanabhan’s “Savarna Jatha” had helped mobilise public opinion in favour of temple entry.
Through his messages and actions, Mr Vijayan said Sree Narayana Guru erased the cruel and unjust stratification of Kerala society into upper and lower castes.
He said downtrodden sections feared landlords who dictated how they lived, worked and paid taxes. The Land and Agricultural reform laws (passed by the first Communist government) ended feudalism for good.
Mr. Vijayan said Guru had called an all-religion conference with the intention “not to argue and win but to inform and be informed”. He said the meeting was a prescient warning to “imbeciles who divide, kill, harangue, demonise and ostracise in the name of religion”.
The head of the Sivagiri Mutt, Swami Sachidananda Prasad lauded Mr Vijayan for recruiting persons from Backward Caste and Dalit communities as priests in Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) temples. Cooperation Minister V. N.Vasavan, ISRO chairperson S. Somanath and SNDP Yogam General Secretary Vellappally Natesan were present.
