14Indian AGE September 2008

On Saturday, August 2, three days before the Mumbai High court dismissed the petition filed by the Bhayantar based couples, Niketa and Haresh Mehta seeking permission to abort a 26 month old embryo which they detected of having serious heart problems, Vincent and his family of 10 took out a protest march in Thrissur, Kerala. They carried placards saying “it's the God's will and we've no right to say no!” A devout catholic, Vincent, seemed to have had no say over the divine call to 'go forth and multiply' , eight of his children stood strong by his side vindicating his undaunting commitment!

The family was protesting the draft recommendations of the State Law Reforms Commission (LRC) headed by Justice V R Krishna Aiyer that mooted legal restrictions on the number of children a family can have and a penalty on families having more than two off springs.

As the family-protest moved around the city, with full police protection, a bemused public had a fun time and the media wiggled sensing the chance of a Sunday human-interest item. Forty six year old Vincent, who runs a way-side eatery at Mundur, half an hour drive from the city, said, though he was poor, he could manage his big family with the help of good Samaritans around, whenever the average family budget of Rs.5000 went beyond his capacity. And his 44 year old wife, Lily, mother of five boys and three girls stated on record that she was ready to beget again if that was His will!

For the activists of the catholic Pro-Life movement, of which Vincent is a State Ministry member, the protest was the beginning of a state-wide campaign by the church against the recommendations of the LRC. Kerala Catholic Youth Movement (KCYM) had organised a meeting in support of the march, attended by its state leaders and political activists including a District Panchayath Council Member. On August 2, the Thrissur Arch Diocese issued a press note strongly condemning the LRC recommendations and Vicar General Mon. Rafael Thattil said the Church will put up stiff resistance if the g o v e r n m e n t a c c e p t e d t h e recommendations.

“Go Forth and -

Multiply” !Church's Bypass Towards

a Larger Christian Family

By K R Ranjith, K P Jayakumar

The political and communal implications of the new population drive by the Catholic

Church in Kerala.

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The protest march by the family follows age old strictures of the Church but the apparent political script of the street drama finds its thread in the eventful stand off between the Church and the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. The left govt. had always been under attack by the Catholic Church. It had took to the streets the educational reforms mooted by the ministry and admonished its followers to resist the 'anti-minority' stance.

The state saw a spate of protests as the Church called for a second v imochana samaram (liberation struggle), a throw back to the violent protests at the aegis of the church in 1957 that toppled the first democratically elected communist government on earth. The catholic clergy again gone belligerent organising state wide protest s demanding the withdrawal of a text book which they alleged to have anti-religious content - sharing a common platform along with the BJP and the United Democratic Front led by the congress. As the dust and heat is about to settle, the State Women's Commission headed by Justice D.Sreedevi, set the church again on war path by issuing a statement that the commission would press for a ban on girls below 18 years from becoming nuns but she had to soften stand under heavy pressure from the Catholic brigade.

As the church fought the LRC recommendations by tooth and nail, grass root level campaigns are on among the Catholics to beget more, and in fact the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Conference (KCBC), an umbrella of 29 dioceses belonging to the three Catholic rites, have publicly announced incentives to Christian families with more than two kids, which many believe to have send communal signals across the society with far reaching political and policy impacts , as the country struggle hard to provide for a 1.1billion strong population.

The Catholic Church had a lways been c r i t i ca l o f the Government sponsored family planning schemes and the objections had been of moral and theological ground. Though the church was

Gifted Children

against family planning in principle, it was left to the individuals to take the call. But the KCBC action plan to increase the birth rate among Christian families is seen as an ambitious shift from its earlier principled-but-passive stand and follow a studied project with attractive perks. The package has smart baits from financial assistance for poor families with more kids , perks for those who conduc t reve rse s ter i l i sa t ion surgery to f ree admissions to the self financing professional colleges - a lottery worth a few millions at the current market rate, which many would find difficult to resist. All hospitals run by the Church w i l l no t conduc t p regnancy termination/sterilisation surgeries in future neither they will be referred to other hospitals. Public functions would be arranged at different levels to honour parents who produce more than two children and will ensure special care for pregnant ladies. "Our men and women had got good education and this had contributed hugely to the shrinkage of the population. We have to re-educate them to have more children," an official of the Bishops council told.

KCBC defends its campaign for larger Christian family in the context of the 'alarming decline in the birth rate' among Christians.

According to the last census, the decadal population growth rate among Christians has come down to 19.2 per cent from the previous 22 per cent. As per the 2001figures, 19 per cent of the total population of Kerala is Christian. While Muslims account for 23 per cent and Hindus make for 57 per cent.

Fr.Paul Thelakkat, Chief Editor, Sathyadeepam, a prominent catholic magazine, and spokesperson of Syro Malabar Synod, says that “there is a kind of Parsi syndrome across the Christian Community in Kerala.” Though he is in no position to state on the national figures to substantiate the apprehensions, Fr. Thelakkatt asserts that his personal survey in the Ernakulam Basilica was a perfect sample. “I studied the ratio of marriages and baptisms in the Basilica and it were just 1:0.9 in comparison with the 1:3 ratio twenty

Parsi Syndrome or Party Syndrome?

five years back. There is a sharp and steady decline.” The Marthoma and Cyrian churches suffered most by the declining birth rates, he said, and the community might soon go complete grey.A m o n g t h e c h i e f s e v e n denominations of the Christian Church in Kerala, Syrian Christians, who constitute 80% of the total Christian population, are the most concerned about this fal l in population. Theire population, which stood at 9.7% of the population just a year ago, the church fears, could plummet to a mere 8% in another ten years. According to unofficial figures the children-per-couple status among Syrian catholics is less than 1.7.

Though the church denies any communal implications in the KCBC move, the saffron brigade was quick to take the lead, but they have a surprisingly different reading to it. They feel, it has vindicated their earlier position to have larger Hindu family to take on the widening Muslim population!! “Though Hindus are unaware of the growing menace of Jihadi Population growth in Kerala, Christian Community blew the whistle and came up with a set of guidelines to compete with Jihadi growth of populat ion in Kerala.” wrote Haindavakeralam, an ultra right website “The special privileges enjoyed by Muslims in Kerala under various schemes like Sachar and Paloli report (a Kerala version of Sachar recommendations), subsidy to Haj pilgrimage, the increase in number of Muslim members in Kerala assembly and Lok Sabha etc are viewed as a threat by the Christians in Kerala.” However, many are critical of the KCBC for taking the issue of population along communal lines and fears that this would further worsen the larger menace of population expansion in the years to come.

Given the growing communal influence over families cutting across religions, things are going to be tough ahead for the family planning endeavours initiated by government departments. Once different religious organizations start investing on increasing their numbers, the state sponsored family planning exercises and the mammoth institutional

Response of the suffron brigade

15Indian AGE September 2008

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16Indian AGE September 2008

support mechanism which consumes a big chunk of budgetary spending, would be left to the mercy of these communal forces. Religious groups had always been critical of the measures to contain population growth on various grounds. The Catholic Church saw it as an intervention opposite to the plan of god, the Muslim clergy held birth control projects as covert attempts to keep their growth in check and the Hindu communal forces of ten complained about the dwindling numbers.

Interestingly, the saffron tribe and the Catholic Church seem to share similar apprehensions about what they fear as the 'menace of growing Muslim population'. Steve Jalsevac in an article written in 'lifesitenews', a catholic website has quoted Fr.Mathew, assistant pastor at St.Sebastian Syro Malabar Catholic Church, Thodupuzha “The Muslim community of India has their Pan Islamic slogan, 'We will overpower you by outgrowing you'. Within 20 years they will overpower all other communities. They will not respond to the call of the national edicts. Predictably, the population debate is getting murkier with the Catholic Church’s stance which has had a sober image of not spilling it s communal agendas in the public

The religious group s and communal formations are not only

By multiplying, they produce

opposed to the population control measures, but also have started teaching their followers to produce more children. The 'small family-happy family' a widely propagated family planning slogan now gets a new public relations challenge from the 'more children, more security' jingle coined by the church.

The catholic clergy even dismiss the fears of population explosion as a myth. “We've long been hearing that the population bomb is about to explode. It is just a false scare aimed at sending panic signals among people and to force them to use birth control measures,” says Fr.Paul Thelakkatt.

“We are concerned about forests and plants but what is the purpose of having flora and fauna if there are no humans on earth?” Fr.Thelakkat airs his concern. “The earth has enough and more resources to provide for a double or more of people than it has now. We must use science and technology to improve the living conditions and to produce more food. It is possible.” And he has ready solutions for the problem of housing and habitation of t h e i n c r e a s i n g p o p u l a t i o n . “Continents like Australia are sparsely populated and there are still to be explored areas for the multiplying population. We must look in a global perspective and should not limit ourselves to political boundaries. That is exactly what the term Catholic means.”

Fr.Mathew, assistant pastor at St.sebastian Syro Malabar Catholic

Church, Thodupuzha is quoted to have accused Keralites of resorting to 'any savage method to limit children'. The pastor said, “How will the population explode? It will never explode because it is a human resource. It will multiply and whenever they multiply they will produce something.”

The Catholic Church has a long h i s t o r y o f o p p o s i n g t h e contraceptives and abortions leading to the accusations that it was not only opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies, it was also against preventing them. With the advent of liberal theology and modernism, non-fundamentalist protestant churches s h e d t h e i r o p p o s i t i o n t o

thcontraceptives in the 20 century. But the Catholic Church remained strict on 'anything which is intrinsically against nature' and stood strong by the dictum exhorted by Pope Pius XI, in Casti Connubii (1930) 'Since, (…) the conjugal act is designed primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purposely sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.'

The dogmatic adherence to these scriptures to prevent any 'sin against nature' has resulted in doing more harm to the very nature itself. T h e a v e r s i o n o f c h u r c h t o contraception and to the use of condoms have had diverse impacts

on the third world population and critics say that the church is partly responsible for the spread of HIV AIDS by blindly rejecting the use of condoms. In 1916, the Vatican declared that if the husband uses condom, the wife must resist him "as she would a rapist." And this stand was reasserted by Pope John Paul II, who stated during the International Congress of Moral Theologians in Rome in 1988 that in a given situation a hemophiliac with AIDS cannot use condoms in an intercourse with his wife as Condom is a method of contraception and "no reason, however grave" will allow its use.

Contempt of Condom

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