Scandalizing Christian Witness in a Multi-religious Society

The reaction and responses of the church leadership to The Kerala Unaided Professional Colleges (Prohibition of Capitation Fees and Procedure for Admission and Fixation of Fees) BILL should be seen as a clear reflection of the changing role of the church in today’s world.

By crying wolf to the ‘bill’ the church leadership has exposed their moral insensitivity and their callous disregard of the primary responsibility of the church: to bear witness to the in-breaking of God’s rule through sacrificial service to the building up of a world of equity, justice, peace and harmony.

It is not enough to take credit for the missionary contribution to higher education, but to ask what their successors have made of higher education. Since the ‘60s, after the Vimochana Samaram (the liberation struggle), the church’s involvement at all levels of education has been without any sense of probity, responsibility, sacrifice, and mission.

Many of us have failed to realise that the Kerala society’s initiation to the self-financing of education was through the unaided, English medium, recognised schools. They gave the churches and similar associations, a taste of what one could accomplish without any capital of one’s own and yet make substantial revenue and profit to expand one’s clout in the educational field.

Though these schools were run for the children of the elites in society, gradually they began to be seen by the middle class and the lower middle class as a means for upward mobility and economic benefits. Thus, schools of various sorts that would suit the purse of the parents such as ‘international’, ‘residential’, ‘public’ and so on – began to spring up in every nook and corner of Kerala with active connivance of the powers that be.

The unbridled privatisation of education, led to the total neglect of the aided and government stream, which resulted in the children of the poor getting a raw deal. The guardians of social justice – including the politicians, church, and other socio-religious organisations – are only interested in their burgeoning profits.

Education is universally recognised as the primary instrument equipped to ensure equity and equal opportunity in this highly unequal and caste-ridden society. The churches in Kerala have the dubious distinction of having pioneered the transformation of education into a source and device of inequity.


Children of the socio-economically weaker strata cannot hope to better their lives in a highly competitive society. They are denied access to good education and hence cannot hope to benefit from the new economic opportunities. Can the Christian community absolve itself of this crime?

This unashamed mercantile nature of private-owned education have legitimised capitation fee under different pet names such as development fund, building fund, etc. It is this morally degraded cultural milieu that has become the fertile breeding ground for self-financing institutions and courses in higher education.

The church and their monastic orders, for which vows of chastity and poverty are fundamental, did not hesitate to take advantage of this opportunity for crass material aggrandizement. They have nowhere to hide after exposing themselves to be callously indifferent to the poor in their own churches and communities.

Self-financing in education is something unheard of in any civilised society, even in highly capitalistic ones such as the United States of America. This form of education should not be confused with private educational initiatives.

Most of the private schools, colleges and universities in the western world are built by the largesse of rich philanthropists. Such schools, though they may charge a higher rate of fees than the government run or supported schools, still provide a highly subsidised education. They do not force the capital costs of education on to the students, irrespective of their financial status. They also insist on a student composition that reflects the socio-economic realities of their societies. Through a well-evolved system of scholarships and financial support, the private schools in the west ensure that no student is deprived of educational opportunities for want of money.

The self-financing system of education is a negation of all values, particularly those Christian values for which the missionaries laid down their lives. They started schools for Dalits and other untouchable communities and also for women. Kerala owes a lot to the noble vision of the missionaries of the past, who saw education as a means of civilising and transforming the existing social order. The tireless efforts of the missionaries have been rewarded in the form of tremendous amount of goodwill towards the church.

Now, the church leadership is in a hurry to encash that goodwill. They unashamedly ask for minority rights to run these self-financed educational institutions, which are the worst form of commercialisation of education.

Greed can only breed more greed and trigger the destruction of the very values Christ gave us for safe-keeping. Why do Christians want to run these educational institutions? What values are they trying to live out? Who are the ones benefited by these institutions? What rights do they demand for running educational institutions of this kind? Is it to serve the most deprived students, or to admit students of their own communities? Or is it merely the desire to make a profitable business out of it? What disadvantage or discrimination as minority are they trying to redress by claiming this right?

By claiming the right to establish and administer educational institutions without specifying the disability or disadvantage or discrimination that they suffer in relation to the majority community, the church leadership is desecrating a sacred right conferred on them by the constitution. The Indian constitution represents the best democratic traditions of a civilized society, and which guarantees that brute majority will not obliterate the traditions, values and distinct identities of a minority.

What a Christian wants and should demand is the right to practice his/her faith, to live out values that are distinctly Christian – responsibility to one’s fellow human beings and creation, self-less and sacrificial service to humanity and intervention in history on behalf of the poor and the outcasts to the point of death.

The clamor for minority rights would appear ridiculous in comparison with the vision and commitment of the founders of some of the Christian colleges in India.

The founders of the Union Christian College, one of the oldest Christian indigenous initiatives in Higher Education in India, acknowledged in one of their earliest brochures (1921) that, "We have gladly engaged with the Travancore Durbar to accept the ‘Conscience Clause’ and to use no manner of compulsion in the matter of attendance at religious instruction. This is no way due to religious indifference on our part but to our conviction that the Christians in India are called upon to give of their best without stopping to stipulate terms for their service, that it is their duty ‘not to be ministered unto, but to minister’. We have no greater desire than that like our Master before us ‘who went about doing good’, we may, poor and despised as we are shoulder our humble share of the day’s burdens among the many tasks that confront the nation at the present time.”

They were even prepared to forgo their concern to teach scripture, "to shoulder the day’s burden among the many tasks that confront the nation at the present time." They never claimed any minority rights; nor did they stipulate terms for their service. But they were prepared to accept the restrictions that the government would impose and unconditionally put themselves at the service of the nation ‘in this great hour of trial’. This was a reference to the independence movement of our nation.

An understanding of the New Man (Human) congruous with the person of Christ, a form of Christian humanism, was fundamental to the educational enterprise of the Missionaries. Christ is understood as the prototype of authentic humanity. Authentic humanity is understood as fellow humanity, life in fellowship and responsibility to the rest of creation and fellow human beings. It points to the lofty goal of facilitating the growth and transformation of human beings into self actualizing beings who are capable of extreme self-sacrifices for the sake "a new heaven and a new earth". This humanistic tradition was at the back of the liberal arts and science tradition in Higher Education. According to this understanding, education is not an activity of acquiring knowledge and storing it but also one of developing a new human being with faculties, vision and commitment to reinvent and change the existing realties and the world.

The self-financing of education is not only against this understanding of the human but reduces human beings to sellable commodities in the job market.

The church, which should have raised its prophetic voice against commercialisation of education and the notion of education as a private good, is seen not only to have silently acquiesced with it, but to be actively engaged in promoting it and making profit out of it. The church by its active engagement with this form of education is proclaiming to the world that nothing else matters except Mammon (the god of wealth) and his project and there in nothing ennobling about human beings.

When our nation is threatened by divisive forces of sectarianism and religious fanaticism, the church by its claim on minority rights and differential treatment for illegitimate reasons and thus, putting majority communities on a disadvantage, not only justifies those illegitimate reasons but also communalises our already fractured social order. A Christian should be seen at this state of world history striving with all likeminded people for promoting social justice and equity, communal harmony, a more humane and sustainable world order and the integrity of creation.

The church leadership is compromising their integrity and moral stature and their most supreme apostolic calling to bear witness to the good news of the in-breaking of God’s rule to set the world and all its relationships right. It is quite obvious to all people in the pew except the bishops that our medical colleges and engineering colleges ‘sell seats’. It is obvious to all except the Bishops that the entrance examinations are conducted after seats have been sold. It is obvious to all except the bishops that they only serve a fraction of the rich in their communities and the majority of poor students from their own communities are left to fend for themselves. All know that these professional colleges have no noble motive other than financial gain and political and social clout. It is obvious to all that these educational institutions have no ennobling role in the lives of students as they also are there as investors who expect good returns.

While all these are crystal clear to all and sundry, the kind of public outbursts on minority rights will only demean themselves and the Christian community in general. True Christians will always remain a minority and it is their privilege and joy. It is their joy to embody the Kingdom values of love, justice, peace and harmony. It is their joy to be the vanguard of a new humanity and world order. It is the responsibility of all true Christians to rise up against the church leadership that is bent on scandalising Christ and his mission in the world.