New Delhi, April 5:West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may not have thought that he was winning over some unusual friends when he said Christian missionaries were behind Kerala’s achievements in the field of education. He was just warding off a few uncomfortable questions which compared West Bengal’s educational standards to that of the other “red fort” Kerala at the 19th party congress in Coimbatore.

He also may not have realised that he was overturning a decade-long party stand which had always underplayed the role of Christian missionaries behind the state’s achievement in education. The party has always maintained that it was the initiative of the first Communist Government under E M S Namboodiripad which is responsible for the “higher” educational and social indicators of the state.

Naturally, the Church is quite amused. The Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India (CBCI) has come out in open thanking the West Bengal Chief Minister for “acknowledging” the role played by the Church in the field of education.

“We are grateful to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for finally acknowledging our contribution towards the society. He was really generous in accepting our role though his party in Kerala has always denied us our due credit,” said CBCI spokesperson Fr Babu Joseph.

According to Fr Joseph, Bhattacharjee has taken a huge risk by defying the decade-long party stand which had given all credits to the EMS Government. What remains to be seen is whether the party leadership would officially acknowledge the role played by the Church, he added.

Obviously, the Kerala wing of the CPM is not amused as this has come at a time when the relation between the Church and the CPM has hit an all-time low with the Left Government’s renewed attempts to control the minority-run educational institutions. They feel that Bhattacharjee has devalued the role played by the first Communist Government towards the state’s educational standards. “How can he give away the credit to the Church just like that while everyone knows that it was the historic steps taken by our first Government that is behind the state’s progress card,” asked a Central Committee member from the state.

The CPM and the church had been virtually on a collision course of late. Though the CPM had tried to win over the community as it had done in the case of the Muslim community in the state, it had not met with much success. The Left Government’s attempts to rein in the minority-run professional institutions had met with strong resistance from the Christian community. It had even moved the court against the Government.

The friction between the two escalated to a level where the students wing of the party, the SFI, attacked Church-run institutions on several occasions. The Church has termed the attack on the institutions as “an organised move by the ruling CPM and its feeder organisations to tarnish the image of educational institutions run by minority communities”.

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