Off With Their Heads — Excerpts from A Thousand Cuts: An Innocent Question and Deadly Answers

More than a hundred Catholics from Vannappuram marched to Bishop House, met the bishop and the other leaders and made emotionally charged appeals for my reappointment. Catholics under the leadership of the Joint Christian Council conducted a protest march to Bishop House, declaring the dismissal as unjust. Another protest march — under the aegis of various teachers’ organizations in which thousands took part — went to Newman College. Many organizations conducted dharnas in various places against the dismissal. In the protest rally held in Ernakulam, my guru, Prof. Sanoo, appealed in the name of Jesus Christ to the Church leaders to reinstate me. Letters from all over the world asking them to take me back in my job reached Bishop House.

I submitted a mercy petition to the manager to repeal the dismissal order on humanitarian considerations.

All these efforts came to naught. Not only that, Kothamangalam Diocese declared war on me.

To counter the public opinion and to placate the faithful, Mar George Punnakottil issued a pastoral letter titled ‘Question-Paper Controversy—Disciplinary Action’ to be read out during the Sunday sermon in the one hundred and twenty churches and institutions under the Kothamangalam Diocese on 12 September 2010.

Some of the senior priests were not ready to read out such an un-Christian and falsehood-riddled pastoral letter that tried to justify my dismissal by denigrating me and branding me as a culprit. Some othersleft out parts they considered as outright lies, and acted as if they had carried out the bishop’s orders. 

The bishop who had declared his ‘honesty of purpose’ at the beginning of the letter by stating, ‘As you will be desirous to know why the teacher was handed out a harsh punishment and I have a responsibility to clarify this’ told barefaced lies to the faithful. 

The reverend stated that, ‘a commission consisting of senior high court advocates to conduct a full enquiry had been appointed,’ when they had appointed only one lawyer to conduct the enquiry. 

As far as I was aware, at that point in time, the two recent cases of college teachers being dismissed were that of Prof. Joy Michael of St Joseph’s College, Moolamattam, and Prof. Sebastian Antony of St Albert’s College, Ernakulam. The enquiry officer had been the same in those two cases as well. 

His amateurish attempts to damn me in the report — by tarring me as a blasphemer and derogator of the Prophet — would have shamed any self-respecting person. In the impugned question, the only two characters were God and Muhammed. To misconstrue the name Muhammed as Prophet Mohammad, the enquiry officer had used Allah instead of God throughout his report. As it would take me much more than a meagre chapter or two to describe this person’s mean, iniquitous ways, for the sake of brevity, I desist from doing so. 

The part, ‘. . . it is highly questionable and moot why a dialogue between God and a lunatic—from P.T. Kunju Muhammed’s “Screenplay: Discoveries of a Believer”, not part of the syllabus—was adopted, and the word lunatic was replaced by Muhammed while creating the question . . .’ in the pastoral letter was written with the invidious purpose of misleading the faithful to believe that the test question was on a topic which was out of syllabus and something that the students didn’t have to study, and that it was prepared with an ulterior motive. 

‘The teacher didn’t pay heed to the DTP operator pointing out the inappropriateness in the question,’ was another brazen lie. The DTP operator—a temporary employee on daily wages at the mercy of the management—was a poor girl who had fully imbibed God’s word that one should not bear false witness. Although she had been put under immense pressure, her statement to both the police and the enquiry officer was that she had only smiled when she had read the question.

I had come to know later that she had become mentally disturbed when falsehoods were foisted on her and publicized in order to crucify me. In order to regain her equilibrium, she had to undergo counselling.

I shall not go into similar inanities contained in the pastoral letter.

The pastoral letter cited my unwillingness to accept my mistake as the paramount reason for my dismissal.

I had prepared the question paper. No one else was responsible. I had owned up to this at every turn. I had expressed regrets and apologized for the question being twisted, misinterpreted, and being used to create trouble by miscreants.

This statement of apology was the one which the manager had transcribed and made me sign. This was appended in the enquiry report as my confession statement.

Did the reverend father want me to confess that I had done this to create religious discord? Would I have been taken back into the university’s faculty if I had confessed to a crime I hadn’t committed? I didn’t need anyone’s charity from claiming to have done something that I hadn’t.

The above were the reactions I had given to the media when they wanted mine to the pastoral letter.

Anand, a reputed novelist in Malayalam, had written a piece titled ‘A Sliver of Light’ in one of the prominent Malayalam dailies lauding my stand. That acted as a wonder drug and strengthened my mental fortitude.

The pastoral letter was read out in most of the churches. It was accompanied by a paper titled ‘Question-Paper Controversy: A Ledger of Enquiry’ by Thomas Malekudi. Many of the younger priests not only read these out, but they also badmouthed me.

Whether directed to do so by the bishop or not, in the following days, nuns from the various convents under the diocese visited the homes of believers and started to spread rumours that I was a wife-beater and neglected to take care of my mother.

Various publications owned and controlled by the Church were filled with broadsides against me and encomiums for the college management, both in the form of articles and opinion pieces.

Not merely religious groups, even INFAM (Indian Farmer’s Movement), a farmer’s group run by the Catholic Church, printed anddistributed leaflets and announcements, denouncing me and supporting the Church’s actions. 

Anonymous letters abusing the elderly and virtuous Father Adappoor — who had deplored the actions of the Church and the college management in his various articles — and spewing lewd vulgarities about my sister, although a nun, were sent around the state through mail. 

Their efforts met with commendable success. The crowds stopped visiting my house. None of those who had prayed fervently for me ever came home after that. Most of the Roman Catholics stopped interactions with us. Even close relatives stopped coming home. They too needed to prove they were true believers.