Nobody knows why Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan found it necessary to reinduct Saji Cherian in his Cabinet, six months after he had resigned on moral grounds. Nothing significant has happened in the interregnum. Mr Cherian had to resign when a video of his speech at a party meeting went viral on social media because of the vituperative comments he made about the Constitution. He said the Constitution was exploitative and put together with excerpts from various other constitutions. He forgot that he was sworn in as a member of the State Assembly and, later, the Cabinet by solemnly declaring not only his loyalty to the Constitution but also his readiness to uphold it in letter and spirit. He was compelled to resign as his continuance in the Cabinet had become untenable.
By the way, the Constitution remains as “exploitative” as Mr Cherian found it six months ago. What happened for the Chief Minister to bring his Marxist colleague back into the Cabinet when there are many MLAs in his party waiting for a chance? No higher authority like a judicial commission or the High Court of Kerala examined the contents of the video and exonerated him of the charge of causing indignity to the Constitution, considered one of the best, drafted after an elaborate debate and discussion in the Constituent Assembly headed by no less a person than Dr BR Ambedkar. Governor Arif Mohammed Khan could not be blamed as it was the prerogative of the Chief Minister to induct anyone of his choice in his ministry.
The episode does not show Mr Vijayan in a good light. What it exposes is his own attitude vis-a-vis the Constitution. But then why single out him when, as a rule, those in power have little compunction in doing what the Constitution prohibits? The three words of equality, liberty and fraternity were not put together in the Constitution but they are reflected in the Preamble, which is its bedrock. Yet, laws that are contrary to Constitutional principles and actions that are an affront to its basic structure are enacted and approved of routinely. More often than not, it is lip service that is paid to the Constitution. It is a different matter that others are less brazen about it than Saji Cherian and Pinarayi Vijayan.
Renouncer of office, not faith
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI acquired greatness not when he was chosen the Pope but when he relinquished the post after serving as the successor of Peter for eight years. After all, the one who renounces has always found greater appreciation than the one who acquires. No, he was not just a quitter — the first in 600 years —but a Pope who laid the foundation for the teaching of the faith for the third millennium. As he famously said, the true problem of the Catholic Church lay not in a dwindling membership but in a dwindling faith. That is what he tried to bolster through his writing, including the three-volume work on Jesus. It can verily be said that few of those who ever sat on the throne of Peter had the intellectual meticulousness and level-headed spirituality that he was famous for. Small wonder that historian Peter Watson described him as the “last representative of the German genius, putting him on a par with Lessing, Kant and Beethoven”.
He was not the first to visit a mosque but he was certainly the first to participate in a Protestant service. His papacy was also mired in controversies about how he enraged Muslims with his Regensburg speech, what he did and did not do to stamp out the clerical sexual abuse of children, the Vatileaks’ scandal and how he broke up a gay cabal within the Vatican itself. The historic act of his resignation has certainly changed the Holy See. He gave it back the spiritual dimension to which it was assigned at the beginning. The large body of theological work that he has bequeathed to the church will remain forever the compass when the church loses its direction, pulled in different ways by modernity. After all, Benedict XVI was a byword for certitude!
