Subhas Chakraborty at a Kali temple in Tarapith in 2006

New Delhi, Nov. 16: In God’s Own Country, the CPM has bumped into Him at last.

The Marxists have won over a new constituency in Kerala, organising thousands of temple workers into unions, but at the price of having an alien parlance thrust on their conversation.

So this is how the chit-chat might run at a meeting of the Cochin Devasom Employees Association:

“See, comrade, how we have helped you get a pay rise.”

“Oh yes, thank God!”

A party source admitted: “Since these workers have a long association with the temples, they tend to take God’s name easily. They often say things like ‘by God’s grace’ or ‘God has bailed us out’. Yes, it’s unusual at party meetings.”

On the credit side, the CPM has organised 2,500 workers and priests — about 70 per cent of all employees at the 410 temples under the Cochin Devasom Board. The party deals directly with the union, which hasn’t been affiliated to CPM labour arm Citu.

Aren’t the employees’ references to God an embarrassment for a party that swears by atheism and whose chief ideologue dubbed religion the “opium of the people”?

The CPM says it can live with God.

“There are believers in our party, so why should anyone’s faith be a problem for us?” said Baby John, Thrissur CPM secretary and one of the leading organisers of the temple workers. “We respect every faith. We see faith as an individual’s personal matter.”

The feeling is the same on the other side. A. Shankaran, 42, employee of Thriprayaar Sri Ram Swami Temple, said: “We need unions to get our rights. Being a CPM supporter doesn’t mean I am compromising on my faith. Most people in Kerala are religious but does that stop them voting the CPM to power every other election?”

Over the past one year, the CPM has also organised the workers of the Travancore Devasom — which runs 1,205 temples, including the Sabarimala shrine — and Malabar Devasom, with state Devasom minister G. Sudhakaran playing a lead role.

John said the unions would help temple employees get their grievances addressed. “Most priests and workers have been serving at the temples in a continuation of their tradition…. Their living conditions need looking into.”

Have the unions helped? “Yes,” said A. Shaji Sharma, president of the 2,500-strong Travancore Devasom Employees Federation. “For example, till a few years ago, even full-time priests used to be paid peanuts. Now they get Rs 6,000 a month.”

Although the CPM constitution does not require members to be non-believers, they are expected not to publicly invoke God or make a show of their faith.

However, Bengal minister Subhas Chakraborty was photographed offering puja at a Birbhum temple two years ago, months after two Kerala CPM legislators — a Brahmin and a Christian — took their oath in the Assembly “in the name of God”. No harsh action was taken, but an old-timer said all three would have been “summarily expelled in our day”.

A sympathetic Karl Marx, however, knew why downtrodden believers needed the “opium”.

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions,” he wrote, making it clear his chief target was not religion itself but the oppressive conditions that created its appeal.

“The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”