Manoj. (Samson P. Samuel)

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 9: Brought up on Karl Marx’s gospel “religion is the opium of the masses”, the CPM is realising that not all Marxists can be forced to kick the habit.

A rising star in Kerala and a former MP has resigned from the CPM on the ground that the organisation denies him the right to affirm his faith in God, rekindling the debate whether a member of a communist party can also be a religious believer.

“I’ve given up my membership of the party because of the conflict between ideology and my religious belief,” said Dr Kurisinkal Sebastian Manoj, who works as an anaesthetist at a private hospital in New Delhi. His wife, Susan Abraham, also practises in the same hospital.

Manoj, 44, faxed his resignation yesterday to the CPM’s local committee at Thumboli in the southern Kerala district of Alappuzha. He represented Alappuzha in the 14th Lok Sabha but lost the election in 2009.

The CPM constitution is silent on whether its members necessarily have to be non-believers, though the party frowns on religious activities in public. But Manoj said the CPM’s recent rectification document barred any member from practising one’s religion and affirming one’s belief in God. The document, a code of conduct for members that was approved by the central committee last year, says members and elected representatives “shall neither organise religious functions nor observe religious rituals”.

“This is quite serious. The party should rectify this first. It should stop playing hide and seek on the question of religion and ponder why it stands alienated from the vast community of believers. The party should clarify whether members can go to Church and participate in religious rituals,” said Manoj, a believer who even saw his Lok Sabha stint as “God’s calling”.

Manoj is the second senior Kerala leader to quit the party on such grounds. Former MP A.P. Abdulla Kutty resigned last year in protest against, among other issues, the party’s “negative attitude to the religious freedom of its members”.

Reacting to Manoj’s resignation, Kutty said that when he quit, many thought he had done so because he had no chance of getting nomination for a third term in the Lok Sabha. “I was attacked for participating in Umrah and attending Id prayers along with the rest of my community,” said Kutty.

Manoj said his decision was purely personal. “I refrained from criticising the party openly as long as I was a member. It’s against party discipline. But I want the CPM to remain a corrective force in politics,” he said.

The issue of whether a CPM member in India can be a religious believer had been raised a few years ago by Subhas Chakraborty, the firebrand Bengal leader who died last year.

In September 2006, Chakraborty had kicked up a storm by performing a puja at the Tarapith temple in Bengal’s Birbhum district. He had chanted “Jai Tara (victory to goddess Tara)” and offered Rs 501, two red hibiscus flowers and a sari to the deity.

Chakraborty had been let off after a mild rap on the knuckles from mentor Jyoti Basu, but the irrepressible leader later maintained in public there was no bigger devotee of Tara — another name for Goddess Kali — than him.

A few months before Chakraborty’s deed, in May 2006, two Kerala CPM legislators, M.M. Monayi and Aisha Potti, had left the party red-faced by taking oath in the Assembly in the name of God.

Echoing Chakraborty, who stayed on in the CPM but often raised the issue of party democracy, Manoj today made it clear it was not just religion that forced his hand.

The young doctor, who acquired the reputation of being a true “people’s” representative during his stint as MP, said he was pained by the CPM’s current attitude to the poor and underprivileged.

“I was attracted by the party’s concern for the poor. But it’s now getting distanced from them and is less interested in solving their problems,” said Manoj, whose USP as MP was that he was always available to his constituents.

“There’s no democracy within the party. Cadres hesitate to say anything within party fora lest they be bracketed with one group or the other. Groupism pervades the party and anyone who speaks out is singled out,” he added.

Chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan had proposed Manoj as the party candidate in Alappuzha for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. The move was considered shrewd since Manoj had the backing of the Catholic Church. He was closely associated with the Church and was once chosen president of the Kerala Catholic Youth Movement.