VIEW POINTS OF THE NEWLY MIGRATED HOUSTON KNANAYA COMMUNITY MEMBERS.
We are a group of families moved to Houston area in the last couple of years. The decision to move to Houston was mainly to have a good knanaya and malayalee community life for our children. The good things we heard about the community center, retirement village, plan to build a church, all the good quality knanaya community activities, most of the knanaya families living in one general area, many dance schools, and many malayalee stores etc. all influenced us in the decision. Above all, the unity and togetherness of the Houston Knanaya community and the high number of participation in the Sunday Mass really was the key to the decision.
Unfortunately we are very disappointed with the events that occurred in the community especially the division and hatred that we see and feel is heart breaking and is becoming worse day-by-day. The upcoming society election is making the situation even worse.
We are really interested in a unified community taking care of our spiritual, social, cultural and sports needs and activities involving the community as one. For this, it is necessary that palli and society work hand-in-hand.
When we heard that most of the people contributed to the church project we were very happy in the unity and forward thinking the community and thought that the people who were leading the fundraising and palli construction as heroes and genuine community lovers.
Then, all in a sudden, things went upside down and the new palli was bought. We went along with the decision fully trusting Jose achan and thought that the people raising voices against the decision was true palli opponents and playing dirty politics.
Looking at the lack of participation form a large group, the somewhat shocking news about the underlying truths about deals, hidden agendas, personal grudges, lack of competency and transparency, in addition to achan’s actions/ignorence, we have realized that our understanding and hopes were wrong. Even our achan publically announced that he was misguided. The deliberate attempt to label some people “palli virodhikal” further alienated them from the palli even though they have contributed to the palli fund. It also looks like palli is trying to take over the society which is accelerating the conflict. Due to all of these, part of our community is going to the local churches for spiritual needs resulting pockets within our community
We believed in the so called palli group and thought that their support to achan will bring back the community together. But alas! what happened next? The same people we saw as heroes and genuine went against achan and was sending letters to our bishops and collecting signatures to get rid of achan.
To make things worse, palli and society seemed to compete each other more. There was no “real” attempt to iron out the issues. The town hall meeting initiated by the Society was just a mockery. Had achan took a leading role, it would have been much more effective.
Then comes this year’s election!!! What do we see? The senior members were divided and taking stand behind each candidate. Looking at the actions of the palli group and the candidate running on the palli platform, we really doubt their sincerity to the community.
With the perspective of having unified and progressive community, we have come to the conclusion that as long as both groups will not change their animosity towards each other we will not have unity. As the new generation of this community we need to stop supporting these hard to change older generation. Instead, for the sake of our kids, we need to step up take charge. We all have small kids and in this foreign land we look forward to live in a better community. We were betting our hopes on some of our generation who are active in the palli, but their stand in this election and the e-mails they are spreading clearly shows that they also fell into the political trap and doing things for cheap popularity. We need to get both palli and society strong to get the maximum benefits for our kids. Today, society seems to be more accommodative than palli, but both should function in mutual respect.
We have two options in this election. One and the easy of them is not to support either one of the candidates and mark your ballot void (asadu) to show our protest. The other option is to support the candidate who has a better chance to open up a dialog and convince both parties even though both candidates promised to bring back the unity. In order for this to happen, the elected President should have influence and particularly be able to convince palli opposite group (provided Achan convince the palli group). It may be better to go with the candidate with the vision to light up the candle at the end of the tunnel to regain our friendship (oruma). We also need a leadership that take a firm stand and walk their talk.
Just two cents from our side.
Thomas, Mathew and Saji
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