THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Over the phone, Vellapally Natesan, the outspoken general secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, says he has a grouse against political parties.
Coming from Natesan, that is hardly surprising. “As usual, both the LDF and the UDF have ignored the Ezhava community. The LDF left out the community in the cold for the last five years, neither did it give Ezhavas sufficient number of seats. In sharing seats, the UDF too has ignored us,” he laments.
The grumble-rumble is a familiar one, especially when it coincides with the elections.
A few days ago, Natesan received veteran BJP leader O Rajagopal at his Kanichukulangara home.
Not that the Yogam general secretary is desperate to fall for the ‘lotus will bloom’ chant.
“I don’t have anything against the BJP. But I don’t think their agenda will prosper here,” he says.
“Sure, they will perform better this time. That is not because of any merit on their part but because the common people are supremely fed up with the LDF and the UDF,” he adds as an afterthought.
Like all community organisations, the SNDP Yogam too has notions about being the true and sole representative of the 65-lakh strong powerful Ezhava community.
Recently, Natesan reaffirmed his hold on the Yogam by overcoming a coup attempt led by businessman Gokulam Gopalan.
But the fact is that Ezhavas as a community have always been a fragmented political force. And there are few indications that things are about to change. Diktats don’t work here. It’s more or less a foregone conclusion that this April Ezhava votes will be split between the UDF and LDF, with a few going to the BJP. Natesan also silently acknowledges this when he says that during the 2011 Assembly Elections, the Yogam’s strategy will be localised.
“We will not side with any political party. We’ve asked our regional units to decide for themselves whom to help. We will help the candidates who help us,” he said.
In Kerala politics, the community - Ezhavas in the south and Thiyyas up north - has been and is a strong force to contend with. Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan and five of his ministers belong to this community. Ezhavas have two union ministers in Mullappally Ramachandran and Vayalar Ravi.
For decades, the community has remained the backbone of the Left, the CPM in particular. The Ezhava community is at once political as well as apolitical; apolitical in a casteist sense which prevents it from grouping. This is largely due to the secular teachings of Sree Narayana Guru embedded in the Ezhava psyche and the community’s close alliance with the progressive movements that shaped 20th century Kerala.
In fact, there has been only one government that has not included an Ezhava - the pre- Independence T K Nair ministry of Kochi in 1947.
“The Ezhavas were depoliticised long ago,” says historian M S Jayaprakash.
“In the 1930s, the Christians, Ezhavas and Muslims launched the abstention movement demanding adequate representation in government and other agencies.
The government had a problem - the joint political council of the three communities had to be broken up. The government jailed then Yogam general secretary C Kesavan who led the movement. Ezhavas decided to embrace Christianity. But in one deft stroke the government defused the crisis with the Temple Entry Proclamation.
Ezhavas all went off to the temples and C.P.Ramaswamy Iyer was given a reception,” says Jayaprakash. What happened in the decades that followed sealed the fate of Ezahavas as a casteist political force. The Christians congregated behind the Kerala Congress and the Muslims behind the Indian Union Muslim League. Leaders such as E M S Namboothiripad cajoled a large section of Ezhavas into the Communist camp by parading K R Gowri and another section joined the Congress bandwagon with R Shankar.
To this day, attempts - albeit few and far between - made to rally the Ezhava community into a single political entity have repeatedly hit blank walls. In the late 70s, the short-lived Socialist Republican Party was one such attempt. More recently, even the occasional musings of Natesan, who is credited with fortifying the loosely organised SNDP Yogam, about the Yogam launching a political outfit has remained just that - musings.
The Hindu Parliament, cobbled together recently, is another attempt at Hindu consolidation. It includes all the prominent Hindu community organisations including the SNDP Yogam, Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha and the Yoga Kshema Sabha except the Nair Service Community.
“We have no political agenda as it is. But, it is there as a larger objective,” says C K Vidyasagar, the chief coordinator of the Hindu Parliament and a former SNDP Yogam president. Vidyasagar adds: “The BJP eyes a Hindu vote bank with a forward community agenda, we also eye a Hindu votebank but the agenda favours the backward communities.”
