The caste chequerboard

When BJP president Amit Shah addressed a meeting of BJP workers in the decrepit Nehru Stadium in Kottayam, Kerala, last month, he was launching the first major assault on the state in which, paradoxically, the minorities have a political stronghold.

Shah’s plan for the Kerala election scheduled for May-June is simple: Don’t let the Nair and Ezhavas, who constitute about 45 per cent of the roughly 55 per cent Hindus in the state, ‘waste’ their votes on the CPI-M and the Congress but instead vote for a Hindu revival in Kerala. In this formidable task he has already got an ally in Valopally Natesan who controls the Ezhava social organization called the SNDP.

Amit Shah’s plan for a unified Hindu political uprising in Kerala has its problems. Will the intermediate caste Ezhavas leave the Left front and the CPI-M in the lurch to seek a Hindu revival? Also will the upper caste Nairs back the BJP-SNDP revivalist rhetoric just for giving the BJP an entrance ticket to the Kerala assembly?

The mistake that Shah is making here is his thinking that all Hindu castes in Kerala will easily identify with a national Hindu party like elsewhere in 2014. Nair and Ezhavas are highly modern, upwardly mobile castes and have very early on worked and grown outside the Hindu identity but are rooted in their caste identity. Both these castes signed their modernizing memos far back. It may be profitable for Shah to be reminded that the SNDP was formed not yesterday but far back in 1903 by a group of 10 wealthy Ezhavas “to promote religious and secular education and industrious habits among Ezhavas.” And since then modern, secular and leftist thinking has been in-built in this intermediate caste. Also, a lot of Ezhava leaders have emerged in the CPI-M. So why should they ditch the Left and go with a party where the brahamanical castes dominate? 

Ezhavas have always been ambitious and upwardly mobile. According to Kerala scholar TJ Nossiter, there are records of Ezhava agricultural innovation before 1857 and by the late 1880 a small group of prosperous Ezhavas was demanding admission to college and government service and an end to their caste disabilities. Such a modernising trend has helped the Ezhavas immensely to become businessmen and top level government servants and Natesan himself is a beneficiary of this historical expansion. Referring to the Ezhava sense of self determination, George Woodcock in A portrait of the Malabar Coast (1967) writes: “No group anywhere in India has so successfully by its own efforts removed itself of untouchability..”

Now for Natesan to try and hook the Ezhavas onto the communalising bandwagon of the BJP in Kerala may be an extremely difficult task. Ezhavas will not take time to realize that Natesan’s aim is regressive, illusionary and personal for he believes that having accumulated wealth as a liquor baron it is the logical step to assume power and what better bet than the BJP at this point. There are reports that Natesan is now rethinking his alliance fearing political isolation.

The CPI-M in Kerala has for long been an Ezhava-backed party. Ezhavas saw the CPI-M as a party which can block the rise of the Congress-led UDF which, apart from having Muslim support (IUML) and the Christian party Kerala Congress, also had the backing of the large segment of Nairs who largely voted for the Kerala Congress to block the Ezhava party, the CPI-M. 

 “Though Gandhism and communism had alleviated the intolerance that existed for centuries between the two castes, they cannot maintain for long a single organization under a common leadership,” writes Somsekharan Nair in Mainstream weekly. 

Nairs like the Ezhavas are also extremely affluent and is concentrated in south Kerala districts of Trivandrum (24 per cent) and in Kollam (30 per cent) and in pockets in the north like Kannur (24 per cent) and Calicut (17.5 per cent). Apart from being a land-owning class, they dominate the government service; their younger generation has migrated and hold top jobs in Silicon Valley and other western El Dorados. They were also the beneficiaries of reform and modernising movements with the Nair Service Society formed in 1914, by a group of 14 young Nairs led by Mannath Padmanabhan. Inspired ironically by the SNDP, the NSS went on to inspire the Nair community for social, educational and now political fulfilment. “Under three lawyers — Mannath, K Kelappan Nair and Changanacherry Parameswaran Pillai — who mixed idealism with the commonplace devices of professional politicians of Europe and America,” the NSS became a potent force in Kerala politics, according to Nossiter in the book Communism in Kerala. 

How can the BJP now woo two modern communities who have achieved most of social, educational, professional and political goals? Also what more can either of them achieve by going with the BJP? Why would Nairs (who have voted BJP in south Kerala) gather under Natesan when they can easily consolidate their votes in favour  of the UDF and thus have a Nair, Ramesh Chenithala, now home minister, for instance, as chief minister?

The seed for this ambitious push into Kerala was planted during last year’s Aruvikara byelection in Trivandrum in which the BJP finished a close third behind the winning Congress and the CPI-M and multiplied their votes four-fold.. It indicated that the Nairs of Trivandrum may prefer the BJP rather than the CPI-M if there is an anti-incumbency factor. 

Will Aruvikara be the pattern for the entire state ? Unlikely. For several reasons. First BJP does not have any Nair leader like the veteran O Rajagopal. Second, Hindutva rhetoric is not going to sway the highly affluent Nairs.

A huge churn in favour of the BJP in Kerala does not seem to be on the cards, for neither the Nairs nor Ezhavas (BJP votebank) are oppressed classes and they live in a comfort zone sharing power alternatively (Congress and CPI-M led fronts). To shake up this cosy existence is very difficult which is why the BJP has drawn a blank in Kerala till now. Also Hindutva rhetoric is not suddenly going to inspire these communities. Amit Shah and Natesan may do well to realise that the Nairs and Ezhavas have already been shaken and stirred a century back.