Underlying the Narayana Guru controversy is the Left’s fight to hold on to its political base in Kerala

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The controversy generated over Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s Sivagiri speech – where he declared that Sree Narayana Guru wasn’t a proponent of the Sanatana Dharma – has now escalated into a massive face-off. Vijayan’s remark came as a rejoinder to Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader V Muraleedharan’s comments, where the latter had sought to place the seer in the Sanatana Dharma fold.

Although Vijayan’s immediate reason for making the statement was to counter Muraleedharan, the veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader might have been trying to kill two birds with one stone.

The Left’s massive setback in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls – where it pushed issues such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the Hamas to the forefront – has forced the party to recalibrate its strategy ahead of the assembly polls next year as it has lost a sizeable chunk of its traditional Ezhava vote bank to the BJP.

With Ezhavas uniformly identifying themselves with Sree Narayana Guru, Vijayan was probably trying to invoke the legacy of the seer as a social reformer, to prevent the BJP from appropriating him for their political ends.

Different meanings of Santana Dharma

The term Sanatana Dharma is understood differently across different regions of India. V Muraleedharan might have meant it in a much broader sense while Vijayan surely referred to it in its ‘Brahminical’ sense of the term.

Today, a lot of people across India relate to the term Sanatana Dharma as a less ritualistic form of Hinduism – or, as a way of life, under a Hindu identity. Of course, the BJP has derived its own term for that, Hindutva, which is also synonymous with its political ideology.

Importance of Sree Narayana Guru

Kerala – or what was then Travancore, Cochin and Malabar – in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries went through what could well be compared to the dark ages of Christianity in the West. The practice of untouchability that existed in the state – a system envisaged by Namboodiri Brahmins – had no parallels across India. While lower castes couldn’t access temples at all, even the Nairs, part of the four varnas, had only graded access.

When Swami Vivekananda toured the state in 1892, he was so appalled by the state of affairs that he likened the state to a lunatic asylum. It was during this phase that a slew of social reformers led by Sree Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, Mannathu Padmanabhan among others set about trying to uplift different communities, against the hegemony exercised by the Namboodiris. Narayana Guru’s philosophy of “One caste, one religion, one God for all men” struck a chord with not only his community of Ezhavas, but across the state.

The Vaikom Satyagraha in 1924 – demanding access to the Vaikom temple and streets surrounding it – led by leaders of the Indian National Congress proved to be a watershed event. That later led to the Temple Entry Proclamation in 1936 in Travancore, which opened up temples to all Hindus, regardless of where they stood in the caste hierarchy.

Sree Narayana Guru, notwithstanding his reformatory zeal, always identified himself as a Hindu and devoted himself to the upliftment of the Ezhava community. He established forty-five temples for the community, and when the Kerala Namboodiris who held exclusive rights over priesthood went on to protest, Narayana Guru insisted that he was consecrating an ‘Ezhava’ Siva at Aruvippuram.

Nevertheless, Narayana Guru’s followers weren’t strident practitioners of the Hindu religion. In Kerala, it used to be a common sight to come across households and business establishments sporting pictures depicting all three dominant religions in the state – that was a marker of Ezhava identity.

Communists and Ezhavas

The Communist Party was established in Kerala in 1939 at a time the Kerala Renaissance Movement held the people firmly in its grip. In fact, the movement provided a fertile ground for the Communists to propagate their ideology and the Ezhavas came to identify themselves with the party in a short span of time. The Communist Party in Kerala became the vehicle of political aspiration for the community.

However, over a period of time, Ezhavas began to find greater affinity with their religion.

Sabarimala verdict’s political fallout

The Supreme Court verdict on women’s entry into Sabarimala in 2018 proved to be an inflection point. When Pinarayi Vijayan set about to implement the verdict with needless haste, he seemed to take the party’s Ezhava vote bank for granted, assuming they would back him in toto. That boomeranged on the CPI-M, and it was clear then that the Hindu identity was taking precedence over other identities for the Ezhavas.

The CPI-M’s shrill campaign in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls anchored on Hamas and the CAA led to another setback, as a counter-mobilisation in favour of the BJP in southern Kerala Ezhava strongholds of Attingal and Alappuzha was evident in the results.

The CPI-M party conferences being held in the run-up to the party Congress in April have seen cadres venting their frustration at the adoption of what was termed an “appeasement” strategy, in hindsight.

In such a scenario, the astute politician in Vijayan is using the opportunity to try and win over a section of the party’s base that has switched over to the BJP by invoking the secular credentials of Sree Narayana Guru.

Whether such a gambit works or not will only be tested in the elections to follow.