The leadership of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam cannot be faulted if it advances its cause using caste as a factor. The aim of the Yogam has always been to address the issues the caste system has created in society, and not to create a wedge between sections. The Yogam has always stuck to a strict secular format, which was the ideal it received from the Guru. It never believed in the boisterous projection of its caste identity.
The core theme of all the attempts the Yogam has been making in its 110 years has been to build a secular platform of the backwards classes.
This is because the Ezhava community, which draws its ideological existence from the teachings of Sree Narayana Guru, would not appreciate or support attempts at communalising itself.
The realisation that the numerically strong Ezhava community has a leadership role in bringing all the other castes, which are more backward, together for a joint fight also played in the minds of its leaders.
More than 30 per cent of all the resolutions the Yogam has passed in its history touches the issues other communities also faced.
In the last decade, the Yogam took certain definite step for politically strengthening the people it represents. Knowing fully well that it is not the Ezhava community that alone has bore the brunt of casteism, the Yogam envisaged a common platform of all the backward communities.
Such a move aimed at revitalising the Hindu society and thereby the whole community. It raised the slogan ‘power to the downtrodden’ to secure a deserving socio-political space for them.
According to the yoga, that is one way to ensure equal justice to all in a state which has witnessed minority consolidation in all spheres.
Even while talking of a foray into the realm of politics, the Yogam kept itself away from communalising it. Power politics is all about numbers, and the demography of Kerala, which has about 45 per cent of it belonging to the minority communities, also did not allow it.
Even the Bharatiya Janata Party has chosen not to use the language it uses in the north Indian states as it has recognised this fact. The initiative did create some ripples but could not sustain the momentum for a number of reasons.
But I reckon that the focus of the Yogam leadership has changed a lot in the last 10 years. It has chosen to abandon the practice of transparency; it became a one-man show of Vellapally Natesan, its general secretary.
It has almost done away with the politics of the backward classes, and has chosen to align with the Hindutwa forces, represented by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP.
Mr Natesan’s Samathva Munnetta Yathra, and the controversy over certain remarks he made in Aluva the other day, must be viewed from this perspective. I was shocked by the tone and tenor of the way he chose to communalise the state government’s offer of financial aid to the family of the man who lost his life trying to rescue two workers trapped in a manhole in Kozhikode. I am sure this is not the language people sitting at the helm of SNDP Yoagam use.
I would read two things into it. One, he wants to outdo the BJP in Hindutwa politics. Now that he has abandoned the politics of strengthening the backward classes, his only resort is to take up the Hindutwa cause. And in this process, he has to make his voice shriller than the BJP, lest he would not be able to attract followers.
At the same time, the revulsion his statement has created in society is likely to force him to mellow down. I would not think that the people who would turn up to listen to him in his journey down south would like him to talk like a strident Hindutwa leader.
The foray of Mr Natesan to electoral politics is sure to harm the SNDP Yogam also. At present, people of all political persuasions are part of it. Once general secretary becomes a political leader as well, then it will set off power struggle at the bottom.
If it goes unchecked, it will ruin the Yogam. But I still have hope that all is not lost, and the leadership and its members would recognize the impending danger and prevent it.
(The writer is former president, SNDP Yogam.)
Download the all new Deccan Chronicle app for Android and iOS to stay up-to-date with latest headlines and news stories in politics, entertainment, sports, technology, business and much more from India and around the world.
