August 2012 has much importance in the chronicle of communal politics in Kerala. For that was the month when leaders of two caste-based organisations decided to merge by forgetting all discords and enmities maintained by them for decades. Those were the SNDP of the Ezhavas and NSS of the Nairs. There is no official report regarding the number of members each caste has but it is believed that Ezhavas constitute 25 per cent and Nairs 15 per cent of the total population of the State. Both organisa-tions now have influence only on five percentage of their castes but that five is decisive in Kerala politics because the difference in total votes between the United Democratic Front led by the Congress and the Left Democratic Front led by the CPI-M is always slender. So luck-hunters in all political parties consider these organisational heads as vote-bank managers and conduct pilgrimages to their headquarters. Some firebrand leaders conduct dialogue through middlemen. Such events fill the minds of those heads with vainglory and they spout irrelevant opinions on all subjects under the sun.
About a century back, Ezhavas formed the SNDP and Nairs set up the NSS for the material and educational prosperity of the concerned castes and they established schools and colleges widely in the State. This they did by using the contributions of members of only their respective castes. After independence, when reservation for government jobs had been provided for the socially and educationally backward classes, the SNDP and NSS started fiery disputations. The NSS pointed out that the majority of Nairs was poor but constituted a forward class; so reservation was denied to them. But at the same time rich persons among the Ezhavas could have the benefit of reservation as they belonged to a backward caste. The NSS then theorised paralogically that all poor men belong to one caste and reservation must be provided for all the poor irrespective of caste which, according to them, was a socialist principle.
A big blunder was made by the NSS in this connection: when they argued for reservation of the poor, they accepted the principle of reservation and their complaint was only that it was not available for the poor Nairs. But poverty and caste inferiority are two distinct aspects in social life. In history, there were big landlords among Ezhavas called Channars and knights called Panikkars who also belonged to the backward class like the poor Ezhavas until independence. Even now a poor Nair working as a servant of a rich Ezhava would not be ready to give his daughter married voluntarily to the son of his master. Because birth, and not wealth, is the criterion to determine caste and hence eligibility for reservation. However, the creamy-layer principle, evolved after the enforcement of the Mandal Commission Report, disregarded that truth. Accepting the creamy-layer principle the NSS moved for litigation to pull down the income limit for reservation. Nevertheless to domesticate the NSS, the government of Kerala granted reservation for the poor members of forward castes and against it the SNDP filed a case. But recently, leaders of these organisations decided to withdraw all cases and move like a single body proving thereby that their warfare on the reservation issue was only a meaningless acrobatic show.
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The sudden provocation for this ceasefire was the swearing in of the fifth Muslim League Minister. In the general election 2011 for the State Legislature, the Indian National Congress leading the United Democratic Front secured 38 seats, the Muslim League 20 and total 72 for the UDF out of 140 seats. When Ministership was shared among parties, the Congress held 10 Cabinet positions and four were allotted to the Muslim League. Naturally the Muslim League was eligible for one more Minister in proportion to its MLAs. Discussions were continuing on that point for one year and at last the Congress accepted the demand of the League. But when the decision was declared, the BJP, SNDP and NSS—having no role in the UDF—unanimously objected to the decision, asserting that the fifth Minister would jeopardise communal harmony. The opinion of the BJP may be ignored as they are destined to say so. But it is unknown how the SNDP and NSS, which did not find anything wrong with four League Ministers so far, could suddenly discover a danger in the induction of the fifth Minister.
Moreover it is worthwhile to recall that about three decades back, the Socialist Republican Party (concocted by the SNDP) and the National Democratic Party (fabricated by the NSS) were components in the UDF. Ministers were decided by the SNDP and NSS (in the form of the SRP and NDP ruling with Muslim League Ministers in the UDF Cabinet). But Ministers of both the SRP and NDP were inefficient and complaints against them to that effect appeared regularly. And in addition, internal struggles came out in the open in both the parties. At last they became a degenerating burden on the UDF leadership. After staging political pasquinade for one full decade, both parties withered away. In contrast, since 1969 the Muslim League stood firmly with the UDF irrespective of whether it was in power or not. When in power, League Ministers discharged their duties in accordance with the decision of their party as well as collective decisions of the UDF. This steady and disciplined performance of the League Ministers enabled the party to develop progressively.
Regarding the political substratum, the League has equanimous leaders capable of arriving at collective decisions and they have enough workers at the grassroot level. But the present leaderships of the SNDP and NSS have none of these qualities and they are just banking on the virtues and assets of their ancestors. A specific example of their indolence was avoidance of self-financing professional colleges allotted widely in Kerala during 2001-2006. About forty engineering colleges and six or seven medical colleges had been granted by the government on liberal conditions. Both the SNDP and NSS, each having resources to establish at least ten self-financing engineering colleges and three or four medical colleges, avoided that sector disregarding the basic intentions of those organisations. This evoked deep discontent among the ordinary people in those communities. Now the top leaders of both the SNDP and NSS are suffering from complexes in the aftermath of their incapacity and dereliction of duty. On the political side, they have jelousy towards the Muslim League having five Ministers in the State. Also, they are intolerant of Christian Churches dominating the medical and educational branches. Without trying to understand and measure their defects and searching for means to reinvent themselves, they make exhortations and organise talkathons for the unity of the majority. Their objective is to consolidate the innumerable Indian castes as if to set up one religion to counter the religious minorities which is the manifesto of the Hindu fundamentalists. But the SNDP and NSS forget that Hindu is a myth and only caste is a reality. In the Kerala Legislature, the BJP could not get a single member so far. They hope that the impending formation of a mongrel political party of the SNDP and NSS would enable them to secure at least one seat in the next general election to be held in 2016.
The Left parties believe that the party to take birth would deflect some Congress votes to the BJP side and if that happens, it would help them to scrape through in that election. For that reason they are providing the ideological framework to the party for which the SNDP and NSS are jointly exerting themselves. If realised, nobody is sure about the longevity of the new concord of two castes having no similarity in heritage. Even though both are Hindu castes before law, Ezhavas are erstwhile Buddhists who repudiated Vedic rites, god, spirituality and temples. Now their motto is “one caste, one religion and one god” derived from Judaism. But Nairs are erstwhile ‘Shaivites' accepting the authority of the Vedas and are devoted to a multitude of gods including animals, serpants and birds. Though Gandhism and communism had alleviated the intolerance that existed for centuries between the two castes, they cannot maintain for long a single organisation under a common leadership. Both cannot dissolve their distinct identities in the crucible of an anti-minority ideology offered by Hindu fundamentalism, although through intense efforts they can eventually come out with a colloid system. But even if that happens, the business-minded leaders of both camps would quarrel for petty reasons and disband the party without much delay.