Should caste leaders like Vellappally Natesan and Sukumaran Nair be taken seriously at the time of elections? Or, like in the case of imposing concrete lions in front of large houses, should their presence be merely acknowledged and then ignored?
Seeing how political parties are desperate to woo them, it looks like they hold the magic wand. But election results demonstrate that they have as much bite as the concrete lions.
Vellappally, by publicly calling for the defeat of certain candidates, has been the more adventurous of the two. Most of the candidates he had badly wanted to lose, be it Congress's V M Sudheeran or K C Venugopal or CPM's V S Achuthanandan or G Sudhakaran, had won with majorities that should have put Natesan in his place. But he is now the president of Pinarayi Vijayan's Renaissance Committee.
Equidistance or 'here and there'
Sukumaran Nair, the more grim-faced and measured of the two, swears by equidistance. “This in reality means that he has his feet on both the boats,” said Dr Shaji Varkey, Kerala University's associate professor of political science. It is not 'neither here nor there' but 'here and there'. “This is convenient because once the elections are over he can claim credit for the victory of either front,” he added.
Acquired wisdom says that Nair votes generally gravitate towards the UDF. This has more to do with history than the preference of the NSS leadership. The upper caste Nair community, which considers itself a victim of the land and education reforms initiated by the Left, had traditionally shown allegiance to the UDF. With the rise of the BJP at the Centre, nearly half the Nairs who were inclined to the Congress turned their affections to the BJP.
A mighty snub?
But the Nair community is not a cohesive unit like the minorities, and therefore can be unpredictable in its choices. During the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when Sukumaran Nair had made a subtle shift to the right by admonishing both the UDF and LDF for playing vote bank politics, the Nair votes declined for both the UDF and the BJP. The LDF had gained. This was one of the findings of the study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. It very nearly looked like Nairs wanted Sukumaran Nair snubbed for thinking for them.
“This was proof that certain individuals within the NSS, most prominently R Balakrishna Pillai, can swing decisive Nair votes in the anti-clockwise direction,” said political scientist Sajad Ibrahim K M who did the CSDS study. The shift of Nair votes was seen predominantly in the Kollam and Mavelikkara belt where Balakrishna Pillai has considerable clout over the NSS network.
Leaders without a vote bank
Such a reverse anti-leadership voting pattern was expressed by the Eezhava community, too. The CSDS study had found that Bharathiya Dharma Jana Sabha (BDJS), the political wing of SNDP, had no major impact in the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2016 Assembly elections. The LDF managed to hold on to over 50 per cent of the Ezhava votes.
Yet again, this demonstrates that community leaders do not have a say in the voting preferences of community members. Even the earlier political avatar of the SNDP, Social Republican Party, and also the NSS's political version, National Democratic Party, were wound up almost as soon as they were floated. “It is no one's case that individuals do not have caste spirit running through them. They do. But in Kerala, it is generally suppressed in favour of larger secular issues at the time of elections,” Shaji Varkey said.
The political leanings of teachers in the innumerable colleges run by both the NSS and the SNDP also tell the same story. Majority of teachers in both the NSS and SNDP colleges are represented by All Kerala Private College Teachers' Association (AKPCTA), which is affiliated to the CPM.
Big zero in Malabar
The NSS and SNDP do not have a pan-Kerala presence either. “In Malabar, they have no influence whatsoever,” said political scientist K T Rammohan. “If they could not take root in the north, it was because the region was swept up in various peasant struggles and also the freedom movement. These struggles brushed aside caste and religious boundaries,” he said.
The north was part of the Madras Presidency, and was under the British rule. Kochi and Travancore regions, on the other hand, were princely states where political consolidation was on communal lines. “It was basically an attempt by Nairs to hold on to their traditional rights that looked under threat from socialist and democratic forces, and by the Ezhavas, Christians and Muslims to claim what was being denied to them,” said J Prabhash, political scientist.
Vellappally paradox
It is Vellappally's lack of political influence that is more surprising. Nairs have never been mobilised on a large scale, except for a brief fleeting period during the Liberation Struggle, but Ezhavas have been. The Ezhava community had been traditionally deprived, unlike the Nairs.
“Before Independence, for instance, only those who paid the land tax or who had earned a degree could cast his vote. This meant that virtually the whole of the Ezhava community were deprived of voting rights in Travancore and Kochi region. They were not given jobs either. This had led to political consolidation on communal lines,” K T Rammohan said. Though initially the leadership was with tall Ezhava figures like Dr P Palpu, who founded the SNDP, the fight was taken over and sustained by the Communists. The SNDP gradually lost its political relevance.
This renaissance strain in the Ezhava DNA must have been passed down. This could by why there is a marked preference among the Ezhavas for the Left even now.
Nair's gain, Vellappally's loss
The limited political sway of both Sukumaran Nair and Vellappally Natesan could also be because they have not played a leadership role outside their organisations. They are essentially seen as in-house lions.
After the Sabarimala verdict, Sukumaran Nair is showing signs of breaking free of organisational confines. He was credited with the stupendous success of the 'namajapa' protests that reverberated across the state. All of a sudden, Nair was haloed. The 10 per cent reservation for the forward caste poor, a demand he had been consistently making, has given the halo an added glow.
Interestingly, Vellappally's aura has been dimmed by Narendra Modi's quota gamble. He was the policy's fiercest critic, and this had endeared him mightily to the Ezhavas. But when the policy came into force, he could not offer even a murmur of protest. His son, BDJS chairman Tushar Vellappally, did not want to offend the BJP. Like all ageing fathers, he has been rendered helpless.
His Nair counterpart is anything but helpless. At the moment, after the 'namajapa' and reservation gains, it looks like Sukumaran Nair has transcended the NSS. A 'haloed' Nair has shown a not-so-subtle affinity towards the Sangh Parivar, manifested very clearly in his open support to the 'Ayyappa Jyothi' organised by the Hindu Aikya Vedi.
How his community would respond will be the story of Kerala's 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
