Covert efforts to confine Sree Narayana Guru to a single caste or religion: Pinarayi Vijayan

Varkala: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday warned against efforts by vested interests to distort and hijack the philosophy of saint-social reformer Sree Narayana Guru, urging people to remain vigilant against attempts to confine him to a particular caste, religion or community.

Inaugurating the 93rd Sivagiri pilgrim conclave at Sivagiri Math, founded by the Guru, Vijayan said the pilgrimage was being held amid concerns over attempts by certain forces to misrepresent and appropriate the Guru’s teachings.

“We must remain alert to covert efforts to restrict the Guru within the boundaries of any single caste or religion. Sree Narayana Guru is a true world teacher who showed humanity the path of humanism, unity, brotherhood and friendship, beyond caste and religious divisions,” the chief minister said.

Describing the Guru as a spiritual luminary whose philosophical vision contributed to the liberation of society, Vijayan said his ideas had played a decisive role in shaping modern Kerala.

He cautioned that fragmented mobilisation along caste and religious lines would weaken democratic and secular values. Stressing the need to integrate the Guru’s message with the vision of progressive forces, Vijayan said safeguarding the country’s constitutional values depended on upholding equality and social justice.

The chief minister also called for collective resistance to attempts to divide people on the basis of identity and urged efforts to strengthen democratic and secular traditions rooted in the teachings of Sree Narayana Guru.

Every word the Guru uttered was a response to the irrational and inhuman tendencies of the society he lived in, Vijayan said. He also warned against attempts to project Indian culture as monolithic, erasing its diversity and subcultures. Myths and imagined narratives were being presented as historical truths with the aim of curbing human reason and the desire for freedom, he alleged. “Democratic forces must recognise this as the agenda of cultural fascism,” the chief minister said.

Stating that the Guru was not merely a monk, Vijayan said he engaged directly with society rather than limiting himself to spiritual contemplation. The Guru’s philosophy, he added, does not permit neutrality between forces that protect social harmony and those that seek to destroy it.

Caste has merely changed his grammar: Siddaramaiah
Meanwhile, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the chief guest at the function, said Sree Narayana Guru’s philosophy remained a powerful response to rising majoritarianism and social divisions in an India that projects economic progress even as unity weakens.

He said the country faced a paradox where economic growth, digital expansion and global influence were celebrated even as social solidarity eroded and hatred became normalised. Caste, he said, had not disappeared but merely changed its grammar.

“Guru understood that when religion is separated from compassion and ethics, it becomes a tool of domination,” Siddaramaiah said. “His philosophy directly counters religious majoritarianism, cultural nationalism without equality and identity politics without justice. Nation-building without social justice is merely state-building, not democracy.”

He said communalism today no longer speaks openly of hierarchy but instead uses the language of identity, fear and majoritarian pride, a danger the Guru had foreseen.

Siddaramaiah said it was no coincidence that after meeting the Guru, Mahatma Gandhi sharpened his stance against untouchability, embraced a simple life and refused to attend weddings that were not inter-caste. He also noted that Rabindranath Tagore’s idea of the “universal man” was inspired by the Guru’s works.

The Karnataka chief minister said the Sivagiri pilgrimage should not remain a yearly ritual. “It must become a continuous social movement,” he said, calling on religious leaders to speak against hatred, scholars to take the Guru’s philosophy into classrooms, youth to challenge injustice rather than inherit silence, and political institutions to align governance with ethical values.

AICC general secretary K C Venugopal and SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellappally Natesan were among those present at the event.