SNDP’s Hindu identity – Fully in line with the principles of the Guru.

(Published by the New Indian Express on 18. 08. 2015)

SNDP’s present attempt to orchestrate the Hindu unity in truck with the Sangh Parivar organisations has nothing queer in it when set against Kerala’s history of social renaissance. True, the renaissance movement social reformers like Guru Sri Narayana launched still guides the cultural ethos of Keralites, But how much such a statement is relevant to the leftist movement we may look to a bit later. It is also interesting to notice that time and again the SNDP leadership, like the Guru, stressed the Hindu identity of the Ezhava community. It is to be noticed that the Guru, Nanubhakta as he was called in youth was a pure Vedantin right from his early days.

The author of Advaitadeepika and darsanamala was by all standards a practical Vedantin who throughout his writings stressed to develop a perfect man. Man was the core of his religion whose tenets he called upon his followers to strictly follow to groom a society graced with love and harmony. India’s religion unlike the western ideologies including those enunciated by Marx, Mussolini and Hitler which either deemed man a sinner or just a granule on the body of the corporate state, was in fact man making. The Guru’s religion too fell in line with this. Rising from the unfathomable depth of his Vedantic knowledge which held man the son of immortal nectar – amrutasya putra – he took Hindu philosophy as the ever available tool to develop man into a perfect being and cultivate humanitarian ideals.

Whatever might have been the atrocities the Caste Hindus hurled at his community and those below, the Guru was not prepared to part with the Darsana he deemed fit for man making. The Siva, he silently declared, was no Brahmin monopoly. It belonged to the Ezhavas too. Hence his having coined an ‘Ezhava Siva’ and led his people on the path the Hindu philosophy showed. Otherwise also, what was there as non-dalit or anti-dalit in Hindu thought with all its sublime aspects having been developed by the dalits? Vedas with their hymns composed by casteless Seers do not speak of caste based difference. Lying at random, they were later collected, compiled and classified by Vyasa, the son of a fisher woman, to use modern jargon, a Dalit. Ratnakara, the forest dweller or scheduled tribal – another Dalit – was the author of Ramayana, the first ever Dalit literature of the world. Then take Sri Krishna – the author of the Gita. Born into the Yadava Community of cowherds – now a scheduled group – he mastered all the then existing knowledge systems, became king of Dwaraka and the King maker of Kurukshetra. And it was quiet natural that Guru had guided his followers on the path of karma or social action his ancient Dalit forefathers cut. Belonging to the line of Vedantins, he was not ready to part with the Vedic tradition and systems of knowledge and the bliss – the Sivam – which Lord Siva personified whether he is an Ezhava Siva or Brahmin one. “Whichever is the religion, it should help make a perfect man”, he said and he firmly believed that the Vedic religion would definitely suffice to this end. Otherwise why that he did not heard his people to the non-Hindu religions and exhorted his people to follow the Vedic religion which he further embellished through his innumerable writings and emendations?. He was a Sanyasi or Seer – Rishi – in its true sense.

One may recall the meeting between Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Palpu at Mysore when the former suggested the latter find out a spiritual leader who could lead the social renaissance in Kerala. Swami Vivekananda disparaged Kerala a lunatic asylum not just because of the existence of caste here. Listen to what Vivekananda observed in this regard: “Was there ever a sillier thing than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right. What inference would you draw except that these Malabaris are all lunatics, their homes so many lunatic asylums, and that they are to be treated with derision by every race in India until they mend their manners and know better. Shame upon them that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed; their own children are allowed to die of starvation, but as soon as they take up some other religion they are well fed. There ought to be no more fight between castes”. And he cautioned the caste hindus, “… one-half of your Madras people will become Christians if you do not take care”.

The saints of the North and South were equally aware of the dangers to befall the Hindu society and alerted the Keralites on the need of defending the faith. It was this defence of the Hindu religion Guru Sri Narayana too took up. And even when later there was a mass thinking among the Ezhavas to escape from the Brahminic supremacy, it was only to take to the path of the Buddha, the sage of Kapilavatsu who proclaimed the philosophy of freedom and equality. They would not go to any non-Hindu religions. They preferred to remain within the precincts of the Vedic systems.

Being the defenders and propagators of the Hindu or Vedic systems and ways of life, the SNDP and the Ezhavas do have the right to carry the torch of Hindu renaissance and don the mantle of the defenders of faith. Taking these, the SNDP can align with any outfit sworn to the same purpose. Hence the desirability of an SNDP-RSS tie-up. Besides, the Guru has been right from the founding of RSS a votary of the Swayamsevaks’ worship, eulogised as the pioneer in the long chain of the Hindu monks.

Then, come to the leftist eligibility to bank upon the Hindu-Ezhava votes. It was the poor Hindus, irrespective of caste difference that sustained this group. But what did the Left return to these poor ones? Through the decades long policy of communal appeasement in their effort to get on to the saddles of power the deep crevasses were dug and Kerala society irreparably segmented. In their scramble for power the Left and the Right played many shameless dramas. And the cat capable enough only to catch the cockroach was fed to become the tiger with its destructive claws and canines. It is well known how for communal appeasement a new district itself was carved out in north Kerala and it is not long before an under-trial charge-sheeted for terrorism and lodged in Tamil Nadu and later Karnataka jails was borne on the shameless shoulders in the last ditch effort to canvass communal votes at the hustings, but for no avail.

What did these people gain from their almost a four score years of political activity blotted with communal appeasement and anti-nationalism. What did they gain from having tried to torpedo the Mahatma’s Quit India movement disparaging him a bourgeoisie, from having supported the British when Gandhiji was leading India’s pilgrimage to freedom, from having pooh-poohed Netaji Bose “boot licker of the Japanese” and cartooned him as the donkey carrying Japanese Premier Tojo, from having celebrated “Pakistan Days” in 1947 or from having organised the “pro-peeking rally” declaring solidarity with the Chinese invasion of 1962 against India?
Interestingly, even the CPI realised that the Hindus are becoming minority in Kerala consequent upon which its dooms day is not far away. When would light dawn upon its big brother? God the dialectical materialist does not believe in alone knows.

* Author is Vice-President (Kerala Unit), College Adhyapaka Sangh.