Pinarayi Vijayan is Kerala’s ‘Modi in a mundu’

Jyoti Malhotra in The Print

In his home village of Pinarayi in north Kerala’s Kannur district, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan arrived one early April morning to inaugurate a Yoga-cum-Kalaripayattu camp at the local convention centre. He sat right through the exploits of enthusiastic children lining up to show off their skills and awarded long-haired Yoga and Kalari teachers spouting the values of the ancient, Hindu spiritual and martial arts disciplines, raising his hand occasionally to bless them all.

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If there wasn’t a huge red hoarding outside the centre, saying ‘Captain’ picturing Vijayan in his spotless white ‘mundu-veshti’ and red CPI(M) flags and bunting leading towards it, you would be forgiven for thinking that a transformation of the state’s iron-fisted Communist leader was in the offing.

But this is Kerala, dotted with hundreds of temples and churches and mosques and for the first time since 1977, won by a Communist party for the second time running. In the intervening years, the state has always alternated between the Left Democratic Front and the Congress-led United Democratic Front.

This time around, the 75-year-old Pinarayi Vijayan has created history not just by keeping the state, with 99 seats — eight more seats than won by his bete noire in the party, former chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan in 2011 — but by restricting the UDF to 41 seats.

For Kerala, the question of “who is Pinarayi Vijayan” is irrelevant. The state knows him as a strong CPI(M) leader who joined the party the year it split in 1964, became the state president of the Kerala Students Federation, was arrested and tortured during the Emergency, had a public spat with fellow Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan in 2007 over the latter’s demolition drive against illegal resorts in the Munnar hills — for which both were suspended — and remains unapologetic about the fact that he won’t let much come in the way of building the party organisation.

With this victory, he has proved his worth not just to the party, but also to the national opposition. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s roots in the party are seen to be linked to Bengal, because of his acknowledged proximity to former chief minister Jyoti Basu, although he is also seen as a VS (Achuthanandan) protégé — it was VS who had helped deliver Yechury to the top job at the party congress in 2015.

But the Left has been totally wiped out in Bengal, down to zero from 76 seats in the last election, and it lost Tripura back in 2018. Today, in only one corner of India, it is because of Pinarayi Vijayan that the hammer-and-sickle is still flying.

‘Mundu udutha Modi’

Vijayan’s political strength is magnified by the fact that he has prevented the BJP from winning even one seat — in the outgoing Assembly, the BJP had the Nemom constituency on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in its kitty.

And yet, for someone as seemingly hardline as Vijayan, he has for years been dogged by a pro-corporate image. In 1997, when he was electricity minister, Vijayan converted an MoU with the Canadian firm SNC Lavalin into a fixed price deal for supply of equipment and services to renovate projects for Rs 239.81 crore.

The 2007 spat with VS took place because Vijayan wanted the resorts to stay.

In February 2020, his government signed an MoU with a US-based company, EMCC Global Consortium LCC, for an upgrade and promotion of deep sea fishing in Kerala, provoking Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala to say the LDF government was “cheating the fishers”. Also last year, he allowed the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Board Fund to issue masala bonds at the London Stock Exchange so funds could be raised from the market to fund welfare activities in the state.

Interestingly, Vijayan is widely known across the state as “mundu udutha Modi” or “Modi in a mundu (similar to dhoti or lungi)”, because of the manner in which he has, systematically, finished off his rivals.

There was VS, of course, who wanted to be chief minister in 2016, but even Yechury realised that it was better to give the state to Vijayan than to the warm and fuzzy “Fidel Castro of Kerala”. There is the former industries minister E.P. Jayarajan, a former Vijayan confidant from Kannur who has retired from politics because he was denied a ticket in this election. Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, fellow Politburo member and rival, stepped down because of cases against his son Bineesh. And outgoing finance minister Thomas Isaac, who reinvented KIIFB, was not allowed to contest because of the two-term rule.

In an interview that early April morning, after he was done with the Yoga and Kalari event in Pinarayi village, I asked the chief minister why he was called the Narendra Modi of Kerala. He laughed softly, and said: “I do not know what kind of person Narendra Modi is. The people of Kerala know what kind of person I am for many years. I don’t have to emulate Narendra Modi. I have my own style and methods. Modi might have his own style.”

Certainly, unlike Modi, Pinarayi Vijayan doesn’t pretend to have a vaulting national ambition. Moreover, unlike the former leaders of the former Soviet Union, he understands that it is important to first protect the home turf, and then think of expanding Communism abroad.

‘Communism with Malayali characteristics’

In the interview, he believed it was important for the Opposition to come together to take on the BJP and Modi, and insisted there was no contradiction in the Left fighting against Congress in Kerala and alongside the Congress in West Bengal.

“There is a unique situation in West Bengal. We took a stand keeping in mind this unique situation. This does not mean the Congress has been absolved of its sins,“ he said.

Certainly, multi-religious Kerala’s uniqueness stems from the fact that it was the first democratic state in the world to elect a Communist government in 1957. Cut to 2021, when Pinarayi Vijayan makes history by beating anti-incumbency and bringing a Communist government to power for the second time in a row.

Asked why Kerala continued to choose Communist governments when the Soviet Union broke itself up in 1991, Vijayan told ThePrint that the CPM was able to “correctly analyse and speak out within the party” about what was happening in the Soviet Union…we were able to carefully preserve the CPM. We were able to take the stand that Marxism-Leninism was right. Fact is, in Kerala, the CPM & Communist parties were strong before and continue to be strong.”

In Vijayan’s mind, Marxism-Leninism is about both Marx and market, just another way into the hearts of people. That’s why Yoga camps as well as the London Stock Exchange are par for the course.

As Pinarayi Vijayan takes the reins of Kerala again, this is a description he would be comfortable with.

-----Here's another view

Here's Why Pinarayi Vijayan Can't Be Called a 'Modi in a Mundu'


P Raman in The Wire

The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front is set to retain power in Kerala, with the trends projecting it as leading or having won at least 94 of the 140 assembly seats.

The LDF victory will curb a four decade-old trend of the state electing communist and Congress-headed governments alternatively.

Two years ago, soon after the Left Front suffered a stunning defeat in the 2019 parliamentary elections, prominent Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi carried a series of edit page articles.

The commentators were in a celebratory mood. One of them gleefully concluded that religion and spiritualism – Sabarimala – had finally triumphed over materialism and Marxism. The commentators concluded that Marxism is archaic, and communists neither change nor learn from past mistakes. Thus, they said, the Left rout in its last sanctuary – they got just one out of 20 Lok Sabha seats – heralded the extinction of communism in Indian peninsula.

I was born and brought up in a communist village in old Malabar. I am familiar with the lifestyles and practices of early communists. To say they have not changed is sheer moonshine. Most early communist workers were scions of landlord families. They left their comforts and moved from village to village, spreading Marxian ideals. They lived on cheap tea without milk and dal vada, like a romanticised proletariat.

Abnegation and monkish life were part of the communist culture. Perhaps it was derived from the Gandhian ethos. Members took the party’s permission even on personal matters like marriage. In early 1960s, I remember Indrajit Gupta, then a young trade unionist, arriving at Calcutta’s 33, Alimuddin Street in a Fiat car with a red flag on it. It was a cultural shock – a trade union worker travelling in a car. It was explained that Gupta found it difficult to reach half dozen trade union functions by travelling in trams. So some richer trade unionists pooled funds and bought an old, creaking Fiat.

Six decades later, I found half a dozen private cars parked at a CPI(M) area committee office in remote Kerala. Even middle level CPI(M) leaders move in their own cars. They have none of the qualms that their 20th century comrades felt.

How can you say the communists never change? Before 1952, the parliamentary route was ‘revisionism’ for communists. The ‘national bourgeoisie’ debate continued for another two decades. For decades, editorial writers attributed the communist success to foreign money. Today’s communists are shorn of all such baggage.

So how has the Left managed to romp back with such a huge majority?

The most simplistic explanation is that the communists have also become another regional party under a charismatic autocrat. Thus, Pinarayi is called a ‘mundututta Modi’ or ‘Modi in a mundu’.

This strongman cult, like Modi’s, has clicked with the people.

Pinarayi Vijayan, who was the general secretary of the Kerala CPI(M) for 17 years, is the party’s senior most leader – barring, of course, the 97-year-old retired veteran V.S. Achuthanandan. Vijayan has a domineering say in the party organisation and the government he heads. But is this enough to call him a ‘Modi in a mundu?’

Is it true that Kerala communists, in their desperate bid to remain, have relevant opted for an authoritarian model?

The first parameter to gauge the degree of authoritarianism in a political party is the level of its internal democracy. In India, CPI(M) and CPI are the only political parties that hold regular elections as per their constitution. For over a decade, all members of the Kerala state committee (as also other elective posts) were chosen by secret ballots at the state party conference. The results with details such as the number of votes each contestant got were released soon after the counting. All this under sharp media glare and endless interpretations.

As per the BJP constitution, its national executive must meet once in every quarter and national council every year. Under the pre-Modi BJP, the two bodies did meet at regular intervals. How many times did the NE and NC met during the seven years under Modi? Elected autocrats – a term used by the Sweden-based V-Dem to describe the Modi regime – never tolerate a lively, functional party organisation.

The other parameter to measure authoritarianism is free internal debates.

For an authoritarian populist, the party must function as his or her appendage. What about the ‘Modi in a mundu?’ In the past two years, AKG Bhawan (the Kerala CPI(M) headquarters) made at least half a dozen interventions. It formally asked the government to reverse many of its decisions. Sections of the media interpreted such interventions as grassroots rumblings. Will any BJP committee – NE, NC or parliamentary party – dare to make such critical remarks about Modi or his actions?

Sample these:

The CPI(M) secretariat on February 20, 2021, attended by Pinarayi Vijayan, directed the latter to initiate minister-level discussions with agitating job-seekers. It said the opposition should not be allowed to take political advantage of the agitation. And Vijayan promptly did.

The CPI(M) state secretariat, after its meeting, observed that the continuing controversy over the gold smuggling has affected the party’s image and that it is a major setback to the party. It asked the chief minister to take corrective measures.

The CPI(M) secretariat on May 25, 2019, asserted that the government’s Sabarimala policy had badly affected the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections. It asked the government for a relook. Vijayan obliged.

Following pressure from within the CPI(M), Vijayan (on November 4, 2019) said that the government did not support the police’s move to invoke the UAPA against workers for Maoist links.

A closer look will reveal that AKG Bhawan acted as an alert watchdog and monitor rather than the CMO’s appendage. Will hard-headed ‘elected autocrats’ like Narendra Modi tolerate such interventions?

Pinarayi came closest to the personality cult trap when his image makers began projecting him as ‘Captain Pinarayi’ – for his leadership in tackling the floods and the Nipah outbreak. This came in for sharp criticism within the party and soon the CPI(M) leadership cried a halt to it – first, senior leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and then Prakash Karat.

“Pinarayi is our ‘comrade’, not ‘captain’,” Balakrishnan said. Soon Vijayan himself washed his hands off the ‘captain’ epithet, in what was yet another example of the the CPI(M)’s embedded corrective mechanism working.

A question of writ - Asiya Bibi and Sabarimala

The Sabarimala and Asia Bibi cases put the spotlight on how institutions adhere to constitutional principles writes Sanjay Hegde in The Hindu


On the streets of India and Pakistan, a frightening message is being sent out: that courts must not rush in where politicians fear to tread. In matters of faith, courts must simply sit on their hands and pray for divine intervention to resolve the petition before them. The public and political responses to Supreme Court judgments in two instances — Sabarimala in India and the Asia Bibi case in Pakistan — bear striking similarities. What is different, however, is the ability of the two states to enforce their writ.

Sabarimala is considered to be one of the holiest temples in Hinduism, with one of the largest annual pilgrimages in the world. The faithful believe that the deity’s powers derive from his asceticism, and in particular from his being celibate. Women between the ages of 10 and 50 are barred from participating in the rituals.

The exclusion was given legal sanction by Rule 3(b) of the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Rules, 1965. The validity of the rule and other provisions restricting the entry of women was decided by the Supreme Court last month. The Court, by a majority of 4:1, held that the exclusion of women between these ages was violative of the Constitution.

The Sabarimala judgment

Then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar held that the practice of excluding women did not constitute an “essential religious practice”. Crucially, the judges also relied on Section 3 of the Act mentioned above which stipulates that places of public worship must be open to all sections and classes of Hindus, notwithstanding any custom or usage to the contrary. It was held that Rule 3(b) prohibiting the entry of women was directly contrary to this. A concurring judge, Justice R.F. Nariman, further held that the right of women (in the age bracket in question) to enter Sabarimala was guaranteed under Article 25(1). This provision states that all persons are “equally entitled” to practise religion. According to him, Rule 3 prohibiting the entry of women, was violative of Article 15(1) of the Constitution.

Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, also concurring, emphasised the transformative nature of the Constitution which was designed to bring about a quantum change in the structure of governance. More crucially, it was a founding document, designed to “transform Indian society by remedying centuries of discrimination against Dalits, women and the marginalised”. ‘Morality’ used in Articles 25 and 26, the judge held, referred to constitutional morality which includes the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. 

Holy communion: It’s just the forests, the mountains and the Sabarimala temple on most days of the year. The place of worship comes alive only during the five-day monthly puja and the 41-day annual pilgrimage season beginning mid-November. 

He also held that barring menstruating women from entering the shrine is violative of Article 17 (the constitutional provision prohibiting untouchability). The judge held that the concept of untouchability is grounded in the ideas of ‘purity and pollution’. These same notions form the basis for excluding the entry of menstruating women into religious shrines.

The sole woman judge, Justice Indu Malhotra, who dissented, reasoned, “Issues of deep religious sentiments should not be ordinarily be interfered by the court. The Sabarimala shrine and the deity is protected by Article 25 of the Constitution of India and the religious practices cannot be solely tested on the basis of Article 14... Notions of rationality cannot be invoked in matters of religion... What constitutes essential religious practice is for the religious community to decide, not for the court. India is a diverse country. Constitutional morality would allow all to practise their beliefs. The court should not interfere unless if there is any aggrieved person from that section or religion.”

While the Bharatiya Janata Party has seen the judgment as an attack on the Hindu religion, the Congress too has not lagged behind. Even an “instinctive liberal” such as Shashi Tharoor has said, “abstract notions of constitutional principle also have to pass the test of societal acceptance — all the more so when they are applied to matters of faith... In religious matters, beliefs must prevail; in a pluralistic democracy, legal principles and cultural autonomy must both be respected…”

Asia Bibi case

In 1929, the funeral of a killer, Ilmuddin, took place in Lahore, executed for the murder of Rampal, a publisher, who had published an allegedly unsavoury reference to the life of Prophet Muhammad. Ilmuddin had been buried without funeral prayers as the authorities anticipated further trouble. But some eminent personalities, who included M.D. Taseer, assured the British authorities that there would be no trouble if there was a proper burial with a procession and Islamic prayers. The British relented and at the public mourning, the funeral prayer had to be read thrice before the surging crowds. The upshot of these events was that Section 295A was introduced into the Indian Penal Code to punish a deliberate insult to religious feelings. 

Years later, in Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan, Sections 295B and 295C were added to the Pakistan Penal Code which criminalised blasphemy against Islam and even made it punishable with death. In 2009, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, was accused of blasphemy by her neighbours and jailed pending trial. She was sentenced to death in 2010 by a trial court.

Her case became a cause célèbre and Salman Taseer, the Governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, visited her in prison to express support. This act by Taseer, who was the son of M.D. Taseer who had negotiated Ilmuddin’s burial, did not go down well. So enraged was his bodyguard Mumtaz Qadri, that he assassinated Taseer in 2011. When Qadri was produced in court for trial, he was showered with rose petals by lawyers. He was tried and hanged in 2016, and his funeral attracted a crowd that rivalled the one at Ilmuddin’s.

Last month, the Supreme Court of Pakistan allowed Asia Bibi’s appeal and declared her innocent of the charges. She has now been released and expected to be granted asylum in Europe. Her lawyer has fled Pakistan and the judges now fear for their lives. Pakistan faced the threat of mob violence led by the radical Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party. Despite Prime Minister Imran Khan’s initial bluster, an agreement has been signed with mob leaders to end the violence.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Saqib Nisar, has reportedly defended himself by saying, “No one should have the doubt that the Supreme Court judges are not lovers of Prophet Muhammad... How can we punish someone in the absence of evidence?”

The thread

It is easy to dismiss the Sabarimala and Asia Bibi cases as being unconnected and belonging to different jurisdictions and contexts. But both belong to the same region and trajectory of history. India was built on a secular foundation while Pakistan was built on a majoritarian Muslim agenda. However, both countries profess at least lip service to the rule of law. Years of majoritarianism have brought Pakistan to the point where its institutions have had to defend themselves before doing justice to minorities. India is at a stage, where its majority is seeking to bring its institutions to acquiesce in majoritarian instincts. A majority whose forebears had committed themselves to a magnificent constitutional compact now has elements who seek to regress from those values.

The question is whether the people and the institutions succumb to pressure or adhere to principle. Each individual, regardless of birth ascribed identity, is a minority of one entitled to an individual guarantee of rights protected by the Constitution. It is in the adherence to individual rights that the greater public good rests. Those who sacrifice a little man or woman’s liberty for the security of the many will find neither liberty, nor security.
Let us keep this in mind, as the Supreme Court agrees to hear in open court a review petition against its Sabarima judgment.

Why Sabarimala is surprising even Kerala, and why it is an opportunity

With all the claims of literacy, good healthcare system and the resultant general progressiveness of Kerala, it largely seemed like a reasonable expectation that women would just start going to the Sabarimala temple writes N P Ashley in The Indian Express

I find surprised, and even flabbergasted, Malayalis and non-Malayalis around me on the Sabarimala issue.

Even though a lot of people had reservations about the Supreme Court verdict which lifted the ban on women of menstrual ages from entering the Sabarimala temple, it was largely expected that, like the famous declaration of the Temple Entry Proclamation which allowed the lower caste groups temple entry in Kerala in 1936, women would just start going to the temple by and by. With all the claims of literacy, good healthcare system and the resultant general progressiveness of Kerala, it largely seemed like a reasonable expectation.

But events unfurled in quite a different way: the televised break down of law and order in the area, the rule of fear and insecurity that hovers around the state on this issue and the unending high-voltage discussions on mass and social media gave a sense of a state at siege. Though all parties are oath-bound and duty-bound to endorse the Constitution of India, and even when most parties at the national level have taken the official national position that there should be no ban on women only because of they are of the menstruating age (this includes the RSS and the Congress), their state leadership got so scared of the sentiments of their supporters and decided to resist the implementation of the court order through campaigns or even physically. The attempts have been so successful that not a single woman of the age between 10 and 50 have entered the inner sanctum of the temple to this day.

 

Women devotees at Sabarimala.

The typicality of Sabarimala

Three aspects of Kerala society throw light on the typicality of the developments: one, Kerala is a hyper consumerist, middle class society in which party supporters behave like consumers with a sense of entitlement. Politicians are only capable of giving what these supporters like and want. This should explain how the state committees of national parties have decided to take a position contradicting their national leadership. Two, though Kerala somersaulted into a global economy in 1970s itself, its values are completely feudal: a huge house, marrying off a daughter in all pomp and glory, and strict allegiance to family, community or party are still cherished.

The cocktail of feudal values and capitalist life-conditions provides the third aspect of the Kerala society: misogyny. Sabarimala is only one of the spaces in Kerala where women have no entry. Public spaces are largely inaccessible to unaccompanied women after nightfall, places of worship, festival venues and grounds are male homosocial havens, mass media and entertainment industries revolve around a handful of male icons, in many households women continue to belong to the kitchen and drawing rooms are still men’s, and lastly and most importantly, political and cultural discussions are held by men, of men and for men (even feminism is just another discussion topic for men!). In short, Kerala’s public sphere is saturated with male bodies and their understanding of the world.

This is not to belittle the amazing movements of the women in the last 30 years for the rights to body, property, work, dignity and presence. But the subcultural space of male bonding has defined itself against all such naming them to be feminist. The all too existing possibility that “feminist” in itself can be used as an allegation, like “terrorist” or “Maoist” in today’s Kerala should tell us something about contemporary Kerala. This becomes all the more revealing when compared with the moral ground that North Indian feminists have won against patriarchy on the ground, creating a new common sense, making it impossible even for the majoritarian right to oppose the Supreme Court verdicts on decriminalising homosexuality and lifting the ban on women to enter Sabarimala.

This is nothing new: though women’s rights were a crucial concern for the social justice project on caste reformation and economic restructuring called Kerala Renaissance (beginning in the early 20th century), men limited their participation to the level of ideas without extending it to bodies and spaces. Women continued to be in-charge of households, preparing children for a male chauvinist society and men continued to talk about things political and social. These women and their domestic spaces were addressed only by two entities: the religious organisations and by television serials (both were designed and developed by men again). Other than making fun of them and treating these as innocuous, men never had interrogations about the exclusivity of the spaces they held. Family WhatsApp groups seem to mould these sensibilities into community stories of victimhood and fear mongering. This blackhole of the Kerala public sphere must be acknowledged in the contemporary developments.

 

Kerala Renaissance: Archaic, Aestheticised or Unfinished?

Sabarimala women’s temple entry issue largely has four categories of people involved: Violent Ritualists (mostly male) who oppose women’s temple entry and believe that women who dare should be stopped using violence and terror, Anti-Violence Ritualists who oppose women’s temple entry but believe that use of violence and abuse by vigilante groups is unacceptable, Constitutionalists who believe that the verdict is, to borrow Gandhi’s words on the Temple Entry proclamation for the lower caste groups, one written in golden letters upholding constitutional morality and must be implemented by getting rid of the violent men at any cost, and Institutionalists who believe that though the judgment could have as well not come at all, now that it has, there is a need to respect the judgment and implement it, slowly and strategically.

All these groups seem equally lost about something or the other: Ritualists don’t know till how long they can hold the fort (every party has people who make contradictory statements is a good sign of it), Constitutionalists have not come up with any practical solution to the law and order troubles that might come up with what has now been construed as the “event of that single woman’s temple entry” (One of the questions they should consider answering is how did this “social vacuum” around Constitutional values come about!) and Institutionalists seem to be rather half-hearted about any actual step by any woman to enter the temple.

Among the four, the first, the Violent Ritualists, given how anti-social their acts have been merit no discussions. They need to be removed from the space and booked, along with their political patrons in the media and elsewhere, for their acts. The Anti-Violence Ritualists, Constitutionalists and Institutionalists can, and I believe they need to, hold conversations.

What would be the reference point of such conversations? Many are resorting to idealisation of the Kerala Renaissance which I find problematic in a discussion about women’s bodies for its very exclusive history on that front. Post 1970s Kerala has been such a different space that much of this rhetoric ring no bell with the life-realities of Malayalis now- as future cannot be in some past and nostalgia for it, it is unlikely to take anybody forward. Reviving any kind of golden past in itself is a regressive position.

Secondly, Kerala Renaissance has been made into an empty symbol to such a point that all sides are actually using the same images. The constitutionalists and institutionalists are constantly reminding people of the dark ages before the Kerala Renaissance while the Ritualists have used the photos of the Renaissance leaders on their “rath yathra” vehicle, and thus making them null entities politically.

The only useful and viable option is to see Kerala Renaissance as an unfinished project: one that talked of social justice for the backward castes like ezhavas while abandoning dalits and adivasis, one that spoke of women but never let them speak and one that believed in freedom from feudalism but without ever being able to come out of feudal values. Kerala Renaissance surely has, in it, a moment and a spirit that is ethical, inclusive and brave that can be captured but it cannot be a destination.

For this act of completion, let women sit together and come up with ethical, practical and effective solutions which are capable of redefining the very social values of the Malayali society. For once, men need to listen and just listen for the saturation they have caused is itself a huge part of the problem.

The underbelly of the state has come out right in the open, while the symptoms have always been there. Now this is an opportunity: let there be new thoughts, new imagery, new set of bodies from the receiving end changing the very paradigm towards a more egalitarian and more inclusive tomorrow. Kerala needs more and Malayalis deserve better!

Surely it is not the politicians’ fault is it?

A dream fable from a strangely familiar land where people blame their politicians for their own failures writes Tabish Khair in The Hindu

I dreamt that I woke up in a foreign country with many languages, cultures and religions. It was also a country with a working democratic system and a Parliament full of different parties.

The people of this country, despite wide swathes of illiteracy, mostly participated in the political process, and often held strong views. But they tended to complain endlessly about their representatives. Some of them would aggressively — even violently — endorse one party against the other, but they would also castigate politicians in general.

“If only we had good politicians,” one of them lamented to me. “Yes,” added his friend, who actually supported a party in the Opposition. “All these politicians just play us against each other in order to win. They never think of the people and the country first. Sheer opportunists, all of them. With no moral, no character, nothing but a hunger for power.”

In my dream, I listened to them, and it sounded familiar. I had heard similar sentiments while awake too. But I was curious. I asked them to explain.

Two cults

“Well, you see,” one of them said. “We have various religions, but the major one is known as the cult of stone and the second biggest one is known as the cult of air.”

Ah, I said. That sounded familiar too. “And what do these, er, cultists look like?” I inquired.

“Look like?” he answered. “They look human, like me and him, of course!” He pointed to his friend, who — to my foreign eyes — looked almost like his twin. “My friend belongs to the cult of air: we call them Aerialists. I belong to the cult of stone: they call us Lithicists.”

Ok, I rejoined. “I don’t see any problem yet — let alone a problem your politicians can take advantage of.”

“No, you won’t, you don’t know the place,” the Aerialist responded. “But you see, we had this church in which we worshipped our god who cannot be seen, and the People’s Party of Aerialists claimed that it had been built on the spot where one of their visible gods had been born...”

“Not that you lot were actually using that Aerialist church,” the Lithicist rejoined with a laugh.

“Facts, my friend, facts. You are talking belief; we are talking facts. Your lot broke down our church by sheer force. You broke the law in the process,” the Aerialist responded.

The two friends paused at this point of disagreement and then agreed that, in any case, they did not care this way or that, and the matter would be decided in court before the next election.

“I still do not see how politicians can...,” I began to say, but I was interrupted by the two.

“That’s not the only issue the courts will decide before the next election,” the Lithicist interposed. “You see, the Aerialist Church has its own personal laws.”

“So do other churches here,” the Aerialist broke in.

“But my friend,” the Lithicist continued. “You will agree that your personal laws are a bit harsh on your women: the husbands obviously get more rights than the wives. Why, they even get more wives!”

The Aerialist looked a bit uncomfortable and waved away the issue. “I say, let the courts decide,” he replied. “They will, they will,” his friend laughed.

I was still quite confused in my dream. “Look here, gentlemen,” I objected. “It is not that I am unfamiliar with such controversies, but what I still do not understand is why you seem to be blaming all this on your politicians?”

Both of them replied together: “Because our politicians take advantage of such situations!”

“But how can they?” I asked, bewildered. “You have said that the courts will decide, and you have told me that you have a constitutional democracy and functioning courts in your country. If so, surely, the courts will decide against the conservative Lithicist position in the case of the demolished church and against the conservative Aerialist position in the case of the personal laws. I mean, you have already indicated that, in terms of law and justice, it was wrong to demolish the Aerialist church and that it is wrong of Aerialists to discriminate against women in their personal laws. So, problem solved: your courts will take the right decision before the elections and no politician will be able to use these issues again!”

Accepting court orders

Both the friends laughed incredulously at me.

“That is what you think, do you?” they scoffed. “Well, let me tell you, Mr. Foreigner (or maybe they said Mr. Dreamer), many Lithicists won’t accept a court order in favour of the Aerialist position on the matter of the demolished church, and many Aerialists will not accept a court order against their personal laws. So, do you know what will happen before the election if the courts take the correct decisions in both the cases? Mobs of Lithicists and Aerialists will be out in the streets protesting and smashing windows for different reasons, preventing reasonable voters from voting… The election will be totally polarised. Politicians!”

“Surely it is not the politicians’ fault if so many of you refuse to accept the correct...,” I started objecting, but that is when I woke up.

On Sabarimala - Why are rational, scientific women upset?

By Girish Menon

“I do not wish to join any club that will accept me as a member” quipped Groucho Marx once. I will pass on this wisdom to women of menstruating age whose efforts to enter Sabarimala have been stopped by their own sisters, male priests and political activists.

In essence the Indian Supreme Court has decided in favour of allowing all women to worship at Sabarimala as failing to do so could be interpreted as discriminatory and in violation of every Indian’s fundamental right to equality guaranteed by the constitution.

The recent violence is testimony to the failure of the Indian state as it could not ensure protection to those women who wished to worship at Sabarimala. This is a replay of Ayodhya 1992 when a mob destroyed the Babri Masjid in violation of court strictures.

I have read reports that those opposed to the Supreme Court verdict in the Sabarimala case have now filed an appeal with the Supreme Court. This is a welcome move and should have been the first step in their protests instead of physically stopping women from entering the temple.

In a democracy the legislature is superior to the courts. So it should have been up to the political activists to pass legislation that suits their political views. However, such legislation will always be of secondary status to the fundamental rights of every Indian which can only be curtailed under special circumstances, if at all.

Tradition

Tradition has been quoted as the main argument to defend the practices of Sabarimala. Leaders of most denominations use this argument to protest against demands for reforms. This argument gains most momentum because of the historical failure to pass a uniform civil code bill that applies to every Indian uniformly.

In the case of Hindus, The Paliyam Satyagraha in Chendamangalam in 1947-48 enabled a break with tradition as lower caste Hindus were hereafter allowed to enter temples. Thus tradition is only a convenient term to fight against reform and modernity.

Uniting all Hindus

The demographic changes in India along with news of rapidly growing Islam and Christianity in many parts of the world give momentum to the BJP argument that ‘Hinduism is in danger’. Under such circumstances can the BJP afford to alienate Hindu women who clamour for the right to worship at Sabarimala?

In the book The Global Minotaur the author Yanis Varoufakis defines the term aporia

–        that state of intense puzzlement  in which we find ourselves when our certainties fall to pieces ; when suddenly we get caught in an impasse, at a loss to explain what our eyes can see, our fingers can touch, our ears can hear. At those rare moments, as our reason valiantly struggles to fathom what the senses are reporting, our aporia humbles us and readies the prepared mind for previously unbearable truths.

For Indians the moment of aporia has arrived. Now maybe the best time to introduce the uniform civil code and ban religious conversions. Else the charge of India turning into a ‘Hindu Pakistan’ may become a self fulfilling prophecy.

On the other hand, why would modern, rational women with a scientific bent of mind and a claim that ‘God does not exist’ fight for rights to worship Ayyappa is something that I have found hard to understand.

The pilgrimage’s progress

Janaki Nair in The Hindu

The rules of worship are made, unmade, and remade over time and Sabarimala is no exception


I remember seeing the ‘birth’ of Ayyappa on stage during a Kathakali performance. Following the drama of Bhasmasura’s destruction by Vishnu as Mohini, Shiva’s fear turning to gratitude, the two ‘male’ gods retreated behind the curtain drawn across the stage. The curtain trembled to the clash and roar of cymbals, drums and singing, before being lowered to reveal an image of Ayyappa. We were overawed by the performance and did not think of raising questions about the ways of the gods. I remember too, in the late 1960s, participating in the ‘kettanara’ rituals (the placing of the bundle of offerings and some items for sustenance on the pilgrim’s head before he sets off on the pilgrimage) of young cousins departing for Sabarimala on foot. The ritual involved all the women in the household. The young men were unshaven, in black, had donned the mala, and were ready to walk the long route barefoot after having observed their 41-day vrathams. I was overawed by the faith of the young ‘Ayyappa’, the women, and was too young to raise any ‘why nots’.

Shortcuts and compromises

In the 1960s, the young ‘Ayyappa’ would have been among the 15,000 or so who made that arduous journey. No longer. In the past five decades, as the numbers have burgeoned to millions, Lord Ayyappa has been witness to, and extremely tolerant of, every aspect of the pilgrimage being changed beyond recognition. Let us begin with the most important reason being cited for prohibiting women pilgrims of menstruating age: that they cannot maintain the 41-day vratham. Yet, as we know from personal knowledge, and from detailed anthropological studies of this pilgrimage, the shortcuts and compromises on that earlier observance have been many and Lord Ayyappa himself seems to have taken the changes in his stride.

Not all those who reach the foot of the 18 steps that have to be mounted for the darshan of the celibate god observe all aspects of the vratham. A corporate employee, such as one in my family, may observe the restrictions on meat, alcohol and sex, but has given up the compulsion of wearing black or being barefoot. I recall being startled when I saw ‘Ayyappas’ clad in black enjoying a smoke in the corner of the newspaper office where I once worked; I was told that it was only alcohol that was to be abjured. My surprise was greater when I saw several relatives donning the mala about a week before setting off on the pilgrimage, a serious abbreviation of the 41-day temporary asceticism. Though this has meant no diminution in the faith of those visiting the shrine, clearly the pilgrim’s progress has been adapted to the temporalities of modern life.

Lord Ayyappa has surely observed that the longer pedestrian route to his forest shrine has been shortened by the bus route. From 1,29,000 private vehicles in 2000 to 2,65,000 in 2005, not to mention the countless bus trips, this has resulted in intolerable strains on a fragile ecology. In other words, pilgrim tourism, far from being promoted by women’s entry to Sabarimala, had already reached unbearable limits.

One of the most vital practices of this pilgrimage enjoins the pilgrim to carry his own consumption basket: nothing should be available for purchase. Provisions for drinking and cleaning water apart, the sacred geography of the shrine was preserved by such restrictions on consumption. But like many large religious corporations such as Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the conveniences of commerce have pervaded every step of the way, with shops selling ‘Ayyapan Bags’ and other ‘ladies’ items’ that can be carried back to the women in the family. In addition to the gilding of the 18 steps, which naturally disallows the quintessential ritual of breaking coconuts, Lord Ayyappa may perhaps have been somewhat amused by the conveyor belt that carries the offerings to be counted. Those devotees who take a ‘return route’ home via Kovalam to relieve the severities of the temporary celibacy would perhaps be pardoned, even by the Lord, as much as by anthropologists who have noted such interesting accretions. And in 2016, according to the Quarterly Current Affairs, the Modi government announced plans to make Sabarimala an International Pilgrim Centre (as opposed to the State government’s request to make it a National Pilgrim Centre) for which funds “would never be a problem”.

The invention of ‘tradition’

Lest this be mistaken for a cynical recounting of the countless ways in which the pilgrimage has been ‘corrupted’, let me hasten to say that my point is far simpler. Anyone who studies the social life and history of religion will recognise that practices are constantly adapted and reshaped, as collectivities themselves are changed, adapted and refashioned to suit the constraints of cash, time or even aesthetics. For this, the historians E.J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger coined the term “the invention of tradition”. Who amongst us does not, albeit with a twinge of guilt, agree to the ‘token’ clipping of the hair at Tirupati in lieu of the full head shave? Who does not feel an unmatched pleasure in the piped water that gently washes the feet as we turn the corner into the main courtyard of Tirupati after hours of waiting in hot and dusty halls? And who does not feel frustrated at the not-so-gentle prod of the wooden stick by the guardian who does not allow you more than a few seconds before the deity at Guruvayur? All these belong properly to the invention of ‘tradition’ leaving no practice untouched by the conveniences of mass management.

But perhaps the most important invention of ‘tradition’ was the absolute prohibition of women of menstruating age from worship at Sabarimala under rules 3(b) framed under the Kerala Hindu Places of Public Worship (Authorisation of Entry) Act, 1965. Personal testimonies have shown that strict prohibition was not, in fact, always observed, but would such a legal specification have been necessary at all if everyone was abiding by that usage or custom from ‘time immemorial’? It is a “custom with some aberrations” as pointed out by Indira Jaisingh, citing the Devaswom Board’s earlier admission that women had freely entered the shrine before 1950 for the first rice feeding ceremonies of their children.

Elsewhere, the celibate Kumaraswami, in Sandur in Karnataka where women were strictly disallowed, has gracefully conceded space to women worshippers since 1996. “The heavens have not fallen,” Gandhi remarked in 1934 when “a small state in south India [Sandur] has opened the temple to the Harijans.” Lord Ayyappa, who has tolerated innumerable changes in the behaviour of his devotees, will surely not allow his wrath to manifest itself. He will be saddened by the hypermobilisation that surrounds the protests today, but would be far more forgiving than the men — and those women — who make, unmake and remake the rules of worship.