Date: 05-04-1999 :: Pg: 12 :: Col: c
By P. Radhakrishnan
IF, as Will Durant wrote, ``(s)ociety is a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic, and when the past is put out through the door it comes in at the window,'' the ``Kerala phenomenon'' of putting the past, or at least a major part of its malignant growth, out through the door, and ensuring that what came in at the window was only its moribund form, should remain a conundrum to the critiques of change.
In this sense, the Vaikom satyagraha continues to be an important national event of historical and contemporary significance, though, reflecting the putrid political climate of the country, parties and organisations which have just concluded the celebrations of the platinum jubilee of the event have used the occasion more to gain political mileage than to spread the meaning, message and significance of the satyagraha.
The Congress(I) president, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi's visit to Kerala on March 31 was ostensibly a ``pilgrimage'' to pay homage to the great leaders who took part in the Vaikom satyagraha; but, going by press reports, all that she did was lash out at the BJP-led Government at the Centre and the LDF Government in Kerala, both of which have hardly anything to do with the Vaikom event.
The reception accorded to the Kerala Congress(I) Committee by the TNCC(I) at Erode on March 25, when a plaque was unveiled at the choultry where the volunteers of the satyagraha led by Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Naicker stayed and rich tributes were paid to him for his role in the satyagraha (typical of the infectitious disease of hero-worship in Tamil Nadu, Periyar has for long been a ``Vaikom Veerar,'' though several others were also jailed before and after him), sounds hollow, as even 75 years after the event untouchability is still rampant and atrocities against the Dalits are on the rise in Tamil Nadu.
The Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam, an organisation of the Izhavas formed in 1902 for the propagation of the teachings and morals of Narayana Guru, their spiritual leader, could have rightly claimed the moral high ground to celebrate the platinum jubilee inasmuch as the SNDP movement had a direct bearing on and a major role in the satyagraha and several-related agitations. However, it sullied its three-day celebrations, from March 29 to 31, by hobnobbing with political parties such as the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee and inviting political nitwits like Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav. How politicians could appropriate an event which Mahatma Gandhi repeatedly claimed was a socio- religious movement and refused to consider political, passes comprehension. How his pioneering role in the satyagraha went unnoticed in the celebrations also passes comprehension.
When Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala in 1892, he was believed to have compared it to a ``lunatic asylum'' because of its caste system, which was the most rigid, oppressive and obscurantist. It was an intricate and elaborate enmeshing of status summations of entrenched privileges versus disabilities, involving religious, social, economic and every other conceivable attribute of caste ranking.
As the minuscule Nambuthiri Brahmins, ensconced at the summit of the caste hierarchy, were the reference group for the caste summations below them, the nature and extent of the ``lunacy'' of this ``asylum,'' and the struggles of its victims to come out of it, of which the Vaikom satyagraha was an important attempt, cannot be understood without a brief reference to the caste system,
Nagam Aiya's description of a Nambuthiri in the 1875 Travancore Census Report sums up his ``god-on-earth'' status. To paraphrase it: His tenants bow down before him not simply as a landlord but as their royal liege and benefactor, suzerain master, household deity and very god on earth. His person is holy; his directions are commands; his movements are processions, his meal is nectar. He is the holiest of human beings. He is the representative of god on earth.
The worst form of social evil perpetrated to heighten and sustain this status was ``distance pollution,'' which the savarnas (the four varnas of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra) inflicted on the avarnas (those below the savarnas) as untouchables, unapproachables and unseeables. A Nayar may approach but not touch a Nambuthiri; an Izhava should stand 38 feet away from a Nambuthiri and 18 feet away from a Nayar; a Pulaya should never go before a Nambuthiri, and should stand 24 feet away from a Nayar and 12 feet away from an Izhava; and a Nayadi should remain ``invisible.'' Important among the debilitating effects of this injunction on its victims was the prohibition on their use of public space used by the savarnas, especially temples and the roads around them.
The ``Kerala phenomenon'' refers to the drastic changes in these and other traditional disabilities, transforming the State from a ``monstrous'' into ``model'' society in modern India and making it the ``first'' in many respects: It is the first State where caste has lost much of its virulence as a social evil, and those (with the exception of tribals and fisherfolk) traditionally living at the margins of society have moved to its centre with a new-found dignity and self-confidence. It is the first to assiduously build up, under the leadership of class-based and Left-oriented political formations, Statewide grass-roots movements of peasants, workers and other oppressed and exploited sections and to convert the enormous mass-base for gifting the nation with the first democratically-elected communist Government.
It is the first to experiment with coalition politics and stabilise it through coalition governance. It is the first to break the traditional caste-based land system - the monopoly over ownership and control of land by the entrenched castes, especially the Brahmins - by abolishing landlordism and tenancy, and conferring ownership rights on the cultivating tenants. It is the first to achieve ``universal literacy'', high life expectancy, low birth rate, and better healthcare and public distribution system. Most important, Kerala is the first and probably only State where civil society - the most important arena in any democratic polity - has succeeded in wresting for itself from an otherwise obtrusive state the largest space as an autonomous sphere for social mobilisation and political articulation of democratic rights, aspirations and expectations.
These changes would not have come about but for the series of well-organised progressive movements challenging Kerala's archaic, unjust and highly discriminatory and exclusionary social order, movements with an egalitarian thrust, which began to emerge in the late 19th century and continued in one form or another well into the recent past, Of these, the Vaikom satyagraha was an important one. The satyagraha, though now part of India's socio-religious history of early 20th century, itself had a brief history.
This was its prelude: the rising aspirations and assertiveness of the Izhavas from the late 19th century; the conviction by the Travancore High Court of some of the Izhavas for entering and offering worship in a temple on the ground that their presence was ``defiling''; the protest against this by the Izhavas in the Srimulam Popular Assembly and their request to the Government to publish a proclamation abolishing untouchability; the resolutions passed by the Nayar Samajams against untouchability; the attempts by the Izhavas in Travancore to remove the stigma by getting all public temples thrown open to all classes of Hindus; the interview by T. K. Madhavan, an Izhava leader and editor of Deshabhimani, with Gandhi at Tirunelveli in 1921, when he informed Gandhi of the disabilities of the community, and sought his advice on the proposed temple entry movement and the support of the Congress Party; Gandhi's response that the Provincial Congress Committee should take up temple entry as an item of its practical programme; the resolution passed at the Kakinada Congress session in 1923, with Madhavan, then president of the SNDP Yogam, as one of its instigators, which committed the Congress to working for the eradication of untouchability; the letter to Gandhi from K. P. Kesava Menon, secretary, Travancore Congress Committee, informing him that it was taking steps to see that public roads used by the savarnas were open to the avarnas; of his appeal to the savarnas in Vaikom in early 1924 to allow the avarnas to use the Temple Road; of a procession arranged by the Congress consisting of Pulayas to pass through this road on the morning of March 1, 1924 but postponed at the request of several local friends who wanted some time more to educate public opinion, of fixing March 30 for the procession; of simultaneous attempts through lectures, leaflets and personal interviews to bring the orthodox people to the side of the Congress; of the brisk arrangements at Vaikom to start the satyagraha if the authorities prohibited the avarnas from passing along the Temple Road; the prohibition by the authorities and the conduct of the satyagraha from March 30.
(The writer is Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.)