For the moment, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan can take refuge behind Narendra Modi. He can say that it was the frantic desire on the part of Kerala voters to see Modi's back that prompted them to temporarily set aside party ties and vote spiritedly for the UDF.
As the chief minister believes, there clearly was a strong wish in Kerala to see the BJP out of power. But, if he is serious about taking the communal elements by the scruff of their necks, can the chief minister spare himself of blame in the humiliating rout the LDF suffered this time?
“No”, says most of the political leaders, analysts and social observers Onmanorama talked to. They say Pinarayi Vijayan's style of functioning would have been at least partly responsible for perhaps the LDF's worst defeat in history.
Failed midnight coup
A senior LDF leader, on the condition of anonymity, said Pinarayi was absolutely right in wanting to implement the Supreme Court order. “There was nothing wrong in a chief minister saying so after the verdict came, even if it might have given the feeling that he was in some haste,” the leader said.
“Where he disastrously erred was in sneaking in two women into the hill shrine on January 2, the day after the Women's Wall was successfully formed across the state. There was an element of triumphalism in the Left camp that offended even liberal-minded Hindus, and should have been avoided at any cost. This gave the impression that the Pinarayi government was not just implementing a Supreme Court verdict but had sinister plans in mind,” the leader added.
Sajad Ibrahim K M, head of the Department of Politics, University of Kerala, who had coordinated a comprehensive post-poll survey in the state, too said women voters they had talked to, even those without any deep faith, felt that the entry of women in the dead of the night with police protection was highly unacceptable. “Otherwise, our survey showed that people were satisfied with the way Pinarayi Vijayan was handling governance, especially the post-flood reconstruction effort,” Ibrahim said.
Pinarayi's double face
One of the state's most reputed social critics, Hameed Chennamangaloor, said that the verdict was a reminder that the Kerala society had seen through the hypocrisy of Pinarayi Vijayan's political strategy. Chennamangaloor said Pinarayi Vijayan's body language, which he described as “so thick with arrogance”, had alienated voters.
“Also, Pinarayi Vijayan's duplicity in matters of faith had distanced the silent, unorganised and neutral voter from the party this time,” Chennamangaloor said. He was referring to Pinarayi's double standards in dealing with faith-related issues. “He seemed to possess commendable spunk while dealing with the Sabarimala issue. But when questions of faith related to Muslim and Christian communities came up, where did all his much vaunted firmness vanish,” Chennamangaloor asked.
Selective renaissance
On November 20, not even two months after the Sabarimala verdict, came the Supreme Court verdict on the ownership of St Mary's Church in Piravom. “Was the Pinarayi government as determined as in Sabarimala to get the verdict on the Piravom church implemented? I suppose not. This is hypocrisy. This government has not succeeded in giving the impression that it was acting in a fair manner,” Chennamangaloor said.
Some churning happened in the Muslim community, too, after the Sabarimala verdict. “Right after the chief minister declared that he would implement the Supreme Court verdict in Sabarimala, Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama (an organisation of Muslim scholars) held a meeting in Kozhikode. During the meeting, the Ulama leader publicly warned the government against applying the Sabarimala gender logic in Muslim mosques in the state,” Chennamangaloor said.
“If Pinarayi Vijayan was so committed to the ideals of renaissance and gender equality, he should have responded the way he responded to Hindu orthodoxy. He did not. Was he not man enough to oppose Muslim orthodoxy,” he said. By being so sheepish in the face of Muslim orthodoxy, Chennamangaloor said, Pinarayi sent out a strange message. “Renaissance was intended only for the Hindu community. Others can do as they please. Such double standards lost him even liberal Muslim votes,” he said.
Consolidation of neutral minorities
Chennamangaloor was also sceptical of the minority consolidation argument. “The most popular Muslim party by a long distance, the Muslim League, was already in the UDF. The second most important party, the SDPI, put up their own candidates and had secured 20,000 to 25,000 votes in all the nine constituencies it had contested, including in Malappuram and Ponnani. The other parties, the INL and P T A Rahim's National Secular Conference, had been with the LDF for quite a long time. There is nothing to show that they had changed sides. Only Jamat-e-Islami openly favoured the UDF in some of the constituencies,” Chennamangaloor said.
In short, he was suggesting that it were the “liberal, unorgansied and neutral” Muslims who had deserted the Left this time.
Ghosts of Periya and Onchiyam
Another prominent social critic M N Karassery said both anti-Modi and anti-Pinarayi sentiments worked in equal measure to forge such a massive sweep for the UDF. Karassery, however, plays down the Sabarimala effect. “If that was the case why did K Surendran, the most celebrated martyr in the Sabarimala agitation, lose so badly in Pathanamthitta,” he said.
He said there was indeed a strong fear among the minorities about a Modi-led dispensation. “But in constituencies like Vadakara, Kasaragod and Kannur, it was clearly a verdict against the CPM's politics of violence,” Karassery said. “Voters in Kasaragod have not forgotten the slain Youth Congress workers. And T P Chandrasekharan's blood has still not dried, it's still fresh,” Karassery said.
Like Chennamangaloor, Karassery, too, was disturbed by the CPM's selective commitment to the rule of law. “Why was there no haste to implement the Supreme Court verdict in Piravom,” he asked. “And in the case of Muslims, the CPM game plan was to secure all non-League votes. They got it completely wrong this time,” Karassery said.
The Left front had suffered badly whenever it had attempted to seek the help of fundamentalist Muslim formations. Telling examples are 2009 Lok Sabha polls and 2011, assembly elections, when Pinarayi Vijayan cosied up to Abdul Nasser Maudani disregarding the bitter disapproval of V S Achuthanandan.
Coimbatore connection
Even right wing Hindu leaders, though not surprisingly, concur with the liberals on Pinarayi Vijayan's role in the defeat of the LDF. They, however, are not ready to accept the verdict as an anti-Modi one. Hindu Aikya Vedi's K P Sasikala, Sangh Parivar's most shockingly extreme face, said the angry faithful just blindly voted against Pinarayi Vijayan. “They were so angry with the way he tampered with the Hindu faith that they did not even think of the consequences of voting for the UDF,” she said. “The voters were perhaps not convinced of the BJP's winnability. But they still had to vent their anger,” she said.
Here is why Sasikala feels that the verdict was anti-Pinarayi. “If it was not against Pinarayi, why did the CPM lose in Palakkad? Just across the border in Coimbatore, the CPM had won big. (CPM's P R Natarajan had won by 1.79 lakh votes.) People in both these constituencies think almost alike. But this time Pinarayi's wickedness made the difference,” she said.