For the first time after the 'Liberation Struggle' that led to the dismissal of the first Kerala ministry, Kerala is witnessing a direct confrontation between the ruling party and the highly influential community organisation, Nair Service Society (NSS). If in the late 1950s the NSS was part of a large anti-government alliance, now it is a one-on-one combat.
It was triggered on election day, April 6, when the NSS general secretary Sukumaran Nair seemed to abandon his organisation's traditional policy of equidistance. "My belief is that people want a change of government in Kerala. The faithful have been upset for some time. It still persists," Nair said after casting his vote at a booth in Changanassery.
This was seen as a clear call to the members of the Nair community to vote against the LDF.
On Friday, in a sign that the CPM was not ready to forget and forgive Nair's remarks, the party's acting secretary A Vijayaraghavan said the NSS general secretary's words had crossed limits. "It also showed he represents anti-Left politics but we had made it clear that the community he claims to represent would not approve of his stand," Vijayaraghavan said in an article that appeared in Deshabhimani on April 16 (Friday).
Quick came Sukumaran Nair's reply, in the form of an official press release. "The fact is, there was nothing political, religious or casteist in my response to certain media queries on election day," Nair said. "It was the chief minister who later gave it a religious and casteist colour by linking it to gods and deities," he added.
Vijayaraghavan also said the NSS was not concerned about the impact the BJP's communal polarisation and its economic policies were having on its own community members.
"Leaders like Sukumaran Nair should realise that the attempts of community organisations to cooperate with the regressive extreme Hindutva project and economic liberalisation were in fact harming the interests of the poor and the ordinary people within their communities," Vijayaraghavan said in his article.
Nair is dismissive of these comments, and is unapologetic about the NSS's support for economic reforms. "You could have avoided such indirect advice," Nair said, sarcastically. "You perhaps are not aware that right from its beginning, the NSS had never given space for communal polarisation. But when it comes to economic reforms, we have offered maximum cooperation," he added.
Nair also ridiculed Vijayaraghavan's claims that the LDF government had stood for the poor among the forward castes. He said the State Government was obliged to implement the 10 per cent quota for the economically backward among the forward castes after the Centre made a law on these lines in January 2019.
"Even then it took nearly two years for the Kerala government to make an amendment to the Kerala State and Subordinate Service Rules. However, those in power should introspect whether the benefits of such a policy were received by the truly deserving," Nair said.
