Renaissance that never was—LDF mutes experiment to rekindle enlightenment spirit

N Muraleedharan

Thiruvananthapuram

Can spirit of enlightenment be infused into a society by administering a single politically-loaded shot? Can ‘Renaissance’ values be regained by a government-sponsored initiative?

 Anyone with a little understanding of history would not even have hazarded these questions. One, however, is forced to ask them an year after the CPI(M)-Led LDF Government launched a campaign on these lines, in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict lifting the ban on women of menstruating age worshipping at the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple.  

 The Supreme Court earlier this month referred a clutch of petitions seeking review of its landmark judgement to a larger seven-judge bench to have a complete look at the fundamental legal and constitutional issues involved. While, doing so it did not stay last year’s order. This, in a strict legal sense, means that women in 10-50 age are entitled to visit the hill-shrine.

Keen to avoid a politically costly back-to-back confrontation with traditionalists, the  CPI(M) leaders in Kerala now contend that the latest order of the apex court could be interpreted differently. Citing legal opinion they sought and received, they hold that the implied spirit of this ruling is that women can wait till the matter is settled once and for all. 

The apex court order last year triggered a huge political turmoil. The main opposition Congress-led UDF as well as the BJP came out strongly over the issue. They, separately, warned the government against taking pro-active steps to implement the judgement, and wanted it to seek more time from the court. The campaign got heated up as the parliament elections were just a few months away.

As expected, the BJP, with the backing of the Parivar outfits, hit the street mustering   all its strength. As the two-month pilgrimage season began, the BJP and parivar leaders and activists organized resistance at the key entry points to the temple and the holy ‘sannidhanam’ atop.

They declared that no women of ‘restrictive’ age would be allowed to worship at the shrine. As a result, women rights campaigners, including Trupti Desai from Pune, had to abandon their efforts to reach Sabarimala in full media glare. After a while, the situation resulted in ugly confrontations between protesters and police at some sensitive points. A top leader of the BJP who was on the battleground was arrested and locked up. 

Having provoked, the normally circumspect strongman Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was pushed to act hard on the campaigners.  Sending loud and clear signals, he said the Government was bound to implement the apex court order, and, would not give in to the pressures from the ‘reactionary forces’ out to put the clock back. 

It was against this flash point that the CPI (M) and its LDF allies opened a social front over the Sabarimala issue. To start with, they organized a ‘ Women’s Wall’ across the state. It was a big success, as far as optics were concerned. Thousands of women, mobilized by the Left parties and their feeder outfits, stood shoulder-to-shoulder and swore they would put up a stiff battle to defend their rights.

After this show, the government moved to its next act by bringing together an assortment of  social and community outfits. The conglomerate, which comprised a host of caste outfits mostly of the backward classes and Dalits, was later formalized as ‘ Navothana Samithi’, which in  English  was called ‘Renaissance Council”.

This forum was envisaged as a permanent set-up. Its mandate was to make all out efforts to reinvigorate the society with the values of social reform and enlightenment, imbibed by Kerala under the ‘renaissance’  movement spearheaded by its  pioneers like sage-reformer Sree Narayana Guru, at the turn of the 20^th century. 

Since then, much water has flowed down the holy river Pampa, where the Ayyappa pilgrims take the dip before trekking up the hillshrine. The LDF suffered a humiliating defeat in 2019 Lok  Sabha polls. Obviously, its renaissance initiative did not help it much at the hustings.

Unsurprisingly, for most CPI(M) leaders it is something to be muted for time being, if not given a smooth burial. All that the Government, and the party that leads it, is looking forward is a smooth pilgrimage season. The Renaissance can wait for a more politically conducive time for revival. 

(N Muraleedharan is senior journalist and political critic )