From K.K. Nair to Gyanesh Kumar: Kerala’s Hindutva connections

There is a Malayalam saying which roughly means, “There is no kashayam (Malayalam for decoction) without ginger.” In everyday usage, it means that somehow or other, a Malayali will be found in almost everything.

If one studies the growth of Hindutva in India, one may be tempted to give this proverb a political twist: wherever the history of Hindutva has taken an important turn, there seems to have been a Malayali somewhere in the background.

This is not to suggest that Malayalis invented Hindutva. They certainly did not. But their presence in several important episodes of India’s Hindu religious and political history is striking.

Take Buddhism. The Buddha was born in Lumbini, in present-day Nepal. Yet Buddhism became a major religion in India, helped greatly by the patronage of rulers such as Emperor Ashoka. Archaeological and historical evidence also points to a strong Buddhist presence in what is now Kerala.

That period is remembered, at least in some accounts, as one in which caste distinctions were less rigid, and people were regarded more simply as human beings. Then came Adi Shankara from Kaladi, near Kochi, probably in the eighth century.

Shankara travelled across India in what is traditionally described as his Digvijaya, or victorious journey. He is traditionally credited with establishing four major monastic centres, or mathas, associated with the four corners of India: Sringeri in the south, Puri in the east, Dwaraka in the west, and Jyotirmath in the north.

Hindu tradition also associates him with the decline of Buddhism in many parts of India. As Buddhism declined in India, its adherents carried the religion to other parts of Asia, where it eventually flourished.

Some historians have argued that the prohibition on crossing the seas was intended to prevent Indians from coming into contact with Buddhists abroad. By then, Buddhism had declined sharply in India but was flourishing elsewhere. This explanation, however, remains a matter of historical interpretation rather than settled fact.

Shankara’s connection with Badrinath remains visible even today. The temple is traditionally associated with him, and its chief priest, known as the Rawal, has traditionally been a Namboothiri from Kerala. A Malayali therefore continues to preside over rituals at one of Hinduism’s most sacred shrines in the Himalayas.

Which brings us to the controversy that erupted last week.

Former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi objected to the concert-style music and DJ performances held near Badrinath during the Devbhoomi Cultural Festival on September 19 and 20. The festival was organised as an Indian Army initiative under Operation Sadbhavana, in collaboration with the Chamoli district administration and the Uttarakhand Tourism Department.

Joshi pointed out that even the blowing of a conch is traditionally restricted at Badrinath. He described the trend as “baazaru sanskriti”, or commercialised culture, and called for similar events near sacred places to be stopped.

The most politically consequential Malayali connection came much later, during the Ayodhya dispute.

K.K. Nair (Kandangalathil Karunakaran Nair), a Malayali civil servant, was the District Magistrate of Faizabad when an idol of Ram Lalla was placed inside the Babri Masjid on the night of December 22–23, 1949. The Supreme Court’s judgment in the Ayodhya dispute records that Nair opposed the State government’s direction to remove the idol, citing the potential for loss of life.

The episode became one of the early milestones in the long Ayodhya dispute. Nair eventually left government service and entered politics. He joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the present-day Bharatiya Janata Party, and was elected to the Lok Sabha. His wife, Shakuntala Nair, too, entered politics and won a Lok Sabha seat from Uttar Pradesh.

Nothing did more to transform Hindutva from an ideological current into a mass political force than the Ayodhya movement. And there, again, was a Malayali.

Then came the UPA years and the 2G spectrum controversy. On September 26, the country remembered former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his birth anniversary. One of the controversies that seriously damaged his government was the CAG’s calculation of a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore from the allocation of 2G spectrum.

That figure became a powerful weapon in the campaign led by Anna Hazare against the UPA government. The CAG’s report had arrived at the Rs 1.76 lakh crore figure as the highest of three estimates based on different methodologies.

Vinod Rai, who headed the CAG, was not a Malayali, but he was a Kerala-cadre IAS officer and had begun his career as a sub-collector in Thrissur.

Saying that the country “lost” Rs 1.76 lakh crore was somewhat like saying that VD Satheesan lost billions because, instead of entering politics, he did not become a businessman like M.A. Yusuff Ali. A hypothetical earning is not the same thing as an actual loss.

And now another Kerala-cadre officer is in the headlines: Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

The Indian Express recently reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally raised objections at least 14 times in ten months over issues involving voter registration, deletions and electoral software. The newspaper reported that the Special Intensive Revision process had struck more than 13 crore names from draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories.

It would be unfair to compare Gyanesh Kumar directly with Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who was the Diwan of Travancore. Yet Kerala’s electoral history offers an interesting precedent.

Travancore was among the earliest Indian princely states to introduce elections. The early electoral system was far from democratic by today’s standards. In the first four elections, held in 1922, 1925, 1928 and 1931, representation in general seats was grossly disproportionate to the population of different communities. Historical accounts of the period show that Christians, who numbered about 16 lakh, secured seven of the 23 elected seats in 1922; Nairs, numbering about 8.7 lakh, secured 12. Ezhavas, despite numbering about 8.7 lakh, had no representation, while Muslims, numbering about 3.5 lakh, initially had no representation and secured one seat in 1928.

The system eventually changed under pressure from the Nivarthana Prakshobham, or Abstention Movement. M.K. Kumaran, in his biography of former Chief Minister R. Shankar, writes:

“It was Sir Mohammed Habeebulla, who was appointed Diwan during the Nivarthana revolt, who presided over the administrative forms in such a way as to please the combination of communities.”

Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who succeeded Habeebulla, conducted the administration and elections in his own authoritarian style. His eventual departure from Travancore, following the famous attack in which his nose was cut, is history.

There is yet another Malayali connection.

On September 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote articles for several newspapers to mark the birth centenary of Ashok Singhal, the VHP leader who played a central role in the Ayodhya movement.

The VHP itself was founded in 1964. Among its founding figures was Swami Chinmayananda, born Balakrishna Menon in Kerala. He was nominated as its first acting president. The inaugural meeting in Mumbai was held at Sandeepani Sadhanalaya, the ashram associated with Chinmayananda, and M.S. Golwalkar was among those involved in the formation of the organisation.

So, from Shankara to Chinmayananda, from K.K. Nair to Vinod Rai and now Gyanesh Kumar, Kerala has repeatedly appeared in chapters of India’s religious, administrative and political history that had consequences far beyond the State.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that Malayalis caused these developments. But it would be equally difficult to deny that, in the great Indian story, there is no kashayam without ginger.