“Dress codes are a Rosetta stone to decode social norms and resistance of a time and place.”
– Stanford Report on Dress Code: How the Laws of Fashion Made History by Professor Richard Thompson Ford (2021).
1813. Kerala’s first mass movement against caste discrimination in the erstwhile Travancore kingdom is led by the Nadars, a Hindu backward caste. The demand is for Nadar women to have the right to cover their breasts just like the dominant-caste Nair women. The Maru Marakkal Samaram (Breast Cloth Agitation), also known as the Channar Revolt, rages for nearly half a century, braving violent repression by the Nairs and the royal government. In 1859, under pressure from Charles Trevelyan, the British Governor of Madras, and the large-scale conversion of the Nadar community to Christianity, the Travancore royal government upholds the right of Nadar women to wear the breast cloth. However, until the early 20th century, even dominant-caste Hindu women are not permitted to cover their upper bodies inside temples as a mark of respect to the deity.
Forward to 2024. On December 31, a raging controversy erupts over a suggestion by Swami Satchidananda, the head of the Sivagiri Mutt, that men be allowed to wear shirts inside temples. The Sivagiri Mutt was founded by the saint and social reformer Sree Narayana Guru (1856-1928) in 1904, and its followers, the OBC community of Ezhavas, constitute the largest Hindu community in Kerala (22 per cent of the population).
Swami Satchidananda said that the archaic custom of removing shirts was to ascertain whether those entering temples were wearing the poonool (sacred thread worn by Brahmins). Although Sree Narayana Guru had opposed the custom, every temple in Kerala, including those set up by him, continue to practise it.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who inaugurated the annual pilgrimage to the Mutt, endorsed Swami Satchidananda’s suggestion. This triggered the Nair Service Society (NSS) and other dominant-caste Hindu groups to accuse Vijayan of meddling in temple rituals. Vijayan, a CPI(M) Politburo member and himself born in a Thiyya (as the Ezhavas are known in North Kerala) family, also said in his speech that the Hindutva camp was trying in vain to appropriate Sree Narayana Guru, who had opposed the Sanatana Dharma that entrenched the oppressive four-fold caste hierarchy of chaturvarnya. The BJP’s national leadership condemned Vijayan’s remarks just as it had slammed Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin’s criticism of Sanatana Dharma in 2023.
In an opinion piece in a national daily, the BJP national spokesperson Guru Prakash wrote: “Narayana Guru, without a doubt, remains a tall and popular figure who has enabled Hindu thought, religion, and culture to reinvent themselves. He is, therefore, a popular advocate of Sanatana Dharma.” He added that Vijayan was “clueless about Narayana Guru and Indian Dalit and subaltern history”.
The Sangh Parivar would have loved to use the controversy for a repeat of the mass agitation it led against the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government for revoking the ban on women of menstrual age from entering the shrine at Sabarimala following a Supreme Court judgment in 2018. P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, the then State president of the BJP in Kerala, had even exhorted his party to make use of the “golden opportunity” provided by the revoking of the ban. However, this time, the presence of Sivagiri Mutt on the other side seems to have restrained the Sangh since any adverse move is likely to upset its ongoing “subaltern Hindutva” agenda, intended to woo the backward castes. The ongoing debate also points to the inroads that the Sangh has made and the inherent contradictions within the Sree Narayana movement.
For, although the Sivagiri Mutt called for an end to the ban on shirts inside temples, it disassociated itself from Vijayan’s critique of Sanatana Dharma. “Sanatana Dharma has no links to the chaturvarnya system. It was only because of the existence of Sanatana Dharma that religions like Christianity and Islamism could enter Bharatham,” said Swami Satchidananda. According to him, Narayana Guru’s famous proclamation, “Oru jaathi, oru matham, oru daivam manushyanu [one caste, one religion, one God for humanity]” is itself Sanatana Dharma. The Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), the powerful social organisation founded by Narayana Guru, has also disowned Vijayan’s critique.
Kerala’s reform movements
Sanatana Dharma was once criticised by most Hindu reform movements, including the SNDP. Documents on the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924, the legendary non-violent agitation against the ban on backward castes from walking on the roads around a temple, had referred to all its dominant-caste opponents as Sanatanis. A century later, both the SNDP and the Congress, which led the Vaikom Satyagraha, defend Sanatana Dharma and call Vijayan “ignorant”. Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan even accused Vijayan of “letting Sangh Parivar own Sanatana Dharma, a great part of India’s heritage”. Only the Dalit groups continue to critique Sanatana Dharma. “Sanatana Dharma is nothing more than a rebranding of the inhuman and antisocial caste system,” wrote the noted Dalit scholar Dr T.S. Syam Kumar.
It is interesting how Hindutva ideology has crept into community organisations that once pioneered progressive internal reforms and opposed orthodoxy. Narayana Guru, considered the architect of the Kerala Renaissance, led a relentless crusade in theory and practice against the Hindu caste system and Brahmin hegemony. Yet, unlike Jyotiba Phule or E.V. Ramaswamy Periyar, Sree Narayana Guru remained an ardent follower and preacher of the Vedanta and Advaita. He defied orthodox Hindu customs by becoming the first non-Brahmin to consecrate idols and set up temples. Credited with a “radical reimagining of religion”, Sree Narayana Guru described himself as unattached to any religion and propagated the importance of education and industrialisation.
Nevertheless, Sree Narayana Guru’s is a complex legacy, and critics have pointed to elements of Sanskritisation in his historic attempts to cleanse the Ezhava caste of its “primitive and archaic” customs and gods and replace them with those of the Hindu pantheon. Although the attempts were to facilitate the community’s upward social mobility, they indirectly validated aspects of orthodox Hinduism.
Perhaps owing to this, Sree Narayana Guru became acceptable to both secular and religious camps. Despite espousing Narayana Guru’s “non-religious spirituality”, there have been forces within the SNDP from the beginning who were aligned to a larger Hindu identity and mobilisation, especially among its elites. In the 1950s, SNDP general secretary R. Shankar, who later became a Congress Chief Minister, joined hands with Mannathu Padmanabhan, the reformist founder of the NSS, to launch the short-lived Hindu Maha Mandalam, Kerala’s first organisation intended to unify all Hindus.
In contrast, a movement led by Sree Narayana Guru’s prominent disciple, “Sahodaran” (Brother) Ayyappan, strongly condemned Hindu orthodoxy, including Sanatana Dharma, and even espoused atheism. Ayyappan called for a change of Sree Narayana Guru’s famous doctrine to “Jaathi venda, matham venda, deivam venda manushyanu [No religion, no caste, no God for humanity]”. Ayyappan was derisively called “Pulayan Ayyappan” (Dalit Ayyappan) by the elites in the Ezhava community for interdining with Dalits. Subsequently, the SNDP gravitated to the Congress while the Ezhava community stayed with the communists.
Things changed after the BJP’s political ascent under Narendra Modi. In 2016, the SNDP’s current general secretary, Vellappally Natesan, launched a new political outfit, the Bharath Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS). His son, Thushar Vellappally, is the president of the BDJS, which is a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Thushar Vellappally was the NDA’s Lok Sabha candidate from Wayanad in 2021 (against Rahul Gandhi) and from Kottayam in 2024.
Natesan, 87, a wealthy contractor, has, for over 25 years, been the powerful and outspoken general secretary of the SNDP and the Sree Narayana Trust, which runs many educational and medical institutions. Although an ardent advocate of Hindu unity and a critic of “minority appeasement”, he is known for his flip-flops. Natesan was all praise for Modi initially but distanced himself from the BDJS after his son took to the NDA. He backed the BJP stir against women’s entry into Sabarimala at first but backtracked later to support the LDF government against the agitation. He even headed the “Renaissance Forum” formed by the LDF government to oppose the dominant castes–led Sabarimala agitation in which even his wife and son participated. Yet, later, he lambasted the government for inviting the people’s wrath by opening the shrine to women.
Sree Narayana Guru famously proclaimed “Oru jaathi, oru matham, oru daivam manushyanu [one caste, one religion, one God for humanity]”
Currently, even as he backs the right to wear shirts inside temples, Natesan differs with Vijayan—to whom he is close—on Sanatana Dharma. Natesan perfectly embodies the complexities and contradictions in the Sree Narayana movement, which the BJP attempts to capitalise on. The once pro-Left community has massively voted for the NDA, as is evident from the latter’s increased vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. According to the Lokniti-CSDS survey, the NDA garnered 32 per cent of the Ezhava vote, up by 11 per cent from 2019, significantly contributing to the LDF’s debacle.
Ironically, the 111-year-old NSS, despite its alignment with the Sangh on many matters, has politically kept away from the BJP. Sukumaran Nair, NSS general secretary, repeatedly proclaims its policy of “equidistance” from all political parties, although the Nair community has gravitated substantially towards the BJP, especially after the Sabarimala agitation in which the NSS was a prime mover. The Lokniti-CSDS Survey showed Nair votes to the NDA rising by 2 per cent to reach 45 per cent in the 2024 election. Sukumaran Nair’s distance from the BJP is believed to be due to his fears of the wealthy NSS being devoured by the Sangh. The NSS runs hundreds of educational and other institutions, and its budget for 2024 alone was Rs.158 crore.
What will the be eventual outcome?
All eyes are on Vijayan to see if he will convert his rhetoric in support of Sree Narayana Guru and his anti-caste philosophy into a reality. He has an excellent opportunity now to end the long-standing Brahmin monopoly in the appointment of priests to Kerala’s largest and richest temples, including Sabarimala and Guruvayur. This continues even 137 years after Sree Narayana Guru created a revolution by daring to fight caste discrimination. On the night of Sivaratri in February 1888, Sree Narayana Guru, then a young ascetic, leapt into the Neyyar River at Aruvippuram near Thiruvananthapuram and emerged with a piece of stone. He consecrated the stone as a Sivalingam and installed it on the riverbank, thus becoming the first non-Brahmin to do so. When the enraged dominant castes questioned this, Narayana Guru replied: “I installed an Ezhava Siva, not a Brahmin one.” After setting up a temple for the idol, Sree Narayana Guru inscribed the famous line: “This is the model abode where people live in fraternity, devoid of differences over caste or hatred of other religions.”
In 1936, the ban on backward castes entering temples was ended in the erstwhile Travancore kingdom after the historic Vaikom Satyagraha led by Mahatma Gandhi and Sree Narayana Guru. It took nearly half a century after Independence for non-Brahmins to be appointed as priests. In 2018, the Vijayan government appointed the first batch of Dalit priests after implementing reservation in the State-constituted Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), set up in 1949, which runs more than 1,200 temples.
Yet, even now, only Namboodiris (Malayali Brahmins) are appointed as Melsanthi (chief priest) in the TDB’s most prominent temples. In Sabarimala, caste is the first codified criterion for Melsanthi appointment. Qualified backward caste candidates whose applications to the post were rejected by the TDB based on their caste have been fighting against the discrimination in courts for many years.
The Supreme Court awaits the LDF government’s response to a special leave petition filed by three candidates belonging to the Ezhava community after the Kerala High Court dismissed their plea in February 2024. Once bitten by the Sabarimala agitation, the government appears twice shy to change the “custom”. However, this time around, no major political or social organisation is likely to oppose the ending of caste discrimination.
Apart from its ongoing subaltern Hindutva project, the Sangh Parivar has long supported the appointment of priests irrespective of caste. This is central to its universal Hindu mobilisation agenda and the construction of a “coherent Hindu identity”. The RSS was the prime mover behind the historic Paliyam Proclamation of 1985 signed by prominent Namboodiri leaders, which called for the appointment of backward caste priests, recasting caste from an “ascribed birthright” to an “achieved right”. Yet, no governments have ventured yet to end the discrimination.
Will the LDF government dare to address this caste discrimination and uphold Kerala’s progressive legacy as the Communist Party marks its centenary in India this year? The answer may redefine the State’s identity in an era of shifting caste and political alignments.
(M.G. Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram, has worked with various print and electronic media organisations. Courtesy: Frontline, a fortnightly English language magazine published by The Hindu Group of publications headquartered in Chennai, India.)
