Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday squarely blamed ‘‘proponents of caste supremacy’’ in Kerala for having used the issue of entry of women of reproductive age to Sabarimala as a pretext to reverse the singular social gains of the renaissance movement.
In an oblique attack on social organisations that lend weight to the Hindu right wing campaign to prevent women between the age of 10 and 50 from entering the temple, Mr Vijayan said the champions of caste hegemony in Kerala aspired to reinvent a feudalistic social order based on Varna.
His observations at a seminar on ‘‘Ultra-conservative drift in Kerala society’’ was widely viewed as an attempt to marshal secular forces to counter what he described as a brazen attempt to divide Kerala into lines of caste and religion.
The Chief Minister said the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had joined the agitation belatedly and as a political afterthought. The organisations had initially advocated the entry of women of all ages to Sabarimala. They welcomed the momentous Supreme Court on September 28.
However, the BJP and RSS were ‘‘scalded’’ when the patrons of ‘‘caste hegemony’’ rejected the apex court order in the name of defending unjustifiable archaic customs that ran against the grain of the universal principle of gender equality.
They sensed a political opportunity and quickly flipped over and accepted the position of the supporters of caste ascendancy without a whimper of protest. The Chief Minister slammed the decision of the Kerala High Court in 1991 that disallowed the entry of women of reproductive age to the temple. He said women had worshipped at Sabarimala without any hindrance before 1991.
The judge who passed the illegal order had waited to do so till a fellow justice, who objected the move, retired.
Earlier in the 1980s, the RSS, backed by casteist forces, had attempted in vain to create a communal confrontation in Kerala by demanding that a minority community remove a symbol of their faith from Nilackal in Sabarimala.
Now, the same forces were trying to rally the majority community in the name of faith.