Oommen Chandy is playing to minority gallery
Several majority communities in Kerala have been complaining for quite some time that the Congress-led UDF Government headed by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy is neglecting their concerns in its supposed urgency to safeguard the interests of minorities. The complaints had started with the constitution of the Cabinet itself. Only eight Ministers in the 20-member Cabinet belong to majority communities, though these communities account for 56 per cent of the total population of the State. The Nair Service Society, an outfit of Hindu upper caste Nairs who constitute over 14 per cent of the population, is convinced that the Government, in which all key posts are held by men from minority communities, has never tried to address the majorities' grievances. This conviction was the reason behind its declaration of an open war some time back against the Congress and the UDF, with which it had maintained a cordial relationship for several decades. The standoff escalated by the day, after a proposal to pacify the NSS by inducting State Congress president Ramesh Chennithala, a prominent Nair in the party, was torpedoed allegedly by the Congress's ‘A' group headed by Mr Chandy. The war reached its peak earlier this week with a newspaper owned and run by Muslim league, the second biggest UDF partner, humiliating the NSS and its founder and general secretary
G Sukumaran Nair, through a fire-spitting editorial. Mr Nair is convinced that it was not just an oversight on the part of the paper's owners that had led to the publishing of the editorial but was the result of a high-level conspiracy. The Muslim league has apologised for the editorial but the NSS said the act was unpardonable. It is a fact that the relationship between Hindu outfits such as the NSS and the Shree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, forum for the highly influential Hindu Ezhavas, with the Government has not been warm ever since Mr Chandy became Chief Minister in May 2011.
However, one of the factors that led to the explosion of that seemingly mild standoff into a war was the support aired by the two Hindu community outfits to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s April 24 visit to Kerala to address a socio-spiritual gathering. The Congress and its minorities-based allies were not pleased with the situation. It is said that the so-called Modi-phobia forced the Congress to suspect that the NSS was getting closer to the Sangh Parivar. The Congress may somehow settle the disputes within it and in the ruling coalition over the induction of Mr Chennithala into the Cabinet soon but that will not be sufficient at this stage to restore the confidence of the majority communities. A section in the Congress is worried that the situation could affect the party's prospects in the coming lok Sabha election, but what the rulers and the Congress should be worrying about is how it is going to damage the peace and harmony in society in God’s Own Country.