Balancing faith and politics

When the Travancore Devaswom Board announced its plan to organise the Global Ayyappa Sangamam, a global meet of Sabarimala devotees, in September, few expected it to expose another fault line in Kerala’s uneasy relationship between faith and politics. That a Left Front Democratic (LDF) government, which has long been proud of its commitment to rationalism, embraced the language of faith and devotion sparked a wave of reactions, ranging from scepticism and ridicule to outright opposition.

In 2018, the LDF had enforced the Supreme Court verdict allowing women’s entry into Sabarimala despite opposition from many devotees in the State. This cost the Left Front dearly in the 2019 elections. By organising the Global Ayyappa Sangama, the LDF appeared to be conducting a re-branding exercise to reclaim goodwill from the broader Hindu community. To detractors, however, the event appeared to be opportunistic at best and desperate at worst.

At the event, an array of community organisations representing various Hindu groups stood on a public stage with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. There were several empty chairs at the venue, but for the government, the optics clearly mattered more than the attendance.

For a while, the LDF’s strategy seemed to work. The political discourse centred around the support provided by key community organisations to the government, particularly the Nair Service Society (NSS). Realising this, the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) scrambled to repair its ties with the NSS, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the NSS of “turning Left”. For a while, it appeared that the NSS, despite internal criticism, was even inching towards an informal understanding with the SNDP Yogam, another community organisation that leans in favour of the LDF.

However, all this changed when a controversy suddenly erupted. The idols of the dwarapalakas or temple guards, and their pedestals, in the Sabarimala temple suddenly seemed to have lost weight. It appeared that the gold plating on the idols had gone missing. Immediately, there were allegations of theft, manipulated records, and a massive cover-up. The Kerala High Court ordered a detailed investigation into the case.

The full details of the suspected irregularities are still not known. However, the ongoing inventory and expert inspection of Sabarimala temple’s valuables is a key step towards making the temple’s management more transparent. In parallel, a Special Investigation Team, constituted in the wake of an interim report from the Travancore Devaswom Board’s vigilance wing, is conducting an inquiry as well.

The magnitude of the scandal has left several officials of the Board, including at least three Board presidents appointed by the LDF government since 2016, in the line of fire. This fresh wave of allegations, spanning nearly 25 years of temple administration, has thrown the government off balance as well, just when it seemed to have struck a fragile equilibrium with the Hindu community organisations. The controversy has exposed serious lapses by the authorities in overseeing the temple’s affairs, as well as their inability to prevent a network of wrongdoing at Sabarimala involving some TDB officials and some outsiders.

Meanwhile, the organisations that once stood with the LDF for the sake of Sabarimala, including the NSS, find themselves cornered. The NSS is grappling with mounting criticism from people at the grassroots for having offered unconditional support to the LDF. Meanwhile, the SNDP Yogam, which is struggling to retain its credibility amid growing public anger, has demanded an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into all the irregularities at Sabarimala; this has been echoed by the UDF. The NSS too has now called for an impartial probe and urged “punishment without mercy” for those found guilty.

The Opposition has seized the opportunity to allege wrongdoing by the Board and the government. The Congress has demanded that the Devaswom Minister resign, and the BJP, which, from the sidelines, watched the episode unfold, has also swung into campaign mode.

For Kerala, the hill shrine has long symbolised a struggle to balance faith and politics. The latest episode underlines that struggle once again.