The Nair Service Society (NSS) is supporting the most destructive anti-women Anti-Shudra Manuvadam in the name of Shabarimala temple’s sanctity . The Nair men for centuries surrendered the Nair women’s self respect to the Brahmin males in worst Manuvadi system called Sambandam. The Brahmin men exploited the Nair women worse than the slave masters exploited the African American women for centuries. The Brahmin men procreated children in Sambandam and left them to the fate of their own.
The Nairs though are considered to be Savarna in the Kerala society but they do not have any spiritual rights within the temple system. They are the forth Varna called Shudra, who were slaves for long time in history, from the days of Rigveda. They cannot become priests and they cannot interpret the Hindu scriptures called Vedas and Bhagvad Gita. There are no Hindu theological schools, colleges that allow Nairs to study theology, leave alone the lower Shudras (who consider themselves as Avarnas in the Kerala contest). Yet Nairs—particularly Nair men after establishing the Nair Service Societyn (NSS) – remain so backward that they almost live at the feet of Brahmins as spiritual slaves. Such tendency of the Shudras has done great damage to the Shudra social and spiritual culture of equality.
This spiritual slavery of the NSS has come out very clearly on the event of Ayyappa temple entry for women.
Ayyappa is a Shudra God like Beerappa of two Telugu states. Both Ayyappa and Beerappa have the Indo-African roots and they are the descendants of the famous Harappa in whose name the first city of the world was built in the Indus basin. After the Aryan migrants of the Brahmin ancestry invaded India and destroyed that civilization several of Harappa’s descendants migrated to the South. Ayyappa, Beerappa (the shepherd God of Telugu region) and many others who bear such names like Veerappa, Mallappa and so on must have migrated to the South and have done great service to society. Hence they became Godheads.
Thus, Ayyappa in his black dress represents the Shudra-Dravidian culture which has its roots in the Indo-African heritage as against the Indo-Aryan Brahminic Vedic safron dess code. There is no saffron dress code there. Ayyappa like Sirdi Saibaba has become a secular Shudra God to whom mostly only the Shudra-Dalit devotees in black dress visit.
The Anti-women code of this Ayyappa God was imposed by the Namdoodiri Brahmins only in the recent years when they took over the temple priesthood as it was mobilizing huge finances. The Nair men are involved only in the temple management committee. The real pooja work is done by the Brahmin priests and they are the ones who wrote this code that women between 10 and 50 should not enter the temple. In fact the Brahmin priests should be expelled from there and only the Shudras should perform the priesthood functions.
No Shudra temple in the country has such norm that women should not enter. In fact many Shudra goddesses like Pochamma, Kali, Durga never follow man -woman difference norms. All kinds of people visit these temples and Brahmins were never poojaris in those temples.
After the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) got strengthened, as it is a Brahmin headed organization, they started imposing Brahmin priests by displacing the Shudra priests in many Shudra temples. The Ayyappa temple is a classic example, how Brahmins took over this temple and women were denied of the right to enter with a theory that menstruation blood is pollution. They do not consider male sexual discharges as pollution. This is mainly Brahmin theory. This was never a Shudra theory.
The Shudra culture of India, which is the culture of majority people, does not believe in this theory of sexual discharge of female or male being spiritually pollutant. All productive communities world over, never believed this kind of anti-production and procreational theories.
The Shudra belief is that female and male sexual discharges are source of human birth. They are never the source of human death. Thus, woman’s menstrual blood is seen as sacred and source of human regeneration.
The Aryan Brahminism, which never involved in production believed that all production work is pollution. They never realized that ‘without mud there cannot be food’. Food is produced only out of mud. Hence mud is not Anti-God as God himself/herself gets involved in all forms of production.
Today Mohan Bhagwat, the head priest from Nagpur, declared a war on the Supreme Court judgment of man-woman equality at Hindu temples. They actually want that at all temples such restriction on women’s entry should be imposed.
A Shudra productive community like Nair community joining hands with RSS Brahminism has caused historical damage to the Shudra values of India that were nurtured as egalitarian values from the days of Harappa. The equality battle at Ayyappa temple is going to be a battle between Shudraism and Brahminism.
The Shudras of India including Kammas, Reddys, Patels, Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs, Marathas, Kumbhis, Kurmis (of Bihar), Lingayats, Vakkalingas, Modaliyars, Nayakars and so on along with other OBCs must oppose the Brahmin conspiracy of taking back our women to pre-Independence status. All the OBCs in the reserved category must understand the conspiracy of these Brahmin-Bania forces from Delhi to Galli. They want to create conditions against equality which slowly will lead to taking away reservations.
Mohan Bhagwath is driving the country to see that all the Shudras/OBCs/Dalits/Adivasis do not even think about equality in future.
The progressive Nairs, wherever they are, must force the leadership of the NSS to get out of this Brahmin trap. Otherwise the poor agrarian productive Nairs will suffer hugely in future. Particularly the Nair women must be saved from the danger of getting destroyed . The Army of Mohan Bhagawat will drive them to suicidal mode once they believe that their own bodies are full of pollution.
I call upon the progressive Nair women to save that great community women for whom I have great respect as they suffered more than any other Shudra women in Indian history.
Prof. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is Chairman T-MASS and political theorist.
