Calling the Muslim-majority Malappuram a “special country and a state with a special section of people”, prominent Ezhava community leader Vellappally Natesan has claimed that backward communities “cannot breathe freely” in the Kerala district. The remarks come months after the leader’s remarks on “minority appeasement” in the state drew outrage from Muslim outfits.
Addressing a gathering of the reform movement Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam at Chungathara in Malappuram, its general secretary Natesan said: “I know your issues and troubles. You live in fear among others… facing their jostling, gawking…I don’t think that you can live in Malappuram breathing freely… You cannot even live here after airing your opinions. Malappuram is a special country and it is a state of a special section of people”, he said.
Continuing his speech, Natesan said: “So what happened, even though several years after the Independence? Did the backward communities in Malappuram get an iota of the benefits of independence?”
Referring to a college established by upper caste Hindu group Nair Service Society at Manjeri in Malappuram, he said: “Some of you got education because of that institution. You wonder whether we have got at least a school where you can study and teach. In Malappuram we have representation only in the job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS). We are responsible for this. When others mobilised as vote banks, we could not come together as a vote bank”.
Natesan and his Ezhava community are known for their left leaning. At the same, he is the patron of Bharath Dharma Jana Sena, which has his son Thushar Vellappally as the chairman. The BDJS is an ally of the BJP-led NDA in Kerala.
A meeting of the NDA was held at Natesan’s house in Cherthala in Alappuzha earlier this week, chaired by the newly elected BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar.
Even after the formation of the BDJS, the Natesan family enjoys good rapport with the CPI(M) — particularly Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. After the Sabarimala issue in 2018, the CPI(M) government had formed a renaissance values protection committee with Natesan as its president. Natesan had drawn flak in the past also for his anti-Muslim remarks: in an article he wrote in ‘Yoganadam’, the mouthpiece of SNDP, last June, he claimed that by nominating Muslims to five of Kerala’s nine Rajya Sabha seats, the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front were “appeasing minorities, especially Muslims”.
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Malappuram district is Muslim dominated with 70 percent of the population belonging to that minority segment. Hindus form 27 per cent, while Christians are two percent of the population in the district.
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