Battle of the Equals

PADMA CAFÉ, A MODEST vegetarian restau­rant, was opened in early April in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram city. Usually, it would have made, at best, the city newspapers’ local pages. Instead, the opening hogged the next day’s headlines. The reason was the presence of Shashi Tharoor and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the two high-profile candidates locked in an intense contest from the state capital in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. It is not uncommon for candidates to attend, even uninvited, minor private functions during election time. But this was not just an­other restaurant. It was the latest to join the chain run by the Nair Service Society (NSS), the powerful organisation of the influen­tial upper-caste Nairs that both Tharoor and Chandrasekhar ar­dently woo. Both candidates sought and received the blessings of G Sukumaran Nair, the formidable NSS supremo, who, however, said he would continue his equidistance policy towards all parties. When Tharoor had stepped down as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) to enter Indian politics and contested for the first time in 2009, Sukumaran Nair dismissed him as not a true-blooded Kerala Nair but a “Delhi Nair”. Today, he accepted both Tharoor and Chandrasekhar as genuine Nairs!

Politicians making a beeline for caste and religious leaders, especially during election time, is not unusual. But it is en­grossing to watch the writer-cum-former diplomatTharoor andthe entrepreneur-cum-politician Chandrasekhar, who have hit the rough and mean streets of Indian politics relatively late in their lives. Having climbed down from their elite and cosmopolitan worlds, they are now hardened, tamed and ‘plebeianised’ by the compulsions of mass politics and elections. Tharoor has often re­called how he was dumbfounded when the latter-day Bollywood star Rishi Kapoor asked him about his caste while they were class­mates at Mumbai’s elite Campion School. Chandrasekhar had to check with his mother to know his caste while filing the nomina­tion for Rajya Sabha in 2006. Caste and religion were too hoi polloi to merit discussion in their urbane families.

Today, both Tharoor and Chandrasekhar know about their constituency’s complex configurations of castes and religions like the back of their hand. Moving around in open jeeps, unmindful of the sweltering mercury with permanently smiling faces and folded hands, they follow the politician’s playbook to the T. They savour tea at dusty roadside shacks, tear fiercely into their rivals, embrace astonished onlookers, lift babies and kiss them on cheeks. Tharoor has honed these skills through the past three elections. Chandrasekhar, though a member of Rajya Sabha since 2006, is fac­ing the heat of the streets for the first time but doesn’t look wanting.

Thiruvananthapuram is the only one among the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came second in the last two elections and the Left was relegated to third place. Though Tharoor had a rousing start in his first election in 2009 with a margin of nearly a lakh votes, he escaped by a whisker with just about 15,000 votes next time. However, he completed a hat-trick in style in 2019, with nearly a one-lakh lead again. Chandrasekhar’s entry has turned the contest in Thiruvananthapuram the hottest in the state and rendered it utterly unpredictable. Thiruvanantha­puram has been known for upsetting the electoral ambitions of many titans, including communist legend MN Govindan Nair and the eminent poet ONV Kurup. The local joke is that the city’s presiding deity, Lord Padmanabha, is permanently in his reclining state to guard against being swept off his feet.

The two candidates pull no punches against each other. Chandrasekhar snipes that Tharoor hasn’t done anything for Thiru­vananthapuram despite being the MP for 15 years and promises to elevate the city into a global knowledge hub. Tharoor returns, reeling out his contributions, and asks why Chandrasekhar makes promises only when he seeks votes. Did he do anything for Kerala as a Malayali while he was a Union minister? Tharoor questions. He rubs it in further, saying he knows Chandrasekhar only as a profit-seeking business­man. Chandrasekhar retorts, asking whether he should reveal everything he knows about his opponent. Tharoor complains that poor fisher­men are being bribed for votes. Chandrasekhar sends a defa­mation notice to Tharoor, who responds that he never men­tioned any name. Congress has petitioned about Chandrasekhar’s alleged discrepancies in the election affidavit, which the Election Commission has directed the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to verify. He hits back, saying it is ironic that Congress’ “first family”, which is on trial for “stealing properties”, and a candidate who resigned as minister for his “illegal IPL interests”, talks about disclosures.

Besides the mutual sparring, the rivals keep projecting their respective core competencies. Tharoor attends writers’ conclaves while his opponent meets techies and entrepreneurs and deploys AI to power his campaign. Chandrasekhar checkmates the former diplomat by getting two former diplomats, External Affairs Min­ister S Jaishankar and TP Sreenivasan, India’s former Permanent Representative to the UN, to pilot his campaign. Both compete with each other to project themselves as viswapouran (global citizen) and claim the legacy of VK Krishna Menon, the former defence minister who won from Thiruvananthapuram in 1971.

Despite their striving to prove how different one is from the other, what is striking are their common factors. Neither of the crorepati candidates belongs to Thiruvananthapuram as their roots are in the neighbouring districts of Palakkad and Thrissur. Children of Malayali migrant families, both Tharoor and Chandrasekhar, were born and raised outside Kerala and studied abroad. Though articulate in multiple languages, neither can speak Malayalam well, having lived outside mostly. Both excelled in their academic and professional careers. If Tharoor boasts an illustrious diplomatic and literary background, Chandrasekhar was among the architects of Intel’s path-breaking Pentium chip, pioneered India’s foray into cellular communications and built up a business empire. Both are latecomers to politics; one is a former Union Minister of State (MoS), and the other is currently one. Both start the day with their favourite idli and chutney and are aficionados of music and sport. Tharoor sings and worships the American satirical musician Tom Lehrer. Chandrasekhar plays the guitar and has a framed gold album by his hero, the Texas blues strummer Stevie Ray Vaughan, hanging on his office wall. Tharoor is mad about cricket while his opponent’s passion is F1 racing. If Tharoor describes himself as a “reasonably discerning single malt Scotch sipper”, Chandrasekhar’s favou­rite spirit is Grey Goose Vodka. However, while the Secularist is a committed veggie, the Saffron leader loves his steak best. Having switched to the traditional Malay­ali costume of mundu (dhoti) and juba (kurta) after entering politics, they even turn up accidentally in identical sartorial colours.

More than differences, these similarities make their contest unpredictable and stiff. Beyond their respective political camps, they address the same constituen­cy—the apolitical, young, urban, educated class, and upper castes. Tharoor had a near-monopoly over these sections in the past elec­tions. Chandrasekhar’s chances depend on how much he poaches them this time. Tharoor has bet­ter clout among the minorities, but some think he is no different from Chandrasekhar as he is seen as a “soft Hindu” and the latter a “stern Hindu”. The Left never misses to remind the Muslim voters of Tharoor’s “pro-Israel” and “anti-Hamas” statements. In a move to compensate, Tharoor joins the mass namaz on the occasion of Eid during his electoral campaign.

Chandrasekhar and Tharoor were at a Church of South In­dia meeting where BJP leader PC George asked the priests not to fear the ongoing Directorate of Enforcement (ED) investigation against them. BJP is upbeat about the Catholic Church screening the film The Kerala Story, reviled by Congress and the Left as anti- Muslim and anti-Kerala.

The third candidate, CPI’s Pannyan Raveendran, starkly con­trasts his two rivals. A winner from here in 2005, the 78-year-old former CPI state secretary is a Class VI dropout and has reported assets worth `12 lakh. Known for his simplicity and affability, many hope Raveendran could be a dark horse or a David against the two Goliaths. The Kerala capital is all set to witness one of the country’s most-watched contests in late April.

About The Author

MG Radhakrishnan

MG Radhakrishnan is a journalist based in Thiruvananthapuram