Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) leader N.K. Premachandran’s remark that “women entered Sabarimala after eating parotta and beef” is more than a casual insult. It reflects how far Kerala’s political class has drifted from the ideals of its own social revolution.
In one careless sentence, he trivialised a historic moment of women’s assertion and reduced it to a question of food, faith, and impurity. By invoking “beef”, a word loaded with caste and communal meaning, Premachandran played straight into the hands of the very forces Kerala’s reform movements spent a century resisting.
Kerala was built on the ruins of caste walls. From Sree Narayana Guru’s temple-entry reforms to Ayyankali’s struggles for Dalit dignity and women’s access to public spaces, the state’s progress was forged through battles against the notions of purity and pollution — ideas that Premachandran has now carelessly echoed.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that women of all ages had the right to enter Sabarimala, it was not a verdict against faith but a reaffirmation of the Constitution. What followed was a violent cultural backlash led by the Sangh Parivar and temple orthodoxy. Women who tried to enter faced mob fury. They were vilified, hunted, and humiliated. And now, years later, a self-proclaimed socialist joins that chorus by mocking those women for what they ate.
Whose side is N.K. Premachandran on? Not the women who fought for equality. Not the Constitution. Not the reformist spirit that built modern Kerala. He stands with the priestly classes, the Pandalam royals, and those who see women as defilers of sanctity and beef as a marker of sin.
This is the tragedy of our times. Progressive politics has decayed into cultural opportunism. The Revolutionary Socialist Party, once a splinter of the Marxist movement, now panders to temple populism and caste-coded sentiment in the name of faith. The vocabulary of equality has been replaced by the vocabulary of appeasement.
Premachandran’s words are not a slip. They reveal a deeper truth: even among Kerala’s secular and socialist elites, patriarchy and caste pride still run deep. The Sabarimala controversy exposed this hypocrisy more brutally than any election ever could. When tested, too many “progressives” chose the comfort of orthodoxy over the discomfort of justice.
The women who entered Sabarimala did not desecrate the temple. They sanctified the Constitution. They walked where patriarchy said they could not — and they did it at enormous personal cost. Mocking them today is not just cruel; it is an act of political cowardice.
Kerala’s true legacy lies with reformers, not reactionaries. The state that once led India in literacy, rationalism, and social reform deserves leaders with courage, not those who trade conviction for votes or dignity for populism.
Premachandran’s statement deserves condemnation not because it is tasteless, but because it betrays the very idea of Kerala.
Absolutely hit the bullseye KA Shaji . It’s high time these so called socialists introspected to find out what they have become . Or is that Premachandran has been too long in Parliament and been enjoying its luxuries that he hankers for more and wishes to cross over to the saffron brigade ?