Explained | Why are the employees of Malabar Devaswom Board protesting now?

The Malabar Devaswom Board, which is responsible for around 1,500 temples in the northern districts, has a story of an unending struggle by the employees for around 30 years.

A week ago, the Malabar Devaswom Board Employees Union, affiliated to the Centre for Indian Trade Unions and a feeder organisation of the ruling CPI-M, started a protest against the Board's delay in implementing the pay revision. Even though the Kerala Temple Employees Coordination Committee has been protesting for the same cause for several months, the union joining the cause shows the extent of despair the employees felt.

The Malabar Devaswom Board has a story of an unending struggle by the employees for around 30 years. Unlike the Travancore Devaswom Board that governs the temples in the southern districts and the Kochi Devaswom Board that manages the temples in central Kerala, the Malabar Devaswom Board, which is responsible for around 1,500 temples in the northern districts, is rather new.

Long after the Travancore and Kochi Devaswom Boards were formed, the temples in North Kerala, erstwhile Malabar district of the Madras Presidency, were still being controlled by various temple trusts and were governed by the Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments (HR&CE) Act of Madras Presidency. For long, the employees at the temples in this region had no stable income and depended upon peanuts from the respective trusts, other than the 'Dakshina' from devotees.

The Malabar Devaswom Staff Union started the protest raising their issues in 1989. The disparity between the wages of the employees was so huge that a temple help was paid around ₹6 a month while a manager got ₹2000. A report in The Hindu on this situation in 1994 caught the attention of the Kerala High Court that registered a case suo motu.

The court then directed the State to constitute a Malabar Devaswom Board and to set up an umbrella board for all the Devaswom Boards in the State. The court asked to set up a common fund to improve the financial condition of the temples. It called for a special project to be implemented in six months to ensure proper wages for temple employees in North Kerala similar to that of Travancore and Kochi.

Even though the State contested the Order in the Supreme Court, it was rejected citing that the demands of the employees and temples were just. The State sought out reasons not to implement the Order several times and whenever the Bill to constitute Malabar Devaswom Board was brought up in the Assembly, it fell flat.

Around 10 court orders, several contempt of court petitions and nine commissions to study the issue, the Malabar Devaswom Board came into effect officially on October 2, 2008, as an amendment to the HR&CE Act. A pay scale for the employees was set up in March 2009, though the wages were still very low.