Many newspapers wrestle with a riddle: who is our reader? The answer holds significance because the reader profile often determines what a newspaper covers with zeal.

Once in a while, you stumble upon initiatives that throw up an answer to the question: what makes an ideal reader?

One such tireless effort was apparent when I met Professor G. Mohan Gopal, a former director of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, and the former director of the National Judicial Academy of the Supreme Court of India. With postgraduate and doctoral degrees in law from Harvard University, Prof Gopal is one of the most lucid commentators on the Constitution and social justice.

Prof Gopal mentioned how difficult it was to elicit clarifications should a reader have some doubts after reading a newspaper report and even after writing to the publication. I persuaded him to talk about it. What followed was an account of a committed attempt at seeking clarifications.

On June 9, 2024, soon after the general election results, The Hindu had published an article on the basis of a CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey. The article analysed the Lok Sabha results in Kerala in which the Congress-led front bagged 18 of the 20 seats; the BJP secured its first parliamentary seat in the state while the CPI(M)-led ruling Left Front won one seat.

Referring to the voting patterns, the article concluded: “The increase in BJP’s vote share was made possible by a slight change in the demographic voting patterns. Close to a majority from among the Nairs (45%) voted for the BJP/NDA. The Ezhava community, the leading Hindu caste group in Kerala that traditionally supports the LDF, also moved to the BJP (32%). This adversely affected the LDF’s election prospects. Moreover, for the first time, 5% of the Christian minority voted for the BJP. Despite these shifts, the UDF retained its traditional vote share of Muslims, Christians and other caste groups, which helped it to secure 18 seats.”

The objective of this column is not to contest the assertions made in the article or the data provided by CSDS-Lokniti. In order to highlight the hurdles inquiring readers can face, this column is confining itself to reporting the experience narrated by Prof Gopal when he tried to seek clarifications.

Prof Gopal sought the clarifications not merely to satisfy his curiosity but also because he realised that the article’s conclusions, arrived at on the basis of what he felt were questionable or hazy data, could drive a wedge between Muslims and the Ezhavas, an influential Hindu caste group that has been largely supporting the Left in Kerala. The issue is of particular significance in the southern state where a controversy raged on whether any of the secular parties had colluded with the sangh parivar in at least one seat in Kerala in the 2024 general election — the answer to which can have far-reaching consequences in a state that has more or less kept the BJP at bay so far.

Since then, Prof Gopal has been trying to get to the bottom of the projection that 32% of the Ezhava community might have voted for the BJP-led NDA in Kerala.

Prof Gopal tried to verify the figure attributed to the Ezhava community. He found that the information uploaded on the CSDS/Lokniti website did not refer to any participant in the post-poll survey as being from the Ezhava community.

This threw up the intriguing question: how did the article arrive at the assumption that 32% of the Ezhava community might have switched to the NDA?

On July 4, taking time off consequential research on the judicial system, Prof Gopal emailed CSDS-Lokniti, asking how many respondents who took part in the post-poll survey conducted in Kerala had identified themselves as Ezhavas or Thiyas (the name of a North Kerala community which is sometimes used in common parlance as a synonym of Ezhava or vice-versa).

It took multiple attempts to elicit a reply. “After several reminders, on July 23, I was provided the following CSDS-Lokniti explanation: ‘There were 90 Ezhava respondents in our survey. In the report that is uploaded on our website code 455 (Toddy Tapper) is for Ezhavas of a total of 666 sample from Kerala’,” Prof Gopal said.

“While it is indeed correct that the report on the post-poll survey uploaded on the CSDS-Lokniti website records that 90 participants are classified as ‘toddy tappers’ under code 455, the response does not answer the question whether, and, if so, how many participants in the post-poll survey identified themselves as Ezhavas,” Prof Gopal pointed out.

“This is because the terms, ‘toddy tappers’ and ‘Ezhavas’, are not synonymous. All (or even many) Ezhavas are not toddy tappers. As far back as 143 years ago, the 1881 Travancore census recorded that only some 7.4 per cent of the Ezhava population was engaged in the vocation of toddy drawing/tapping. The 1931 census (the last caste-based census) shows that this percentage came down to some 3.8 per cent by 1931. Almost a century later, only some 15,000 or so persons in Kerala are estimated in 2023 to still have toddy tapping as their occupation. Even if every single one of them is Ezhava, that would still constitute only an infinitesimal proportion of the Ezhava community,” Prof Gopal added.

The respondents had replied to Question Z7 of the CSDS-Lokniti questionnaire, “What is your Caste/Jaati biradari/tribe name?” “‘Toddy tapper’ is not a caste or community name, certainly not in the Kerala context. It is, therefore, highly improbable that any bona fide participant from Kerala would voluntarily identify his or her caste/jaati/biradari as ‘toddy tapper’,” Prof Gopal said.

“We need transparency on the factual basis on which CSDS-Lokniti is now asserting that the 90 persons who are classified as toddy tappers are Ezhavas. Did they self-identify as Ezhavas? If so, why were they classified under code 455 as ‘toddy tappers’? Alternatively, did they self-identify as toddy-tappers? If so, on what basis are they now being identified as Ezhavas for the purposes of the analysis reported in The Hindu on June 9?” Prof Gopal asked.

He feels that it appears that Ezhavas have been singled out for the label by CSDS/Lokniti. For instance, the Telugu-speaking Gowda, Gavalla, Setti Balija, Edina, Krishna Bali castes, which are also widely said to have been associated with toddy tapping, are rightly enumerated in the CSDS-Lokniti survey by their caste name (code 222), not as ‘toddy tappers’, Prof Gopal pointed out.

“The thoughtless and erroneous description of all toddy-tappers as Ezhavas (and all Ezhavas as toddy-tappers) carries forward a highly casteist and dishonest trope that has for decades been used to negatively stereotype Ezhavas as toddy-tappers. As working on alcohol has for centuries been considered in the varna system as a justification for untouchability, this trope has been used for centuries to make and keep Ezhavas as ‘untouchables’, resulting in the poorest amongst them being enslaved and sold in the slave trade. The reality is that there is no single vocation that defines the Ezhava community, members of which engage in a wide variety of work,” Prof Gopal pointed out.

CSDS-Lokniti has also not divulged the names of the six parliamentary constituencies/six assembly constituencies/six polling stations where the survey was conducted in Kerala. In the interests of transparency, this information should be made public as it could reveal any inherent bias in the constitution of the sample, he said.

“Sadly, given The Hindu’s credibility and the purported precision of the conclusion (32% of the Ezhava vote has moved to the BJP), the June 9 report has become pivotal in building a powerful narrative in Kerala that the Ezhava vote, a traditional progressive pillar of the Left in Kerala, has moved to the far-Right,” Prof Gopal said.

The matter is not just academic. “As the Muslim community could quite easily be led by such a narrative to believe that a very large section (some one-third) of the Ezhavas have fallen prey to Islamophobia, it has the dangerous potential of endangering social harmony in Kerala by creating a schism between the traditionally fraternal Ezhava and Muslim communities which together constitute nearly one half of Kerala’s population,” Prof Gopal said.

On August 5, Prof Gopal said, he wrote a detailed letter to The Hindu, requesting that the accuracy of the CSDS-Lokniti finding discussed in the article be “rigorously verified, its basis be made fully transparent, and any necessary correction be published promptly.”

Since then, until December 5 — that is for over 120 days — Prof Gopal has not received any reply to his letter. Nor is he aware of any explanation or clarification having been published in the newspaper. This columnist sought The Hindu’s comment on the issue twice — on October 7 and on November 19 — but had not received any response till December 5.

The purpose of this column is not to blame the newspaper, the pollsters or the writers of the article but to ensure clarity. When this columnist was editor, it is possible that several readers with similar grievances have been treated similarly. But conscientious readers like Prof Gopal, indispensable to preserve the credibility of newspapers, remind us of the need to reform ourselves and respond to readers at the earliest.

R. Rajagopal is editor-at-large, The Telegraph