The Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, spoke the truth when he said that the inhuman and casteist taxes on people’s breasts and heads were imposed by the Sanatana Dharma or the so-called Vedic Varnashrama Dharma, to divide them. The communist leader was speaking at an event held to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Nadar women’s struggle for the right to cover their breasts in erstwhile Travancore, the southern princely state in present day Kerala. He was joined by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin at the event held at Nagercoil in March 2023. But even today, leading writers and historiographers ignore such crucial events and episodes related to the renaissance struggles and modernity of South India. They often contest the caste subjugation that such practices promoted by reducing the breast-cloth struggles to the influence of Victorian morality.
The initiative of abolishing breast tax was taken up in 1812 by the missionary and colonial British administrator Colonel John Munro, whom CM Stalin remembered at the Nagercoil meet. Colonel Munro was the British Resident and Diwan of Travancore and Kochi from 1811-1813. He forced the regent queens of Travancore to end the barbaric taxes inflicted upon the Avarna, the castes outside the Varna system, who have lived in the region from the early middle ages after the suppression of Buddhism in Kerala till the modern age under the Brahmanical regime. As I have previously written in my books Sahodaran Ayyappan: Towards a Democratic Future, Puthan Keralam: The Buddhist Foundation of Kerala Culture, and Buddhism and Kerala (edited), Buddhist Bahujans who did not submit to Brahmanism were humiliated with these taxes and the caste practices of untouchability. They were not allowed decent clothing and ornaments, access to public roads, and to cover their breasts before caste Hindus.
The breast-cloth struggles, called Thol Seelai Porattam in Tamil and Mel Seela Kalapam and/or Channar/Nadar Revolt in Kerala, began with the Nadar Christian women wearing blouses. This made the other Nadar women also want to cover their breasts. Many brave Nadar women like Sakuntaladevi, Yesu Adial, and Neeti Adial became martyrs in the long struggle. The most vibrant, yet hard, phase of the agitation, MSS Pandian wrote in 2016, was fought by the Nadars from 1822 to 1859, when the Travancore regime that was ruling Nanjilnad (now part of Kanyakumari and Nagercoil districts of Tamil Nadu) released the official sanction for all women, especially Avarna women, to use breast-cloths in public.
The struggle was also accented by the community reforms initiated by Ayya Vaikundar or Vaikunda Swami, a leader of the Nadar community who established the Society for Equality (Samatva Samajam) in 1836, trying to bring together the untouchable Avarna castes, even before Jyotiba Phule founded his Satyashodhak Samaj in the 1850s. A parallel can also be seen in the social reforms and cultural struggles of Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, a legendary leader of the people from the Avarna Ezhava community, from 1840s to 1870s in Kayamkulam region of Travancore. The Ezhavas had Buddhist legacies up until the early middle ages when Brahmanism established its militia and sexual colonies among the Shudra women of Kerala. Arattupuzha initiated a series of struggles for breast-cloth and ornament-rights of Avarna women in Karthikappally and Karunagapally taluks.
The decree by Travancore Regent Gowri Parvathy Bai allowing persons of all castes to wear gold and silver ornaments / Drishya Bhoomika Exhibition
Shared pasts and histories have brought together the two CMs Pinarayi and Stalin at a time when the Sanatana Dharma and/or caste Hindutva discourse is on the rise across the country. The united efforts of the south Indian leaders may become a resistance to the communal and divisive agenda of cultural nationalism and Vedic and Vedantic obscurantism of Varnashrama Dharma.
Stalin, who belongs to the Shudra Isai Vellalar caste, projects the Dravidian model which has its foundations in the critical paradigm of Periyar and the Neo Buddhist movement of the Dalit leader Pandit Ayyothee Thassar (also spelled Iyothee) who published the journal Dravida Pandian and Tamilan in the 19th century and wrote Indirar Desa Sarithram or Buddhist History of South India.
Pinarayi, who hails from the Avarna Thiyya/Ezhava caste, brings to the table the secular and polyphonic legacy of Narayana Guru and his anti-caste teachings. The Neo Buddhism of Guru’s leading disciples Sahodaran Ayyappan and Mitavadi Krishnan is also a key critical and rationalist praxis for the greater struggle and resistance to caste and its hegemonic, homogenising religion. A southern pressure on the Bharatiya Janata Party's power centres can be exerted if the old brothers from the Sangam age unite and stand together.
Savarna historiographers like Manu S Pillai contest the people’s narratives around Nangeli, an Avarna woman who defied the casteist system of breast tax. He says that women of all Varnas and castes roamed freely without breast clothes, and suggests that women in Kerala were sexually liberated till the European missionaries arrived. He thus implies that Nangeli’s caste status had negligible import. That her fight was not for the reclamation of human dignity but merely a class struggle against an oppressive tax system.
It is a line that is popular among many Savarna intellectuals who come from liberal or Left traditions. TK Anandi, a savarna woman who is the gender consultant of the Kerala government, wrote in the state’s Public Relations Department’s magazine Janapadham in 2019 that breast tax and Nangeli’s sacrifice were issues of economics. Like Pillai, she too argued that Nangeli could not afford to pay breast tax, and that it had nothing to do with dignity or honour.
The imposition of the Varnashrama Dharma began from the seventh and eighth centuries onwards, Brahmanism made inroads in Tamilakam through the Saiva and Vaishnava Bhakti frenzy, in competition with the Mahayana forms of Buddhism. In the Sangam age before the Brahman invasion, driven by the democratic and egalitarian values of Buddhism, there were several prominent women poets and intellectuals like Avvaiyar, Kakaipadiniyar, and Nachchellaiyar, according to ancient Sangam literary texts.
Women in the Sangam age used tazha udai or organic leaf-woven fabrics, cotton, and even imported silk from Kalinga and Kanchi. They also wore ornaments and led cosmopolitan lifestyles. However, Brahmanical patriarchy gradually usurped political power and patronage, and annihilated the traces of Buddhism and its democratic culture.
In Kerala, this was severe, and persecutions were carried out to establish the anti-human and anti-democratic Brahmanical patriarchy through the Dandaniti (rules for punishment) of Manusmriti by the 8th century. This included a graded system of sexual slavery in which subordinated caste Shudra women were expected to be available to men from the upper castes, especially Brahmins.
There is seldom any mention of the fact that the Savarna or caste Hindu women did not have to remove their breast cloth before the Avarna, who formed a vast majority of people. Notably, Shudra women (mostly Nairs, a dominant community that enjoys much social capital in present day Kerala) had to uncover their breasts before Kshatriyas and Brahmins as an act of submission dictated by the Varna hierarchy. But they never had to pay a tax for covering their breasts in public places. Brahmanical patriarchy had even enforced a cloak called ghosha and an umbrella called marakuda for Brahmin women to cover themselves completely when in public. This is by no means a sexually liberated society but indeed a perverted and exploitative system created for the enjoyment of men.
Execution stones or Kazhuveti Kallu that were used to persecute the Buddhists and erected as a warning to the Avarna to keep away from Brahmanical Hindu temples can be found at many places in Kerala, from Thirunelli in Wayanad to Tiru Koditanam near Vazhappally in Changanassery. In Asamannoor, near Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district, the Vattezhuthu inscription, derived from Asokan Brahmi scripts, on an execution stone tells the date of a casteist killing in the 10th century.
It was much later, in the 17th century, after the foreign invasions and frequent wars in Venad and Travancore, that a breast tax was imposed on Avarna women who wished to cover their breasts in public. Tax collectors were appointed by the Varnashrama regime.
Nangeli, the brave Avarna woman from the Ezhava community in Cherthala of Alappuzha district, defied this casteist custom by chopping off her breasts and bleeding to death when the tax collector arrived to penalise her. Her husband Tiru Kandan or Kandappan was away. On his return, he jumped into her pyre and sacrificed his life too.
This is believed to be the only instance of a male partner doing a reverse Sati. Although, this may not be part of the University-curated, peer-reviewed or so-called ‘formal’ history, it is an integral part of the oral histories and memories of the subjugated communities.
Even today, the relatives and great granddaughters of Nangeli live in and around Cherthala town. Social leaders from C Kesavan to KR Gouri Amma, hailing from the Ezhava community, have invoked Nangeli in their autobiographical writings. There are similar narratives and local lore among the tribals of the Western Ghats like Mala Arayar.
The prevalence of similar local narratives and memories among the Bahujans of Travancore attest to the fact that such caste humiliations and atrocities were widely prevalent and that resistance and martyrs were also plenty.
Many of the authors who deny the role of caste in the system of breast tax are not right-wingers or Hindutva sympathisers. But their caste denialism helps strengthen the right-wing agenda by romanticising Brahminical Hinduism and conjuring images of a pristine past where Malayali women did not have to cover their breasts — an utopia destroyed by Victorian morality.
It's interesting that this article in Janapadham appeared soon after the unrest at Savarimala, the non-vedic shrine that was appropriated by Vedic HInduism and renamed Sabarimala. A few months before the article appeared, the Devaswom Economic Reservation Act was passed in the Kerala Assembly in November 2018, allowing 10% economic reservation to caste Hindus for Devaswom Board jobs.
The move was aimed at appeasing those sections of the Sanskritised non-Brahmin castes, such as Nairs, who were angered by the government's support for menstruating women seeking entry into Savarimala. Subaltern historian ‘Dalitbandhu’ NK Jose and other Dalit/Ambedkarites called these agitations against womens’ entry the Shudra Lahala or the Shudra uprising.
A protest march against the Supreme Court verdict granting menstruating women entry into the Savarimala shrine in Thiruvananthapuram in January 2019
The Shudra uprising gave currency to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) anti-Constitution agenda by opposing the Supreme Court verdict allowing women of menstruating age to enter to the Savarimala shrine, as recorded in Dalitbandhu’s 2019 book Shudra Lahala.
Anandi also claimed in a speech made in Ernakulam in November 2018 that the name Nangeli was not used among Avarna communities in the 19th century. However, it is a widely known fact that Mooloor S Padmanabha Panicker, the elder disciple of Guru and the first Avarna poet to enter the literary public sphere in the late 19th century, had an elder sister named Nangeli. CV Kunhiraman, another lead-disciple of Guru, a master of Kerala prose and journalism, and a founding editor of Kerala Kaumudi (Malayalam daily) has also mentioned women in his household who had the name Nangeli.
Such gross ignorance, anachronistic claims and sanctioned erasures irrigate caste Hindu historiography, media activism, and mainstream discourses in Kerala. They conceal the fact that only Avarna women were forced to pay the inhuman tax for covering breasts in public.
It is unfortunate that the Left government in Kerala, with CM Pinarayi at its helm, lost steam after initially backing women’s entry into Savarimala based on the Supreme Court’s verdict in 2018. The movement, which had the backing of the state government, could not counter the pressure exerted by the neo-Brahminical castes and elites who came up with their own terminology for the Savarimala disturbances during the Savarimala riots — Vishwasi Lahala or the uprising of the devout, or Teendari Lahala which literally translates to ‘menstruating untouchable women’s insurgency.'
In fact, welcoming their exclusion from the temple, a section of caste-Hindu women referred to themselves as teendaris (untouchables) for being of menstruating age. They took to the streets to ‘save’ the celibacy of Lord Ayyappa, which would be ‘polluted’ by their presence.
CM Pinarayi, who was bound to implement the order of the Supreme Court, struggled to fulfil his Constitutional duty. He was abused in public and on social media by caste Hindus, especially Nair women like Mani Pilla, who hurled casteist slurs and abuses at him. Pinarayi was called “Chova Kooti Mon,” which means “abominable offspring of an Avarna woman.” The ‘biopower’ of the subaltern woman was demonised and vulgarised as a casteist abuse, which also served as a curse at the Asokan Buddhist past of Avarnas and ancient Kerala.
In the orchestrated, turbulent backdrop of the Shudra uprising, the government passed the Devaswom Act for economic reservation for caste Hindus in November 2018, thus further cementing their monopoly over religious affairs. Far from seeing the Devaswom Act as a setback for social justice, caste Hindus and their leaders in the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) went on to challenge the Union government to implement ‘economic reservations' universally.
The Nair Service Society demonstrating against the Savarimala verdict in Thiruvananthapuram in October 2018
Three months after the CPM government introduced these reservations in the temple board, in February 2019, the Union government passed the law granting reservations to economically weaker sections among the upper castes. The ground reality is that the Devaswom Board was at the point filled 85% with Nairs, the Malayali Shudra or kuleena (of ‘high’ birth).
These casteist Savarna fabrications are paraded as history in Kerala’s oligarchic present where typical power elites monopolise public education and service, not to mention media and academia. Oligarchy, or the rule of a few elites, has become the norm in Kerala. Be it the Devaswom Board or the KR Narayanan National Institute of Visual Science and Arts (KRNNIVSA), where students raised allegations of casteism, all Constitutional institutions and public sector services are monopolised by caste Hindus and caste Christians (Syrians) along with their Brahmin patriarchs. The dominant Shudra have become more Brahmanical than Brahmins. As in the case of Rajputs, Reddys, or Jats, the Malayali Shudra (Nairs) are playing Neo Kshatriyas.
The few elites of the state have grabbed all the resources and public funds in Kerala. Despite being over-represented in the public service and education sectors, they are now multiplying their monopoly by grabbing more public resources and services through the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) reservations. EWS is against the principles of political representation enshrined in the Constitution. As per Article 16 (4) “due and adequate representation” of all communities is a Fundamental Right.
Reservation is a tool to ensure the political representation of those who are denied it due to caste and social exclusion. It is meant to ensure the representation of the unrepresented and/or or underrepresented communities in education and public service. It is not a job package, poverty alleviation scheme, or economic upliftment project. Most of the State’s revenue goes into economic packages and poverty alleviation programmes.
With EWS, the over-represented forward castes have grabbed 10% more by citing an economic logic that is contradictory to the principle of social justice at the core of the Indian Constitution. The Shudra uprising happened in Kerala under the hegemony of the power elites who monopolised Kerala soon after Independence.
Their ascend to power began with the Malayali Memorial of 1891 (a petition submitted to the Maharaja of Travancore demanding a fair share of jobs in public services for educated natives, who were mostly Nairs). This is evidence for how the Malayali kuleena or Shudra entered public services using the principle of representation in democracy, and then blocked others from receiving due and adequate representation.
EWS, the most recent sabotage of the Constitution, was made possible through the intense Hinduisation carried out through Hindu Sanskrit Purana recitals and Geeta meets in recent times. Mavarata (Sanskritised as Mahabharata) and Ramayana recitals and pedantic speeches were unleashed by caste Hindu pandits and kuleena pedagogues, misusing the academia and tax money. Such Ramayana and Mavarata recitals, like the 1990’s Doordarshan serials of the Hindu epics, brainwashed even the Avarna masses, making them forget reality and history.
The monopoly of caste Hindus extends to education institutions across the state. When KRNNIVSA students agitated after accusations of caste atrocities were levelled against Shankar Mohan, the former director of the Institute in 2022, its chairman Adoor Gopalakrishnan said that Shankar Mohan, having been born into a Malayali kuleena family like him, cannot go wrong. Adoor, who is a renowned filmmaker, also passed casteist and patriarchal remarks about the women cleaning staff of the Institute.
In March 2023, the principal of the Government Law College in Ernakulam, another caste Hindu, gave show-cause notice to students who placed the portraits of Ambedkar and Dakshayani Velayudhan (Dalit woman member of the Constituent Assembly, who hailed from Kochi) in the central hall of the college. The hall is also the old Legislative Assembly Hall of the erstwhile Kochi kingdom. These are only a few of the many contemporary examples of Constitutional sabotages and misuse of power by the kuleena Shudra in Kerala.
In a political climate shaped by the monopolies of caste Hindus in Kerala, CMs Pinarayi, and Stalin are to appear together to commemorate a lower caste struggle yet again next year.
CM Pinarayi has extended an invitation to CM Stalin for the centenary of the historic Vaikom struggles (Vaikom Satyagraha 1924-25). The struggle for the freedom of movement around the temple roads was led by T K Madhavan, a lead disciple of Guru. It was Periyar, influenced by the anti-caste philosophy and life of Guru, who stated in Vaikom that the huge stone Linga installed there in the middle ages by Pulikalan Chami or Vyaghrapada Maharshi is a mere stone suitable only for washing clothes. Historians Stella Kramrisch, and Dalitbandhu, in his 2016 book, have argued that the site was a Buddhist shrine till 1539.
Periyar was arrested for his involvement in the Vaikom struggle, but was released early, along with several other prisoners, when the Travancore king passed away. The Vaikom struggle was preceded by many people’s struggles resisting the Brahmanical and Shudra regime.
More than a century before the Vaikom Satyagraha, there was a public protest for the freedom of movement at Vaikom. This was in 1806, soon after the sacrifice of Nangeli, and was called the Dalavakulam struggle and massacre by the Travancore Nair brigade of the Dalava (Diwan) Velu Thampi. Around 200 young men from the Ezhava community led an unarmed procession through the temple roads and attempted to enter the shrine by claiming that it was theirs, as the sacred grove Panachikal Kavu is within the shrine. The sacred groves were relics of Asokan Sangha Aramas (protected reserves) nurtured by Buddhist nuns, or Kanya Kavus, which is why sacred groves are still called kavu in Kerala. The young men were butchered by the Nair brigade of Travancore under the orders of Velu Thampi, and pushed into the temple’s eastern pond. This pond later came to be known as Dalavakulam, literally meaning “the pond of the Dalava.” Poet Kumaran Asan’s Vadayar speech was on the martyrs of Dalavakulam. TK Madhavan’s Deshabhimani daily reported it in 1924. Dalitbandhu wrote the book Dalavakulavum Vaikate Chraistavarum (Dalavakulam and the Christians of Vaikom) on this.
It is hoped that when Pinarayi meets Stalin again at Vaikom, they may also invoke the martyrs awaiting a proper burial and homage in Dalavakulam at Vaikom. Dalavakulam is a bus-stand now. A fitting monument must be constructed there by the government. CM Pinarayi had invoked Nangeli’s name to defend himself during the 2018 Shudra uprising; now is the time to invoke the anti-caste fighters and martyrs of Dalavakulam.
Dr Ajay S Sekher is an assistant professor of English and the coordinator of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in Kalady, Kerala.
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