Foreword
I first became
aware of Kerala in 1952 as
an undergraduate in St Stephen's College, Delhi. This was before the official
formation of the modern state of Kerala as part of the Indian Union in 1956
by joining the two indigenous kingdoms of Travancore
and Cochin that had owed allegiance to the British Crown. Soon in my history
class I learned of the antiquity of the name of the state which appears in a
slightly different form in the edicts of the Maurya
Emperor Ashok (c. 269-232 BCE) as
"Keralaputra", literally "the sons of
Kerala". There were several students both in the college and in the
university, who spoke Malayalam. The name of the language obviously derives
from Malaya or Malayadesh, the general designation of
the coastal region more familiarly known by its derivate Malabar, which has
such romantic associations. Later on in Sanskrit literature I encountered the
popular conceit of the soft breezes of Malaya mountains
heavy with the fragrance of sandalwood and cloves. It was also during those
undergraduate days that I became acquainted with the art of Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), perhaps
the best known Keralaputra after Shankaracharya.
I first
visited Kerala during the winter of 195859 when
I was contemplating my doctoral research on the architecture of Nepal at
Calcutta University. A group of us travelled all the way from Calcutta (now
Kolkata) to Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) by
train via Madras (now Chennai) to attend the annual Indian History Congress. It
was not only the first professional conference I attended but also my debut
presentation of a paper on art history. Thus my long professional career was
launched in modern Kerala. The greater excitement, however, was that the newly
formed state had the first Communist government on the subcontinent led by
E.M.S. Namboodiripad who was to deliver the keynote
address at the conference attended by thousands of historians from home and
abroad. As Bengalis and students of Calcutta University, we were all to a
degree influenced by Marxism and therefore for us it was truly an exciting
occasion.
I don't
remember much about the Congress itself except the thunderous applause that
followed the Marxist leader's speech and my own nervous but well-received
presentation on a special form of the Buddhist goddess Tara in Nepal. I also
have fond memories of the distinctive regional food: the delicious fish curries
(elixir to a fish-loving Bengali) and the rich Muslim cuisine, especially the
rice and meat dish, dripping in ghee (or was it coconut oil?), called biryani. I distinctly remember our visit to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple where I first became conscious of
the distinctive architecture of Kerala. It was a revelation to find the
extraordinary resemblance between the timber architecture of Nepal in the
Himalaya and that of Kerala at the southernmost extremity of the subcontinent.
Although the Padmanabhaswamy Temple complex was
reconstructed mostly during the reign of Marthandavarma
in the 18th century, from my familiarity with Stella Kramrisch's
pioneering study of Kerala architecture, I realized that the form probably
originated long before stone was introduced in the Dravidadesha.
Over the years, on return visits to Kerala, I would note the use of the same
form in the Islamic and to a lesser degree in the Christian architecture of the
region. I would again encounter the same ecumenical taste in architecture in
the Hindu/Buddhist and Islamic monuments in distant Kashmir, in the Himalaya.
From Trivandrum we took the train south to the town of Padmanabhapur
am where there are older temples with dazzling murals. We continued south to
visit Kanyakumari or Cape Comorin now in Tamil Nadu.
I returned to
Kerala a decade later in January 1969, this time not with historians and orientalists, but with a large group of American tourists.
Not only did I become better acquainted with Kerala's classical Kathakali dance form, but I also visited the city of Cochin
(today Kochi) and the famous backwaters.
One of the
highlights of the trip was to watch an all-night performance of Kathakali in the sprawling complex of Padmanabhaswamy
Temple. It was an enthralling and captivating experience, as much for the high
quality of the performance in its original ambience as it was meant to be seen,
as for the reaction of the large local audience, young and old, who sat
appreciatively on the hard ground for hours with wonder and delight. Watching
that live performance in the dimly lit temple compound until the first rays of
the sun caught the pinnacle of the temple tower in "a noose of light"
was a memorable aesthetic experience and gave me insights into the essence of
both dance drama and the visual arts that I never learnt in any university
course. It gave me a better understanding of Bharata's
Natyashastra as well as of another Bharata who came into my life intimately for a few months
in 1965-66. This was K. Bharata Iyer
the great historian and exponent of Kathakali. I had
the distinct privilege of working with him in setting up the American Academy
of Benares (now subsumed into the American Institute of Indian Studies in Gurgaon) at Rewa Palace in
Varanasi. He was an accountant by profession, a scrupulously orthodox Kerala brahman, and a scholar continuing
the intellectual tradition of the region that produced India's greatest
philosopher Shankaracharya more than eleven centuries ago.
The other
unusual and unexpected experience was visiting Co chin for the first time. The
city itself seemed no different from any other settlement, but to see the Mattancherry palace with its wonderful murals of Hindu
mythology in the typical exuberant and ornamental style of painting, to walk
down Jewtown leading to the synagogue with its floor
of Chinese tiles next to the palace, the Dutch church and other relics of the
colonial period, and, most exotic of all, the Chinese fishing nets rising above
the waters like black sails silhouetted against the setting tropical sun are
all vivid images m my memory.
My own city of
Calcutta offers a wealth of places of worship including mosques, temples,
churches, and synagogues built during the colonial period, but somehow while
walking down the narrow street lined with stores owned by Jewish settlers I
felt as if I had been transported to another place and another time, perhaps
old Nazareth or Jerusalem of the Old Testament. I remember how excited and
surprised the Jews in my group of weary American travellers were. Alas, when I
returned to Cochin three decades later in 2000 with my family to show them this
relic of Kerala's religious tolerance, the Jewtown
had been converted to Brahman town. The Jewish traders had all left to be
replaced by displaced Kashmiri brahmans.
Only one Jewish family lingered on selling the lace that the ladies of the
family made where I had bought some on my first visit. Another family looked
after the forlorn synagogue where the Chinese blue and white tiles are no
longer tread by pious Jewish feet but admired like
museum pieces by tourists from far and wide.
The sight of
the Chinese fishing nets silhouetted against the setting sun that today offers
a picturesque subject for the tourist cameras also announces Kerala's long
established link by sea with China in the east and Africa and Arabia in the
west. The archaeological evidence as well as tradition attest to Kerala's fame,
perhaps as early as the time of the biblical ruler Solomon, as the source of
spices and peacocks since ancient times. It was certainly an important emporium
for textiles and spices until the fall of the Roman empire
in the 4th century. The void was then filled by Arab merchants and sailors,
which explains the strong presence 'of Muslims and Islamic culture and the
memorable biryani that I tasted on my first visit.
The Europeans did not arrive until 1498 when the first expedition led by the
Portuguese Vasco da Gama docked at Kozhikode/Calicut.
(Fortunately, the name Calicut will survive in the expression
"calico", a form of textile popularized by colonial trade.) It is
said that what surprised the Portuguese adventurer most was encountering
flourishing communities of Jews whom he wanted to destroy but was prevented by
the intervention of the local rulers.
Perhaps the
most romantic experience of our turn-of-the-millennium visit, and certainly the
most picturesque, was the boat ride in the serene backwaters of Kerala. How
relaxing and comforting it was to travel in gently rolling boats along narrow
waterways lined by tall coconut trees in the lush green surrounding. Nestled in
this verdant landscape were villages of whitewashed and red-tiled houses
connected by narrow footpaths along the backwaters. No concrete, no cars, no
pollution. It was gratifying to find these backwaters and the communities
living along their banks still flourishing at the beginning of the new
millennium. Neither the wealth derived from West Asia nor the urge to
modernization had materially altered their intrinsic character. Nature had not
yet succumbed to the onslaught of the bulldozers and earthmovers of
urbanization that is inexorably altering the urban landscape of this enchanting
land.
The essays and
images gathered here, most of them by Malayalis,
present observations in words and pictures and speak about the changes that
modernity is relentlessly imposing upon some of the urban centres of Kerala.
Hopefully, this foreword by a Bengali admirer of the state recording his
personal and sporadic impressions of the cultural continuity and changes in
Kerala will be helpful in understanding better the unavoidable evolution and
transformation, the angst and exhilaration recounted by the new voices brought
together in this volume.
Introduction
In Keralas mountainous Idukki
district, Ramakkal Medu
attracts a small number of picnickers. Here, from an eastern tip of the Western
Ghats, the plains of Tamil Nadu are visible in a dramatic 180degree sweep. In
sharp contrast, Kerala is visible only as a thin, green strip of land. Malayalis, as the people of Kerala are called, rarely have
a panorama of their beautiful land since the hills and vegetation obstruct
their vision.
Inside the
village of Ramakkal Medu,
if visitors want to purchase something, a local will direct them to Balan Pilla "city". And
of course, they find at the dead end of a road, Balan
Pilla's lone tea stall, with a shop that can serve
any consumer's need.
There is
another village called Kumbanad on the pilgrimage
route to Sabarimala, one of the most popular worship
spots in Kerala. Again a remote village, just a 2-kilometre
stretch. Yet, in this brief length, there are 16 banks. A survey
conducted by a newspaper in 1998 revealed
that more than 200 people have
invested in excess of one crore rupees as fixed
deposits in these banks. Kumbanad also has
well-established schools, hospitals, and shops along with churches and Bible
study centres. At least one member from every house is in the US or Europe,
West or East Asia.
Kerala is
38,863 square kilometres of tropical land in the southwest tip of the Indian
subcontinent. With average annual rainfall of 3,125 millimetres, its flora and
fauna are rich and diverse; such intense inundation also creates 44 rivers and
two major backwater systems, the Vembanadu, the
biggest water body in western India, and the Ashtamudi.
This state accounts for 1.18 per cent of India's total landmass and 3.34 per
cent of the national population. The population density in the state is 819
people per square kilometre. However, actual population density is much higher
since Kerala's land includes protected forest (25 per cent of the total), water
bodies, and plantations that are virtually uninhabited.
The
disposition of Kerala's urban spaces and economy makes it difficult to define
and distinguish cities, towns, and villages using conventional categories. In
other parts of India, urbanization is resulting in increased population growth
in existing cities. In Kerala, a different phenomenon is observed. Seventy-five
per cent of the population continues to reside in villages, slightly higher
than the national average, and these villages are becoming townships with
augmented facilities. Most of Kerala, except for remote places, is urban with
banks, schools, shops, hospitals, and public utilities. Except for Ernakulam, where population growth and urbanization are
simultaneous, Kerala's established towns are also globalizing without huge
shifts in habitation. Many of these towns and villages indeed have become
satellites of international metros. Kerala's social and political orientation
has promoted a huge investment in education, which has created the most
literate population in India and a large pool of skilled workers. However, the
demand for their skills is much lower than the supply. Kerala's surplus human
resources thus have spread all over the world seeking job opportunities. In
this context, it is interesting to note that in 2004, a sum of Rs 18,460 crore was remitted to Kerala from abroad, which is seven
times what the state receives as its share from the Central government's annual
budget.
The even
distribution of infrastructure along with availability of capital and water
near the soil surface have contributed to Kerala's peculiar urbanization, in
which the historical pattern of habitation in contiguous but individually owned
homesteads persists and flourishes even as the state urbanizes. People do not
need to cluster around the larger centres for the advantage of availability of
services and resources. A well-established road network allows even smaller
villages to remain connected with each other and larger towns. Kerala has 1,54,679 kilometres of road with a density
of 4 kilometres per square kilometre, far ahead of the national average of 0.74
kilometre per square kilometre. For every 1,000
people, there are 4.86 kilometres
of road, much higher than the national average of 2.6 kilometres. The
distribution of road management is decentred: panchayats
control 67 per cent of
the road network, the state Public Works Department 17.02
per cent, and corporations and municipalities 10.08
per cent. The National Highway is just 0.98
per cent of the total. The remaining 4.02
per cent is maintained by the Irrigation and
Forestry departments, the Electricity Board, and Railways. All these roads have
made Kerala a supremely comfortable space for the transaction of commodities
and services. People use the network to make small trips to access services in
the various commercial centres that accrete around major junctions. This
accessibility of infrastructure and connectivity has created a sense of unity
among the state's residents.
The Past to the Present
Once soft,
unpaved, foot-wide paths connected this land, along which people lived
separated from each other by caste. These narrow pathways were violent
corridors of debate such as who should walk in front, who should not walk at
all, etc. Highly oppressive social stigmas and a crude but detailed practice of
hierarchies split people into hundreds of castes. This alone, however, is not
Kerala's past. In its collective memory, there are many narratives and layers
and among them is one about Onam, the regional
festival. Onam is a remembrance about how people
lived as one during the reign of Mahabali, the Asura ("non-divine") king. For many centuries, the
people of Kerala have been celebrating this festival.
There is
historical evidence that Kerala's coasts were emporia for regular overseas
trade. The coinage that Bowed in through this trade was hoarded, perhaps
because people had no other use for it. Kerala existed as bits and pieces,
often ruled simultaneously by several kings, hundreds of chieftains, and
autonomous sanctuaries of a thousand places of worship. The oldest creation
myth speaks of a saint who reclaimed from the sea and divided into villages a
landmass named Kerala, imagined to stretch from Kanyakumari
to Gokarna and isolated from the rest of the
subcontinent. Old memories about Keralas borders are
vividly marked in such myths.
Another layer
of Kerala history begins from Marthandavarma's period
0729-58 CE). This
king of Venad, a tiny kingdom in the southern tip of
the Indian peninsula, extended his state up to the middle of present-day Kerala
and formed Travancore by raising an army of local people. He then modernized
and centralized it; Marthandavarma appointed the
Dutch caprain De Lannoy,
whom he captured in a war, as commander-in-chief and gave him the status of a
local noble. The large size of Travancore as well as the creation of a
centralized army was a new era in Kerala's statecraft. In 1750, Marthandavarma dedicated the state to his deity Padmanabha through an offering ritual called Trippadidanam and positioned himself and his successors as
servants of the god. From this action, Travancore's residents came to see
themselves as the subjects of a deity rather than as subjects of a mortal king.
The idea of communally owned capital, a powerful social belief even in
present-day Kerala, is also rooted in this event. In
1780, the small principality Perumpadappu became the much bigger state of Kochi under
King Shakthan because he gained the support of
Travancore to annex smaller chieftainships and accepted the over lordship of
Hyder Ali of Mysore. Already by 1766, the Mysore sultan controlled the northern
Malabar region. These events changed Kerala from tiny principalities to a set
of large states, administered by a new class of bureaucrats and centralized
armies. Later the princely states of Travancore and Cochin invested a great
deal in the education, health, and well-being of their people as well as
knowledge transfer from Europe. They paid high prices for access to modern
engineering and transportation technologies, which they used within the limits
of existing systems of caste and religion. Later, after Tipu Sultan’s Malabar came under British governance.
British Malabar provided models for caste-fee, civil society that highly
inspired Kerala’ evolution.
Modern-day
Kerala is the result of the unification of the three regions: the princely
states of Travancore and Kochi and the Malabar region of the Madras Presidency.
After Independence, the Tamil-speaking
southern parts of Travancore and Kannada-speaking northern pans of Mala bar
were subtracted, and Palakkad from Madras state was
added. Kerala's formation as a linguistic state was in 1956, on the 1st
of November. The Malayalam language, rather than
geography or history, forms modern Kerala's identity. Malayalam is a mixture of
an old dialect of Tamil spoken in early historical Kerala and Sanskrit; it
evolved over the last few centuries, enriched by words from Arabic, Persian,
Portuguese, a by product of trade. An earlier form of
the language first appeared in the Vazhapalli
inscriptions in 830 CE and the
Malayalam script began its evolution in the early 13th century. The grammar and
aesthetic guidelines for this composite language and its verse and prose
expressions are discussed in Leelatilakam, a
14thcentury manual. Ezhutachan, towards the end of
the 16th century, wrote independent translations of Indian epics. The poetic
expression in his verses contains a fully evolved language with its own
grammar, very close to today's written and spoken Malayalam.
Around the
mid-19th century, with Christian missionary activities, the language further
improved and became a tool for modern education. The Jesuit priest Benjamin
Bailey at Kottayam established the first printing
press in Kerala in 1821. He published the first English-Malayalam dictionary in
1846 and the first Malayalam Bible in 1841. By the end of the century, printing
and publishing became widespread; newspapers, novels, essays, and poetry
analysed and criticized everyday life. There was an informal dissemination of
modern education as ordinary people started imbibing these written ideas. It
helped reformists and their movements challenge casteism
and raise the discourse of human rights. For example, Narayanan (1854-1928,
popularly known as Sri Narayana Guru), the philosopher and social reformer,
addressed a self in the process of individuation, rather than an amorphous
sense of personhood based on the longstanding practice of loyalty. As a modern
person, he used straightforward, slogan-like phrases: be powerful by being organized and be enlightened with education. Even his poetry imagines God's
divinity as a steamship, which can help navigate the mighty ocean of life. This
is an example of imagination developing according to changing conditions.
The reform
movements in Kerala were primarily in response to the crudity of Hindu casteism. The temple entry proclamation occurred in Travancore
in 1935 and in one sense, officially ended discrimination among Hindus.
Gradually temples in Kochi and Malabar too opened their doors to all castes.
This tempered intra religious hierarchies among Hindus and made their
communities similar to the less stratified ones of the Christians and Muslims.
Perhaps, Kerala began evolving a new identity around this time, as a region
where all three major religious communities had equal social rights.'
Along with
this social reformation began a process of reconstruction of the notion of
self, aided by widespread
political movements, which led people towards a rational politics and the
questioning of institutions. The role of communism is notable in all this.
Through their
mass revolts, communist movements questioned the conservatism of
tenant-landowner and employee-employer relationships.
Contents
Foreword |
9 |
Introduction |
12 |
Thiruvananthapuram
/ City of a Horizontal God |
28 |
Kollam
/ Urbanization in Tourism's Own
Landscape |
42 |
Alapuzha
/ A Hidden Fortress Made of Water |
60 |
Kottayam
/ The Hills Are Moist |
78 |
Kochi / The Other City |
88 |
Thrissur
/ Round and Around the Town |
104 |
Palakkad
/ Some Threads Including the Sacred |
118 |
Kozhikode / Yesterday and Today |
132 |
Kannur
/ Monumental, Monolithic |
146 |
Foreword
I first became
aware of Kerala in 1952 as
an undergraduate in St Stephen's College, Delhi. This was before the official
formation of the modern state of Kerala as part of the Indian Union in 1956
by joining the two indigenous kingdoms of Travancore
and Cochin that had owed allegiance to the British Crown. Soon in my history
class I learned of the antiquity of the name of the state which appears in a
slightly different form in the edicts of the Maurya
Emperor Ashok (c. 269-232 BCE) as
"Keralaputra", literally "the sons of
Kerala". There were several students both in the college and in the
university, who spoke Malayalam. The name of the language obviously derives
from Malaya or Malayadesh, the general designation of
the coastal region more familiarly known by its derivate Malabar, which has
such romantic associations. Later on in Sanskrit literature I encountered the
popular conceit of the soft breezes of Malaya mountains
heavy with the fragrance of sandalwood and cloves. It was also during those
undergraduate days that I became acquainted with the art of Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906), perhaps
the best known Keralaputra after Shankaracharya.
I first
visited Kerala during the winter of 195859 when
I was contemplating my doctoral research on the architecture of Nepal at
Calcutta University. A group of us travelled all the way from Calcutta (now
Kolkata) to Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) by
train via Madras (now Chennai) to attend the annual Indian History Congress. It
was not only the first professional conference I attended but also my debut
presentation of a paper on art history. Thus my long professional career was
launched in modern Kerala. The greater excitement, however, was that the newly
formed state had the first Communist government on the subcontinent led by
E.M.S. Namboodiripad who was to deliver the keynote
address at the conference attended by thousands of historians from home and
abroad. As Bengalis and students of Calcutta University, we were all to a
degree influenced by Marxism and therefore for us it was truly an exciting
occasion.
I don't
remember much about the Congress itself except the thunderous applause that
followed the Marxist leader's speech and my own nervous but well-received
presentation on a special form of the Buddhist goddess Tara in Nepal. I also
have fond memories of the distinctive regional food: the delicious fish curries
(elixir to a fish-loving Bengali) and the rich Muslim cuisine, especially the
rice and meat dish, dripping in ghee (or was it coconut oil?), called biryani. I distinctly remember our visit to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple where I first became conscious of
the distinctive architecture of Kerala. It was a revelation to find the
extraordinary resemblance between the timber architecture of Nepal in the
Himalaya and that of Kerala at the southernmost extremity of the subcontinent.
Although the Padmanabhaswamy Temple complex was
reconstructed mostly during the reign of Marthandavarma
in the 18th century, from my familiarity with Stella Kramrisch's
pioneering study of Kerala architecture, I realized that the form probably
originated long before stone was introduced in the Dravidadesha.
Over the years, on return visits to Kerala, I would note the use of the same
form in the Islamic and to a lesser degree in the Christian architecture of the
region. I would again encounter the same ecumenical taste in architecture in
the Hindu/Buddhist and Islamic monuments in distant Kashmir, in the Himalaya.
From Trivandrum we took the train south to the town of Padmanabhapur
am where there are older temples with dazzling murals. We continued south to
visit Kanyakumari or Cape Comorin now in Tamil Nadu.
I returned to
Kerala a decade later in January 1969, this time not with historians and orientalists, but with a large group of American tourists.
Not only did I become better acquainted with Kerala's classical Kathakali dance form, but I also visited the city of Cochin
(today Kochi) and the famous backwaters.
One of the
highlights of the trip was to watch an all-night performance of Kathakali in the sprawling complex of Padmanabhaswamy
Temple. It was an enthralling and captivating experience, as much for the high
quality of the performance in its original ambience as it was meant to be seen,
as for the reaction of the large local audience, young and old, who sat
appreciatively on the hard ground for hours with wonder and delight. Watching
that live performance in the dimly lit temple compound until the first rays of
the sun caught the pinnacle of the temple tower in "a noose of light"
was a memorable aesthetic experience and gave me insights into the essence of
both dance drama and the visual arts that I never learnt in any university
course. It gave me a better understanding of Bharata's
Natyashastra as well as of another Bharata who came into my life intimately for a few months
in 1965-66. This was K. Bharata Iyer
the great historian and exponent of Kathakali. I had
the distinct privilege of working with him in setting up the American Academy
of Benares (now subsumed into the American Institute of Indian Studies in Gurgaon) at Rewa Palace in
Varanasi. He was an accountant by profession, a scrupulously orthodox Kerala brahman, and a scholar continuing
the intellectual tradition of the region that produced India's greatest
philosopher Shankaracharya more than eleven centuries ago.
The other
unusual and unexpected experience was visiting Co chin for the first time. The
city itself seemed no different from any other settlement, but to see the Mattancherry palace with its wonderful murals of Hindu
mythology in the typical exuberant and ornamental style of painting, to walk
down Jewtown leading to the synagogue with its floor
of Chinese tiles next to the palace, the Dutch church and other relics of the
colonial period, and, most exotic of all, the Chinese fishing nets rising above
the waters like black sails silhouetted against the setting tropical sun are
all vivid images m my memory.
My own city of
Calcutta offers a wealth of places of worship including mosques, temples,
churches, and synagogues built during the colonial period, but somehow while
walking down the narrow street lined with stores owned by Jewish settlers I
felt as if I had been transported to another place and another time, perhaps
old Nazareth or Jerusalem of the Old Testament. I remember how excited and
surprised the Jews in my group of weary American travellers were. Alas, when I
returned to Cochin three decades later in 2000 with my family to show them this
relic of Kerala's religious tolerance, the Jewtown
had been converted to Brahman town. The Jewish traders had all left to be
replaced by displaced Kashmiri brahmans.
Only one Jewish family lingered on selling the lace that the ladies of the
family made where I had bought some on my first visit. Another family looked
after the forlorn synagogue where the Chinese blue and white tiles are no
longer tread by pious Jewish feet but admired like
museum pieces by tourists from far and wide.
The sight of
the Chinese fishing nets silhouetted against the setting sun that today offers
a picturesque subject for the tourist cameras also announces Kerala's long
established link by sea with China in the east and Africa and Arabia in the
west. The archaeological evidence as well as tradition attest to Kerala's fame,
perhaps as early as the time of the biblical ruler Solomon, as the source of
spices and peacocks since ancient times. It was certainly an important emporium
for textiles and spices until the fall of the Roman empire
in the 4th century. The void was then filled by Arab merchants and sailors,
which explains the strong presence 'of Muslims and Islamic culture and the
memorable biryani that I tasted on my first visit.
The Europeans did not arrive until 1498 when the first expedition led by the
Portuguese Vasco da Gama docked at Kozhikode/Calicut.
(Fortunately, the name Calicut will survive in the expression
"calico", a form of textile popularized by colonial trade.) It is
said that what surprised the Portuguese adventurer most was encountering
flourishing communities of Jews whom he wanted to destroy but was prevented by
the intervention of the local rulers.
Perhaps the
most romantic experience of our turn-of-the-millennium visit, and certainly the
most picturesque, was the boat ride in the serene backwaters of Kerala. How
relaxing and comforting it was to travel in gently rolling boats along narrow
waterways lined by tall coconut trees in the lush green surrounding. Nestled in
this verdant landscape were villages of whitewashed and red-tiled houses
connected by narrow footpaths along the backwaters. No concrete, no cars, no
pollution. It was gratifying to find these backwaters and the communities
living along their banks still flourishing at the beginning of the new
millennium. Neither the wealth derived from West Asia nor the urge to
modernization had materially altered their intrinsic character. Nature had not
yet succumbed to the onslaught of the bulldozers and earthmovers of
urbanization that is inexorably altering the urban landscape of this enchanting
land.
The essays and
images gathered here, most of them by Malayalis,
present observations in words and pictures and speak about the changes that
modernity is relentlessly imposing upon some of the urban centres of Kerala.
Hopefully, this foreword by a Bengali admirer of the state recording his
personal and sporadic impressions of the cultural continuity and changes in
Kerala will be helpful in understanding better the unavoidable evolution and
transformation, the angst and exhilaration recounted by the new voices brought
together in this volume.
Introduction
In Keralas mountainous Idukki
district, Ramakkal Medu
attracts a small number of picnickers. Here, from an eastern tip of the Western
Ghats, the plains of Tamil Nadu are visible in a dramatic 180degree sweep. In
sharp contrast, Kerala is visible only as a thin, green strip of land. Malayalis, as the people of Kerala are called, rarely have
a panorama of their beautiful land since the hills and vegetation obstruct
their vision.
Inside the
village of Ramakkal Medu,
if visitors want to purchase something, a local will direct them to Balan Pilla "city". And
of course, they find at the dead end of a road, Balan
Pilla's lone tea stall, with a shop that can serve
any consumer's need.
There is
another village called Kumbanad on the pilgrimage
route to Sabarimala, one of the most popular worship
spots in Kerala. Again a remote village, just a 2-kilometre
stretch. Yet, in this brief length, there are 16 banks. A survey
conducted by a newspaper in 1998 revealed
that more than 200 people have
invested in excess of one crore rupees as fixed
deposits in these banks. Kumbanad also has
well-established schools, hospitals, and shops along with churches and Bible
study centres. At least one member from every house is in the US or Europe,
West or East Asia.
Kerala is
38,863 square kilometres of tropical land in the southwest tip of the Indian
subcontinent. With average annual rainfall of 3,125 millimetres, its flora and
fauna are rich and diverse; such intense inundation also creates 44 rivers and
two major backwater systems, the Vembanadu, the
biggest water body in western India, and the Ashtamudi.
This state accounts for 1.18 per cent of India's total landmass and 3.34 per
cent of the national population. The population density in the state is 819
people per square kilometre. However, actual population density is much higher
since Kerala's land includes protected forest (25 per cent of the total), water
bodies, and plantations that are virtually uninhabited.
The
disposition of Kerala's urban spaces and economy makes it difficult to define
and distinguish cities, towns, and villages using conventional categories. In
other parts of India, urbanization is resulting in increased population growth
in existing cities. In Kerala, a different phenomenon is observed. Seventy-five
per cent of the population continues to reside in villages, slightly higher
than the national average, and these villages are becoming townships with
augmented facilities. Most of Kerala, except for remote places, is urban with
banks, schools, shops, hospitals, and public utilities. Except for Ernakulam, where population growth and urbanization are
simultaneous, Kerala's established towns are also globalizing without huge
shifts in habitation. Many of these towns and villages indeed have become
satellites of international metros. Kerala's social and political orientation
has promoted a huge investment in education, which has created the most
literate population in India and a large pool of skilled workers. However, the
demand for their skills is much lower than the supply. Kerala's surplus human
resources thus have spread all over the world seeking job opportunities. In
this context, it is interesting to note that in 2004, a sum of Rs 18,460 crore was remitted to Kerala from abroad, which is seven
times what the state receives as its share from the Central government's annual
budget.
The even
distribution of infrastructure along with availability of capital and water
near the soil surface have contributed to Kerala's peculiar urbanization, in
which the historical pattern of habitation in contiguous but individually owned
homesteads persists and flourishes even as the state urbanizes. People do not
need to cluster around the larger centres for the advantage of availability of
services and resources. A well-established road network allows even smaller
villages to remain connected with each other and larger towns. Kerala has 1,54,679 kilometres of road with a density
of 4 kilometres per square kilometre, far ahead of the national average of 0.74
kilometre per square kilometre. For every 1,000
people, there are 4.86 kilometres
of road, much higher than the national average of 2.6 kilometres. The
distribution of road management is decentred: panchayats
control 67 per cent of
the road network, the state Public Works Department 17.02
per cent, and corporations and municipalities 10.08
per cent. The National Highway is just 0.98
per cent of the total. The remaining 4.02
per cent is maintained by the Irrigation and
Forestry departments, the Electricity Board, and Railways. All these roads have
made Kerala a supremely comfortable space for the transaction of commodities
and services. People use the network to make small trips to access services in
the various commercial centres that accrete around major junctions. This
accessibility of infrastructure and connectivity has created a sense of unity
among the state's residents.
The Past to the Present
Once soft,
unpaved, foot-wide paths connected this land, along which people lived
separated from each other by caste. These narrow pathways were violent
corridors of debate such as who should walk in front, who should not walk at
all, etc. Highly oppressive social stigmas and a crude but detailed practice of
hierarchies split people into hundreds of castes. This alone, however, is not
Kerala's past. In its collective memory, there are many narratives and layers
and among them is one about Onam, the regional
festival. Onam is a remembrance about how people
lived as one during the reign of Mahabali, the Asura ("non-divine") king. For many centuries, the
people of Kerala have been celebrating this festival.
There is
historical evidence that Kerala's coasts were emporia for regular overseas
trade. The coinage that Bowed in through this trade was hoarded, perhaps
because people had no other use for it. Kerala existed as bits and pieces,
often ruled simultaneously by several kings, hundreds of chieftains, and
autonomous sanctuaries of a thousand places of worship. The oldest creation
myth speaks of a saint who reclaimed from the sea and divided into villages a
landmass named Kerala, imagined to stretch from Kanyakumari
to Gokarna and isolated from the rest of the
subcontinent. Old memories about Keralas borders are
vividly marked in such myths.
Another layer
of Kerala history begins from Marthandavarma's period
0729-58 CE). This
king of Venad, a tiny kingdom in the southern tip of
the Indian peninsula, extended his state up to the middle of present-day Kerala
and formed Travancore by raising an army of local people. He then modernized
and centralized it; Marthandavarma appointed the
Dutch caprain De Lannoy,
whom he captured in a war, as commander-in-chief and gave him the status of a
local noble. The large size of Travancore as well as the creation of a
centralized army was a new era in Kerala's statecraft. In 1750, Marthandavarma dedicated the state to his deity Padmanabha through an offering ritual called Trippadidanam and positioned himself and his successors as
servants of the god. From this action, Travancore's residents came to see
themselves as the subjects of a deity rather than as subjects of a mortal king.
The idea of communally owned capital, a powerful social belief even in
present-day Kerala, is also rooted in this event. In
1780, the small principality Perumpadappu became the much bigger state of Kochi under
King Shakthan because he gained the support of
Travancore to annex smaller chieftainships and accepted the over lordship of
Hyder Ali of Mysore. Already by 1766, the Mysore sultan controlled the northern
Malabar region. These events changed Kerala from tiny principalities to a set
of large states, administered by a new class of bureaucrats and centralized
armies. Later the princely states of Travancore and Cochin invested a great
deal in the education, health, and well-being of their people as well as
knowledge transfer from Europe. They paid high prices for access to modern
engineering and transportation technologies, which they used within the limits
of existing systems of caste and religion. Later, after Tipu Sultan’s Malabar came under British governance.
British Malabar provided models for caste-fee, civil society that highly
inspired Kerala’ evolution.
Modern-day
Kerala is the result of the unification of the three regions: the princely
states of Travancore and Kochi and the Malabar region of the Madras Presidency.
After Independence, the Tamil-speaking
southern parts of Travancore and Kannada-speaking northern pans of Mala bar
were subtracted, and Palakkad from Madras state was
added. Kerala's formation as a linguistic state was in 1956, on the 1st
of November. The Malayalam language, rather than
geography or history, forms modern Kerala's identity. Malayalam is a mixture of
an old dialect of Tamil spoken in early historical Kerala and Sanskrit; it
evolved over the last few centuries, enriched by words from Arabic, Persian,
Portuguese, a by product of trade. An earlier form of
the language first appeared in the Vazhapalli
inscriptions in 830 CE and the
Malayalam script began its evolution in the early 13th century. The grammar and
aesthetic guidelines for this composite language and its verse and prose
expressions are discussed in Leelatilakam, a
14thcentury manual. Ezhutachan, towards the end of
the 16th century, wrote independent translations of Indian epics. The poetic
expression in his verses contains a fully evolved language with its own
grammar, very close to today's written and spoken Malayalam.
Around the
mid-19th century, with Christian missionary activities, the language further
improved and became a tool for modern education. The Jesuit priest Benjamin
Bailey at Kottayam established the first printing
press in Kerala in 1821. He published the first English-Malayalam dictionary in
1846 and the first Malayalam Bible in 1841. By the end of the century, printing
and publishing became widespread; newspapers, novels, essays, and poetry
analysed and criticized everyday life. There was an informal dissemination of
modern education as ordinary people started imbibing these written ideas. It
helped reformists and their movements challenge casteism
and raise the discourse of human rights. For example, Narayanan (1854-1928,
popularly known as Sri Narayana Guru), the philosopher and social reformer,
addressed a self in the process of individuation, rather than an amorphous
sense of personhood based on the longstanding practice of loyalty. As a modern
person, he used straightforward, slogan-like phrases: be powerful by being organized and be enlightened with education. Even his poetry imagines God's
divinity as a steamship, which can help navigate the mighty ocean of life. This
is an example of imagination developing according to changing conditions.
The reform
movements in Kerala were primarily in response to the crudity of Hindu casteism. The temple entry proclamation occurred in Travancore
in 1935 and in one sense, officially ended discrimination among Hindus.
Gradually temples in Kochi and Malabar too opened their doors to all castes.
This tempered intra religious hierarchies among Hindus and made their
communities similar to the less stratified ones of the Christians and Muslims.
Perhaps, Kerala began evolving a new identity around this time, as a region
where all three major religious communities had equal social rights.'
Along with
this social reformation began a process of reconstruction of the notion of
self, aided by widespread
political movements, which led people towards a rational politics and the
questioning of institutions. The role of communism is notable in all this.
Through their
mass revolts, communist movements questioned the conservatism of
tenant-landowner and employee-employer relationships.
Contents
Foreword |
9 |
Introduction |
12 |
Thiruvananthapuram
/ City of a Horizontal God |
28 |
Kollam
/ Urbanization in Tourism's Own
Landscape |
42 |
Alapuzha
/ A Hidden Fortress Made of Water |
60 |
Kottayam
/ The Hills Are Moist |
78 |
Kochi / The Other City |
88 |
Thrissur
/ Round and Around the Town |
104 |
Palakkad
/ Some Threads Including the Sacred |
118 |
Kozhikode / Yesterday and Today |
132 |
Kannur
/ Monumental, Monolithic |
146 |