1

Being a Brahmin the Marxist Way: E.M.S. Namburipad and the Pasts of Kerala …the indigenous bourgeoisie denies the active role played by Brahmins in the further development of Kerala…the theory of ‘Brahmin domination just an accident’, [is] a theory which denies the very scientific character of history. E.M.S. Nambudiripad, The National Question in Kerala In 1910, K.Ramakrishna Pillai, the editor of Svadesabhimani, was exiled from the princely

state of Travancore, on account of his intemperate and unmitigated opposition to the

monarchy and the corruption of the court. Accompanied by his beloved wife, he settled in

northern Kerala and, in 1912, wrote a biography of Karl Marx: the first in any Indian

language. In itself, this was a remarkable and prescient intellectual foray. The Russian

Revolution was five years in the future and Marxism had not assumed the aura of millenarian

hope. However, what is equally significant is the question of how Ramakrishna Pillai

understood Marxism. He saw two tenets as being central to Marxism: the collective

ownership of land and the abolition of private capital. This would ‘create equality in the

world by destroying the gulf between the rich and the poor’.1 There is not much critical

comment in the brief exposition of these ideas. Much of the book is devoted to a

biographical sketch highlighting Marx’s unyielding opposition to the Prussian monarchy, his

exile and the travails of a peripatetic dissident life with his devoted wife. One is struck by the

remarkable parallel with Ramakrishna Pillai’s own life and concerns. ‘Communism’, he states,

‘is incompatible with the rule of the king and his laws’, allying Marxism to his own anti-

monarchist sentiments. At another point, writing of Jenny, Marx’s wife, Pillai wrote: ‘Let all

mothers sing in the glory of that great women who shared her husband’s joys and

sorrows…’. In a subtle way, Ramakrishna Pillai’s own biography recasts the life of Marx’s

life in terms of his own autobiography.

Such individual understanding of Marxism may not be unusual. Lala Hardayal, in his

biography of Marx, written in the same year, called him a ‘great European rishi’ and saw his

1 P.C. Joshi and K. Damodaran (eds), Marx comes to India,Delhi,1978, p.108.

2

central aim as being the ‘solution of the problem of poverty’.2 The first biography of Marx in

Chinese, written in 1919 by Yuan Quan (probably the pseudonym of Li Dazhao), described

in detail Marx’s poverty, the suffering of his family and Marx’s ill-health. The basic point as

Arif Dirlik points out was moral: Marx’s tenacity in the face of adversity.3 Just as in the case

of Marx’s life, so possibly in the historical engagement with Marxist theory. All reading

happens within a matrix of ideological and cultural determination. This is not, of course, to

argue that one must privilege the idiosyncrasies of individual engagement with a text over

the possible meanings within the text itself. It is, rather, to emphasize that

‘misunderstanding’ of a text, or a body of theory, are a window to an individual’s mode of

thinking as it grapples with a structured ideology. We can then focus on a notion of ideology

as a dynamic, interactive and on-going activity rather than as a finished intellectual system.

More important, we can begin to look at how individuals make meaning through the

translation of ideas in terms of their own concerns, rather than become ‘transmitters’ of a

system that has a coherence independent of individual understanding. 4 Once we bear this in

mind, then a study of Marxist thought in India becomes less obsessed with a scholastic

evaluation of the ‘correct’ interpretation of Marx, or, indeed, with the question of the

‘relevance’ of Marxism in an Indian context(which would involve seeing Marxism as nothing

more than a closed body of thought originating from European minds). Texts which actually

mange to stretch Marxism onto Indian ‘reality’ in a Procrustean manner become less

interesting, largely because of the overwhelming sense of unreality they mange to convey.

For example, M.N.Roy’s India in Transition (1922), treated Marxism as set of conclusions

which could be transposed on to any society and processed on the assumption that India

was largely a capitalist society.5 This is a case in point of an individual acting a ‘transmitter’

rather than a ‘translator’ of an ideology. Marxist writing should rather be seen as exposes to

what Raphael Samuel calls a ‘promiscuous variety of intellectual currents’. He points to the

seemingly curious phenomenon of British Marxist historians producing their most insightful

2 Ibid.,pp.47-8. 3 Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism, New York, 1989, p.105. 4 Ibid., pp.7-10. 5 Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Heteronomous Radicalism in M.N.Roy’. in Thomas Pantham and Kenneth l.

Deutsch, (eds), Political Thought in Modern India. New Delhi, 1986.

3

work on Puritanism and religious sectarianism, and speculates on the possible implications

of the Methodist upbringing of some leading Marxist historians.6

So what did Marxism mean to a generation of Malayalis who became communists? For a

large number, this transition was located in the history of local politics and the move from

the Kerala Congress, through Congress socialism to Communism. It was more an

organizational move than an ideological one. 7 The discipline that Marxist/socialist ideology

provided allowed the communists to take over the political organisation of the Congress by

1939. They became ‘communists’ first and then discovered Marxism. To use Dirlik’s

evocative phrase they had ‘walk[ed] backwards into Marxism’.8 It is also possible that a

widespread unawareness of Marxism was encouraged by the very organisation of the party

which maintained a strict division between those that engaged with theory and those

involved in mass mobilization.9 K.P. Gopalan, trade union organizer, encapsulated the mood

of his generation when he stated that, ‘we had socialist aims without knowing anything about

socialism’. 10

Early perceptions of Marxism arose from an amalgam of a heightened ethical awareness and

the existence of Soviet Union as a utopian exemplar of equality and achievement. When the

nationalist newspaper, Mathrubhumi, first began carrying articles on socialism in the early

1930s, its pieces were more remarkable for their polemical value. “Ignorance is the

fundament of capitalism. Anger is its armour. Cruelty is its weapon. The synonyms of

capitalism are treachery, oppression, deception, selfishness and contempt towards others.’11

In a society, like Kerala, riven by caste inequality, the egalitarianism had resonances which

allowed its absorption into a local idiom. Krishna Pillai, one of the founders of the

Communist Party in Kerala, wrote in 1934, that ‘communism believes that the whole world

belongs to one caste i.e. the human caste’. At times, it seemed as if communism was the

6 R.Samuel,’British Marxist Historians, 1880-1980’, New Left Review, 120, (1980), pp. 42-4. 7 Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India, Malabar 1900-1948, Cambridge, 1994,

ch.5. 8 Dirlik,Origin, p.98. 9 K.P.R. Gopalan in an interview with K.K.N. Kurup, 10 March 1985 and with author,12 March 1987.K

Madhavan in interview with author, 17 March 1987. 10 N.E. Balaram, Keralathile Communiste Prasthanam(The Communist Movement in Kerala), Trivandrum,

1973. 11 Mathrubhumi, 18 April 1934.

4

highest stage of Gandhism: ‘The capitalist would be destroyed and the rule of the country

will pass in to the hands of the daridranarayan’. 12 This ethical, egalitarian and emotive

understanding reflected more the aspirations of individuals than the theoretical complexities

of Marxism. For others, the experience of the Russian revolution was the most profound

argument in favour of Marxism. As K. Damodaran was to write, ‘[they] identified themselves

completely with the Soviet Union’.13 The introduction of the Five Year Plans had created an

utopian space: ‘within four years, all hoarders vanished, there was no conflict between

classes and the number of small peasants who owned land was countless’.14 In a special

number of the socialist newspaper Prabhatham, E.M.S. Nambudiripad (henceforth EMS) was

moved to write, ‘if the world does not copy the Soviet model, it will mean the destruction of

civilisation’. The same issue contained an exposition of the basic ideas of Marxism which

stated that ‘with the aid of this science (dialectical materialism), we can forecast the future of

man and society and thus control it’.15

The Marxism that we are dealing with here bears a close resemblance to British Marxism at

the beginning of this century as described by Stuart Macintyre: millenarian in character and

unaware of central categories or historical trajectories.16 The transition from this kind of

Marxism to a more serious engagement was both sharper as well as mediated by a particular

brand of Soviet Marxism presided over by Stalin. Most Malayalis theoreticians, K.

Damodaran and EMS in particular, were influenced in their understanding of Marxism by

the literature coming from the Soviet Union. The main texts were the documents of the

Comintern edited by Kuusinen and Dimitrov, and the Short History of the CPSU(B) published

in 1938 and available in translation in Malayalam in 1941.17 It was the Short Course which

became the textbook on Marxism. As Damodaran wrote later, ‘we identified Stalinism with

12 P. Krishna Pillai, ‘Fascisavum kammyunisavum’ (Fascism and Communism) Mathrubhumi 1934. 13 K. Damodaran, ‘the tragedy of Indian Communism’, in Tariq Ali(ed), The Stalinist Legacy,

Harmindsworth, 1984, p. 349. 14 P. Krishna Pillai, ‘Rashyayile Randaam Panchavalsara Paddhati’ (The Second Five Year Plan in Russia),

Mathrubhumi, 1934. 15 E.M.S. Nambudirpad, ‘Basic Principles of Marxist Economy’, in Public (General) Dept. G.O. 1351

(Confdl.) 17 August 1939; K.Damodaran, ‘Science of Marxism’, Public (General) Dept. G.O. 1351

(Confdl) 17 August 1939. 16 S. Macintyre, A Proletarian Science: Marxism in Britain, 1917-1933, London, 1986, p. 35. 17 T.V. Krishnan, Kerala’s First Communist, Delhi, 1971, p. 73

5

Marxism-Leninism’.18 This was also to mean that Marxism came to be less with revolutionary

dreams’ and utopian imaginings and more with a self-contained and rigid ‘science of the

history of society’. The clearest statement of this came in 1938 when Stalin wrote that

‘[s]ocialism is converted from a dream of a better future fro humanity into a science’.19

What were the features of the ‘science of history of society’ as laid down in the Short

Course? Stalinist Marxism, was in Walicki’s description, a ‘Marxism for the masses’ (in this

lay its appeal) and was characterized by a combination of ‘blind faith with quasi-scientism’.

No freedom of interpretation was allowed to the reader and chapters ended with a set of

‘correct and binding conclusions’. What is important for the present discussion are two

related features. First, the crucial role allotted to productive forces as the most mobile and

revolutionary element of production and the necessary adjustment of relations of production

to the rise of new productive forces. Second, five types of relations of productions, each

higher than the previous one and inevitably superseding it were spelt out: from primitive

communism to socialism.20 The idea that ‘dialectics pointed only in one way- forwards; a

‘progressivism’ that saw civilization as advance from lower stage to higher stages meant that

‘survivals’ from one stage into a presumably higher stage were to prove difficult to explain.

This was to be true of both caste and matriliny in the case of Kerala. The persistence of such

traits complicated the deployment of the category of ‘progressive’ since progressive societies

were the ones in which the political and ideological superstructures were in harmony with

the potential forces of economic development.

The Communist Party of India’s line between 1939 and 1948 saw bewildering shifts from

opposition to war in 1939; through support fro Great Britain during the ‘anti-fascist’ war

from 1942 which invoked notions of class harmony to keep up production; to a turn to

agrarian radicalism in 1946; followed by inauguration of a short-lived programme of agrarian

revolution in 1948. Most of EMS’s work in this period had been programmatic and in

response to the immediate political situation. The quick-silver shifts in party positions had to

18 Damodaran, ‘Tragedy of Indian Communism’, p. 349; E.M.S. Nambudiripad, Deshabhimani (Patriot),

Calicut, 1943. 19 J.V.Stalin, Problems in Leninism, Peking, 1976, pp. 849, 851; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams:

Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, New York, 1989. 20 A. Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of Communist Utopia,

Stanford, 1995, pp. 426-53. ; L. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford, 1978, Vol., 3.

6

be clarified for the cadres and Onnekkalkodi Malayalikal (1946), a summary account of the

consequences of British rule for Kerala and future prospects, was the only book to engage in

a historical excursus.21 Keralam, Mayalalikalude Mathrubhumi (Kerala, the Motherland of the

Malayalis, 1948, henceforth KMM), was the first attempt to stand back from the exigencies

of programmatic writing and engage with the problems of the history of Kerala. The central

problematic as EMS wrote later was to find a clue to the ‘crucial problem of the history of

Kerala- how and why the matriarchal [sic] family has continued to exist in Kerala down to

the twentieth century while it was superseded in all civilized countries’.22 The framing of the

question is in itself significant: the idea of inevitable progress and transcendence is explicit. It

assumes that with the changes in the modes of production, vestigial social forms like the

matrilineal family would softly and silently vanish away. The attempt tot explain the

empirical- the intransigent persistence of social forms- in terms of the theoretical- their

inevitable supersession and disappearance, provides the underlying tension in the book.

In this book we look at two texts, KMM and The National Question In Kerala (1952, henceforth

NQK) written by EMS. I would argue provisionally and tentatively that these theoretically

informed histories of Kerala can also be read as attempts at negotiating EMS’s Nambudiri

identity at a time when Brahmins were under siege in south India as malevolent parasites.

Marxist method, informed by what Samuel had termed ‘a promiscuous variety of intellectual

currents’, allowed fro the relocation of the Brahmin in the past as one of the key elements in

the social and economic transformation of the region. These issues predominate in EMS’s

reconstruction of the history of ancient Kerala. First, there is an engagement with the

Dravidianist critique of the Brahmin as an immigrant into the egalitarian, civilized space of

south India who introduced caste hierarchy and subordinated the indigenous culture.

Second, the institution of caste is reevaluated as a necessary stage in the transition from a

primitive form of society to a more advanced one through a more efficient organisation of

production. Finally, al a time when the ideology of language politics and of the linguistic

organisation of states was gaining prominence, it was claimed that regional identity was

premised on a unifying culture created by the brahmins. EMS had come out of an

21 See E.M.S. Nambudiripad , Aikyathinulla Tadasthangal (Hindrances toUnity), Calicut, 1943;

Deshabhimani; Party Sanghadakan, (Party Organiser), Calicut, 1944; Onnekkalkodi Malayalikal (One and

a Half Crore Malayalis), Calicut, 1946. 22 E.M.S. Nambudiripad, The National Question in Kerala, Bomabay, 1952, pp. i-ii.

7

involvement with the reform movements within the Nambudiri community before his

encounter with Marxism. These texts stand at the end of a personal trajectory: of his

engagement with what is meant to be a Nambudiri; and at the beginning of a political one: of

a role of a Nambudiri, now an unmarked citizen, in the modern world. The past is where the

genealogy of a progressive identity is constructed, and history is deployed as the arena in

which transformation is wrought.

Contra Dravidian Ideology

At the time of the linguistic reorganization of states in south India, the major contender in

terms of a fully formed regional ideology was the Dravidian movement in the Tamil

speaking areas of the Madras Presidency. Having originated in the anti-brahmin movements

of the early twentieth-century, it articulated both a positive sense of region- Tamil speaking

Dravidanadu- as well as the negative definition of who did not belong to the region; the

brahmins. The official demand for Dravidanadu, first articulated in 1944, included, apart

from the Tamil region, parts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and the Malabar district

as well. As late as 1954, C.N.Annadurai saw Kerala and Karnataka as autonomous states in

the federal political unit of Dravidanadu. The motto was – “Divide on the basis of language,

unite on the basis of race.”23 For Malayalam speakers in Travancore, Cochin and Malabar,

trying to define their own identity through the Aikya Kerala (United Kerala) movement, this

appeared to be an obstructive ideology bordering on regional imperialism. An added edge

was provided by the demand raised in 1946, of the Tamil speaking districts of Travancore

for freedom from the Malayalis. This was utilized by the Maharaja of Travancore to buttress

his own demand for an independent state, separate from “Kerala”. As EMS was writing his

text, the Dravidian ideology was a palpable political challenge in its attempt to subsume

linguistic identity within a putative racial unity.

While the cultural ideology of the Dravidian movement was inclusive and saw Kerala as

having sprung from the Tamil civilization forged in the Sangam period, its political ideology

was premised on a sharp divide between the brahmin and the non-brahmin. In 1938, when

E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker analysed the meaning of the word “nation”, he stressed the vitality

23 P.Ramamurti, The Freedom Struggle and the Dravidian Movement, Madras, 1987, p.82.

8

of centrifugal forces in India, there by justifying “Dravindanadu”. At the same time, he made

clear that the central opposition was between Tamilians and brahmins. The Dravidian

federation would include “all ‘Hindus’ except brahmins who call themselves Aryans”.24 This

anti-Brahaminism expressed itslf in various ways. As cultural exclusivism it claimed that the

Dravidian civilisation had always been untainted by the brahmins and that the two ‘races’

had always lived separately. This was explicitly argued in Annadurai’s Arya Maya (1943) that

saw the river Narmada as the impermeable barrier separating the Tamil culture from

Aryanadu. As an argument for original Tamil glory, it saw the Tamil civilization as

originating independently of Aryan/brahmin infusion. Indeed, the classical nature of Tamil

was evaluated by the absence of Sanskrit influence. Finally, the Aryan invasion represented

the foisting of a hierarchical, radicalist division of a hitherto egalitarian society. The concrete

manifestation of this was the caste system which put the brahmin at the apex. The Dravidian

critique constituted a rejection of the brahmin as an unnecessary irritant in the Dravidian

space.

Though the attack on the brahmin/Nambudiri in Kerala was neither as sustained nor

vituperative as the Tamil region, the brahmin identity was under siege. An added and more

profound dimension here was that there was considerable soul-searching within the brahmin

community itself both for internal reform as well as for restructuring its relation with other

castes, particularly the Nairs. The upper echelons of Nambudiris and Nairs were bound by

an intimate and fraught affiliation. Only the eldest son within a Nambudiri household could

marry, the younger ones entered into alliances with Nair women of the established

tharavadus(matrilineal households). From the late nineteenth century, a movement emerged

among the Nairs which was at the same time a move for internal reform- of marriage,

inheritance and division of property- as well as one that was deeply resented the Nambudiri

liaisons with Nair women.25

24 K.Nambi Arooran, Taml Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism, 1905-1944, MAdurai, 1980, pp.239-

41; E.F.Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahmin Movement and Tamil

Separatism, Berkeley, 1969; M.R.Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India, Princeton,

1976. 25 G. Arunima, ‘Colonialism and the Transformation of Matriliny in Malabar, 1850-1940, Cambridge PhD.

Thesis, 1992.

9

The critique of the Nambudiri as an effect, lecherous drone battening over Nair tharavadus

was best expressed in O. Chandu Menon’s novel Indulekha(1889) which immortalized these

concerns. This critique also emerged from the impetus within the Nair community to move

out of matriliny, which they saw as a relic of a barbaric past. Among the Nambudiris, there

was considerable rethinking fuelled by the emerging Nair critique as also by an

overwhelming sense of being caught in a time warp while other castes and groups engaged

with the challenge of colonial modernity. Three issues were prominent in this intellectual

ferment: endogamous marriages- that Nambudiri men should marry within the community

rather than enter into liaisons with Nair; partition of family property- freeing the younger

generation from the coils of the joint family household; and western education- so that

Nambudiris could compete with other castes in the ‘modern world’ instead of being

confined to an arcane and irrelevant scholarship of Sanskrit ritual. As an article put it in a

language characteristic of the times, ‘the degenerate state of the Nambudiri community is

worse that any other in the world’.26 Another element was added to the critique with the

emergence of the tenants’ associations and the demand for fairer rent and more secure

tenure which targeted the Nambudiri community as landlord, particularly in central Kerala.

EMS’s life encapsulates many of these dilemmas of brahmin identity in Kerala. He was born

in one of the eight most exalted Adhyan Nambudiri families, the only ones with the privilege

of becoming Vedic hymnologists. His household, Elamkulam, was one of the largest

landowners in south Malabar and had connections with the royal family of Walluvanad

through marriage. He grew up ‘surrounded by temples, prayers and benevolent and

malevolent gods’ and had an education in Sanskrit, being initiated early into the chanting of

Vedic hymns.27 It was only because of the presence of progressive relatives with a favourable

attitude towards English education that he got to go to elementary school and subsequently

became one of the few Nambudiris of his class and generation to attend college. Young

widows, polygamy and the large numbers of unmarried women on account of the practice of

Nambudiri liaisons with Nair women were a palpable presence in his childhood and youth

and these experiences drew him towards Nambudiri reform movements emerging in the

beginning of the century. At the age of fourteen, he became the secretary of the reform

26 Mathrubhumu,18 December, 1923. 27 E.M.S. Nambudiripad, How I Became a Communist, Trivandrum, 1976, pp. 2-5.

10

organisation, the Yogashema Sabha, which even while it was concerned with modernizing

the community conducted proceedings in a very Nambudiri atmosphere with breaks for the

performance of rituals. Inspired by the ‘Ezhava movement and the anti-brahmin propaganda

of EVR’, he increasingly became disenchanted with religion and ritual, cropped his tuft and

stopped wearing the sacred thread. It was out of the crucible of caste reform that EMS

moved to an involvement with the Congress and became a believer in full independence.

However, in 1927, enough of his older identity remained within him as he voted on the side

of the landlords against tenancy reforms at the Payannur Congress conference. But by the

mid-thirties, EMS had moved towards socialism and was responsible for setting up a sub-

committee within the regional Congress committee to enquire in to the conditions of

agricultural labour. Within the pages of the nationalist newspaper Mathrubhumi(founded in

1923) and the short-lived socialist newspaper Prabhatam(1938) he contributed articles on the

priciples of socialism and the differences with the Congress. In 1939, when the communists

finally broke away from the socialists, EMS was one amongst the core group.

With KMM, EMS stepped back from immediate political concerns to articulate the twin

concerns of Marxism and the trajectory of Kerala’s history. As a young radical Nambudiri

involved in social reform movements within the community in the beginning of the century,

there had been a sense of revulsion towards an archaic and backward-looking lifestyle. The

task of making a human of the Nambudiri, as one of the watchwords of the movement had

phrased it, created a profoundly divided self. In this work we see the engagement with the

history of Kerala which recovers a role for the Nambudiri as the prime mover in the

economic and social transformation of the region. This chapter argues tentatively that the

language and method of Marxism seemed to allow for such a recasting. The second

trajectory derives from the first but addresses itself more to the political perception of the

brahmin, particularly in the polemic of the Dravidian movement. In the enterprise of

imagining a united Kerala based on a community of Malayalam speakers, EMS argued in the

text that the regional culture is one produced by compromise and synthesis between the

Aryan/brahmin and Dravidian elements, rather than a displacement of Dravidian

civilization. Throughout the test there is the presence of the Other- the Dravidian ideology

that sought to delegitimise the status of the brahmin in south India. EMS attempted to

rehabilitate the brahmin in two strategies. First, through a frontal engagement with the

11

theory of a pristine Dravidian culture supplanted by an Aryan one, EMS built an argument

for a benign synthesis of civilizations. That is to say, he argued that the constant interaction

of Aryan brahmins and Dravidians within regions brought about a unity within regional

cultures which took precedence over racial differences. Second, he recast the role of the

Aryan/brahmin in the history of Kerala (and by extension, south India) not as the advent of

a superior civilization, but in the more neutral terms of bringing about an advance at two

levels: first, economic i.e. in the mode of production; and second, social i.e. the shift from

“matriarchal” to “patriarchal” family forms. These reconstructions created interesting

tensions within the text. While there is an acceptance of the fact that an earlier civilization

existed, the relation to its putative glory is ambivalent. It is seen only as a stage to be

transcended – an era of lower forms of culture i.e. that which is associated with less complex

modes of production, of organisation of labour and of family forms. Thus, while the idea of

a compromise and synthesis between civilizations is being worked out, there is

simultaneously the conception of the inevitable triumph of a gently civilizing brahmin

ideology.

The question of how the brahmins came to Kerala was the primary one: was this

process the southern equivalent of the Aryan invasion supplanting the Dravidian cultures in

the north? EMS distanced himself unequivocally from the brahmin founding myth of Kerala

in the Keralolpatti: that Parasurama had flung his axe into the sea and reclaimed land which he

settled with immigrant brahmins.28 He went along with the Dravidian position that the

existence of an indigenous civilization in Kerala preceded the coming of the brahmins. In

speaking of the conflict between the two cultures the persistence of the earlier cultures was

recognized: “Neither the axe of Parasurama nor the advaita of Sankaracharya, or even 2000

years of continuous brahmin power have been able to destroy the non-brahmin way of

life.”29 He argued that forms of culture, marriage and inheritance had continued without

substantial change and neither culture had been wholly victorious or wholly defeated.

However, the question of numerical and cultural strength of the brahmins in particular

regions complicated the picture somewhat. Where the brahmins were “strong”, as in south

Malabar there had been changes: the lower caste Tiyyas followed patriliny unlike their

28 E.M.S. Nambudiripad, Keralam Malayalikalude Mathrubhumi [Kerala, the Motherland of the Malayalis]

(Trichur: Deshabhimani Pulications, 1965) First published 1948, p.47. Henceforth KMM. 29 Ibid., p.48.

12

northern counterparts and shrines had been converted to temples through a “cleansing” of

their ritual. But, on the whole, despite brahmin influence, practices like equal rights for men

and women in property and the freedom to marry and separate at will had been retained.

While marriage had been considerably ritualized among the brahmins and made a life-long

covenant, for others “it is a relation entered into for the ease of life and to satisfy a physical

need.” Of course, the brahmins themselves had not been immune to local influences and

had adopted customs peculiar to the region, later codified by Sankara, as well as allowing for

some compromises with local religion such as the setting up of non-brahmin shrines within

temples.30 There is a seemingly celebratory statement that the Nairs, Pulayas and Tiyyas were

able to strongly resist the dominance of men within families which came “in the name of

brahminism and culture.”31 How are we to understand this reconstruction of Kerala’s history

which on the surface seems to display similarities with the Dravidianist position? What value

does EMS place on this persistence of the indigenous way of life?

As we go on we realize that the stage is being set for the next step in the argument

which is about the growth of civilization and the transition from one family form to another.

The persistence particularly of “matriarchal” (sic) forms of geneaology and inheritance

marks the Nairs, Pulayas and other inhabitants as part of a primitive civilization which is

then provided an ideal by the “patriarchal” brahmin household. But we anticipate the

working out of the argument here. First, there is the question: “Who did the brahmins

supplant within the regions of Kerala?” Comparing the different theories about the origins

of the Nairs which locate their original home in places as far apart as Nepal, Chotanagpur

and southern India, EMS comes down in favour of their being a Dravidian people. They

were part of the civilization of the south proved by “Tamil scholars” to have been no less

advanced than that of the Aryans.32 One of the indicators of their level of advancement was

the fact that they managed to retain the distinctive features of their social organisation i.e.

matriliny even after ‘clash with the people like the Aryans who possessed a superior

civilization and culture’.33 Throughout the text there is a constant movement between the

term Aryan implying a northern origin fro the Nambudiris and being consonant with

30 KMM, pp.47-52. 31 Ibid., p.51 32 Ibid., p. 58 33 Ibid., p. 57,emphasis added

13

Dravidian position, and the more neutral term of brahmin locating the Nambudiri as one

among the brahmins originating in the southern peninsula. Immediately undercutting the

idea of Nair ‘advancement’, EMS went on to add, ‘Today the vestiges of matriliny only

survive among the Negro race; and in our region among the Pulayas, Parayas and other races

who are more backward socially and culturally.’34

Even as the Nairs were seen as part of the developed Dravidian peoples, their practices were

seen as belonging to an earlier stage of civilization. In the Introduction to the second

impression of KMM in 1965, this evaluation of the Nairs was elaborated with a creative

misreading of Engels’s hierarchy of family forms from group marriage to patriarchal family.

EMS read Engels as arguing that the move away from mother-right represented an

unqualified advance, though Engels saw in it the ‘world-historical defeat of the female sex’.35

EMS adopted the trajectory of Engels’s argument: ‘Marxian point of view of development

from group marriage to monogamy’, 36 but not the critique. What made possible, even

necessary, such a misreading? Beginning in the late-twentieth century, there had been much

debate about matriliny and marriage among the Nairs. In 1881, the Malabar Marriage

Commission had been set up to enquire into the question of whether the institution of

marriage existed among the matrilineal communities and amidst the dust raised by the debate

it became clear that there was a deep belief in the inevitable progress towards the patrilineal

family and monogamous marriage. The works of John McLennan, John Lubbock and Lewis

Morgan were already current in Kerala at the beginning of the century as reforming elites

gathered intellectual ammunition to engage with these problems of family, marriage and the

division of property. 37 In 1908, K.P Padmanabha Menon who wrote the pioneering history

of Kerala, citing McLennan, had stated with the confidence of the modernizer that, ‘the

promiscuity of savagery had passed into the polyandry of barbarism and the polyandry of

barbarism into the monogamy of civilization’.38 For the Marxist thinker, Engels had

complicated the picture of the transition to the patriarchal family. This was evident in K.

34 Ibid., p. 57 35 F. Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, London, 1972, p. 20 36 E.M.S. Nambudiripad, Kerala, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Bombay, 1964, p. 20 37 G. Arunima, ‘Colonialism and Matriliny’, ch. 5. 38 K.P. Padmanabha Menon, Memorandum on the Report of the Travncore Marumakkathayam

Commission, 1908, p.9

14

Damodaran’s work Manushayan [Human] (1947). He began his discussion of the family by

mentioning the work of McLennan, Lubbock and Morgan, stating that the last named had

made the most important contribution in establishing the historicity of the family as a social

institution. He then went on to cite Engels on the origin of marriage, patriarchy and the

subordination of women. However, since his concern was with the move out of matriliny, he

observed that the survival of the ‘freedom’ of women as in the case of Kerala was

characteristic of the ‘lower’ stages of savagery and barbarism.39 If Damodaran side-stepped

Engels even as he acknowledged the difference in his position, EMS absorbed Engels into

the trajectory posited by Morgan et al. It is interesting to note that Dange, coming from

Maharashtra had little problem in accepting, atleast theoretically, Engels’s critique, when he

wrote that the ‘monogamy of class-ridden society…becomes a mockery for the woman’.40

EMS made an interesting and unsubstantiated connection between matriliny and the caste

regime. Since the Nambudiris were able to make the sharpest break from mother-right to

father-right they became the highest caste while those who retained the maximum amount of

freedom in marriage and preserved the ‘mother-right’ became the lowest of the caste

Hindus.41 So here again the argument of the superiority of the brahmin civilization was the

phrased in the language of Marxism: as representing the teleological end which the inferior

family forms strive towards. EMS stated sharply in 1964 that give time and with the

transference of descent from mother to father, ‘the Nair family will become the

Nambudiri’.42 The family was central to many of the debates among Marxists in Asia, since it

was seen as impeding the development of the individual. A move from the extended family

to the nuclear family was necessarily progressive inasmuch as it freed the individual

simultaneously from the trammels of tradition and a collective identity.43 The dilemma in

EMS’s case was two-fold. Before the issue of the individual relation to the family was the

more important one of the move from an inferior to a superior family form.

By the time he came to writing the NQK he had more fully worked out the place of the scale

of the family forms in his evaluation of the role of the brahmin within the indigenous

39 K.Damodaran, Manushyan, Trichur, 1947, pp. 60-3. 40 S.A.Dange, From Primitive Communism to Slavery, Bombay, 1949, p. 131. 41 KMM , pp. xvi-xvii. 42 Nambudiripad, Kerala, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, p.20. 43 D.G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945, Berkeley, 1981, pp. 131-2.

15

civilisation. The critique of the Dravidian ideology was much sharper as well: “the new

bourgeois theory of Dravidian superiority seeks to attribute all the characteristics of modern

civilized society to a people whose family life was dominated by matriarchal relationships.” 44

The other dimension to the argument was the evaluation of the political structures which

had attempted to rule over Kerala, particularly the Chera Empire. Later in the paper we shall

look at how EMS denied the role played by kings and empires in the construction of the

region of Kerala and made an argument for the brahmins as having provided the political

and cultural cement within a fragmented, primitive society. Here the Chera empire was

evaluated and found wanting for its inability to ‘transform family organisation from one

based on mother-right to that based on father-right’.45 It was argued that this was inevitable

since there had been no central imperialized government which in turn could have been

possible only with a shift to field cultivation on the basis of irrigation such as in the Kaveri

and Godavari delta. Since there had not been an advance in the mode of production and

consequently no increase in wealth, empires were an ‘artificial superstructure on the material

foundations of Kerala’.46 The Tamils could deal ‘a crushing blow to family life based on

mother-right’ because ‘the necessity for the organisation of such a mode of production

[based on artificial irrigation]…compelled [them] to develop their Chera, Chola and Pandya

empires’.47 In Kerala, these sets of imperatives did not obtain and the persistence of the

indigenous way of life was both cause and effect of a lower form of social organisation,

production and political development.

As to when the brahmins actually entered Kerala, EMS preferred the date suggested by

R.C.Dutt – 4th century B.C.E. – for the immigration of brahmins into south India, rather

than 8th century C.E. as suggested by William Logan. However, he disagreed with both on

the question of origins. The migration was presented as the result of an internal movement

from within the southern peninsula of India i.e. from Maharashtra, Karnataka and the banks

of the Krishna and the Godavari rather than an invasion from the north. By arguing this he

was mapping onto the territory delineated by Dravidian ideologues and locating the brahmin

firmly within it, rather than as an outsider. Moreover, the idea that the brahmins were

44 NQK, p. 7. 45 Ibid., p. 18. 46 Ibid., p. 19. 47 Ibid., p. 19.

16

conquering Aryans was subtly undermined at the same time; he was careful to avoid the use

of the word Aryan and Aryan culture at this juncture, except for occasional slippages

throughout the text: “It is more logical to assume that the brahmins came to Kerala in

different groups, from different regions at different times than to suppose that there was a

single immigration of one body of people from one region.”48 There was no originary

migration attended by disastrous consequences as in the Dravidian representations. EMS’s

alternative history was presented as a ‘surmise’ (abhyuham) for which he offered no evidence.

The regional differences between Nambudiris in Kerala were seen as arising from their

migration from different parts of southern India e.g. the observances of the Nambudiris

from northern Kerala reflected their Maharashtrian past. However, here again there was a

tension. EMS stated that the Nambudiris of central Kerala had had the most influence on

the history and culture of the region. He traced their origin to the banks of the Krishna and

Godavari ‘because after the coming of the Aryan culture, the foremost civilisation in India

was in the Andhra region.’49 Therefore, even as the idea of northern Aryan origin for the

Nabudiris was rejected, it was argued that the advanced sections among them were only one

remove away from the superior Aryan civilisation.

In the ‘Introduction’ to the second impression of KMM in 1965, EMS returned to an

argument about the Brahmins having come from north India, but the ramifications of this

reversal served radical purposes. He hypothesized that the brahmins came to Kerala at a time

when changes were coming about within marriage practices and family organisation. A

section from the ‘caste Hindus’ (this is curious as EMS argued later that it was the brahmins

who brought caste to Kerala; although as in the use of the word Aryan, there was a decided

inconsistency throughout the text) had gone some way towards imposing monogamy on

their women while allowing the men to cohabit with women of other caste Hindu families

and marry within their own caste. This group also accepted the study of the Vedas and along

with those who ‘came from the north’ became the class known as Nambudiris. This surmise

(abhyuham) regarding the origin of the Nambudiris was given a radical edge by the statement

that they were the result of jati samkara (mixture of castes). The brahmin was moved from

originating within the Dravidian space, albeit of a different race, to becoming one among the

48 KMM, p.53. 49 Ibid., p.54.

17

Dravidians.: ‘After several generations it became impossible to tell who the immigrants and

who the natives were.’50 Throughout the text, Marxism and its notion of historical

development – the motor of the mode of production- was deployed against the Dravidian

rhetoric of the brahmins as aggressive immigrants. As EMS puts it, ‘the development of a

region is not determined by forces which enter the region from outside. It is rather

influenced by the existing social forces which are growing within it.’51

The caste system and landlordism

Here we come to the next stage in the argument: what allowed the brahmins to establish

themselves in Kerala in the midst of a people at a high level of civilization? EMS puts it thus:

‘the Nambudiri possessed an advantage that Nair society lacked. What was that advantage?

The answer is- the caste system’.52 The caste system was the marker of the superior

economic organisation which the brahmins instituted allowing the shift from one mode of

production to another. Just as slavery helped human society to progress towards a more

civilized state in Europe, the caste system played a similar role in its time. In a context of

agitations against caste both in Kerala as well as in the rest of the Madras Presidency, the

characterization of caste provided is benevolent, as a means of organizing production alone.

The son follows the profession of the father; in every boy is implanted the desire to gain training and then expertise in his family profession; this expertise in the family profession becomes the basis of creating the means to live a happy life: this is the essence of the caste system. As a result men and women of different castes had the opportunity to develop their professional skills; each generation learned from the experiences of the previous generation…53

The brahmin was seen as the prime mover in this system, the ‘one who organized

production’ by allocating to each caste a profession. Political overlords were unable to

systematize an advanced mode of organisation of labour or of production, stultifying society

in the ‘matriarchal’ mode. The organisation of caste as a superior form of the division of

labour allowed for two possibilities which were expanded upon in NQK. The development

50 KMM, p.xix. 51 Ibid. p.xiii. 52 Ibid. p. 59. 53 Ibid. p.60.

18

of productive forces was given an impetus by the new social division which led to the

accumulation of wealth, division of labour and the division of society into classes. This

finally paved the way for transition to father-right among the more advanced groups.54 While

KMM had argued for caste as a division of labour with people allotted professions which

they then developed over generations, in NQK, the argument was expressed in terms of

differential ranking in terms of movement towards ‘father right’. However, there was

another major shift in NQK. Earlier he had argued that the Nambudiris had instituted the

caste system (where he shared ground with the Dravidianists, though they ascribed different

meanings to the founding of caste). He now argued that the process of division into castes

had been ‘facilitated or even stimulated’ by the Chera Empire and contacts with ther ets of

India. He continued that ‘whether these contacts did also include the immigration of of a

whole caste (Nambudiris)…is an open question’.55 Caste existed before the coming of the

Nambudiris, prior to which the ‘soil of Kerala was prepared for the sowing of the seed of

brahminism’.56 On the same page he referred to the ‘brahmanical scheme of division of

labour’ i.e. caste which left unresolved the links between the advent of the brahmins and the

institution of caste: ‘the difference between one caste and another is a difference in the stage

reached by them in the evolution of society’.57

EMS was not alone at this time in characterizing caste as if it were devoid of all connotations

of ritual and social lowliness. It was only as late as 1948, at the Second Party Congress that

opposition to discrimination based on caste was officially made a part of the ‘Programme of

the Democratic Revolution’. Even then discrimination against the untouchables was

denounced instrumentally as a ‘bourgeois attempt to keep the masses disunited’ rather than

as possessing a deeper resonance at the experiential level as well.58 Moreover, in 1946,

following the consolidation of the Communist Party in northern Kerala through a pragmatic

political line during the war, the issue of caste had been summarily shelved. This arose from

the successful attack on certain forms of caste discrimination as an effect of the class

hierarchy through peasant mobilization during 1938-40 which then relegated the issue of

caste to the reforming influence of the rival Congress through the largely ineffective Harijan

54 NQK, p.29. 55 Ibid. pp.34-5. 56 Ibid. p.29. 57 Ibid. p.32. 58 M.B.Rao ed. Documents of the History of the Communist Party, New Delhi, 1976, pp.85, 111-2.

19

Sevak Sanghs.59 In 1944, this issue blew up in the face of the party when, following the

dismissal of C.H.Kanaran and Raju, Tiyya labour organizers from the provincial committee,

there was considerable discontent within both the ranks and the leadership about the ‘caste

systemt’ within the party. EMS rode the storm by arguing that the party should not become

the ‘display case of the religions and castes of India’. 60 Kanaran and others within the party

continued to press for an engagement with the issue of caste, arguing for associating the

communist party with caste associations and stating that ‘caste was a reality in contemporary

society’ which could not be ignored.

If the rational organisation of production through the caste system was one of the

innovations imported by the Brahmins, the other one – ‘the special contribution of the

Aryans to Kerala’ (emphasis added) – was the landlord system. It helped institute the system

of private property in Kerala and here EMS moves towards a curious blend of traditional

Nambudiri myth and Marxist method. Observing that there is a direct relation between

brahmin dominance and the prevalence of landlordism – least in north Malabar, most in

central Kerala – he goes on to ask, ‘Does this show that the tradition of Parasurama having

granted land to the brahmins is correct?’61

The details of the origins of landlordism were equally curiously worked out. Once the

Nambudiris had instituted the caste system it became necessary to compensate those who

provided services either in terms of land or grain from lands. The Nambudiris generated

ways of making an income by playing an entrepreneurial role and in return for this they took

a portion of the harvest. Te local rulers (naduvazhis and desavazhis) were given a portion of the

harvest in return for protection. As the status of the Nambudiris and rulers increased, the

importance of the share they received also went up. Over a period of time, ‘it became

absolutely necessary for the cultivator to relinquish a portion of the harvest and it came to be

established that the Nambudiris and rulers had rights of overlordship on the land’. In EMS’s

narration, this was represented as an inevitable, painless and uncontested transition which

was accompanied ‘by an increase in the devotion of the cultivators towards the Nambudiris

and the gods they had brought with them.’ The belief became entrenched that the produce

59 Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communsim, ch. 5 and 6. 60 E.M.S.Nambudiripad, Party Sanghadakan, pp.3-6. 61 KMM, pp.65-6.

20

of the land belonged by rights to the Nambudiris or particular deities. If on the one hand it

was the rationale of the superior organisation of production by the Nambudiri that gave

them status, on the other it was a growing and unexplained devotion to them which lay at

the bottom of the creation of private property.62

The greatest advantage of the caste system was that it paved the way for a major economic revolution. What the transfer of the rights over land from the hands of those who cleared the forests and cultivated the lands to those who lived off a portion of the produce without engaging in cultivation actually meant was the emergence of a new sense of private property.63

In Kerala, private property was instituted with the coming of the Nambudiris while in the

rest of India it had to wait till the coming of the British. A form of absolute rights over

private property which extended not only over the land but the vegetation ad natural

formations on it was prevalent here to the great astonishment of the British. By the time

NQK came to be written, EMS had moved to the position that there was no intrinsic

connection between the coming of the Nambudiris and the origin of private property.

Indeed, where the Nambudiris came from (the geographical location was unspecified), they

had been used to communal ownership by village communities rather than the idea of

individual ownership. Therefore, even before their coming, ‘land had already gone far

towards being turned into private property’.64 We are not told how he arrived at this reversal

of the earlier assumption. However, this can be explained if we see that the argument had

shifted from seeing the Nambudiris as the harbingers of a new economic order, which would

associate them also with the deeply ambivalent heritage of caste and landlordism. Rather, it

was argued that they were the catalysts for a social transformation – from matriliny to

patriliny – which was part of the ascendant ideology within Kerala and therefore had more

unequivocal support.

It was in another context that EMS took up what was lying beneath the surface of his benign

delineation of the caste system: the question of inequality. In an attempt to locate the history

of Buddhism in ancient Kerala he argued for a clash between those who espoused Buddhism

and those who welcomed the newer immigrant groups. Buddhism was seen as having arisen

62 Ibid. pp.67-70. 63 Ibid. p.72. 64 NQK, pp.32-3.

21

in response to the ‘subordination of the majority of the people to a tiny minority’ despite the

‘social advancement’ brought about by the division of labour through caste.

Those who believed that the earlier Kerala without the caste system and janmi overlordship [Nair lordship] should be restored espoused Buddhism, and those who wanted the destruction of the old order and the institution of a new one [Nambudiri-janmi overslordship] took recourse to the brahmin religion.65

The victory over Buddhism of Sankaracharya and the advaita philosophy represented not

only the triumph of an ideology but a shift in the relations of production. For EMS, this was

a crucial watershed in the history of Kerala an he went along with the tradition held by the

Nambudiris in the Keralolpatti that the Malayalam era which begins in 825 C.E.

commemorated this event. His preference for this Nambudiri myth is interesting considering

the other options available to him.66 Buddhism perished because it had to; it represented an

older order which may have had greater equality between people as a premise but was tied to

a stagnant mode of production. It is curious how the triumph of advaita and the caste

ideology are presented as two sides of the same coin when the contemporary radical critiques

of caste whether by Narayana Guru or by Swami Vaghbhatananda drew upon advaita for

arguing against caste inequality.67

Aikya Keralam: Kerala as a Linguistic Region

It was in the laying out of an argument for Kerala as a cohesive regional unit bound by a

common history, language and culture that there was a more detailed and direct engagement

with the Dravidian position. EMS argued against the idea of a pristine Dravidian civilization

invaded by an Aryan one and put forward the gentler suggestion of a compromise and

exchange between the brahmin and the Dravidian. Just as in Kerala the brahmin became a

player in the matrilineal system of the Nairs, similarly, in Tamil Nadu, they had to adopt the

prevalent alphabet and content themselves with the fact that they could influence the local

literature but little. Nevertheless the culture that emerged in South India was a composite

one ‘formed by the conflict between Dravidians and Aryans’, in which the different strands

65 KMM, p.74. 66 For a discussion of the various theories regarding the origin of the Kollam era in 825 A.D., see A.

Sreedhara Menon, A Survey of Kerala History, Kottayam, 1967, pp. 114-22. 67 V.T.Samuel, ‘”One Caste, One Relgion, One God for Man”: a Study of Sree Narayana Gru (1854-1928)

of Kerala, India’, Hartford Seminary, 1973; Swami Brahmavratan , Maharshi Vaghbhatananda Gurudevar,

Thottapally, 1971.

22

had become inseparable. Even Tamil literature, which ‘prides itself on being the most

independent of Sanskrit influence’, had had its rules of grammar codified by the sage

Agastya.68 From an argument establishing the synthesis of cultures, the next step was a leap

forward to state that over the centuries, there had been a shift away from a pan-Dravidian

culture to regional ones in which ‘there is a greater similarity between the brahmins and non-

brahmins within a region than between brahmins, or Dravidians across regions’.69 The

brahmin had been naturalized and attained a unity with the Dravidians in linguistic regions,

while there are’ differences and contradictions between the Dravidians themselves’.70 In

Kerala, moreover, ‘Dravidianised Aryans’, i.e. Nambudiris and ‘Aryanised Dravidians’, i.e.

Nairs had created a distinct new culture. The rug was pulled out from under the Dravidianist

position by arguing that the Dravidians had less in common with each other and mre of an

affinity with the brahmins. The argument of racial difference was undermined by positing an

emergent unity.

The next step brought together the important components of the enw society – caste and a

distinctive culture which integrated regions and gave them their unique character. The

origins of regional identity lay in the possibility of the creation of a high culture premised

upon a division of labour.

In fact, it was on the basis of the caste system which subordinated the majority of the people socially and culturally to the brahmin, and the janmi system which subordinated them economically to the landlord, that Kerala developed its own culture and form of government and the Malayalis grew as an independent people.71

And again,

If these two arrangments [caste and the landlord system] had not existed, the Nambudiris would have been unable to engage in cultural activities and develop the sciences and literature and the Nairs could not have improved agricultural practices and developed their martial and physical prowess.72

The cultural argument is made with greater specificity in NQK. Developing upon the earlier

critique of the Chera Empire, he argued pace Stalin that like ‘the empires of the slave and

68 KMM, pp.83-4. 69 Ibid. p.85. 70 Ibid. p.86. 71 Ibid. p.71. 72 Ibid. p.105.

23

medieval periods’, it had managed only to maintain Kerala as a ‘conglomeration of tribes and

nationalities, each of which lived its own life and had its own language’.73 Thus, Kerala was

moving from ‘clan languages to tribal languages’ at a time when Tamilnadu was moving from

‘tribal languages to the languages of nationalities’.74 Under the system of ‘feudal landlordism’

that developed after the coming of the brahmins there was a division of labour between the

‘manual and the intellectual workers’ and the allotment of a definite share of the produce to

the latter. The brahmins were then able to devote themselves to the ‘unification of several

dialects into a national language’.75 It became possible for Kerala to shear off from the Chera

Empire of which it had been a part and for Malayalam to develop as a language independent

of Chentamizh only under the umbrella of the brahmin. Moreover, ‘in a Kerala which was

populated by different communities across its length and breadth, a uniform government,

society and culture came into being’.

Here again the contrast with the Dravidian movement is striking. EMS argued that the

geographical region of Kerala was unified by the cultural production of the brahmins. This is

despite his critique of existing historiography as being ‘largely about the rulers of Kerala and

the higher classes associated with them’ and excluding the ‘lives of Cherumas, Parayas and

Nayadis who were slaves under the sway of these ruling classes’. He stated that, ‘in

Padmanabha Menon’s history 176 pages are devoted to the Nairs, 109 to the Nambudiris

and only 22 to the Tiyyas’.76 The Dravidian movement drew upon a geneaology, built

assiduously from the late 19th century, of a unified and glorious Tamil civilisation which was

given a concrete definition by the anti-brahmin movement. The trajectory of regional

identity in the Malayalam speaking area was different. Starting from the early 20th century,

the spate of caste reform movements had undermined the notion of a coherent regional

culture. In Travancore, the introduction of community based politics has fragmented the

political as well as cultural realm into mutually opposed and infrequently united spaces of the

73 In the Introduction to NQK, EMS states that it was Stalin’s On Linguistics [Concerning Marxism in

Linguistics (1950)] that allowed him to rethink the ‘crucial problem of the history of Kerala’, i.e. the

continued existence of the ‘matriarchal’ family, with is suggestion that the ‘superstructure does often act

independently of the basis’. Of course, Stalin remains obfuscatory on the nature of the relation. He says

both that the superstructure is not ‘passive and indifferent’ but actively assists the base to take shape as also

that the superstructure is ‘created by [the] base to serve it’, J.V.Stalin, Selected Works, II, Calcutta, 1976,

p.251. 74 NQK, pp.24-5. 75 Ibid. p.55. 76 KMM, p.43.

24

Nair, Ezhava, Syrian Christian and so on.77 In Malabar, the attack on the janmi sampradayam

(the culture of landlordism – often loosely translated as feudalism) from the late thirties

ranged from a critique of excessive exactions of rent to a rejection of forms like Kathakali as

being subsidized by peasants but culturally restricted to the landlord. The emergent socialist

critique had undermined the possibility of appealing to the canonical literature of the region,

by characterizing it as a product of a ‘feudal’ culture in a language removed from the

experiences of the masses- Sanskrit and a highly Sanskritised Malayalam. The progressive

writers’ movement of the forties attempted to create a new demotic, populist culture which

drew upon the lives of the subordinate and to a lesser degree from the folk culture- popular

ballads, ritual performances and so on.78 However this was as yet in its infancy.

A high culture was being attacked for it ‘feudal’ overtones while the relation with a popular

culture was fraught with contradictions. Beginning with the Ezhava reform movement of Sri

Narayana Guru, the route for social mobility involved a jettisoning of ‘barbaric’ and

‘primitive’ customs and practices. The roots of caste inequality were seen as lying in the

unclean professions and uncivilized culture of the lower castes.79 Popular religion cme in fro

censure from the upper castes as well as lower caste reformers, and by extension so did

popular culture which had largely religious connotations. The brief attempt by The

Communist Party at an instrumental deployment of popular cultural forms in the forties had

not been serious enough to make a break from this civilizing impulse. Explainign this shift to

the cadre, EMS had written in 1944,

There is a common assumption that expressing an interest in the fine arts or developing a taste fro it, is not

suited for a communist. Those communists who have an interest in kathakali, festivals and temple festivals

often are embarrassed about admitting it. Today the circumstances are such that we have the opportunity to

lead the renaissance in literature, music and the other arts.80

77 Robin Jeffrey, ‘Travancore: Status, Class and the Growth of Radical Politics, 1860-1940, in R.Jeffrey ed.

Peoples, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in Indian Princely States, Delhi, 1978. 78 E. Sardarkutty, Purogamana Sahitya Nirupanam (Criticism of Progressive Literature), Trichur, 1985;

P.K. Gopalakrishnan, Purogamana Sahitya Prasthanam: Nizhalum Velichhavum (The Progressive

Writer’sMovement: Light and Shadow), Trichur, 1987. 79 Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism, chs. 3 and 4. 80 E.M.S. Nambudiripad, Party Sanghadakam, p. 6.

25

Once the movement for regional identity- Aikya Keralam- began to gain mass following,

cultural fissures across caste and community were subsumed at least momentarily ina an

exaltation of Malayalam and its literature; an unequivocal return to the older classical

tradition as in Tamilnadu.81 Of course, though the trajectory was similar to that in

Tmailnadu, for EMS, the ideological underpinning came also from Stalin’s cocept of

nationality, in which language was one of the major constituents of a peoples’ identity. In

September 1942, in a resolution at a plenary meeting of the central committee, sixteen Indian

‘nations’ were classified, ‘Keralas’ being one of them. However, the turn to language as an

unifier of a region remained a deeply ambivalent solution; coming at the end of a

redefinition of politics in Kerala establishing the rightful place of the ‘working classes’, the

new Kerala and the definition in terms of culture of the janmis.

So was there a sense of region, or any form of political unity prior to the cultural unification

wrought by the Nambudiris? Had Kerala been politically united under the rule of the

Perumals (9th to 11th centuries C.E.)? Here the central traditional account is the Keralolpatti.

Parasurama, who founded Kerala, divided the land into sixty-four brahmin villages and

prescribed an oligarchical government in which all the villages were represented. Over a

period of time, dissensions arose and under these circumstances representative authority was

conferred on select villages to act on behalf of the community. When this too failed to

prevent disputes, protectors were appointed to hold office for three years and four advisory

boards, each under an officer, were set up. Finally, the brahmins assembled at Tirunavayi

and resolved to bring in alien kings (Perumals) to rule over the country. Each Perumal was

to rule for twelve years and then retire from public life. The Keralolpatti gives a list of twenty-

four such Perumals who ruled over Kerala and the last of them is reputed to have converted

to Islam and left for Mecca, after partitioning the country among his relatives. The mythical

account points to a political unity of Kerala under the Perumals which was fragmented after

the last Perumal renounced his rule.

EMS went along with the then existing historical consensus that even under the ruleof the

Perumals there had been no unity; under their overlordship there had been several kings

81 S. Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970, Berkeley, 1997.

26

who owed allegiance to them.82 It had been a form of feudal rule with the Perumals

exercising a fragile control and their ‘empire’ disintegrated after their departure. However, he

made a significant departure from the consensus in two respects. First, he disagreed with

Padmanabha Menon’s assertion that the Perumals rather than being invited by the brahmins

were sent to rule here by the Chola-Chera-Pandya kings i.e. they were the appointed

governors following the incorporation of Kerala into the southern empires. He prefers the

account in the Keralolpatti which ash the brahmins inviting the Perumals, thus casting them

squarely as the movers in the political realm as his account of caste had made them the

lynchpins of the economic realm. Second, and more important, he argues that rather than

rule by a brahmin oligarchy prior to the coming of the Perumals, there had been a

democratic framework (janadhpatya vyavastha) which was supplanted by the despotism of the

Perumals. ‘The establishment of feudal rule meant the destruction of ancient democracy’.83

This characterization is derived from a reading of the ‘Nambudiri tradition’ which he

preferred to Padmanabaha Menon’s own historical reconstruction from a variety of sources.

Here he attempted a reconciliation with the Dravidian ideologists by recasting the Aryan-

Dravidian conflict as that between two forms of democracy: the ancient Aryan democracy

brought from North India by the brahmins and the existing Nair system of local and village

assemblies (tarakoottam and naatukoottami).

The Nmabudiris are seen as having provided the only unifying government within Kerala,

and that too, a ‘democratic’ one, just as earlier they were shown to have provided the

bonding cultural cement for the region. In NQK, another evaluation of the ‘empires’ of the

south was provided, arguing against the ‘theorists of Dravidian superiority’ that the ‘racial

origin of the founders of the two types of empires –the Indo-Iranian in the north and the

Turanian in the south – is irrelevant in a study of the respective roles they played in the

development of human society in India’.84 There had been considerable interaction between

the north and south – wars of conquest, attacks and counter attacks – which meant a

considerable diffusion of ideas and peoples. He went on to argue that the brahminical

civilisation may have been the common product of the ‘Indo-Aryans’ and the ‘Turanians’

82 K.P.Padmanabha Menon, A History of Kerala, Cochin, 1924, vol.I, pp.420-67. 83 KMM, p.93. 84 NQK, p.26.

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(note the conscious avoidance of the term Dravidian). Conditional on this the hypothesis

being accepted, EMS took the next breathtaking step:

We are led to the very interesting conclusion that the Dravidian empires of the south were not (as is generally supposed) bastions against brahminism which were ultimately broken down, but the agency through which brahminism was reared on Dravidian soil.85

The final step in the argument against Dravidian ideology had been made: the Dravidian

‘civilisation’, if such existed, was necessary only in as much as it allowed for the inevitable

establishment of the brahmin and brahminism in south India.

A Usable Past

What did Marxism allow EMS to do? First, it facilitated a reconceptualisation of the idea of

caste as having played a historical role in organizing production in such a way that it

promoted the development of both individual skills as well as a regional culture. The latter

was developed by the brahmins at the apex of the caste hierarchy who were freed from

labour to devote themselves to intellectual and cultural activity. Second, and following from

this, amidst the general condemnation of the brahmin in south India, Marxism allowed the

reinstatement of a role for the brahmins by putting them at the heart of crucial changes in

the organisation of the family, a theme with major resonances for a society engaged in an

attack on the legacy of matriliny. Contradictions remained: the use of Nambudiri myths

along with a scientific approach to history; the putting of the working classes at the heart of

the theoretical exercise but in practice, exalting the high culture produced by the brahmins.

D.D.Kosambi, in one of the earliest reviews of Nehru’s The Discovery of India, observed that it

reflected the bourgeoisie coming of age in India. EMS’s work is a powerful example of the

brahmin coming of age in south India, emerging out of the critiques of the Dravidian

movement as well as the soul searching within the Nambudiri community to forge a history

that restored the brahmins to their rightful place.

On the face of it, EMS’s use of Marxism and its concepts is idiosyncratic at best and

instrumental at worst. As we have seen, Engel’s argument about the transition to a

patrilineal, monogamous family was taken on board to serve EMS’s own concern with the

85 NQK, p.28.

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persistence within Kerala of a ‘barbaric’ form like matriliny. Engel’s critique of this transition

was ignored. Morover, the historical location of institutions like caste remained unclear: was

its origin at the juncture of primitive communism, slavery or feudalism? Was the period of

the ‘ancient democracy’ of the Nambudiris the era of primitive communism? If the

Nambudiris introduced caste into Kerala (as argued in KMM), how does this square with the

idea of primitive communism? There are curious formulations of the nature of Malayali

society. EMS argued that in medieval Kerala, the ‘basis’ was European feudal while the

superstructure was ‘brahmin i.e. Asiatic’, and it was this brahminical superstructure that was

responsible for the ‘further development of productive forces’.86 However, we would be off

on a tangent if we read this text as an exposition of Marxist historical method. EMS’s was a

purposive history which ‘misunderstood’ Marxism for the political programme of the

Malayali region of Kerala. It was necessary to counter the Dravidian critique to imagine a

unity within the region of individuals constructed as Malayalis rather than as Brahmin or

non-brahmin. And, in this parallels with the nationalist discourse are evident.

The question really is: what did Marxism allow EMS to do; why was Marxism good to think?

To answer this, one has to understand the particular nature of Marxism’s relationship with

the past. The version of historical materialism that EMS, Damodaran and other Malayali

Marxists espoused advocated evolutionism and ‘progress’ as the watchwords of history. The

past was merely a stage that would be transcended in the inexorable forward movement of

change. Caste and other phenomenon were embarrassments located in a particular stage of

society that had had its day.

As Damodran listed at random; ‘caste pollution, purdah, magic, superstition and matrilineal

households’ and the privilege of power were now matters of the past.87Marxism expounded a

linear conception of progress and of inevitable modernization which at times could pose a

problem for the anti-colonial sentiments of the Malayali communists. EMS, writing his

descending Minute in the Malabar Tenancy Committee Reportof 1940 observed of the role

of the British, that, ‘here is a higher and more advanced form of society and its perfected

machinery and state culture acting as the tool of history in destroying the decadent social

86 NQK, pp. 30-1. 87 K.Damodaran, Charitraparamaya Bhoutikavadam (Historical Materialism), Trichur, 1948, pp. 13-14.

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system and a dying culture’.88 This desire to jettison the past and embrace the blandishments

of ‘progress’ generated conflicts within Marxists in the colonies and elsewhere in Asia. As

Dirlik shows, Chinese Communist Party writers offered tortuous arguments in accepting

capitalism and imperialism as historically progressive, while trying to reconcile this with their

resentment of the effects of these forces.89

The evolutionist paradigm had more insidious effects in the attitude towards the past.

Historical materialism consigned traditional values and institutions to the superstructure of

society and predicted their ‘natural’ extinction. Therefore, at one level, there was no need to

struggle against an old and dying culture. As David Marr observes, remarking on the work of

the Vietnamese Marxist Tran Huu Do, the dialectic could be used to explain the progressive

demise of the extended family system, superseding of kings and popes of oil magnates and

the victory of revolution. 90 Determinism allowed detachment. The idea of the inevitable

supersession of traditional moribund forms released EMS and other Marxists from what

Levinson calls, in his classic work on the fate of Confucian ideology in China, the

‘compulsion to denounce’. They could move away from indictment to explanation.91 The

past could truly become a foreign country to be examined dispassionately. Ultimately, it was

this neutering of the past which vitiated much Marxist history and EMS’s own Marxixante

foray. For, in not looking back in anger, EMS and others denied the long shadow of the past

in the present. Dravidian rhetoric about Brahmin immigration and the origins of caste was as

such about the past as inequality in the present. EMS’s attempt to leap away from history y

asserting the pastness of caste and matriliny denied their tangibility in the present and their

continuing legacy.

The classics, traditions, and the usages could now be scrutinized from the vantage point of a

world which had consigned them to the past. As Dange wrote,

88 Malabar Tenancy Committee Report, 1940, p.73. 89 A. Dirlik, Revolution and History: Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919-1937, Berkeley,

1978, pp.80-81. 90 Marr, Vietnamese Tradition, p. 274. 91 J. R. Levinson, Confucian China and its Modern Fate: the Problem of Historical Significance, Vol. 3,

London, 1965, p. 70.

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It is my firm opinion of the vast storehouse of Hindu mythology and religion, social laws and practices, if read and sifted on the basis of Historical Materialism would yield a consistent and rational picture of India’s ancient history.92

The past could be used once it has been transcended and the Marxist method allowed for

the creation of a usable past.

92 Dange, From Primitive Communism, p. 21