The Many Incarnations of Kuriyedathu Thatri

More than a century after the sensational excommunication of Kuriyedathu Thatri and a very large number of men whom she allegedly reported to be her paramours shook the aristocracy of the Hindu kingdom of Kochi, the story continues to haunt the imagination of Malayalis. Her story of revenge has invited many interpretations. These interpretations take place in both high literary forums as well as in popular culture.

Lalithambika Antharjanam, one of the earliest women to gain recognition in the field of Malayalam literature, retold Thatri’s story, hailing her as the Goddess of Retribution who struck at the roots of the rot that had beset traditional Malayali Brahmin life. There have been prurient retellings that exploited the pornographic possibilities of the tale, turning it into a series of sexcapades of a cloistered, high-caste woman.

Modernist retellings, which include Madambu Kunhukuttan’s Outcaste, have cast Thatri as the embodiment of cosmic female energy sweeping away the decadence of the Brahmins and preparing the ground for new beginnings, or as the embodiment of aesthetic refinement whose lust was for art, not the male body.

Books, Culture, Features, History, Kerala, Literature, Society

By J Devika

September 3, 2019

A Race Boat (kali vallom) called Delhi

The Mepral house, my maternal family’s ancestral home, was known as “the house with the vallom (boat)” for miles around. There was never any need to prefix ‘kali’ or ‘race’ to the boat, it was a tacit acknowledgment that it was no ordinary country boat. Though this vallom called Delhi was not in the larger Chundan league, it had a splendor of its own. I recall the ceremonial thrusting of the Delhi boat from the boat house into the Mepral river in Thiruvalla, for the season. It was preceded by a small pooja—she was adorned with a string of Jamanthi poovu (Chrysanthemum flowers) and her hull embellished with the auspicious three lines of sandalwood paste.

However gently the men pushed her into the river, guided by their rhythmic shouts and grunts, she always managed a splash when she hit the waters. The water would rise high and she would majestically dwarf the river, her sides almost straddling the river’s breadth. By then there would be an astonished crowd of people, all having deserted their daily chores, gawping at Delhi bobbing on the river till she steadied herself, perhaps using the Archimedes principle. I always felt that Delhi was made for much bigger waters and not for a measly tributary of the River Pampa, but this was her home for nearly three-quarters of a century.

The name ‘Delhi’ for a boat had always intrigued me and more I asked around the curiouser the story got. Two of my maternal uncles, George P Kuruvilla and his cousin P J Kuriakose, are story tellers in their own right and I, armed with copious amounts of salt, was determined to take it all in with an occasional pinch. Some would call it a futile exercise but it was a fascinating one—I found myself drawn into a labyrinth of interconnected stories, myths and legends, fantasies and refutations—I could no longer delineate fact from fiction. So much for that salt.

Features, History, Kerala, Sports

By Minu Ittyipe

August 29, 2019

The Thiyyas of Malabar: In Search of a New Identity

Professor Jayendran, who spent a lifetime teaching English to generations of young scholars in a celebrated college in Kozhikode, lives in a modest home in the city outskirts. A chronic bachelor, he spends his time reading and writing, and is happy to welcome visitors. He makes it a point to show visitors a simple bedstead that occupies the pride of place in his bedroom, a prized possession he has inherited from his illustrious ancestors who lived in the old colonial town of Thalassery. “Sree Narayana Guru slept on this bed when he was our honoured guest almost a century ago,” he tells his visitors.

That visit to his ancestors’ home took place during the early years of the 20th century, when the Guru travelled to Malabar as part of his social reform initiatives. The few occasions he was in Malabar, he met community leaders, intellectuals, businessmen and professionals and urged them to eschew retrograde practices like animal sacrifice and child marriage widespread in the community, and encouraged them to adopt modern educational and social practices that were suited to a community’s progress. He established a few temples and ashrams during those visits, in places like Calicut, Thalassery, and Kannur, and some other places.

Among the temples that the Guru had established in Malabar were the famous Sreekanteswaram temple in Calicut (1910), the Jagannath temple in Thalassery (1908), and the Sundareswaram temple at Talap in Kannur (1916). During those visits he came into contact with a large number of the Thiyya community leaders.

Caste, Culture, Features, History, People, Society

By N P Chekkutty

August 18, 2019

The Ezhava Uprising in Kalpathy

It has been several centuries since the Tamil Brahmins migrated from Thanjavur and surrounding areas to Kalpathy, on the outskirts of Palakkad town, in Kerala. Kalpathy has preserved its unique culture and heritage that is far removed from that of their neighbors’ outside the community. The row houses of the village, whose kitchens still prepare the traditional cuisine, retain its old world charm.

On a typical morning, the heady aroma of filter coffee accompanied by the chanting of Vedic hymns by Brahmins with scared ash on their foreheads, welcomes you to the village. Women wearing kanakambaram flowers on their head can be seen drawing the traditional kolams in the courtyards. The village has always attracted the curiosity of outsiders and the annual Radholsavam (car festival) at the local temple is a big draw. Tourists descend in hordes, especially from foreign locales, to experience the perfect blend of music, rituals and the pulling of the traditional chariots.

The village caught the headlines for all the wrong reasons when Justice V Chitambaresh of the Kerala High Court—at a Tamil Brahmin global meet at Kochi, where a large number of the participants were from Kalpathy—described Brahmins as ‘twice born’ with ‘all good qualities.’ The speech by a sitting judge denouncing caste-based reservation for socially backward communities brought on scathing criticism for its open exhortation for economic reservation, apart from placing Brahmins above all other castes and communities. J Chitambaresh, a native of Kalpathy, had brought the heritage village once again into focus with his controversial statement.

Features, History, Kerala, Society

By K A Shaji

July 16, 2019

A Burmese Prince in Kannur: Life of Moung Lat in an Indian Garrison

Almost a decade ago, while researching on European burials in Malabar coast for a book I was writing, I came across a surprising entry in the death and burials register kept at the old garrison church in Kannur: Egbert Alexander Granville James, died and buried on 19th August 1887, son of Prince Moung Lat, Burmese state prisoner. The brief entry in the burial register at St. John’s Church said the boy died on the sixth day of his birth and the cause of death was ‘tetanus’.

The British East India Company that had come to possess the entire Malabar region from late 18th century had established the garrison at Cannanore as early as 1810, in order to protect the large areas seized from Tipu Sultan and their vast trade interests. The garrison had seen hectic military activity over the years as it had to deal with a highly volatile region that experienced a number of revolts including the Pazhassi rebellion of 1790s to the Moplah revolt in 1921. The barracks were home to almost all the major regiments of the British Army, from the HM 74th Highlanders to the Royal Fusiliers. The English had established the church and a cemetery nearby and among the tombs of traders and soldiers from various European nationalities was this singular grave of a Myanmar prince.

The mention of a Burmese prince as state prisoner in the garrison town’s church records was surprising: the British authorities had always maintained that the only state prisoner from the Burmese royal family, after the conquest of Burma in the third Anglo-Burma war in 1885, was King Thibaw, who was followed by his consort Queen Supayalat (who was also his half-sibling) and their daughters who were lodged in a hill-top house called Outram at Ratnagiri, a coastal town in the Konkan region of Maharashtra. After spending more than 30 years in penury and isolation at Ratnagiri, the King died in 1916 as a captive and the Queen and her three daughters were allowed to return home afterwards, leaving behind one of her daughters who had married a commoner in India. The eldest Princess later returned to Ratnagiri to be with her husband Gopal Sawant, who was formerly employed as the family’s driver.

Features, History

By N P Chekkutty

June 25, 2019

How the Emergency was declared on June 25, 1975

On 12 June 1975, Justice J.M.L. Sinha delivered the judgement declaring the election of Smt Indira Gandhi as ‘void’. Within one and a half hours, we got the news that Smt Indira Gandhi had obtained a stay order for twenty days.

The stay order was obtained through misrepresentation made on her behalf by her advocate Shri S.C. Khare. It was given in writing that as it was a question of election of the leader of the party and the office of the prime minister was involved, some time would be taken by the Congress party to elect another leader. This order was passed ex parte by Justice J.M.L. Sinha while our advocate Shri R.C. Srivastava, who was in Allahabad at that time, was not heard. Our advocate, while knowing that the stay order had been passed without a hearing, went to the learned judge’s residence and told him that the order was passed without hearing him, but the learned judge did not change his order.

Smt Indira Gandhi engaged Shri N.A. Palkhivala as her Senior Advocate. The order of Justice J.M.L. Sinha was that the stay order would continue for twenty days or till the time when the appeal was filed in the Supreme Court by Smt Indira Gandhi, whichever took place earlier.

Book Extract, Books, History, Law, National, Politics

By Rama Goyal

June 24, 2019

The Mappilas of Malabar

There is in Kerala a fascinating legend featuring the Hindu sage Vararuchi and a pariah girl who bore him twelve children. The story is rich in metaphor, and to this day there are families along the coast that claim descent from one or another of their fabled offspring. The eldest, for instance, was raised a brahmin, while the youngest, who oddly had no mouth, is venerated as a temple deity. One son was a celebrated master carpenter, folklore connecting him to shrines across Kerala, while another was a madman whose chief delight lay in rolling a boulder uphill, only to watch it tumble down, over and over. Yet another brought to his esteemed Brahmin brother’s feast beef to eat, while one more of Vararuchi’s tribe settled as a trader. And in a tale that weaves together brahmins and Nairs, a deity as well as a dalit, it is this sibling, Uppukoottan, who introduces a final interesting identity. For Uppukoottan, son of Vararuchi, is believed to have been raised a Mappila, adhering not so much to his father’s Hindu traditions as to the word of the Prophet Muhammad.

While to some the presence of a Muslim in a popular Hindu legend might seem outlandish, to Malayalis the story is by no means unusual. After all, across the length and breadth of Kerala, history and legend are united in featuring Muslims (and Christians) prominently in a shared cultural universe. Arabs had mastered the seas even before the Prophet was born, and soon after its dawn, Islam was delivered to Kerala through long-standing channels of commerce. The oldest mosque in the region, for instance, is said to have been established in the lifetime of the Prophet himself, in 629 CE, though archaeologists quibble about the exact age of the structure. By 849 CE, at any rate, Muslim traders were consequential enough to witness a royal grant (made, incidentally, to Christians), their signatures inscribed in archaic Arabic. When Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan diarist, came here in the course of his travels, he saw men from Persia in settlements along the coast, and one of the most beautiful mosques in Calicut, the turquoise blue Mishkal Palli, was founded soon afterwards by a commercially prolific merchant who began his life and career in faraway Yemen.

The influence of the Mappilas, born from the union of Arabs with local women as well as from subsequent conversions, quickly found reflection in Kerala’s already diverse culture. Some of the principal officials of the Zamorin of Calicut were Muslims, and in the great Mamankam festival at Tirunavaya—the most important religious gathering in Kerala till the eighteenth century—Muslims participated in the colourful revelries just as they did in formal royal ceremonies. At Sabarimala, where hundreds of thousands converge to worship the Hindu god Ayyappa, homage is also paid to Vavar, the deity’s Muslim friend whose name sounds (painfully to some) like Babur. The language of the Mappilas, meanwhile, developed into a unique blend of Malayalam sound and Arabic script, influenced over time by Persian as well as by Tamil and Kannada. Their architecture, too, absorbed Kerala’s indigenous style—the oldest mosques feature no domes or minarets, bearing instead the gables and tiled roof that crown temples and even Christian churches from this era. The nerchchas of the Mappila community, celebrating saints and divines, resemble Hindu festivals—the tall brass lamp, the elephants, bright parasols and fireworks, all integral to the temple pooram as much as to these Muslim commemorations. There is even, in fact, a Mappila Ramayana, featuring Ravana as a sultan; Surpanakha’s proposition to Rama in this version seeks sanction from the Sharia.

Book Extract, Books, Culture, History

By Manu Pillai

June 12, 2019

Reign of Akbar: Open Doors of Inquiry

Akbar probed into open-mindedness from the very beginning of his career. However, his secular views surfaced clearly sometime around 1580. Thereafter, his acceptance of and respect for other faiths was so unconditional that the voice of orthodoxy, Abdul Qadir Badaoni, and the Christian Jesuits declared that perhaps he was not a Muslim. Shaikh Ahmad Sarhindi went a step further and claimed that Akbar had not only deviated from Islam, but he hated it.

A simple explanation for Akbar’s liberalism is often located in the claim that his mother was a Shia and therefore he was exposed to the idea of balancing differences of creed from early childhood. However, Iqtidar Alam Khan opines that Hamida was not a Shia, since her brother Mu’azzam Beg was involved in the assassination of Humayun’s Shia Wazir Khwaja Sultan Rushdi (1546), and the killing was understood to be the design of orthodox Sunni bigots.
This shifts the focus towards other early influences on the Baadshah’s mind— and in this context the role of his tutors seems noteworthy. Two of them were Irani Shias—Bairam Khan and Mir Abdul Latif Qazvini—and the third was a Sunni Turani, Munim Khan. Luckily, all of them were above sectarian prejudices. In fact, if one digs deeper, beyond the general liberality of Akbar’s immediate ancestors one finds the roots of toleration in the Mongol traditions.

The cultural ethos of the Timurids promoted broad-mindedness. Timur respected all religions and Shias were never persecuted in the Timurid principalities. The Yasa-i Chingezi was literally a guidebook of the Timurids and according to Alauddin ‘Ata Juwaini, it required the ruler ‘to consider all sects as one and not to distinguish them from one another.’ According to Juwaini, Chengiz Khan refrained from bigotry, communal preferences and discriminatory policies. In fact, Iqtidar Alam Khan attributes Akbar’s persecution of the Shias and Mahdavis (1560) to the erosion of the influence of Yasa-i-Chingezi. In the 1560s, the Chishti Khanqahs (hospices) had introduced Akbar to a liberal way of thinking. In addition to his regard for Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, he was particularly indebted to Shaikh Salim Chishti of Sikri. After the death of many of his newly born children, Akbar left one of his pregnant queens at the Shaikh’s khanqah at Sikri and requested him to pray for the birth and survival of an heir.

Book Extract, Books, Culture, History

By Farhat Nasreen

May 21, 2019

The Day Non-Violence Triumphed over Violence

When Mahatma Gandhi embarked on his pilgrimage to Dandi, so expectant was he of his arrest that he wrote a letter the previous night to Jawaharlal Nehru, foretelling it. The British were notorious for not living up to expectations and not only did Gandhi wake up a free man on 12 March, 1930 but also triumphantly fulfilled his endeavour on 6 April.

Consequently, with Mahatma’s morale boosted, he decided to go beyond “picking a seer or two of salt from here and there” and announced in a speech at Chharwada on 26 April to raid major salt works at Dharasana to live up to the epithet of “salt-thief”.

History, Politics

By Sahil Yadav

May 7, 2019

The Arakkal Dynasty: Legend and Legacy

Legend has it, that around 686 CE, an embassy from Mecca disembarked on the busy shores of Kerala. Arab merchants had, of course, been sailing here for centuries, but this particular mission had a unique purpose—it was charged with the conversion to Islam of an Indian prince. A few years previously, the Malayali king, Cheraman Perumal, had crossed the Arabian Sea, to become a Muslim. Now, it was for his nephew that this embassy came, so that he too could follow in the footsteps of his illustrious uncle. The name of the nephew, born from a royal sister, Sridevi, was Mahabali. And promptly after embracing the Prophet’s faith, he was reincarnated, styled hereafter (somewhat conveniently) as Mohammed Ali.

This is merely one of many legends that constructs for the Arakkal family of Kannur a place in Kerala’s antiquity. The region’s only Muslim royal house, and once rulers of the Lakshadweep Islands, Arakkal is distinguished also in following the matrilineal system of succession. It did not matter what the Shariat prescribed in such matters—matriliny, it is said, was another link the family retained to its Hindu origins. Cheraman Perumal, according to dynastic chronicles, instructed his sister to uphold tradition. Both her children, he commanded, “should be made to reign according to their seniority”. And so it was done—if the eldest child in any generation was male, he was the Adi Raja (or Ali Raja) of Arakkal; if it was a girl, she held the same title, with the extra style of “Beevi”.

Culture, Features, History

By Manu Pillai