Pradeepan Pampirikkunnu begins his essay by quoting the concluding section of A Cultural History of India by A L Basham in which the latter underscores the importance of individualism in Indian democracy. A L Basham remarks that while the Chinese sages or Hebrew prophets thought in terms of the salvation of whole people, Indian seers thought of the salvation of individual men and women. The author comments that the individualist idea of salvation has been the basis of Indian life and the same individual centric notion functions in the democratic system of the country in which the communities are often ignored. He observes that in the Indian context caste is not a superstructure, it is a self sufficient structure that includes economic processes. According to him, landlordism was not the economic way in which caste developed; on the contrary it was on caste based production relationships that landlordism was built. A look at the agricultural system of Kerala will testify this. The agricultural labourers form the lowest layer, Nair managers and overseers form the next layer and Brahmins occupy the upper layer who control the system.
A new Kerala, structured by anti-caste and anti-landlordism ideas, emerged in the last decades of the 19th century as a result of the renaissance efforts. This was later expanded by the Communist party and land reforms in mid-twentieth century. Agricultural production relations in Kerala were built on the romantic illusion of the paraya/pulaya - landlord relationship. Similarly, the formation of Indian nationalism is also romantic- religious in nature in which exploitation of the lower castes were considered as natural order. He also notes that the nationalist imagination homogenised Hindus as a single religion and incorporated Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist religious signs. The Indian freedom movement also developed a similar kind of anti-colonial and religio-national unity by bringing together the Hindus. This formation of a unified Hindu society was at the cost of ignoring social reformers like Jyotiba Phule who analysed caste operation in a broad modern perspective and struggled uncompromisingly against it.
A similar kind of political development happened in Kerala as well. Social reformers like Ayyankali, who was regarded as ‘emperor of pulayar’, was never considered as an icon of Kerala as a whole. Notable communist leaders like EMS Nampoothiripad did not acknowledge the contributions of Ayyankali in his writings. In short, there were two nodes in this caste sensibility. The first one is a public node that is formed in relation to nationalism which has consolidated an ideological base throughout India. The second one is complex regional cultural life structure constructed by subtle layerings of castes, rituals and beliefs they embody. The prescribed distances to be maintained between castes were part of his regional specificity whereas in the field of aesthetics and philosophical thought, Kerala shared the pan-Indian paradigm.
The Kerala Renaissance of the early 20 century initiated by Sree Narayana Guru integrated the lower castes into the elite savarna nationalism. Yet, this has opened up possibilities for liberation of the lower castes. One of these was casteless spirituality and another is the anti-caste position that is combined with the assimilation of Western modernity. This displaces the idea of traditional caste occupation and introduces that of the worker. As a result community organisations like SNDP encouraged the setting up of factories as well as libraries. In his maiden speech before the Travancore Praja Moolam Sabh, Ayyankali proposed the concept of farm land for those farming. It is interesting to note that the modernization process initiated by Narayan Guru and Ayyan Kali has prepared the ground for regional development that runs parallel to Western modernity
Western modernity was presented as a liberating ideal in works like Chandu Menon’s Indulekha. However, modernity created a sense of the universal citizen which was essentially Eurocentric. Social reformers like Narayan Guru brought a regional population into the public sphere at the backdrop of national modernity which assigned them universal citizenship. Within the overarching framework of national modernity, the initiatives taken by Narayan Guru and Ayyankali were not fully appreciated. They proposed a materialist production centric environment and the idea of social justice. At the same time National modernity transmitted the strange idea that to destroy caste, it was enough to be a universal citizen and that there was no need for the specific context on the broader environments of caste change. The emergence of this nationalist idea successfully set aside the anti caste ideology and socio economic democracy introduced by regional modernity. In short, this has resulted in an erasing of the distinctive specificities promoted by regional modernity by the universalized notion of nationalism. The reforms introduced by leaders like Krishnadi Asan, Ayyankali regarding emancipation of the oppressed were reduced to mere caste activities at the same time people like K P Keshava Menon were regarded as champions of the nationalist discourse
During the Kerala Renaissance period, community formation was a tendency in which various sub castes merged into communities for example shudras became nayar and several subcastes were incorporated into this large Nair community. Similarly, different sub castes form communities and they become very effective in demanding various social and economic advantages and sharing of power. At the same time, organisations like SJPS formed by Ayyankali were becoming increasingly fragile and dysfunctional. At this point casteism, not anti-caste, was the basis of democracy.
Even after fifty or more years of the formation of Kerala, the oppressed people never got into power. This is not because they were not involved in socio-political movement and the democratic process, but because the democratic system itself is formed out of casteist priorities. Along with this, communists have argued for reservation to the economically backward among the upper castes which dilutes the very concept of reservation and social justice.
Casteism is practised in all walks of Kerala life especially in the public sphere. This forces dalits who get into key positions of power through reservation conceal their identity. Revealing one’s identity is considered as pre-modern and anti-class and against the communist ethos, at the same time, upper castes retain their upper hand in the social system and enjoy caste privileges. In effect, modernisation created pro-savarna silence in dalits and this has found expression in novels like Indulekha and Randidangazhi. In these novels, Dalits are either completely absent or promote class struggles instead of asserting their identity. It is also important to realise the social movement and ideals of Ayyankali have not found expression in any mainstream malayalam literary productions. It is also worth to note that almost all renaissance reformers have stressed on the importance of education in the emancipation of the oppressed, but Dalits characters in novels like Randidangazhi never argue for education but they become assets of the labour unions. This brings out the limitations of Marxist politics in Kerala which reduces the questions of social power to an issue of landlordism. Writers like Thakazhi have portrayed the miserable life of the oppressed, but have not incorporated the dynamics of savarna-avarna interactions of early malayalam novels such as Saraswathi Vijayam, Gathakavadham or Parishkara Vijayam in their novels. They understood caste only as a super-structural effect of landlordism.
Caste considerations are pervasive in Kerala public life but it is not acknowledged by political parties. Congress has placed the nationalist savarna modern man as a model whereas a savarna working class man is the model of communist party. Caste functions implicitly or explicitly in the socio political imaginations of kerala. The rejection of regional identities and the endorsement of pan-India savarna subjectivity is very much present in Malayalam literature. At this stage, the savarna life transactions and symbols were presented as secular. An analysis of the literary works by MT Vasudevan Nair will throw light into this process.
The decline of Nair tharavadu and the anger of those dismissed from the matrilineal family home and property occupy a central concern in MT’s literary works. The Nair household is placed at the centre of his fictional world and its human relations have been glorified. The language, art forms, social manners and practices, mode of inheritance etc... of nairs have formed the Malayali commonsense. The writing style and Valluvanadan dialect employed by MT has transformed the tharavadu from being a system of inheritance to the cultural foundations of Kerala. In his writings, the individual occupies centre stage and the rest of the society is cast in the background. His prose has succeeded to rescue the tharavadu from its decline and reproduces it as a secular nostalgia for common keralites.
The inception of modernist literature in Malayalam is also cast into the savarna aesthetics. Using European aesthetic/ material awareness, the stalwarts of modernism traversed in upanishad worlds and refused to acknowledge the socio-political milieu their writings emerge from. They often concealed their place in the caste hierarchy and assumed a cosmopolitan air which was unknown to Kerala then. The expatriate modernists imagined Kerala as a nostalgic past
Kerala modernity was based on a totally individualistic sensibility. These individuals were represented in literature as characters with unlimited freedom and they usually belong to savarna castes. The image of a modern individual who feels distinctly different from the society he belongs to is a recurrent presence in malayalam literature since the sixties. Writers like C V Sreeraman, P Vatsala and M Sukumaran wander through the outskirts of modernity and come up with oppressed people who often treat them with sympathy. They get a peripheral agency in their writing.
The decline of communist movements, global ideological crisis and cultural transactions after modernism have resulted in the formation of a new cultural equation which interrogates the implications of modern savarna individuals in literature. This cultural context has enabled dalits to claim a right to authorship. Political change in north India and the realities of caste and religion have enabled them to distinguish and identify the form of this authorship. This is also the time when educated dalits, who worked with Communist and Naxalite movements, make their claim to authorship as dalits. This period also witnessed the coming together of Dalits who were part of community organisations and those from left politics and this has resulted in the forming of socio-cultural interactions of their own. Though this claim to authorship is recent, its origin may be located in the publication of Saraswathi Vijayam. The continuity of this stream of considering community as a positive entity can be seen in the works of K P Karuppan’s poetry and TKC vaduthala’s short stories. The writings of Paul Chirakkilode and Kaviyoor Murali can also be considered dalit attempts to claim authorship
C Ayyappan has effectively problematised the fake human face of modernism in his short stories. In books like Uchayurakkathile Swapnangal, Nandukal etc..he reveals the oppressive nature of individual based Kerala modernity’s literary formulations. His is one of the most original and creative expressions of dalits in malayalam.
The most effective critique of Kerala modernity’s false sense of freedom and individualism is made possible through the autobiographies of dalits. Tales of communities and occupations have replaced those of the individual and this formed from the peripheries of postmodernist discourses. Thes autobiographies records the joys and agonies, victory and torture and failure of those people. The individual has disappeared and the community history has appeared. The emergence of life stories of illiterate and ignorant dalits- scripted by literate members - such as C K Janu, Nalini Jameela and Mayilamma into the literary scape has put the writer's self into a crisis. These literary narratives present the complexity of social reality and deal with specific and systemic issues instead of heroic cries faced by individuals. These narratives emerge out of social realities and present society in its completeness. Only mainstream savarna literature, caught in its aesthetic theories, is still seeking universal truths.
