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There are very many population groups who came below the Nair caste which were more or less given a go-by. As per this book, the human populations of any significance or worth are from the Brahmins to the Nairs. Below the Nairs, all others are mere nonentities.

There might be some level of correctness in this. Especially if a Travancore kingdom perspective is made to be borne upon the Malabar location. For in Travancore, almost all castes below the Nairs were maintained at varying subhuman levels. Even the Ezhavas were terribly subordinated.

It is true that there is mention of the Ezhavas having their own deities such as Madan, Marutha &c. in the Native Life in Travancore written by Rev. Samuel Mateers. I do not personally have much information about this caste which is actually native to the Travancore kingdom. I do not know if they had a spiritual religion of their own in their own antiquity.

Beyond that I am not sure as to whether the Ezhavas did affix their loyalty to their traditional gods. Or whether they, in their desperation to get connected to the Brahmanical spiritual religions, ditched their traditional gods, and deities; and jumped the fence.

The actual fact that get diluted when reading this book, the Malabar, is that there was not much of a traditional connection between Malabar and Travancore, before the conjoining of the locations after the formation of India. The political connection that the English rule in Madras established with the Travancore kingdom also helped. But then, north of Cochin, socially there was not much of a connection or intermingling with Travancore. This much had been my personal observation from about 1975, when I first moved to Alleppy from Malabar.

I will speak more about the disconnection later.

Before moving ahead, let me make one more quite categorical statement. It is about the languages of Malabar and Travancore. Both were different. The language of Malabar was more different from the language of Travancore that current-day Malayalam is from Tamil.

This is also a theme that would have to be taken up for inspection in close proximity with the discussion on at least the latter two entities. That is, the Christian Church representing the lower castes from Travancore and the Ezhava leadership, also from Travancore.

The language issue could be quite confusing. The term ‘Malayalam’ has some issues. It is about which language this usage represented earlier, and what it represents now. Also there are items to be mentioned about the real traditional language of Travancore.

There is one specific item that has been oft taken up for substantiating very many curious assertion. That is the book, Keralolpathi. This book is suspect in many ways, in what it aims to assert. Who wrote it is not clearly known, I think. But then the reason why such a book has been written might be taken up for inspection, in close connection with the other items being discussed.

I will now take up each of the issues. Before commencing, I need to remind the reader that the social system functioned in terrible feudal languages. Every man was quite terrorised of being associated with an individual or institution, who or which, was a lower entity. Generally the whole idea is casually mentioned in a most wayward manner as ‘Caste system’. This is a very shallow way to see the issue. In fact, this wanton verbal usage, ‘caste system’ does not explain anything. It literally skims over the real tumultuous depth of the whirling social twirls.

Caste system is not actually based on social or mental indoctrination. There is indeed real positive and negative, non-tangible forces at work that creates the forces of repulsion and attraction. Attachment, association and proximity to lower-positioned man can induce powerful negative forces inside a human being. These forces can exert their power not only at an emotional level, but even at a physical level.

At the same time, the opposite is also true. Attachment, association and proximity to a higher positioned person or entity can induce positive forces.

In this book, I will try to explain this quite cantankerous issue which literally can move the discussion beyond the very periphery of the realm of physical sciences. However, readers can also read the earlier mentioned book, An Impressionistic History of the South Asian Subcontinent. Quite candid information on this issue has been delineated in that book.

It is this terror of the pull and push of an all encompassing and overpowering negativity that has literally defined the history and historical events of this location, which is positioned at the south-western edge of the South Asian Subcontinent; north of Travancore.

The English East India Company’s aims and urges and attitude were of the sublime levels. However, they did not really understand the society into which they were inducing powerful corrections. In fact, they were correcting errors without understanding what actually created the errors in the first place. They had literally no idea about feudal languages. In fact, way back in England, there was a feeling that all nations and populations were innately similar to English populations in human emotions. It was an understanding bereft of a very powerful knowledge. That of the existence of feudal languages.

There is another general idea which I would like place here. It is about the general quality of formal history on India. Most of the various inputs about the quality of the populations, peoples and social system which existed in this subcontinent are more or less half-truth, or carefully cherry-picked items. The total aim is to give an impression of very resoundingly high-quality population groups who were allegedly pushed into destitution by the English rulers. This idea is not only half-truth or half-lie, but total lies and fabricated information.

What is usually compared in these kinds of comparisons is imageries of fabulous looking native-Englishmen and women living in good quality houses in the midst of totally destitute lower-castes. The immediate impression that springs into the minds of easily deluded persons is that it is the Englishmen who have brought in this destitution and desultory looks in the lower castes of the subcontinent.

The actual fact would be the exact opposite. The lower castes and subordinated classes of the subcontinent were held in tight hold by their own upper classes and castes. It was the English rulers who brought in the light of liberty to these desolate human beings who had lived for centuries in miserable surroundings.

However, it is not easy to save or improve or pull out the lower classes from their

subordinated stature. For, the situation is like a multi-storey building that has collapsed in an earthquake. The human beings are alive in the lowest floor. But how to pull them out? Above them is the mountainous weight of several floors of the building, crushing down on their collapsed floor.

This was the exact issue in pulling up the lower castes and classes. They were tied to their upper classes in very tights knots of subordination in verbal and dress codes. Even their body postures cannot be changed into an English body posture. For, if they do such a thing, it would amount to the greatest of impertinence. Their upper classes would quite casually impale them with iron nails or do something worse.

In formal history writing of this subcontinent, carefully filtered items are arranged to give a very false impression of this subcontinent.

South Asia, which is currently occupied by Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, was never a single nation or a single population. It was never a nation. There was actually no sense of a nation even inside a miniscule kingdom here. Even inside a miniscule kingdom, it was a feverish struggle between competing populations to subdue others. And among the hundreds of kingdoms, it was a messy time of continual fights and overrunning and molesting and raiding into each other’s locality.

The major issue that I find in formal history writing currently going on in India is that it is being done with a very specific aim. The aim is not write a correct version of history, but to write a contrived version which proposes the antiquity of a nation here which was astoundingly rich, technologically high, with high levels of scientific knowledge etc.

The writers of these kinds of silly history most probably do not know what the actualities were just fifty years back. In spite of this terrific shallowness of information, they propose to know what the state of the subcontinent was some 2000 to 7000 years back. The continuously mention an ‘India’ which most probably did not exist inside the subcontinent, but literally was a purposefully distorted version of a ‘Inder’, ‘Indus’, ‘Indies’, ‘Hind’ etc. words, which were known in the global maritime commercial centres. However, how much these words can be connected to the current-day India is a confusing point. River Indus itself is not in current-day India.

Such historians take quotes from ancient travellers who give brief descriptions about isolated locations and incidences with some kind of superlative exclamations and adjectives. But then they also give more detailed descriptions about other realities, which are more mundane and terrible. These items are quite cunningly avoided. The other superlative expressions of taken up as authentic descriptions of the state of the land.

Travellers make great comparisons and mention great things about cities and kings and certain isolated issues. However, the great fact that most of the people were enslaved and they were a generally not given much importance. They express great appreciation for the great hospitality they received from the rich merchants and the royal personages. Some of the writers do also mention the other reality of the tragic conditions of the people. However, formal Indian historian would not be eager to focus on them.

They focus on quite ridiculous sentences such as ‘this city had the most famous harbour in the world’. ‘Merchants from all over the world came here’. ‘This was a great commercial centre’ etc.

Merchants come to all locations where they understand that there is some commodity that can be sold elsewhere for a profit. However, that does not transpire that that particular location is fabulous. For instance, some decades back I used to frequent a literally forest-like district in south India, for buying agricultural produces, fruits and bananas and plantains. Actually so many other merchants did frequent that locality for similar purposes. Lorries used to come even from north Indian locations.

QUOTE: To the kingdom under the sway of Keprobotras, Tundis is subject, a village of great note situate near the sea. Mouziris, which pertains to the same realm, is a city at the height of prosperity frequented as it is by ships from Ariake and Greek ships from Egypt. END OF QUOTE

However all this cannot be mentioned to convey an understanding that the people in the location were socially high-class. In fact, the reality was that most the people were crude and lower class, in the forest location I had frequented. There were a few higher class financially rich persons and families. They were generally soft and well-mannered to visitors like me. However, to their own subordinated populations, they were nice but quite suppressing. But then, the lower classes were quite well-mannered to their superior classes, who they understood to have some kind of social power over them. However to visitors and other nonentities in the location, they had no qualms in being rude and ill-mannered, if they measure them to be of not of high financial stature.

These are the issues that need to be understood when cherry-picking from the writings of ancient travellers. Traveller writings can rarely be correct unless that particular writer knows what to look for.

QUOTE: For everybody has here a garden and his house is placed in the middle of it ; and round the whole of this them is a fence of wood, up to which the ground of each inhabitant comes.” END OF QUOTE

The above is a quote from Shaikh Ibn Batuta’s travelogue. However, that is only from a very slender perspective of a solitary traveller.

See these QUOTEs from this book, Malabar:

QUOTE: 1. The walls are generally of latorite to bricks set in mud, for lime is expensive and scarce, and till recent years the roof was invariably of thatch.

2. and it was not till after the Honourable East India Company had had settlements on the coast for nearly a century that they were at last permitted, as a special favour, in 1759 fill to put tiles on their factory at Calicut. Palaces and temples alone were tiled in former days.

3. The house itself is called by different names according to the occupant’s caste. The house of a Pariah is a cheri, while the agrestic slave—the Cheraman— lives in a chala. The blacksmith, the goldsmith, the carpenter, the weaver, etc., and the toddy-drawer (Tiyan) inhabit houses styled pura or kudi ; the temple servant resides in a variyan or pisharam or pumatham, the ordinary Nayar in a vidu or bhavanam, while the man in authority of this caste dwells in an idam ; the Raja lives in a kovilakam or kottaram, the indigenous Brahman (Nambutiri) in an illam, while his fellow of higher rank calls his house a mana or manakhal.

4. The Nambutiri’s character for Hospitality stands high, but only among those of his own caste.

END OF QUOTEs.

This is the reality as different from the miniscule impression of solitary travellers.

Social communication is very powerfully designed by the language codes. Without this knowledge, no traveller or sociologist can claim to understand a people or population or society or nation.

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