Here we are entering an area where the so called facts of
history will prove inadequate and perceptions will take over.
The perception I have formed for myself is that in Kerala the Congress Party had never cared enough for social reform. By concentrating on the freedom movement, the Congress largely missed the reform track, even though there were some isolated attempts at softening the harshness of caste inequities and gender discrimination.
When the Socialist faction (Sreedharan Pillai’s ‘fraction’) broke off from the Congress and started the Communist movement, it took forward the reform movement already initiated by the leaders Radhakrishnan has mentioned.
But the Communists, on their part, by concentrating on organizing the working class, whose liberation they believed would bring a new age of enlightenment and prosperity, also could not achieve much.
I think two overarching Malayali traits, patriarchal fixations and caste exclusiveness, were more or less inhibiting any and all broadbased reform programmes.
As to the Malayali MCPs: Though descriptions in history text books of the freedom and preeminence women in Kerala had enjoyed in the past are legion, they are largely ill-informed. Women in Kerala were oppressed for generations upon generations in all castes and sub-castes, proof for which we need not seek in history. It is being graphically demonstrated in the ongoing Sabarimala agitations in which women turned up in unbelievably large numbers, shouting in effect, ‘we don’t want the freedom the Supreme Court has given us’! So thoroughly has subservience been rubbed into their psyche.
There were, indeed, movements within castes for reform, like the demand for abolition of marumakkathayam. But they had wanted only shifting of privileges to the new vocal groups within the same castes.
Attempts at social reform here were always hemmed in by caste fences. There were no movements in Kerala demanding universal gender equality for women. For instance, the breast-cloth agitation did not demand the right of modesty for all women but only the Channar women; V.T.Bhattathirippad’s programme of liberating women from the confines of the ‘kitchen’ was limited to bringing only the ‘antharjanam’ out.
I am afraid, the self-congratulatory Malayali is living in a cultural echo chamber. Without attaining at least gender equality, that too not for women alone, any claim by any party to have brought about social reform in Kerala will sound hollow.
The perception I have formed for myself is that in Kerala the Congress Party had never cared enough for social reform. By concentrating on the freedom movement, the Congress largely missed the reform track, even though there were some isolated attempts at softening the harshness of caste inequities and gender discrimination.
When the Socialist faction (Sreedharan Pillai’s ‘fraction’) broke off from the Congress and started the Communist movement, it took forward the reform movement already initiated by the leaders Radhakrishnan has mentioned.
But the Communists, on their part, by concentrating on organizing the working class, whose liberation they believed would bring a new age of enlightenment and prosperity, also could not achieve much.
I think two overarching Malayali traits, patriarchal fixations and caste exclusiveness, were more or less inhibiting any and all broadbased reform programmes.
As to the Malayali MCPs: Though descriptions in history text books of the freedom and preeminence women in Kerala had enjoyed in the past are legion, they are largely ill-informed. Women in Kerala were oppressed for generations upon generations in all castes and sub-castes, proof for which we need not seek in history. It is being graphically demonstrated in the ongoing Sabarimala agitations in which women turned up in unbelievably large numbers, shouting in effect, ‘we don’t want the freedom the Supreme Court has given us’! So thoroughly has subservience been rubbed into their psyche.
There were, indeed, movements within castes for reform, like the demand for abolition of marumakkathayam. But they had wanted only shifting of privileges to the new vocal groups within the same castes.
Attempts at social reform here were always hemmed in by caste fences. There were no movements in Kerala demanding universal gender equality for women. For instance, the breast-cloth agitation did not demand the right of modesty for all women but only the Channar women; V.T.Bhattathirippad’s programme of liberating women from the confines of the ‘kitchen’ was limited to bringing only the ‘antharjanam’ out.
I am afraid, the self-congratulatory Malayali is living in a cultural echo chamber. Without attaining at least gender equality, that too not for women alone, any claim by any party to have brought about social reform in Kerala will sound hollow.
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