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Ezhava

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Ezhava
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Malayalam
Religion
Hinduism

The Ezhavas are a community with origins in the region of India presently known as Kerala. They are also known as Ilhava, Irava, Izhava and Erava in the south of the region; as Chovas, Chokons and Chogons in Central Travancore; and as Tiyyas, Thiyyas and Theeyas in Malabar.[1][2] The Malabar Tiyya group have claimed a higher ranking in the Hindu caste system than do the others, although from the perspective of the colonial and subsequent administrations they were treated as being of similar rank.[1][3]

As well as being agricultural laborers, small cultivators, toddy tappers, and liquor businessmen, some Ezhavas were also involved in weaving and some practised ayurvedic medicine. Ezhava dynasties such as the Izhathu Mannanars also existed in Kerala.[4] The Chekavar, a warrior section within the community, were part of the militias of local chieftains and kings. There were also renowned kalaripayattu experts among them.[5][6]

History

Legend

According to legend and some Malayalam folk songs, the Ezhavas were the progeny of four bachelors that the king of Ceylon sent to Kerala at the request of the Chera king Bhaskara Ravi Varma, in the 1st Century AD. These men were sent, ostensibly, to set up coconut farming in Kerala. Another version of the story says that the Sri Lankan King sent eight martial families to Kerala at the request of a Chera king to quell a civil war that had erupted in Kerala against him.[7][clarification needed]

Social and religious divergence

It has been suggested that the Ezhavas may share a common heritage with the Nair caste. This theory is based on similarities between numerous of the customs adopted by the two groups, particularly with regard to marking various significant life stages such as childbirth and death, as well as their matrilineal practices and martial history. Oral history, folk songs and other old writings indicate that the Ezhavas were at some point in the past members of the armed forces serving various kings, including the Zamorins of Calicut and the rulers of the Cochin dynasty. Cyriac Pullapilly has said that only a common parentage can explain some of these issues.[8]

A theory has been proposed for the origins of the caste system in the Kerala region based on the actions of the Aryan Jains introducing such distinctions prior to the 8th-century AD. This argues that the Jains needed protection when they arrived in the area and recruited sympathetic local people to provide it. These people were then distinguished from others in the local population by their occupation as protectors, with the others all being classed as out-caste. Pullapilly describes that this meant they "... were given kshatriya functions, but only shudra status. Thus originated the Nairs." The Ezhavas, not being among the group protecting the Jains, became out-castes.[8]

An alternate theory states that the system was introduced by the Nambudiri Brahmins. Although Brahmin influences had existed in the area since at least the 1st-century AD, there was a large influx from around the 8th-century when they acted as priests, counsellors and ministers to invading Aryan princes. At the time of their arrival the non-aboriginal local population had been converted to Buddhism by missionaries who had come from the north of India and from Ceylon. The Brahmins used their symbiotic relationship with the invading forces to assert their beliefs and position. Buddhist temples and monasteries were either destroyed or taken over for use in Hindu practices, thus undermining the ability of the Buddhists to propagate their beliefs.[8]

The Buddhist tradition of the Ezhavas, and the refusal to give it up, pushed them to an outcaste role within the greater Brahminic society.[8][9] This tradition is still evident as Ezhavas show greater interest in the moral, non-ritualistic, and non-dogmatic aspects of the religion rather than the theological.[8]

Past occupations

The traditional occupation of the Ezhavas was tending to and tapping the sap of coconut palms. This activity is sometimes erroneously referred to as toddy tapping, toddy being a liquor manufactured from the sap. Arrack was another liquor produced from the palms, as was jaggery (an unrefined sugar). In reality, most Ezhavas were agricultural labourers and small-time cultivators, with a substantial number diverging into the production of coir products, such as coconut mats for flooring, from towards the end of the 19th-century.[1]

Some Ezhavas were involved in weaving and ship making.[10]

Martial traditions

Many were employed as guards or sentinels in the palaces of Cochin and Travancore.[11] Syrian Christians of Kerala, who were privileged in the pre-colonial period to have their own private armies, recruited Ezhava members due in part to this tradition.[12]

Chekavar

A subgroup of the Thiyyas considered themselves to be warriors and became known as the Chekavars. The Vadakkan Pattukal ballads describe Chekavars as forming the militia of local chieftains and kings but the title was also given to experts of Kalari Payattu.[13]

Medicine and traditional toxicology

Some Ezhavas had an extensive knowledge of the medicinal value of plants, passed to them by their ancestors. Known as Vaidyars, these people acted as physicians. Itti Achuden was probably the best known Ezhava physician who directly influenced the classification of Hortus Malabaricus in the 17th century. Itti Achuden's texts were written in the Kolezhuthu script that Ezhava castes used, for they were prevented from learning the more sanskritized Aryazuthu script which was the preserve of the upper-castes.[14]

Some Ezhavas practiced ayurvedic medicine.[15][16][17]

Culture

Ezhava/Channar Musicians from the 19th century: Performing the traditional "Villadichaampattu"

Aivar kali

Literally, Aivarkali means the play of the five sets. This was a ritualistic art form performed in almost all important temples of Kerala. Today it is found in central Kerala. This is also known as Pandavarkali, which means the play of the Pandavas, (the five heroes of the Mahabharatha), and is performed by Asari, Moosari, Karuvan, Thattan and Kallasari communities. This ritualistic dance is performed beneath a decorated pandal with a nilavilakku at its centre. The five or more performers with their leader called Kaliachan enter the performance area after a ritualistic bath, with sandalwood paste over their foreheads, dressed in white dhoti, and with a towel wrapped around their heads.[18]

Arjuna Nrtam (Mayilppili Tukkam)

Arjuna Nrtam ("the dance of Arjuna") or Mayilppili Tukkam is a ritual art performed by men of Ezhava community and is prevalent in the Bhagavathy temples of south Kerala, mainly in Kollam, Alappuzha and Kottayam districts. Arjuna nritham is also called "Mayilpeeli Thookkam" as the costume includes a characteristic garment made of mayilppeeli (peacock feathers). This garment is worn around the waist in a similar fashion as the "uduthukettu" of Kathakali. The various dance movements are closely similar to Kalarippayattu techniques. The performers have their faces painted green and wear distinctive headgears. The all night performance of the dance form is usually presented solo or in pairs.[18]

Makachuttu

Makachuttu art is popular among Ezhavas in Thiruvananthapuram and Chirayinkizhu taluks and in Kilimanoor, Pazhayakunnummal and Thattathumala regions. In this, a group of eight performers, two each, twin around each other like serpents and rise up, battling with sticks. The techniques are repeated several times. Sandalwood paste on the forehead, a red towel round the head, red silk around the waist and bells round the ankles form the costume. This is a combination of snake worship and Kalarippayattu.[18][19]

Parichamuttu kali

Parichamuttu kali is a martial folk-dance prevalent among the Ezhavas around the Alappuzha, Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Palghat and Malappuram districts. It is also performed by Christians and some other Hindu communities. Its origins date back to when Kalaripayattu, the physical exercise of swordplay and defence, was in vogue in Kerala. The performers dance with swords and shields in their hands, following the movements of sword fight, leaping forward, stepping back and moving round, all the time striking with the swords and defending with shields.[18]

Poorakkali

Poorakkali is a folk dance prevalent among the Ezhavas of Malabar, usually performed in Bhagavathy temples as a ritual offering during the month of Meenam (March — April). Poorakkali requires specially trained and highly experienced dancers, trained in Kalaripayattu, a system of physical exercise formerly in vogue in Kerala. Standing round a traditional lamp, the performers dance in eighteen different stages and rhythms, each phase called a niram.[18]

Teyyam (Teyyattam) or Kaliyattam

In northern Kerala, Teyyam is a popular ritual dance. This particular dance form is also known as Kaliyattam. The main deities of Ezhavas include Vayanattu Kulavan, Kativannur Viran, Pumarutan and Muttappan.[18][page needed][19][page needed]

Customs

Family system

Ezhavas adopted different patterns of behavior in family system across Kerala. Those living in southern Travancore tended to meld the different practices that existed in the other parts of Kerala. The family arrangements of northern Malabar were matrilineal with patrilocal property arrangements, whereas in northern Travancore they were matrilineal but usually matrilocal in their arrangements for property. Southern Malabar saw a patrilineal system but partible property.[1]

These arrangements were reformed by legislation, for Malabar in 1925 and for Travancore in 1933. The process of reform was more easily achieved for the Ezhavas than it was for the Nairs, another Hindu caste in Kerala who adopted matrilineal arrangements; the situation for the Nairs was complicated by a traditional matrilocal form of living called taravadu and by their usually much higher degree of property ownership.[1]

Position in society

Although Ezhavas performed the works associated Sudra Varna, they were considered as untouchables (Avarna) by the Nambudiri Brahmins who formed the Hindu clergy and ritual ruling elite in late medieval Kerala.[1]

Conversion to Christianity

A sizeable part of the Ezhava community, especially in central Travancore and in the High Ranges, embraced Christianity during the British rule, due to caste-based discrimination. In Kannur, Protestant missions started working in the first half of the 19th century, notably the Basel German Evangelical Mission. Most of their converts were from the Thiyya community.[20] The Congregationalist London Missionary Society and the Anglican Church Mission Society were also prominent in the movement for religious conversion, having established presences in the Travancore region in the early nineteenth century.[21]

Conversion to Sikhism in central Kerala

See also: Sikhism

During the Vaikom Satyagraha movement against untouchability, a few Akalis, an order of armed Sikhs, came to Vaikom in support of the demonstrators. After successfully completing the Satyagraha and after the Temple Entry Proclamation, some of the Akalis remained. Some Ezhava youth were attracted to the concepts of the Sikhism and as a result, joined the religion.[22]

Spiritual and social movements

The lowly status of the Ezhava meant that, as Thomas Nossiter has commented, they had "little to lose and much to gain by the economic and social changes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries". They sought the right to be treated as worthy of an English education and for jobs in government administration to be open to them.[1] An early Ezhava campaigner and their "political father", according to Ritty Lukose, was Padmanabhan Palpu.[23] In 1896, he organised a petition with more than 13,000 signatories that was submitted to the government asking for the recognition of the right of the Ezhavas to enter government service; the upper caste Hindus of the state prevailed upon the Maharajah not to concede the request. The outcome not looking to be promising, the Ezhava leadership threatened that they would convert from Hinduism en masse, rather than stay as helots of Hindu society. C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer, realizing the imminent danger, prompted the Maharajah to issue the Temple Entry Proclamation, which abolished the ban on lower-caste people from entering Hindu temples in the state of Travancore.[citation needed]

Narayana Guru

Eventually, in 1903, a small group of Ezhavas established Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalan Yogam (SNDP), the first caste association in the Kerala region, naming it after Narayana Guru, who had established an ashram from where he preached his message of "one caste, one religion, one god" and a Sanskritised version of the Victorian concept of self-help. His influence locally has been compared to that of Swami Vivekananda. The organisation attracted support in Travancore but similar bodies in Cochin were less successful. In Malabar, which unlike Cochin and Travancore was under direct British control,[24] the Tiyyas showed little interest in such bodies because they did not suffer the educational and employment discrimination found elsewhere, nor indeed were the disadvantages that they did experience strictly a consequence of caste alone.[25]

The Ezhavas were not immune to being manipulated for covert political purposes. The Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924–1925 was a failed attempt to use the issue of avarna access to roads around temples in order to revive the fortunes of Congress, orchestrated by T. K. Madhavan, a revolutionary and civil rights activist,[26] and with a famous temple at Vaikom as the focal point. Although it failed in its stated aim of achieving access, the satyagraha (movement) did succeed in voicing a "radical rhetoric".[25]

The success of the SNDP in improving the lot of Ezhavas has been questioned. Membership had reached 50,000 by 1928 and 60,000 by 1974, but Nossiter notes that, "From the Vaikom satyagraha onwards the SNDP had stirred the ordinary Ezhava without materially improving his position." The division in the 1920s of 60,000 acres of properties previously held by substantial landowners saw the majority of Ezhava beneficiaries receive less than 1 acre each, although 2% of them took at least 40% of the available land. There was subsequently a radicalization and much political infighting within the leadership as a consequence of the effects of the Great Depression on the coir industry but the general notion of self-help was not easy to achieve in a primarily agricultural environment; the Victorian concept presumed an industrialised economy. The organisation lost members to various other groups, including the communist movement, and it was not until the 1950s that it reinvented itself as a pressure group and provider of educational opportunities along the lines of the Nair Service Society (NSS), Just as the NSS briefly formed the National Democratic Party in the 1970s in an attempt directly to enter the political arena, so too in 1972 the SNDP formed the Social Revolutionary Party.[25]

Dispute between Thiyya and Ezhava

Some in the Thiyya community have objected to being treated as Ezhava by the government of Kerala. They have campaigned for the right to record themselves as Thiyya rather than as Ezhava when applying for official posts and other jobs allocated under India's system of positive discrimination. They claim that the stance of the government is contrary to a principle established by the Supreme Court of India relating to a dispute involving communities who were neither Ezhava nor Thiyya.[27][28] The Thiyya Mahasabha has also opposed the SNDP's use of the Thiyya name at an event.[29]

In February 2013, the recently-formed Thiyya Mahasabha objected to the SNDP treating Ezhavas and Thiyyas as one group, rather than recognising the Thiyyas in Malabar as being distinct. The SNDP was at that time attempting to increase its relatively weak influence in northern Kerala, where the politics of identity play a lesser role than those of class and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has historically been a significant organisation.[30][31]

See also

Notes

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Nossiter (1982) p. 30
  2. ^ Mandelbaum, David Goodman (1970). Society in India: Continuity and change. University of California Press. p. 502. ISBN 9780520016231. Another strong caste association, but one formed at a different social level and cemented by religious appeal, is that of the Iravas of Kerala, who are also known as Ezhavas or Tiyyas and make up more than 40 per cent of Kerala Hindus
  3. ^ Kodoth, Praveena (May 2001). "Courting Legitimacy or Delegitimizing Custom? Sexuality, Sambandham and Marriage Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Malabar". Modern Asian Studies. 35 (2): 350. JSTOR 313121.(subscription required)
  4. ^ Pullapilly (1976) pp. 31-32
  5. ^ Social Movements and Social Transformation.Page 23. Macmillan. 1979. Retrieved 28 December 2007. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Farmers of India.Page 359. (Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 1961. Retrieved 01-12-2008. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  7. ^ EMS Namppothirppadu, Keralam Malayalikalude Mathrubhumi Desbhimany publications, VOl1, 1947 page 27
  8. ^ a b c d e Pullapilly (1976) pp. 26-30
  9. ^ Joseph, George Gheverghese (2003). On life and times of George Joseph, 1887-1938, a Syrian Christian nationalist from Kerala. Orient Longman. p. 18. ISBN 978-81-250-2495-8. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  10. ^ Lemercinier, Geneviève (1984). Religion and ideology in Kerala. D.K. Agencies. p. 246. Retrieved 21 June 2011.
  11. ^ The Ethnographical Survey of the Cochin State. Cochin Government Press. 1907. ISBN 978-0-19-517706-0. Retrieved 25 December 2008. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  12. ^ Joseph, George Gheverghese (2003). On life and times of George Joseph, 1887-1938, a Syrian Christian nationalist from Kerala. Orient Longman. p. 20. ISBN 978-81-250-2495-8. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  13. ^ Pillai, Elamkulam P. N. Kunjan (1970). Studies in Kerala History. Kottayam: National Book Stall. pp. 111, 151–154.
  14. ^ Grove, Richard. "Indigenous Knowledge and the Significance of South-West India for Portuguese and Dutch Constructions of Tropical Nature". Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 121-143. JSTOR 312903.(subscription required)
  15. ^ Alan Bicker, RF Ellen Peter Parkes (2000). Indigenous environmental knowledge and its transformations. Routledge. p. 9. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  16. ^ Gadgil, Madhav (2005). Ecological Journeys. Orient Blackswan. p. 82. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  17. ^ Singh, Abhay Kumar (2006). Modern World System and Indian Proto-Industrialization. Northern book center. p. 312. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  18. ^ a b c d e f Bernier, Ronald M. (1982). Temple Arts of Kerala: A South Indian Tradition. Asia Book Corporation of America. ISBN 978-0-940500-79-2.
  19. ^ a b Chaitanya, Krishna (1987). Arts of India. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. ISBN 978-81-7017-209-3.
  20. ^ Kareem, C.K (1976). Kerala District Gazetteers: Palghat. printed by the Superintendent of Govt. Presses. p. 188. Retrieved 24 June 2011.
  21. ^ Kooiman, Dick (1996). "Who is to benefit from missionary education? Travancore in the 1930s". In Bickers, Robert A.; Seton, Rosemary E. (eds.). Missionary Encounters: Sources & Issues. Routledge. p. 158. ISBN 9780700703708.
  22. ^ Kusuman, K.K (1976). The abstention movement. Kerala Historical Society. p. 19. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
  23. ^ Lukose, Ritty A. (2010). "Recasting the Secular: Religion and Education in Kerala, India". In Mines, Diane P.; Lamb, Sarah (eds.). Everyday Life in South Asia (2nd ed.). Indiana University Press. p. 209. ISBN 9780253354730.
  24. ^ Gough, E. Kathleen (1961). "Nayars: Central Kerala". In Schneider, David Murray; Gough, E. Kathleen (eds.). Matrilineal Kinship. University of California Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-520-02529-5.
  25. ^ a b c Nossiter (1982) pp. 30-32
  26. ^ Pullapilly (1976) p. 38
  27. ^ Ramakrishnan, Kalathil (23 January 2012). "Thiyyas to move SC against Government order". IBN. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  28. ^ "Plea to lower minimum qualification for jobs". The Hindu. 23 May 2012. Retrieved 28 March 2013.
  29. ^ "Thiyya forum lashes out at SNDP". The Hindu. 27 January 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2013.
  30. ^ "Ezhava-Thiyya convention in Kozhikode". The Hindu. Retrieved 28 March 2013. {{cite news}}: Text "date-1 February 2013" ignored (help)
  31. ^ "SNDP out to make a dent in CPM citadels in Malabar". The New Indian Express. 1 February 2013. Retrieved 28 March 2013.

Bibliography

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