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All About Malayalam Language - Details about Malayalam

Malayalam is the official language of Kerala. Spoken by over 35 million people, it is one of the 22 officially recognized languages of India and ranks eighth in its number of speakers. The speakers of Malayalam are called 'Malayalees'. Apart from Kerala, Malayalam is also spoken by the people of Lakshadweep (a union territory on the western coast of India).

It is supposed that the term 'Malayalam' is derived from the words 'Mala' meaning mountain and 'Alam' meaning land or place. The term 'Malayalam', when spelled in English, is a palindrome.

The language consists of a total of 53 characters comprising of 37 consonants and 16 long and short vowels. A new lipi or style of writing was introduced to replace the old style in 1981. This new style reduced the number of characters radically.

History of Malayalam

Malayalam along with Tamil, Kota, Kodagu and Kannada, belongs to the south Dravidian family of languages. Malayalam is not considered as an ancient language and is the youngest of all developed languages of the Dravidian family. It almost took four to five centuries for Malayalam to emerge as a distinct language from its Proto Tamil-Malayalam variant. It has striking similarity to Tamil. Tamil and Sanskrit being the languages of administration and scholarship, greatly influenced the early development of the Malayalam. Later, with the entry of Brahmins, many Indo-Aryan features were taken up by the language.

Malayalam Vocabulary

The Malayalam vocabulary consists of a number of words borrowed from Sanskrit and Tamil. The arrival of the Europeans further enriched the Malayalam vocabulary, with the language absorbing numerous words and idioms from English, Portuguese, Dutch etc. Infact English stands next to Sanskrit in lending words to Malayalam. Likewise, many Malayalam words found their way into other languages (e.g. Coir, Copra, Catamaran etc.)

Malayalam Scripts and Writing Malayalam

Oldest written record of Malayalam is the vazhappaLLi inscription from circa 830 A.D. The Malayalam script, known as kolezhuthu (Rod-Script), is derived from the ancient Grandha Script. Malayalam consists of 37 consonants ( /vyanJanam/ ) and 16 vowels ( swaram ). To make typewriting possible in Malayalam, a new style of writing was introduced in 1981. This new style reduced the number of characters considerably. Malayalam also have numerals of its own, but seldom used now a days.

Malayalam has a number of regional and even more number of communal dialects among the native speakers. The variation are evident in accent, vocabulary, grammar etc as region, community, religion, social status differ. Unlike other Dravidian languages, Malayalam differs in such aspects as the absence of personal endings on verbs.

Though Malayalam is a regional language with relatively less number of speakers compared to other Indian languages, 170 daily papers, 235 weekly and over 550 monthly periodicals are published from Kerala alone. The most circulated daily newspaper in any regional language in India is in Malayalam.

With the migration of Malayalees from Kerala to various parts of the world, the language also found its way abroad. Malayalam is now taught in many universities outside Kerala including some in the United States.

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Malayalam is the language of Kerala, the southernmost state in India. Over 35 million people speak this language. Malayalam, one of the Dravidian languages, has its own alphabet and grammar. It originally developed from Tamil and uses many Tamil words. It has also adapted many words from Sanskrit, other Indian languages, and English.

Malayalam is extraordinarily rich in every genre of literature, and every year, numerous books and publications are produced in Malayalam. In Kerala alone, 170 daily papers, 235 weekly papers, and 560 monthly periodicals are published in Malayalam. In fact, the most circulated daily paper in India is written in Malayalam. This language is presently taught in many universities outside Kerala, including some in the United States.

Course Offerings

• MLYM 0100/5100 Beginning Malayalam I          
• MLYM 0200/5200 Beginning Malayalam II    
• MLYM 0300/5300 Intermediate Malayalam II
• MLYM 0400/5400 Intermediate Malayalam II   
• MLYM 1500/5500 Advanced Malayalam

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The quest for linguistic identity and the establishment of Malayalam as a distinct language

Of the four literary Dravidian languages, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil, Malayalam has the youngest literary tradition, the least number of speakers, and the smallest linguistic area. In addition, it is the least studied of the four by linguists.

If that wasn’t enough, Malayalam has historically had to constantly assert its own identity, especially in relation to Tamil, its closest relative. This was because a sense of confusion around Malayalam’s origins (and by extension, its uniqueness) was a recurring theme in Kerala’s history over the last millennium.

It’s something the Malayalam literati were traditionally aware of, something they had to grapple with and make sense of, in their quest to cultivate a distinct Malayalam literary identity. This search for a cohesive national identity became increasingly important as linguistic nationalism took root in India, with print culture and standardised literary registers serving as manifestations of said nationalism.

Intellectuals from Kerala had to establish the distinctiveness of Malayalam, and one of the ways they sought to do so was by examining the language’s origins, cultural traditions, and very linguistic character in greater depth.

Understanding Malayalam’s origins

Modern (spoken) Tamil and modern Malayalam both descend from a common ancestor, Middle Tamil, which in turn evolved from Old Tamil - the language of Sangam literature. Both have undergone numerous changes and innovations since then, and both are equally removed from this earlier period in their linguistic history, since they both branch off from one common point.

This relationship has given rise to the erroneous understanding that modern Malayalam is an offshoot of modern Tamil, when in reality a better analogy would be that the two are sisters, and that one sister dresses up as their mother (ie, Middle Tamil) when the situation calls for something more formal.

Dialects of Middle Tamil evolved differently in different regions, in modern Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, and Kerala. While speakers in Tamil Nadu and Tamil-speaking Sri Lanka continued (and still continue) to use a literary form modelled on Middle Tamil (specifically, a variant described in a 13th century grammar , the Nannūl ), speakers in Kerala broke from this tradition during the Middle Tamil period and went on to develop their own literary form, a form that would eventually be called Malayalam.

However, despite these linguistic changes in Kerala’s Middle Tamil dialects and the emergence of a tradition that used these dialects, people did not see themselves as speaking “Malayalam” yet.

As the scholar Rich Freeman writes , consciousness of a well-defined, singular Malayalam identity crystallised relatively late, only in the last few centuries or so. This is reflected in the fact that the very name 'Malayāḷam' for the language (which he calls a relatively modern coining) only gained widespread currency after the start of the colonial period — before that, the speech of Kerala was generally just called Tamiḻ by the average person, and bhāṣā (Sanskrit for language) in literary, Sanskritic registers.

Ensuring Malayalam’s place in linguistic nationalism

Freeman goes on to note that Malayalam borders three linguistic zones that have had differing levels of success in the modernist project of constructing a national identity on linguistic lines - Tamil, which has succeeded spectacularly, and Tulu and Kodava, which have conspicuously failed.

Tamil’s success, of course, derives from the antiquity and robustness of its literary form, while Tulu and Kodava’s lack of success is because they did not have an established literary tradition to begin with. Malayalam’s position was somewhere between the two, and only the efforts of intellectuals bound to its cause could place it in the same camp as the other literary Dravidian languages.

Indeed, the Malayalam literati strove to make this project a reality, zealously devoting themselves to the cause of linguistic nationalism that had seeped to Indian intellectual discourse of the time.

The Kerala Pāṇinīyam

One such Kerala intellectual who sought to define the independent character of his language was AR Raja Raja Varma, an accomplished scholar of Malayalam with an encyclopedic knowledge of the language’s workings and history.

Varma was the first native Malayalam speaker to write a grammar of the language, his 1896 work, the Kerala Pāṇinīyam . In his Kerala Pāṇinīyam , Varma listed six features found in literary Malayalam and not in literary (ie, Middle Tamil based) Tamil, features that he felt definitively gave the former a distinct identity from the latter, and by extension, legitimacy as a distinct literary language.

These features were basically innovations that had occurred in the western dialects of Middle Tamil over the centuries (while other Middle Tamil dialects, the ancestors of modern Tamil dialects, continued to innovate too). One of these innovations is unique to modern Malayalam among virtually all Dravidian languages - puruṣabhēda nirāsam (പുരുഷഭേദനിരാസം), the loss of personal markers, or endings on verbs that encode the grammatical categories of person (first, second, and third person), number (singular, plural), and gender (masculine, feminine, neuter).

Personal markers and their grammatical information

To illustrate the sort of grammatical information personal markers encode, let’s take different forms of the same verb in both Malayalam and Standard Tamil, past tense forms of "to come". In Standard Tamil, you have nān vandēn, avan vandān, avar vandār, avaḷ vandāḷ which mean I came, he came, they came, she came respectively. While vand- part remains constant, what comes after it, the personal marker - encoding person, number, and gender - changes.

In Malayalam on the other hand, these same forms would be ñān vannu, avan vannu, avar vannu, avaḷ vannu. There is only one form for the past tense, vannu, used across variations in person, number, and gender. In other words, a Malayalam verb by itself carries no information about what’s being referred to - it could be oneself, a dog, a group of people, a single person facing the speaker, anyone at all, really. There’s no way to tell, except from the pronouns, and well, context (of course).

Malayalam itself still makes these grammatical distinctions however, as the variation in pronouns indicates. As the term innovation suggests, this was a change that happened over time. Epigraphical and literary evidence available to us shows how the distribution of these markers evolved over the centuries, ultimately disappearing from the language, although persisting in some form in literature.

The evolution of personal markers In Malayalam

The first inscription that is now identified as being in Malayalam, the Vāḻappaḷḷi inscription dating back to the 8th century CE, features personal markers. These personal marker forms were near identical to their Middle Tamil counterparts (and by extension, those in modern literary Tamil).

The Old Malayalam texts and inscriptions that follow the inscription feature personal markers too, with phrases like avaḷ vandāḷ (she came), identical to what literary Tamil uses even today (while the same form is ava vandā in spoken Tamil). However, even in Old Malayalam, there are scattered occurrences of verbs without these personal markers.

These instances of omission would grow over time, becoming more and more frequent. The first grammar of Malayalam, the 14th century Sanskrit language Līlātilakam, references this ongoing innovation, something that would’ve been a contemporary development in the language at the time. However, it goes on to note that lower castes [hīnajātiya] in Malabar [Kerala] do say vandān, irundān - personal endings were still widely being used in day-to-day speech by many Malayalam speakers and hadn’t completely disappeared just yet.

An analysis of Malayalam inscriptions shows that personal markers stopped showing up around the 15th century. Since inscriptions traditionally reflect linguistic changes a lot more readily than literary works, it’s likely around this period that the language finally lost its personal markers for good.

The verse of Eḻuttaccan, the iconic 16th century Malayalam poet widely referred to as the father of modern Malayalam, features verbs both with and without personal markers, albeit with a reduced, partially collapsed system when he did use verbs with them. This convention was inherited from the past in deference to earlier literary tradition, and does not necessarily mean that personal markers were still used in day-to-day Malayalam.

Of course, by the time Varma wrote the Kerala Pāṇinīyam , the literary form that was being cultivated had done away with personal markers, allowing him to identify it as a feature characteristic of literary Malayalam.

Interestingly, some linguists report that personal markers survive in some Malayalam dialects spoken on the islands of Lakshadweep , an archipelago situated around 400 km from the coast of Kerala. The geographic isolation of the islands no doubt helped preserve these verb forms many centuries after they had died out on the mainland. These speakers would basically have to delete these endings in writing, while freely using them in speech.

Cementing linguistic nationalism

This strategic repurposing of Malayalam’s puruṣabhēda nirāsam is a good example of how divergent linguistic paths were used during the era of linguistic nationalism to help the process of forging distinct cultural identities for communities bound to a certain literary language.

It also offers a window of insight into the politics surrounding the formation of linguistic identities, a process that became increasingly important with the rise of nationalism in India and the subsequent solidification of historically fluid linguistic boundaries.

Ultimately, the efforts of the Malayalam literati to consolidate a unique, singular identity for their language bore fruit, and the language’s literary culture flourishes today. The roots of their success in building this identity for the language lie in the standardisation of a distinct Malayalam literary register and its subsequent propagation through print. This could only be achieved through discourse fueled by linguistic nationalism, and the efforts of scholars like AR Raja Raja Varma.

Views are the author's own

Karthik Malli is a Bengaluru-based communications professional with a keen interest in language, history, and travel. He tweets at @SandalBurn, and posts on Indian languages at @TianChengWen.

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Essay on Culture of Kerala

Students are often asked to write an essay on Culture of Kerala in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Culture of Kerala

Introduction.

Kerala, a state in southern India, is known for its unique culture. This culture has been shaped by its history, geography, and diverse population.

Art and Music

Kerala’s culture is rich in art and music. Kathakali and Mohiniyattam are famous dance forms. The music includes traditional Sopanam and popular Mappila songs.

Language and Literature

Malayalam is the local language. Kerala has a strong literary tradition, with many famous poets and writers.

Festivals like Onam and Vishu are celebrated with great joy. They involve feasts, boat races, and flower decorations.

In conclusion, Kerala’s culture is a beautiful blend of tradition and modernity. It’s a fascinating study for anyone interested in Indian cultures.

250 Words Essay on Culture of Kerala

Kerala, a southern state of India, is renowned for its rich cultural heritage that has been shaped by a multitude of influences. Its unique culture is a blend of Aryan and Dravidian cultures, developed over millennia, under influences from other parts of India and abroad.

Art and Architecture

Kerala’s art and architecture are distinctive, with a strong influence of Dravidian and Islamic styles. The intricately carved wooden houses and temples, adorned with murals and sculptures, are a testament to the artistic prowess of the Keralites. Kathakali, a traditional dance-drama, and Kalaripayattu, an ancient martial art, are significant contributions of Kerala to the world.

Literature and Language

Malayalam, the local language, has a rich literary tradition dating back to the 13th century. Kerala has produced many renowned writers and poets who have significantly contributed to Indian literature. The state’s emphasis on education is reflected in its high literacy rate.

Cuisine and Festivals

Kerala’s cuisine is a gastronomic delight, with a wide array of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, flavored with spices and coconut. Onam, the harvest festival, and Vishu, the New Year, are celebrated with much pomp and grandeur, showcasing the vibrant traditions and customs.

500 Words Essay on Culture of Kerala

Kerala, often referred to as “God’s Own Country,” is a state in South India renowned for its unique culture. The culture of Kerala is a synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian cultures, developed over centuries under influences from other parts of India and abroad.

The official language of Kerala is Malayalam. Kerala’s literature is deeply interwoven with its cultural fabric, with works dating back to the 13th century. Ezhuthachan, known as the father of Malayalam literature, is celebrated for his significant contributions. Kerala’s literary culture continues to thrive, with contemporary Malayalam authors gaining international recognition.

Performing Arts

Kerala’s architecture is a testament to its rich cultural past, with structures exhibiting a blend of indigenous, Dravidian, and colonial influences. The Kerala mural paintings, found on the walls of temples and palaces, are renowned for their intricate detail and vibrant colors.

Kerala’s cuisine is as diverse as its culture, with a myriad of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. The use of coconut, rice, and a variety of spices is a defining characteristic of Kerala’s culinary tradition. The state is famous for its elaborate ‘Sadya’, a vegetarian feast served during festivals and weddings.

Social Practices

Kerala’s social fabric is characterized by its matrilineal system, a unique social structure where descent and inheritance are traced through the female line. The state is also known for its high literacy rate and progressive social reforms, such as land redistribution and healthcare initiatives.

The culture of Kerala, with its diverse art forms, literature, cuisine, and social practices, offers a unique blend of tradition and progress. It is a testament to the state’s rich heritage and its ability to adapt and evolve over time. Understanding and appreciating this cultural richness can provide valuable insights into the complexities of human societies and their development.

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Early period to the 19th century

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Malayalam literature

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Malayalam literature , body of writing in the Malayalam language of South India . The earliest extant literary work is Ramacharitam (late 12th or early 13th century). In the subsequent period, besides a popular pattu (song) literature , there flourished a literature of mainly erotic poetry composed in the Manipravalam style, an admixture of Malayalam and Sanskrit .

The earliest examples of Malayalam literature are ballads and folk songs, which are entirely indigenous . Two outside sources, however, contributed much to the development of the later literature: Sanskrit , which was the language of scholarship, and Tamil , which was the language of administration over a long period. Ramacharitam , a poem based on the Yuddhakanda of the Ramayana , is the most important of the works influenced by Tamil . Both in its grammar and its vocabulary it appears to be a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam. Less markedly dependent on Tamil are the works of a family of poets from Niranam in central Travancore who flourished in the late 14th and 15th centuries. Their works include translations of the Ramayana , by Rama Panikkar, and of the Bhagavadgita , by Madhava Panikkar.

The importance of Sanskrit in the development of Malayalam culture lies not only in its position as a literary source, but also in its influence on the language. A special literary dialect arose containing a large admixture of Sanskrit and likened in its name—Manipravalam—to a necklace strung with “pearls and coral.” It is described in detail in the Līlātilakam , a 14th-century treatise in Sanskrit on Malayalam grammar and poetics.

Among the many Manipravalam works are sandesa kavyas and campus . The former, modeled on the Meghaduta of Kalidasa ( c. 5th century ce ), are “message poems” consisting of two parts: the first giving an account of the circumstances in which the message must be sent and the route by which it should go; the second describing the heroine and the actual message. The finest extant work in this form, the Unnunili sandesam , was probably written in the 14th century, but the tradition of this type of poem has continued into the modern era. Campus are elaborate compositions dealing with a given theme in alternating passages of verse and prose.

Though it was customary for writers of the Sanskrit school to use Sanskrit metres and figures of speech in their poems, local forms were not forgotten. An outstanding example of a work in a purely Malayalam metre is the 15th-century Krishnagatha (“Song on Krishna”), usually attributed to Cherusseri Namboothiri. The greatest figure in Malayalam literature is Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan (the second name meaning “father of letters”). Little is known with certainty about his life, though he is generally believed to have been born early in the 16th century. He was a poet in the Hindu tradition of bhakti (“personal devotion to God”). His main compositions, though based on Sanskrit works, show great originality of treatment . Thus his Adhyatma Ramayanam makes the hero, Rama, an ideal figure both as man and god, and his Mahabharatam omits all episodes not strictly relevant to the story of the Pandavas.

Malayalam poetry’s close link with dance and theatre produced two major poets, Kunjan Nambiar (1705-70) and Unnayi Variyar (a contemporary). Nambiar’s racy verse narratives of mythological stories were written for thullal, a recitation-and-dance form of theatre he invented. Kerala is also known as the home of kathakali . In this form of dance drama the actors concentrate on mime and gesture, while others recite or sing the verses. The verses belong to a literary genre known as Attakatha, which has been cultivated since the 15th century and takes most of its themes from the Puranas . Unnayi Variyar’s Nala-charitam is generally acknowledged to be the finest dramatic work written for kathakali.

Modern period

In the 19th century, as a result of the work of Christian missionaries, the uses of prose were greatly extended. The process was accelerated by the production of textbooks for schools. Furthermore, the dissemination of European literature led to attempts at literary composition on Western lines. In 1889 there appeared the first novel in Malayalam, Oyyarathu Chandu Menon’s Indulekha , which portrays the effect of Western ideas on an orthodox Hindu family. Modern Malayalam literature began around the beginning of the 20th century and was influenced by the Western literary forms. Kerala Varma Valiya Koyil Thampuran is regarded as the last of the neo-classicists and the first of the moderns. The historical novel was introduced by C.V. Raman Pillai, who was later followed by the versatile historian, statesman, and man of letters Kavalam Madhava Panikkar .

Twentieth-century Malayalam fiction achieved a major breakthrough in the 1940s and thereafter. Narratives, particularly after Indian independence (1947), increasingly concentrated on the life of the ordinary person. The short story became a trendsetter with the works of Vaikom Mohammed Basheer and Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai. M.T. Vasudevan Nair and N. Mohanan brought a new voice into prose narrative marked by intense lyricism. Later fiction has produced important writers like O.V. Vijayan , Kamala Das , and Anand. Fantasy and irony and self-reflexivity dominate their fictional imagination. Dialects have an edge over the standard language in their writings.

Literary criticism emerged in the 20th century. Criticism on modernist lines came to the forefront in the writings of C.J. Thomas, N.V. Krishna Warrier, M. Govindan, S. Guptan Nair, M.K. Sanoo, and Sukumar Azhikode. A new generation of critics entered the scene with theoretical inclinations bordering on postmodernism, and among them are K.P. Appan, Narendra Prasad, Asha Menon, V. Rajakrishnan, V.C. Srijan, and P.P. Raveendran. Dalit ( untouchable ) and feminist perspectives also received attention from later critics.

Before independence the work of poets writing in the various national languages gave impetus to the nationalist movement. The outstanding representative of Malayalam was Vallattol Narayana Menon . Before he turned to patriotic verses, he translated Sanskrit works and wrote a number of poems on Sanskrit models. Several of his compositions are religious in inspiration and often show a sympathetic understanding of the faiths of others. In his later years he took social justice as his theme, as did many younger poets. The post-independence era saw a shift toward modernism and postmodernism. A few well-known names are Warrier and Ayyappa Paniker.

Modern drama began with the farces written in the first decade of the 20th century by C.V. Raman Pillai in imitation of Shakespeare and Molière . In the 1930s, however, new trends became visible in drama, espousing social reform through theatre performances. The plays of N. Krishna Pillai and Pulimana Parameswaran Pillai heralded a new movement in serious theatre. Postmodernist elements in drama surfaced in the works of later writers like Narendra Prasad, Balachandran, and C.N. Srinath.

Culture of Kerala - Rich Culture & Traditions

• Food of Kerala
• Clothing and Traditional Dresses of Kerala
• Architecture of Kerala
• Folk Dance and Music
• Literature of Kerala
• Art and Craft in Kerala
• Festivals of Kerala
• Religion in Kerala
• Occupation of Kerala
• Rituals of Kerala
• Importance of Elephants
• Modern society
• Tourism in Kerala

1. Cuisine - Food of Kerala

2. Clothing and Traditional Dresses of Kerala

3. Architecture of Kerala

4. Folk Dance and Music

5. Literature of Kerala

6. Art and Craft in Kerala

7. Festivals of Kerala

8. Religion in Kerala

9. Occupation of Kerala

10. Rituals of Kerala

11. Importance of Elephants

12. Modern society

13. tourism in kerala.

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Human by Nature, and the beauty of Kerala

by Gloria Apara | Mar 10, 2020 | India | 1 comment

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A smiling face in a shaking head over the green palm trees background. That’s the first thought I have every time I think about Kerala.

The land which has totally changed my way of experiencing India.

I had the great opportunity to explore the region of Kerala with the Kerala Blog Express 5 th edition and within this trip, I gathered some of the best memories in travel I have made until today during this trip.

This was not my first time in India, it was actually the third, and the second time in the same year I was going back for more. For more experiences, for more beauty, more delicious food, and the most, more smiles!

This article is published in partnership with the Kerala Tourism board to share with you their latest campaign, Human by Nature, and as I’m writing these words, I have a big smile on my face as I remember my time exploring Kerala and thinking about its people.

Kerala’s cultural diversity

Kerala is a diverse land in many aspects, and as a traveler is a delight to be able to see how alive its culture is.

Everywhere you go you see people living under their traditions, women wearing the white and golden Sarees, men wearing their Doti, and several religious celebrations being part at different times of the year; Kerala is the land where Hindus, Muslim, and Christian live together and in peace.

The first time you see the Theyyam or the Muttappan is impressive, and if you have the chance to attend a demonstration of Kalaripayattu, the traditional martial art of Kerala, you will respect even more the culture and traditions developed in this area hundreds of years ago.

I was very surprised to know that more than 93% of the population in Kerala are literate, and they speak Malayalam, a language derived from Tamil that is 1100 years old or older.

Kerala is the land where Ayurveda was born, and you can spend several days to heal your body and reconnect doing an ayurvedic treatment retreat, or you can just indulge having a Shirodhara oil ayurvedic massage in the evening after touring the region.

Kerala and its natural beauty

When most people think about India the first images coming to their minds are about the Taj Mahal, sarees, and spicy food.

During my previous trips, this was part of the image I’ve had about India, as I was mostly traveling in the Northern areas.

The first hour in Kerala was mind-blowing! The scenario was of a very green road while driving out of Thiruvananthapuram airport, this was already very different from the other areas of India I’ve previously traveled.

Kerala’s nature is diverse, and you can be at the beach enjoying the sun and palm trees in the morning and later in the day walking through the tea plantations in Munnar.

One of the most touching experiences in Kerala was sleeping in a boat driving through the backwaters, where I could watch the most beautiful sunset and hear the birds while seeing all the life happening in and near the river.

This and so much more is what nature is in Kerala and I’m sure it will bring the best memories to your own trip!

People in Kerala

During my travels, I have encountered few places on Earth where I feel so welcomed as in Kerala.

Because India, in general, is a country where one of the key ingredients for the perfect memory formula is the interactions with its people.

Indians are one of the friendliest people with foreigners and travelers and it can be even a bit overwhelming the level of kindness they are able to have with someone new. I can’t tell how many selfies I have with people I talked to during my daily tours!

But especially in Kerala, people smile at you openly and with so much kindness in their eyes, that is hard to forget them.

I can only feel a great warm feeling in my heart every time I think about the dances, the laughs and the unique conversations I had with total strangers.

Kerala’s people are used to supporting each other and here, responsible tourism takes an important part in regional development. Communities are working together to preserve their culture and traditions and share them with visitors in homestays and real-life experiences tours.

I regret not spending more time in Kerala and staying in a local home for few days to be able to experience closely their way of living, exchanging stories and even perhaps learning to prepare a deliciously spicy curry!

People in Kerala are proud of who they are, and they don’t doubt in sharing everything with someone else. They love to show you their culture and make you feel part of them even if it’s just for a short time.

A trip to Kerala it’s so unique thanks to its people.

Kerala is green, wild and with so much natural beauty I had the feeling I could explore this area for a longer time.

Traveling in Kerala was revitalizing to me. It reminded me how important it is to keep the connection with your roots, embrace them and exalt them as they are part of who you are.

The land of kind people with big smiling eyes, the land who put tears in my eyes while saying goodbye to a land that has connected me with so much happiness, and remind me we are all the same kind of spices, we are all Humans.

I wish you can explore this region and see with your own eyes, God’s own country and its people.

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Gloria Apara

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I’m Gloria, the creator of Nomadic Chica, with a passion for Travel, Coffee, and Asian food.

Growing up in Santiago Chile and dreaming of travel and international exploration. I have set out my life to make my dreams come true.

Having traveled through Asia, Europe, and South America, for the last 20 years, I have a wealth of travel knowledge and experience to share. NomadicChica.com was created to inspire others to travel and empower solo female travels with knowledge.

Love this article, This is so amazing blog post. This place is so nice and such a human nature beauty of Kerala. That’s sounds is so great. Thanks for sharing your information.

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Hi! I’m Gloria, a serious travel addicted from Chile, passionate about going out of my comfort zone, trying delicious food, beautiful destinations and Luxury Places.

I’m here to hopefully inspire you enough to make your own travel dreams true!

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Growth and Success in Kerala

Introduction to Kerala 

Kerala stands out among the states of India, not only for its relative poverty, but for the truly remarkable array of basic health benefits which it manages to provide to its citizens.  Despite having a per-capita GNP of only $298 in 1991, Kerala boasted a nearly one hundred percent literacy rate, and had one of the lowest incidences of child malnutrition in all of India.  By contrast, the GNP in the rest of the country was $330, and the adult literacy rate only 52% (Franke and Chasin 1994).  The robustness of health of Kerala’s citizens also shows through in a variety of other metrics, and the extraordinary success of Kerala’s ambitious program to settle entrenched historical inequities and promote truly exceptional widespread health demands an explanation.  In fact, the phenomenon of the state’s development has been so well studied that the “Kerala Model” is frequently referred to by economists, anthropologists, and policy-makers alike.

However, looking simply at the health metrics in Kerala is not sufficient.  To fully understand its current situation, one must take a biosocial approach.  This means recognizing that “measurable biological and clinical processes are inflected by society, political economy, belief, desire, to a similar extent as other aspects of social life” (Farmer, et al).  For Kerala, this entails looking not just at the failures or successes of currently implemented policy, but also at the historical circumstances which informed it and the social structures which surround and shape it.  Only by looking at the Kerala model more deeply, analyzing it through a variety of disciplines, can we hope to find meaningful answers about the causes of its successes and failures, and its applicability and meaning in a broader world context.

One aspect that contributes to the uniqueness of Kerala is the strong civil activity and organization of its citizens.  This history of mobilization started centuries ago under the oppressive and demeaning caste system, pressing vital reforms through entrenched local and national interests to result in the current notable health statistics.  Though the benefits of these reforms are experienced both biologically and socially, they come as the result of deliberate moves of policy and advocacy which organized the disadvantaged to fight for their own rights.  With that opportunity, the people of Kerala have managed to structure and enforce specific reforms which have direct, beneficial effects on the way they live.

Kerala is often dismissed as a special case, a perfect storm of ecological, historical, and individual circumstances.  However, the characteristics of Kerala which enabled its success are not strictly limited by setting, and the approach it took toward advocacy, policy, and reform can apply in broader contexts, and has.  The idea of education as mobilization addresses one of the main problems in development today – the fact that that it often enhances inequality even as it promotes GNP-level growth – by working to combat “structural violence” at its roots (Farmer).  Kerala challenges the assumption that countries have to experience economic growth on the national level to be lifted out of poverty by showing that meaningful education reform and the nurturing of an engaged active citizenry can create a better standard of life without succeeding on any traditional monetary growth metrics.  The state’s uniqueness is not then a testament to the Kerala Model’s ineffectiveness or irreplicability, as some allege, but to the deep entrenchment of the economic growth model and the interests which support it.

History of Kerala

Kerala’s successes are the result of a long history of division and struggle. Up through the 1900s, people in that area were bound by a rigidly inflexible caste system.  Subtleties of dress and speech “ensured that a person’s place in society could be recognized at a glance” (Jeffrey 1992).  These highly visible classifications in turn determined how wealth was distributed and how different social groups interacted.  Higher-caste groups were considered pure; they owned the land or were priests, while lower castes were relegated to the most menial labor and considered contaminated or polluted.  Though this system was in place throughout India, it was both particularly elaborate and exceedingly strict in Kerala.  In the nineteenth century, Indian reformer Swami Vivekananda called the region “a madhouse of caste” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Chief among the restrictions imposed on the lowest castes were their inability to own land, interact with higher-caste individuals, or enter Hindu temples, but other instances of structural violence against lower-caste Keralites were innumerable and utterly pervasive.  These inequalities were doubly entrenched in tradition and religion in India, making them especially intractable.  However, as described later, education for critical consciousness works to counteract the systemized violence of the caste hierarchy by teaching people to question the system rather than just adapt to it.

The caste system epitomizes traditional authority, which social theorist Max Weber described as “resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of those exercising authority under them” (1964).  Traditional authority differs from bureaucratic, or rational-legal authority in that it is historically derived.  Because of this, policies are determined by custom, or the whims of whoever custom selects to rule.  The utter lack of meritocracy in such a static caste society meant that edicts from the ruling class could only be enforced as long as the tradition on which they were grounded continued to prevail.  As challenges to the traditional system came in the form of the caste liberation movement, they also inspired challenges against the idea of top-down authority at all.  When the caste system finally fell, those who had been most disadvantaged by it had also learned that social and governmental structures were not infallible – that they could be agitated against.

Education played an important part in Kerala’s tremendous transition from a rigidly caste-divided society into one of India’s most egalitarian states.  Though the region historically had strong literacy rates, it was the early-1900s expansion of the education system into the countryside which paved the way for the mass mobilization and active citizenry which today define Kerala.  However, this early emphasis on vernacular schools (schools which taught in the native language, Malayalam) was actually implemented with much the opposite intention.  A Maharaja of Travancore explained the pro-education policies by saying, “a government which has to deal with an educated population is by far stronger than one which has to control ignorant and disorderly masses.  Hence education is a twice-blessed thing – it benefits those who give it and those who receive it” (Jeffrey 1992).  Though advocating for education, he and other elites believed it would lead to a less barbarous, easier to control populace.  In this case, limited knowledge about the effects of literacy and education, led decision-makers to implement policies with results almost diametrically opposite of what they intended, a phenomenon Robert Merton called “the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action” (1936).  Ironically, the very education reforms structured to make the populace easier to govern would help inform the radical movements which later swept Kerala.  This gap between expectations and results shows most clearly in the selection of Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery as a required text.  While educational authorities applauded “Washington’s emphasis on deference and slow, peaceful change,” low-caste Hindus read it as a manual for how to go about challenging their oppressive situation.  In this case, the maharajas were simply unable to fully understand the impact that the texts they selected would make, and because of this they never anticipated the revolutionary seeds their own purportedly placating school system would sow.

The school system in Kerala directly challenged the traditions of the past.  It mixed the castes, even as it heightened awareness of ethnic identities by using them for scholarship distribution and other such organizational purposes.  These hardened social identities challenged traditional modes of hierarchy and deference in Kerala, giving rise to a much larger movement.  Schools became a testing ground for little acts of rebellion, and as Gandhi’s nationalist non-cooperation movement swept the country, it found many student followers.  Rebellion was literally taught in class – teachers were paid little and irregularly, and they objected, noisily.  “From the mid-1930s, vigorous teachers’ unions spread new ideas and forms of protest into distant corners” (Jeffrey 1992).  This idea of dissent, of critically examining one’s situation and working to change it, strikes at the heart of structural violence, which perpetuates its injustice by being unnoticed.  For this reason, the very first movements of the educationally engaged Kerala citizens were to combat these systemic injustices, mostly through land reforms.

The various modes of dissent against structural violence became part of the social landscape of Kerala, incorporated through years of organized activism like temple entry marches, which sought to gain access to segregated temples, and “interdining,” which publically broke taboos by showing high- and low-caste Indians eating together (Franke and Chasin 1994).  As the former students became teachers, this method of mass organization as communication became an integral part of Kerala’s culture, a process which Berger and Luckman refer to as “the social construction of reality” (1967).  However, while Berger and Luckman tend to use the term to describe the institutionalization of authoritative social realities as seemingly objective and binding laws, it means something rather different here.  It still refers to the process by which a socially-constructed understanding becomes an opaque, concrete reality of life, but in Kerala that fact of life is not a monolithic structure, but a movement of people.  The reality which has been socially constructed through years of protest is that of an organized populace, effective at representing their viewpoints.  Literacy is widespread in Kerala, information-seeking and active citizenry encouraged, protest expected.  Though these are all social facts, constructed by the activism of Kerala’s people, they also became objectified over time as a concrete reality, influencing policy and lives by the ever-present threat of mass mobilization.

In fact, it was this reality of this active peasantry that allowed for the passage of many of the most revolutionary reforms in Kerala.  Education itself, though originally instituted by benevolently misguided maharajas, relied on the activism of the lower castes as well.  They instituted reading and writing circles, which had a strong Marxist component and ensured that “the right to literacy in Kerala was transformed from a purely government-sponsored policy to a popular mass movement” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  These sorts of grassroots movements, such as the 1990 Total Literacy Programme, helped Kerala to achieve 100% literacy by 1991, while the overall literacy of India was just 52% (Franke and Chasin 1994).  However, key to understanding the literacy movement is an emphasis on what was being taught, that people were learning to think critically about themselves and their situations.  This in turn led to a more active and engaged citizenry which was better able to protect its own interests throughout various forms of government.  Paulo Freire described the prerequisite for participating in meaningful social change as “a form of education enabling the people to reflect on themselves, their responsibilities, and their role in the new cultural climate,” and though he wrote about Brazil, his words are equally resonant when trying to describe what distinguishes the political consciousness of Kerala (2008).  Though education began the reform movements in Kerala, those movements soon became the basis for education through the efforts of a class that prioritized and fought for empowering Keralites through meaningful, thought-provoking literacy campaigns.

However, education was not the people of Kerala’s only priority, nor even their first.  Access to land had also been historically highly restricted, and as the class consciousness of the peasants grew, they found the traditional system of tenancy increasingly exploitative and insufferable.  Radical associations began as early as 1915, when activists formed the Malabar Tenancy Association, and they continued to gain steam all the way through 1957, when Kerala elected a Communist Party of India majority to the state legislature (Franke and Chasin 1994).  The first priority of this administration was to implement significant land reform, which they did on November 9, 1957, through the announcement of the Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill (KARB).  Immediately, the bill faced strong opposition from the landed interests, including a member of the Praja Socialist Party, a misleadingly-named organization which had in fact often been called “the party of the past” in India (Fickett 1973).  In the debate, a prominent PSP member named Joseph Chazhikkadan “compared the KARB to Pandora’s Box, the revenue minister in charge of the Bill to Pandora, and the provisions of the Bill to leprosy, tuberculosis, rabies, a scorpion, snake, wolf, and so on” (Radhakrishnan 1989).  In the face of this virulent opposition, however, there was widespread peasant mobilization to support the bill.  Throughout the debate, radical groups mustered support for the KARB, including rallies, conferences, meetings, and other demonstrations.  When the central government of India launched a joint steering committee to remove the elected radicals with “the declared aim of saving the state from communist attacks and establishing peace, democracy, and democratic government,” supporters of the communist ministry took to the streets for 50 days, picketing government institutions and schools (Radhakrishnan 1989).  Though Kerala’s communist government was indeed dismissed by the ruling Congress party in India at the end of that period, the replacement ministry still had to deal with these activists.  Despite a variety of adjustments made which eliminated many of the protections for tenants, the revised legislation passed in 1960 as the Kerala Agrarian Relations Act retained most of the provisions of the KARB, and still “provided major economic relief to tenants” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  However, subsequent protests by wealthy landowners and appeals to the central government succeeded in substantially watering down the already diluted KARA.

Legislative disappointments aside, radicals in Kerala certainly gained more from the brief communist ministry than they lost.  In addition to the precedent set by the passage of a substantial land reform act, there were also benefits which, though less immediately tangible would have even greater ramifications for the future.  By the time the seven party United Front, led by the Communist Party of India – Marxist, was elected to power in 1967, many of the most substantial impediments to land reform had been removed.  This revival of the leftists’ prior agenda was enabled by a variety of factors, such as the breakup of the anti-communist alliance which previously thwarted the KARB, the splintering and dissolution of the Congress party, and the increased mobilization of the peasantry which had resulted from the alliance of formerly anti-communist groups with the left to work for mass interests.  Though the passage of the Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act in 1969 was itself relatively uneventful, – by this point, popular pressure had driven most political leaders to support the bill – the KLRAA still had a massive impact on the division of resources in society, turning 1.5 million tenants in small land owners.  However, it is important to emphasize that this reform was not just the result of a quiet vote or secluded legislative debate.  “Quite the contrary, it was the outcome of decades of organizing, petition signing, marching, meetings, strikes, battles with police and landlord goon squads, election campaigns, and parliamentary debates” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Importantly, all this mobilization was initiated by a critically educated citizenry which was prepared to fight for its convictions.

Kerala’s transition in the early twentieth century from a rigid, caste-defined society to the implementer, in large part by a mobilized peasantry, of one of the most thorough land reforms in South Asia depended ultimately on early efforts to educate the entirety of its citizenry.  Though that educational movement was started with much the opposite intention, the skills and material taught enabled everyone in Kerala to look critically at their situation and to fight for improvements, in both education system itself and in the exploitative distribution of property and the outmoded laws which protected established interests.  Key to understanding the increased mobilization of popular resources was the institutionalization of radicalism as a mode of learning and of protest in Kerala.  Through successes like the land reform acts, the great mass of the previously disadvantaged came to understand themselves as having a role in crafting of the policies which affect them, and over time this understanding solidified itself as a society in which even the most wealthy and elite were forced to reconcile their aims with those of the least privileged.

Health Outcomes in Kerala

Tracing the history of Kerala shows how the disenfranchised took back crucial elements of their own governance through education and mobilization.  However, the effects of that newfound government remain to be demonstrated.  Though Kerala did not experience the economic boom that is often conceived as marking development in poor countries, the various metrics of quality of life have improved significantly, a phenomenon Srikumar Chattopadhyay and Richard Franke referred to as “accomplishing more with less” (Freund 2009).  On its most basic level, this can be shown as a comparison between Gross National Product and life expectancy.  Under traditional understandings of development, an increased GNP corresponds with more wealth and a higher individual standard of living.  However, Kerala is an exception to this rule.  Despite having a per capita GNP of only $298 in 1991, as compared to India’s overall GNP of $330, Kerala had an average life expectancy of between 69 and 72 years.  India’s average life expectancy was 60 years, and the life expectancy of other countries as economically destitute as Kerala was only 55 years.  In fact, Kerala’s life expectancy was only 4 to 7 years shorter than that of the United States of America, despite the latter having an approximately 75 times greater per capita GNP (Franke and Chasin, 1994).  Clearly, the state is outperforming classical expectations of development based on economic growth.

However, simply comparing GNP and life expectancy does not tell the whole story of a population’s health.  Fortunately for Kerala, nearly all the other metrics are equally favorable.

By the end of 1991, Kerala had achieved 100% literacy, while the rest of India lagged behind at only 52 percent.  In keeping with Kerala’s tradition of citizen-led movements, the 1989 Total Literacy Campaign which enabled Kerala to reach this goal was run in large part by the Kerala People’s Science Movement, a 70,000 member volunteer organization (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Though literacy had regressed in Kerala by 1994, it retained the unique characteristic of being relatively equitably distributed between men and women.  While the male literacy rate was 93.6%, female literacy was still 86.3%, which was 35 points higher than general literacy in the rest of the country.  In contrast to this seven point literacy gap in Kerala, the difference across India was 25 percentage points – male literacy was 64%, and female literacy only 39% (Parayil 2000).  Additionally, there is evidence that literacy in Kerala is not just learned as routine, but is put to active use.  Despite their poverty, Kerala’s citizens have the highest newspaper consumption in all of India, supporting the assertion that “literacy in a progressive and mobilized political environment also enhances political awareness” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Kerala’s remarkable literacy rates are certainly an achievement in and of themselves; they speak to a remarkably far-reaching and engaging educational system.  Even more important, however, is the fact that literacy in Kerala has a greater connotation, that it signals a well-informed populace, able to participate actively as citizens.

Literacy is only one metric of development, and it speaks little to the physical health of the population.  However, it is not the only improvement in the lives of impoverished Keralites which was implemented by the radical regimes of the 1950s and 60s.  In a 1981 census which measured the percentage of villages which had access to specific vital resources, Kerala ranked first among Indian states in nearly every category, ranging from schools, to food ration shops, to post offices and hospitals.  A similar survey found that while India as a whole had only 263 hospital beds per 100,000 people living in urban areas, Kerala had nearly twice that, at 458.  The difference was even more marked in rural areas, where for 100,000 people India averaged 12 beds and Kerala averaged 107, despite being significantly poorer (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Though the region was still extremely impoverished, even compared to other Indian states, the resources which it did have were distributed more equitably, resulting in a higher basic standard of living and better access to healthcare.

This speaks to the prevalence of the institutions of care, but a still more biological analysis of population health is also necessary.  In addition to Kerala’s high life expectancy, it also had by 1991 an infant mortality rate of 17 per 1,000 live births, as opposed to the all-India rate of 85.  Infant mortality per thousand in comparably low-income countries was 91, while in the USA it was 9 (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Whereas between 1990 and 1996, only 34% of births in India were attended by trained health personnel, in Kerala 94% of births were attended, a fact which no doubt contributes to Kerala’s relatively low infant mortality (Parayil 2000).  Kerala also has a relatively low birth rate; at 20 per 1,000, it’s much closer to the USA’s 16 than India’s 31 or other low-income countries’ 38 (Franke and Chasin 1994).  These indicators – high life expectancy, low infant mortality, and low birth rate – all correspond with increased access to effective medical care, which is especially remarkable given the overall dearth of wealth in Kerala.  These strong health metrics epitomize the central paradox of Kerala, that of accomplishing more with less.

However, the area of public health in which that trope of accomplishing more with less shows through most strongly is nutrition.  Since the Indian food shortages of 1964, Kerala has used ration shops to provide nutrition for the most destitute.  As a result of rationing and similar food provision programs, like free school and nursery lunches “nutrition in Kerala is equal or superior to that of other parts of India” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  It is certainly true that Kerala suffers from less widespread malnutrition than the rest of India.  Between 1988 and 1990, the percentage of children in Kerala who suffered from severe undernourishment was only 1.6% or 2.4% for boy and girls respectively, compared to the all-India rate of 9% (Parayil 2000).  However, it is likely that this is not actually the result of a significantly increased per capita caloric intake (Indians averaged about 2100 calories per day in the early 80s, while estimates for Kerla ranged from 1600-2300), but rather from a mode of distribution which assures even the most indigent of their basic requirements, as well as from better access to primary healthcare centers, which can treat the effects of improper nutrition if necessary.  The public food distribution system in Kerala is widely considered the most effective in the state, and 90% of individuals hold ration cards (Ramachandran 2000).  However, it is important to note that these food reforms were not simply handed down from the administration, rather “it was primarily the outcome of decades of struggle by workers and tenant farmers to control the landlords and other elite forces exploiting them” (Franke and Chasin 1994).  In this way, Kerala’s history of mass movements plays out on even the smallest scale, the individual bodies of its citizens.

The mobilization of Kerala’s citizens does not just change policy; it affects their health on the level of both a single individual and the entire population.  The ability to effectively represent their own needs, enabled by a critical education, allowed the people of Kerala to pass redistributive reforms, in particular regarding land, food, and education, which in turn have a direct beneficial effect on their health as measured by any number of indicators.  There are problems with this radical approach.  One of the most common critiques is that the sort of social safety net in place in Kerala creates a welfare state, where people have no real motivation to work.  And at first glance, troubling economic statistics like Kerala’s 25% unemployment rate seem to support this view.  However, unemployment is a much deeper historical problem in Kerala; it existed long before the communist ministries.  Additionally the unemployment crisis in Kerala is most severe in agriculture, where male laborers averaged only 147 working days per year in 1983-84 (Franke and Chasin 1994).  Both these factors ought to be taken into account when looking for the cause of Kerala’s unemployment.

Because unemployment is a historic trend in Kerala, its cause must also be historic.  The most likely candidate is Kerala’s extremely high population density; at 786 people per square kilometer, it is nearly three times that of the rest of India (Parayil 2000).  This explains both the longstanding nature of Kerala’s underemployment and the fact that there are simply too many people to work the land every day.  As more underlying causes of unemployment are fleshed out, the welfare state argument loses traction, and it becomes clear that the effect of the redistributive reforms in Kerala is not to discourage work, but to create a backup system for those who cannot find it.  These reforms were designed and militantly put in place by the advocacy of the least advantaged members of society, in order to protect their most basic needs, like land and food.  The citizens in question are both unreservedly motivated and extremely effective because of their high level of education, and their advocacy leads to a state with a standard of living much more advanced than its economic growth metrics suggest is possible.

Kerala in a Broader Context

Kerala is a large state, but it is still only a tiny fraction of a much larger developing world.  However, its role as an alternative model of development makes Kerala of huge importance in the question of whether a similarly radical set of reforms would have the same effect in other places.  The argument put forth in Franke and Chasin’s book is that the success of Kerala was locally defined, enabled by the specific conditions of Kerala’s ecology, history, and people’s movements (1994).  However, to say that the specificity of the conditions which preceded Kerala’s transformation preclude similar reforms in other regions is disingenuous.  Though Kerala’s evenly dispersed resources (and therefore evenly dispersed population) may have made it easier to develop a comprehensive education system, the prevalence of similarly literate societies in regions as dissimilar as Azerbaijan, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea makes shows that this primary goal of universal education can be accomplished in diverse settings if prioritized (UN Statistics Division 2011).  From this understanding, the emphasis placed on the specific people and history of Kerala can be reexamined as just part of the impact of early educational reforms.  Through education, the citizens of Kerala were able to bring about for themselves the reforms they needed most, and though there are certainly extraordinary challenges associated with instituting full literacy to the point of critical consciousness, they are not categorically prohibitive in the rest of the developing world.  Nor are the beneficial effects of early education only evident in that particular state – a 1991 study with compared the differences in development between four Scandinavian countries and four comparably-sized Latin American ones identified the two critical components of the relative advancement of the Scandinavian countries as education and early land reform, a trend supported centuries later and half a world away in Kerala (Thorp 1993).  Kerala, though a current and compelling model, is not the only evidence that a policy of radical reform and redistribution, informed by the advocacy of the people most affected, produces significantly better health and development outcomes than pursuing a never-ending policy of economic growth.

Why then, does the trope of economic growth as the premiere mode for human development persist?  Despite being outmoded and possibly even counterproductive, that particular holdover from colonial ideology retains its power in the same way that the caste system endured for so long – by being a traditional authority, institutionalized over centuries.  Throughout the colonial ages, it was simply the goal to get more, to grow straight through the edges of the map.  Over time, this idea of expansion as the only possible method of development solidified and the colonial process which brought it into being became opaque.  It existed as its own reality, a law of development.  Kerala (and increasingly more and more research on similar phenomena) challenges this traditional understanding that development means economic growth because this growth comes at the expense of increased inequality and often does nothing to advance the interests of the vast majority of society.  It shows that traditional models of growth fail to take into account the potential of a consciously educated and mobilized population, that such populations can and have instituted radical reforms policies through mass advocacy which end up drastically raising the quality of life for all citizens.

The problem which Kerala highlights in global health, is the persistence of traditional modes of examining development, of building more more instead of accomplishing more with less.  The solution is then being willing to use seemingly radical techniques and reforms to accomplish development on a human scale, as opposed to on the economic scale it is measured on now.  Put simply, it is the difference between raising life expectancy and raising GNP.  However, the implementation of these reforms cannot be put equally simply, for the fundamental reason that the radical changes in society have to come from the advocacy of the population which they purport to affect.  As such, education, not just for routine literacy, but for critical consciousness, is a vital first step.  It teaches citizens to integrate meaningfully with the world around them, to define it rather than just adapt to it (Freire 2008).  The definitions of how to achieve human health and developmental success which countries struggling to survive in the Darwinian world of global economic development could come to are unknown, but Kerala shows that critically examining one’s context and making, by mass protest if necessary, the appropriate adjustments leads to a radically more healthy, egalitarian, and meaningfully informed society.

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Weber, Max.  The Theory of Social and Economic Organization . Ed. Talcott Parsons. London: Free of Glencoe, 1964. Print.

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Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Kerala — God’s Own Country” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Kerala — God’s Own Country

Kerala is one of the smallest states of India. The state stretches along the Malabar coast on the western side of the Indian peninsula, is sandwiched between the hills of the Western Ghats on its eastern edge, the Arabian sea on the western edge and is bordered by the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

God’s own country is a phrase that was first used in the context of Kerala by Vipin Gopal in 1993. Later, the Kerala state tourism development corporation adopted it as the brand for its tourism promotion campaigns. The National Geographic Magazine has named Kerala as one of the ten paradises of the world.

Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram) is the capital of Kerala. The city is well known for its Kovalam beach, Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple and various museums and palaces. The highland district, Idukki, with mountains, valleys, dams, forests, wildlife, orchids, streams, scenic points, trekking trails, sanctuaries, hill stations and lakes can be called as God’s own hideaway. Munnar and Wynad, the famous hill stations, can bring one even closer to nature. The climate is equable and varies little from season to season, with temperatures normally ranging from 80 to 90 F in the plains but dropping to about 70 F in the highlands. It gets both south-west and north-east monsoons; and the rainfall is heavy, averaging about 300 cm annually.

Kerala, a kaleidoscope of mesmeric charms enthralls everyone with the sun, the filtered glades of palm trees, shimmering beaches, dense tropical forests, rocky coasts, still bays and astounding rivers. It has an intricate maze of mossy backwaters, interspersed with rice fields, rich in wildlife and bursting with cashew, coconut, coffee and rubber plantations, and a medley of spices such as cardamom, pepper, turmeric and ginger. Banana is intrinsic to the culture of Kerala; consumed as food and medicine, used in rituals and ceremonies and offered to gods in prayer. Tea plantations flourish in the highlands e.g. Munnar.

In this land of great natural beauty, the country undulates westward from the majestic heights of Western Ghats, presenting a vista of silent valleys clothed in the richest green. The elegant waterfalls at Athirampally, near Trichur, are a popular tourist spot. Along the coast, sand dunes shelter a linked chain of lagoons and backwaters, studded with sea-gulls and country canoes plying at a snails pace. The silence of clear skies is broken only by the coos of koels (a kind of cuckoo) and the frequent flutter of cranes perched on the embankments. The scenic Thekaddy wild-life sanctuary is a popular vacation destination for nature lovers. People also visit Kerala for its well-known ayurvedic massages and traditional ayurvedic treatments.

Kerala has a unique culture. People are of Dravidian racial stock. The local language is Malayalam, but English and Hindi are also commonly spoken. Art forms range from Kalavipayattu, the martial art, to Kathakali which is amongst the oldest dance styles. Onam is the most important festival; it celebrates the mythical king Mahabali’s return to Kerala. At this time then, there is a burst of water carnivals which attracts visitors from everywhere, the most exciting of these are Nehru Trophy Boat Race held on the second Saturday of every August, the Aranmula Race after Onam and the one held during the Great Elephant March in January. Guruvayur, with its temple dedicated to Lord Krishna is a popular pilgrim center.

Exploding palms and trumpeting elephants, temple dances that thunder into the night, colourful festivals, serene churches, enchanting byways and elegant snake boat races make Kerala a land of stunning beauty and yes God’s own country…

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Imagining Communities - Differently: Print, language and the 'public sphere' in colonial Kerala

This article examines the questions of ethnicity, territoriality and history in Kerala through an examination of two interrelated themes: the emergent print media and its uses, and the problem of language. By looking at examples of primarily two different kinds of prose writing that became available in this period—religious tracts and literary journals (with some references to the more explicitly literary genres like the novel and the short story)—it addresses the problem of identity that underlies the changes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the differential claims that groups made on the public sphere.

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National identities are not primordial, nor did linguistic identities exist as labels on the people of India a few centuries back. Linguistic identities were invoked through common culture, literature and a shared history to stick on. In the pre-colonial times, the present day linguistic state called Kerala was divided into different provinces ruled by kings which were later consolidated under invoked relationships of ‘one language-one culture-one land-one people’ which partially happens through the mechanisms and machinery that form part of the larger colonial regime. The language varieties across these different provinces were later on unified under the category Malayalam, gradually through language planning and standardization. The role of natives in taking forth these representative categories in the backdrop of new identity formations is also noteworthy. The printed word gradually gained more privilege over the local spoken variants, side by side with the shaping of a singular culture swiping of the differences, aided by a common literature and system of education. The paper attempts at an examination of the socio-cultural hierarchies that were created parallel to the changes in language and people’s approach to languages as well as debates on questions related to the newly imagined ‘region’ and the emergence of the ‘regional linguistic nationalism’ that occupy the newly evolving ‘Malayalee public sphere’.

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Novel, as a literary genre has always struggled to capture the anxieties embedded in national histories. The politics, ideologies and cultural conflicts of nations have always been part of the history of novel. Infact there need not even be a separate category called novels of national history. Every novel is woven by the threads and strands of the nation in making. The spatio-temporality of the genre in its European origin and its colonial dissemination, made the novel an integral unit of the nation state. Most novels of national history of the colonial period thus write new representations of colonial histories, sometimes even by inventing scores of intricate discursive methods. The novels of C. V. Raman Pillai in Malayalam confront the colonial dilemma by inventing many linguistic time-spaces within a single historical periphery that ranges from pristine Sanskrit to the most local vernacular expression 1. Raman Pillai was infact one of the first writers in Malayalam who had to face the trauma of reconceiving locales as nations. This is why heperhaps painted his Travancore rather ahistorically as asovereign nation state, a historical replica of the colonial state whose domination it was facing at the time. In his historical novels, he takes the pain to avoid any reference to colonialism and Travancore's subordination to the British, while he has authored several articles decrying colonialism as the root cause of the political problems that Travancore was facing. Bewildering diversity of Malayalam dialects that Raman Pillai uses in his works were for him only one of the tools and raw materials in the kind of imaginary nation building exercise that he ventured into through his novels 2. Such meta nationalist politics was an inseparable aspect of both nationalist and literary histories of the colonial era. Raman Pillai imagined Travancore state as one giant state in opposition to the furtive threats against it, existing outside the socioeconomic history of the world at that time. In its illusoriness and in its unaccountability to the colonial history, Raman Pillai's Travancore was actually representing the inferiority of the very subjugation that he was being silent about. His conception and use of novel was rooted in its capacity as a medium that could contain this unspeakable politics as well. In this manner, through his novels, Raman Pillai could dodge and forget the violence, the injustices and unethicality of the state of Travancore and imagine that he could conquer the inferiority instilled by colonialism by staying close to the general socio-cultural politics of nation 3. On the other hand S.K Pottekad and ThakazhiSivasankara Pillai, two prominent novelists who followed Raman Pillai's generation, did not have these conflicts while writing their novels. OruDeshathinte Katha [The Story of a desham (loacle)]' by Pottekad (1971) orKayar ['The Coir] by ThakazhiSivasankara Pillai (1978/2013) and Tattakam by Kovilan (1995) are grounded in the liberal landscape of postcolonialism. They also reinvented counter-national histories, albeit through different narratives that sought to overcome the garrulousness of nationalist politics through the ironical interpolation of the histories of the small locales (desham). K. P Appan, the foremost literary critic of high modernism in Malayalam, showers eloquent praises on S K Pottekad's material historicizing and his 'objective subjectivism' that makes him craft his novels as though they were 'Kerala's monologues'. But Appan compares the historical objectivity in Pottekad's narratives to the objectivism in journalism and eventually goes on to make a parallel to Dickens's fictional landscape. An aesthetic methodology rooted in the writing of regional histories as against the grand narratives of nation building that was evident in Pottekad was thus mostly overlooked.

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The southwest coast of India has always been a significant site within the global network of relations through trade and exchange of ideas, commodities, technologies, skills and labour. The much longer history of colonial experience makes Kerala’s engagement with modernity polyvalent and complex. Without understanding the multiple space-times of this region, it is impossible to make sense of the complexities of Kerala modernity beyond its general description as ‘Malayalee modernity’. From the colonial pepper trade and Narayana Guru’s philosophical engagement with the question of caste, to the seemingly disparate elements that weave together an ‘eclectic past’ through the Muziris Heritage Project; from the debates on women’s sexuality around the Suryanelli rape case, to the gendered constitution of public space during the mass annual Attukal Pongala ritual; from the changes in state attitude towards providing piped water supply to how Cochin port’s inter-War history has scripted the story of urban modernity; from the shaping of the public sphere to the radical Left politics of the 1970s and the emergence of popular janapriya literature—this book analyses the ideas, spaces and practices that intricately weave the region’s experiences of modernity. Kerala Modernity emphasizes the methodological need to re-examine the idea of ‘region’ as a discursive category to explore Kerala’s regional modernity apart from Eurocentric and nation-centric frames of analyses. The interdisciplinary presentation—complete with a Dalit critique of modernity in the Foreword—will be an important contribution to literature on Kerala and the debates on alternative modernities in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and scholars of history, sociology and literary and cultural studies, as well as the interested general reader. CONTENTS List of Tables, Figures and Map FOREWORD : Gopal Guru Acknoweldgements INTRODUCTION / Situating an Unbound Region: Reflections on Kerala Modernity Satheese Chandra Bose and Shiju Sam Varughese CHAPTERS 01. The Routes of Pepper: Colonial Discourses around the Spice-trade in Malabar Vinod Kottayil Kalidasan 02. Colonial Intellectuals, Public Sphere and the Promises of Modernity: Reading Parangodeeparinayam Shiju Sam Varughese 03. (Re)construction of ‘the Social’ for Making a Modern Kerala: Reflections on Narayana Guru’s Social Philosophy Satheese Chandra Bose 04. Port Building and Urban Modernity: Cochin, 1920–45 Justin Mathew 05. At the End of the Story: Popular-Fiction, Readership and Modernity in Literary Malayalam Ancy Bay 06. Contemporaneity and the Collective: The Reportage in Amma Ariyaan Ameet Parameswaran 07. The Politics of Sexuality and Caste: Looking through Kerala’s Public Space Carmel Christy K.J. 08. Attukal Pongala: Myth and Modernity in a Ritualistic Space Darshana Sreedhar 09. The Pipe Dreams of Development: Institutionalising Drinking Water Supply in Kerala S. Mohammed Irshad 10. Archaeology and the New Imaginations of the Past: Understanding the Muziris Heritage Project Rachel A. Varghese REFERENCES NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS INDEX

Dilip Menon

Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature (PLTL)(eds GN Shinde and SB Mirza), Nanded, Maharashtra, India

Every narrative has a context which is consciously or subconsciously derived from a world-view and an ideology, and so do have the narratives of 'origin', those which were knitted together to create different community identities towards the end of 19th and the early decades of 20th century Kerala. Placed within the wider context of 'colonial modernity', these myths turned out to be and at times were used for constituting a 'lineage', and in recalling certain pasts, at the same time, selectively erasing some others. These representations, centered around the il/legitimacy claims put forth through decades,eventually revolve around certain repetitive themes and motives like :the places of origin and the initial settlements of each caste/ community group.The refashioning and solidification of caste/community identities towards the the beginning of the 20th C involving the attribution of historicity effected through the blurring of boundaries between the 'historical' and the 'mythical' narrative genres turns out to be the focus here.

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