Temple-Entry Movement in Travancore, 1860-1940 Author(S): Robin Jeffrey Source: Social Scientist, Vol

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Temple-Entry Movement in Travancore, 1860-1940 Author(s): Robin Jeffrey Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 4, No. 8 (Mar., 1976), pp. 3-27 Published by: Social Scientist Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516377 Accessed: 05-04-2020 11:23 UTC

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This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ROBIN JEFFRET

Temple-entry Movement in Travancore, i860-1940

AN EXTREME, yet popular view of the princely states suggests that they were sloughs of decadence and inertia, their people enduring unrelieved miseries, their rulers pursuing unspeakable pleasures. Only in the 1930s, if indeed then (so the argument runs), did Congress victories in the provinces, and the rising tide of nationalism, begin to ripple the stagnant waters of politics and society in the princely bog. For some states, such an appreciation may even be correct. However, in others there were vigorous political movements, involving large numbers of men, their course influenced far more by the peculiar nature of the princely-state arena than by developments in British India. Such a state was Travancore, which roughly corresponded to the southern half of today's Kerala. This article is a study of the movement among prospering low-caste Hindus for the right to enter schools, government service and ultimately government-controlled temples in a staunchly theocratic Hindu state. The right of temple-entry was within the gift of a strict, high-caste Maharaja (as it could never be within that of a British government) and was the ultimate "symbolic conversion of wealth into honour" for which educated men among the low castes strove from the 1890s. Initially a new, wider concept of caste developed, as college-educated men sought to involve their less wealthy and less educated castemen in a political community of

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST such numbers and solidarity that the princely government would have to reckon with it. Issues of temples and religion were capable of arousing the interest of people from diverse educational and economic backgrounds, and in Travancore, moreover, even the poor tended to be literate. There were large numbers capable of being rallied. The princely government, caught between its trusteeship of Hindu orthodoxy and its desire to consolidate all its Hindus against the threat of Christian proselytizing, sharpened the issues first, by resisting low-caste pressures and then seeking to defuse them. By the time the definitive accommodation, the Temple Entry Proclamation of November 1936, had come about, thousands of literate, low-caste peasants and workers had acquired a keen political consciousness. This in turn was increasingly responsive to the rhetoric not merely of caste, but of class. State and Society at a Glance In discussing society in Travancore in the twentieth century, one encounters a problem of categories. Literacy in Travancore was higher than in any other state or province in India. Male literacy in 1931 was 41 per cent and in 1941, 68 per cent. In 1931, more than 70,000 Travan- coreans were literate in English out of a population of five million. Most of these 70,000 could probably be categorized as "middle class" in that at least part of their livelihood came from government service, teaching, law or clerical work. However, there were cash-crop farmers, merchants and small bankers who were not literate in English but who would fall into a "middle class" category. Moreover, of the more than two million Travan. coreans who were literate in 1931, large numbers were small landholders, tenants, landless labourers or factory workers. To be literate did not mean to be "middle class." Among Ezhavas, male literacy was 43 per cent in 1931, though Ezhavas were low caste and mainly poor labourers and tenants. I have tried to deal with this problem of useful categories by generally referring in the pre-1920 period to an "educated elite" which can be measured through the English-literacy statistics in the censuses. I begin to use the expression "middle class" only from the 1920s when the admittedly unsatisfactory economic data permit some tentative statements about class formation, and when Travancore politicians and labour leaders begin to use the rhetoric of class consciousness. Travancore covered an area of 7600 square miles, and among the princely states was exceeded in population only by Hyderabad and Mysore. It was the most literate state or province in India; by 1941 its male literacy rate had reached 68 per cent. It was also one of the most densely populated areas. Its population grew from 2,952,000 in 1901 to 6,070,000 in 1941, an increase of 106 per cent. The all-India population increased by 32 per cent in the same period.2 Much of the cultivable land in the state was, by the 1920s, given over to cash crops-coconut, pepper, cashew, cardamom, rubber, sugar

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 5 cane and tea. European planters had opened estates in the Western Ghats, the border between Travancore and the Madras Presidency to the east in the 1860s, and from the 1880s the products of the coconut palm- copra, coconut oil, coir and coir matting-were increasingly commercial- ized and exported. By 1920 large numbers of Travancore landholders and labourers were involved with these crops and had come to depend on the cash economy created thereby.8 Two features of traditional society had struck European visitors since the sixteenth century. The first was the matrilineal system of family and inheritance followed by most caste-Hindus, particularly the Nairs, who formed the warrior-gentry. "These kings do not marry," the traveller Duarte Barbosa wrote in 1516, "only each has a mistress, a lady of great lineage and family, which is called Nayre." The second feature was the rigidity, refinement and ruthlessness of the system of caste. Men polluted their caste superiors not merely on touch but on sight. In the extreme case, a Pulaya was said to pollute a Nambudiri Brahmin from 95 paces. "When [the Nairs] walk along a street or road," wrote Barbosa, they shout to the low caste folk to get out of their way; this they do, and if one will not, the Nayre may kill him without punishment; even if he is a youth of good [high-caste] family but poor and worth- less, and he finds in his way a manl of low caste who is rich and respected and in favour with the King, yet he makes him clear the way for him as if he were a King.4 This was largely the system that the British found when they imposed a political Resident on Travancore in 1800. In the next 60 years, little attempt was made to tamper with the state's society or local politics. From the 1860s, however, powerful forces came increasingly to bear on the lives of Travancoreans. There were a number of reasons. Travan- core had fallen into grave disfavour with British governments in the 1850s for its careless, corrupt and cruel administration. In 1860 a young and well-educated Maharaja came to the throne. His Minister was his former tutor, a brilliant product of the formal English education offered in the Madras High School from the 1840s. British pressure to reform the administration complemented the enthusiasm of the Maharaja and his Minister to be seen as innovators and modernizers. The administration was increasingly centralized, examinations were introduced for government servants, commercial monopolies abolished, sweeping land reforms promulgated conferring ownership rights on thousands of government tenants, and a wide network of schools established. By the mid-1870s there were a thousand miles of roads where in the 1850s there had been no roads at all. European missionaries, more numerous in Travancore than in any comparable area of India, intensified their educational and proselytizing work among avarna (low-caste) Hindus. In the hills, European planters opened estates; in the port towns of Quilon and

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Alleppey, merchants, both European and Indian, began to export Travan- core crops. Travancore, according to the Secretary of State for India in 1867, had become a "model state."5 The Travancore government emphasized its modernity and efficiency in 1875 when it carried out the state's first "scientific" census on the lines of the British Indian census of 1871. The census put the population at 2,311,000-74 per cent Hindu, 20 per cent Christian and 6 per cent Muslim. Of the total population, about 40 per cent were avarna Hindus, and about a quarter savarna (high caste). This in itself was a surprise to those who had studied the earlier attempts at censuses in 1816, 1836 and 1854, all of which had put the savarna population well in excess of the avarna. The very act of counting the avarna population was an admission that it had some importance, though the Tamil Brahmin who wrote the 1875 report dismissed avarna Hindus with the remark that they were "not distinguished by any peculiarities worth mention."' He might have mentioned, however, the disabilities that still worked against those Hindus who were classified as avarna by their neighbours. They were banned from using many roads and public buildings, banned from most government schools, and banned from approaching-much less, entering -temples.7 Census and Reality The 1875 census discovered 420 "sub-divisions of Hindu castes," but the report listed only 75 "more general sub-divisions." The largest group of caste-Hindus, 19 per cent of the total population, were the Nairs, or "Malayali Sudras," as the Brahmin census-taker chose to call them to keep them in their proper place in the four-varna hierarchy. Nairs were further divided into 35 subcastes, considered to be ordered hierarchically, though often linked through hypergamous marriage liaisons.8 Among the avarna Hindus, the largest section was that of the Ezhavas, 16.5 per cent of the total population. Ezhavas, though regarded as polluting by caste- Hindus, enjoyed superior status to the appallingly abused ex-slave castes, who totalled about 12 per cent of the population. An Ezhava was said to pollute a Nambudiri Brahmin from 32 feet and a Nair from 12, and considered himself polluted by the approach of one of the ex-slave castes. Ezhavas too were divided into subcastes, but the census-takers, being caste-Hindus, did not trouble to record or discuss them. Although there were a few affluent landholding families of Ezhavas in central Travan- core, the overwhelming majority were engaged in labouring occupations: weaving, farming as tenants or subtenants, and caring for the coconut palm, the task with which they were traditionally associated. A few other prosperous families were noted for their ayurvedic physicians. It was Ezhavas who were first to rebel against the disabilities which old Travan- core society enforced against avarna Hindus.' The census presented a neat picture of society. Categories were listed, percentages given; nothing looked tidier than the social structure

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 7 of Travancore. How accurately did the census reflect reality? It has been pointed out convincingly that in other areas of India the census-takers worked hard to hammer their data into simple moulds, and in doing so, startlingly distorted the social categories they were seeking to portray. ' To these distortions, there was a response: growing numbers of western- educated Indians read of themselves in the census reports, and though the reports may have categorized them in unfamiliar ways, they often chose to turn the categories to their advantage. If this was what government expected, government should have it, especially when the new categories offered a large constituency which a man could claim to represent. Deal- ing with an administration heavily influenced by utilitarian ideas of the greatest good for the greatest number, men found it desirable to be able to turn to the census and claim to speak on behalf of four lakhs of Nairs, or 3.8 lakhs of Ezhavas, or, in the case of the Justice Party in Madras, "40 million non-Brahmans."'' The Travancore census of 1875 undoubtedly caught a truer picture of social reality than many other Indian censuses. Local men conducted it; a Brahmin graduate of the Trivandrum college wrote the report. Such men, concerned as they were with their own status, had an interest in seeing that the social nuances governing their lives were correctly presented. Christian Converts However, in enumerating castes on a statewide basis and publishing the findings, the 1875 and subsequent censuses were helping to alter concepts of caste. Caste, especially in Travancore, was essentially a local matter in former times. The higher one's caste, the greater one's mobility and awareness of the wider world. A Brahmin could move freely throughout the petty chiefdoms of the old Kerala region and would have had a clear idea of the four varna categories of classical Hinduism. But a low- caste man, an Ezhava for example, was bound to his locality. He knew with which families he could marry, which people he could approach, and which he might eat with; but his awareness of other Ezhavas, even 30 miles away, was likely to have been scant. Even from a distance, his dress (a cloth hanging no lower than the knees and no covering above the waist) warned his caste-Hindu neighbours of his lowly status. If he did not show the required subserviences, he was beaten. To run away to another locality offered no prospect for improvement, for how would a man live without his traditional landlords and patrons? And in a land without roads and bridges, how far could a man run?12 From the 1860s, however, growing numbers of Ezhavas and ex- slave castes came in touch with European missionaries, from whose schools they were able to get a basic education. Many of the ex-slave castes converted to Christianity, but the large majority of Ezhavas held back from this decisive step.'8 Pressure from British governments, European officials in Travancore service, and western-educated Travancoreans eventually

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 8 SOCIAL SCIENTIST brought admission to Ezhavas in growing numbers of government schools. From the 1870s, Ezhavas began to graduate from the Trivandrum college. The 1875 census put male literacy among Ezhavas at 3.15 per cent; by the 1891 census it had risen to 12.10 per cent, and 30 Ezhavas were literate in English." At the same time, communications developed rapidly. It became easier for a low-caste man to escape to towns like Alleppey or Quilon, where the expansion of the coir and copra industries was begin- ning to bring cash to Ezhava families. Moreover, as the number of men educated in English increased, so did the study of the census reports. In Travancore they began to reveal what caste-Hindus regarded as an alarming rate of conversion to Christi- anity. In 1875, 20 per cent of the population had been Christian; by 1901, it was 24 per cent; by 1931, 31 per cent; by 1941, 32 per cent. In the same period, the proportion of Pulayas, the largest of the ex-slave caste, who were nominally Hindus, fell from 8.18 per cent, to 6.99 per cent, to 4.07 per cent to 3.92 per cent.15 The decennial censuses developed into a battleground on which men might attempt to elevate their status or prove the popular superiority of their religion.'6 However, even in 1931 there was no electoral danger to the administrative dominance of caste-Hindus in Travancore. The franchise was still narrow enough to ensure that those converting to Christianity did not have the vote anyway and the Maharaja was still the earthly trustee of the god Padmanabhan in the great temple in Trivandrum.'7 It was, however, the implicit reflection on their faith that troubled caste-Hindus, as well as the reduction of their rhetorical constituency. All this, moreover, augured trouble if a system of one-man, one-vote, now being advocated by the Indian National Congress, ever came to pass in Travancore. New Elites By the early years of the twentieth century, there had begun to emerge among caste-Hindus,Christians and even avarna Iindus, especially Ezhavas, a significant educated elite. It was not purely urban. Indeed, in Travancore there was not a single city; but there were 20 small towns, each with at least a munsiff's (civil) court, schools and taluk offices. By the 1930s the government alone employed 25,000 people. Members of the elite usually came from landholding families; they took their education first in their local schools, studied up to high school matriculation in the small towns, and could take a Bachelor's degree in Trivandrum, Erna- kulam in Cochin State, Trichinopoly or Madras. Then the government service, the wide network of private schools, or the law courts lay before them. They were able to maintain close touch with their relatives in the countryside.'8 Getting an education and middle-class job in Travancore did not involve the decisive break with one's relvatives and locality that it ofte i n did in Bengal, where the young man was sucked into the vortex of Calcutta.9. In the 1880s, when the first formally educated Ezhavas began to

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 9 come out of government and mission schools, most jobs under government were closed to them. The government service was the preserve of caste- Hindus. The alternative for the well-educated was to leave the state, and this was the course followed by the first two Ezhava graduates in Travan- core. Others, less well-educated, were pushed towards trade and com- merce, an area which Malayali caste-Hindus tended to avoid. By 1900 the export value of the products of the coconut palm, caring for which was the traditional occupation of Ezhavas, exceeded Rs 80 lakhs a year.2 The labour for the industry was overwhelmingly Ezhava,and growing numbers of Ezhavas were also becoming middlemen and petty factory owners. "Good work is being turned out here by private industry," wrote the Travancore Dewan of an Ezhava coir factory near Quilon in 1904, "and some boys are being trained in the work... This institution speaks well for the industry and spirit of self-help of the Elava (Ezhava) community."2' Weaving was another traditional occupation that lent itself to small-scale capitalism. The two Ezhavas who have been chief ministers since independence in 1947 both came from families that ran modest weaving enter- prises around the turn of the century.22

TABLE I

LITERATES IN ENGLISH, 1911-1931

1911 1921 1931 All Brahmins 3,007 4,221 8,226 Nairs 5,446 14,169 18,606 All Christians 10,129 24,059 37,296 Muslims 299 1,159 1,608 Ezhavas 1,441 4,529 5,202

20,322 48,137 70,937

The decade from 1911 to 1921 was a crucial one, both in terms of education and economic expansion. The increase in the number of people literate in English was one indication.23 Literacy in Malayalam among males over five years of age went up from 29 per cent to 38 per cent; among Ezhava males, it went up from 12 per cent to 36 per cent.24 The government expenditure on education, which was Rs 8 lakhs in 1911, rose to Rs 25.8 lakhs by 1920. In 1917 there were 364,000 students in Travan- core, about 10 per cent of the total population.2 There were also indications of a growing middle class. Of the limited companies that survived the depression in the 1930s, only three predated this 1911-21 period; 57 were founded from 1911-21.26 In spite of the First World War and the loss of some European markets, the coconut products industry continued to expand. In 1914 exports of manu- factured coir mats and matting were valued at Rs 8.2 lakhs; they were worth Rs 24.5 lakhs by 1921. Average value of exports rose from Rs 242

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 10 SOCIAL SCIENTIST lakhs in the decade 1901-11 to Rs 484 lakhs in the 1911-21 period.27 The government excise revenue went up from Rs 27 lakhs in 1910 to Rs 38 lakhs in 1920, an important development for Ezhavas, many of whom were involved in the liquor trade.28 While the population increased by 15 per cent, people supported by the "professions and liberal arts" increased by 56 per cent, and those supported by trade by 24 per cent.29

TABLE II

SELECTED OCCUPATIONS, 1911-1921 Population 1911 % of 1921 % of % of supported by total total increase population population Trade 285,333 8.3 333,314 8.5 24 Professions and liberal arts 97,729 2.9 142,398 3.6 46 a) Law 8,543 0.2 11,575 0.3 36 b) Medicine 10,209 0.3 25,728 0.7 152 c) Instruction 26,365 0.8 35,779 0.9 34 d) Letters, arts and science 18,896 0.6 24,113 0.6 28

Nearly three times as many Ezhavas as Nairs were returned as "traders," and even in the category "lawyers, doctors and teachers," there was a significant number of Ezhavas:8

TABLE III

NAIRS AND EZHAVAS IN TRADES AND PROFESSIONS, 1921

Nairs Ezhavas Traders 15,449 42,438 Lawyers, doctors, teachers 10,568 2,326 Public administration 5,172 346 Artisans and other workers 13,966 77,456

However, Christians, especially the ancient Syrian Christians, provided the largest number for this growing middle class. More than half the English literates were Christian, and of the 50 small banks operating in the state in 1920-1, 11 were in the Syrian Christian centre of Tiruvalla alone; not one was based in Trivandrum, the state capital.8 Syrian Christians had turned to rubber planting, and in the 1920s, to the finance and export of the cashewnut.82 Among Syrian Christians, moreover, there had always been large landholders and traders.88 Where a middle class was emerging, there had also to be the begin- nings of a working class. By 1921 there were 54 factories each employing more than 20 people; about 8300 people worked in such establishments. Moreover, 720,800 people were returned as being supported by various

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 11 factory and cottage industries. The majority of these were low-caste folk; for example, 77,500 Ezhava "artisans and other workers" were returned and only 14,000 Nairs.84 The English-educated among the middle class tended to retain their caste or religious identity. Government discrimination reinforced such distinctions. Although the English-educated of various castes mixed freely for business and on formal social occasions in the towns, they looked to their castemen and co-religionists as their natural associates and allies in other matters. The spate of medal presentations to young graduates, which began about 1910, nicely illustrates the growing assertiveness of the educated elites, and their tendency to see themselves as the narural leaders of their caste or religious grouD. The first such presentation was in 1906 to an Anglican Syrian Christian girl who had passed the First Arts examination. When she completed her BA in 1909-probably the first Malayali woman to do a BA-there was a meeting of most of the leading clerics and citizens of the various Syrian Christian denominations to present her with a gold medal. Over the next 10 years there were similar presentations to congratulate the first Nair woman elected a mem- ber of the Royal Asiatic Society, Nair women graduates, the first Ezhava woman graduate, the first Ezhava woman apothecary, the first London Missionary Society woman graduate, the first Muslim graduate, the first Nambudiri Brahmin MA, the first Syrian Christian to take a first at Ox- ford, and the first Syrian Christian to get a King's Commission in the army.85 The war also provided new opportunities for Travancoreans to go abroad and experience western middle-class life at first hand. An Ezhava doctor, for example, held the rank of captain in the wartime army and moved from there into the Indian Medical Service.86 For Job Equality Implicit in all this was a game of one-upmanship among the elites of various communities. This took a more acute form (because there was a good deal at stake) over the question of representation in the legislature and government service. Late in 1918 Syrian Christians of various sects (primarily Jacobites and Mar Thomites) formed the League for Equal Civic Rights to agitate for the opening of all branches of the government service to Christians, Muslims and avarna Hindus, and the ending of untouchability. Turning to the census reports, the leaders (newspaper proprietors, merchants, landlords, lawyers and planters) claimed to speak for 26 lakhs of civilly disabled Travancoreans. It was, they said, a simple matter of greed: caste-Hindus were seeking to keep for themselves the positions of power in the government. To charges that they represented no one but themselves, or, at most, the educated Syrian Christian population, the leaders of the League replied disarmingly: So long as the League speaks in behalf of [Muslims, avarna Hindus and non-Syrian Christians] and advocates their cause...so long as the leaders of these communities desist from publicity[publicly], declaring

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that they do not care for the enjoyment of equal civic rights, so long can the League well be said to represent the 26 lakhs, even if all of them have not formally or actively identified themselves with the movement.87 The League pointed out that out of 4000 jobs in the crucial Revenue Department, more than 3800 were held by caste-Hindus.88 The League eventually got the concessions it sought in 1922 when the Revenue Department was separated from the Devaswam, or temple management department, thus removing the objection to non-Hindus and avarnas in the executive service. It was, by this time, a fairly uncontro- versial act, and the Civic Rights League fell into inactivity even before it was carried out. In 1925 the first Christian Dewan, an Anglo-Indian, was appointed, and the first Christian district officer.8' The Civic Rights League had been quick to forget the antiuntouchability aspect of its original programme when the major grievance of educated Syrian Christians was met. However, for avarna Hindus, most importantly Ezhavas, the separation of Revenue and Devaswam depart- ments meant little while they were still excluded from some roads and public buildings, had only a handful of men in the government service, and were prohibited from entering or approaching temples. The Civic Rights League, however, had drawn a number of educated Ezhavas into the genteel petitioning of state-level politics in Travancore. One such man was T K Madhavan (1885-1930), who was to engineer a much more vigorous assault on the civil disabilities of Ezhavas, especially the most galling of all to the educated, prosperous and "respectable": the prohibition against entering temples. Agitational Strategy T K Madhavan was a good example of the Ezhava educated elite. He was born in 1885 into one of the wealthy matrilineal joint families of central Travancore; his father came from another. The extensive Travan- core school system allowed him to take his primary education close to home. He attended high school in the nearby town of Mavelikara, and eventually matriculated from a Roman Catholic high school in Quilon. His school experiences impressed on him the disabilities of Ezhavas, disabilities which he later realized were shared by Ezhavas throughout the state: "My companion on my daily trip to and from the school was a Nair boy... whose poor mother was a dependent of ours. He could go straight along all the roads, whereas I, in spite of being economically better off, had to leave the road every now and then [to avoid polluting caste-Hindus]. This used to cut me to the quick".'4 Before he was 20 he was involved in social affairs, organizing and speaking to Ezhavas in central Travancore, and acting as an English translator for Ezhava notables attending the representative assembly in Trivandrum. He came under the influence of Sri Narayana Guru and the SNDP Yogam, the Ezhava caste association, and worked for the Yogam

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 13 from 1914. In the following year he founded the newspaper Deshabhimani to publicize Ezhava grievances and achievements.4 Madhavan's experience with the Civic Rights League probably influenced his views on how Ezhavas should campaign for the attainment of their civil rights. In the Civic Rights League, they had been used chiefly as an additional social category to bolster the arguments of educated Syrian Christians. Madhavan saw that this alliance with the Syrian Christian elite was not the only one open to educated Ezhavas. Indeed, it was perhaps not even the most desirable, for Christians did not rule Travancore; caste-Hindus did that. Madhavan turned away from the Christian alliance, and stressed the need for Ezhavas to win the cooperation of educated, progressive caste-Hindus. Such support, he argued, would demonstrate the changing times and cause the government to abolish the old disabilities. The rise to prominence of Gandhi and the Gandhian ethic greatly aided Madhavan in his pursuit of the new strategy, for hundreds of caste-Hindus revered Gandhi and looked for a way to participate in his campaigns.4 2 Madhavan first raised the question of temple entry in an editorial in Deshabhimani in December 1917. The issue was discussed at meetings of the SNDP Yogam and the Travancore assembly over the next three years, and Madhavan himself introduced resolutions calling for temple entry and recognition of Ezhavas' status as respectable caste-Hindus. Taking note of the non-cooperation movement in British India, he began to advocate more direct methods, and threatened that Ezhavas would arbitrarily use roads close to temples, and enter temples to worship. In November 1920 he himself went beyond the restrictive notice boards on a road near the Vaikom temple in north Travancore, and announced this to the district magistrate to demonstrate the stupidity of the law: "I am an Ezhava by caste. I came to Vaikom today and went to the temple here, past the notice board posted on the road."48 Mahatma Gandhi's Advice The temple-entry question simmered throughout the first nine months of 1921, as the non-cooperation movement boiled in British India. Madhavan and his supporters took temple-entry propaganda into the villages of central and north Travancore, and their meetings provoked counter-demonstrations from orthodox Hindus. The state's armed police were alerted to prevent riots." The Maharaja of Travancore was the 64-year-old Sri Moolam Thirunal, well-educated in English, yet a simple and devout conservative, who had ruled since 1885, the year of Madha- van's birth. As long as Sri Moolam Thirunal was on the gaddi there was no question of the temples being opened to all castes. At the same time, British governments, which might have put pressure on Travancore to liberalize its policies, were caught up in the non-cooperation movements, and were prepared to believe that any agitation in a princely state was seditious. Moreover, in Travancore itself, members of the Ezhava elite in

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST the government service sought to keep the favour of the Maharaja and repudiated Madhavan's belligerent talk of forcible temple entry.45 Confronted with a situation in which many prominent Ezhavas were not prepared to offend a government that was moderately good to them, Madhavan astutely set out to build his own support by broadening the base of his campaign. In doing so, he was taking the first step towards transforming many Ezhavas into the most radical political participants in the state. When Gandhi came to south India in 1921, Madhavan managed to arrange an interview with him at Tinnevelly and got his blessing for an agitation for temple entry in Travancore. "I would ask you." Gandhi began, "to drop temple entry now and begin with public wells. Then you may go to public schools." Madhavan quickly corrected him: "You seem to mistake our position in society for something analogous to that of Panchamas in British India. Except half a dozen schools...all public schools in this state are open to us..." Gandhi replied: "You are ripe for temple entry then." He advised Madhavan "to offer civil disobedience. You must enter temples and court imprisonment if law interferes." This was a matter, Gandhi assured him, that the Kerala Provincial Congress Com- mittee (KPCC) should take up.'6 The interest and approval of Gandhi was a powerful weapon for Madhavan to use, not only among his castemen but among educated caste-Hindus. Vaikom Satyagraha Madhavan's interview came, however, as the Moplah rebellion was sweeping the southern half of Malabar District. The rebellion was popu- larly blamed on the activities of the Congress in arousing the passions of illiterate Muslim peasants. It was two years before Malayalis generally, and Malayali Congressmen especially, began to recover from its effects. In December 1923 Madhavan attended the Kakinada session of the Indian National Congress which was important in having a resolution establishing a committee on untouchability adopted. In January 1924 the KPCC, searching for a way to establish itself after the setback of the rebellion met in Ernakulam and chose K Kelappan, a Malabar Nair who had worked in Travancore and been the first president of the Nair Service Society there, as convenor of an antiuntouchability committee.4 7 The roads around the great Siva temple at Vaikom in north Travancore were closed to avarna Hindus, as were the roads near most temples. Vaikom, however, had the advantage of easy communications by boat and road with the neighbouring princely state of Cochin, with the enclave of British Cochin, and with the Shertallai peninsula across the backwater, where an Ezhava working class had grown up around the coir industry. Madhavan was a skilled propagandist who appreciated such advantages.'" To appeal to as broad a section of caste-Hindus as possible, the

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 15 demand at Vaikom was not for temple entry, but for the right of avarna Hindus to use the roads near the temple. The orthodox, however, were to see this correctly, as the thin end of the wedge. Under the leadership of K P Kesava Menon, a Malabar Nair who was president of the KPCC and editor of the newspaper Mathrubhumi, a satyagraha was planned to begin on 30 March 1924. On that day, Kesava Menon announced, he would violate the law by approaching the temple in the company of avarna Hindus. Four days before the satyagraha was to start, the district magistrate instructed the police to set up pickets to bar avarnas from using the temple roads;his stated aim was to prevent clashes between the satyagrahis and angry orthodox Hindus.49 On 30 March a Nair, an Ezhava and a Pulaya, "dressed in Khad- dar uniforms and garlanded," and followed by a crowd of "thousands" attempted to use the roads. They were stopped by the police and arrested; the crowd dispersed, having been told that this procedure would be repeated each morning until low castes were permitted to use the roads. 0 The three volunteers were sentenced to six months' simple imprisonment when they refused to post bonds for good behaviour. The Vaikom satyagraha, "a truly glorious fight," The Hindu correspondent wrote, "to establish the dignity of man and his right of free movement," had begun.5 '1 It was to last for 20 months. One can identify five stages in the long campaign: 1 The first began on 30 March 1924 when the three initial volunteers were arrested. The ritual of satyagraha and arrest continued until 10 April when the government decided to make no more arrests. 2 Instead, the police barricaded the roads against the satyagrahis, who sat before the barricades, fasted and sang patriotic songs. This period of excitement lasted from April to September. Vaikom commanded all- India attention, Gandhi advised the volunteers on their methods of satyagraha, C Rajagopalachari and E V Ramaswami Naicker came to Vaikom to offer advice, and caste-Hindus instigated attacks by thugs on the volunteers. 3 In August, however, the old Maharaja died. His successor was a young Maharani Regent who immediately released the 19 satyagrahis imprisoned in April. A third stage began, in which the satyagraha at Vaikom continued politely but the most publicized activity was elsewhere. Two jathas of caste-Hindus marched through the state to demonstrate support for the demands of the satyagrahis and to symbolize the alliance with the caste-Hindu middle class which Madhavan sought to form. A resolution calling for the opening of roads around the temples was introduced in the Travancore legislative council in October. It was February 1925 before it came to a vote, and then it was defeated by a single vote, all the official members opposing it. 4 Gandhi's visit to the state in March 1925 marked the fourth stage. He talked to all parties, but the only arrangement he was able to

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST make was for the withdrawal of the police parties and barricades on the understanding that the satyagrahis would not enter the forbidden streets. 5 The fifth stage, a period of waning interest, lasted until November 1925 when the government completed diversionary roads that could be used by the low castes without polluting the temple. Only a few lanes remained closed to low castes. On 23 November 1925, the last satyagrahi was withdrawn.32 To have sustained such a campaign for 20 months was a remar- kable achievement. Although the outcome was unspectacular, the propaganda value for Madhavan's cause was immense. From where did the support come? Of the 19 men who were convicted in the first phase, only seven were from Travancore, and only one of these-Madhavan himself- was an avarna Hirdu. The leaders who kept the campaign going were Congressmen and Nairs, notably K Kelappan and K P Kesava Menon. Mannath Padmanabha Pillai (Mannam), the general secretary of the Nair Service Society, led one of the caste-Hindu jathas. 8 Christians, however, had been soured on the campaign in April 1924 when Gandhi instructed the Syrian Christian Congressman, George Joseph, to leave the satyagraha strictly to Hindus.5 For Congressmen from Malabar, the campaign gave an opportunity to revive a Congress that had suffered a severe setback with the Moplah rebellion of 1921. For Travancore Nairs, like Mannath Padmanabha Pillai, avarna Hindus were potential junior allies in the competition with Christians for land, jobs and control of the legislature and government service. Disabilities enforced against avarna Hindus only increased the possibility of their converting to Christianity. Only a consolidated Hindu community could stand against the growing wealth of Christian merchants and cash-crop farmers in central and north Travancore."5 The attempts to forge a-united front of the avarna and caste-Hindu middle class reached a peak in May 1924 when a large joint meeting of the SNDP Yogam and the Kerala Nair Samajam was held near Vaikom to support the satyagraha. It was, according to its supporters, "the most inspired spectacle ever witnessed in Travancore.. .attended by about 15,000 people...the hugest gathering...ever assembled in Travancore.""6 Even if this was true, the meeting clearly showed the difficulties of trying to unite all Nairs on a statewide basis. Those "aristocratic" Nair families of south Travancore, who had long held the cosiest niches in the government and the best channels to the palace, stayed away from the confer- ence. The reason, wrote one of their number, was that many disapproved of the satyagraha at Vaikom and of the participation of non-Travan- coreans in Travancore politics. He pointed out that the retired Travan- core official who was to have presided over the meeting had withdrawn in protest and had to be replaced by a vakil (lawyer) fiom Calicut in Mfalabar District. 7 Calls for the abolition of caste, which were repeated with increasing

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insistence during the satyagraha, offended and frightened the orthodox. One caste-Hindu wrote: People do not object to associating with Thiyas of the Madhavan type-clean and cultivated-but it will want a lot of time and patience for us to mingle with the unwashed Thiya, who carries about his person live crabs and a pot of toddy, and who from time immemorial has had to stand out of the way of the higher caste people...What is to be the end of it all? Creating and continuing opposition will result in retarded progress of reform and if persisted in will lead to Bolshevism and bloodshed. 8 Christians, moreover, were offended by Gandhi's ban on their taking part in the movement, and were quick to pour scorn on the loudly proclaimed unity of Nairs and Ezhavas. "The interests of the two communities." a Christian wrote, "are not the same." Like orthodox Hindus, he too deplored the talk of intermarriage which some young men and women think "will bring about the unity for which their leaders are striving hard."59 Means and Ends There were also doubts about the commitment of Ezhavas to the leadership and methods of the Indian National Congress. Madhavan, to be sure, was convinced, and he was capable of rallying financial support from some of the big Ezhava families in his own locality in central Travancore. The SNDP Yogam also expressed its approval of the campaign. However, the fact remained that the leading satyagrahis were caste- Hindus, many of them from British India. Fearing persecution, Ezhavas from the neighbourhood of Vaikom were reluctant to associate themselves with the satyagraha.6? Moreover, Sri Narayana Guru, the holy man around whom the SNDP Yogam was organized and whose reputation accounted for the Yogam's influence among thousands of poor Ezhavas, had little enthusiasm for Gandhian methods. In June 1924 an Ezhava journalist created a furore by publishing the content of an informal con- versation with the guru. Sri Narayana held that "the volunteers standing outside the barriers in heavy rains will serve no useful purpose...They should scale over the barricades and not only walk along the prohibited roads but enter all temples... It should be made practically impossible for anyone to observe untouchability."6 Gandhians were appalled at this suggested breach of non-violence, and by late June, Sri Narayana had written to Gandhi to assure him that there had been misreporting and misunderstanding: "I have no objection whatsoever to the satyagraha movement started by Mahatma Gandhi to fight this evil nor to the cooperation of people in that movement. Any method of work that may be adopted for eradicating the evil of untouchability must be strictly non- violent." 2a However, when Gandhi came to Travancore in March 1925, he and the guru soon found that there was one holy man too many in the

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST state. Gandhi took issue with Sri Narayana's motto, "One caste, one religion, one God," while the guru told Gandhi that "he was not a believer in non-violence in agitations for removing social disabilities and that...he was anxious to secure for his community by any method, social equality... with caste-Hindus including temple entry and admission to caste-Hindu houses."68 Gandhi was said eventually to have persuaded the guru of the need for non-violence, yet such a concession can only have been grudging. The satyagraha, moreover, produced a good deal of militant rhetoric. One such voice was that of K Aiyappan (1889-1968), the son of an ayurvedic doctor in Cochin, a graduate of the Trivandrum college and a director of the SNDP Yogam. "Just as the Russians managed to obtain freedom by putting an end to their royal family," he told a meeting of 2000 people in the tough, coir workers' town of Shertallai, "so the Ezhavas also must fight to the very end without caring [for] the guns of the sepoys, batons of the police or even the Maharaja."' It was not surprising that the officiating Dewan, an elderly Tamil Brahmin, found "most of the satyagrahis imbued with strong ideas of some form of com- munism. They very often began to talk of the equal rights of men."' 5 The Aftermath The Vaikom stayagraha began to point up class divisions, full of political potential, even among Ezhavas. Jathas and fund-raisers carried news of the satyagraha and the grievances of Ezhavas to the remotest villages of Travancore. Previously, the small Ezhava middle class, relying on its kinsmen in the villages and the devotion of even illiterate Ezhavas to Sri Narayana Guru, could claim convincingly to speak for "the Ezhavas." From the time of Vaikom, however, the fiery speeches of men like Aiyap- pan became more frequent, and doubts grew among poor yet literate Ezhavas about whether the right to use temple roads, or even temple entry itself, held any solution to their problems. The satyagraha aroused the interest of thousands in the abolition of their disabiltiies, yet the results of the campaign were few. What fruits there were came in the shape of notoriety for middle-class leaders. The general secretary of the SNDP Yogam, for example, was taken into the government service as a judge.6 Nor were the methods of the Indian National Congress, especially its em- phasis on prohibition, calculated to appeal to the large number of Ezhavas whose livelihood and pleasure often lay in toddy and arrack. Gandhi commented waspishly on the fact that the Travancore revenues drew Rs 27 lakhs from the abkari trade.67 Even among the small Ezhava middle class, there was disagree- ment about how the rights of "respectable" citizens were to be won. Madhavan himself was committed to the "sanskritizing" way-othodox Hinduism, prohibition, temple entry and association with caste-Hindus and the Indian National Congress. But there was a long tradition among Ezha- vas of flirtation with Christian missionaries, and a few thousand Ezhavas

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 19 had converted to Christianity.68 By the 1920s, conversion to Buddhism was also being argued as a way of escaping from the disabilities enforced against avarna Hindus in Travancore." In the aftermath of Vaikom, however, Madhavan "tower[ed] above his immediate contemporaries,"'7 and in 1927 he became the general secretary of the SNDP Yogam. Following the example of the Indian National Congress, he concentrated on membership and local organization. Within 18 months he had increased the membership from 4200 to 50,000 organized into 255 branches.7 1 He promoted Vaikom-style satyagrahas, in cooperation with caste-Hindus, for the use of temple roads in other towns in Travancore.72 However, by the time of Madhavan's death from tuber- culosis in 1930, avarna Hindus seemed little closer to temple entry. The alliance with middle-class caste-Hindus, which had been prosecuted for 10 years and was intended to melt the hearts of the orthodox and win over the Travancore government, had produced few concrete results. As late as 1936, in addition to all the temples administered by government, there were still 11 miles and 778 feet of road closed to avarna Hindus as well as 21 traveller's bungalows.7 8 Joint Political Congress The Travancore government had argued constantly that there could be no temple entry while there was opposition from orthodox caste-Hindus. The Maharani Regent, who governed the state from 1924 to 1931, was felt to be sympathetic to the demands of avarna Hindus,but it was said that her hands were tied.74 The caste-Hindu jathas that crossed the state during the Vaikom satyagraha had shown the support which Madhavan and his followers could win from sections of the caste-Hindu middle class. Yet this was obviously not enough. Although as late as 1930, Mannath Padmanabha Pillai, the general secretary of the Nair Service Society, told a meeting that he himself would help in forming Ezhava volunteer corps to enter temples by force, the alliance with sections of the caste-Hindu middle class slowly crumbled after Madhavan's death. Rather than attempt to convince government of caste-Hindu support, younger Ezhava leaders now began to turn towards the aggrieved Christian middle classes and towards agitations designed to prove their political strength. "The centre of gravity", George Joseph was later to write, "has moved from the caste- Hindus to Christians, Ezhavas and Muslims."75 Gandhi's ban on Christian participation in the Vaikom satyagraha had done much to sour the Christian middle classes on the Indian National Congress and its programmes in Travancore. The Congresss appeared too much a caste-Hindu organization, and Christians in Travancore were having difficulty enough with a caste-Hindu state which seemed intent on denying them political and executive power commensurate with their commercial and economic power. In 1931 the young Maharaja came to the gaddi, and power over the state's administration passed largely into the hands of his mother,

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the Junior Maharani, and her friend and confidante, Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar, the Madras lawyer and politician, who came to the state as "constitutional adviser". Both were staunch Hindus. The Christian threat to the character of a Hindu state could, in Ramaswami Aiyar's view, be overcome by uniting all Hindus into a single, devout community without distinction of caste. Throwing open the government temples at the right moment could be a vital step in this process of consolidation.7 6 In 1932 the Travancore government introduced a long-awaited constitutional reform, of which Ramaswami Aiyar was undoubtedly the architect. However, instead of the new political opportunities for which the Christian middle classes hoped, the new system retained a property- tax franchise high enough to preserve the supremacy of caste-Hindus in the legislature.77 In January 1933 the representatives of 12 Christian, Ezhava and Muslim organizations formed the Joint Political Congress to boycott the elections to the new legislature and to demand representation proportionate to community numbers in the legislature and government service. For the next five years, politics in the state was polarized intensely between caste-Hindus and the Joint Political Congress. The leading Ezhava newspaper dismissed suggestions of Hindu unity as attempts at "the exploitation of the Ezhava community for the mainten- ance of caste-Hindu supremacy."78 'Independent Community' Although the government was able to win over Ezhava leaders, the SNDP Yogam fell into the hands of "a few misguided Ezhava young men."79 They used the organization to propagate increasingly radical doctrines. "The Nairs are making monkeys of the Ezhavas," C Kesavan (1891-1969), the new general secretary, told a meeting in 1933. "We want adult suffrage...We are not Hindus... Renounce this Hinduism."8 Kesavan, like his contemporary Aiyappan, was a good example of the growing number of educated Ezhavas whose rhetoric was becoming increasingly militant. Neither he nor Aiyappan joined the Communist Party after its establishment in Travancore in 1940, but they were in sympathy with many of its members, and their speeches in the 1930s undoubtedly propelled young working-class Ezhavas in its direction. Both Kesavan and Aiyappan came from large, humble families, and were in their late 20s before they were able to complete their BA degrees. Both had brief periods as teachers in the government service before they resigned, Kesavan to do law and Aiyappan to become a full-time journalist.8 1 There was a receptive audience for radical speeches. The coir industry, which from the 1880s had relentlessly dragged thousands of Ezhava families into a cash economy and brought many of them a modest improvement in their living standards, collapsed with the depression. About 125,000 people were directly engaged in the industry in 1931, 7200 of them in primitive factory conditions in Alleppey and the Shertallai peninsula.8 Exports of coir yarn, a cottage industry employing thousands of Ezhava

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.5 on Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:23:51 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TEMPLE-ENTRY MOVEMENT IN TRAVANCORE 21 women, fell in value from Rs 125 lakhs in 1924-5 to Rs 64 lakhs in 1932-3. The export value of coir mats and mattings produced in the factories around Alleppey dropped from Rs 90 lakhs in 1927-8 to Rs 70 lakhs in 1932-3.88 Wages were cut by as much as 75 per cent.84 The men thrown out of work or towards starvation wages were literate. Male literacy among Ezhavas was 43 per cent in 1931, and one Alleppey factory owner lamented that "our labourers are much more educated than those in British India. Most of them are able to read and even edit newspapers. Many of them deliver splendid lectures. Some of them are even able to compose beautiful poems in Malayalam."8" The new radical leadership of the SNDP Yogam moved among the workers, and joined the labourers' demands for improved conditions to the middle classes' call for political power and recognition of their "respectable" status. When there was a strike of coir workers in Alleppey in 1933, among the slogans was, "Destroy the Nairs, destroy Nair rule, destroy capitalism."8" These men were still Ezhavas; but they were awakening to the fact that they were also workers. The two themes-the iniquity of social disabilities and the growing class consciousness-were brought together in a Malayalam book written in 1934. The author, E Madhavan, born in 1903, was an Ezhava of Vaikom, who had studied up to matriculation and been involved in the SNDP Yogam from his youth. The book Swatantrasamudayam ("An Inde- pendent Community"), called for Ezhavas to abandon all religions as equally false. "Right up to the present day, religion has not been able to benefit man," Madhavan wrote. Nairs, the devotees of Hinduism, stood between Ezhavas and their legitimate rights, and even those Nairs who had offered support during the Vaikom satyagraha had done so only for selfish ends. Ezhavas had no need of a religion that offered them only disadvantages and debasement. In these days of depression and unemploy- ment, he continued, only the people of Russia were eating well; only in Russia had religion been abolished. The 20 photos in the book included T K Madhavan, C Kesavan, K Aiyappan, Jawaharlal Nehru and M K Gandhi; but the last was a picture of Lenin.87 Mass Conversion Threat The Ezhava middle class yearned for acceptance as caste-Hindus. Admission to the temples of the Maharaja would mark the ultimate "symbolic conversion of wealth into honour." To achieve this end, Ezhava leaders were ready to use whatever leverage was available to force the government's hand. Although Ramaswami Aiyar undoubtebly saw the political advantages of opening the temples, he did not manoeuvre himself into the dewanship until 1936, and the Dewans from 1932 to 1936 were a European and a Muslim, neither of whom could safely make innovations regarding Hindu temples.88 There was, moreover, an exaggerated fear of a violent reaction from orthodox caste-Hindus if the temples were opened. In November 1932 the Travancore government appointed a

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Temple Entry Enquiry Committee which took more than a year to present its report. It did not come out unequivocally in favour of opening the temples: "There is a strong feeling among Savarnas in favour of temple- entry being allowed. At the same time, it has to be recognized that there is considerable opposition from a large body of Savarnas on the other side." 89 Government accepted its recommendations to open most roads, wells and tanks to all castes, and issued the announcement the day before Gandhi arrived in the state on his Harijan tour in February 1934.90 With the Joint Political Congress demanding communal representation in the legislature on the basis of population, and showing its ability to make a mockery of elections, Ezhavas began to hold out the threat of conversion against the government. As the police noted, "Conversion means increase in the numbers of one community and as matters now stand, means more political power."" From 1934 to 1936 calls for conversion became an almost daily occurrence in the vigorous Travancore verna- cular press.92 Buddhist, Muslim and Sikh missionaries toured the state and made a few converts. But the most potent threat was that of conversion to Christianity. The leading advocate was C V Kunjuraman (1871- 1949), a wily editor and vakil and the father-in-law of C Kesavan. Whe- ther Kunjuraman had any intention of becoming a Christian is doubtful, but he was successful in convincing the police, the government and many of the European agents of the Church Missionary Society that thousands of Ezhavas were about to renounce Hinduism.98 The Proclamation Elections to the Travancore legislature were due in 1937. With the Joint Political Congress likely to follow the example of the Indian National Congress in British India and contest the elections, government was concerned to isolate the Christian element of the JPC. Throughout the first half of 1936, pressure in favour of temple entry among caste-Hindus- mounted; so too did conversion activity and the talk of mass conversion of Ezhavas. On 8 October 1936 Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar became Dewan, and on 12 November, the young Maharaja's birthday, a proclamation was issued which threw open all the government temples in the state to all Hindus. Rejoicing was widespread, and opposition scant.9' From the government's point of view, the proclamation had many of the desired effects. The movement for conversion ceased abruptly, and there were stories of recent converts returning to Hinduism 9. The proclamation won the praise of Gandhi, who visited the state to take part in temple-entry celebrations in January 1937. It also brought dearly loved all-India publicity for Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar, and placed Travancore in advance of British India in such social matters. C V Kunjuraman, typifying the attitude of the older Ezhava middle class, welcomed the proclamation, banished thoughts of conversion from his mind, and began to concern himselfwith the manner in which the glorious event should be commemorated.96

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Entry to temples, however, was far from solving the problems of all Ezhavas. E Madhavan, for one, ridiculed it.97 Ezhava workers of Shertal- lai immediately began entering tcmples in their vicinity-even the great Vaikom temple. They refused to abide by the dress restrictions and frightened away the Brahmins.98 To allow men into a temple to offer food to a god was small comfort when they had no food for themselves. In the long run, even the Ezhava middle class did not fall solidly behind the government. It lent much support to the movement against the Ramaswami Aiyar government organized by the Travancore State Congress in 1938. Only after the movement had been crushed did the SNDP Yogam and most middle-class Ezhavas see the wisdom of joining with the Nair Service Society once again to support the regime. This they did until independence in 1947.99 Radicalizing Influence The movement towards temple entry revealed the changing concept of caste and the emergence of class as an important motivating force in Travancore politics. The caste rules enforced by a theocratic state were intensely galling to low-caste men newly educated in doctrines of merit and equality. Though in pre-British times Ezhavas may have had little awareness of themselves as a statewide group, the newly educated and prosperous stroveto build a political community out of the common denominators shared by thousands of men called "Ezhavas." Yet in this process, there were palpable class divisions emerging, divisions that were accentuated as a cash economy and factory system spread within the state. Middle-class Ezhavas sought to be spokesmen for their poorer castemen and to use their numbers to support the claims, dear to their own hearts, for equality in all spheres of the state's life. Various strategies were open to them: alliance with the Christian middle classes for an assault on government, alliance with the caste-Hindu middle classes to cajole concessions from government, conversion to other faiths, or the advocacy of atheism and radical change. Perhaps the more militant courses were advocated chiefly to impress the government; but such programmes, once articulated by middle-class leaders, found a receptive audience among the literate Ezhava working class. Moreover, a dispute concerning temples and religion was probably the quickest way to interest and involve thousands of the rural poor in agitational politics. The distinctive arena of the princely state contributed to the movement for temple entry as the arena of British India could never have done. The decisive centre of power-the palace-was near at hand, accessible, capable of being embarrassed, vulnerable. Moreover, a Kshatriya Maharaja, unlike the British Raj, could make the "symbolic conversion" acceptable and credible to his caste-Hindu subjects. The fate of the princely government was in many ways bound up with the success it might have in rallying its Hindu subjects around it. In that game, the grant of temple entry was a valuable card to play.

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Yet temple entry did not bring about the consolidation of the Hindus into an orderly, pious community for which the government had hoped. Indeed even the Hindu middle class was often divided on a caste basis. However, the middle classes of various communities were less and less able to count on the support of all their poor caste fellows or to claim credibly that they alone were the spokesmen for men of their community. The movement for temple entry had introduced agitational politics and radical programmes to thousands of poor men. When temple entry brought no solution to their fundamental problems, they turned to parties and philosophies that promised to convert the honour and respect, con- ceded with temple entry, into economic well-being. [This articleformspart of the author's forthcoming book to be published by Oxford University Press.] 1 Travancore Census Report (hereafter Census), 1931, I, p 28u-8. 2 Censuses. 8 See Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nayar Dominance, Society and Politics in Travancore 1847-1908 (hereafter Nayar Dominance,) University of Sussex Press, London 1975, chapters 3 and 4. 4 Duarte Barbosa, The Book of Duarte Barbosa, translated by M L Dames, Hakluyt Society, London 1921, II, p 49. C Jeffrey, Nayar Dominance, chapter 3; Sir Stafford Northcote, Hansard, CLXXXVII, 24 May 1867, p 1068. 8 Census, 1875, p 231. 7 Robin Jeffrey, "The Social Origins of a Caste Association, 1875-1905: The Founding of the S N D P Yogam," South Asia 4, October 1974, pp 140-2. Census, 1875, pp 197-8. 9 Census, 1881, p 62. Jeffrey, NVayar Dominance, chapter 1, for a discussion of distance- pollution. ' ? See, for example, James Manor, "The Evolution of Political Arenas and Units of Social Organization: The Lingayats and Vokkaligas of Princely Mysore," unpublished paper, and reviews by Christopher Baker and David Washbrook, Modern Asian Studies V, 3, July 1971, pp 276-83. 11 Tyagaraja Chetti's telegram to Montagu, 1917, in Eugene F Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India, Oxford University Press, Bombay 1969, p 59. 12 For mobility in traditional times, see Eric J Miller, "Caste and Territory in Malabar", American Anthropologist, LVI, 1954, pp 410-20. 8 Jeffrey, "Caste Association," pp 854-67. 14 Census, 1891, II, pp 854-67. 1 Census, 1931,I, p 331. ' For example, ibid., pp 337-8; also, Census, 1941, I, p 125. '7 For the origins of the trusteeship, see A Sreedhara Menon, A Survey of Kerala History, National Book Stall, Kottayam 1970, pp 282-3. 1 8 See, for example, Census, 1921, I, p 18. 1O See Nirad C Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, Jaico, Bombay 1966, p 261. 2 0 Travancore Administration Reports and Statistics of Travancore. 2t V P Madhava Rao, "The Dewan's Tour. Inspection Notes," 16 May to 18June 1904, Kerala Secretariat, Travancore Political Department, 97/1904. 22 C Kesavan, Jivitasamaram, National Book Stall, Kottayam 1968, I, p 40. R Sankar Shastiabdapurthi Commemoration Volume, S T Reddiar, Ernakulam 1969, p 193. 28 Censuses. 24 Ibid.

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25 Statistics of Travancore: Madras Mail, 21 February 1917, p 4. 26 Travancore Directory, 1938, pp 817-30. 27 Statistics of Travancore, published annually from 1915-16. 28 Ibid. 29 Census, 1921, I, pp 132-5. 30 Ibid., II, pp 102-3. 31 Statistics of Travancore, 1920-1. Seven were in Changanacherry, three in Mavelikara and one in Kottayam, all important Syrian Christian centres. 32 C P Matthen, I Have Borne Much, Ampthill, Madras 1951, pp 34-41. 33 See Jeffrey, Nayar Dominance, chapter 4. 34 Census, 1921, II, pp 102-3. 35 Madras Mail, 8 February 1906, p 5; 29July 1909, p 5; 23 March 1910, p 6; 13 May 1910, p 3; 3 September 1912, p 3; 10 July 1914, p 3; 20 July 1915,p 3; 15 March 1916 p 3; 18 May 1917, p 3; 5 May 1919, p 3;6 September 1920, p 6. 36 Madras Mail, 14January 1920, p 3; 15 May 1922, p 4. 37 Madras Mail, 7 May 1919, p 5, letter from John Chandy, Kottayam. 38 P K K Menon, History of the Freedom Movement in Kerala, II, Government Press. Trivandrum 1972, p 289, quoting Malayala Manorama, 14 December. 1922. 3a Ibid., pp 288-9. Madras Mail, 5 October 1920, p 6; 8 April 1920, p 3; 10 May 1925, p 6. The Dewan was M E Watts whose father had been chiefsecretary in Travancore 40 Quoted in A Aiyappan, "Iravas and Culture Change," Madras Government Museum Bulletin, V, 1, 1943, pp 45-6. 4' SNDP rogam Who Is Who, Sree Rama Varma Vilas Press, Quilon 1853, pp 192-3. KR Narayanan, "Ti Ke Madhavan," in SNDP Togam Golden Jubilee Souvenir, Vignanaposhini Press, Quilon 1953, p 103. 42 Narayanan, "Madhavan" op. cit., pp 1034. 4' Madras Mail, 18 May 1920, p 5; 24 May 1921, p 6. Narayanan, "Madhavan," p 104. T K Madhavan to the District Magistrate, 13-4-1096 [c. 30 November 1920] Kerala Secretariat, Travancore Confidential Section [hereafter CS] 554/1920. 44 District Magistrate, Kottayam, to the Chief Secretary, 15 March 1921 ,CS 549/1921 Madras Mail 15 June, 1921, p 8. The Hindu, 20June 1921, p 7. 45 Madras Mail, 18 May 1920, p 5. 46 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter CWMG], XXI, pp 185-8, interview on 23 September 1921, published in The Hindu, 30 September 1921. 47 Narayanan, "Madhavan," p 104. 48 Ibid., p 222, for Madhavan's propaganda sense. 49 Ibid., 204. "Official Note Regarding the Vycome Satyagraha with the Remarks of the Officer in Charge of the Administration Thereon," 17 April 1924, Travancore Records, Vaikom Bundle [hereafter VB], No I. 50 The Hindu, 31 March 1924, VB No 4 [newspaper references that follow are from VB No 4 unless a page reference is given]. 51 Ibid. 53 "Official Note..." VB, No 4, which is a large file of newspaper cuttings. Madras Mail 9 February 1925, p 4. 53 Narayanan, "Madhavan", p 205. 5 The Hindu, 5 May 1924. 55 Jeffrey, Nayar Dominance, chapter 7. 56 The Hindu, 12 May 1924. 5 7 Trivandrum Daily Ncws, 26 May 1924. The writer was T K Velu Pillai. 58 Madras Mail, 5 May 1924. s Madras Mail, 10July 1924, p 4. Trivandrum Daily News, 27 May 1924. 60 C Rajagopalachari was "extremely dissatisfied with the small share taken by Eazha- vas in the movement." The Hindu, 27 May 1924. 61 The Hindu, 6 June 1924.

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62 Narayana Guru to Gandhi, 27 June 1924, roung India, 10 July 1924, in CWMG XXIV, pp 363-5; also, p 259. 68 W H Pitt, Police Commissioner, "Report on the Tour of M K Gandhi in Travan- core," 24 March 1925, VB, No 7. 64 Inspector of Police to District Superintendent of Police, 4-9-1099 [c. 15 April 1923], VB, No. 5. 66 R Virararagha Aiyengar, Memorandum, 24 April 1924, VB, No 1. 66 SNDP Who Is Who, 51, for the note on N Kumaran. 67 roung India, 26 March 1925, in CWMG, XXVI, p 417. Gandhi claimed that Christians were the heaviest drinkers, which, even if true, was not tactful. 68 Jeffrey, "Caste Association", pp 46-8. 60 The Hindu, 10 May 1924. Madras Mail. 4 April 1923, p 5. N Kumaran Asan, the Ezhava poet and first general secretary of the SNDP Yogam, repudiated conversion to Buddhism as a possible strategy. See his Mataparivarttana Rasvadam [The Alchemy of Conversion] Sarada Book Depot, Trivandrum 1971; first published, 1923. 70 0 M Thomas, Under the Knife, New Book Syndicate, 1970; first published c. 1926, p 4. 71 Narayanan, "Madhavan," pp 221-2. 72 At Suchindram in 1926 and Tiruavarppu in 1927. The latter coincided with another visit from Gandhi. CWMG, XXVII, pp 98-100, pp 114-20, p 131. DSP, Kottayam, to Police Commissioner, 10 October 1927, CS, 846/1927. 78 CS, 783/1925. Maramat Engineer to Chief Secretary, 30 November 1935, CS, 1365/ 1936. Also, CS, 1622/1936, 772/1929. 74 CWMG, XXVI, p 293. 7t Kerala Kaumudi, 29 November 1937, CS, 776/1940. 7 Ramaswami Aiyar's view was never stated so baldly, but it comes through clearly in his newspaper statements and notations on office files through the 1930s and 1940s. For a further discussion,see Robin Jeffrey,"A Sanctified Label-'Congress'in Travan- core Politics, 1938-48," in DA Low (ed.), Congress and the Raj, Heinemann, London, forthcoming, 1976. 77 R Ramakrishnan Nair, Constitutional Experiments in Kerala, Kerala Academy of Political Science, Trivandrum 1964, pp 12-17. 78 Madras States, Fortnightly Report [hereafter FRI or 2], second half of January 1933, National Archives of India, Home Political, 18/1/1933. Kesavan, Samaram, I, pp 51-60. The Hindu, 27 January 1933, p 14. Kerala Kaumudi, 23 April 1936, quoted in Weekly Secret Bulletin [hereafter WSB], III, 17, 25 April 1936. 70 C O Madhavan [himself the highest ranking Ezhava in government service] to Chief Secretary, 31 October 1933, CS, 1338/1933. 80 Police Report, 28 October 1933, CS, 1129/1933. 8 See C Achutha Menon, Smaranayute Etukul, Prabhat Printing and Publishing Co Ltd, Trivandrum 1971, pp 85-92, for an appreciative essay on Kesavan as a "progressive" by the Communist Party of India chief minister of Kerala. K Aiyappan "Keralattile Samudayaparishkaram" [Social Reform in Kerala], in SNDP Souvenir, p 80 for the help- ful role of the Communist Party in social change. For Aiyappan's life, see SNDP Who Is Who, pp 7-8, and K A Subramaniam, Sahodaran Ayyappan, Cochin 1973, pp 63-79. 8a Census, 1931, I, p 248, 8 Statistics of Travancore. 84 The Hindu, 10 May 1938, p 3. 86 M L Janardanan Pillai, Sri Moolam Assembly Proceedings [hereafter SMAP], VII, 18 November 1935, p 478. 86 Janardanan Pillai, SMAP, VII, 12 November 1938, p 35. 87 SNDP Who Is Who, pp 189-90, for biography of E Madhavan. E Madhavan, Swatan- trasamudayam, S G Press, Parur 1935, pp 149-50, 83-5, 12, 254, 246. Lenin's picture is between pp 264-5. 88 For Ramaswami Aiyar's position in Travancore and the opposition of the Political

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Department to his assumption of the dewanship, see India Office Library and Records, Crown Representative Records R/1/29/1361 and R/1/29/1485. 89 Report of the Temple Entry Enquiry Committee, Government Press, Trivandrum 1933, p 80. 0o Ibid., p 82. Madras States, FR2 January 1934. CS, 923/1924 [sic]. 9' WSB, III, 30, 25 July 1936. 92 WSB, II, 43, 26 October 1935; 51, 21 December 1935; 52, 28 December 1935; III, 7 15 February 1936, for example. C9 C V Kunjuraman, Ezhavarute Mataparivarttana Samrambham (Ezhavas' Conversion Preparation) CMS Press, Kottayam 1936. WSB, III, 10, 7 March 1936;15, 11 April 1936. 4 WSB, III, 9, 29 February 1936; 10, 7 March 1936; 17, 25 April 1936; 22, 30 May 1936 30, 25 July 1936. Menon, Freedom Movement, II, pp 308-10. See also Nilkan Perumal, A Hindu Reformation, R J Ram and Co, Madras 1937 and Mahadev Desai, The Epic of Travancore, Ahmedabad 1937. 9 WSB, III, 51, 19 December 1936; 52, 26 December 1936; IV, 1, 2 January 1937. 96 Kerala Kaumudi, 3 January 1937, in C V Kunjuraman, Tirannetutta Kratikal (Selected Works), Puthuppalli Raghavan (ed.), Pratibha Publications, Quilon 1971, pp 212-9. 97 WSB, IV, 4, 23 January 1937. 98 Travancore Government Records, Temple Entry Proclamation File, 12/11/1936. 9 See Jeffrey, "Sanctified Label".

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