Chapter- V Representation of Social Change in Kayar: a Historical Analysis

CHAPTER- V REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN KAYAR: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS As elsewhere in the colonial societies, interaction between the structures of domination institutionalized by colonialism and the ways in which indigenous responses to it were evolved forms the central theme of the social history of the modern Malayali society as well. During the post-colonial phase, once the tumultuousness of the anti- colonial political struggles got subsided, and the society moved on to the specific historical juncture of nation building, there developed a literary trend in the Malayalam literary arena of presenting the history of social change (modernization as a social experience that the various localized popular communities had undergone) through story narratives. On account of its vastness and elasticity, novel proved to be the most preferred format for epitomizing the convergence of history and literature on the theme of social change. The novel Kayar by Takazhi Sivasankara Pillai published in 1978 presents the trajectory of the historical development of the modern society in Travancore. As has been mentioned, this novel has been conceived as a narrative depicting the transformation process in all the diverse aspects of life in a particular region, the Takazhi village, the author’s own provenance and its immediate neighborhood in Kuttanad from the nineteenth century colonial situation to the introduction of land reforms in the democratic era during the early 1970s. As an addendum to the juxtaposition of the literary and historical representations of the social change process, this section seeks to make a historical analysis of the same accomplished in the Kayar narrative. All narrative representations are multi-layered process operating at three levels. We do have at first the objects in reality, and then the representations of these objects. In the third plane, each representation drags along with itself its own represented, just as we are accompanied by our own shadow on a sunny day1. This representation’s represented self image in this context may be considered as the political sensibility of 1 Frank Ankorsmit, “Truth in History and Literature” in Narrative Vol. 18 No. 1, January 2010, p. 40 171 the historical representation. To make sense of this political sensibility of the historical representation, the text has to be situated in the context of the dominant institutions, social practices and discourses which shape the culture of the time of its production. Scholarship on Takazhi generally regards Kayar as a compendious tale of tales where all the motifs that had obsessed Takazhi’s mind in the earlier works taking a rebirth2. This is particularly so because deep affiliation to the land and landscape of Kuttanad have formed the spatiality of Takazhi’s entire literary universe. The interactions between the micro and macro level social processes have formed the apparent concern of Takazhi’s narratives. Historical events taking place at the national or supra-national planes have their actualization in the story narratives in relation to how it leaves its impacts on the local social terrain. Part of the Kayar narrative representation is autobiographical in nature and much of the stories and delineations are modeled after local personalities and myths and legends3. The social milieu that the Kayar narrative represents denote a shifting configuration in the social vision of the author from a perspective that sees class struggles to mutual accommodation of communities as the essence of the social relations4. While illuminating the political sensibility of the narrative representation or the representation’s self image, one may situate the literary universe of Takazhi in general in the backdrop of the transformation that the Malayali cultural landscape had undergone in the wake of its engagement with colonial modernity. Being conceptualized as a creative response to the process of cultural amnesia induced by the colonial experience, the intuitive spirit that sets up the Kayar representation was nationalist envisioning. Since there is a close affinity between nationalism in colonial societies and the orientalist project of rediscovering the lost past, it is quite natural that knowledge forms born out of the colonial discourses starting with orientalist ventures and later being appropriated by the colonized intellectuals would continue to be a profound influence in the postcolonial imaginings as well5. To trace this linkage between the colonial epistemology and the aspects of novelistic representations with due recognition to the deviations forms another concern of this venture. While reflecting these divergences, an undertaking is made to unearth the political sensibility 2 K. Ayyappa Paniker, Takazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Trivandrum, 1988, p. 124 3 See, Introduction in N. Sreekantan Nair, Kayar (English Translation), New Delhi, 1998. 4 K. N. Panikkar, “Literature as History of Social Change” in Social Scientist Vol. 40 No. ¾, March-April 2012, pp. 14-15 5Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London and New York, 2002, pp. 17-18 172 of the novel followed by a brief appendage dealing with an attempt to make sense of the socio-political meaning conveyed by the narrative. Modernity and Transformations: The Case of Malayali Cultural Landscape During the early years of the nineteenth century, when British colonialism was established, feudal ideologies and symbolisms had dominated the cultural landscape of the indigenous Malayali society. The forms of cultural production and reception that had been in circulation in the major princely houses of Travancore, Cochin, Kodungallur, Pandalam and Mavelikkara etc. and in their dependent feudal families had held hegemony in culture. Lion share of the total literary production were in the form of Attakatha, Thullal, short poems, instant verses, and the prose poem that appear vary rarely in the Champoos and Sandesakavyas. Those Avarnas who were adept in Sanskrit and literature were also depended on these literary models. Still, it may not be improper to estimate that the main patrons of these literary creations based on the Sanskrit and Dravidian meters, rhetoric and poetic forms were chiefly drawn from the elite classes of the society6. Even though, these literary productions conveying the aesthetic flavors ranging from devotion to erotic exuberance had exercised powerful influence in the feudal circles, they were presumed to have nothing to do with the intellections and sensibilities of the masses at large7. During the nineteenth century, the literary horizon witnessed the production of no such creations that can be compared to the central tradition of Malayalam poetry exemplified by the folk poetry of the antiquity and later the Rama Charitam and gradually evolving through the Niranam Poets, Cherusseri, Poonthanam, Ezhutthachan and Kunjan Nambiar8. Sanskrit had formed the basis of the nineteenth century feudal cultural sensibilities as well as the specific modes of literary production and reception. The Sastris who came from Madras and Bombay Presidencies and elsewhere in South India had taught Sanskrit in the royal/feudal houses. Later on, many indigenous Gurukulams like the Kodungallur Kovilakam and Koodallur Mana had undertaken Sanskrit instruction. For certain period, Sanskrit literary ethos continued to inspire the 6 K. N. Ganesh, Keralathinte Innalekal (The Yesterdays of Kerala), Trivandrum, 1997, p. 309 7The encouragement given to the promotion of classical arts and the decline of popular art forms like Thullal during the early 19th century. See, Ibid., pp. 328-329 8 K. Ayyappa Paniker, A Short History of Malayalam Literature, Thiruvananthapuram, 2006, p.49 173 feudal intellectuals even after they had undergone acquaintance with the English language and modes of literary production9. The influence of Sanskrit was greater in the Malayalam works of these feudal litterateurs as compared to the literary creations of Cherusseri, Ezhutthachan, Poondanam and Kunjan Nambiar who had lived prior to nineteenth century. Development of prose literature was the most important impact of the nineteenth century European intellectual influences in Malayalam. It was the missionary prose that had liberated Malayalam from the conventional pattern marked by a long and complex style as exemplified in the Champoos and the Grandhavaris10. English language became the chief source of all the myriad forms of worldly knowledge for the missionaries as well as a generation got educated in the missionary educational institutions. The faint beginning of modern Malayalam prose was there in the periodicals that had emerged by about the mid-nineteenth century. The more simple, direct and informal pieces of articles appeared in these publications were modeled after English essays11. English novels were imitated in the name of narratives. The writers of the age were influenced by such genres as the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott, Gothic Novels, the social novels of Dickens, M.R.S Henry Wood, Elizabeth Gaskell etc., the romantic creations of such popular writers as G. W. M. Reynolds, and the allegories like Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. While Archdeacon Koshy’s Parishkkarapathi was modeled after Pilgrim’s Progress, in Kundalata, there was said to be an explicit Gothic influence in its makeup12. As far as the development of the Malayalam language was concerned, the nineteenth century scenario was marked by the maturation of two parallel streams viz. the one represented by the Sanskritized Malayalam embodied

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