18/01/2016
Ever since I wrote Theekkadal Katanju Thirumadhuram (the fictional biography of the Father of Malayalam Language) I am under no-holds-barred attack from an organization called the Ezhuthassan Samajam, a caste-based outfit falsely claiming to represent the whole of a miniscule community in Kerala. Their war-cry is: I have portrayed the Father of Malayalam as a member of the Nair community. Their presumption puts him in the Kaduppottan-turned Ezhuthassan caste, a jaina community originating from Karnataka.
My school-leaving certificate classifies me as ‘Hindu - Nair’ – an appendix inherited at birth which, however, has been no impediment to me in acquiring a cosmopolitan perspective of unity in diversity, the essence of Indian thought.
The Father of Malayalam nurtured the same worldview of universal oneness, fought the forces of segregation and divisionism all his life and lit the lamp of renaissance in Kerala. It was a great surprise to me when my grandparents revealed that he was our ancestor. But, in sharp contrast with the life-sketch of his that I got from them, the canards in popular parlance (probably spread intentionally by irrated parties) painted him as a bastard and a hopeless drunkard, even despite the fact that the poetic works attributed to him could not emerge except from a noble and elevated soul. So the search for the truth of the matter in this regard became part of my life from age 11. It took half-a-century to mature.
After higher education at Tanjore he had inherited the family’s residential school – *akshara kalari* – where students from all castes, communities and religions were taught and teachers bore the title Ezhuthachan. This title had nothing to do with any caste. There were people from all castes and even religions among them. But, all hell broke loose as the biography began to appear in the Sunday Magazine of the Mathrubhumi Daily. I was abused by phone and mail on a daily basis; the paper was threatened with community boycott; letters to the editor written in unseemly language were forced on the paper.
Till then, I was not aware of the fact that the community of ‘Kaduppottans’ had requested the British government in 1920 to get their caste name changed into Ezhuthassan and also for sanction of backward status. Gazette notifications and census records vouchsafe for the requests and the approval thereof. An article on the issue written by lexicologist S N Mannadiar has been therefore appended to the biography as a record of truth when it was published in book form. Sri Mannadiar now adds that L. K. Ananthakrishnaiyer’s ‘Castes and Tribes’ (1910) which enlists all of the castes then present in the region does not mention Ezhuthachan or Ezhuthassan.
Maybe because every divisive organization needs an enemy to serve as target for their hate-campaign aimed at promoting loyalty among its members old and new, the poisonous affront is being steadily escalated. Newspapers have been ‘forbidden’ from publishing any appreciation of the book; critics have been threatened; my effigy has been burnt at several places; protest marches have been organized; when the Bharatiya Gnana Pith announced their Murthi Devi Award for the book, representations were made to them to withdraw the award because purportedly, ‘the book misappropriated the sacred guru of the Ezhuthassan community - a jaina saint - and transformed him into a Nair’; when the Kochi Devaswom Board announced the Narayana Pisharoti Award for the book, a press conference was called by the Association to declare that the presentation and acceptance of the award would not be allowed to take place; a march was organized to the venue and the police had to be called to ward off untoward incidents.
The latest is their meeting the Minister for Culture, Government of Kerala, the President of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, the Director of the State Institute of Languages, the Vice-Chancellor of the Malayalam University and many others who matter with the threat that if this book is given any recognition, their community (the presence of which is in fact limited to no more than two or three Assembly constituencies at the most, and even there no more than minimally) will en-mass vote against the ruling front and tilt the balance against it. Politics being what it is today, it looks like paper-tigers can have the cake and eat it too!
But, thanks to my upbringing, I have been able to keep my cool; I did not want to add fuel to the fire of separatist passions. Meanwhile, the biography, well taken by the discerning public, has gone into its sixth impression despite all the hue and cry against it. In thousands of homes today it is the cherished companion of Adhyatma Ramayanam Kilippattu on its pedestal.
However, the threat now is: the distribution of the book will be interfered with. This is the limit. The work is being taken to task for having defused, though unknowingly, a dastardly attempt at cultural hijacking. I invite the attention of all those who are on the side of justice and freedom of creative expression to take note and intervene.
When *Adhyatma Ramayanam Kilippattu* was written, the then ruler of the region, at the behest of those who accused it of ‘offering Vedic instruction to the lower castes and opposing chaturvarnya’, ordered to confiscate and destroy the original manuscript and also banned ownership as well as recitation from any part of any copy. But better sensibility and commitment to knowledge and culture in other quarters kept the work safe, nurtured it and made it an essential part of every household. I am sure the same forces will help this biography of the composer of that great work and the Father of the language survive and serve future generations.