The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India 019946930X, 9780199469307

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The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Title Pages Ester Gallo

(p.i) The Fall of Gods (p.iii) The Fall of Gods

(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press 2/11 Ground Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002, India © Oxford University Press 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. First Edition published in 2017

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Title Pages All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this book in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN-13: 978-0-19-946930-7 ISBN-10: 0-19-946930-X Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro 10.5/13 by Tranistics Data Technologies, New Delhi 110 044 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020

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Endorsement

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Endorsement Ester Gallo

(p.ii) ‘Ester Gallo has given a wonderfully nuanced, beautifully written, and innovative account of kinship, memory, and class in South India which enlarges our understanding of how these three processes are intertwined and mutually constitutive. Drawing on a rich array of detailed sources, including diaries, genealogies, accounts of migration, houses, and eating practices she shows how, rather than being assigned to a nostalgic realm, kinship is intricately interwoven with temporality. This is not only a major contribution to scholarship on class in contemporary India, it will be an important point of reference in the study of kinship and memory more widely.’ —Janet Carsten, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom ‘This fascinating study of kinship among Nambudiri Brahmins challenges easy assumptions about the role of the past in the present. Crucially the book highlights the use of ruptures and discontinuities foregrounded in kinship memories as shaping recent family histories and strategies of upward mobility, which emphasize the role of kinship studies as part of the analysis of class formation in South Asia and beyond.’ —Henrike Donner, Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom Page 1 of 2

Endorsement ‘A completely novel approach to understanding middle classes in modern India, at the intersections of caste, kinship, and mobility! An understanding of history, memory, gender, sexuality, it brings together a powerful narrative, examining the weft and weave of “family modernity”, the old (intergenerational histories) and the new (mobility patterns) and understanding “middle-classness” from a unique vantage point. An exceptional anthropological study and fascinating read.’ —Meenakshi Thapan, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India

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Dedication

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Dedication Ester Gallo

(p.v) To Giulio and Anita (p.vi)

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Figures, Graph, and Tables

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.ix) Figures, Graph, and Tables Ester Gallo

Figures 2.1 Re-elaboration of a section of Aravayur Nambudiri genealogies 68 4.1 Restructuring of another old illam after partition and migration (1988–present) 131 4.2a Orientation of an ancestral house 135 4.2b Plan of an old illam in Krishnapuram (until 1979) (not inhabited) 136 4.3 A modern Nair-Nambudiri Nalukettu house in Kochi residential area 149 4.4 Savitri ’s house in Kochi’s suburbs (two-storey house) 156 4.5 Sreelatha’s house in Kochi’s suburbs (one-storey house) 161

(p.x) Graph 5.1 Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages involving Nambudiri men and women, 1877–2005 208

Tables 2.1 Nambudiri (men and women): Primary and integrative occupations in Krishnapuram, Tallipuram, Sreepuram, and Kochi 79 2.2 Historical patterns of Krishnapuram emigration across caste, religion, and gender (1920–today) 82 2.3a, b, and c Nambudiri migration in Krishnapuram and surrounding areas between 1920 and 2008 84 5.1 Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages among Nambudiri men and women, 1877–2005 206

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Acknowledgements

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.xi) Acknowledgements Ester Gallo

I FINISHED THIS BOOK A few days before Gediz University, Izmir, the institution where I have worked for five years, was closed down by the Turkish government alongside other 16 universities in the context of the post-coup ‘purges’. The arrest of many colleagues, the detention or deportation of foreign students, and the temporary confiscation of our books and writings by the police that followed the 23rd of July 2016 came at the end of many months in which freedom of speech, democratic mobilization, and civic dissent had been severely attacked by the growing authoritarianism of the Turkish government, in front of the eyes of a far too hesitant European Union. While writing, teaching, and moving freely are privileges which I continue to enjoy in virtue of a European passport, the essence of academic work remains an unattainable goal, and a risky endeavour, for many of my friends and colleagues who have remained in Turkey. The completion of this book, therefore, marks for me the end of a complex academic journey, in which living with oppression and fear has been possible thanks to the inputs, daily complicity, and emotional support of many colleagues. I am indebted to Őzge Biner and Zeynep Şahin Mencutek for being there throughout the writing, for their patience with my frequent mood swings, and for turning our offices in ‘safer’ places of irony and jokes about politics. My gratitude goes to Ela Aras, Naciye Çıracı Yucel, Neslihan Demirtas (p.xii) Milz, Betul Durmaz, Iştar Gözaydin, Zubeyit Gün, Manfred Milz, Güldem Őzatağan, and Ayca Yilmaz for their encouragements and trust over the years. My thoughts and appreciations also go to my Gediz students, for their curiosity and interest in our class discussions and for their search of alternative interpretations.

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Acknowledgements This book has also benefited from the time and generosity of many other colleagues. I owe a particular debt to Janet Carsten, for being a wonderful mentor during my years in Edinburgh, for providing me with numerous occasions of exchange on the relation between kinship and memory, and for her support during different stages of writing. The Centre for South Asian Studies and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh have offered stimulating venues for the discussion of social changes in India and South Asia. I would like to mention Caroline Osella, Nayanika Mookherjee, and David Gellner for their insightful comments on the original proposal and on the earlier draft of some chapters. Filippo Osella and Geert de Neve have been important source of guidance during my research period at Sussex. I would like to thank Henrike Donner and Meenakshi Thapan for their trust and support. I thank Simonetta Grilli, Luciano Li Causi, and Pier Giorgio Solinas for having initiated me to the field of kinship studies, and the University of Siena for providing generous funding during my doctoral years. While space does not allow me to mention all the many Malayalis living in Kerala and in the diaspora who have opened their home and devoted their time to a clumsy anthropologist, I would like to mention Vimala Devi, Ignatius, and Kein Gonzalvez for their hospitality and care during my staying in Ernakulam district. I have shared with Anil Chandrasekhar T. the ups and downs of fieldwork, and much of my research in Kerala has benefited from his guidance and advises. Last but not least, the book has also benefited from the comments of two anonymous reviewers from Oxford University Press, New Delhi. The editorial team at Oxford University Press has provided helpful guidance and has been very patient with the many delays in delivering the manuscript. Needless to say, I lay claim to all the shortcomings of the analysis developed in this book. A special appreciation goes to Paolo Boccagni, Stefano Falcinelli, Donatella Malfatti, and Francesca Scrinzi for their remarkable capacity of friendship; to Emanuele Massetti for being a great father, and (p.xiii) for taking care of all of us throughout the writing process; and to Rukiye Değirmenci for being with us for four years. I owe a debt to my mother, Maria Clementina Zaccagnini, for being a generous, patient, and travelling grandma. The writing of this book would have not been possible without their support. I dedicate this book to my children, Giulio and Anita, who have accompanied me in many journeys and who keep infusing me with joy. (p.xiv)

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Introduction

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Introduction Kinship, Memory, and Indian Middle Classes Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords The introduction highlights the importance of understanding how, in globalizing south India, families engage through memory with the question of how kinship norms, ideals, and experiences can enhance social mobility. It critically reviews and bridges three sets of literature: firstly, the historical critique developed within postcolonial and feminist tradition on the relation between colonialism, middle classes, and gendered family reforms; secondly, classical and recent anthropological approaches on political history and memory; thirdly, contemporary analysis of kinship within and beyond South Asia. The introduction argues that an analysis of the relationship between kinship, memory, and social mobility reveals to be timely and original to reconnect the well-known colonial middle-class projects of family modernity with the much less explored dimension of how (actual and aspiring) middle classes have engaged across history with these projects. Keywords:   feminist history, postcolonial studies, anthropology of kinship, anthropology of memory, middle classes, Nambudiri Brahmins

Salina: They are coming to teach us good manners. But they won’t succeed, because we think we are gods. […] Tancredi: For things to remain the same, Page 1 of 32

Introduction Everything must change. —The Leopard, 1958 THE OPENING QUOTATION MOMENTARILY STEALS us away from the lands and times of Indian history towards the crises of Sicilian society in the 1860s, as they are portrayed in the masterpiece of Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard. The novel captures a critical moment in the making of modern Italy, the approaching end of the feudal privileges of an old-fashioned and declining aristocracy and the emergence of a class of neo-aristocratic youths. The latter, driven by nationalist sentiments, fight to free Sicily from the Bourbon kingdom in order to annex the southern parts of the peninsula to a new unitary state under the House of Savoy. From the enchanted and secluded country palace of Donnafugata, the main character, the old Prince of Salina, witnesses with acute awareness the ruin of his own ruling class ‘without ever making, still less wanting to make, any move toward saving it’.1 In one of the most engaging passages, Salina receives the visit of (p.2) Chevalley, a Piedmontese official who invites him to accept a role in the Senate. In refusing, Salina kindly equates the intrusive modernism of his guest to the perpetual—and unsuccessful— attempts of earlier French, Spanish, or Arabic conquerors to ‘canalize Sicily into the flow of universal history’. As a people that have always sat on the throne of a godly perfection, Sicilians remain plunged in a past of grandeur to the point of preferring a ‘grand funeral’ rather than having to come to terms with historical changes. By contrast, Salina’s young nephew Tancredi is endowed with the necessary appeal and boldness to successfully embrace the nationalist cause and, we are left to imagine, to impose himself as a politically and socially influential citizen of the future Italian state. Unlike many conservative aristocrats—who shun the irreverence of Tancredi in the name of righteous traditions—Salina silently admires his nephew’s intelligence and entrepreneurial character, while nevertheless preserving some distance from Tancredi’s provocations. Tancredi’s (apparent) break with traditions appears in his love for Angelica, the seductive daughter of a rich member of the enterprising middle class, and in the unspoken choice to refuse the ‘expected’ marriage with Concetta, his pious and submissive cousin. Predictably, it is Angelica’s father who takes up the place in the senate refused by the aristocratic Salina. Salina and Tancredi confront each other throughout the novel in a way that unexpectedly makes the latter appear more aristocratic and conservative than his polished uncle. Rather than accepting the fading of an era, Tancredi subscribes to the idea that, in order to remain powerful, the godly rulers of the past should transform the ideological and material premises of their privileges.

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Introduction The Leopard (1958) captures an epochal moment in Italian history: it portrays a watershed between the past traditional feudal order and the birth of a modern society. It unravels a critical event of Italian nation making: a moment in which, as Veena Das (1995: 6) articulates in relation to the context of India, ‘new models of actions came into being which redefined traditional categories of thoughts’ within a novel polity. A moment in which history created spaces for the emergence of new social relations also in ‘the private’ sphere of domestic life and of kinship, through the disruption of previous patterns of relatedness and the emergence of new ways of imagining, making, and living kinship (see Carsten 2007: 4–6). Indeed, The Leopard (p.3) threads official historiography into the private domain of family relations and, in turn, through passionate kinship narratives, it exposes readers to a nuanced understanding of historical changes related to modern forms of class formation. In this respect, the evocation of this Sicilian story invites us to consider how epochal changes have forced declining and emerging classes to rethink the foundations of their existence, and how family relations were involved in the process. Like in the Sicilian novel, and in more or less similar historical times, Indian political histories have been inscribed into the intimate lives of many colonial subjects like Malayalis. The birth of modern Keralam was marked, among other things, by the decline of landed aristocracy and the rise of a new and internally heterogeneous middle class. In the process, old marriage and kinship customs started to be increasingly scrutinized by colonial rulers, and yet not least by nationalists and community reformers in the name of a national project.2 Novel models of love, conjugality, and gendered individuality were debated alongside emerging ideas of class decency and aspirations, and became important landmarks of social and economic progress. As in Italy, strands of Malayali aristocracy joined the ranks of an upwardly mobile class of mediators, who acquired enough power and influence to ‘link the people with the new rulers’, and who grew ‘in strength and prosperity with the progress of a (foreign) rule’ (Ahmad and Reifeld 2011: 8). Others, like many among the Nambudiri Brahmins, for long refrained from entering into the flow of ‘universal’ history. Their inclination introduces us to some of the exceptional features of Malayali Brahmin history with respect to the wider process of colonial class formation in the subcontinent. While within India a disproportionate majority of those who can legitimately claim middle-class status today come from the upper castes (Béteille 2001; Hasan 2011), for Nambudiri Brahmins this process implied prolonged periods of marginalization as well as the difficulty to be legitimately recognized in the present as part of ‘the’ Indian middle class.

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Introduction I started to think of the similarities between our Sicilian tale and the history of Nambudiri Brahmins during the first months of my doctoral fieldwork in central Kerala. I had moved there in 2000 and, drawing from a former research project conducted with Christian Malayali migrants in Rome, I initially aimed at understanding the effects of women’s emigration on gendered kinship relations. Yet, (p.4) my doctoral research took a fairly different turn. As it often happens, field encounters played a role in generating new curiosities. One day I was invited for tea in one of the old Nambudiri mansions in Krishnapuram—a village not too distant from the port city of Kochi—which was famous for being the home of prestigious Nambudiri Brahmin lineages. The architecture of the old house let the glorious past of this community shine through, and yet one could not avoid sensing the effects of a prolonged decay. During a long conversation, Uma, the old landlady, interpreted the history of her family as a painful transformation from deyvam (gods) to manushyan (human beings): from an aristocratic elite enjoying holy status to a more anonymous middle class of modern citizens. This shift implied loss and gain: it meant to sacrifice the family, class and caste architecture of past privileges in the name of modern imperatives. Interestingly, nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ did not straightforwardly render the past appealing. Rather, Uma’s memories were moulded by Salinian and Tancredian influences: the tacit regret for a lost godly status combined with the awareness that traditional nobility was not suitable for modern times, nor did it eventually made her life better. Her eldest son Sanjay, a neurologist who had built his career in the USA, was very keen to stress how peculiar the past social system of Nambudiris was and, simultaneously, how this peculiarity hindered the betterment of the community. More than his mother, Sanjay blamed Nambudiris for not having been able to keep pace with the times, for having never been fully able to ‘give up’ their elitism. His dissatisfaction often resulted in harsh criticism of his kin, and in his uneasiness to lean on the comfort zone of intergenerational continuity. For both Sanjay and his mother, and for many others whose stories are recalled in this book, the course of history was shaken—although in very different ways—by the actions of colonial rule, and by reformist movements acting more or less since the late nineteenth century. The caste associations known as Nambudiri Yoga Kshema Sabha and Nambudiri Yuva Jana Sangham were, since the early twentieth century, among the agents of this family and community tremors. Community politics in colonial times was constructed in the present as an epochal change—a breaking point between past godly status and progressive community ‘humanisation’—and its recalling shaped the ways family relations were made meaningful in the present.3 (p.5)

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Introduction As an anthropologist interested in kinship, the exceptionality of Nambudiri Brahmins did not come as a surprise. I had quite fresh memories of my undergraduate studying on the ‘symbiotic relation’ (Mencher and Goldberg 1967: 87) bounding matrilineal Nairs and Nambudiris through sambandham, or on how Nambudiris’ rigid rules of primogeniture in inheritance and endogamic marriage rights were determinant in exalting this community’s exceptional status within Malayali caste hierarchies. What attracted my interest, however, was not so much Nambudiri sophisticatedness in kinship rules. Rather, it was the way colonial history was made meaningful through ‘private’ kinship accounts without necessarily making Nambudiris eager to identify in past family relations a space of protection from nonetheless disruptive events. On the one hand, Nambudiris’ stories made them appearing to me as tenaciously engaged with the attempt of withdrawing from historical processes of structuration determined by colonialism and middle-class reformism. Like conservative Sicilian aristocrats, the appeal of godly perfection had eclipsed for some strands of Nambudiri society the lure of new forms of mobilities. On the other hand, I found captivating the liberating role assigned to kinship conflicts and to ‘heroic kin acts’ in Nambudiris’ memories of their eventual engagement with ‘mainstream’ history. Extreme conservatisms and revolutionary ethos indeed coexisted in Nambudiri accounts of their transformation into a modern middle class, and kinship provided a frame through which political histories were threaded into the present.

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Introduction The study of the relation between colonial history, kinship memories, and contemporary middle classes in India is what this book is about. In recent times, the label ‘middle class’ has been increasingly adopted in collective politics of identity to claim modern paths of social mobility. Middle-class status importantly offers people the chance to detach themselves from past allegiances and from histories of marginalization in order to assert renewed citizenship status. It is, therefore, not surprising that the recent growth of middle classes worldwide— and particularly in postcolonial societies—have attracted the attention of scholars, policy-makers, and media, which have differently highlighted shifting middle-class political participation (Basu et al. 1993; Brass 1994; Hansen 1999; Jaffrelot 2007), economic orientation, and consumption lifestyles (p.6) (Blanc 1997; Chua 2000; Fernandes 2006; Lange and Meier 2009; Ong and Nonini 1997; Sloane 1999). This work has traced the links between neoliberal policies, changing party politics, and the emergence of renewed social configurations that partly challenge pre-existing social orders. This complex and variable scenario has been often addressed by pointing to the emergence of a ‘new middle class’, whose moral values, behavioural codes, and political principles are sometimes deemed to depart radically from its nationalist and postIndependence antecedents (Varma 1998). Recent ethnographies have pointed out the need to offer a more nuanced analysis of the continuities and differences between the ‘traditional’ middle classes and their new avatars. This work has shown the persistent link between caste status and middle-classness within the transition from traditional family-led businesses towards the acquisition of key roles within emerging private corporations (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008a; Harriss 2003), or the continuing value of education as an inroad to social mobility (Fernandes 2006; Lakha 1999). It also highlighted the enlargement and diversification of the middle-class social base across the urban–rural divide, caste, and religious composition, as well the growing impact of migration, transnationalism, and global networks in shaping middle-class working lives (Assayag and Fuller 2005; Osella and Osella 2000; Saavala 2001; Upadhya 2004; Weiner and Katzenstein 1981).

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Introduction Overall, however, the emphasis placed on the novelty and synchronic features of new middle classes has often obscured how present class status is built on cumulative historical transformations and on ambivalent engagements with the past. Furthermore, beyond some relevant exceptions (Donner 2005, 2008; Osella and Osella 2000; Uberoi 2006), we know very little about how contemporary middle classes frame their status beyond economic-oriented behaviour and around specific-gendered kinship cultures. Scant analysis has been conducted to understand how history is retrieved in the present to shape contemporary kinship and family relations among middle classes. This, I believe, reflects a wider gap in socio-anthropological studies, which have seldom engaged with the relationship between kinship and class (Cassidy 2002; Strathern 1981, 1999). With Leela Fernandes (2000: 89–90), it is possible to say that the ‘newness of the middle class involves an ideological-discursive projection’ which, I (p.7) further suggest, has hindered anthropological understanding of how the old feeds into the new while also generating new changes. Drawing from a prolonged ethnography with Nambudiri Brahmins—and on their relations with other middle-class Malayalis—the book engages with two interrelated questions. The first one addresses the place of kinship in the forging of middle-class identity in contemporary liberalizing societies, and explores what kinship relations—in the domains of housing, conjugality, parenthood, and filial affection—are voiced by contemporary middle classes through generational engagement with history. The analysis does so by interrogating both present narratives as well as the meanings of those material objects (genealogies, diaries, artefacts, houses, or food) that are involved in middle-class memorialization. The second question aims at mapping continuities and differences between the well-known importance of gendered kinship projects within colonial middle-class formation with the much less studied role of kinship in present middle-class lives and identity politics. To this end, the book interrogates what relationship between colonial history and modernity, and what dispositions towards the past, emerge through intergenerational memory to mould present middle-class families ideas, norms, and practices.

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Introduction Nambudiri collective history constitutes an intriguing case study in this context. Their history of conservativeness, revolutionary political activity, and prolonged decline unravels the tortuous routes undertaken by colonial subjects in gaining modern class status through the questioning of their domestic relations and intimate lives. Community history has often been accompanied by radical changes in kinship relations, and the way these events are recalled in the present makes it difficult to conceptualize the attainment of contemporary middle-class status among traditional elites exclusively in terms of genealogical continuity. As such, Nambudiri history offers important insights on the place that disruptions and blockages play in the uneasy, and certainly unpredictable, process of family making. By focusing on the complex ways in which kinship, memory, and class intertwine, this book also aims at counterbalancing the overall synchronic approaches to the new middle class, and to map how past family experiences of class mobility (or immobility) are retrieved in the present to shape novel understandings of family relations.

(p.8) Kinship, Memory, and Modernity

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Introduction The relation between kinship and memory has received scant attention in anthropology (Bloch 1998; Carsten 2007). This partly result from the fact that, as Janet Carsten notes, while scholarship on memory has been to a considerable extent concerned with major political histories, kinship studies have more frequently engaged with the ‘private’ everyday domain of family lives (Carsten 2007). Available scholarship has for long adopted a functionalist approach, largely emphasizing two elements. First, the shared nature of kin memory is underlined. Families constitute themselves through routine memory-work and, in turn, the sharing of memories allows kinsfolk to be incorporated into family life across generations (Archibald 2002; Halbwachs 1950; Morgan 1996). Similarly, inheritance and life cycle rituals aim at etching the memory of a person within future generations’ destinies and creating continuity with a kinship past (Finch and Mason 2000). Second, the limited literature has more often than not conceived family memories as having a conciliatory role in the relation between kinship time, wider political history and modernity (Koleva 2009; Krmpotich 2010). Cole (1998) notes, for instance, how for the Betsimisaraka of Madagascar kinship memories aim at aligning present destinies with ancestors and at displacing a colonial past. In her accounts, kinship constitutes itself as a shelter from a disruptive modernity and allows postcolonial subjects to nurture, and to claim for, intergenerational continuity. In a partly similar vein, Sutton (1998) notes how in the Greek island of Kalymnos continuity in intergenerational memory is conceived as capable of making history more familiar and controllable: memory configures itself as a form of analogic thinking, and kinship recalling constructs history in less invasive, less threatening, and more intimate terms. Indeed, and despite the recognition of the disconnection with which memory is fraught (Birth 2006; Lambek and Antze 1996), when memory is analysed in relation to kinship, metaphors of ‘genealogical transmission’ and ‘cumulative growth’ continue to receive primary attention (Day 2007a, 2007b). This often results from the ‘assumption that the continuity of (kinship, ndr) time is basically one with the continuity of experience’ (Nisbet 1970: 359–60) and reflects the tendency to neglect how ‘kinship is constituted out of acts of rupture’ (Franklin and McKinnon 2001: 18). (p.9)

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Introduction Recent studies have shown how the relevance of family recalling goes much beyond the ‘private’ domestic domain and have a ‘larger-scale political import’ (Carsten 2007: 4; Hodgkin and Radstone 2003; Pine 2007; Stoler and Strassler 2002; Tanabe and Keyes 2002). In his analysis of Jewish recalling of mixed families in twentieth-century Europe, Stephan Feuchtwang (2007: 169–70) notes that, while recalling might aim at establishing lines of kinship, this does not automatically translate into the acceptance of kinship continuity but rather a series of pasts in which the continuity of kinship is in fact formed through a series of disruptions. In a partly similar way, Laura Bear (2007b: 46–7) shows how the recalling of the colonial past among Anglo-Indians fails to provide a continuous grounding for narratives of the self and of family histories, a fact that translate into a persistent sense of ‘community illegitimacy’. These perspectives reveal the possibility of bringing the analysis of political conflict and historical disruption into the heart of kinship, and of exploring those circumstances where biographical idioms fail to embrace the myth of cumulative growth (Bear 2007b; Carsten 2007; Day 2007; Pine 2007).

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Introduction This book draws significantly from this work and also aims at complementing it by focusing on the role of kinship memories in shaping intergenerational engagement with Indian political history as well as in moulding contemporary middle-class politics of identity. The book explores what specific events in colonial past are made meaningful in the present to voice kinship relations, expectations, and normative ideals among Brahmin middle classes, and the extent to which the search for continuity in kinship time coexist, and it is ambivalently interwoven with, points of caesura, and resulting disruptions in family relations. The analysis of how the past is retrieved in present middle-class kinship aims to bridge two interrelated areas of disjuncture in the existent literature. The first, as mentioned above, refers to the hiatus between the multifaceted historical representations of colonial middle classes and the predominantly economically-oriented depiction of their contemporary avatars. Studies of colonial middle classes have highlighted how ‘the modern’ was framed by public engagement with issues of gender, sexuality, morality, domesticity, religion, and education (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007a; Ghosh 2006; Gupta 2001; Kodoth 2001; Nijhawan 2008; T. Sarkar 1992; Thapar 1989; Walsh 2004). This engagement has been interpreted in (p.10) diverse ways. As mentioned, scholars writing in the subaltern studies tradition emphasize the defensive nature of the attitudes of Indian middle classes towards modernity, which resulted in the framing of the domestic sphere as the ‘spiritual and uncompromised domain’ of Indian authenticity (Chakrabarty 2002; Chatterjee 1990; Nandy 1983). Conversely, and most importantly in the context of this book, Joshi (2001) argues that middle-class modernity ambivalently combined a defensive attitude with the entrepreneurial capacity of imposing new ways of life. As a result, according to the author, middle-class engagements with modernity could only be ambivalent, in so far as it combined both oppressive and liberatory stances, a fact that—despite peculiar political and historical circumstances—makes ‘Indian’ modernity not essentially different from other patterns of modernity worldwide (Joshi 2001). As discussed later in this book, in the field of gendered kinship relations, colonial modernity in Kerala brought along the delegitimation of many constitutive features of matrilineal system and of its relation with other patrilineal communities. Yet, it also opened spaces for the framing of novel ways of imagining and experiencing kinship and gendered family relations. Importantly, it will be argued, the unpredictable diversity of these imaginations and experiences across generations cannot not be exclusively subsumed neither within the remit of colonial projects nor within the ones of middle-class reformism. The understanding of how colonial history eventually transformed the relation between family and class indeed requires in-depth ethnographic and historically sensitive investigation of kinship trajectories in the present.

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Introduction Overall, it is important to note how, while in current literature on colonial history and Indian nationalism, the relevance of gendered family relations within middle-class politics of identity has been widely acknowledged, the focus has been to a considerable extent lost in present enquiries of middle classes. In a strikingly different direction, contemporary middle classes are mainly addressed in relation to their economic and political orientations (Béteille 2003; Fernandes 2006; Misra 1983; Upadhya 2009; Varma 2007). Critical exceptions do admittedly exist, and have highlighted the relevance of genealogical connections among information technology professionals (Fuller and Narasimhan 2007, 2008a) or of community diasporic networks for status enhancement (George 2005; Leonard 2008); they interrogate (p.11) the under-studied realms of middle-class youth culture (Lukose 2005; Nisbett 2007; Osella and Osella 1998), of moral anxieties and dilemmas among the middle classes (Dickey 2011), or the impact of urban living on gendered relations and family ideals (Donner 2008). Yet this literature often subscribes to the conventional idea that middle-class status is legitimately built on genealogical continuity4 and on the value of kinship solidarity, and fails to interrogate the ambivalent role the past might play in middle-class trajectories, in shifting kinship norms, ideals, and experiences, and the possible presence of ambivalent zones of conflict and disruption (see Peletz 2000). The second disjuncture refers to the analytical distance between anthropological representations of ‘Indian kinship’ and historical analyses of colonial family modernity. Until the 1980s, if kinship attracted an anthropological gaze that was overly concerned with structures and norms (Dumont 1964; Fuller 1976; Gough 1956, 1961; Inden and Nicholas 1977; Karve 1953; Mencher and Goldberg 1967; Parry 1979; Trautman 1981), in the early 1990s feminist and postcolonial historians have unsettled previous accounts by arguing that the ‘traditional’ kinship system envisaged by anthropologists was the product of a much deeper history (I. Chatterjee 2004; Sangari and Vaid 1990; Uberoi 1996). This literature enhances our understanding of ‘the colonial family’ through a gendered perspective, although this does not effectively lead to the interrogation of the multiple forms taken by kinship as result of colonial transformations. Significantly, the 1908s witnessed the questioning of kinship in socioanthropological studies of South Asia (see Uberoi 1994). This, I suggest, has partly resulted in the long-term difficulty within anthropology to bring the fruits of historical critique to bear on the analysis of contemporary kinship (important exceptions are Bear 2007; Caplan 2003; Mody 2008). As Caplan noted in the late 1990s (1998: 3), in relation to classical accounts of assumed ‘normative panIndian kinship’:

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Introduction While all such investigations therefore provide insights into the complexity and subtlety of Indian (Hindu) connubium, what they often fail to consider is the possibility that the ideas and practices surrounding marriage in India might also have been influenced by historical events and circumstances in the wider political and social order. Recently, original contributions have started to explore the relationship between violence, the postcolonial state, and kinship (p.12) (Das 1997); the link between class, sexuality, and family experiences (Busby 2000; Donner 2008; Grover 2011; Lambert 2000; Uberoi 2006; Unnithan 2010); and the social construction of love, romance, and affections in contemporary liberalizing India (Osella 2012; Srivastava 2009, 2004; Thapan 2009). Yet overall, this literature— despite its overall focus on postcolonial modernity—remains partial insofar as it does not openly interrogate the crucial question concerning the ‘traces of colonial past’ in contemporary kinship phenomenology. The aim of this book is therefore to reconnect the well-known colonial middleclass projects of family modernity with the lesser-explored dimension of how (actual and aspiring) middle classes have engaged with these projects across history. It is argued that the analysis of how new and emerging strata engage with political history through ‘more private’ family memories is key to a deeper understanding of contemporary middle-class politics of identity. The analysis developed here does not only accord great importance to different genres of recollection, but also to how the political dimension of memory expresses and alters contemporary kinship, the latter being viewed as a crucial affective and normative realm of social life. At the same time, the book advances existing work on kinship in modernity by looking at the importance of historical ruptures through the lens of social mobility, thus contributing to the understanding of the under-theorized class dimension of contemporary kinship cultures. In highlighting the different and unpredictable ways in which kinship has come to be understood, experienced, and made an object of normative evaluation through memory—and the importance of family ruptures in processes of social mobility—the book goes beyond the overall predominant conceptualization of kinship as mainly forged by intergenerational continuity.

The Porosity and Historicity of Middle-Class Identities

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Introduction The definition of what constitutes the ‘middle-class’, its socio-economic ‘contours’ and culture, has been the subject of prolonged debate within the social sciences, particularly involving Marxist and Weberian approaches.5 The former have been mainly concerned with structure of relations of production, although they have been progressively forced to recognize the importance of the criteria of property (p.13) ownership, skills and organizational authority (Wright 1986), as well as the middle-class seizing of positions within the state bureaucracy (Gouldner 1979). Differently, Weberian approaches develop a definition of class which seeks to take into consideration both the subject’s position within the capitalist market, as well the capacity of the subject to access the market of consumption, while also connecting class with status and lifestyle (Goffman 1951; Lockwood 1958). While Weberian approaches introduce what anthropologists would call the cultural dimension of class, they often downplay the question of how differential access to economic resources structures the relation between classes as well as the persistent imbalance of power and inequality beyond the disguising politics of ideals based on merit, individual achievement, and honours (cf. Liechty 2003: 14–15). Beyond the Marxist and Weberian debate, it has been recognized how the question of a unitary definition of ‘the middle class’ presents analytical problems in itself. According to Wacquant (1991: 51), both approaches—in trying to offer us a stable and unitary definition of what ‘a’ middle class is—suffer from similar shortcomings insofar as they equally ‘urge [us] to resolve on paper what is not resolved in reality’. The longstanding debate over the identification of suitable criteria through which define the ‘middle class’ has indeed brought social scientists to wonder if, it is appropriate to achieve a comprehensive definition for a reality that presents a recalcitrant phenomenology (Bourdieu 1987). The label ‘middle class’ itself often hides large internal differentiations, with many segments of this class being unable to live up to the standards usually set, for instance, in relation to the ‘new’ middle class in postcolonial contexts like India, around issues such as English education, cosmopolitan outlook, and access to a consumerist society (Deshpande 2003; Fernandes 2000). The recognition that the boundaries and constitutive features of the middle class cannot read off objective criteria of classification has brought to the pluralization the concept, and to interrogate the contingent historicity of the processes and practices that have led in different times and sites to the structuring and restructuring of this social formation (Ahmad and Reifeld 2001; McNall, Levine, and Fantasia 1991).

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Introduction As Béteille (2001: 81) notes, the Indian middle class is unique ‘not so much because of any peculiarity of the Indian occupational or educational system as because of the peculiar way in which class (p.14) is intertwined with caste and community in contemporary Indian society’. More so than in Europe, the emergence of a middle class in India constituted a major departure from the ‘traditional’ social order in so far as it altered caste structures and relations and opened up space for the emergence of newly mobile strata (Ahmad and Reifeld 2001; Misra 1961). Yet, despite the questioning of traditional hierarchies, class in India today retains a ‘distinctively communal flavour’ (Donner and De Neve 2011: 2) because cultural markers of caste and communal difference not only persisted in the forging of ‘modern class-based notions of identity’, but were also emphasized and essentialized through colonial policies and political discourse (Cohn 1996; Dirks 2001; Inden 1990). As such, ethnographic interrogations of class formation in India can seldom transcend the determinant role of caste and religion in shaping, enhancing, or inhibiting the inscription of personal, household, or collective belonging within the porous contours of middle-class identity.

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Introduction The neglect until the mid-1980s of Indian middle classes within social sciences is the result of the intertwining effects of the persistent influence of an Indological gaze privileging caste over class (Béteille 1965), the shifting paradigm towards post-structuralism and postcolonial theory (Chibber 2006), as well as the fact that, as suggested by Béteille (2007: 952), ‘intellectuals do not like too much attention to be paid to the class to which they belong’. Pioneer studies of middle classes in India predate the 1980s, and aimed at understanding the colonial origin of middle classes (see for instance: Misra 1961), as well as their development in rural areas alongside the introduction of a market agricultural economy (Béteille 1965). More recently, they have mushroomed in the wake of liberalization policies, somehow leaving some scholars questioning whether the refashioning of the label ‘new middle class’ is anything but a political construct of supporters of economic deregulation (Deshpande 2003; Fernandes 2000). Pioneer work on Indian middle classes is of great importance in mitigating a novelistic approach, oriented towards a definition of the new middle class as ontologically different from its colonial forebears: rural, vernacularly educated, middle-caste, parochial, and neoliberal (the former), as opposed to urban, Western-educated, upper-caste, secular, cosmopolitan and state-oriented (the latter). Béteille’s groundbreaking ethnography (1965) (p.15) stresses for instance the longstanding existence of a provincial middle class formed by agricultural entrepreneurs in rural India. According to Béteille, this upwardly mobile rural middle class was not necessarily involved at the local level in the freedom struggle, nor was it particularly involved in projects of secularization. Nevertheless, what united the urban and rural middle classes was the Congress umbrella organization which spread throughout the country: while the nationalist elite provided the party with a social and political consensus in the cities, the agricultural landowners were able to gather support through patronage at the rural level. In Béteille’s (1965) analysis, the role of the business class remained marginal in the pre-1980s era. However, its socio-economic and political influence has grown throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Its growing strength, and the overall growth and diversification of ‘the middle class’ in India in this period, mirrors the long-term and joint effects of the crisis of the planned economy, the decline of the Congress hegemony, the impact of migration, and the development of the software industry (Bhatia 1994; Brass 1994; Jenkins 1999; Kothari 1993).

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Introduction Relatively recent ethnographies have highlighted the importance of taking into account the subjective and relational dimension of Indian middle-class identities, that is people’s struggles to be recognized as middle class by competing groups, and the anxieties related to the preservation of status within a neoliberal environment due to socio-economic as well as in case of international emigration legal precariousness (Dickey 2011; Donner 2008; Osella and Osella 2000; Vora 2009). This work has paid attention to the ways in which individuals position themselves within class hierarchies by confronting their histories with the ones of competing subjects, and has highlighted the importance of personal and public narrations in the framing of middle-class (plural) realities. The work of Liechty on the emergence of Nepali middle classes holds relevance here. The author (Liechty 2003: 25–6) suggests how the adoption of a narrative approach to the study of middle classes can help to grasp the processual and often unstable character of middle-class formation. By comparing the different stories ‘told’ by people who identify themselves as being ‘in the middle’ we gain a more nuanced understanding of the many coexisting, competing, and often non reconcilable ways in which people make sense and value their trajectories of social mobility. (p.16)

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Introduction Drawing from these considerations, I suggest how the analysis of intergenerational narratives of class mobility offers insights beyond the grand narratives opposing ‘old’ and ‘new’ middle classes, and highlights how people orient themselves through past and present demands of class identity, but also try to reconcile the many contradictory spaces of middle-class everyday life. In this book, I consider kinship memories as a form of narrative (see Bahloul 1992) through which people both connect with and disconnect from temporal processes of class formation. The analysis of kinship memories allows us to see the plural ways in which Nambudiris make sense today of events that haunts (or release) their pasts, and how these events are threaded today in their conceptualizations and experiences, disappointments and desires, about being a middle class vis-à-vis other middle classes and social strata. Through the analysis of family memories we can gain insights on the processual and plural ways in which colonial and postcolonial subjects have engaged with macro processes of class formation and on the role played by kinship in it. Importantly, memory is considered in present analysis not only as a discourse about family history, but as a constitutive feature of kinship in the present (Carsten 2004, 2007). Memory expresses a specific, and yet often shifting, interest on the past (cf. Connerton 1989; Tonkin 1992). Through this interest family relations are not only kept alive across different temporalities, but are also generated in present everyday life and interaction. Importantly, as the analysis developed in the following chapters will show, active interest in the past does not necessarily—or certainly not uniquely—translate into a shared nature of kin memory. Rather, kin lines become the site for the often uneasy coexistence of different interpretations of the past, and of resulting interpretations of how family relations ‘should be’ in the present. In this line, the book aims at mapping the many ways in which recalling among Nambudiris gives shape to the material, ideological, and representational sides of kinship and to understand how family memories voice the tension between middle-classness and the caste/religionbased politics of identity in contemporary Kerala.

A Global Village? Locating the Research

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Introduction Kerala constitutes a very interesting context in which to analyse relationships between class, memory, and kinship. As in other parts of (p.17) India, the emergence of a middle class in Kerala was partly an ‘artificial’ result of colonialism, with specific educational policies introduced in order to meet the administrative requirements of the Raj (Frankel 1988). The colonial delegitimation of Nambudiri Brahmin landlords since the 1920s occurred increasingly alongside the favouring of emerging strata like Nairs, Tamil Brahmins, and Syrian Christians through the enactment of land reforms (Jeffery 1992; Panikkar 1989; Radhakrishnan 1989), by involving these communities in educational and professional training as well as in subsequent migration opportunities (Kurien 2002; Osella and Osella 2000), and by consolidating their presence within the growing state apparatus. Indeed, differently from other parts of India—where the ‘renaissance’ of postcolonial society was mainly led by high-caste Hindu brahmins (Raman 2010)—the transition from a colonial to a postcolonial state meant for Kerala the progressive de-legitimation of the Malayali Brahmin elite and the emergence of new mobile middle classes across religious diversity, often—but not exclusively—supported by a traditional highcaste rank.

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Introduction The state of Kerala was formally created in 1956, out of the merging of former Malabar state (Madras presidency) and the two princely states of Cochin and Travancore. Its foundation resulted from a much longer period where the movement known as aikya Keralam (united Kerala) gathered different social movements—the latter gathering peasants, caste associations, and trade-unions, among others—in the affirmation of a unique regional identity as Malayalis (D. Menon 1999). As Devika (2007b) has shown, the ‘desire for development’ has been intimately linked to the idea of Malayali people as a distinct socio-cultural entity, and as being naturally oriented towards achievements in health, education, and family well-being. The postcolonial history of Kerala development to some extent confirms the success of this collective project. Despite its low GDP and per capita income, Kerala has been ranked first in the country in terms of human development, infant mortality, life expectancy rates (higher than Korea, China, Malaysia), sex ratio (equal to the US and Europe), and of a nearly universal level of literacy. Social achievements were to some extent promoted by the strength of left parties which led to the first democratically elected Communist-led Government in 1957. The success of the Kerala Model of Development (KMD) has been object (p.18) of academic reflections, which have to some extent embraced state rhetoric of self-celebration in order to highlight how development brought with it the corrosion of caste and gender inequalities (among others: Franke and Chasin 1992; Heller 2000; Jeffery 1992, 1994). However, more recent and critical studies have convincingly shown how social development and economic distribution widely bypassed the poorest sections of the population (Herring 1980; Oommen 1994; Radhakrishnan 1980). In this reading the celebration of the KMD is considered as another ‘regime of truth’ (Raman 2010: 4) that obscures persistent and newly reified unequal power relations.

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Introduction The area I selected for my research in Kerala approximately included the port city of Kochi (Ernakulam district), the satellite town of Tankamali,6 and a cluster of villages including Krishnapuram, where a large part of the research was conducted: the overall area develops in a continuum between the northern part of Kochi city and the southern periphery of the smaller town of Thrissur (south Malabar, Thrissur district). This area well reflects the history of class decline and ascendance that overall characterizes the state’s history. Being located in what was during colonial times the border area between south Malabar and Cochin state, the area historically resented both from the delegitimation of traditional landed elites which initially developed in the princely state, as well as from the rise of middle-class reformist movements like the Yoga Kshema Sabha which were particularly active in Thrissur. The area represented a basin for internal and international migration since the 1930s and its contemporary location near the city port of Kochi and the international airport of Ankamali makes it an attractive destination for return migrants and for migrants’ investment of remittances. The social landscape of the villages surrounding Kochi has considerably changed. Old Nambudiri mansions have been progressively demolished or sold to more affluent middle-class families, and the sacred aura of a brahmin’s temple have been somehow challenged by the construction of modern impressive churches, new mosques, and Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam temples or community centres (the latter for exuntouchable yet upwardly mobile Ezhava communities). Furthermore, since the late 1990s, many Nambudiri temples in Krishnapuram have been taken over by trusts led mainly by middle-class Nairs or Varma entrepreneurs. The latter have significantly launched religious activities (p.19) and festivals and contributed to the rebirth of holy centres, which had for long been left in a state of abandonment (Gallo 2007). My fieldwork combined an engagement with, on the one hand, a prolonged and hybrid urban-village ethnography (2000–2; 2004–5; 2008), which translated in frequent movements between my main field location, the village of Krishnapuram as mentioned, and the surrounding rural areas and the city. On the other, it involved a multi-sited strategy implying research in different migrant destinations in Indian cities (Dehli, Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Pune in 2004–5; 2008–9) and short-term visits abroad (London, Rome, Edinburgh, and Dubai, between 2004 and 2011). Villages like Krishnapuram became key research locations within a wider network of related places. In Krishnapuram the interviews were conducted both in Malayalam and in English. Although my knowledge of Malayalam eventually allowed me to follow conversations and to interact on a daily basis, I often relied on the help of a research assistant for the translation and understanding of more complicated concepts and terms. In Indian cities and abroad interviews were mainly conducted in English, often upon the open requests of my interlocutors. A Village in the Network Page 21 of 32

Introduction Krishnapuram represents an ‘urban village area’, with fuzzy contours which are the result of cumulative historical transformations. Its fuzzy character partly originates from its historical development as a collection of residential bunches around the aristocratic abodes of Nambudiri Brahmins. While possessing a sacred authority over property and inhabitants, Nambudiri Brahmins also functioned as key politico-administrative units until the end of the nineteenth century (Mencher and Unni 1976). British land policies significantly transformed Krishnapuram power relations and, from the 1920s onwards, migration gradually connected Krishnapuram to Indian metropolitan areas and to British colonies abroad (Gardner and Osella 2003; Kurien 2002). As in other parts of Kerala and India, the emergence of a modern middle class in colonial times did not, however, significantly challenge traditional configurations of caste-based power beyond Nambudiris, insofar as the process marginalized to a large extent lower castes, untouchables, and Muslims (cf. Osella and Osella 2000 (p.20) ). The reframing of Krishnapuram’s boundaries overlapped with new waves of international mobility from the 1970s onwards (encompassing Europe, the Gulf countries, the US, and Malaysia) and with the unprecedented entry of previously marginalized individuals into mass migration flows. Kinship work found material and symbolic expression in the village through remittances, philanthropic activities, and via investments in houses, hospitals, education, community centres, business, and religious activities. Alongside the expansion of commercial activities in the port city of Kochi, migrants’ investments also drove the simultaneous inclusion of Krishnapuram within expanding municipal boundaries (cf. Shah in Atal et al. 2005). The last three decades have witnessed the accelerated growth of a new middle class drawn from formerly lower-status communities such as ex-untouchable Ezhavas, Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities, and Muslims. They have challenged traditional village power relations by expanding their presence into areas that were once closed to lower castes: they have purchased land and houses from traditional elites, sent their children to good schools, and established economic, religious, and cultural activities that have challenged upper-caste hegemony. Nevertheless, differential access to skilled migration (Gallo 2013), good private secondary education, and health facilities, as well as persistent forms of stigmatization and marginalization, still inform the structures underpinning village power relations.

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Introduction The move to nearby villages, towns, and to Kochi was an important complementary source in understanding kinship histories and memories of people who had left Krishnapuram long ago but remained connected to it imaginatively, emotionally, and materially. As such, I did not see the widening of my research area as antithetical to village ethnography but as a way to make the village a more meaningful location for my interest in kinship, class mobility, and migration (Gallo 2015). In a similar line, my decision to combine parallel and subsequent periods of fieldwork in different migrant destinations followed from the consideration that this better allowed me to understand two important aspects related to my research question on middle-class kinship memories. First, taking into account the affective positioning of those subjects who had left the village—but who had nevertheless remained involved in village politics of identity—offered better (p.21) insights on the polyphonic constitution of middle-class kinship through migrant memories and life histories. Involvement in ‘village affairs’ constituted a way to heal kinship ruptures and to contest the village’s spatial, social, and emotional contours. Second, the merging of village ethnography within what we might define as a ‘multi-sited’ strategy responded to my interest in mapping the relation between class, kinship memories, and material culture. During my time in Kerala, villagers and urban dwellers referred to the existence of diaries, genealogies, and pictures that migrants had taken away with them or that had been produced in the diaspora. Villagers and migrants were starting to share these memories in order to build a new collective identification with the village. As Mines and Yazgi note, ‘villages’ should also be approached as ‘structures of feeling’ and ‘registers of identity’ which people carry with them in the world where they act (Mines and Yazgi 2010: 11, 19). As such, urban middle-class engagement with the refashioning of village activities, and the diasporic production of village memories through material culture, reflect how people are actively involved in the ‘making and unmaking of village communities’ well beyond the blurred boundaries of changing Indian villages (cf. Sax 2010). A multi-sited approach to the study of contemporary middle classes overall met my interest in understanding how different engagements with the past are informed by widespread experiences of geographical mobility, kinship dispersion, and multiple territorial belonging. All of these features are indeed deemed to be constitutive of contemporary middleclass cosmopolitanism, and the Kerala middle classes are exemplary in this respect in so far as they combine exposure to international mobility with persistent belonging to the locality (Osella and Osella 2008).

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Introduction The analysis developed here combines participant observation with the analysis of oral and written narratives, and with a gendered life-history approach. Archive/documentary and limited media research complemented this. A life history approach partly draws from the reconstruction and or sharing of five genealogies covering a period of 150 years (approximately 1860–2005), made possible thanks to the existence of family memories and genealogical trees. Individual diaries were in some cases kindly made available by Nambudiri families and translated into English, while other diaries belong to a rich literature on Kerala history which is increasingly being published in (p.22) English. The research therefore combines attention towards family memories and narratives with a focus on the material objectifications of memories, such as private diaries and family genealogies. This is in keeping with the intention to map how kinship is rooted both in the official recalling of history and in more intimate family memories. Additionally, the analysis is based on a total of 85 semi-structured interviews with Nambudiri families, with 35 of these families belonging to four aristocratic lineages. Interviews were conducted with Nambudiris living in Kerala as well as with migrants residing in India and abroad. Three surveys with 433 Nambudiris were conducted in 2001, 2003–4, and in 2008–9. In addition, 50 interviews and informal conversations involved members of the village and urban middle classes from different caste and religious backgrounds (mainly Nairs, Tamil Brahmins, Ezhavas, Syrian Christians, and Anglo Indians). Importantly, while this book focuses on a specific Brahmin section of the contemporary Malayali middle classes, it does so by adopting a relational and dialogic approach that takes into account the trajectories of other emergent Keralan middle classes across caste and religious differences (see also Osella and Osella 2000). Fieldwork Relations, Closeness, and Distance

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Introduction As a ‘white’, ‘western’, and ‘middle-class’ woman enrolled in a doctoral programme, I was often accorded privileged status by many Nambudiri Brahmins, thus allowing me to be identified as a person with whom it was ‘appropriate’ to share personal histories. Tellingly, I was perceived as a privileged traveler myself—someone close to a skilled migrant—and therefore in line with the recent success of younger Nambudiri generations in entering the professional flow. Being ‘an elite among the elites’ (Burghart 1990) contributed to produce a kind of emotional closeness with my informants: they were eager to share often painful kinship memories, often on the premise that as a researcher living abroad I had acquired the sensibility to listen to and understand other people’s concerns. Yet this closeness was also partly built upon folk notions of caste exclusivity, which rested on an association between the ‘sophisticatedness’ of elite status, a higher education level, and the capacity to create empathy in relation to histories of emotional distress. My presence in the (p.23) field was often contrasted with the ‘vulgarity’ and ‘material lifestyle’ of Malayali nouveaux riches and of unskilled migrants, who were deemed to lack the necessary cultural sensibility to understand the sufferings of the declining elite. However, I refrained from the possibility of being associated exclusively with an exclusive caste milieu (cf. Jodhka 1998) and my field relations also implied open moments of confrontation with more conservative Nambudiris, but also with Nairs and Syrian Christians. My decision not to stick to caste rules or religious boundaries and to mingle freely with people from a different class, caste, and religious background often created tensions with my Nambudiri acquaintances, and in few circumstances led to my banning from their houses. Emotional closeness coexisted in my experience with prolonged, and often ill-concealed, moments of personal irritation towards discriminative attitudes, fact that led to tensions and sometimes to a break in field relations. Attitudes, however, varied considerably across urban/rural divides, age and generation, and migration histories. My critical stances often found an open door among more liberal Nambudiris, and in a considerable number of cases, this was related to generational experience of inter-caste or inter-religious marriages.

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Introduction Indeed, emotional sharing with my Nambudiri interlocutors had both a gendered and generational dimension. My relations with migrant women of different ages and with men in their sixties were often framed around a tension-free complicity. Women often ironized with me on the normative expectations surrounding their mobility as pioneer migrants. For instance, they ironically addressed those male village fellows who believed that, as ‘virgin cosmopolitans’, migrant women should not engage in any pre-marriage sexual relations abroad. This expression gave voice to what women perceived as the inconsistency between men’s showing-off of ‘modern’ lifestyles and their ‘narrow ideas about women’s lives’, to quote one of my acquaintances. The expression ‘virgin cosmopolitan’ also provocatively questioned whether men ought to remain virgin while living ‘here and there in search of good jobs and good company’, as another woman commented. Women’s use of irony in my presence often aimed at establishing a common understanding of the difficulties related to living in a patriarchal society, where women’s movement and life choices were often publicly scrutinized. Yet irony also simultaneously (p.24) challenged a specific gendered understanding of family relations (Raheja and Gold 1994). Older women in particular could be more carefree regarding social norms in comparison to young unmarried women, as they had already accomplished many of the duties usually associated with their life cycles (marriage, reproduction, and the raising of children). During my research in Kerala I was aged between my late twenties and midthirties. Interestingly, the generational difference between these women and me rarely inhibited the sharing of emotionally charged histories. Independently from my age, my socio-geographical provenance as a ‘western’ woman was seen by them as a sufficient grounding on which to expect me to share their irritation and impatience towards restrictive gendered behavioural codes. Somewhat similarly, my relationship with migrant Nambudiri men in their sixties was framed by a mutual understanding of the limits of caste and gender codes. Nambudiris who had experienced and/or contradicted the normative aspects of caste affiliation—albeit as members of an elite—were much more straightforwardly critical of their own caste and household membership than those who had not.

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Introduction My relations with Malayali migrant men aged between their thirties and early fifties were very different. Men in this age group tended to be more suspicious about my ability as a ‘western’ student to understand their histories. Gender and generational hierarchies were often reaffirmed by treating me as a young, inexperienced student who needed guidance from a knowledgeable Brahmin. Tellingly, Nambudiris were also adamant in discouraging me from engaging in fieldwork relations with lower-caste individuals. While this fragment of Nambudiri society engaged with the contradictions of their community and family history, in comparison to women and to older generations, they were also much keener to make it clear to me that Malayalis had retained more of a family culture as opposed to the ‘decadence of Western families’. Statements like ‘we have family troubles but you have no families!’ often accompanied moments of memory sharing to reassert a distance between ‘them’ and ‘me’. In a partly similar vein, the decision to spend time with Nambudiris in India and abroad generated tensions in my fieldwork relations. My return to Krishnapuram after periods spent in London or Delhi sometimes caused jealousy among Krishnapuram villagers over the more (p.25) personalized access I had to village histories or to written documents, or provoked irritation over the possibility that these memories might disclose a less clear-cut portrait of family history and class mobility.

The Chapters This book looks at class simultaneously as a temporal trajectory, a set of claims, and a whole of heterogeneous intergenerational realities, and takes into account different and interrelated dimensions of family life as these pertain to the affective, material, experiential, and normative elements of kinship among Nambudiri middle classes. I begin by delving into the debate over the appropriateness of ‘traditional’ Nambudiri kinship that developed alongside colonial reformism and middle-class community organizations.

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Introduction Chapter 1 sets the Indian and Malayali historical context in which the ‘Yoga Kshema Sabha’ (YKS) and Nambudiri Yuva Jana Sangham (YJS) developed to voice the reformist ambitions of young Nambudiris and to carry forward related gendered projects of family, educational, and lifestyle transformations. Yoga Kshema Sabha and YJS ethos will be discussed in relation to the colonial delegitimation of indigenous kinship and to the broader history of kinship reform that has marked the middle classes in Kerala and India. An analysis of YKS documents will highlight how the debate on kinship expressed the aim of drawing a ‘divine elite’ into the arena of inter-community competition and the place of reformed domesticity in this process. Chapter 1 opens the way to subsequent analysis of how the politics of middle-class identity in the early twenty-first century is able to revitalize a fragment of the colonial past by connecting (or disconnecting) family and individual histories from the grand narratives of class transformations (see Arnold and Blackburn 2004; Mookherjee 2013), while also reframing institutionalized history in the more intimate idioms of intergenerational relations. Chapter 2 indeed moves on to explore the generational dimension of Nambudiri class engagements with reform movements, and threads this into a discussion on the position held by Nambudiris in Kerala society. It analyses the various ways in which Nambudiris lineages engaged with YKS and YJS and how persistent inequalities within this community in terms of status and health remain (p.26) central in preventing the formation of solid and long-lasting community organizations. Indeed, land reform, emigration, educational attainments differently involved Nambudiris throughout twentieth century history, creating at times spaces of pioneer class renewal and yet also of major and prolonged decline. This chapter also discusses how Nambudiri class trajectories are perceived in Kerala today by other Malayalis, and the impact that this has on Nambudiri kinship memories. It is suggested that, in a state where the invalidation of traditional hierarchies is ideologically celebrated to support modern achievements, any attachment to past privileges on the part of the old elite is publicly condemned. The fact that Nambudiris are today widely perceived in oppositive terms to Malayali modernity produces tensions and uncertainties over the suitability of past status in forging contemporary class identity, and brings them to hold an ambivalent position towards their kinship past.

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Introduction Chapter 3 will discuss how memories of the YKS are produced in contemporary Kerala through the material production of diaries and autobiographies. It delves into the dialectic of ‘oppression’ and ‘liberation’ from existing gendered kinship relations as they are articulated in women’s and men’s memories and generational experiences. The chapter will explore why, and in what circumstances, diaries become a suitable way to narrate histories, the particular relationships they frame between present and past, and how their messages are received by Malayalis. The analysis of diaries is revealed to be important in order to trace continuities and discontinuities between the official rhetoric of the YKS—as voiced through its written propaganda—and the ways in which YKS ‘kinship revolution’ is differently constituted through family recalling and emotional suffering. Particular attention is given to the ways in which past intergenerational relations are conceived by elderly people whose lives have been directly involved in or influenced by the YKS. It is suggested that, while official diaries emerge as an elitist exercise in renounced nobility, other diaries deeply criticise the orthodoxies of the YKS to show how real and substantial transformation in kinship relations occurred through Nambudiris mingling with the rest of society across religious, caste, and territorial diversity. Chapter 4, along with Chapters 5 and 6, explore how the recalling of family history in terms of ‘collective suffering’ materializes in (p.27) contemporary kinship affective, relational, and normative apparatuses. Chapter 4 examines Nambudiri houses and the place they hold in the material phenomenology of kinship memories. Houses are understood here not only as ‘private’ domestic places but as domains where families’ engagement with political history is expressed, visualized (or hidden) in internal spatial dispositions, in the presentation of objects, in the daily routine, and in consumption practices. Indeed, houses are conceived as sites where kinship is made by either reproducing the past, or by searching a distance from it. The social and symbolic significance of past Illams architecture (Nambudiri ancestral houses) is contrasted with the meanings ascribed to present middle-class dwellings and to the way people choose to inhabit the latter. The relation between gender, class mobility, and kinship will be developed by comparing middle-class Nambudiri men and women narratives.

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Introduction Chapter 5 explores the meanings of genealogical records for the legitimation or critique of contemporary marriages, and particularly of love and/or intercommunity unions. The production and keeping of genealogical records and graphs can be seen as a relatively widespread exercise among Nambudiris, partly reflecting their status aspirations. This chapter will argue that the notes and narratives that accompany middle-class genealogies substantially contradict the aspiration of the YKS to create a ‘pure’ community of equal caste membership. While the YKS envisaged a genuine community of brahmins in which inter-caste marriages had no place, genealogical recalling unsettles the suitability of ‘proper kinship’ and points to the necessity of crossing borders in order to successfully achieve middle-class status. Chapter 6 discusses how different family models—joint, nuclear, transnational, among others—are linked to class mobility among Nambudiri migrant families. In this context, the question of the relation between family size, sterilization, and citizenship is analysed to show how sticking to the ‘one-child’ model is made meaningful by referring to a wider colonial history of family reproduction and creates dilemmas in the present. This chapter discusses how histories of procreation, childbirth, and care are recalled to illustrate the progressive move from a ‘sterile community’ to a ‘responsible community’. While the ‘sterile community’ describes a colonial past in which few Nambudiri children were born or accepted due to orthodox kinship norms, the ‘responsible community’ accepts the (p.28) sacrifice represented by sterilization in order to achieve models of modern motherhood and fatherhood. Changing family sizes, if combined with generational forms of migration, also produces anxieties among middle-class families on elderly and children care, a topic that is discussed at the end of this section. Chapter 7 looks at intergenerational engagement with brahmins’ contemporary politics of identity through the perspective of irony. It delves into how older sections of Nambudiri society critically engage with contemporary political uses of the past for class claims and community building by neo-orthodox Nambudiri youth. This section analyses the formation of the modern YKS in the 1990s, as promoted by educated Nambudiris—often living in the diaspora—to counter the (supposedly) persistent subordination of the community to more successful middle-class strata. This new generation lacks direct or close historical experience with the YKS, one of the reasons why elders regard the movement’s new avatar with disdain. Newly orthodox positions on the proscription of intercommunity marriage, the higher status of brahmins, or the rediscovery of Sanskrit education and of life cycle rituals (samskaras), are highly criticized by elder generations and often create conflicts between parents and children. The chapter suggests how contemporary attempts to reframe a fragment of ‘glorious history’, rather than allowing middle-class Nambudiris to escape from the ‘backward’ public representation, have the effect of exacerbating public perceptions of Nambudiris as the embodied antinomy of the present. Page 30 of 32

Introduction The conclusions thread the discussion to argue for a reconsideration of the place hold by kinship in postcolonial trajectories of social mobility. The reading of present middle-class modernities through the lens of kinship recalling and experiences provides a necessary balance to the ongoing focus on new middle classes as mainly enmeshed in political activism and economic strategies of mobility. The book closes by suggesting how, among Malayali middle classes, the historical move from nationalist engagement towards contemporary liberalization has been accompanied by the questioning of any kinship project based on unproblematic ideas of joint family, caste purity, and intergenerational hierarchies. In the process, alternative ways of conceiving kinship have emerged, based on the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, as well as on the necessity of territorial, caste, (p.29) and religious mingling. Importantly, kinship recalling emerges as a salient and constitutive component in connecting past and present middle-class experiences and in moulding political orientations and projects of social mobility. Middle-class identities are framed today not only by a nostalgic attachment to an idealized past, in which kinship constitutes either a shelter from turbulent history or a space of sociability characterized by loss and longing. Rather, contemporary claims for social mobility are premised upon a historically grounded reconsideration of the importance of kinship connections and disconnections, where ruptures are deemed necessary in order to actively enter into mainstream history. Notes:

(1.) Passages in quotes are taken from the English translation of the novel. (2.) For a detailed discussion on gendered family and kinship reforms in colonial times, see Chapter 1. (3.) See Chapter 1 for a discussion on Nambudiri reformist movements. (4.) For an exception to this overall tendency see the work of Osella and Osella (2000) about caste status and middle-class trajectories among the exuntouchable Izhavas in Kerala. (5.) For a comprehensive and critical overview of the different positions developed by Marxist and Weberian approaches see (among others): Prezworsky 1985; Wacquant 1991. (6.) With the exception of Kochi/Ernakulam, the other location names have been changed. The Block Panchayat is an administrative unit that was created following Indian Independence (1947) and the formation of the Kerala state (1956). It usually comprises several villages. Tankamali Block Panchayat embraced eight villages.

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Some Moments in History

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Some Moments in History Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords Chapter one sets the historical context in which both nationalist and middleclass reformist movements developed in colonial Kerala and India across caste, class, gender, and religious diversity. It focuses on the reformist movements known as the Yoga Kshema Sabha (henceforth YKS) and Nambudiri Yuva Jana Sangham (YJS) which developed at the beginning of the twentieth century to voice the class ambitions of young Nambudiri Brahmins. The YKS and YJS ethos will be discussed in relation to the colonial de-legitimation of indigenous kinship and to the broader history of gender reform that has marked the middle classes in Kerala. An analysis of YKS documents will highlight how the debate on kinship expressed the aim of drawing a ‘divine elite’ into the arena of inter-community competition and the place of reformed domesticity in this process. Keywords:   colonial domesticity, gender, caste, middle-class reformisms, Yoga Kshema Sabha, Yuva Jana Sangham

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Some Moments in History THE EXCEPTIONALITY OF NAMBUDIRI PATRILINEAL kinship, and specifically the peculiar relation of intimacy and distance linking this community to matrilineal Nairs, has attracted anthropological gaze since the first decades of the twentieth century (Aiyappan 1941; Fawcett 1900; Gough 1952, 1956; Mencher 1962).1 Kinship norms on conjugality and inheritance were determinant in ensuring the preservation of Nambudiri higher status within Malayali caste and class hierarchies (Dumont 1961; Mencher 1966; P.K.P. Menon 1937). Particularly among abhijaata (aristocratic) families2 the unity of illakkar (lineage members) was partly assured through a relatively rigid principle of primogeniture and differential marriage system (adhivedanam) between the firstborn and the cadets. While the eldest son could enter into endogamic and polygamous marriages (veli)3—alongside having sambandham with Nair women —for younger sons sambandham with Nair women represented the only chance to enter legitimate unions. According to genealogies, veli was allowed to cadets only in exceptional circumstances such as the demographic decline of the mana (patrilineal lineage) or the death of the eldest son. Primogeniture allowed abhijaata families to select meticulously the eldest son’s spouse from equally ranked but non-related lineages (Mencher 1966; Puthenkalam 1977), the lack of this possibility resulting in frequent men’s monogamy or women’s (p.31) spinsterhood. Polygamous marriages could also cause young women to remain prematurely widowed as second or third wives of a much older husband. The well known ‘symbiotic relation’ between Nambudiris and Nairs (Mencher and Goldberg 1967: 87) had a peculiar class connotation for abhijaata families in central Kerala. Sambandham provided Nambudiris with connections to affluent and politically powerful matrilineal lineages (Dumont 1961a; Gough 1952), particularly with the royal Varma family of Thripunithura. For Nambudiris, the possibility to regard cadets’ descendants as ‘non-parents’ (Tarabout 1990: 83), through their ascription to maternal taravad (lineage/home), meant not only preserving social distance with Nairs but also to limit the demographic growth of the mana and potentially frequent partition of land and property. Whilst cadets remained part of the community, their exclusion from the veli (sacred marriage) prevented them from undergoing the processes of transformation induced by the celebration of some important samskaras (such as the veli) and from the future perspective of becoming a bharathavu (husband) and a kudumbanathan (householder), that is the founder of a new descent line. Somehow, the perpetuation of joint living models—of the lineage interests, qualities, and ambitions—could be partly achieved through the estrangement of apphans (younger sons) from otherwise constitutive gendered kinship roles.

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Some Moments in History The ambivalence and fragilities of the Nambudiri kinship system should not be conceived as a unique product of colonial policies and early twentieth-century Malayali reformism. Available family records register since the early nineteenth century events of aajaras (breaking of customs), in which competition between different lineage members erupted in unaccepted endogamic marriages of younger lineage male members and to the subsequent formation of new lineage branches. These marriages could result out of contrasts opposing the firstborns of different Nambudiri wives (of the same lineage head) as well as the latter with apphans. In both cases ‘unorthodox endogamic marriages’—that is those marriages within the caste that involved Nambudiri men who were in principle excluded from the veli—were the product of relatively frequent claims of a more equal distribution of inheritance and conjugal rights within the mana. Nevertheless, the 1920s mark a shift in the way internal lineage controversies start to be framed and expressed in the public sphere. (p.32) Indeed, in this period, colonial gaze intertwines with Malayali middle-class reformism in restituting an image of Nambudiris as a once glorious and yet declining community and in opposing to this portrait the much more promising association between family modernity and national progress (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007a; Fuller 1976; Kodoth 2001; Yesudas 1978). It is in this context that family hierarchies and gendered generational relations started to be contested in a renewed vein. In this chapter I draw from existing historical studies on Indian and Malayali colonial history to discuss how Malayali community movements—specifically the YKS and the YJS—started to redefine the contours of Nambudiri family life by engaging at once with nationalist and leftist positions. The intent is, first, to apprehend the work of Nambudiri community organizations within the wider context of Indian middle-class reforms, and to highlight similarities and differences between the two contexts. Second, the analysis shall delve into the way in which Nambudiri reformed caste membership was linked to a project of kinship reform which, while framed in a revolutionary language, eventually intended to reassert community privileges. The aim is to highlight those projects, aims, and languages that, since the early twentieth century, seized considerable importance in the public arena to voice ambivalent projects of community modernisation (Joshi 2001; T. Sarkar 1992; Walsh 2004). This discussion, I suggest, provides an important background against which to apprehend contemporary memories of class mobility and how middle classes engage today with the colonial de-legitimation of indigenous kinship in order to assert gendered family models in the present. The importance of the movement emerges also in relation to the specific language used by its members to advocate a modernist ethic of community transformation, a language that still influences the way in which contemporary middle classes imagine their own historical trajectories: as a necessary transformation from gods (deyvam) to human beings (manushyan). Page 3 of 32

Some Moments in History Domesticity and Colonialism in India The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a public sphere where power relations between the colonial presence and Indian nationalist middle classes were voiced through the (p.33) formation of religious and political associations. The development of print culture led to a rich range of magazines, periodicals, instruction manuals, or morally edifying tracts which debated the ‘fashioning of a new collective Hindu identity’ and represented ‘chief cultural resources for reformers, caste-associations and neo-Hindu ideologues’ (Gupta 2001: 10–11). Although reading remained confined to a limited class, importantly it also became a ‘non-specialized, fluid, pervasive everyday activity’ (T. Sarkar 1992: 216) which voiced popular debate and criticism.4 Nationalist interrogation of power relations was not confined to questions of political structure and economic development, but embraced indigenous customs and traditions, including the relevant domain of gendered domestic relations and gendered subjectivities (Banerjee 2004; Bose 1997; Chatterjee 1990; Orsini 2002; T. Sarkar 1992; Walsh 2004). The new imagined Indian nation, it was envisaged, would be born out of refashioned gendered selves within the domains of conjugality, patriarchal relations, sexuality, and parental care: in this light, practices such as sati, child marriage, or polygamy were increasingly placed under the scrutiny of both colonial and nationalist reformers (Fuller and Narasimhan 2013; Sinha 2006). As Nijhawan has noted, a process of sanitization of the emerging middle classes partly resulted from their ambivalent engagement with the civilizing rhetoric promoted by British writers, which identified in women’s conditions the litmus test for the progress and wellbeing of a nation (Nijhawan 2008). This engagement with colonial constructions resulted in a dialectic exercise of appropriation and transformation of the contents and purposes of original colonial interpretations (Nijhawan 2008). The formation of a new desired model of womanhood and manhood became not only a key element in the framing of middle-class identities but, even more crucially, the ‘ground of the debate’ in the definition of national identity and in the confrontation between Western and Indian society (Mani 1989: 29; Sinha 1995). Importantly, middle-class projection of new gendered models domestic life aimed at multiple acts of distinction: from colonial rule and from the ‘vulgarity’ of the Indian masses (P. Chatterjee 1990; Malhotra 2002), as well as from the Muslim ‘other’ (Sarkar and Vaid 1990). The framing of modern middleclass identity implied also a public politics of collective memory through the rediscovery (read (p.34) construction) of an idealized pre-colonial existence of pure Hindu ‘community’ traditions, which were largely derived from Orientalist constructions (Chakravarti 1990; Thapar 1989).

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Some Moments in History Historians writing within the subaltern studies tradition agree by now that colonized Indians ‘did not remain simple-hearted victims of colonialism’ but ‘became participants in a moral and cognitive venture against oppression’ (Nandy 1983: xvi) and against the structure of meanings through which the British had come to understand them (see Cohn 1996). In this respect, Indian middle-class reformers were far from performing ‘mimetic gestures’ of colonial language and codes (T. Sarkar 1992). Historical critique has nevertheless offered different interpretations of the nature of middle-class responses to colonial gendered constructions of Indian domestic relations. Partha Chatterjee has argued how the development of a nationalist paradigm was premised not so much upon a rejection of Western modernity as upon an ‘ideological principle of selection’ (P. Chatterjee 1990: 240) that aimed at making modernity consistent with nationalist projects. The dialectic of complicity and difference that drove Indian encounter with colonialism resulted in a strategic separation of the domain of culture into two spheres, the material (public) and the spiritual (private). In nationalist agendas the material sphere represented the site of expression of Western superior power, while the ‘Indian’ home constituted the untouched and spiritually pure self of the nation. According to Chatterjee, this prompted nationalists towards a defensive attitude with respect to ‘traditional’ patriarchal family norms, which they held should be at once rediscovered and protected from an inimical foreign rule. If the home constituted the repository of the true Indian identity, women had the specific duty to preserve its spiritual existence by subscribing to renewed models of respectability. While women’s education, travel, or employment could be accepted, they should maintain ‘traditional’ habits of clothing, eating, and religious observance (P. Chatterjee 1990: 248–50). In a similar line, Dipesh Chakrabarty (1994: 85–6) has shown how in framing a modernist idea of the respectable Bengali woman (bhadramahila) the nationalist agenda selectively engaged with the crucial question of freedom, by opposing the ‘Western’ interpretation of the term as ‘right to self-indulgence’ to the ‘Indian’ reading of it as ‘liberation from the ego, the capacity to serve and obey voluntarily’. This interpretation (p.35) drove Bengali conceptualization of the ‘modern private’ not in terms of a Western bourgeois model of the nuclear family and companionate marriage, but of a refined expression of the ‘Indian’ patriarchal and extended family.5

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Some Moments in History Tanika Sarkar analysis (1992) nuances the tendency to interpret Indian nationalist redefinition of Hindu domesticity mainly in terms of a reaction to the colonial state, and points out to the fundamental distinctions between middleclass reformers and Hindu nationalists, as well as to the critique developed in women’s writing since the 1860s. Sarkar notes that liberal reformers interpreted the Hindu domestic customs of the time as a sign of decay of past ideal conditions, whereas nationalists celebrated the Hindu home in its pure and uncontaminated forms. She underlines how women’s critique of nationalist projects to define a modern patriarchy—as well as their advocacy of the right to education—originated from their active participation in the public sphere and reflected the proliferation of different—and often contrasting—positions within the middle-class feminist agenda (see also Nijhawan 2008). Devika (2007a) also warns us against the simplistic dichotomization between (assumedly homogeneous) the engagement of men and women with middle-class reformism, or against the assumption that women were placed in an uncomplicated relation with dominant middle-class men. Access to knowledge and the public sphere was framed not only around gender lines but also by internal community differences and inequalities, which involved both men and women.6

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Some Moments in History The complex relationship between middle-class reformism, nationalism, and the colonial state is further problematized by Sanjay Joshi (2001) in his study of colonial Lucknow. Joshi criticizes the tendency in subaltern studies to interpret the ethos and purposes of middle-class reformism as mainly driven by the contestation between nationalists and the colonial state. For the author, Indian middle-class engagement with modernity cannot be interpreted exclusively in terms of a defensive attitude towards the colonial state nor exclusively as a process producing alternative modernities from Western ones. The ambivalence of middle-class modernity was not only a product of colonialism. Rather the ambivalence and contradictions that characterized middle-class reformists agenda stemmed from the fact that India (and well beyond) ‘modern politics unleashed by the (p.36) middle classes […] simultaneously spoke in the voice of reason and sentiment, of the need to preserve tradition and initiate radical change, advocated liberty and authoritarianism, equality and hierarchy, often at the same time’ (Joshi 2001: 179, emphasis mine). This becomes particularly evident in the domain of modern gender relations and, specifically, of womanhood models promoted in the first decades of the twentieth century. According to Joshi, middle-class women did not embrace a unique ideal-type of feminist politics, nor were they at once critical of all aspects of patriarchy. Rather, by selectively engaging with the possibilities and limitations of gender reforms, women were able to create a space for their own agendas while simultaneously facing men’s attempts to create new forms of control. In this respect, the modernity that resulted from the gendered politics of middle-class identity was at once ‘oppressive and liberatory’, insofar as it ‘neither allowed for untrammelled male patriarchy, nor for autonomous feminist politics’ (Joshi 2001: 94–5). Joshi’s analysis does not delve into how middle-class gendered reformism influenced shifting kinship norms and family relations. Nevertheless, his analysis is important for understanding the way in which, in colonial Kerala, kinship reforms resulted—in the words of our Sicilian middle-class heroes—from contradictory and ambivalent attempts to ‘change everything to preserve everything’ at once.

Declining Elites and Colonial Disdain

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Some Moments in History As in the wider context of India, the formation of a Malayali public sphere took place in a setting where new values began to become fashionable’ (Devika 2007a: 31), and older socio-political hierarchies, cultural values, and domestic moralities gave way to new ones. The understanding of shifting gendered kinship models should be located within the wider analysis of shifting power relations in colonial south India, a process that took relatively different shapes in the three areas making today modern Kerala. In Malabar (Madras Presidency) direct British rule translated—at least until the 1920s—into policies aimed at strengthening the properties and rights of the landed aristocracy (Panikkar 1989; Radhakrishnan 1989). Differently, in the formally independent princely states of Travancore and Cochin the progressive erosion of traditional jenmi (p.37) status accompanied the emergence of a new class of usually high-status kanakkar (tenants) mainly but not exclusively composed of Hindu Nairs, Syrian Christians, and Tamil Brahmins. This new class capitalized on land property to invest in educational and labour possibilities within the growing administrative systems (Franke 1992; Gough 1965; Jeffery 1992; Lemercinier 1984). Between the early nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century the expropriation in the Cochin state of a large portion of devaswom—land annexed to religious properties such as temples—from Brahmin lineages accelerated not only ongoing processes of land distribution but also the progressive decline of the godly status of Nambudiris. Tarabout notes how the concept of jenmi— particularly when related to Nambudiris—held the interrelated meanings of property ownership and divine rights on the territories controlled and on its inhabitants.7 The idea of janman was indeed strictly linked to the godly status of brahmins (Tarabout 1986, 1990). Furthermore, in both Travancore and Cochin states, the abolition of hereditary positions within the state apparatus and colonial projects to form a new class of officers trained in modern education accompanied the progressive removal of Nambudiris from key government positions—taken up mainly by Tamil Brahmins, Nairs, and Syrian Christians— and weakened their political and cultural influence (Fuller 1976; Mencher 1966). This was coupled with Nambudiris’ low rate of attendance at the growing numbers of English-medium schools which had been set up since the 1840s (C.A. Menon 1911).

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Some Moments in History The progressive decline of Nambudiri status should also be partly explained in relation to the particular favour with which Christian communities were regarded by British officers, and to resulting politics of communalism that essentialized caste and religious differences (Yesudas 1978). Unlike in the rest of India, where brahmins were identified as a class of highly educated and refined subjects and as potential loyal supporters of the Raj, in Kerala the British progressively moved to privilege Syrian Christians. They were mainly attracted by the possibility of training a high-status community of a similar confession. Yet, while Syrian Christians actively took up the educational possibilities promoted by the British and entered into skilled emigration as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and nurses both in India and in the colonies (Bayly 1984; Visvanathan 1993), (p. 38) they actively resisted any form of Latinization or association with the Protestant Church (Devika and Varghese 2010), and the British increasingly turned to other high-status groups such as Hindu Nairs and Tamil Brahmins (Fuller 1976), as well as to the lower-status Latin Catholics (Yesudas 1978). This period was overall witness to a progressive shift in the way Nambudiris were represented in public documents by both colonial and Malayali society. Until the beginning of the twentieth century depictions of Nambudiris as deyvam were inspired by the secluded life of this community and by its association with the highest expressions of ritual and religious knowledge (see Fawcett 1900; Thurston 1909; Census 1875). Following decades witness a growing disdain towards Nambudiris from British society and progressive Malayalis, who compared the decadent state of the jenmis with the one of progressive communities. The following passage, taken from a Malayali observer of the time (Iyer 1912: 287–8) is indicative of how the changing mood of the time portrayed the old aristocracy:

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Some Moments in History They [Nambutiri] have also fallen intellectually from their once lofty position […]The two richly endowed Vedic Institutions at Trichur in the State, and at Tirunavai in south Malabar, intended for the study of Rig Veda, are not properly attended by the Nambudiri Bramacharis of all parts of Cochin, Malabar and Travancore. Nor is the discipline in them very commendable. The old Sanskrit college near Trichur is now almost deserted. Thus they no longer care for the sacred learning of their forefathers. […] They are not advancing, nor have they any inclination to advance with the progress of modern times; and they are completely outbeaten in the race of progress by their Adyals (Sudra), the Nayars. The junior members are forbidden to marry in their own community and have no voice in the affairs of the families: and therefore the feeling of responsible cooperation on the part of unmarried males does not exist or is fast dying out in the family organization. Living in a land of charity and finding no difficulty for maintenance owing to the liberality of the rulers, chieftains and others, they find no necessity to rise above the struggle for existence which prevails in other castes. They appear to be contented with the lot in which they are cast and have no higher ambition. In this respect they are a marked contrast to the other brahmins. While during every ten years, the population of every caste is steadily increasing in the State, the strength of the Nambudiri is steadily diminishing. This is especially owing to the marriage of a large number of their girls at an (p.39) advanced age, some remaining in celibacy for a long time, and owing also to the marriage of the junior members outside their own community. The women are kept in utter ignorance. […] There can be no doubt that they are going down, and unless they wake up and rise to the occasion they will lose their status and be forgotten. Similarly, in the Malabar Commission Report—published in 1891 to voice the opinions of the commission appointed by the Madras Presidency to investigate the morality of sambandham—we read (MMCR 1891: 64): The Nambutiri instead of taking the lead in every intellectual pursuit, as do the Brahmins in other parts of India, have become enervated to such an extent that it would be difficult to find more than a few who have mastered the Grammar and the Syntax which is the chief vehicle of their sacred text. Most of them get no further than committing a number of slokas (verses) to memory. Not only do they refuse altogether to tread the path of knowledge opened up to them by a barbarian Government, but it is rare to find one of them who has studied the literature of their own vernacular. Still, E.M.S. Nambudiripad (1943: 4) retrospectively points out how the persistent (if decaying) aristocracy of the jenmis is at odds with their backwardness in terms of education and progressive attitudes:

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Some Moments in History The new class of educated young men and officers were politically and culturally far more advanced than their landlords who, however, were economically and socially dominant in the countryside. The very state which made them politically independent of the jenmis made them much more dependent economically on those same jenmis. A Thasildar or a Police Inspector or a Sub-Judge is part of a machine which deals with jenmies as with any other citizen, but individuals who are appointed to these posts are socially and economically dependent on some of these jenmies. The officer has innumerable opportunities of bossing over the jenmis as over the rest of the people, but the jenmi can evict his family from the house in which it lives. The educated and professional man with a wide outlook and a sturdy sense of self-respect has to humiliate himself before the narrow-minded and conceited ignoramus who is his landlord. There are many elements of interest in the passages outlined above. The first one relates to the progressive de-legitimation of the material and ideological means underpinning Nambudiris’ traditional (p.40) privileges. Devika (2007a: 6–7) notes how since the late twentieth century the fact that the condition of Malayali Brahmins could be discussed as ‘an issue of public concern’ represents a point of caesura, insofar as this was an unthinkable act of disrespect in the older order. Public criticism crucially addressed what were perceived as the double-edged limitations of a fading elite. First, there was the decline of the traditional cultural and intellectual values of a community that was expected to represent the distinctiveness and superiority of the ‘Malayali race’ vis-à-vis the colonial presence. In this respect, Nambudiris’ abandonment of traditional ritual and religious Hindu knowledge and the state of ‘lavish decay’ in which they indulged made them unsuitable symbols for Hindu reformers in the recreation of a valuable Hindu past. But this betrayal of traditional values was exacerbated in the eyes of colonial society by Nambudiris’ equally damaging reluctance to take up English education as a means of collective transformation, education being one of the most important ‘marketable skills’ within middle-class politics of identity (Joshi 2001: 7). As such, Nambudiris somehow betrayed both nationalist claims for a reconstructed Hindu superiority as well as reformist advocacy for radical change.

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Some Moments in History Second, and relatedly, the passages above illustrate a growing ideological dichotomization of high-status elites, which would highly influence Malayali middle-class trajectories in later decades. A successful middle class able to combine traditional pedigree with modern achievements—namely Syrian Christians and Hindu Nairs—was distinguished from a class of god-like rulers who considered themselves ‘too aristocratic to enter the public world’ (Joshi 2001: 12) and thus failed to frame novel forms of social exclusivism. The above considerations lead us to the third point of interest that is, the ideological association between the project of Malayali modernity and the critique of the gendered norms and relations underpinning matrilineal systems. Indeed, given the symbiotic relations binding Nambudiris and Nairs, the progressive interrogation of the marumakattayam system and of sambandham relations by colonial and reformist society affected the contours of family life well beyond the Nair community, and interrogated also the future existences of Nambudiri men and women (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007a).

(p.41) Building Progressive Keralam As mentioned, transformations in ‘traditional’ hierarchies were shaped by the ongoing interaction between the colonial state and emerging community organizations. The early twentieth century witnessed the establishment of two important caste-based organizations among lower-ranked communities, which went on to influence the language and content of Nambudiri Brahmin organizations: the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (henceforth SNDP) which, under the leadership of Sree Narayana Guru, advocated transformations for the untouchable community of Ezhavas; and the Nair Service Society (NSS), which aimed at giving traditional upper-caste privileges new material and symbolic foundations. The formation of community organizations was partly the result of the colonial state’s tendency to engage with indigenous groups on the basis of reified notions of ‘caste’, the latter conceived as the primary source of identification in Indian society (Bayly 1984; Dirks 2001; Inden 1990). In parallel, people’s membership of transforming collectivity was conceived as conducive to building modern citizenship (Frietag 1996). Importantly, nationalist ideals emerging throughout the subcontinent were mainly absorbed and voiced in Kerala through the work of caste-based reformist movements (D. Menon 1994). Furthermore, the initial influence of the Congress Party in Kerala, particularly from the 1930s onwards, also progressively overlapped and coexisted with that of leftist parties (D. Menon 1994; Radhakrishnan 1989).

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Some Moments in History Community organizations aimed at negotiating with the state in order to seize available resources by appropriating the language and content of reforms in their own terms,8 and their agenda was considerably influenced by Syrian Christians’ pursuit of values of entrepreneurship, education, and modernization. Colonial politics supported community claims in different ways but remained, at least until the 1930s, largely centred on the support of higher status groups. One of the reasons advanced against the Malayali Memorandum—the latter presented in 1891 Travancore by some reformist Ezhava (alongside Nairs, Christians, and a limited section of young Nambudiris) to claim for positions in the administrative and bureaucratic state apparatus—was that Ezhava held lower status and were not educated enough to gain access to state offices (Bayly 1984; Jeffery 1992; Lemercinier 1984). Nevertheless, and despite colonial ostracism, the (p.42) SNDP played a growing role in advocating and promoting community transformations, by arguing for Ezhavas’ need to disengage from traditional and highly stigmatized caste-based occupations (such as toddy tapping) and to pursue modern education so to compete with other emerging strata on equal terms (Osella and Osella 2000). The purification of traditional caste identity also required lower castes, as well as upper ones, to dismantle consuetudinary ritual practices and religious beliefs and to rebuild these within a discourse of more ‘rational’ and modern religiosity (Joshi 2001; Osella and Osella 2000). The construction of community respectability overall implied a process of purification of old caste practices: the colonial association between family reform, community progress, and national modernity required a deep reconsideration of gendered family organizations, domesticity, and kinship norms (Devika 2007a; Osella and Osella 2000; Walsh 2004). Matrilinity, in particular, started to undergo a progressive de-legitimation among Ezhavas, Nairs, and Nambudiris. The NSS was initially more successful in advancing its request to the colonial state regarding the need to change agrarian relations, while also gradually pursuing a wider strategy of de-legitimation of traditionally family hierarchies and of the power of the karnavan, the head of the matrilineal lineage/house (A.S. Menon 1979; Panikkar 1995). The questioning of gendered caste and family relations implied a critical reconsideration of intra- and intercommunity relations, including Nairs’ customary connections with Nambudiri Brahmins.

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Some Moments in History Between 1891 and 1896, the work of the Malabar Marriage Commission represented the first legal attempt by the British to scrutinize matrilineal kinship relations. Sambandham received particular attention, addressing moral concerns among colonial legislators about the decency of what was increasingly interpreted as a form of concubinage (Fuller 1976). The Report of the Commission reflected a persistent tension between two different interpretations of sambandham, that of the landed aristocracy (Nambudiri and Nairs) and that of the emerging progressive Nair middle class. The first was paradoxically closer to colonial interpretations and emphasized that sambandham relations did not imply any hereditary or property rights for the partner or for the children born out of these unions. The Report initially accepted aristocratic Nambudiris’ view of sambandham with Nair women as the sacred right of a superior class and yet (p.43) as a non-binding union in terms of kinship and caste membership (Tarabout 1990). Conversely, the interpretation voiced by reformist middle-class Nairs assimilated sambandham with Nambudiris to a form of oppression, and advocated the right of legal recognition for these unions (Jeffery 1992). In the same line, part of the middle-class Nair society also subscribed to colonial demands to reform the sexual and conjugal life of Nair women and to re-inscribe the latter within new forms of modern patriarchal and monogamous relations (Devika 2007a; Saradamoni 1999). The Malabar Marriage Act (1896) represented a compromise between these two views: while it tried to assert principles of monogamy and patrilinity by introducing the opportunity to register sambandham unions, it refrained from embracing middle-class Nairs’ critique (Kodoth 2001). While the Act remained a dead letter in Malabar, the debate generated by the work of the Commission fuelled the reformist claims of Nair reformers and reflected the growing influence of this community (Osella and Osella 2000; Puthenkalam 1977). It also opened the way to subsequent reforms such as the right to leave to sambandham partners their self-acquired property and to transform sambandham relations into what was seen as a ‘proper marital union’. Overall, at the turn of the new century, the argument for internal community reform developed alongside and voiced growing discontent towards traditional agricultural relations and the power of brahmin jenmis. Community reforms both resulted from and shaped the emergence of a highly heterogeneous social stratum which was equally concerned with distancing itself from an outdated and de-legitimized aristocracy and the ‘uncivilised’ masses of poorer social strata (Ahmad and Reifeld 2001; Devika 2007a; Dickey 2012; Donner and De Neve 2011; Joshi 2001).

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Some Moments in History As in other parts of colonial south India, and in common with Tamil Nadu Brahmins, Nambudiris initially saw the advocated reforms as a threat to their privileges. In opposition to the prospects of colonial modernity, they advanced the claim that brahmin culture was the essence of the Indian nation (Fuller and Narasimhan 2013; Pandian 2007). Nevertheless, the increasing de-legitimation of the jenmi order combined with the development of a sharp critique in the public sphere of Nambudiri gendered family organizations— (p.44) antharjanams’ secluded status being a significant source of public condemnation —to force some fragments of the old godly ruling class to reconsider the premises and conditions of their traditional privileges.

Bad Practices, Good Manners: The Yoga Kshema Sabha The growing awareness among young Nambudiris of their own decline vis-á-vis the competition of formerly lower strata inspired the formation the Yoga Kshema Sabha in 1908. The system of primogeniture granted younger Nambudiris a higher degree of freedom from the strictures of caste hierarchy as well as a prolonged proximity to Nair families. This, in turn, allowed them to absorb reformist attitudes of the time and to bring these into their own community projects. According to the memories of an important community reformer, V.T. Bhattathiripad, the inflow of young Nambudiris into caste-based reform movements also resulted from dissatisfactions with earlier participation in nationalist movements and from the lack of grass-roots political activism by the Kerala Congress Party (Bhattathiripad 2013: 92–3). Although the latter remained important in shaping the positions of some YKS members, caste-based reformism provided Nambudiris with a project of concrete intervention in their own society, while also allowing them to connect with wider nationalist processes across the subcontinent. In line with other middle-class reform movements in colonial Kerala, the YKS partly addressed the need to forge a new ‘community identity’ that could transcend internal hierarchies and to transform traditional status into modern exclusivity (Arunima 2003). The conservative defence of existing privileges, alongside the intent to transform the means of superiority through family reforms and modern education, dominated a considerable part of the movement. In this sense, the movement could hardly be called ‘reformist’ (Devika 2007a: 125–8).

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Some Moments in History However, a new wind of relatively progressive reformism began to blow during the 1920s, following the formation of a more radical branch of the movement, theYJS, which started to stake claims for deep changes in family organization, marriage, and conjugality. While some fragments of the YJS—particularly those closer to the (p.45) ideas of V.T. Bhattathiripad—grappled with the thorny issues of inter-caste marriages and the end of caste inequality, both movements remained highly conservative with respect to lower-caste rights. This can be seen in the hostility both associations showed towards Vaikom Satyagraha (1924), the movement in which lower castes fought against temple entrance restrictions imposed upon them and against untouchability more generally. Overall, following Devika (2007a: 147–56), we can say that Nambudiri reformist positions, while remaining internally heterogeneous and fragmented, also coalesced into three main sub-groups. The first position is well articulated in the 1917 Swadharmanushatanam9 memorandum, which envisages the modern Nambudiri collectivity one that can preserve its internal hierarchies and marital arrangements—both primogeniture and sambandham—and seek minimal community changes in order to acquire new privileges. The second position is related to two important reports—the Nambudiri Family Regulation Committee Report (1925) and the Nambudiri Female Education Committee Report (1927)—which were promoted by some fragments of the YKS and the YJS. It sought greater community exclusivity (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007a) by resisting sambandham, by questioning the system of primogeniture, and the resulting power of the moosambooris (the eldest Nambudiri male of the household). Third, more radical positions influenced by the work of V.T. Bhattathiripad went further and identified important sources of community modernity in the dismantling of feudal relations, in the right of widow remarriage and women’s educational rights, as well as inter-caste unions. The second and third positions played an increasingly greater role in the public sphere, and moulded the language in which the need for community reform was expressed. Relevant figures such as V.T. Bhattathiripad and M.R. Bhattathiripad initially played a determinant role in the YKS, and to some extent their positions seemed to soften the more conservative contours in which family reforms were framed. Over time, however, persistent and dominant elitism within the YKS prompted these figures to withdraw from the movement.

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Some Moments in History All of these positions accepted, albeit to different degrees, two important axioms of community reformation: the reified existence of a Brahmin ‘glorious past’ to draw from in the enactment of reforms (p.46) (D. Menon 1999) and the need for ‘self-correction’ (Devika 2007a: 146) as a way to counterbalance the current state of decay. In different ways, all positions also absorbed the growing domestic-public demarcation promoted by the colonial morality, but differently conceived the degree to which domesticity could be reformed. The more progressive and more radical stances adopted ambivalent attitudes towards the most intimate domains of the household. The domestic sphere, far from being identified as the inviolable domains of Hindu authenticity as it was in the context of colonial Bengal (see P. Chatterjee 1990), eventually became increasingly targeted as the hellish site of community backwardness. As a result, middle-class reformist Nambudiris increasingly advocated the abandonment of existing kinship relations and gendered models as a necessary path to cultural and economic renaissance, the rediscovery of a valuable Nambudiri past of religious knowledge and the acceptance of modern education. In the passage below, taken from the movement’s manifesto Unni Nambuthiri, both traditional and modern routes are deemed necessary not only for the well-being of the ‘community’ but also for the moral and cultural integrity of the whole Malayali society (Bhattatiri 1923: 223): Firstly, there must be some among the Nambudiri community to pursue the Vedic studies systematically and do work for general human welfare. In the second place, at the instance of such learned leaders, the ways of life of Nambudiris must be brought into tune with the requirements of the time as other communities have since long done. Thirdly, in order to achieve these ends, traditional Vedic education and modern western education should both be pursued with equal importance. The Yoga Kshema Sabha has a great role to play in this direction. As this passage implies, the drawing of Nambudiri into the arena of modern competition with caste and religious groups that were once kept at a distance due to their inferiority does not straightforwardly translate into the willingness to give up their aristocratic status. Rather, modern achievements were interpreted as a necessary way of re-establishing brahmins’ cultural and intellectual superiority, and enhancing the well-being of the wider Malayali society. As in the wider context of India, the gendered contours of the debate crucially related to the need to raise the status of women through education and as a means to build ‘respectable’ families. In this light, a parallel was traced between current kinship norms and (p.47) the ‘utter ignorance’ in which Nambudiri women were kept by the elder members of the lineage (P.N. Nambuthiri 1928: 194):

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Some Moments in History In other communities, girls are properly brought up and educated because they have a role in perpetuating their families. They get suitable grooms and give birth to good children. But what about Nambudiri women: a cursed one, with no credits for physical charms or virtues of character! These are the concerns only of men who aim at a happy domestic life, and of commercial bridegrooms. The whole decline of Nambudiris is due to this shameful practice of degrading the Vedic ritual of marriage into a heinous slave trade. There are several reasons for this degradation. In the present set-up permitting caste marriage only to the eldest son, the younger ones take wives from other communities. Some progressive minded youngsters have begun to raise their voice against this age-old custom, but they are also facing stiff opposition. […] No code of law prescribes it or prevents their caste marriage. This is how a past sin has become a noble custom!! Respected ladies, it is this awkward convention of marriage that is at the root of all the evils in the Nambudiri community. YKS discussion on womanhood was fraught with ambivalences. As this passage shows, YKS men addressed the ‘miserable condition’ of the antharjanam and began to criticize gosha-related practices such as veiling, seclusion, and lack of English education. More radical stances addressed the conditions of Nambudiri women who, after having entered into pre-puberty marriages with old Nambudiri men, had been widowed at an early age. V.T. Bhattathiripad’s famous speech on the right of widows to marry young Nambudiri men addresses the need to involve women in the debate on family reforms (Bhattathiripad 1930: 58): My young sisters, who carry the burden of old husbands, do you wish to unburden yourself of this weight? If so, you can certainly marry again. If you hesitate to do so, thinking that you would not like to start such a revolutionary thing, you will have to bear the burden of that sin till the end of your life. This marriage which was performed without taking your needs or wishes into account, just so that you are sent out of your natal homes, is not binding by thought, word or deed to you. So, getting married again will not in any way damage your chastity. And don’t console yourself with the thought that you have a husband. Biting the shell will not quench your thirst. Just mentioning the word sugar will not sweeten your mouth. Or, if you are satisfied with this marriage in name only, as (p.48) a yogi controls his hunger by his breathing exercises, I have no reason to intervene. But, let us ask a widow about this. […] Who knows what their thoughts are?

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Some Moments in History In the passage above, Bhattathiripad seems to cast doubts on the suitability of ‘marriage’ as the only inroad to community membership for young women. At the same time, widow remarriage becomes for Bhattathiripad one of the fundamental steps in the project of creating modern conjugal relations between apphans—younger Nambudiri men—and young Nambudiri women. The passage ascribes importance to the involvement of women’s ‘needs and wishes’ into consideration, thereby projecting a model of conjugality in which women can participate on ‘equal terms’ with their male counterparts. The framing of modern women’s lives was ideologically articulated in the language of liberation from ‘pre-existing jailed subjectivities’ (Devika 2007a: 147) but in fact it aimed at forging a model of the educated and well-mannered housewife within new patriarchal relations (see also Walsh 2004). Not only education but all bodily symbols of women’s seclusion in Nambudiri houses started to be criticized and framed around a new language of decency and respectability (Cohn 1996). The abandonment of gosha, the covering of bared breasts, and the adoption of more appealing dress codes marked the construction of a modern model of middle-class femininity, often implicitly inspired by a confrontation with the greater refinement and sophistication of Nair women. Antharjanams were depicted as the ‘burden’ of reformers (Devika 2007a: 158) and became central in reformist debates. Nevertheless, this depiction of antharjanams instrumentally emphasized gender hierarchies within illams (patrilineal lineages/houses) by downplaying both other relevant premises of family organization and those spaces of negotiability women could seize thanks to their kin, class, and age position. As Devika (2011: xxvii) observes: Antharjanams’ extreme seclusion, the practice of their travelling without husbands, escorted by servants, the extreme difficulties, material and otherwise in conducting Smarthavicharam, all left spaces in which the rules ordering everyday life could be potentially upturned. […] Women’s accounts indicate not so much a total subordination of one sex by the other in the illam, but a more complex, mobile play of power with other factors like age, seniority or moral authority. (p.49)

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Some Moments in History The question of antharjanam lives did not remain confined to the reformist projects of middle-class men but fuelled Nambudiri women’s active engagement with reformist meetings and the formation of their own branches, like the Antarjana Samajan. From the 1920s onwards Nambudiri women started to break with clothing requirements and to leave their ancestral houses to join the YKS activists. In many cases, they married young YKS activists secretly and against their families’ wishes, and refused to marry (through polygamous marriage) elder Nambudiri men. The development of women’s organizations and newspapers partly challenged YKS men’s assumption that ‘political activities undertaken by Nambudiris would naturally include the interests of women’ and they faced sharp denunciation within and beyond the movement (Arunima 2003: 169). Some insights on the tensions underpinning women’s reformist agendas can be gained from the recently published memories of Devaki Nilayamgode (2011). Nilayamgode finds part of her inspiration in influential Nambudiri women like Parvathi Manezhi or Arya Pallom who had previously started to question the physical symbols of seclusion by stopping covering themselves in public. Nilayamgode’s memories are important to understanding how reformist antharjanams pursued the value of women’s working status and independence from the bonds of marriage as the sole source of women’s realization. These aims underpinned the establishment in the 1930s of a centre to train Nambudiri women in different working skills, where a sense of cooperation for a common cause emerges in making antharjanams familiar with manual jobs. Yet, Nilayamgode’s memories also point to the limits of women’s reform projects by illustrating reformist men’s reluctance to support women’s ‘free’ working and leisure time outside their renewed domestic roles as modern wives (2011). She notes how, following the shock of the Thaatri scandal,10 both reformist and conservative Nambudiri men ‘used this idea to allege that the training centre was set up to create more Thaatri’ (Nilayamgode 2011: 154). Women who were present in the public sphere as artists, workers, and community reformers became gradually ostracized,11 and ‘the reformist rhetoric and politics eventually came to be couched in a masculine idiom’ (Devika 2011: 169–70).

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Some Moments in History Nilayamgode’s memories also offer insights into the ambivalent relations of symbolic dependency women’s reformism entertained (p.50) with ‘paternal’ figures like V.T. Bhattathiripad, the latter often being conceived as a primary agent of women’s liberation from lineage constraints. In one telling passage (Nilayamgode 2011: 152–3), Nilayamgode recalls Arya Pallom, the wife of a Nambudiri reformist and communist party member, inviting antharjanams to stop worshipping the saligrama (a fossilized stone which is usually placed in the puja rooms) and to worship instead figures like V.T. Bhattathiripad. In turn, V.T. Bhattathiripad refuses to be an object of worship as this would run counter to women becoming free from old constraints. The passage highlights the dialectic between reformist women’s search for independent paths towards gendered family reforms and their subscription to a view of ‘male’ revolutionary figures as leading the way to their liberation from traditional ‘hellish’ domesticity.

Questioning Intergenerational Hierarchies As novel models of femininity inhabited reformist ideas of domesticity, modern masculine ideals also shaped youth demands for marriage and inheritance rights (Sinha 1995). The demand for the equal right to marry within the community aimed at allowing young Nambudiris to gain full membership of the community as householders and generators of future descendants. The invalidation of existing kinship norms like primogeniture and adhivedanam was justified on the premise that the latter prevented Nambudiris from infusing the community with new vitality. Young men were depicted as feeble figures lacking any generative role, and were associated with wretched antharjanams. The following passage is taken again from the YKS manifesto (Nambuthiripad 1926: 32): It is with shame and sorrow that I say that our young men are spiritless like serpents with their poison teeth removed. They are the slaves of old men and old habits. Even their dreams have not been able to leave the gatehouse and take even one step outside. As long as young men admit that the ways of old men and the old ways of life are the right ones […] the Nambudiri community and the young men will not progress. Here, generational hierarchies are deemed to be unable to provide youngsters with a promising and rewarding future. Youth are invited to withdraw from existing ways of living in order to embrace progress. Crucially, elder generations are deemed to have failed in representing (p.51) a model of inspiration for younger generations. In another passage (Nambuthiri 1928: 219), we read:

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Some Moments in History […] Namboodiris of the golden days were conscious of their social responsibilities, and did their best in literature, administration, ethics and so on, changing with the demands of the times. It is as a result of their attention to all spheres of life that we still see some of their institutions and systems, though in a decaying state. If they had also maintained a narrow outlook, as their descendants do today, the Namboodiris would have been things of the past. The community can hope for progress only when they became aware of their responsibilities. […] The major cause of the decay of the community is the lavish conduct of vaaram, pooram and yagam, feasting being the main item. In ancient days feasts were given only to entertain guests, but later they became mere show[s] of luxury. Most of them don’t have proper education that can help [the] expansion of mental horizon[s]. Till the age of thirty they learn only to fall into the rut of superstitious practices and do not give any contribution to the community. Elder generations of the time are depicted as morally corrupted and in antithesis with the responsibilities of modern youth. In challenging the unfertile authority of the elders, different and coexisting models of family life were put forward. Reformist Nambudiris certainly absorbed colonial associations between progress and the nuclear family, and shared a criticism of old, constraining models of joint family life. The bulk of their reforms were to some extent fascinated by the model of Victorian conjugality, based on companionate marriage, and by the equal participation of men and women in a union based on ‘equal’ social responsibilities and modern love. Still, this position coexisted throughout the debate with the aim to create new forms of joint living premised on equal male participation in community reproduction and joint family life. Importantly, among young reformers, claiming the right to marry within the community and to generate legitimate descendants was key to the wider project of demographically invigorating the patrilineal lineage. It is in this context that we need to understand the importance of parivedham—equal marriage for all the male members of the lineage—as a means of producing at once new forms of parenthood and a modern collectivity. Endogamous marriages become here not only a way to achieve gendered maturity as fathers and heads of the lineage but also a duty to be undertaken for the development of Malayali collectivity. As we read in another passage (S. N. Bhattatiri 1924: 216) (p.52) Young men! […] Remember that you were not born of and not brought up by mothers belonging to other communities. At least do not forget that, even if you wish to go and marry into the other communities, to have some people called Nambudiris to do so, at least some of you have to marry within the community. Realise that the Government may be forced to take a few into the zoo, to show the world specimens of Nambudiris.

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Some Moments in History If a lower birth rate came to symbolize the backwardness of a declining community, the procreation of Nambudiri men and women through a new legitimate endogamy ideally lay at the heart of the cultural and socio-economic regeneration of Nambudiris. The Nambudiri Kudumba Regulation (1925) represented the first legal attempt to reform Nambudiri kinship. It sought to limit the power of the head of the family, advocated the right of caste marriage and succession for Nambudiri men, and the right to maintenance for each member of the lineage.12 The formation of demographically strengthened mana was premised partly upon a shift in masculine models. The aristocratic male of the older order could not continue to represent a suitable model of manhood (Devika 2007a). The image of old Nambudiri men indulging in marriages with young Nambudiri wives while young men were excluded from endogamous marriages would ideally be progressively replaced with a new model of Nambudiri youth fully committed to the creation of a demographically strong and united community, based on the equal right to endogamous marriage. Dominant and more conservative positions within the movement were more concerned with the creation of a ‘pure caste’ where all men could have equal access to endogamous marriage and where all relations with lower communities could be severed (Arunima 2003: 172). Yet contradictions also emerge here, to the extent that the demand for the creation of a community endowed with clear caste boundaries existed alongside the claim of some activists to preserve the right to sambandham alongside that of creating endogamous families. Nevertheless, the proposal to recognize the hereditary rights of Nair wives and of children born out of sambandham met with rejection by large sections of the movement. The draft of the first Nambudiri Family Bill—presented at the first Legislative Council of Cochin in 1925—defined the right of succession of a Nambudiri man in exclusive accordance with his endogamic marital status. Only if a man was married to a Nambudiri (p.53) woman did he have the right to leave his property to his wives and children, whilst the lineage would jointly inherit his property if had he entertained sambandham.13 In the same line, whilst the 1920 Cochin Nayar Regulation and the 1925 Travancore Nayar Act entitled Nair women and children to maintenance (to be provided by the Nambudiri father), this right was never recognized by the YKS nor the wider community.14 Eventually, more radical positions were subsumed within the project of creating a middle class that was modern but that at the same time preserved its Nambudirithan (Nambudiri exclusivity).

Humanizing the Nambudiris

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Some Moments in History By the end of the 1930s Nambudiri community organizations had fallen into a period of further internal fragmentation and their activities had considerably declined. This was also due to the fact that some of the reformists’ requests in terms of family rights—particularly inheritance rights and the end of polygamy and parivedanam—had started to be taken into account at legislative levels and had been incorporated into new family regulations. The 1931 Travancore Malayala Brahmin Act began a process of recognition of all male members’ right to marry within their own community and to leave their individual property to children born out of these unions. The law was followed by similar provisions in Cochin and Malabar. In addition, the 1939 Cochin Nambudiri Act recognized the right of different lineage branches to request the partition of joint property, although only with the 1948 Cochin Makkattayam (Amendment) Act—and later on with the 1958 Kerala Nambudiri Act—was the right to claim an equal share of the illam’s property extended to individual members of the patrilineal lineage. Contrary to more conservative YKS positions, new legal frameworks also recognized the right of children born out of sambandham to claim a share of the individual property of their Nambudiri father. According to genealogies, these changes did not automatically translate in this period into Nambudiris’ withdrawal from polygamy, child marriages, or adhivedanam, practices which persisted in the area of my research throughout the 1960s. Nor did the changes advocated by reformist movements necessarily open the way to the community’s economic improvement.15 (p.54)

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Some Moments in History In the early 1940s earlier caste-based reformist language merged into leftist politics coalescing around the activities of the Communist Party (D. Menon 1994). Both of these strands are important for understanding what the humanization of Nambudiris meant in the rhetoric of reformers and how the process was linked to the attainment of a renewed class status. The presidential address E.M.S. Nambudiripad gave in 1944 to the 34th YKS annual meeting illustrates how persistent discordance and conservatism within the community were criticized by Nambudiris who came to be closer to leftist politics (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]). The speech begins by outlining the reasons that have led E.M.S. Nambudiripad to leave the caste-based reformist associations and to join the Communist Party. In his words, this decision arose from the awareness of the shortcomings of the movement in reaching all the different realities of an internally fragmented ‘community’ of Nambudiris who, due to social, cultural, and economic reasons, had remained disconnected from, or critical of, the movement. Activism within the Communist Party is made meaningful by referring to the intent to create a more solid internal unity, while also allowing Nambudiris to keep up with ongoing changes. The critical evaluation of the Nambudiri situation is developed in dialogue with the matrilineal Nair community, who are however in this context deemed in this context to have fallen into a similar state of degradation as Nambudiris. Like Nambudiris, Nairs are depicted as a landed aristocracy indulging in obsolete family practices, a fact that distances both collectivities from the entrepreneurial ethic of Ezhavas, Christians, and Muslims. In this context, the humanization of Nambudiris is envisaged as a process through which landlordism is replaced by business, industrial and trading activities (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 270).

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Some Moments in History The progressive dismantling of joint family assets and organizations initiated by the YKS was not accompanied, in Nambudiripad’s view, by the questioning of landlordism, preventing among brahmins the conversion of land into more lucrative and honourable activities. This, in turn, extensively limited the contribution that Nambudiris were able to offer the future state of Kerala and the nation more generally, aside from leaving many families destitute. E.M.S. Nambudiripad’s advocacy of a united community is tainted with ambivalence when he states that ‘renovation in the community would not have occurred (p. 55) without changing the poor (Nambudiris) into manual labourers and the rich into good industrialists and businessmen’ (1999 [1944]: 284–5). Indeed, and throughout the speech, E.M.S. seems more inclined to interpret problems affecting the community in terms of the opposition between ‘modern’ and ‘orthodox’ souls—and in terms of YKS reluctance to approach Communist positions—and much less in terms of latent and enduring conflicts between the Nambudiri landed elite and dependent lower sub-castes.16 One important element of reflection in E.M.S. Nambudiripad’s speech is the link the reformer traces between government employment, community size, and middle-classness. E.M.S. Nambudiripad argues that modern class status should not uniquely be based on the attainment of public forms of employment in state government institutions. Rather he asserts that community-based organizations should orient their members and the wider Malayali population to (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 186). Nambudiris’ critique of being discriminated against in favour of Ezhavas, Christians, or Muslims, these groups having lobbied for a higher share of government employment, is formally criticized here on the basis of the bigger demographic strength of these communities relative to Nambudiris (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 90). E.M.S. Nambudiripad envisaged a community where state employment was not the only way to achieve middle-class status, and where young Nambudiris, rather than ‘dreaming to join the ICS’17 should find ‘employment from industrially developing countries in America, UK, Soviet Union, and so on’ (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 93). Further, Nambudiripad addresses the current lack of vitality in the YKS, which is deemed to be unable to invest the same energy into building modern educational and labour routes for Nambudiris as it did a few decades earlier in fighting against inter-caste marriage and adhivedanam. In this respect, the reformer interprets what he perceives as the unrewarding states of spinsterhood or conjugal life among Nambudiris less in terms of generational constraints and more in terms of an inadequate work ethic among young men and women. In his interpretation, indulging in sambandham relations, or demanding huge dowries from the bride’s family, represent an easy way for Nambudiri men to escape their responsibilities as modern middle-class householders in earning a living to support their own families (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 68–72). (p.56)

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Some Moments in History At a more formal level, for E.M.S. Nambudiripad the humanization of Nambudiris ought formally to proceed through the renunciation of the Brahmin ideas of having a rightful place at the top of society and of occupying a privileged position in modernizing Kerala by virtue of ‘tradition’. By downplaying the impacts of landlordism on internal and inter-caste relations, he perceived in ‘Nambudiri Brahmin mentality a destructive force more for Nambudiri themselves than for lower caste people’ (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 78). In his reading, indeed, brahminism need not be sacrificed in itself, if its premises could be changed to prevent Nambudiri decline. The idea of self-correction developed earlier by the YKS permeates E.M.S. Nambudiripad’s political position, but it is re-inscribed within a wider discourse emphasizing the potential contributions that reformed Nambudiris could make to the state (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 80): An ordinary ‘Yoga Kshema’ member will accept this because if the Namboodiris work according to this program the Namboodiris will progress. But a Communist will accept this because while improving the lot of the Namboodiri this program will also destroy the retrograde social forces of Kerala and thus pave the way for creation of a future Kerala of equality. The humanization of Nambudiris is formally envisaged as a revolutionary act of sacrifice that nevertheless aims at preserving the status and privileges of the community. Moving away from Nambudirithan, it is thought, will integrate the community within mainstream society, whilst also allowing brahmins to (re)gain a new leading position in the future state of Kerala. Dilip Menon (1999) invites us to consider how, beyond the official rhetoric emphasizing the end of brahminism as a necessary condition of change, E.M.S. Nambudiripad continues to share the idea that Malayali Brahmins had the necessary historical and cultural endowments to lead the future development of the Kerala state and its unification into a single united linguistic region. The glorious past of Nambudiris is reinvented in a new Marxist language to emphasize the contributions made by brahmins to the ending of matrilinity and the development of a caste-based division of labour. Just as brahmins were able to act as cultural innovators and unify the geographical region of Kerala in the past (D. Menon 1999: 80), they are seen as having the potential to achieve a new primary position in modernizing Kerala. As a former activist in the YKS, and despite (p.57) his criticism of the latent orthodoxy of its members, throughout his speech E.M.S. Nambudiripad continues to share the YKS’s view of Nambudiris as collectively ‘the prime mover in the economic and social transformation of the region’ (Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]: 65).

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Some Moments in History The formation of middle-class identities in early twentieth-century Kerala, as in the rest of India, remained deeply imbued with a ‘communal flavour’ (Donner and De Neve 2011: 2–3) insofar as socio-economic organizations and cultural markers between communities retained importance while also being endowed with new meanings. The formation of a public sphere in which different and often fragmented communities’ projects could be voiced and debated (Devika 2007b; Joshi 2001) opened up spaces for a novel contestation of the power of Malayali Brahmins. In the context of the political redefinition of intra- and intercommunity relations, ‘kinship emerged as a terrain fraught with competing tensions, where imposed hierarchies were always contested’ (I. Chatterjee 2004; Sreenivasan 2004: 56). Importantly, and to some extent differently from other areas of colonial India like Bengal, the domestic sphere was less identified by reformist Nambudiris as the ‘private, sacred and inviolable domain of Malayali authenticity and more as a domain of public debate, where the void of certain family norms and hierarchies emerged as a legitimate pathway to class mobility. The contestation of customary family relations, while invalidating existing generational and gender hierarchies, was also premised on the establishment of modern patriarchal relations less centred on lineage life and more on the ‘equal’ participation of ‘un-jailed’ men and women in the formation of modern families (Devika 2007b; Walsh 2008). The framing of new gender and family models implied a double engagement with the past. On the one hand, particularly among nationalists, traditionalized customs and values inspired the rediscovery of a true Hindu identity, and the drawing of well-defined caste and religious communities. On the other, the imperative of progress also invited middle-class reformers to break with past codes of conduct and to frame reformist language in terms of ‘revolutionary acts’ for the welfare of the community and of the entire society. These (p.58) positions coexisted with each other and produced an ambivalent engagement with the past that, as the following analysis shall suggest, deeply influenced the politics of memory among subsequent generations. For an elite that could claim a godly status, the processes of moving away from past traditions were anything but smooth. Indeed, the YKS both articulated the betrayal of past glories by Nambudiris and the possibility that, by breaking with present decay, the community could gain a new leading position in Kerala society.

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Some Moments in History Despite internal fractures in the movement, the modern Nambudiri community that was largely envisaged was one which could acquire the means to ensure its prosperity while also preserving its internal hierarchies and privileged status (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007b: 147). Certainly, in line with the aristocratic trailblazing figures of our Sicilian tale, revolutionary stances among Nambudiris aimed at changing everything in order to maintain privileges. At the same time, the production of new models of womanhood and manhood was expressed through a language that simultaneously undermined the legitimacy of elders in generating future existences. An apparent paradox emerges when we look at the dialectic between caste membership and kinship norms. The formation of a modern and united community was intimately premised on the dismantling of (existent) kinship hierarchies and norms, as the demand for parivedham eloquently shows. Endogamy, rather than being a customary (and shared) foundation of caste identity, emerges here as a modern form of community identity, which can be achieved only by disrupting current generational hierarchies. The progressive de-legitimation of the system of primogeniture, or the claim for endogamous marriages, reflected an ongoing and controversial attempt at forging modern status through radical kinship reform. As I will begin to show in the next chapter, this opened spaces in which different and unpredictable kinship relations, values, and projects could be forged, often well beyond—and in contrast with—the YKS attempts at building an aristocratic and pure ‘community’. In the process the humanization of Nambudiris took unpredictable contours, which in many instances departed from the ideals and imaginations of community reformers. Notes:

(1.) Fuller (1976) notes how available records about the Nambudiri–Nair relations date back to the sixteenth century, and can be found in the writings of European travellers.

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Some Moments in History (2.) In contemporary Kerala, the general term ‘Nambudiri’ refers to a community which has traditionally been internally divided in terms of status and wealth, although—as the following chapters will show—some of these differences have been progressively attenuated throughout the twentieth century. Broadly speaking, we can identify three main subdivisions among Nambudiris. First, the Adhyan Nambudiri is the highest group of brahmins in terms of status and wealth. Adhyans are believed to be descendants of the eight lineages who first moved to Kerala. They traditionally constituted the landed aristocracy, and could be identified by the suffix—pad of their caste identification (Nambudiri-pad) which marked their status as abhijaata (noble families). The second group, known as Asyas, ranked immediately below the aristocracy and included a range of sub-castes formally dedicated to ritual and religious services in relation to the landed elite, although they themselves were often (albeit not always) owners of landed estates of varying size. Within this group, we include: Akkithiri (in charge of domestic rituals); Bathathiri (teaching of Vedas; high priests/Thantris); Somathiris (pujaris in family temples) which in turn comprised Vaidhikian (ritual authorities) and Smarthans (judges in Nambudiri tribunals). Both Adhyans and Asyas were also known as Othuvallar (Nambudiris who have the right to study the Vedas). Conversely, the third group—known as Othillathavar—grouped together different sections of Nambudiri society who did not have the right to study the Vedas and who held a position that was considerably lower than the first two groups in terms of status and wealth. Broadly termed as Jatimantras Nambudiri, this third group included: Astha Vaidyans (devoted to the study of medicine); Yatra Nambudiris (who worked in the armed forces for abhijaata families); Grahmini Nambudiri (in charge of the administration and maintenance of Adhyan and Asyas family properties) and Mussad (doctors). For simplicity of discussion, in this book I will mainly refer to the three broad categorizations outlined above (Adhyans, Asyas, and Jatimantras) unless strictly necessary. (3.) According to genealogies and narratives, it was common for the eldest member of aristocratic lineages to have up to three Nambudiri wives. (4.) Tanika Sarkar notes how religious and political associations constituted an alternative and often opposed area of public expression; that is, a form of mass protest. Sarkar also stresses the necessity of not underestimating the novelty of the public sphere as it emerged from the proliferation of middle-class periodicals and magazines from the 1870s onwards. While vernacular printed journals resulted in a considerable expansion of the means and audiences for public debates, they also built upon and coexisted with earlier popular oral– performative traditions (see T. Sarkar 1992: 215–16). (5.) The other element of difference referred to the subordination of the question of domestic life to religious ideas and to the creation of a distance between the secular British and the ‘non-secular Indian personhood’ (Chakrabarty 1994: 85).

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Some Moments in History (6.) See the analysis developed in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3 on the differing involvement of Nambudiri men and women in middle-class reformist movements. (7.) At the same time it should be noted that this interpretation of the right of janman as exclusive lineage property was significantly shaped by British notions of land sovereignty (Devika 2007a; Panikkar 1989). (8.) See discussion developed in the previous paragraph. (9.) The literal meaning is the ‘performance of one’s own dharma’. (10.) Kuriyedathu Thaatri was a Nambudiri woman who underwent Smaartha Vichaaram (trial) accused of having entertained promiscuous relations with Nambudiri men. Thaatris, in accepting the accusation, argued for the equal treatment of all parties involved in the scandal and listed the names and surnames of all Nambudiri men she had had sexual relations with. This was followed by the outcasting of all those accused by Thaatris and of the woman herself. The event is remembered by V.T. Bhattathiripad as a watershed in Nambudiri community history as it brought to light the decaying customs of amorally corrupt elite, to which modern morality should have be opposed (2013). (11.) See also the memories of Lalithambika Antharjanam discussed in Chapter 3 on the complex relation between kinship, writing, and womanhood. (12.) The Bill was approved by the Cochin Legislative Council but rejected by the Cochin Maharaja. Only with the Kerala Nambudiri Act in 1958 were these rights completely recognized. (13.) The Nambudiri Kudumba (Family) Regulation (1925) represents the first major legal attempt at kinship reform in the community, promoting the limitation of the elders’ power in family administration, the right of caste marriage for Nambudiri men, the right of maintenance for each member of the lineage including those living away from the mana, and the right of succession. The Bill was approved by the Council but eventually failed to receive the approval of the Maharaja of Cochin. Again, these rights were only completely recognized with the Kerala Nambudiri Act in 1958. (14.) The right of a Nambudiri man to leave half of his individual property to his sambandham children was not formally recognized until the Cochin Nambudiri Act in 1939. (15.) See Chapter 2. (16.) See the following chapter. (17.) The Indian Civil Service, one of the most prestigious fields of public employment. Page 31 of 32

From Gods to Human Beings

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

From Gods to Human Beings Mapping Generational Histories Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords Chapter two explores the generational dimension of Nambudiri class engagements with reform movements, and threads this into a discussion of the position held by Nambudiris in Kerala society. It analyses the various ways in which Nambudiris lineages engaged with YKS and YJS and how persistent inequalities within this community in terms of status and health remain central in preventing the formation of solid and longlasting community organizations. Indeed, land reform, emigration, educational attainments differently involved Nambudiris throughout the twentieth century history, creating at times spaces of pioneer class renewal and yet also of major and prolonged decline. This chapter also discusses how Nambudiri class trajectories are perceived in today’s Kerala by other Malayalis, and the impact that this has on Nambudiri kinship memories. Keywords:   generational change, class mobility, land reforms, migration, inter-community competition

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From Gods to Human Beings THIS CHAPTER OUTLINES HOW THE reformist ethos promoted by middle-class community movements was apprehended in Nambudiris’ generational histories. It begins by delving into how internal community hierarchies resulted in different kinship practices and concerns, and the reasons why community reformism in colonial times failed to appeal to and create a united community. It then moves to consider how family destinies were differently influenced by land reforms, and the reasons why the changes in gendered family relations advocated by the YKS and the YJS were for many families not accompanied by timely class regeneration. The second part of the chapter explores the role of migration in unsettling customary family relations and contributed to accentuate the divide between immobile conservative families, on the one hand, and newly mobile Nambudiri society, on the other. The chapter concludes by discussing how Nambudiri class trajectories are recalled today and made object of evaluation by other Malayali middle-classes and the ambivalent position Nambudiris occupy within the public celebration of Kerala modern development. The chapter suggests how, in the context of present research, the importance of the YKS and YJS lied less in their capacity to unite different fragments of Nambudiri society and more in the impact (p.60) they had on the way subsequent generations have come to conceive the temporal relation between kinship, caste membership, and class mobility. Willingly or not, both movements eventually compromised the ideology of continuity between elders and youth as a positive source of legitimate kinship. They forged new identities in opposition to (a fragment of) Nambudiri past and it promoted the idea that membership within the community could be achieved only through the negation of its axioms. Nevertheless, the transformations advocated by community reformisms did not involve the community in similar terms nor were Nambudiris smoothly accepted by other Malayalis as a modern middle class.

Fragmented Elites Studies on colonial middle-class reformism have stressed how the latter aimed at defining the contours of a modern, united, and internally purified ‘communities’, and how this trend involved in similar fashions Nambudiri, Nair, or Ezhava organizations (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007a; Osella and Osella 2000). Yet the idea of ‘community’ remained more at the level of aspiration than of achieved reality, and its contours also varied deeply according to local resolutions and contexts (D. Menon 1994). If we move from the grand narratives of Nambudiri reformism—as these are produced through the movement manifesto and official speeches—to the local narratives of those who have directly or indirectly engaged with the YKS, it emerges that the movement was fraught with divisions and sometimes hostility between different segments of the Brahmin population. In Krishnapuram, as in neighbouring villages and towns, the YKS remained to a large extent an elite movement among the elites, insofar as it mainly (albeit not exclusively) appealed to younger, high-status Adhyan and Asyas Nambudiris.

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From Gods to Human Beings There are some important reasons for this. The first refers to the fact that highstatus lineages could count on closer relations with the progressive strata of Nair high-class society (Devika 2007a; Kodoth 2001). For example, male members of two of the richest lineages in Krishnapuram entertained sambandhams with Nairs and Varmas of neighbouring branches of the royal family and with the royal palace of Thripunithura. According to village genealogies, among Nambudiri (p.61) and Nair elites these sambandhams often had a relatively stable character and were reciprocally expected between the two lineages across generations. Sambandham also created important networks beyond the village, and allowed access to the intellectual and organizational momentum of more vibrant towns like Thrissur, Thripunithura, or Kochi. In 1905, for instance, Narayanan—the third son of the aristocratic Aravoor mana—entered by his lineage’s arrangements into a sambandham with Parvathi, from the royal family of Thripunithura, whose mother had been in a sambandham with Narayanan’s father Irawin since 1889. Between 1905 and 1918, Narayanan’s closeness to Parvathi’s family allowed him to enter into contact with her cousin Krishnan, who was active in the Nair Service Society. Aravoor family memories record how Narayanan was influenced by Krishnan’s critique of not being a ‘proper man’ (since he could not marry a woman from his own caste) in his decision to join the YKS and to marry, in 1922, a Nambudiri woman from Thrissur against the will of his father. By contrast, lower-status Nambudiris rarely benefited from sambandhams with the upper echelons of matrilineal society, and usually entered into more temporary relations with poorer Nair families within the village, the latter maintaining a more marginal involvement in Nair caste/class reformism. Thus, stable sambandham relationships and related cross-locality networks seemed not only to inspire the involvement of higher-status Nambudiris with reformist ideals, but also to provide them with material and ideological support after frequent breaks with more conservative lineage members.

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From Gods to Human Beings Second, and perhaps more importantly, the YKS addressed kinship concerns which were largely a prerogative of aristocratic Nambudiris. The practice of endogamous polygamy and questions of property partition and inheritance were to some extent extraneous to lower sections of village Asyas and, particularly, to many Jatimantras Nambudiris. According to available genealogies, many lowerstatus families in the late nineteenth century were already practising monogamy within the caste. This applied not only to the eldest member of the lineage. Younger members were often leaving their family village out of economic problems and moving to other parts of Kerala in search of labour as pujaris or temple administrators. This allowed them a certain degree of independence in establishing their own families and in marrying lower-status Nambudiri women. In many (p.62) instances, poorer Nambudiris were keen to marry their daughters to apphans, even with small dowries, so to limit family constraints in maintaining a large number of children. Similarly, as one of my interlocutors said, property partition did not often occur as a result of family arguments as ‘there was very little property to share’. In the same line, it is important to stress how YKS rhetoric of the ‘liberation’ of antharjanams (Nambudiri women) from oppressive family hierarchies did not always address the reality of poorer Nambudiri families. While it is true that lower-status brahmins were often keen to stress the moral importance of gosha (women’s purdah) in the past, in practice many Jatimantras families were more or less forced to allow their women to break with this custom. The words of this elderly Grahmini man reflect the often sarcastic attitude with which YKS activities were viewed by lower-status Nambudiris: I well remember YKS people were coming to our house….it must have been in the late 1930s, just before I had left the village ….they were saying that we should have allowed women to go out, to advance their status ….my father replied them that my mum was already doing so….as she had to leave every morning our poor house to go as a servant to an Adhyan family!!! Often she did not even have the time or the thought to cover herself with the olakkuda (palm leaf umbrella)….that was an elite business!!

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From Gods to Human Beings The man’s reference to the olakkuda is not casual. In the YKS, the throwing away of palm leaf umbrellas constituted a symbolic act of irreverence towards what was perceived as the backward practice of the seclusion of Nambudiri women. In addressing the use of this object as an ‘elite business’, our interlocutor underlines the ideological and material distance between the concerns of YKS members and the lived reality of many lower-class Nambudiri women. Among Nambudiri women of lower status, gosha is sometimes invoked as a past form of protection from the need to earn a living, or as a practice which could be adopted occasionally and depending on the practical needs of their family. Gosha is thus depicted as less of a stable and overwhelming condition affecting past antharjanams—in contrast to the way it is depicted by higher-status Nambudiri women or in reformist rhetoric.1 This brings us to the third element underpinning the exclusivism of the YKS with respect to the larger Nambudiri society: the (p.63) tensions surrounding the dependence of lower-status Nambudiris on the upper echelons of the ‘community’. The relative worsening of economic conditions which affected many aristocratic families in the area since the early decades of the twentieth century exacerbated already exploitative relations between the landed aristocracy and dependent Nambudiri families. While the former still expected lower-status Nambudiris to comply with their hereditary duties to offer ritual, administrative and health services to their lineages, they were less in a position to perform their own patrician roles through providing payment in kind or financial support. Crucially, the YKS developed in Krishnapuram at a time when the official middle-class ‘claim for a united community’ was being undermined by the erosion of customary relations between the landed aristocracy and lowerstatus Nambudiris. Village memories point to how reformist rhetoric was detached from considerations of the many class differences already existing within ‘the community’. This well emerges for instance in memories of family crises and of the related fragility of intra-caste relations. When Savitri’s mother became sick in 1939, their family could not afford to pay for a doctor of provide her with adequate care. Savitri—then eight years old—was sent by her father to the nearby Velunni mana’s palace in Krishnapuram to ask for some financial help. A Jatimantra Nambudiri, Savitri’s father had been administering one of the lineage’s family temples in the area and her mother had been working for them for 35 years as a servant. As Savitri recalls:

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From Gods to Human Beings I was just a child, but I remember that Velunni mana was very much discussed at that time because of their revolutionary ideas … they were saying they were progressive. We have always served them for generations and I went to ask for some help …. it was also their duty. But they refused by saying that they were becoming poorer than us!!! And my mum died … When those YKS people came to our house, I think [a] few months later to ask our support, my brother almost killed one of them … many were from rich families like Velunni, all good words and manners. But in practice you see… Many lower-status Nambudiris in the village had been generationally linked to the landed aristocracy by customary duties and rights, but these links were increasingly weakening due to the decaying conditions of many high-status families or as a result of new discriminatory (p.64) attitudes against the lower sections of Brahmin society. The inability and unwillingness of high-status families to meet the expectations of dependent Nambudiri families and to provide them with the necessary support in times of emergency makes local YKS activities appear at odds with the movement’s claims to cement internal community relations. Lower-status Nambudiri memories also allow us to apprehend the different contours of generational conflict in a less privileged milieu. For the landed aristocracy family conflicts between ‘elder conservatives’ and more ‘progressive youngsters’ were often inspired by claims over marriage and inheritance rights. Among lower status Nambudiris, generational conflicts were moulded by different positions over the degree of dependency and respect poorer Nambudiri families owed to the landed aristocracy during a time of rapid socio-economic change. In this context, elder generations’ attachment to old forms of labour relations and subscription to intra-caste hierarchical codes is targeted by younger generations as the cause of family decline and conservatism. One teacher from a low-class lineage of Jatimantras Nambudiris linked this with his decision to turn away from Krishnapuram after the death of his sister in 1944. Despite the poverty of the family, his father had refused to look for a manual job and continued to work as a pujari for the local Nambudiri landlord. When the man’s sister became sick, his mother went secretly to ask for help from the local landowner who promptly refused. In the aftermath of the girl’s death, discord arose between father and son over the celebration of funeral rituals: My father still wanted to ask the jenmi his permission to celebrate all the rituals as at that time you could not even be free to do that without the consent of the aristocracy … I thought that was too much … what was the use of all these rituals if they were only meant to perpetuate slavery? And where was the YKS who had much talking about a united community? They never showed up to help us.

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From Gods to Human Beings Family rituals thus started to be placed under scrutiny. However, among lowerclass families, critical attitudes emerged less from a general inclination to privilege modern forms of education and to delegitimize certain practices conceived as irrational or backward, and more from the intent to break with ongoing agricultural relations (p.65) and related forms of dependency. Following his sister’s death, my interlocutor left the village and went to Chennai, where he worked for more than 40 years, first as a pujari and then—after completing his education—as a teacher. He married a Nambudiri woman (in a civil ceremony), refused to follow samskaras (Hindu life cycle rituals) and rarely returned to his natal village. Overall, village memories point to how reformist movements voiced kinship concerns—especially those of polygamy or succession—which were alien to lower-status Nambudiris with far more limited economic positions. In failing to convincingly address persistent inequalities binding lower-class pujaris, household employees, temple administrators, small owners, or tenants to the landed elite, the YKS never fully embraced the community it wished to create. It provided an inroad to middle-class mobility, but only to a small section of Nambudiri village society, which could count on the support of other upper-class brahmins and Nairs in the face of wider lineage opposition. Despite family conflicts, aristocratic Nambudiris could progressively convert part of their share of family property or individually acquired resources into education, professional labour, or migration. While internal hierarchies were crucial to the polarization of Nambudiris’ positions on caste-based reformism, this was also affected by individuals’ entry into leftist politics. In common with other communities, Nambudiris’ activism within the Communist Party was in continuity with earlier ‘modernist projects’ of caste-based organization, ‘although within a different ideological framework’ (Osella and Osella 2000: 19). As discussed in the previous chapter, through the language of Marxism, Communism produced a new formulation of the progressive contribution that Nambudiris had made—and could make—to Malayali development (D. Menon 1999). Nevertheless, while appealing to the unifying mission of Nambudiris with respect to the future Kerala state (D. Menon 1999)—and while ambivalently engaging with the suitability of the caste system for the region’s economic progress—Communism eventually failed to address persistent forms of caste-based inequality, both across and within communities.

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From Gods to Human Beings Still, in Krishnapuram, the early 1940s witnessed the partial transcendence of Nambudiris’ internal differences through the inflow into the Communist party of brahmins from different status and economic (p.66) backgrounds. For some aristocratic youth, involvement in leftist politics was in keeping with earlier participation in YKS projects. For less prestigious Nambudiri families, political activism also represented a way to voice relations of dependency with a declining Brahmin aristocracy. In village memories frequent traumatic events of family loss or prolonged tensions with the landed aristocracy underpinned poorer Nambudiri men’s involvement in the Communist Party. At the same time, militancy in the Party also to some extent allowed lower-status Nambudiris to establish relations beyond the village, and to enhance their geographical and social mobility. Many lower-class Nambudiri men moved out of Krishnapuram to nearby towns or into north Malabar where, thanks to the support of partyfellows, they could find good employment opportunities and sometimes establish more equal intra-caste and inter-community relationships. A certain degree of complicity between Nambudiris of different social backgrounds started to emerge in two important fields which addressed both shared ideology and new, emerging family patterns. Indeed, common disenchantment with rituals and religion cut across different strata of Nambudiri society, to the point that entering the Communist Party was often accompanied by the refusal to wear the sacred thread. Furthermore, while among YKS members the right to parivedanam (equal endogamous marriage for all male lineage members) translated into marrying Nambudiri women of more or less equal high status, Communist Party activism also led to endogamous arranged marriages across sub-caste divisions and beyond caste boundaries, something that would have been unthinkable in earlier decades. Many militant Nambudiris from Krishnapuram who married Nambudiri women from a different sub-caste did so through what they called ‘party connections’, although until the 1970s these unions rarely tended to involve partners who were very far apart in the internal caste hierarchy.2

Changing Kinship Relations and Class

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From Gods to Human Beings As mentioned in the previous chapter, endogamous marriages (veli) for secondborn Nambudiris were not unknown before the early twentieth century’s advent of community reform movements. While for aristocratic lineages these marriages could occasionally represent (p.67) a strategy to reinvigorate the lineage’s demography, for lower-class Nambudiris they resulted from frequent lineage segmentation from the resulting establishment of different tavazhi (lineage branches). However, from the beginning of the twentieth century, endogamous marriage—especially among the upper echelons of Nambudiri society—increasingly became a way of showing a certain commitment to the well-being of the community. Importantly, the claim to the right of parivedanam is not necessarily a result of membership into the YKS. Rather, from the 1940s onwards, this right is increasingly expressed in the more encompassing secularist terms of the rejection of backward religious practices—particularly strong among Communist adherents—or in the language of citizenship duties following the creation of the state of Kerala (1956). One important element that emerges from the analysis of genealogies is that equal marriage rights within the community were less advocated as a way to dismantle a model of joint family living and more as an inroad to infuse the latter with demographic strength, equality, and cohesion. Yet, and particularly among pioneer Nambudiri reformists, parivedanam was likely to produce deep kinship ruptures, which often resulted in long-lasting family breaks, the exclusion of the newly-married couple from village life, and the latter’s relocation in a different part of Kerala/India, or abroad. Family ruptures exacerbated Nambudiris’ sense of fragility in being at the margin of kin and caste relations. More often than not, kinship ruptures in turn fuelled the intent to form new lineage branches premised on novel forms of joint living, centred on children and their entitlement to equal marriage (and gradually property) rights. Even in the 1960s, when the legal right of individual inheritance of joint property started to take root in family practices, formal partition of the property did not necessarily translate into the separation of different family units.

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From Gods to Human Beings The conflictual character of endogamous marriage weakened throughout the 1940s, but it did not start to become a legitimate practice until the early 1950s. Indeed, the enforcement of laws throughout Kerala aimed at legalizing the right to endogamous marriage—for example in Travancore (Travancore Malayala Brahmin Act 1931), in Malabar (Madras Nambudiri Act 1933) and Cochin (Cochin Nambudiri Act 1939)—only started to resonate widely among Nambudiri families two decades later, largely as a result of growing (p.68) internal mobility or of gradual accommodation of formerly sacrilegious acts. Among upper-status Krishnapuram Nambudiris, many of those families who left the village following family ruptures managed to build up educational and professional careers. Particularly, those who established new lineage branches at the outskirts of semi-urban areas like Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), or Thrissur were more easily able over time to join the ranks of a middle class of government officers, teachers, and lawyers. Between the 1930s and the 1970s the slow transition from traditional elite to a modernizing middle class was accompanied by a renewed way of conceiving family joint living and of investing in a growing progeny not only in terms of education but also in terms of affective and legal lineage membership. The following case study, taken from one mana’s genealogical recordings and memories, is particularly illuminating.

Figure 2.1 Re-elaboration of a section of Aravayur Nambudiri genealogies Source: Author.

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From Gods to Human Beings In 1903 Subramanian, the second-born of an aristocratic lineage, married a Nambudiri woman at the request of his mother. His elder brother Parameshwaran had married, but had no children until 1909. However, after the death of Subramanian’s first wife, his decision to marry a Nambudiri widow in 1922 created a family scandal. By that time, Parameshwaran had unexpectedly had four children with his first wife (two boys and two girls) and a second veli for the (p.69) younger son was seen as unnecessary. Subramanian’s marriage to a widow from Thrissur was a service to the YKS: a fellow from Thrissur had introduced Subramanian to his sister, who remained a widow at the age of 15, and asked him to marry her as a proof of commitment to the cause. Subramanian was also motivated by the idea that his lineage was going to die out due to the limited number of children. After a few years of difficult coexistence in the old nalikettu, Subramanian moved to live on the outskirts of Kochi, in one of the families’ abandoned properties, which he slowly restored thanks to his job as a teacher in a local Vedic school. Parameshwaran’s family remained in Krishnapuram and for many years, the two brothers did not have any relation with each other. I met Vijayan, the third son of Subramanian, in 2000 when he was a retired 62-year-old doctor. He was still living in the same area where he had grown up with his brothers and sisters, although they had demolished the previous house and built a smaller one. As Vijayan recalled: My father was very particular in giving the three of us the same things … we all studied and we went to local English schools in Cochin. He barely took us back to Krishnapuram, even if today is just one hour and a half drive from here!!! Me and my brothers and sisters we all married Nambudiris, my parents were so particular about this but paradoxically, because of these marriages, we were all much excluded by our people ... my parents were very much closer to other people … more like us …. By ‘people like us’, Vijayan mainly meant Nairs, Varmas, and Syrian Christians, sometimes Tamil Brahmins. In many cases, indeed, class status was more easily built up by mingling beyond community boundaries and less by sharing genealogical relations with brahmins. Vijayan continues by reflecting on how novel forms of joint living framed his personal trajectory as a middle-class man: You see, after my father left the old house and until we partitioned our property in 1976, we all lived together in the same house … me, my brothers with their children and my sister Savitri also lived in a nearby house with her Nambudiri husband, after he was outcasted from his family. Many kids around, I mean it was a new feeling for us … because before you could not really bring your children … the ones you had with sambandham into your family house … So we were all going to school, and later on we all got into good jobs …. (p.70)

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From Gods to Human Beings The other branch of the lineage, however, was fraught with its own tensions. Parameshwaran’s children—Nayaranan and Krishnan—both married from within the Nambudiri community despite the initial reluctance of their father, and had continued to live in the village’s ancestral house. This branch of the lineage had subsequently experienced a dramatic decline which resulted in the demolition of the old family house in 1979 and the migration of many of its members in Delhi as unskilled workers, or movement towards the city to take up poorly-paid jobs as pujaris. In contrast, between 1950 and 1956, Ravi (married to a Nambudiri) and Kunjunni (married to a Nair) initiated a legal fight against their father Parameshwaran for the assignation of a share of the lineage joint property. This was obtained only in the early 1960s, partly as a result of the enforcement of the Hindu Succession Act (1956).3 This claim led to a second rupture in the family life of the lineage, resulting in the selling of the obtained share of the property and the outflow of the two men’s families towards Kozhikode, in Malabar. As the story of Parameshwaran’s children shows, with time endogamous marriage among abhijaata families was normalized in the lineage reproductive strategies. Yet, changes in marriage practices were also accompanied by different class trajectories. While Subramanian’s ruptures with his father and brother might have provided the impetus for renewed strategies of mobility and for a village–town–city move, endogamous marriage in the cases of Parameshwaran’s first two children did not really challenge the link between aristocratic status and agricultural relations. Most lineage members remained in the village: for them, and contrary to YKS predictions, the newly acquired family status as kudumbanathan did not automatically bring about engagement with modern educational and occupational possibilities. Like for Parameshwaran’s children, a considerable number of aristocratic Nambudiri families remained largely dependent on their landlord status. Yet they also had to confront with the fact that changing conjugal and reproductive patterns were placing a new demographic pressure on shrinking lineage properties and land revenues. Importantly, marriage-related conflicts had a significant effect on the relation between kinship and class. As the above stories show, kinship ruptures both resulted from and significantly sharpened internal distinctions in wealth and status among members of the same lineage. (p.71) Some Nambudiris could engage with socio-geographical mobility and with related educational and professional possibilities since the 1940s while the bulk of Nambudiri village society had to wait for the impact of the 1969 land reforms to take up initiatives of labour and geographical mobility. The intensification of internal divisions within once-prestigious lineages and, more specifically, the coexistence within the same network of kinship relations of increasingly poor and decaying Nambudiris with an upwardly mobile Nambudiri society deeply influenced the capacity of Brahmin middle classes to combine genealogical pedigree with modern status.

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From Gods to Human Beings Land and Fading Status For many Nambudiris kinship reforms were not accompanied by the timely class regeneration they promised. Many of the changes advocated by the YKS/YJS in the first three decades of the twentieth century involved—at least until the late 1940s—a relatively limited section of village Nambudiris. While more entrepreneurial members of rich lineages left the village to pursue educational and professional opportunities in Kerala or other Indian destinations, the bulk of Brahmin society in Krishnapuram remained either closely attached to landlord privileges. Among lower-status Nambudiris, families remained linked to village agrarian relations and to forms of dependency on declining aristocratic lineages until the 1960s. At the same time, in many other cases, the impossibility of relying on large land revenues prompted lower-status Nambudiris to search for alternative opportunities outside the original grahmam without entering into harsh family crises. Overall, however, it is possible to say that the decades between the 1920s and the 1960s marked the decline of Nambudiris in contrast with ascendant Nairs, Syrian Christians, and, to some extent, Ezhavas and Muslims, as well as other Brahmin populations in the wider context of south India. While Krishnapuram resembles some areas of Malabar—where Nambudiris’ janman right made villages appear as a sort of Brahmin ‘informal empire’ (D. Menon 1994: 13)—the system of agrarian relations was affected by a series of land policies enacted in Travancore and Cochin states from the early nineteenth century onwards. These aimed to progressively reduce the control of jenmis (landlords) over (p.72) lineage properties (Brahmaswom) in favour of kanam tenants and, later on, verumpattamdar (sub-tenants) (Franke 1992; Gough 1965; Jeffrey 1992; C.A. Menon 1995 [1911]), as well as their control over temple land (Devaswom) in favour of the State (Tarabout 1997). Between the 1920s and the 1950s there was a considerable decrease in both the amount of land annexed to temples and the resulting revenue, which was used to maintain and administer sacred buildings. In turn, this resulted in many temples ceasing their own activities, and in the loss of jobs among dependant lower-class Nambudiris.

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From Gods to Human Beings As for the janman land, while it is important to note that the three Adhyan lineages in Krishnapuram remained among the largest landowners in the village until the early 1970s (alongside a few Asyas families), the early twentieth century also produced changes in what Panikkar terms the ‘three-tier hierarchical relationship’ (Panikkar 1995: 185) between jenmis, kanakkar (tenants) and verumpattakkar (sub-tenants and workers). These changes reduced not only the extent of Nambudiris’ properties but, perhaps more importantly, compromised janman rights by allowing a class of intermediary high-status Nair and Syrian Christian tenants to acquire full occupancy rights on kanam land. In line with changes occurring in other areas of central Kerala, Nambudiri landlords started to lease land against an initial lump sum payment to a growing class of rent-paying and rent-receiving intermediaries. This class was then able to concentrate control of kanam land in its own hands and to reinvest the surplus in more kanam, as well as in English education and professional jobs for younger generations. The rise of the middle class in Krishnapuram and neighbouring semi-rural areas partly originated in this class of intermediary kanakkar (see Panikkar 1995). Indeed in the area of the research contrasts with other rural areas of southern India, and particularly with Tamil Nadu. If we take as a comparative case in point the analysis developed by Andre Béteille in early 1960s Sreepuram, it appears that in both contexts, brahmins have been playing ‘a smaller part in deciding the fate of the village’ (Béteille 1965: 208). As Béteille shows, changing hierarchies of class and power at village level drew from a transfer of power from brahmins to non-brahmins in panchayat office (Béteille 1965: 208). The last Nambudiri panchayat president in Krishnapuram dates back to 1957, while in the following decades (p.73) Nair, Christian, Ezhava, and more recently Pulaya representatives began taking leading positions at panchayat and ward (subpanchayat division) levels. Yet in Tamil Nadu the decline of Brahmin rural dominance was partly induced by their voluntary withdrawal from the village agrarian economy and by their pioneering investment in urban life. In parallel, as Béteille suggests (1965: 209), ‘non-brahmins remained firmly rooted to the village and its agrarian economy’ while brahmins were progressively monopolising clerical, executive, and professional occupations. Conversely, in Krishnapuram, considerable mobility among Nambudiris towards town and city centres began only in the late 1960s, at a time when other more progressive and entrepreneurial communities had already built up their own competitive advantages in most educational and professional fields.

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From Gods to Human Beings This lack of capitalization on land revenues exacerbated the effects of the land reforms enacted in the newly formed Kerala state from the mid-1950s on. The Kerala Land Reform Act in 1969 was the last in a series of reforms which eventually consolidated the privileges of tenants and the emerging kanamholding middle classes (Radhakrishnan 1989). Due to the specific configuration of the 1969 land reform—which ascribed major importance to the criteria of tenant rights, compared to that of the property ceiling—a large amount of Nambudiri properties were de facto transferred to Nairs, Syrian Christians, and, to a much lesser extent, to Ezhavas and other lower castes (Herring 1980).4 Despite many Nambudiris in the village ascribe their decline to the enforcement of the land reform, it would be erroneous to overemphasize the effects of the reforms in terms of expropriation of land. As in other parts of Kerala, the span of time between the unsuccessful 1957 reform and the reform in 1969 allowed many Nambudiris to transfer part of their land to other family members through donation or partition. Indeed, it is not so much the loss of land per se which can explain the decline of village Nambudiris. Rather, it was the final legitimation of jenmis’ rights over the lands of the grahmam, combined with what Béteille terms ‘the belated start’ (Béteille 1965: 209) in moving on to alternative life paths, that contributed to their marginalization in village political and social structures, and in those of Kerala more generally. The decline of Nambudiris as landlords is clear in the socio-territorial configuration of contemporary Krishnapuram. Until the (p.74) 1950s, the innermost part of the old grahmam was the exclusive domain of prestigious Adhyan mansions and Nambudiri family temples. Since then the selling or loss of land properties in favour of more mobile classes has translated into the demise of many old nalikettu (old Kerala houses) and the building of palatial villages by Nair and Christian businessmen, government officers, or professionals, as well as return migrants. In the same line, five out of the eight major temples in the area were taken under the control of village trustees, prevalently Nairs, and often under the semi-explicit control of the more influential Nair Service Society (Gallo 2007a). Village memories recall how in the aftermath of the mid-1970s enforcement of the land reform, the eldest member of Aravoor mana called for a village meeting gathering the representatives of the panchayat and ward units, and of major caste-based associations. During the meeting Aravoor mana, along with the other two Adhyan lineages, made it clear that the three lineages could no longer take care of the local Thirullar Temple, and asked the village to create a trust to take over the administration and maintenance of the sacred building. This event constitutes a watershed in village memories of changing rural relations: it marked the public admission of Nambudiri of their prolonged decline and, perhaps more importantly, the progressive abandonment of any longstanding prohibition on lower castes to come physically close to aristocratic families’ properties.

Occupation and Professionalization: New and Old Middle Classes Page 15 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings Until the late 1960s, class change among Nambudiris seem to be characterized by a polarization between, on the one hand, the decline of the landed elite and of dependent rural families and, on the other, the consolidation of middle-class status among those pioneer subjects who engaged with internal or international mobility. For some aristocratic and Asyas families the outflow from villages to urban India often allowed a progressive move towards English education or in higher educational qualifications in general. Pioneer migration mainly allowed Nambudiris to successfully combine high-caste status with modern middle-class achievement, and aligned them with the exclusivity that characterized the Indian colonial and post-independence (p.75) ‘old’ middle-classes (Béteille 2007; Daechsel 2006; Frankel 1989; Misra 1961). According to my data, government jobs and employment in educational institutions were in this period mainly taken up by a restricted number of Nambudiris of traditionally higher status, whereas lower-class families mainly achieved similar positions only in the second generation—and since the late 1970s, in general. At the same time, it is important to note that this transition excluded the bulk of Nambudiri society, for whom class renovation was a more tortuous process. The limited number of pioneer abhijaata, Asyas, and Jatimantras Nambudiris who moved out of the ancestral village more commonly experienced, at least initially, a degree of downward mobility. While some men could work in local schools as salaried teachers, in a significant number of cases men were employed in poorly remunerated jobs as pujaris in public and private non-Nambudiri temples, in low-level government positions or in occasional jobs in small private town businesses. Significantly, precarious life conditions were in some cases exacerbated by the lack of support from the wider network of kinship relations that often followed family breaks.

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From Gods to Human Beings In this respect, the formation of Nambudiri middle classes differs to some extent from that of Nairs and Syrian Christians. For the latter, the consolidation of urban middle classes in the colonial period and in the decades that followed combined with and built on the growing influence these groups gained within the agrarian economy. Many Nairs, Varmas, and Syrian Christians, while becoming urbanized in the Indian metropolis or abroad, never fully lost connections with their native village and invested part of the material and symbolic capital accumulated in cities or migrant destinations back into the village, mainly in the form of land and other immovable properties. More broadly, a comparative gaze on the history of Tamil Brahmins is again worth here. For the latter migration represented a major long-standing route to social mobility and to the formation of a consolidated Tamil Brahmin middle class. The majority of the real middle-class Tamil Brahmin has emigrated, leaving behind brahmins at the two extremities of the socio-economic scale, the very rich and the very poor (Chuyen 2004: 158–60). Among this community, sociogeographical mobility has been characterized by speediness and completeness, with village families becoming urbanized within the span (p.76) of one generation (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008a: 180–1). Yet, this only applied mainly to rich and higher status Tamil Brahmins, while lower-class families were more likely to have adopted a stationary life within Tamil Nadu (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008a). Differently, among higher-status Nambudiris, village outflow until the 1960s involved a relative minority and somehow constituted a sacrilegious act in terms of betrayal of kinship and agrarian relations. It implied leaving entire lineage braches or families for other urban destinations and a disengagement from the rural economy. Migrant money was rarely invested back ‘home’ to enhance the conditions of kin who stayed behind. Unskilled migration frequently occurred among traditionally lower-status Nambudiris and often led to subsequent class mobility. In this case, migration was more linked to labour mobility than to political activism and more often translated into a relatively continuous flow of remittances. In turn, this enhanced the life conditions of traditionally lower-status families, who were more able to take up better educational and labour opportunities in subsequent generations.

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From Gods to Human Beings However, the public acceptance of decline that characterized village brahmins in the early 1970s also gave new impetus to mass strategies of social mobility previously disdained by the bulk of Nambudiri society. It was in this period that the village saw a considerable outflow of Nambudiris to nearby towns and cities in search of work. Three major changes seemed to occur in this period. First, leaving the village and the old ancestral house for education and work became an increasingly accepted strategy and was charged with fewer generational tensions. A growing number of more conservative families started to recognize the need to accept available job possibilities in order to overcome economic difficulties and to revive the fortunes of a déclassé community. Second, these changes in family attitudes contributed to the re-establishment of a connection between dispersed lineage branches across villages and towns as well as the investment of money accumulated via urban jobs back into the native village. In the late 1970s, remittances began to be more regularly invested in higher education, the building of better houses and better care provision for family members who remained in Kerala.5

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From Gods to Human Beings Third, and important, many Nambudiri women started to enter salaried occupations. For many antharjanams the movement from (p.77) Krishnapuram towards the nearby cities of Ankamali and Thrissur, and particularly the three urban poles of Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and Kozhikode, resulted in the acceptance of qualified jobs as school teachers, clerks in private businesses, or government employees. However, the biographies of many aristocratic and lower-class Nambudiri women are also characterized by unskilled and manual labour: harsh economic conditions forced many to accept manual jobs in restaurants, firms, or as servants in affluent urban families of Nambudiris but also Nairs or Syrian Christians. Significantly, this also marks a temporal and social contrast with the way in which gendered labour patterns characterized the matrilineal and Christian middle classes between the 1920s and the 1970s. While between the 1920s and the 1950s the rise of Malayali Christian and Hindu middle classes relied on women’s pioneering skilled and semi-skilled labour as nurses, teachers, and doctors in Kerala, India, and in other British colonies, the attainment of modern privileges in subsequent decades also resulted in women’s progressive withdrawal from salaried occupations and the almost exclusive identification of class status with male professional occupations (Osella and Osella 2000). Osella and Osella also note how, among lower-caste yet upwardly mobile middle classes like Ezhavas, the emulation of Nair and Syrian Christian lifestyles often led the former to subscribe to the model of the ‘bourgeois educated housewife’ (Osella and Osella 2000: 44). Conversely, among Nambudiris colonial critique of gosha (women’s seclusion) combined in later decades with the ‘shame’ of having uneducated and jobless women and promoted a common idea that women’s (skilled and unskilled) labour was an essential to class regeneration and to avoid the stigma of being a ‘backward community’.6 In this respect, the attainment of contemporary middle-class status among Nambudiri families can also be seen as forged not only out of the praising of women’s more legitimate labour as professionals, but also through an emphasis on the sacrifice constituted by their physical and unskilled labour. Table 2.1 Nambudiri (men and women): Primary and integrative occupations in Krishnapuram, Tallipuram, Sreepuram, and Kochi Occupation

Men

Women

8.05%

1.63% (9)

Main Occupation 1. Agriculture: administration (only activity)

(67) 2. Agriculture: administration and manual labour (only 1.32% activity) (11) 3. Small business – Petty trade

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–

4.7% (39) 2.17% (12)

From Gods to Human Beings

Occupation

Men

Women

Main Occupation 4. Medium-large business – Trade

0.96% (8) 0.36% (2)

5. Professional work (doctor, lawyer)

5.76% (48)

   Engineer

4.7% (39) 2.9% (16)

   Technician (computer, laboratory)

2.16% (18)

5.05% (28)

6. Technical employment (carpenter, electrician, beautician, tailor)

3.97% (33)

2.9% (16)

7. School teachers

4.32% (36)

13% (72)

8. University teachers

1.92% (16)

0.54% (3)

9. High government employment

1.32% (11)

2.4% (13)

10. Low government employment

2.3% (19) 4.9 (27)

11. Private Sector I (professional, bank clerk, journalists)

4.2% (35) 3.8 (21)

12. Private Sector II (accountant, secretary, shop assistant)

6.25% (52)

13. Army/Police

4.92% (41)

14. Tourism

–

4.7% (26)

5.77% (32) –

1.62% (9)

15. Skilled migration: India

7.45% (62)

6.31% (35)

16. Unskilled/semi-skilled migration: India

8.53%

9.75%

(71)

(54)

17. Skilled migration: Abroad

2.76% (23)

2.9% (16)

18. Unskilled/semi-skilled migration: Abroad

4.44%

3.61%

(37)

(20)

19. Religious jobs: pujari; mel shanti; thantri

8% (67)

–

20. Pujari outside Kerala

5.1% (43)

–

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From Gods to Human Beings

Occupation

Men

Women

Main Occupation 21. Unemployed

6.7% (56) 26% (143)

21.a Housewife

14.8% (82)

21.b Job-seeking

11% (61)

Total

832

554

Integrative Jobs a. Marriage Broker

1.9% (16) 4.15% (23)

b. Vastu consultant (Traditional Architecture)

1.44% (12)

–

c. Astrologer

3.5 % (29)

–

d. Sacred Texts Reader

3 % (25)

e. Land Administration

17% (127)

Total

25.8% (209)

2.34% (13) –

6.49% (36)

Source: Survey, Gallo (2005–6). As implied above, in the two decades that followed the enactment of the 1969 land reform Nambudiri society underwent intense change which internal community hierarchies. Today, the poorest Nambudiri families in Krishnapuram and surrounding come today from declined aristocratic lineages as well as from the lowest ranking of Jatimantras (p.78) Nambudiris, while professional occupations, skilled migration, and higher education cut across different Nambudiri sub-castes. An elder generation doing less rewarding jobs was progressively replaced by a generation of educated professionals and well-off youths.

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From Gods to Human Beings As indicated in Table 2.1, contemporary employment patterns of Nambudiris are fragmented across a wide range of occupations. The administration of land property still involves a relatively significant portion (8 per cent) of village Nambudiris with no other forms of employment, while only a minority have moved towards agricultural manual labour as a form of primary subsistence. If, for Nambudiri women, unemployment is shunned as a symbol of past gosha, for Nambudiri men the administration of land property as the sole form of family income has since long ceased to be a symbol of prestige, and is negatively perceived by more progressive Nambudiris as well as by other communities. If we look at those forms of employment that are typical of what is often termed as the ‘traditional middle class’—salaried bureaucrats and professionals like lawyers, doctors, employees in private firms, or teachers (Ahmad and Reifeld 2002; see Mines 1984)—they are more often than not a belated product of 1970s and 1980s social mobility rather than the longer-term outcome of colonial and postcolonial class formation (as in the rest of India). As previously mentioned, this mainly applies to those Nambudiris who stayed in Kerala, whereas those who migrated to north Indian cities in many cases achieved better professional positions in earlier decades. Today, while jobs like doctors and lawyers involve both men and women comparatively equally, teaching emerges as predominantly a women’s job. Compared to men, Nambudiri women also more often hold high or low government employment. For middle–lower-class men, technical employment or petty business is often accompanied by integrative employment in so-conceived traditional Brahmin occupations such as astrology, Vastu consultancy, or priesthood, whereas middle–lower-class Nambudiri women may work as marriage brokers or sacred text readers to increase family income. In the mid-1990s, however, a considerable section of Nambudiri society ‘caught up’ with new middle-class forms of professional employment in the banking sector or in the IT industry. This was particularly (but not exclusively) the case for men. With some (p.79) (p.80) important exceptions, large business activities are still a marginal form of employment for Nambudiris compared with Syrian Christians and Nairs. They tend, to my knowledge, to be mainly concentrated in the two commercial cities of Kochi and Kozhikode, where business is enhanced by many transnational connections developed through decades of migration. In this period, English education and university degrees became a relatively popular form of achievement among Nambudiris, alongside the improvement of life conditions and economic security at both village and city level.

Page 22 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings As in the rest of India, today, ‘middle-classness’ is realized not only in the urban centres but can also be realized in rural areas (Donner and De Neve 2011: 12). Indeed, compared with earlier decades, class mobility combines with the revitalization of urban–rural kinship networks to smooth down previously sharp distinctions between Krishnapuram Nambudiris and urban community fellows in terms of lifestyle and consumption. The attainment of prestigious jobs in the IT industry, however, is crucially linked with migration to Indian cities or abroad: indeed the percentage of Nambudiri men and women working in IT is much higher in such destinations than it is in Kerala. In today’s Krishnapuram, Nambudiris form an aggregation of heterogeneous middle classes, making it difficult to trace a correlation between traditional subcaste status and modern achievements. Lower-class Nambudiris working as pujaris, in petty business, unskilled migration, or technical employment come from aristocratic and lower-status lineages in decline. More established middleclass families draw their status from occupations such as teaching, high-level government employment, law, or military service, while new generations have engaged in professional jobs and skilled migration as doctors or engineers.

Movement and Displacement across Generations In common with the rest of Malayali society, the formation of Nambudiri middle classes in the colonial and postcolonial period cannot be understood without referring to the role played by internal and international migration since the early twentieth century. Migration allowed various forms of material and symbolic investment back home (Gallo 2013; Kurien 2002) and enhanced the translation (p.81) of traditional elite status into modern class one. Trained to become teachers, doctors, and nurses by the British and the Anglican Missionary Society, Nairs and Syrian Christians (both men and women) worked in north India and in other British colonies from the 1920s onwards. The move to Indian metropolis was frequently an important step towards further destinations abroad (Gardner and Osella 2003). Remittances represented an important means through which Nair and Syrian Christian migrants could both maintain connections with the homeland as well as enhance the status of relatives living in Kerala by investing in education, professional jobs, business activities, and well-off lifestyles (Gallo 2013; Kurien 2002). Remittances enhanced their role as cultural entrepreneurs (Joshi 2001), as these two communities connected achievements in the household sphere with the display of hegemony in political, financial, and cultural matters.

Page 23 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings Since the late 1970s ‘Gulf migration’ has implied the participation of previously marginalized strata—particularly low-caste Hindus and Muslims—in unskilled and semi-skilled outflows (Zachariah, Mathew, and Rajan 2000). From this period onwards, remittances have deeply transformed Krishnapuram’s landscape and social life. The gap between the mansions of elites and the humble houses of lower strata has been replaced by a growing number of newly built brick houses, which are often more luxurious than the houses of established elites. Dress codes and forms of consumption have deeply challenged the formerly exclusive status of Nairs and Syrian Christians: today, an increasing number of low-caste youths can afford modern items such as branded clothes and bodily ornaments, and families have access to costly technological goods (Osella and Osella 2000). Migration and remittances have a double and interrelated impact on the multiple formations of middle classes. First, as in the case of Syrian Christians and Hindu Nairs, internal and international mobility reinforces the nexus between caste, class, and status by creating a modern middle class which is able to combine genealogical pedigree with modern achievements. Second, the inflow of financial and symbolic resources has moulded the formation of elites within previously marginalized communities, thus unsettling the longstanding association between traditional high-caste/class status and modern privileges. In today’s Krishnapuram, a significant number of Ezhava, (p.82) (p.83) Ashari, Latin Catholic, and Muslim families, as well as (in a much more limited way) Pulayas and Papayas (Scheduled Castes [STs]), can afford a lifestyle which has long been confined to the local elite.

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From Gods to Human Beings

Table 2.2 Historical patterns of Krishnapuram emigration across caste, religion, and gender (1920–today) Period

Destinations

Typology of Migration

Gender

Main Community (Caste, Religion)

1920–50 British Raj + Anglican

Africa, Malaysia, Singapore (Colonies)

Pioneer men and women

Hindu Nairs, Syrian Christians

Missionary Society

Internal Migration (Indian cities)

Skilled Migration (doctors, nurses, teachers)

1950–70

Africa, Malaysia, Singapore (Colonies) Internal Migration (Chennai, India settentrionale)

Skilled and unskilled migration + Military service

Migrant men and following women/families

1970–Today

Gulf countries

Semi-skilled and unskilled Male migration (1990s) migration Growing independent female migration

Syrian Christians, Hindu Nairs, Hindu Ezhavas, brahmins Latin Catholics; Muslims

1970–Today

Marginal destinations (Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany) UK

Religious/Vocational migration Skilled migration (Nurses) Unskilled migration (Domestic service)

Female-led migration, following husbands/ families (1990s) Growing independent male migration

Syrian Christians, Latin Catholics

1990–Today

UK, Europe, US, Canada,

Skilled migration

Male and female

Syrian Christians, Hindu

India

(engineers, doctors)

migration

Nairs and brahmins

Source: Author.

Page 25 of 36

Above communities, Ezhavas, Nambudiris Syrian Christians, Hindu Nairs, Hindu Ezhavas

From Gods to Human Beings These families invest in higher education in the hope of transforming unskilled migration into the more prestigious migrant trajectories towards Europe, Australia or the US, although for many this project finds little practical realization. At the same time, investment in technological items, gold, and household goods accompany the display of social change. As noted by the Osellas, this also exacerbates each internal community divide, with elites attempting to distance themselves from those community fellows who have been less successful (Osella and Osella 2000). As implied in the previous section, until the 1970s only a relative minority of Nambudiris kept pace with emerging middle classes by taking up skilled and semi-skilled occupations in India or abroad. Migration often translated into generational distancing from village social life, particularly among older generations. One 72-year-old doctor, now living in Delhi, had left Kerala as a child as a result of his father’s tensions with his family. He told me: For my father’s family migration was unthinkable, but my father’s life conditions after he joined the Yuva Jana Sangham became intolerable and he left with my mother in search of better opportunities. He started to have a job there as a teacher but he never sent money back home, why should […] he? And now we are doing much better than those who preferred to stay there thinking to be superior. In the eyes of conservative families, the stigma of having joined reformist movements combined with younger generations’ decision to engage with migration, which was disdained because it meant leaving the ancestral house and compromising Brahmin purity and status. Conversely, for reformist Nambudiris moving out the natal village constituted a way to overcome persistent family tensions and, in many cases, outcasting. The severing of kinship ties that accompanied family conflicts partly explains why the migration of outcasted members failed for a long time to lead to the redistribution of capital among the wider lineage. As in the case analysed above, helping kin back in Kerala was not an option for many pioneer migrant Nambudiris, either because of persistent resentment or because it might not be accepted by conservative family members. Weak social (p.84) (p.86) and economic connections between pioneer migrants and their kin in Kerala is sometimes still evident in the distance that divides the lifestyles and well-being of Nambudiri families I met in Bengaluru, Delhi, or Chennai from those of less educated and well-off relatives living in Kerala. This contrasts with the visible improvements achieved through migrants’ remittances by non-Brahmin families living in Krishnapuram, who could count on a deeper generational continuity in the capitalization of remittances. Thus, even in case of social mobility through migration, acquired class status assumed a kind of individual character, or exclusively involved the newly created family.

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From Gods to Human Beings

Tables 2.3a, b, and c Nambudiri migration in Krishnapuram and surrounding areas between 1920 and 2008 Period of Migration

Unskilled/ Manual

Semi-Skilled

Skilled

1920–70

(Manual labour, home care, cleaners, employees in petty business)

(Nurse, accountant, laboratory technicians, pujaris, temple administrator, low government employees; technical jobs as carpenter, electrician; beautician, hairdresser)

(Teacher, engineer, doctor, lawyer, banking/ finance, large business)

Indian Cities Men/Women

Men/Women

Men/Women

(Chennai, Bengaluru,

4/5

4/1

4/1

Europe/UK

2 ....

..... .....

2 .....

Gulf Countries

..... .....

..... .....

1 .....

African Colonies

..... .....

3/1

2/1

Malaysia– Singapore

..... .....

1 .....

1/1

United States

... .....

..... .....

..... .....

Total:

6/5

8/2

10/3

Period of

Unskilled/

Semi-Skilled

Skilled

Migration

Manual

1970–90

(Manual labour, driver, home

(Nurse, accountant, laboratory technicians,

(Teacher, engineer,

care, cleaners, employees in

pujaris, temple administrator, low

doctor, lawyer, banking/

petty business)

government employees; finance, large technical jobs as carpenter, business)

Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune)

electrician; beautician, hairdresser) Page 27 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings

Period of Migration

Unskilled/ Manual

Semi-Skilled

Skilled

Indian Cities Men/Women

Men/Women

Men/Women

(Chennai, 9/5 Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune)

12/2

12/11

(p.85) Europe/UK

1 ....

2/1

3/1

Gulf Countries

8/2

17/9

9/6

(former) African Colonies

.... .....

1/2

...... .....

Malaysia– Singapore

1/4

3/4

9/4

United States

..... ......

..... ......

2 ....

Total:

19/11

35/18

35/22

Period of Migration

Unskilled/ Manual

Semi-Skilled

Skilled

1990–2008

(Manual labour, home care, cleaners, employees in petty business)

(Nurse, accountant, laboratory technicians, pujaris, temple administrator, low government employees; technical jobs as carpenter, electrician; beautician, hairdresser)

(Teacher, engineer, doctor, lawyer, banking/ finance, large business)

Indian Cities Men/Women

Men/Women

Men/Women

(Chennai,

2 .....

9/4

22/13

.... .....

7/3

9/15

Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune). Europe/UK

Page 28 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings

Period of Migration

Unskilled/ Manual

Semi-Skilled

Skilled

Gulf Countries

7/5

12/7

31/18

(former) African Colonies

.... .....

.... .....

..... ....

Malaysia– Singapore

2/3

3/5

17/9

United States

..... .....

2 ....

25/16

Total:

11/8

33/19

104/71

In contrast, lower-status Nambudiris were to some extent freer from traditional constraints and aristocratic expectations, and had engaged with migration since the late 1940s. A minority took up jobs as teachers in India or in African colonies, while the majority worked in poorly remunerated occupations as pujaris or as manual labourers in Indian cities. Only the subsequent migrant generation was able to take steps towards higher education and professional employment. Yet, in both cases lower-status migrant Nambudiris entered the legitimate ranks of the middle classes relatively earlier, compared to aristocratic families, and are sometimes more easily recognized as ‘equal’ by other Malayalis in the diaspora. It was only in the late 1970s that migration within and outside India became a significant phenomenon in the community and a relatively shared experience between mobile subjects and those who ‘stay back’. In this period, unskilled and semi-skilled migration towards north India and Gulf countries became a relatively shared practice between Nambudiris and lower-status communities. Yet migration also came to be considered by many brahmins as a necessary and urgent step to overcome the generational reluctance to enter into degrading occupations. Unlike in the established middle classes, Nambudiri women also entered in larger numbers into the ranks of semi-skilled migration, and took up occupations which were unthinkable until the late 1960s.

Page 29 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings To some extent, the belated involvement in migration among Nambudiris—and the mass involvement in unskilled and semi-skilled forms of mobility since the 1970s—crucially created an undesired proximity with the lower sections of Malayali society. Migration bore (p.87) its fruits only in the 1990s a time in which Nambudiri youth started to engage with skilled migration to Europe, the UK, and the US. Unlike Nairs and Syrian Christians—for whom the move from colonial forms of skilled migration to the forms that have characterized liberalizing India since the early 1990s—has been relatively smooth; for Nambudiris, their more recent involvement in prestigious jobs abroad has frequently been built upon years of more degrading forms of socio-geographical mobility, and can still be an arduous process. It is only in the last decade that we witness the establishment of a new generation of young brahmins who have started to compete with well-established Malayali middle classes for skilled jobs in the high-tech sector or in large corporations, although this new trend coexists with the persistent importance in family migration strategies of semi-skilled forms of mobility. Contemporary middle-class Nambudiris living in Kerala more often than not have relatives living and working in other parts of India or abroad. The prestige and benefits that can derive from such transnational connections, however, depend on the interrelated effects of the capacity to maintain stable kinship relations, the level of legal security and financial stability achieved in the host countries and the prestige of professions attained abroad. Middle-class Nambudiris in the diaspora, as in Kerala, are stratified by large differences in material, cultural, and social capital, as well as by differences in lifestyles and patterns of consumption (see Béteille 2001: 79–80). Those who engaged with migration at earlier points are today more easily found in prestigious destinations like the US, Europe, or Australia working as engineers, doctors, or academicians.

Page 30 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings Among Nambudiris the cumulative effects of remittances are visible in the area of research in the renovation of old Nambudiri mansions, in the building of new houses in the city outskirts, and in the formation of community associations aiming at philanthropic activities—such as the building of schools, hospitals, or the renovation of places of worship—and at seizing spaces in cultural, political, and economic life. As in other parts of urban India (Donner 2005; Fernandes 2006) a growing number of Nambudiris are now investing in modern schooling, not only as a way to enhance their children’s marriage prospects and family status but because many middle-class families see English education as the only route to good jobs (p.88) in Indian cities or abroad, given the high rate of youth unemployment in Kerala. Nevertheless, the attainment of modern English education and of prestigious forms of skilled mobility abroad, while shaping the ideal of middle-class modernity in liberalizing Kerala, remains practically difficult for many lower-class Nambudiri families. A good proportion of lowermiddle class families I spoke to are still restricted to less prestigious forms of semi-skilled or unskilled migration towards Gulf countries, Malaysia, or north India. While remittances in these cases can still enhance the living conditions of relatives in Kerala, they are less likely to translate into straightforward access to private English education, the acquisition of properties in more convenient city locations of urbanizing villages, or in comfortable lifestyles. As Leela Fernandes (2006) has noted in relation to the wider context of India, Nambudiri middle classes in contemporary Kerala remain highly fragmented and internally divided although, as already remarked, this fragmentation only rarely reflects traditional sub-caste divisions. Migration has sharply contributed to this double process of disengagement from traditional caste status and to the creation of renewed intra and intercommunity differences. Particularly, differential involvement in skilled and unskilled migration moulds what Fernandes defines as the tension between, on the one hand, the ‘claim’ to (upper) middle-class status and the disappointing realities of those families who are symbolically and materially less able to live up to Malayali common expectations of cosmopolitanism.

Nambudiri Middle Classes and ‘The Others’

Page 31 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings Nambudiri history of mobility, and of immobility, is subject to different forms of scrutiny among other Malayali middle classes. Indeed, being middle class is not so much an objective condition of existence which can be uniquely defined in terms of occupation or wealth. Rather, and more crucially, being middle class is a matter of a folk debate among Indian citizens (Donner and De Neve 2011). This debate in contemporary Kerala is fuelled by the relatively recent inflows of once-marginalized communities (like lower-caste Hindus, Muslims, or Latin Catholics) into the middle class ‘category’ and by the fact that middle-classness is claimed by people from many (p.89) different walks of life. For many Malayalis ‘middle-classness is a career’ (Gellner 1964: 187), an ascendant movement intimately rooted in the bourgeois idea of progress and against which individual and collective life is evaluated. As such, being middle class is not only a matter of debate but also of mutual recognition across diverse communities and of reciprocal validation, acceptance, and denial (Dickey 2011). In contemporary Kerala, certain communities are more easily—and more successfully—acknowledged as ‘middle-classes’. This recognition depends on the capacity to achieve an equal distance from déclassé groups such as the landed aristocracy and from stigmatized lower strata (see Béteille 2007). Distance from the traditional elite holds ideological relevance in a state like Kerala where the praising of developmental models and of related successful land reforms, family planning, social development, and literacy plays a pivotal role in the forging of Malayali collective modernity. In this context, Nambudiris’ transformation from traditional elite into a modern middle class appears more as an ongoing project, a yet-to-be accomplished collective career, and less as an enjoyable reality. Indeed, Nambudiris are often identified in contemporary Kerala as an anti-modern and diminished community which has not succeeded in transforming past nobility into modern privileges (or has done so much later that other communities), and which still lives in the shadow of a backward past. Certainly, the rhetoric of decline is a common feature of the Brahmin elite across India, and Nambudiris are no exception. In Kerala, this idea is accompanied by an additional rhetoric of ‘neo-brahminism’, in that it acknowledges ‘the fact of belonging to an upper caste whilst at the same time stressing the difficulties of being part of it’ (Satyanarayana 1992: 235). This encompasses the idea of the sacrifice Nambudiris have made for the well-being and unity of the region in renouncing privileges and being deprived by anti-Brahmin policies.

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From Gods to Human Beings Yet the ‘backwardness of Nambudiris’ rhetoric also constitutes an important means through which the wider society—particularly but not exclusively the Hindu and Syrian Christian upper middle classes—describes the old elite as culturally and economically uncivilized (pinnokkam) in order to mark a break between past inequalities and a progressive present. On one hand, the ideological positioning of Nambudiris as backward is used by successful Nairs, other Malayala (p.90) Brahmins, and Syrian Christians to praise modern achievements while at the same time ‘masking’ persistent forms of inequality and the intimate correlation between caste status and legitimate middleclassness. The following statement, made by a Nair businessman, living in Kochi, about his Nambudiri neighbourhood is symptomatic of the wider tendency among higher-status Malayali middle classes to identify Nambudiris as the role repository of past caste-based discrimination and ‘backward’ conservatism: Nambudiris have committed many atrocities in the past, and had never wanted to give up their privileges … Then they became very poor and they paid for this!! While everyone was changing and working hard they remained there … and today, despite they have improved, they are much less advanced … In the past, Nambudiris and Nairs were very close, but today, they are not like us. Established middle classes try to underplay the impact of land and status privileges on their educational and professional attainments and stress how, unlike Nambudiris, they were able to legitimately enter into the modern middleclass milieu thanks to their hard work, savings built generational saving, and cultural investments. In the process, past allegiances among rural Hindu elites are invalidated in the present, and a community like the Nairs advocates a distance between their progressiveness and Nambudiri backwardness. On the other, and particularly in villages like Krishnapuram, the rhetoric of the ‘poverty and backwardness of Nambudiris’ is used by once-marginalized strata like Ezhavas, Muslims, or Latin Catholics to highlight the end of exploitative agrarian relations and to mark a cleavage between the decline of the aristocracy and their own recent trajectories of middle-class mobility. Village memories remark how past rules on pollution and the humiliating rituals of subordination to which lower castes were subject to in front of Nambudiris have left the place today by more assertive behaviour, although especially in villages like Krishnapuram old Nambudiri generations can still command a certain degree of respect from once-dependent lower castes.

Page 33 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings Importantly, this public representation of Nambudiris as the antinomy of Malayali present development is far from being snobbishly discharged by Nambudiris on the premises of their ancestral nobility. Rather, it represents a rhetoric which is intimately (p.91) rooted in experiences of decline and which has to be confronted in order to produce an alternative present. Present class insecurity among Nambudiris is partly rooted in the fact that present well-being does not necessarily find in community history the desired generational continuity and cultural legitimacy. Nambudiris are engaged today in self-critical reflections on the cumulative costs of having for long considered themselves to be ‘too aristocratic to enter the public world’ (Joshi 2001: 12) and in the resulting failures to have imposed themselves as modern cultural entrepreneurs. Indeed, the ‘cultural capital’ of Nambudiris is not immediately accepted in contemporary Kerala. Whilst Nambudiris are sometimes acknowledged as having particular intellectual qualities and as the holders of certain knowledge, this is more in relation to the past history of Kerala society, whereas the prestige associated with English and scientific knowledge marks the achievement of the middle-upper classes. In contemporary central Kerala, the modern elite is not inclined to identify its own high cultural values as brahminical (see Fuller 1990). Significantly, the successful management of temples and religious schools by high-status Hindu Nairs makes the latter more easily identifiable with classical ‘superior’ knowledge by wider society, despite the renewed and growing presence of Nambudiris as priests and teachers since the 1990s. This chapter has started to unravel how early twentieth-century community reformism has been apprehended by the Nambudiris of that time and by subsequent generations. It has claimed for the importance to look at how internal community divides have shaped Nambudiris’ differential engagement with the YKS and YJS, and how this has resulted in different generational paths of mobility. The family changes advocated by community reform movements appealed to and differently involved Nambudiri families across sub-caste and class divides. Both the YKS and the YJS were certainly determinant in framing a public discourse which unsettled the legitimacy of certain kinship norms and family hierarchies, generated internal debates on the fate of a declining community and, importantly, exposed Nambudiris to the scrutiny of colonial and Malayali gaze. (p.92) Yet, community reformisms could not eventually overcome its innate elitism, and reflected persistent fractures and tensions between the aristocracy and dependent sub-castes.

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From Gods to Human Beings Until the 1960s, the ideological association between family change and class mobility found some practical realization only for a limited number of Nambudiri families. The transformation of Nambudiris from gods to human beings revealed to be a much longer and tortuous process if compared to the ones envisaged by community reformers, and it is still object of contemporary debate and scrutiny among Malayali middle classes. Among aristocrat Nambudiris, sociogeographical mobility was achieved through often painful and harsh human costs and resulted in the prolonged isolation of pioneer migrants or in difficulties in maintaining connections back home and in enhancing the well-being of the wider household or lineage network. Differently, migration among lower subcastes translated in a relatively smoother way in the investment of remittances back home and in the betterment of migrants’ kin. In the context of prolonged community decline, internal and international migration produced two important changes the relation between Nambudiri kinship and class. First, among aristocratic families, it progressively marked a polarization in class status among, on the one hand, ‘unorthodox’ mobile subjects and their closer family relatives and, on the other, more ‘conservative’ lineage members. Second, it unsettled traditional sub-caste hierarchies, and opened spaces for conjugal relations between the aristocracy and formerly dependant families. The 1969 land reform represented the ‘final act’ in a much longer delegitimation of the landed aristocracy and yet it also opened renewed spaces for intergenerational critique and prompted many families to engage with pathways of mobility that had been shunned in earlier decades. Since then, Nambudiris have gradually managed to build their class status on new premises although, if compared with other brahmins in India, their belated start have consequences on the degree of recognition this community enjoys vis-á-vis the wider Malayali society. Nambudiri past exclusivity has often represented a burden in the fashioning of middle-class identities. As the following chapters will show, this by no means implies that Nambudiri past is not valued by present middle classes or that a form of connection (p.93) between the past and the present plays no role in contemporary Nambudiri identity politics. Indeed, as the following chapter will show, despite its limits and failures, the YKS is crucially important in the present to assert middle-class status, both among Nambudiris who praise membership into it and among those who critically recall its elitism. Notes:

(1.) See analysis developed in Chapter 3. (2.) For a more detailed analysis of the relation between marriage and political activism, see Chapter 5. (3.) Before this, the Cochin Makkattayam (Amendment) Act in 1948 formally recognized the right of all lineage members to claim and obtain their individual share of joint family property. Page 35 of 36

From Gods to Human Beings (4.) According to Herring, one of the elements which distinguished the 1969 Kerala land reform from the other reforms enacted in the rest of India was that the primary criteria adopted in Kerala to confiscate and redistribute land was not so much the property ceiling but, rather, the transformation of tenancy rights into property rights. As a consequence, while those Nambudiris who were not in the position to terminate kanam relations found themselves relieved of part of their properties, this was not really distributed among the landless class of labourers but among the powerful class of intermediaries. According to Herring, should the primary criteria have been the property ceiling, the expropriated land could have been better redistributed among disadvantaged populations (Herring 1980). (5.) See analysis developed in Chapter 6. (6.) As will emerge in the following chapters, staying at home for a Nambudiri woman today is often conceived as source of shame for the family, as women’s unemployment recalls in the present the shadows of past conservatism.

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Debts of Identity

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Debts of Identity On Written Memories and Middle-Classness Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords Chapter three discusses how memories of the YKS are produced in contemporary Kerala through the material production of diaries and autobiographies. It explores why, and in what circumstances, diaries become a suitable way to narrate histories, the particular relationships they frame between present and past, and how their messages are received by Malayalis in the public sphere. The analysis of diaries is revealed to be important in order to trace continuities and discontinuities between the official rhetoric of the YKS— as voiced through its written propaganda—and the ways in which YKS ‘kinship revolution’ is differently constituted through family recalling and emotional suffering. Particular attention is given to the ways in which past intergenerational relations are conceived by elderly people whose lives have been directly involved in or influenced by the YKS. Keywords:   public memories, autobiography, diaries, gender, self

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Debts of Identity THE ANALYSIS OF DIARIES AND autobiographies is key to the understanding of how gendered selves are constructed in relation to middle-class reformist projects of family modernity. They offer important insights on how different individuals make sense of their class locations and construct their self in dialogue with the formation of modern collectivities (Arnold and Blackburn 2004; Mookherjee 2013; Rajan 2013; Rudolph 1997; T. Sarkar 1993). The ‘objects of memory’ I analyse here mirror a rich variety of work produced by Nambudiri men and women between the late 1920s and early 2000s. Some of them have been published, while others are circulated only within a circle of selected kin and friends. Some have been written a posteriori, once the narrated events were considered (temporally and emotionally) distant enough to be shared. Others were written ‘along the way’, in crucial times of social transformation and geographical displacement. All of them have accompanied the writer’s personal engagement with what he/she felt were ongoing epochal changes and connect and disconnect from the actions of the YKS and the YJS. In the first part of the chapter, I explore how recalling differently positions the writer with respect to ongoing transformations in family (p.95) and caste relations, and how the subject constructs himself/herself in relation to remembered kinship experiences. I do so by engaging with six written memories. Three belong to well known Malayali writers and reformers— Kanippayyur Nambudiripad, V.T. Bhattathiripad, and Lalithambika Antharjanam —and have been published both in Malayalam and in English; the other three are private unpublished diaries, two of them written by Malayali migrants. It unravels how written memories aim to forge shared knowledge with kin and for kin and to make the author’s own experience intelligible across generational and gender differences. Yet writing also positions the author in a liminal position as, through this act the author becomes an ethnographer of the kinship norms, affective apparatus, and experiences of his/her time (cf. Rudolph 1997). The second part of the chapter delves into the ‘multiple temporalities of writing and readings’ that characterize diaries (Steinitz 1997: 55). It does so by discussing the meanings underpinning the reading of autobiographies among present middle-class audiences and how the circulation of written memories voices contemporary Nambudiri politics of identity. I suggest how the contemporary use of diaries moulds a ‘collective memory project’ centred on a double meaning of debt towards ancestors. On the one hand, current interpretations of autobiographies scrutinize ancestors as subjects who produced suffering and trauma in personal lives, and emphasize their failure to generate a successful middle class. On the other hand, by recalling the deeds of those who sacrificed their lives for the well-being of the community, moral obligations towards meritorious ancestors are re-established and a new Nambudiri centrality within Malayali history is claimed.

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Debts of Identity The writing of kinship memories emerges as determinant in moulding Malayali middle-class status. To my knowledge, many of the Nambudiris authors of diaries and autobiographies belonged to a generation that had a relatively close personal experience of reform movements, or that witnessed subsequent major changes partly linked to reformist projects. Social reforms made people ‘keenly aware of the historicality of their lives and worlds’, and autobiographies written (p.96) by participants and interlocutors of reform initiatives often made the ‘historical dimension of their lives central to their labour of selfdefinition’ (Kumar 2009: 298–9; see also Parry 2004).1 Writing among Nambudiris mirrors people’s belief in being a product of specific past events as well as of a generational engagement with history. If we consider middle-class life as a trajectory of ascendance (see Day 2007a; Gellner 1964) we can understand how writing represents a moment in which people reflect on the upward steps consciously undertaken in order to improve one’s own material and symbolic conditions. Recalling among Nambudiris voices the intent to reflect on similar progressive transformations. Yet, for some ascension simultaneously implies a fall from aristocratic status, and a negotiation of those norms, ideals, and customary expectations which once framed the divinity of Nambudiris. At times the difficulty of reconciling the double movement of downward and upward mobility frames the ambivalent ways in which authors engage with their kinship relations. In other instances, it is the individual’s irritation with persistent community elitism that has promoted a move away from caste orthodoxy, and unsettled the individual’s sense of relatedness.

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Debts of Identity I begin with a very popular published diary, Ente Smaranakal (My Memories), written by Kanippayyur Sankaran Nambudiripad. Its interest for the present analysis lies in the way the tensions arising from modern class transformations are resolved by reaffirming brahmins’ duty to renounce their nobility for the well-being of Malayali society, and by making past status something to be admired at a distance by contemporary generations. Born in 1891 in the princely state of Cochin, Kanippayyur belonged to one of the most renowned and prestigious Adhyan Nambudiri families in central Kerala. Published in 1963, the diary was written during a time of deep transformation in kinship relations, which are synthesized by the author as a ‘radical move away from joint family life’,2 due to property partitions and migration. In line with indigenous bibliographical tradition (see Vatuk 2004) Sankaran’s memories are organized around a series of selected subjects which are deemed relevant to the past constitution of Nambudirihood: the illam (the Nambudiri house), education, the Cochin royal family, the antharjanam (Nambudiri women), and aabhijaatyam (traditional aristocratic status). The impetus for writing arises from the feeling that the past is disappearing without leaving (p.97) many traces in the material life of kinship. The meticulous recalling of life cycle rituals (samskaras), of women’s and men’s dress codes, of family festivities, or temple celebrations not only marks the exclusive routine of an aristocratic family, but also mirrors folk ideas about the processual and cumulative acts in the creation of kinship bonds (see Carsten 1997, 2004) between illakkar (members of the same lineage). Kanippayyur’s memories speak to a wider kinship culture in south India, one which conceives the person as enabled to develop kin and caste identity not uniquely by virtue of birth, but through the sharing of living spaces, food, and ritualized daily actions (Busby 1997; Daniel 1992; Lambert 2000; Osella and Osella 2002).3 This understanding of kinship, however, is located in a temporal dimension which modern generations have broken away from. Kanippayyur wonders if contemporary Nambudiris could ever comprehend the habits and limits imposed on Brahmin men and women in the past. A particular contrast is made between the humbleness of past Nambudiri women and the more demanding lifestyles of the ‘modern antharjanam’: This picture of the Nambudiri women of a century ago will be a matter of wonder and disgust for the fashionable women of today, who mingle freely with the outside world, and move about wearing a saree and sporting a vanity bag!

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Debts of Identity Kanippayyur implicitly draws here from reformist gendered rhetoric on the exceptional seclusion of Nambudiri women, but tones down the polemical aspects of the YKS. Antharjanams are depicted as being limited in their daily movements, social relations, and aspirations, and yet Kanippayyur sometimes seems to flirt with those ‘good old days’ when Nambudiri women were willing to ‘think of themselves as a degree below the boys’. Udaya Kumar argues that Ente Smaranakal reflects a folk ethnographic attempt at constructing a ‘narrative of the non-unique’ (2009: 307). For Kumar, all aspects of Nambudiri family life are recalled after they are perceived to have disappeared. As such, the inhabitation that memories can allow for is impossible for modern subjects, as modernity has swept away all the premises on which aristocratic kinship norms and practices were legitimized. At the same time, I believe it is possible to see something more in Kanippayyur’s memories. His memories can be understood to reflect (p.98) an elitist exercise in renounced nobility, which constructs Nambudiris as an elite whose life was to a large extent exceptional in relation to the wider Malayali society. The act itself of ascribing the reality of Brahmin life to the past may be interpreted as an act of exclusivity. For many people who are not of aristocratic descent, kinship tends to be more oriented towards the present rather than the past (Carsten 2007). Differently, Kanippayyur’s orientation towards past kinship relations suggests the intent to depict the noblesse oblige of a community which conceived sacrifice of customary kinship as part of its exceptional status. This emerges, for instance, in the chapter devoted to the discussion on aabhijaatyam (traditional aristocratic status): The Namboodiris are perhaps the worst sufferers of grounds of distinction based on social status and recognition (like that of English nobility). The noblest among the Nambudiris were subject to isolation from the rest of society. This aabhijaatyam was a covetable mark of authority and dignity. Interestingly, this passage obscures the fact that aabhijaatyam characterized only a minority of Adhyan families within a wider Brahmin collectivity, and uses the idiom of ‘suffering’ to retrospectively construct a community which has slowly renounced its privileges in the name of modern class status. Kanippayyur seems to be at once disappointed and pleased by modernity. While seeking to convince modern generations of the uniqueness of the Nambudiri past, his writings are also moulded by complicity with the necessity of changes, which are deemed to have brought brahmins out of isolation. It is in this movement from reluctance to the acceptance of modernity that the author eventually subscribes to the reformist ethos of the YKS, without however entering into open dialogue with it.

Writing on Revolution and Redemption

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Debts of Identity As Sarkar notes, writing an autobiography often results from the individual’s awareness of setting his or her life against contemporary family and community expectations, and from the attempt to make sense of ‘acts of disobedience’ against assigned roles (T. Sarkar 1993: 58–9). In a strikingly opposite mood to that which characterizes Kanippayyur’s memories, the work of V.T. Bhattathiripad4 desacralizes the aura that surrounded Nambudiri family life in the past (p.99) and aims at dismantling the founding elements of aristocracy. His recently published memories (2013), like his wider literary work, are inspired by a dialectic between committed participation in Nambudiri community modernization and a somewhat disenchanted critique of the shortcomings of reforms. His memories voice a complex understanding of what middle-classness meant for a fragment of caste-based reformism. Modern education and employment achievements were crucial in the reformer’s understanding of the humanization of Nambudiris. Yet, Bhattathiripad also envisages a satvik renaissance (Bhattathiripad 2013: 13) for his community: a transformation not only in what he considered the aesthetic and material aspects of class, but a spiritual and intellectual movement towards social justice, the latter partly accomplished through the abolition of caste differences. Bhattathiripad’s memories rarely reflect an endogenous interpretation of his community’s history. No event flooding into what he describes as the ‘monotonous routine’ (Bhattathiripad 2013: 52) of an obsolete community stands out on its own. Rather, he insists on the mutual comprehensibility of local and international experience and on the connection between global events and local transformations (cf. Sutton 1998). In this light, he scrutinizes Nambudiri family life against the backdrop of the political and social changes resulting from the First World War, from the growing influence of the National Congress or the spread of Gandhi’s reformism, and sets a contrast between the motions of history and the ‘dormant mood’ of his own community (Bhattathiripad 2013: 29).

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Debts of Identity This well emerges at two crucial moments in his memories. In the first, he critiques gendered family hierarchies. This critique particularly revolves around the opposition to the unequal status framing the acchan (elder brother) and apphan (younger brothers) within patrilineal lineages and around Nambudiri women’s marginalization in the community and in wider Malayali society. Bhattathiripad’s exasperation with his ‘handicapped’ life as a young apphan— with limited cultural and financial resources of his own—is voiced through the recalling of a meeting with a ten-year schoolgirl who asks him to help with her homework. Ashamed of his own illiteracy, he bursts into tears. This event is a turning point in his gradual realization of the inadequacy of his own life with respect to the demands of the ‘outer’ world, and marks the start of Bhattathiripad’s progressive involvement in (p.100) reformist movements. His recalling delves into the most thorny events of Nambudiri family and sexual life, to unravel how the primogeniture system and adhivedanam (eldest son’s marriage) has produced at once immorality in kinship relations and historical immobility. The recalling of the scandal of Kuriyedathu Taathri exemplifies this. In 1905 Taathri, a Nambudiri woman married at an early age to an old apphan, was found guilty of having slept with many high-caste men. Put on trial (smarthavicharam), Taathri meticulously listed the names of all those with whom she had sexual intercourse. In doing so, she refused to interpret her actions in terms of ‘individual sin’ and brought to light a longstanding intercommunity practice. Later, in the 1970s, V.T. Bhattathiripad recalls this event as having shaken the Brahmin legitimacy of old family relations: it was forced celibacy, community orthodoxy, and family hierarchies that had led the community into moral degeneration. The woman functions here as the site of the link between the domestic sphere, the community, and wider national history (Kumar 2009: 311–13). If Taathri’s life reflects the disconnection between families, community well-being, and wider processes of modernization, the ‘new Nambudiri women’— by refusing child marriage and agreeing to marry young apphans—ought to endorse community reforms and accept new rules. Second, and relatedly, through the recalling of Taathri’s history, V.T. Bhattathiripad engages with his critique of the ‘cruel chain of customs’ inherited from ancestors, a chain which materializes in the imposed transmission of life cycle rituals. Distrust regarding family relations develops along the lines of critical engagement with samskaras and Vedic knowledge. Rather than expressing Brahmin exclusivity, these are deemed to be an expression of irrationality (Joshi 2011; Osella and Osella 2000) and to mirror elder generations’ eccentricity. At different points in his autobiography, he expresses his concern over the negative effects of highly ritualized education on the personalities of lineage children and youth (Bhattathiripad 2013: 31): Education that does not nourish the brain and entertain the mind will generally be uninspiring, especially so in the case of little ones. Such an education system will alienate one very quickly. Page 7 of 32

Debts of Identity For him, the memorization and repetition of mantras (Sanskrit verses) and slokas (prayers) was a source of youth inability to engage (p.101) with social transformations and to understand the seismic events that occurring locally and globally at the time. In representing knowledge belonging exclusively to brahmins and which could not be shared with other communities, rituals and Vedic knowledge actually cast Nambudiris outside mainstream social change. For V.T. Bhattathiripad, changes in the material and spiritual conditions of Nambudiris represented a form of community redemption from ongoing discriminatory attitudes towards its own members—such as young people and women—and towards the rest of Malayali society. At the same time, historians have also noted that his reformist stances on gender and inter-caste equality find limits in his uneasiness over confronting antharjanams who compromise community identity through marital relations with members of lower castes or other religious communities (Kumar 2009; see also Devika 2007a). In this light, we should read his difficulties in accepting the choices of Uma, a Nambudiri woman whose sexual freedom leads her to reject her conjugal bond with her Nambudiri husband. Furthermore, her two subsequent marriages with a Muslim and a Punjabi Brahmin, respectively, make her a difficult subject of redemption.5 As Kumar reflects (2009: 312): Although Uma does not directly make demands on the community, her very way of life, with its instability of identity, poses a threat to VT’s project of reforming and rescuing Nambudiri women. Paradoxically, for the reformist leader whose discourse of freedom invoked Nambudiri women as its source, VT is forced by Uma’s presence to propound a doctrine of nonfreedom for all Nambudiri women: for them, there is no legal point of exit from a ritually consecrated marriage. Uma’s life history unsettles the legitimacy of the link V.T. Bhattathiripad establishes between kinship reforms and community redemption, a link that shapes his autobiographical recalling throughout. While he often publicly rejected the role of paternal guide to Nambudiri women (see also Nilayamgode 2011), he nevertheless framed the normative framework in which young Nambudiri women should be initiated into modern marriage. Marriage between antharjanams and young apphans is key to his understanding of individual and collective duties in relation to the humanization of Nambudiris.

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Debts of Identity V.T. Bhattathiripad’s autobiography opens new spaces in which to understand how middle-classness is expressed through the idiom (p.102) of a rupture of temporal continuity between ancestral kin and present lives. The modern self is projected in contrast to the life designed by older generations—although, in some circumstances, the celebration of discontinuity expresses ideological stances rather than real departures from ongoing norms and practices. His autobiography is also relevant insofar as it frames the context in which Nambudiris come to understand autobiographical writing. V.T. Bhattathiripad conceives writing itself as a powerful act of departure from his social milieu, and as a source of self-transformation. Writing transforms the author in an ethnographer of his own surrounding (Rudolph 1997). It produces a critical distance between the author and the narrated people and events, whose more painful and ambivalent shades are accepted, I suggest, as part of individual transformations. V.T. Bhattathiripad’s writing also constitutes a reference point for other Nambudiri authors, and provides a ground for the development of heterogeneous genres of recalling and for the narration of heterodox lives (cf. Mines 1999). While authors like Lalithambika or Njaloor Sreedevi (in different ways) invoke him as a paternal figure under whose tutelage it is possible to suture the disconnection between the self and a Brahmin collectivity, others— like Narayanan P.—voice a rejection of the paternal authority of reformist figures and movements over their lives.

Liminal States The memories of Lalithambika Antharjanam and Njaloor Sreedevi’s unpublished diary offer further insights into the heterogeneous and complex relation between the gendered self, community orthodoxy, and reformist movements. For the two women, recalling expresses an intimate relation between the act of writing, participation in social reform movements, and the constraints and possibilities of ‘traditional’ kinship life. This complex interrelation between everyday lived kin relations and long-term reform projects makes writing about kinship an extremely delicate process: close kin are threaded into self-narratives of affective life and at the same time scrutinized from a distance. A comparative look at the work of Sylvia Vatuk serves to introduce us to the specificities of Nambudiri women’s work. Vatuk analysed the dialectical relations between the self and (p.103) kinship as these emerged in the diary of Zhakira Ghouse, a Muslim middle-class woman living in 1950s Hyderabad. Kinship provides Ghouse with the impetus for writing and the social milieu in which memories are legitimately readable. Zhakira Ghouse’s diary is not meant to be ‘private’ but, rather, is written to be shared within the khandan (extended family). In this respect, Zhakira Ghouse has to pay attention to ‘deflect potential criticism of the literary activity in which she engaged from those with whom she wishes to maintain the closest possible intimate ties’ (Vatuk 2004: 152).

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Debts of Identity Similarly, for Lalithambika and Njaloor Sreedevi, the writing of memories rarely appears to be a private enterprise. The construction of their autobiographies is inspired by the need to create a dialogue with close kin, yet also to talk to a wider Malayali audience about the constraints of their family lives. Their work is certainly shaped by the desire to preserve those intimate ties that are deemed as determinant in their emotional and relational well-being. However, and in contrast to the case analysed by Vatuk, open criticism of kin relations becomes, I suggest, a ritual of self-transformation. For the two women, writing not only represents a way to reflect on conflicting family relations. Perhaps more importantly, writing is also a constitutive act of constructing and renewing kinship ties through social critique. Old kinship life is depicted as simultaneously tyrannical and cowardly, with elder generations reluctant to break with established kinship norms and customs. This depiction allows women writers to project their conjugal intimacy and motherhood as a radical departure from lineage expectations and as a way to regenerate their lives as artists (Lalithambika) and as working women (Njaloor Sreedevi). Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909–1987) is probably one of the most popular Nambudiri women. After a long career as a novelist and social reformer, she wrote her more personal memories in her seventies. These were published in 1979 as Atmakathakkoru Amukkham. Lalithambika’s autobiography is generated by what she terms as ‘duality’ in her own life (Antharjanam 2000: 160) arising from the tensions between her artistic inclinations and her enmeshment in lineage life. As for V.T. Bhattathiripad, access to knowledge becomes a yardstick against which kinship love is measured. Despite her mother being ‘terrified by the don’ts’ (Antharjanam 2000: 175–6) of elders, she made sure that little Lalithambika could access books. (p.104) Lalithambika’s gratitude towards her indulgent and progressive parents stems from the opportunity she was given to read and write. Both activities nurture her desire to know about the world and also shape the ways in which she constructs her own life in relation to local and national events. Knowledge compensated for the ‘forest fortress’ (Antharjanam 2000: 175) life of her large, orthodox family, while also constituting a challenge to daily lineage routine. Writing was associated by conservative kin with the worlds of colonials and of reformers, compromising lineage purity and distracting antharjanams from family duties. Against this backdrop, Lalithambika uses writing to critically engage with assigned family roles: she ‘evacuates’ the image of the ‘nurturing mother and housewife’—who finds ‘emotional fulfillment’ in household occupations—and replaces it with the image of the unaided ‘slave’, as well as of the ‘independent thinker’ (see T. Sarkar 1993: 52–3). Writing constitutes a regenerative act in Lalithambika’s personal life and in the building of new affective relations. Still, looking at her life retrospectively, she blames her ancestors for having limited the potentialities of her creative nature (Antharjanam 2000: 168):

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Debts of Identity What a writer, a man or a woman, needs most is freedom, the freedom to break family bonds and the courage to defy opposition of any kind. In 1932, as a married woman, Lalithambika leaves her house to join a meeting organized at Mavelikkara by Mannath Padmanabhan—a Nair social reformer and founder of the Nair Service Society (NSS)—to greet two antharjanams, Nenmini Mangalam and Arya Pallam, who had decided to abandon gosha. Wearing a saree rather than covering herself with the ‘usual enveloping mundu’ (Antharjanam 2000: 147), and far away from the indiscrete eyes of her house, Lalithambika throws away her palm leaf umbrella (olakkuda). The meeting marks a move away from the dress and bodily codes of antharjanams and towards membership of a reforming community. On returning to the old house, she and her husband are rejected by her family: My father smiled gravely. Amma (mother) wept, beat her head and lamented ‘I wish I had never had a daughter. If only she had died as soon as she was born. I did not want a daughter like you….’ I knew her grief (p. 105) was sincere but it did not move me at all. […] It was much worse in my husband’s household, where there were old uncles and grandmothers who were rigid disciplinarians. Despite these filial conflicts, her father appears subsequently as a saviour. In order to avoid a definitive rupture with his daughter, he buys a small plot of land nearby to build a little house for Lalithambika and her husband. The establishment of an independent house produces shifts in the couple’s material and cultural conditions. They engage with manual and artistic work as well as with the nationalist cause, against the customary rules: My husband cultivated the land. We spun yard and wove mundus on our own loom. We even presented Gandhiji with two mundus we had woven when he came to visit that area. The garden I had dreamed about for many years blossomed around our house and in my heart. I read a great deal. I wrote stories and poems. In line with a colonial middle-class ethos of renewed conjugal intimacy and modern patriarchal relations (Devika 2007a), the new conjugal family is recalled as a cradle in which to nurture companionate marital relations and a space where adherence to the national struggle becomes possible via novel forms of self-sufficiency.6 Lalithambika’s recalling oscillates between images of the bright moments of her own conjugal life and the gloomier recalling of the many antharjanams who have suffered in their confinement in old illams (ancestral houses). Her autobiography is haunted by the ghosts of child widows of octogenarian husbands, outcast women, or women sold in marriage in northern Kerala who wander lost in hysteria or die alone at the margins of village streets.

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Debts of Identity Unlike the ghostly presences analysed by Bear in her study of Anglo-Indian kinship memories—where ghosts appear as ‘welcome external signs of temporal and spatial continuity’ (Bear 2007b: 50)—ghosts of antharjanams constitute for Lalithambika a burdensome reminder of past family life. The writing of kinship memories aims to acknowledge the suffering women whose stories would otherwise have remained untold in the privacy of old illams. In this respect, writing can be considered as a purifying ritual through which ancestral sins can be cleansed and a new collectivity can be built.

(p.106) A Community of Sufferers In common with Lalithambika, the autobiography for Njaloor Sreedevi is a way to thread the generosity and selfishness of kin ties into the same picture, and to show the shades of grey in family life (Strathern 1992). To a greater extent than Lalithambika, however, Sreedevi’s life narratives seem never to achieve resolution in terms of healing family conflicts. Written in the 1990s, the diary originated from Sreedevi’s encounter with a Malayali student interested in the history of the Nambudiri community. It recalls Sreedevi’s childhood and continues up until the marriage of her daughter to a sailor. The central association between kinship and suffering is announced at the outset. Sreedevi’s diary begins with the traumatic loss of her father, her only ally in the illam in Palakkad (north Kerala) where she was born in 1909. Rumours of change filter through into Sreedevi’s secluded life, for example when V.T. Bhattathiripad and other YKS reformers visit her illam to perform the theatre piece Adukkalayilninnu Arangathekku (From the Kitchen to the Front Stage), advocating antharjanams’ abandonment of gosha. While the illam refuses to host the performance, Sreedevi manages to send four annas (1/16 of a rupee) to V.T. Bhattathiripad through her younger brother as a way of contributing to the reformist cause. This was the beginning of a symbolic long-lasting alliance between Sreedevi and the paternal figure of V.T. In 1933, aged 18, Sreedevi marries the youngest son of a nearby lineage. Sreedevi’s uncle accepts the union out of economic necessity, as the young man (a reformer) does not ask for a dowry. However, her husband’s lineage excommunicates them for contravening the primogeniture system. They find provisional refuge in Sreedevi’s ancestral house, but due to persistent tensions the couple soon slips away to join some YKS fellows. Sreedevi moves from selfdepiction as a passive woman towards a more assertive representation of her choice to abandon gosha (seclusion) and to follow her reformist husband. Treated as polluted by the wider community, Sreedevi gives birth to a child who soon dies, followed shortly afterwards by her husband. At this point, her paternal relatives materialize to redeem her, without success:

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Debts of Identity One day, my uncle sent my grandmother to ask me if I would be willing to do some rites of expiation and start living like everybody else. I replied (p. 107) that I would not perform any rites of expiation. For about four months after this, I stayed all alone in that big house receiving food from my own people as bikhsa [alms]. Then for a long time there would be nothing. I lived like that, a life of living death even when I was alive. One day, my eldest uncle sent his younger brother and gave him little money and asked him to send me away. Through her memories, Sreedevi progressively creates an irreconcilable distance between the otherness of ‘her own people’, and the legitimacy of the life path she chooses for herself, accepting the sufferings of kinship rupture as a form of regeneration. Her memories refuse to subscribe to the celebrative stances of Kanippayyur on the ritualized character of kinship sharing that characterized lives in ancestral homes. In this line, the consumption of food given by her kin assumes a constraining meaning for Sreedevi insofar as it is given in alms to force her to return home. The turning point in Sreedevi’s life comes when she meets V.T. Bhattathiripad in person. He introduces her to Mr Njaloor, whom she marries (despite the ban on widow remarriage) and with whom she has a daughter. Widowed again within a few years, Sreedevi brings up and educates her child alone, thanks to her work as a fish-seller, a spinner, and eventually a government clerk. When her daughter is asked for in marriage by a man working on a ship, she presents herself as the one who has the sole authority to decide: He wanted my permission more than that of others, since we did not have any relatives. I told him that if Sarasa liked the proposal, I had no objection. […] I then started to repair the house I had built and I told him he did not need to worry as the house was for him to stay as well.

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Debts of Identity Sreedevi accepts the irreparability of kinship breaks and does not seem to pursue reconciliation. She describes her life as a mother as disconnected from the safety net of family networks, and yet celebrates those community members who rescued her from isolated wandering. Sreedevi’s memories point to a shifting meaning of kinship. Increasingly, kin cease to be made through normative residential proximity as well as through daily sharing within ancestral houses, and are created by itinerant lives of hard work and starvation. Importantly, the extraordinary character of her daughter’s birth is set against the infertile nature of generational hierarchies, and withdrawing from (p.108) the ancestral path is depicted as a moral act. Humble jobs not only have a transformative role for the person but for the meanings of kinship. When her daughter marries, Sreedevi uses her savings to restore her little house in order to host her son-in-law. Reversing the norm of virilocal residence and unwilling to inscribe marriage and birth within the history of the lineage, she describes herself and Sarasa as the sole authorities in framing their family future and reconstituting a sense of home with a man whose job as a sailor would have traditionally cast him out of the community. Overall, for Lalithambika, and with major emphasis for Sreedevi, the move away from brahminism is understood as a progressive transformation from a community of birth to a community of sufferers, where new ways of life can be achieved only through hard work. Their autobiographies set up a complex relation between the self, a transforming community, and family reforms. Neither Lalithambika nor Sreedevi uncritically subscribe to the reformist movement. While their life narratives develop in dialogue with the exemplary lives of important reformist and nationalist figures (men and women), they each cast different doubts on the progressiveness of nationalist parties and reformist associations in terms of gender reform. This emerges in relation to, for instance, Lalithambika’s critique of the Congress party’s failure to select Akkamma Cheriyan or any other Malayali woman to stand as a candidate in the 1948 election, or in Sreedevi’s concerns about the YKS’ mild agendas on women’s rights to work and education. Sreedevi recalls that even more progressive husbands found it difficult to cope with their wives spending long hours at work in the few centres for antharjanams’ training and employment established in central Kerala.7 Their memories, indeed, only partly engage with the fate of Nambudiri women in the aftermath of revolutionary acts, and only begin to address the many shortcomings of reformist movements in terms of women’s rights (cf. Devika 2007a).

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Debts of Identity Nevertheless, for both women membership of a reformed community remains key in healing ruptures in family relations. Paternal and maternal reformist figures compensate for the lack of emotional closeness and material support of their own ancestral lineages. Mattison Mines’ analysis of the diary of Koratha, a Malayali man who severs his bonds with the Jacobite community to convert to Anglicanism, holds relevance here. Mines notes how writing represents for Koratha (p.109) a way to elaborate on his sense of being split between two contrasting ‘social fields of estimation’ (Mines 1999: 223): between a community which no longer provides the opportunities it once did, and the other (the Anglican) which has less status and prestige, but which has the potential to provide new opportunities thanks to its association with the British. Lalithambika’s and Sreedevi’s memories share with Koratha’s diary the theme of a fraught choice between ‘a conservative and novel sense of the self’ (Mines 1999: 222). Both women compensate for the suffering caused by the breaking of wider family ties with the firm belief that their gestures actively contribute to building a fresh and forward-looking Nambudiri collectivity, membership of which is never put into question. Ultimately, and paradoxically even more firmly than what V.T. Bhattathiripad recognized in his maturity, both women share a faith in the renaissance of Nambudiris, and in the positive heritage of revolutionary reformers.

The Impossible Reconciliation Despite the influence of reformist movements, not all heterodox lives reflect individual intentions to flourish under the shadow of revolutionary acts. The diary of Narayanan P.8 offers different insights into individual attempts to carve out a new sense of the self in opposition to the normative expectations of both aristocratic norms and reformist ideals. He explores the existential possibilities of a double act of rupture with his kin and with the YKS project of a pure Nambudiri collectivity (see Arunima 2003).

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Debts of Identity I became aware of the diary’s existence through Narayanan’s daughter, Priyadatha, during my visit to her house in Chennai in 2005. Priyadatha was a retired high-level government officer in her early seventies. Married to a Nair lawyer for more than forty years, she had two children: a son working in Dubai as an engineer and a daughter working in the software industry in Chennai. I discovered by chance that she had a Nambudiri father. Unlike many Nambudiris I had met in the village and in Kochi, Priyadatha had never spoken openly about her caste or descent. As she put it, she had simply chosen not to have one—like her father. It was only when I told her about my research on memory and family that she mentioned the existence of her father’s diary, an unpublished short manuscript (p.110) which she kept for herself and her children. When I first read the English translation of Narayanan’s diary, my attention was captured by the recalling of one aspect that had been tellingly silenced in the written memories I had previously encountered: the emotional and relational fate of sambandham relations between Nambudiris and Nairs in the aftermath of family reforms.9 Narayanan’s narratives revolve around the conflict between an initial aspiration towards endogamic marriage and a longstanding reflection on the necessity to provide emotional and financial support to his Nair spouse and the children born out of his sambandham. I found it equally interesting how the writing accompanies Narayanan’s progressive rejection of Nambudiri reformist ideals and his withdrawal from both the YKS and the YJS. He observes the fates of ‘his community’ without allowing himself immediate empathy with either the orthodox or the progressive strands. Narayan’s diary is not written ‘after the events’, or in response to any public expectations. Rather, it accompanies crucial moments in his life: from initial YKS membership between the late 1920s and the mid-1930s, to his radical break with the movement; from the decision to move to Chennai with his family in 1934, to his death in 1958. Intended to be confidential, his diary allows him to distance himself critically from ongoing events. The secrecy of Narayanan’s diary ‘generates reflexivity’ (Rudolph 1997: 171) on kinship. While the author is enmeshed in politicized family relations, writing encourages him to ‘make the familiar unfamiliar’ (Rudolph 1997: 152) and to look critically at what kinship and political activism have produced (or failed to deliver) in his own life. Aged 18, Narayanan enters into a sambandham with Devaki, an affluent Nair woman, with whom he has two children: Remeni (born in 1922) and Vijayan (1924). He recalls the joys of paternity and how—against the rules of the time— fatherhood brought him closer to his wife and her family, far away from his paternal lineage:

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Debts of Identity I am learning of a new life, a new possibility…the warmth of the house when I go there, the pleasure of playing and of eating with them. All this is denied to me in my own house, by the people of my same blood (illakkar). My visits to my illam (ancestral house) are becoming rare … every time I go there I feel like a burdensome alien. My wife and my children are not welcomed to my house, as if they do not exist. (p.111) This passage unravels a tension between the rewarding possibility of sambandham—which Narayanan conceives throughout as generating a durable family life—and the gloomy feeling that accompanies each visit to his ancestral house. However, while he is initially inclined to prefer his wife’s family to his Nambudiri one, subsequent tensions also emerge with respect to the matrilineal lineage. Narayanan’s exclusion from his illam makes him embarrassingly dependent on his wife’s family. After an argument with his wife’s brother, he decides to move to Thrissur to pick up employment as a teacher. However, his Nair wife, Devaki, refuses to follow him with their two children, influenced by her lineage’s criticism of his weak financial situation (though he continues to contribute to the children’s maintenance). We learn about the hardship of coping with the distance from his wife and children: his sincere love for Devaki seems not to be reciprocated by her ‘preference to live a comfortable life in the protective allure of her taravad (Nair ancestral house)’. During his stay in Thrissur, Narayanan comes closer to the YKS and YJS, which infuses his personal frustrations with a political inflection. In 1933 when one of his YKS fellows asks him to marry Savitri, a young Nambudiri widow, he finds himself at a junction. He eventually agrees: more out of the personal need for a ‘family of his own’ than as a form of political duty. With Savitri he has two other children, Priyadatha (born in 1934) and Ravi (1936). Predictably, the marriage excommunicates the couple and paddhiaggakhia (an outcasting ceremony) is performed by Narayanan’s lineage members. Equally painful is Devaki’s decision to put an end to their sambandham, an act that generates insecurity and emotional distress, particularly in relation to fatherhood: There is these days a big talk about duties towards children…my fellows say that to be a Nambudiri is to grow up your own children, but what does this mean? Are my children with my first wife not also my own children? What father would I be if I abandon them? How will they grow up without knowing about me, the person who love them?

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Debts of Identity Narayanan demands that he continues to see his ‘Nair’ children and contribute to their upbringing. Interestingly, this decision is accepted by Savitri (his Nambudiri wife) but produces a twofold divergence with both the YKS and the YJS. First, he is increasingly uncomfortable with the interference of political organizations in his (p.112) ‘private’ decisions. He objects to his conjugal and parental affections being considered as a public domain for community reformism, and emphasizes the importance of personal realization and emotional fulfillment. Second, he comes to believe that old boundaries and privileges are far from challenged by the persistent conservatism of caste-based reformism. Narayanan compares the normative expectations of the YKS and YJS with the orthodox positions of his lineage: What is important for me, what I think makes a person respectable, is to keep the promises. How can we control the feeling? How can a person deny the love for the children? Is this not what the movement has criticized about the past: the impossibility to be loved and to have families? Was not this what we were fighting for? It is Nambudiris which is important or it is to become humans, as they say? Now they do not seem to me so different from how we have been in the past… This passage, written in 1938, illustrates individual difficulties in resituating personal lives within the contours of changing collectivities and compensating for the losses incurred through kin ruptures with novel forms of community belonging. More than outcaste status, it is Narayanan’s reluctance to confirm to the Nambudiri reformist milieu that leads to isolation. In 1940, he loses his job as a teacher and decides to leave with his ‘Nambudiri’ family for Chennai, where he gets a new job as a school director. He refuses to see his family or involve himself in what he calls ‘Brahmin community affairs’, but continues to visit his children from his first marriage. In 1943, after Devaki’s death, he brings Remeni and Vijayan to live with him in Chennai in order to give them a better education. One of his last writings acknowledges his debt to his Nambudiri wife, for having accepted Remeni and Vijayan in the house as her own children: I owe a big admiration to her. When I see her touching my children, without thinking if they are Nairs or Nambudiris….I think I have to be grateful to her for all the changes she could make to our life. All this would have not been possible if we had stayed in Kerala.

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Debts of Identity While the diary frequently revolves around discussion of the impact of personal decisions and dilemmas on the lives of his wives and children, Narayanan does not seem to easily indulge in the gendered rhetoric of women’s liberation advocated by reformist ideals. He implicitly rejects the image of the progressive male as (p.113) the ‘indispensable figure’ behind the modernity of middle-class Nambudiri women (cf. Rajan 2013: 69–70). For instance, in describing his appreciation for Savitri’s government employment in Chennai, he does not see himself as the initiator of her career. Similarly, he does not ascribe to himself the merit of Savitri’s progressive disregard for caste rules. Rather, his writings express an understanding of family transformations as the result of coordinated achievements made by interrelated individuals, whose actions have reciprocal influence and forge new kinship bonds. Personal and family transformations are intimately linked to migration and related social mobility. Physical distance from Kerala allows Narayanan to achieve emotional and relational detachment from painful events and to reconstruct his life without allowing it to be straightforwardly subsumed within any community or state project (cf. Mookherjee 2013). As Mines (1999: 229) notes, ‘some individuals find it beneficial to relocate their identities in new sets of relationships, which constitute new groups and forms of evaluation’. Narayanan’s writing express a prolonged dilemma in the individual move from what is conceived as membership of an unrewarding aristocracy towards the promise of a reformed community. Yet, this transition never reaches a point of resolution, and difficulties in reconciling the self with novel community membership eventually lead him to reject both options. While the self is constructed through a constant dialogue with the life possibilities offered by different social milieus, Narayanan’s diary voices the refusal to comply with both the ‘old’ kinship norms of sambandham relations as well as with new projects for a pure Nambudiri community. To some extent, writing counterbalances the progressive obliteration of family lives achieved through Nambudiri–Nair unions, and invites readers to track down those individual destinies which have not fully —or not uniquely—subscribed to monogamous endogamic marriages as a modern expression of citizenship.10

An ‘Ordinary’ Movement

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Debts of Identity In a partly similar way to Narayanan’s diary, the writings of Kavitha P. offer insights into the limits of reformist movements in fully embracing the Brahmin community. They also unravel how individual lives (p.114) find expression beyond the elitist rhetoric of liberation of gendered subjectivities promoted by reform movements (see Devika 2007a). Kavitha P., a Nambudiri woman in her late sixties, has lived most of her life outside Kerala. She recently returned to Ernakulam with her husband to enjoy what she called ‘a relaxed old age after a hard working life’. My meeting with her initiated an important shift in my fieldwork orientations and my understanding of internal differences among Nambudiris. Kavitha did not belong to the aristocratic milieu of Nambudiri landlords, but came from a poor, lower-status Grahmini Nambudiri family. Her humble origins, combined with the need to work outside her home from an early age and a turbulent migration history, make her life difficult to reconcile with the representation of secluded antharjanams publicly offered by reformist movements throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and which remains relatively popular among contemporary Malayali middle classes. Like Priyadatha, Kavitha P. was acutely aware of the potential relevance of a personal diary for an anthropologist working on kinship. This awareness partly drew from her certainty that, in her words, by ‘knowing our families we also know much more about life’. Kavitha constantly drew parallels between her intention to ‘write a diary’ as a way to make sense of events beyond the ‘privacy’ of her own life, and my ‘taking notes’ on her experiences as a way to understand the wider history of Nambudiris and of Malayali in general. In part, her sensibility towards anthropological work was nurtured by experiences of social and geographical mobility: ‘distance made me reflect a lot on the family…you become more aware of the fact that things they are not as obvious as they had appear when you do your daily life in the same place’. Kavitha kept a diary as a way to reflect in more durable terms on this complex interrelation between personal kinship history as a migrant woman and her engagement with wider transformations occurring in Kerala. The way Kavitha introduced herself to me showed her awareness of the dominant narrative on past Nambudiri women as secluded subjects, and of her different class and gender positioning with respect to available representations. ‘Oh, you should read what I have been writing in the last few years….’, she told me during one of our preliminary meetings. She specified that I should read, and not only listen to her stories. I believe this was partly dependent on the fact that her diary had become a constitutive part (p. 115) of her own personality, a filter through which she made sense of lived kinship relations, and a reassuring presence in the way she presented herself to others.11 Kavitha’s diary was not merely a space for reflecting on ongoing events. Perhaps more importantly, it was something ‘enabling and empowering’ (Rudolph 1997: 169): it had become part of her own identity, and was a source of comfort and advice when faced with family crises or important choices. Page 20 of 32

Debts of Identity On my part, combining the reading of some of Kavitha’s writing with prolonged conversations gave me the opportunity to thread the temporal location of specific scripts with more contemporary interpretations of personal experiences: it allowed a longitudinal perspective on how past ideas were maintained, or transformed, in the present by the same writing subject. The two particular aspects of Kavitha’s diary I explore here address the specific relation between gender, labour and family hierarchies, on one hand, and the relation between lineage and more ‘nuclear’ forms of family life, on the other. Kavitha’s narratives appear substantially different from those characterizing the writings of the women analysed previously. For Lalithambika A. and Njaaloor Sreedevi (as well as Nialayamgode Devaki), seclusion (ghosha) represents a point of origin in their narratives of self-transformation as middle-class women. Class mobility implies for them a departure from the aesthetics, bodily and relational restrictions imposed on antharjanams. For Kavitha P., ghosha constitutes from her adolescence onwards a relatively distant object of amazement and, perhaps paradoxically, desire. Aged 14, Kavitha was obliged to work as servant in a rich Nambudiri house. This was not unusual: her sister Bahdra and her mother had been similarly employed. Going out of her humble house does not hold the exceptional meaning it had for aristocratic women: after a few months, it had become what she defines in her diary as an ‘ordinary movement from poverty to privileged abodes’. However, the banality of this movement has deeper life implications. Commuting allowed Kavitha greater spatial mobility, something that she conceives as determinant in her subsequent decision to migrate to Mumbai in the late 1950s and to Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) in 1975. It also freed Kavitha from the supervision of male family members. Some carefreeness with respect to gendered kinship rules allows Kavitha to attend a local village school established by missionaries. In 1951, aged 17, she began (p. 116) to keep a diary. Her writings in this period reflect her ambivalent engagement with the life conducted by her aristocratic landladies: We cannot afford all the precautions of jenmis ….We have other concerns such as eating and working, and I cannot care for my personal appearance like oppols did12…As soon as I enter their house I had to stick to rules, be more careful about where to go and whom to avoid, how to cover. But then women there were curious, they asked me to bring some food from outside …. or how people dress. I feel sorry for them….somehow, but they also seem so well protected, no need to worry about anything…

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Debts of Identity The passage has resonance for the understanding of different subjective positions with respect to ‘strict’ gendered house rules. For Kavitha, entering into a ‘workplace’—the house of landlords—requires a degree of self-transformation, and requires her to change her way of dressing and behaving. This is deemed necessary in order to be physically close to antharjanams, and in a way reasserts gendered hierarchies of purity between women of different status and socioeconomic background, independent from common caste affiliation (Osella and Osella 2000). Yet, Kavitha is also a source of curiosity for affluent Nambudiri women: she brings information, goods and ideas from outside, something that she uses to present herself as more experienced and learned, and to rebalance power relations with her landladies. This also emerges in relation to the reformist activities ongoing when she was young. Her writings delve into how the YKS and YJS’ activities were a source of wonderment for many aristocratic women, and of delusions. She dismisses their requests for information with a hasty and disinterested ‘I have not much time for this, and they do not care about me’. The lack of interest Kavitha shows in reformist movements has multilayered origins. The movements’ rhetorics touched upon imagined community transformations that already constituted a reality for Kavitha. She was not rigidly sticking to ghosha rules; she was already a working woman, struggling to earn a living. In stating that reformers ‘were not caring about her’, she raises doubts about their real inclusive powers. Perhaps more importantly, she also acutely withdraws from the possibility of being ‘looked after’ by paternal figures. As she told me during one of our conversations, recalling reformist activities in their village: For them it was easier to talk to women like my old landladies … they could be guided and accepted things, they were sitting all days without (p.117) doing much … but how to talk to women like us who were working, moving and were already trying by themselves to achieve a basic education? While the harshness of working life permeates her sense of insecurity, and makes seclusion sometimes appear as a more reassuring possibility, Kavitha resists possible identification as a subject in need of rescuing by ‘revolutionary’ activities. For Kavitha class mobility is rather achieved through migration, first as a single and then as a married woman, and in the acceptance of those jobs that made her crucially ‘assimilable’ to lower castes and Christians. Following the economic breakdown of her Nambudiri employee, Kavitha agrees to be trained as a nurse and moves to Mumbai to work. In her diary she portrays her parents as an important support, although they are often motivated by desperate economic conditions:

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Debts of Identity My father told me that these were not the jobs of Nambudiris … it is a dirty job, because you have to clean and care for bodies, but there is no other options, and also I will continue to work and to help my family. Tellingly, caste considerations are marginalized in the name of kin duties and prospective class mobility. In Mumbai Kavitha enters into a highly heterogeneous milieu, partly thanks to her job and partly as a consequence of her sister’s marriage to a Christian man. Kavitha and her sister keep sending money back to their parents and, after their brother’s death in 1958, remain the sole source of support for their family in Kerala. It is from the perspective of a working woman who took up ‘unwanted jobs’ that Kavitha measures her relations with her family and the wider Nambudiri collectivity. In the early 1970s, a few years before moving to Riyadh with her family, her sister, and brother-in-law, she writes: Many things seem not to have changed among the Nambudiri families I knew in Kerala. Many women are still at home, they do not work …they remained very picky about labour but many of them are also starving as my family did in the past. My work at least is helping my parents to achieve a better life. Another element of interest in Kavitha’s writings is the ‘absence’ of any significant kin connection with lineages. Unlike for the women whose writings are analysed above, there is no joint family or large ancestral house for Kavitha to ‘fight against’ in order to transform (p.118) herself. Her diary mirrors a limited engagement with the teleological transformation from ‘traditional lineage’ to modern ‘small family norms’ usually advocated by reformists and taken as a symbol of Indian modernity (see Arunima 2003; Devika 2008; Saradamoni 1999; Walsh 2004). For Kavitha, ‘large families’ remain a privilege of the few, to which she contrasts her sole responsibilities towards her parents and her sister. While other kin in Kerala remain in the background of her family portrait, Kavitha’s diary delves into how the construction of a large network of kin relations is possible thanks to her migrant life. She marries a Nambudiri in Mumbai, who also comes from a lower-status family, and has three children.

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Debts of Identity Like many Christian migrant women from Kerala (Gallo 2005, 2006), Kavitha actively supports the migration of other family members and reconstitutes a large circle of relatives in both Mumbai and the Gulf. In Saudi Arabia she often describes her new family life as involving a large network of kin and friends, which partly reflect caste membership and partly exclude any form of community boundary.13 Rather than conceiving herself within the modern form of the small family, she contrasts the poverty and isolation of her own original house with the extensive kin relations she constructs in migrant destinations; she is constantly engaged in activities like hosting nephews, attending cousins’ weddings, or travelling abroad to visit relatives. As she told me one day, reversing the historical narratives of more aristocratic Nambudiris: ‘My family used to be small, and now I have lots of relatives….we try to help each other, and I feel much less alone than when I was younger’. Kavitha was very proud of the fact that, thanks to her job, she had enabled her children to receive a good education and to find good jobs. While she herself had decided to return to Kerala after her retirement, she encouraged her children to ‘stay abroad’ and to find jobs in Gulf countries or the US. In a way, Kavitha’s biography begins where those of higher-status women end: her narratives focus on the challenges faced in terms of caste status, kin relations, and personal realization in engaging with working life in Indian and foreign destinations, and the cumulative effects of labour in class mobility. Importantly, while Kavitha’s father and husband occupy a place in her diary, she rarely describes herself (p.119) as a subject in need of male help, nor as a woman who has been ‘saved’ by a paternal reformist figure. As a female autobiographer, she directly expresses her unwillingness to totally subscribe to available historical narratives of gendered cultural norms and role definition (Arnold and Blackburn 2004; Kandiyoti 1988). Unlike Narayanan P., Kavitha never loses a sense of caste belonging and chooses an endogamic marriage with a Nambudiri man without entering into conflicts with kin or community fellows. Yet, it is through her role as a working woman that she negotiates the terms and conditions of her membership of a changing Brahmin community. She overcomes discriminatory attitudes related to her jobs by claiming a status as a pioneering and ‘self-made’ woman, one who was able to engage with migration and mobility well before many aristocratic families.

Talismans of the Present Discussing the temporal longevity of diaries, Rebecca Steinitz notes (1997: 54): The diary is always more than its content, it always serves not only as a text but as a talisman. [… It serves as a critical element in the connection, across the multiple temporalities of writing and reading, of the reader with the writer, producing, as it were, the reader’s personal experience of the writer’s personal experience. Page 24 of 32

Debts of Identity According to Stenitz, the temporal location of diaries is not only the one related to the writer’s immediate present, or the one of the past which the writer aims at constructing. Autobiographers also write by imagining the use of their words in a distant future, through the awareness that they themselves or other people might refer to these words in order to create their own past. In this respect, diaries and autobiographies potentially generate specific forms of ‘collective memory’ (Steinitz 1997: 55) insofar as the present of the writing subject can be transformed in the past of many others. Indeed, while diaries unravel how the individual composes his/her own self-narratives (see Arnold and Blackburn 2004) vis-á-vis shifting community contours, they may also produce ‘models of the self’ that can, in turn, inspire present forms of collective identity politics. During my fieldwork in Kerala, interest in written memories of renowned Brahmin writers seemed to flourish among Nambudiris. (p.120) Copies of published diaries and autobiographies were visible on bookshelves and were often recommended to me as sources of knowledge. They were frequent subjects of debate during evening discussions on house verandas, and a source of confrontation between different generations of Nambudiris. It was not rare to meet Nambudiris in city bookstores to ask for the latest edition of a volume, and copies were sometimes sent abroad to relatives and friends. Diaries represented an important reference point in the double act of narrating lives and of presenting one’s own story to a researcher, and constituted a source of validation of more private family stories. Narratives of individual and family lives often adopted as reference points the exemplary lives of famed Malayali figures like V.T. Bhattathiripad or Lalithambika Antharjanam. The recalling of a specific house event was frequently connected to the heroic actions and ideas of a diarist, particularly if the same event brought ruptures in family ties or emotional distress. In this respect, written memories also acted to heal of ambivalent feelings generated by unresolved kin relations. Present narratives constantly referred to the past revolutions achieved in the community thanks to the pioneering actions of forefathers and foresisters. The same possibility of kinship seemed to be rooted in the ancestral actions of middle-class reformers. Sentences like ‘if it was not for V.T. Bhattathiripad we would have not come into existence’, or ‘the YKS made us human beings’ were common when narrating histories of parental or conjugal relations. In this line, more personal histories of outcasting, generational conflicts, or unconventional marriages found expressions and were legitimized through the more institutionalized memories of ‘public’ diaries and autobiographies.

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Debts of Identity The reading and debating of diaries in the present held a generational dimension. Among middle-aged and elderly Nambudiris it was an activity usually shared among a relatively limited circle of kin and friends. Among young middleclass Nambudiris—aged between their mid-twenties and early forties—interest in written memories underpinned the establishment of novel collective activities such as community associations, Nambudiri history websites, or public events to gather Nambudiri scholars or artists. Public interest in notable moments of Nambudiri history seemed to be partly generated by young peoples’ renewed status as professionals in India and/or as skilled migrants abroad. The creation of community associations (p.121) both in Kerala and in migrant destinations was often inspired by the intent to connect Nambudiris in the diaspora by appealing to a specific fragment of the community past, which was deemed to endow present identities with prestige and distinctiveness.14 Narratives of class mobility adopted the breakaway acts of reformers as origin myths of origins. For many contemporary Nambudiris, the swinging trajectory from decayed elite, to lower-middle class status and then to middle-upper class status was made significant by referring to the many sacrifices undertaken by past reformers against the backdrop of family conservatism. Divergences of opinion were notable. Some stressed the YKS’ revolutionary attitude, while others pointed out how people like V.T. Bhattathiripad or Lalithambika Antharjanam remained distant in some ways from the movement due to its persistent orthodoxy. Beyond these differences, it was significant that filial memories were more often than not threaded within a wider narrative emphasizing, on one hand, the constraint of traditional kinship relations and, on the other, the valuable act of aachara, the breaking of old customs. Only a minority of Nambudiris I met were keen to straightforwardly interpret their class mobility histories in terms of a genealogical continuity with past aristocratic status. Rather, a desecrating attitude towards past family life—often depicted through the idiom of ancestral bad practices (durunnarappu)— prevailed in making sense of modern achievements. Interestingly, histories of kinship ruptures that many admittedly considered shameful and a symbol of past backwardness were retrieved to emphasize the progressive nature of present generations.

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Debts of Identity Overall, in my view contemporary interpretations of diaries—and the kind of collective memory they sought to produce—mirrored a twofold understanding of generational relations. On the one hand, present status was understood in terms of generational disconnections from those villains of the past (Feuchtwang 2005) seen as hindering the progress of the community. Prolonged histories of economic and social decline were explained by referring to ancestors’ failure to adequately engage with past social mobility opportunities. In contrast, revolutionary figures became surrogate ancestors whose actions initiated a long collective march towards community regeneration. In making the YKS the surrogate ancestor of modern families, neo-orthodox Nambudiris attempt simultaneously to (p.122) highlight disconnection and to reintegrate past ruptures (Carsten 2007) with those ancestors who fought for community regeneration. In this respect, we can interpret Nambudiris’ ‘obsession’ with past kinship conflict as an elitist contestation of exclusivity, and inscribe this attitude within a new ‘rhetoric of neo-brahminism’, in that it acknowledges ‘the fact of belonging to an upper caste whilst at the same time stressing the difficulties of being part of it’ (Satyanarayana 1992: 235). As long as traditional Nambudiri exclusivity represents a burden in the fashioning of middle-class identities, remembering kinship conflict represents a way to re-connect marginalized family destinies to mainstream historical processes of social mobility. An example of this can be found in one Nambudiri journalist’s public interpretation of Njaloor Sreedevi’s diary. The 1997 article, published in a Hindu monthly magazine, Kalaveekshanam, addresses the pedagogical importance of her revolutionary life. The important parallel between the birth of socially unwanted children and the regeneration of the community is used to admonish all Malayali women (Narayanan 1997: 7): Do the women who hold administrative and professional jobs in Bombay or New York ever remember the grandmas who suffered for the liberation of the weaker sex? […] Sreedevi’s place is high not only in the reformation of Nambudiri women but also in the women’s liberation movement in Kerala. The present generation of Malayalis has much to inherit from the example set by Mrs Njaloor. In this passage, the imperative of remembering embraces not only Nambudiri women but ideally the whole Malayali diaspora. Restoring a more conventional understanding of the generational debt, this passage identifies in the sacrifices of Nambudiri women not only the redemption of the whole community but also the possibility of regarding present middle-class status as a cumulative product of Brahmin sacrifice. Maurice Bloch notes how (1998: 81–2):

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Debts of Identity […] Recalling defines the person in relation to time by invoking, or not invoking, notions of a past interaction with an external world which contains truth and falsehoods, permanent and impermanent elements […]. These ways of remembering the past not only create the imagined external world but they create the imagined nature of the actor in the past which, in so far as this actor is seen as a predecessor, refers also to those living in the present. (p.123) The reading of diaries and written memories among contemporary Nambudiris enhances the production of shared knowledge through which the present of modern collectivities is consolidated by invoking the past experiences of exceptional individuals. It enhances contemporary middle-class attempts to build a ‘continuum of selfhood’ (Narayan 2004: 231) with meticulously selected ancestors and to claim a space in the public sphere as the descendants of revolutionary Malayalis. Diaries allow for the sharing of experiences across different temporalities. Nevertheless, the transferability of memories that diaries promise does not go unquestioned. While contemporary readings of diaries open spaces in which specific constructions of the self can inspire modern collective identities, they also represent a context in which other individuals can object to or challenge the collective memorialization of past individual lives (see Baussant 2007; Lambek 1996). In this light, we should interpret the resistance of Narayanan’s daughter Priyadatha’s resistance to his diary, or Kavitha’s willingness to share her writing only among a limited circle. Both women were particularly critical of the possibility that personal narratives could be used by those they conceived as neo-orthodox Nambudiris to reify notions of community identity and exclusivism.15 For Priyadatha, remembering kinship ruptures experienced by her father represented a way to question past elitism, a position that made it difficult for her to subscribe to contemporary Brahmin identity politics. For Kavitha, writing represented a way to define and distinguish her own life from those of aristocratic or affluent Nambudiri women, and to claim independence from the gendered rhetoric of salvation of secluded antharjanams. While not ruling out future publication, Kavitha was uncomfortable with the public interpretations of individual narratives being promoted by many Nambudiris in the early 2000s. She drew back the possibility that her own life could become a symbol for collective exclusivist projects, partly in view of the fact that she was as distant from contemporary Nambudiri associations as she had been from reformist movements in the past. For both Priyadatha and Kavitha, recalling represented a way to make sense of the heterogeneity of individual histories, and to set these histories against identity politics claiming a modern community exclusivity in the present. (p.124)

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Debts of Identity Written memories hold unique importance in the understanding of how Nambudiris have differently engaged with the turbulent years of colonial and Malayali middle-class reforms, and of how individual experiences and personalities were enmeshed in—and yet also drove—socio-political change in Kerala, and in India more generally (Daniel 1992; Mandelbaum 1973; Mines 1988). The value of the diaries discussed here does not reside in their being a statement of historical truth (Arnold and Blackburn 2004; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992), but rather in the possibility they offer to go beyond any preconfigured and all-encompassing depiction of community reformism and, more broadly, of middle classes as they developed in colonial times. Written memories do not mirror the total enmeshment of the individual in collective networks of caste, class, or kinship, nor the forging of an independent and antagonistic self against a holistic social domain (Arnold and Blackburn 2004; Okely 1992). Rather, they reflect a complex engagement of the individual with changing collectivities (Mookerjee 2013), an engagement which is contextually enacted through desired proximity but also through critical distance from community belonging. Specifically, diaries unravel the existence of heterogeneous—and often contrasting—temporal engagements with the ‘revolutionary’ acts of reformist movements. They range from the elitist exercise to recompose a kinship past in order to reaffirm modern privileges, to the more controversial engagement with the limits of remembered family practices; from the ‘liberatory’ experiences of breaking with some community kinship norms, to the painful recognition that full membership of a circle of Nambudiri relatives or class fellows is often more of an illusion than an achieved reality. This chapter has suggested how writing represents a powerful symbolic act through which kinship is both created and contested: it is a constitutive exercise through which family relations are forged and made intelligible for present and future lives. It represents a ritual of self-transformation, through which the writer observes the behavioural and emotional codes of his/her time with an ethnographic gaze and highlights the rewards, possibilities, and failures of family relations. Importantly, writing places the author in a liminal position with respect to kinship: sharing and detachment, empathy and criticism often painfully coexist in individual relations with families and with (p.125) related political project of community transformation. The desire to create a space of protection from turbulent political times coexists with the intention to expose kinship to the yardsticks of history. Diaries restitute us a polyhedric image of the meanings, ambitions, and shortcomings that making families in colonial times meant for different subjects, and simultaneously, they unravel how kinship was differently harnessed in processes of class mobility. In this respect, diaries disclose the simultaneous private and public nature of kinship relations: how the domestic sphere was influenced by socio-political change and how the latter was made meaningful and reshaped through novel ways of conceiving and living through family relations. Page 29 of 32

Debts of Identity This chapter also suggests that diaries illustrate a progressive shift in the way kinship is understood today by some fragments of middle-class Nambudiris: from binding a community of birth towards the forging of a community of sufferers, where family conflicts, isolation, and silence have contributed to shape forms of class mobility. Importantly, the cutting of some kinship ties—with lineage elders in many instances—are ambivalently conceived as holding a generative force in the attainment of novel gendered family roles. For Njaloor Sreedevi or Narayanan P. acts of aajaras—the breaking of customs—ambivalently isolate them from the wider kinship networks and yet also allow them to experience parenthood and to frame conjugal lives beyond the community contours designed by reformist movements. The idea that disruptions in traditional family life constitute a duty and a chance for forms of class mobility holds relevance in the present, and becomes apparent in contemporary interpretation of diaries among Nambudiris. By recalling in the present the heroic acts of revolutionary ancestors, present Nambudiri middle classes attempt at making public the contribution of this community to the development of Malayali society, and to acquire new visibility and recognition vis-á-vis other middle classes. While a temporal connection with past Nambudiri life is deemed problematic among contemporary middle classes, in so far as it threatens to restitute in the present an image of an anachronistic and backward community, some generational continuity is sought today with those meritorious ancestors who have acted as saviours of wider collective destinies. In this reading, past YKS and YJS activism is deemed to have liberated Nambudiris from the constraints of the past. Yet, in the present like (p.126) in colonial times, the rhetoric of liberation does not go unquestioned. Diaries offer insights into the ambivalence, dilemmas, and unresolved disconnections that underpin the ‘transition of the self’ from a former aristocratic belonging towards middle-class membership. They map the existence of individual and heterodox interpretations of conjugality, filial relations, and community membership that cannot be fully subsumed within the projects of endogamy, modern patriarchy, and caste purity promoted by reformist movements. Notes:

(1.) As such, genres of recalling analysed below depart from the Hindi–Persian literature analysed by Barbara Metcalf (1995) which ascribes little importance to chronology and emphasizes individuals’ capacity to subscribe to timeless exemplars. (2.) See the contrasting example of Kavitha P. (3.) This topic is taken up again in the next chapter.

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Debts of Identity (4.) The literary work of V.T. Bhattathiripad is extremely rich, ranging between political scripts, novels, theatre pieces, and memories; detailed analysis of his writing goes beyond the remit of this chapter. Here I limit my reflections to the recent English translation of ‘My Tears, My Dreams. Kanneerum Kinaavum’ (2013). (5.) For a contrast between V.T. Bhattatiripad positioning with respect to intercaste and inter-religious marriages and Nambudiri modern engagements and understanding of such unions see Chapter 5. (6.) Lalithambika’s emphasis on the joy and freedom that surrounds her new home evokes the memories of V.T. Bhattathiripad of Rasikasadanam, the new house he established after he achieved the endogamic marriage he desired with Sreedevi Antharjanam (Bhattathiripad 2013). (7.) For similar positions see also the diary of Devaki Nilayamgode (2011), which recalls the difficulties women in the 1930s encountered in legitimately taking up jobs due to opposition from the community. (8.) At the request of the diarist’s daughter, the writer’s name and those of his relatives have been changed. The same holds for the discussion on the diary of Kavitha P. (9.) An exception to this are the written memories of V.T. Bhattathiripad (2013), where he recalls his relations with Madhavikutty Varasiar, a woman from the Ambalavasi caste with whom he had a sambandham before abandoning her to marry within his own caste. In Kanneerum Kinavum, V.T. recalls his pain over her death from cholera, and the joyful intimacy they shared in earlier years. However, while touching upon the dilemma of marriage choices between sambandham and veli, the narrative is progressively resolved through V.T.’s achievement of emotional and relational fulfillment with his endogamic marriage and through his subscription to veli as a necessary political choice to encourage reform among Nambudiris. (10.) I pick up this general argument, as well as the story of the inter-caste marriages of Narayan’s children, in Chapter 5. (11.) As will become clear, however, Kavitha’s diary was aimed at only a small, selected audience. (12.) Oppol literally means ‘elder sister’, but was also used by non-lineage women of lower status as a respectful form of address for the women of the aristocratic houses where they worked. (13.) I pick up this issue in Chapter 5. (14.) The issue of community associations is discussed in Chapter 7. Page 31 of 32

Debts of Identity (15.) Again, for a more detailed analysis of modern Nambudiri orthodoxy, see Chapter 7.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

The Illam and Its Dispersion Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Chapter four examines Nambudiri houses and the place they hold in the material phenomenology of kinship memories. Houses are understood here not only as ‘private domestic’ places but as domains where families’ engagement with political history is expressed, visualiszd (or hidden) in internal spatial dispositions, in the presentation of objects, in the daily routine, and in consumption practices. Indeed, houses are conceived as sites where kinship is ‘made’ by either reproducing the past, or by searching a distance from it. The social and symbolic significance of past Illams architecture (Nambudiri ancestral houses) is contrasted with the meanings ascribed to present middle-class dwellings and to the way people choose to inhabit the latter. The relation between gender, class mobility, and kinship will be developed by comparing middle-class Nambudiri men and women narratives. Keywords:   houses, remembrance, political history, class mobility, masculinity and femininity, consumption

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The Illam and Its Dispersion ONE IMPORTANT ELEMENT DIARIES DISCLOSE is the relevance of illams (ancestral houses) in Nambudiris’ memories of family transformation and related class trajectories. This should not perhaps come as a surprise. In Kerala, like in the rest of India and well beyond it, houses and domestic life have been at the heart of colonial and/or nationalist reforms and of middle-class historical engagement with modernity (Burton 2003; Donner and De Neve 2011; Mitchell 1988; Sangari and Vaid 1990; Tebbe 2008; Thomas 1994; Uberoi 1996). However, as Carsten (2004: 51–3) notes, despite the recognition of the importance that houses held under colonialism, we know very little about how people have effectively received and transformed modern meanings of houses across history. Among many Nambudiris—like Malayalis in general—the house is to some extent an important point of reference in the narration of personal and lineage histories. Indeed, as the classical literature has shown, the meanings of (patrilineal) illams and (matrilineal) taravad addressed a mutual and constitutive relation between houses, lineage, and joint-family life (Fuller 1976; Gough 1961; Mencher 1962; Mencher and Goldberg 1966; Moore 1989).1 Among contemporary middle-class Nambudiris, the location, architecture,and internal spatialization of illams, as well as the daily routine that inhabited them, (p.128) is often recalled in the presentation of the self and in making sense of their contemporary class location. Sentences like ‘Oh, if you want to understand me and my family you have to visit my house’, or ‘a trip to our illam will reveal more than reading books about us’ accompanied Nambudiri memories of decline and social renovation, although memories did not always reflect positive attitudes towards ancestral houses. Indeed, what I found interesting was the mixture of irony and embarrassment through which personal relations with illams were framed: emotional attachment and nostalgia coexisted with sharp criticism and a willingness to detach oneself from the social architecture of old houses. Present forms of housing in urban spaces are set in continuity and yet also in opposition to old illams, and memories of ancestral houses hold a crucial importance in the way class status is materialized in today’s disposition of internal domestic spaces and in the establishment of relations within and beyond caste and religious boundaries.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion This chapter explores how memories of ancestral houses are woven into narratives of class mobility and how recalling moulds ongoing relations between house spaces and gendered kinship relations. It begins by outlining the contemporary public perception of illams in Kerala, as this is important in order to understand the ambivalence of Nambudiris’ engagement with their house histories. I then turn to consider different gendered and generational memories of illams, by also briefly mentioning the role of migration different narrative attitudes. A brief discussion on the Hindu architectural science (Vasthu Shasthra) invites us to consider the centrality of more normative understandings of folk ideas of healthy life and class distinction. This sets the ground for analysing how gendered memories of illams shape contemporary houses and middle-class ideas of inter-socialization and ‘achieved’ gender equality. The analysis suggests how among contemporary middle-class Nambudiris the illam is ambivalently understood as both an elite shelter and a hinder of family class trajectories. This attitude holds both a generational and a gender dimension. Critical stances on past illams’ gendered and generational hierarchies more often characterize different cohorts of middle-aged and elder Nambudiris (aged between their early forties and early eighties) and more poignantly voice a masculine rhetoric of class mobility. Yet, even more sarcastic (p.129) attitudes do not automatically translate into men questioning houses’ modern patriarchal relations. Differently, women’s memories of illams often appear as less gloomy and more able to ironically capture both the constraining and protective dimension of past kinship relations. However, despite their more accommodating attitudes, middle-class women are today actively drawing from memories of the spatial constraints of illams to question the relational boundaries of contemporary dwellings.

Secrecy and Backwardness The ambivalent engagement of Nambudiris with their house history is influenced by the ways illams today inhabit the wider Malayali middle-class imagination. Kein was my Syrian Christian landlady in Kochi. I had just told her about my intention to move to Krishnapuram for a week (following an invitation from a Nambudiri family living in a restored illam) when Kein burst out with the following ironic comment: In a real illam? Are you kidding? I did not know there were ones still standing....You are very lucky, we have never come to know what was happening inside those houses. Do your job well and then let us know ...!

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The Illam and Its Dispersion I understood with time that Kein’s comment was symptomatic of a broader tendency among well-established Christian urban middle classes to locate Nambudiri dwellings in a specific space and time: as erased objects of a rural past, surrounded by secrecy. In principle, what had been inaccessible in the old days due to caste and religious restrictions could not be understood in the present in relation to the assumed disappearance of ‘real’ illams. However, my landlady’s attitude also revealed a persistent curiosity towards the previously inviolable Brahmin architecture. The idea that a foreign anthropologist could do a ‘better job’ if compared to locals disclosed the relevance of persistent limitations in accessing the domestic life of old elites. Mockery also characterized the stances of urban Hindu Nairs, upper-class Muslims, and welloff Ezhava families. In rural areas, however, and particularly among the middle classes of traditional lower- caste status, scorn sometimes hid apprehension towards Brahmin houses. Village memories signal how past rural life and inter-caste relations were widely understood through the (p.130) physical presence of Nambudiri houses, which constituted a crucial marker in village political and social life.2 Old Nambudiri abodes lay at the centre of the agrahamam—the sacred place of origins of patrilineal ancestors—and were symbols of social distinction with respect to lower castes. A field extract well exemplifies how the past spatial centrality of illams can mould villagers’ contemporary understanding of family histories: Krishnapuram, 25 January 2005 (field notes) ‘My landlord in the village, Mr. Kunjunni, is a seventy-two old retired teacher from the Ashari community.3 Kunjunni’s son successfully runs a business in Doha, and has invested part of the profits in a computer business back into the nearby town. A large portion of land was purchased from Mavor Mana, the local Nambudiri lineage, and a new brick house was built in what was the old Brahmin compound. In the morning, Kunjunni accompanied me to visit the newly elected panchayat (village) head, who is a Pulaya (ex-Untouchable) woman and a party comrade. He recalled how in the past this was impossible, as the head of Mavor Mana ‘sent his men to rule the village’. His apparently bold attitude gradually changed when he showed me the way to reach the old Mavor illam: ‘I will accompany [you] to the gate, and then you will go yourself. Things have changed, but I still do not feel comfortable to enter their house … it was their place (agrahamam) …. Oh, my son does not care!!! He is rich and he lived abroad … he enters there and confidently walks there … straight … because he knows no one can say anything to him …. But I still have in front of my eyes the image of my father, who had to bend in front of the house and stay away meters from the gate … I just cannot help [it], even after they [have] become so poor. You will see, their house is still big, but believe me … it is nothing if compared to what it was in the past!’ Page 4 of 39

The Illam and Its Dispersion Illams inspire memories of past discrimination but also act as reference points in the tracing of transformations in caste and class relations. Drawing from different spatial attitudes towards old Brahmin houses, Kunjunni makes sense of a generational shift in his own family history. This is not only in terms of a movement from his own status as a lower-middle-class public employee to his son’s status as a relatively rich middle-class businessman. He also addresses transformed bodily attitudes in caste relations, ‘from a curved respect’ to a ‘straight’ and self-confident way of walking through the house gate. The contrast between past illams and their modern appearance informs village memories of wider social mobility. While the present (p.131) state of Mavor house might still surprise a visitor with its large garden, its refined two-floor wooden structure, and charming family temple (see Figure 4.1), for villagers who preserve visual memories of its past features, the present can only be conceived —intentionally and instrumentally—as a colourless objectification of decline. The presence of well-preserved illams in central Kerala today is a rare sight and is often the result of acquisition by rich Christian, Nair, or Ezhava families.4 Furthermore, formerly isolated Brahmin abodes are today surrounded by modern (often palatial) houses which have been built thanks to migrants’ remittances. The purchasing of land from decayed aristocratic landlords has spatially and symbolically (p.132) marked the ‘entrance’ of new emerging strata into the heart of the agrahamam. The recalling of the material transformation of illams rhetorically addresses the way Malayalis interpret the wider

Figure 4.1 Restructuring of another old illam after partition and migration (1988– present) Source: Author.

history of modern Kerala development: from a conservative and hierarchical society, to a ‘revolutionary state’ where equality and social progress have been achieved (albeit in an ambivalent way—as Kunjunni’s persistent inhibitions suggest).

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Among non-Brahmin middle-classes, houses are moralized through an ideological connection between the status of the owner and the temporality of the latter’s social mobility. If illams are known to be inhabited by Nambudiris, they become a symbol of pinnokkam (uncivilized) elitism. In turn, Nambudiris are seen as unable to detach themselves from the backwardness of ‘old-style’ life (see S. Sarkar 1997) and unable to legitimately enter into the ‘middle’ sections of society (Dickey 2011; Donner and De Neve 2011; Joshi 2001). Conversely, the passage of ancestral houses to rich owners across caste and religious lines is officially welcomed, as this reflects the ascendance of more progressive social strata.

The Alter Ego of Lineages Behind the ‘secrecy’ of illams that puzzled my interlocutors lies a complex relation between personhood, lineage, and space. The articulation of this in contemporary memories is worth exploring before we delve into the analysis of modern houses. A more formal recalling of the illam emphasizes its importance as a primary source of lineage identification. This attitude particularly (but not exclusively) characterizes young Nambudiri migrants.5 Among them the remembered house is like a ‘small cosmology’ which ‘symbolically restores the integrity of a shattered geography’ (Bahloul 1992: 28) and the temporal and spatial unity between its members (Carsten 2004; Halbwachs 1980). Migrants’ memories reflect a double tendency in class trajectories. Among decayed families—who struggle to engage with more legitimate models of middle-class skilled migration—the recalling of glorious illams anchors unfulfilment to a territorially based space of elite unity and distinction. Yet, old illams are also imaginatively seductive to well-off Nambudiri youth who have grown up in migrant families in Dubai, London, or other prestigious (p.133) destinations. For them, recent economic well-being derives from a generational move from unskilled/semi-skilled migration to skilled migration, and fuels a renewed interest in the ancestral locations of Brahminhood. A nostalgic interest in illams reflects a wider search for those elements in lineage history that could nurture a sense of caste distinction with respect to an otherwise highly differentiated Malayali middle-class milieu. For both decayed aristocrats and flourishing Nambudiris the illam represents the place where the patrilineal lineage (mana) originated, and where present lives were connected to the maharishi (founding ancestors). Houses are recalled as determinant in the forging of blood relations (rekhta banhdan) among members of the same lineage (illakkar). Memories often focus around visualization of the family temple (grahmamkshetram), and on its importance in ensuring continuity between present lives, ancestors, and the divinity.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Women’s memories ascribe particular importance to the sharing of land products in the forging of kinship relations and in the formation of the Brahmin personhood. Kinship was locally perceived to be made (cf. Carsten and HughJones 1995, 2004) through the sharing of paramb (home garden land) and through daily commensality. Land products are recalled as determinants in nurturing intergenerational continuity (parambiri) through the transmission of exclusive intellectual qualities (bhudijini) and physical well-being (aroghyam). Garden land products are also importantly recalled as a means through which women could counterbalance their transient position within the patrilineal system. They were deemed to strengthen the women’s links with their father’s ancestral house (mahelere) and with the maternal lineage (ammathu bandhan). Women’s memories about the uniqueness of the food they were given in their mother’s or father’s house, or about a specific way of cooking/storing pickles or milk products often supported women’s claims of a certain degree of distinction from the encompassing identity of their husband’s illakkar (lineage members). Among men, it is the specific link between architecture, prestige, and physical well-being which tends to be emphasized. ‘If you wanted to know about one family, you should have asked about its illam’, is a common male saying. The recalling of lineage history more often than not begins with a spatial visualization of the illam’s large internal gardens, verandas, reception rooms, or attached temples. As (p.134) one young Nambudiri engineer, working in Dubai recalled, during our first interview: The house had to breathe, this is why our illam was built with natural wood and had many large rooms with azhiyakam6 (wooden ventilators) ... you were living inside, protected, but you were still connected with nature during the puja, the prayers, the daily life .... This is why we had a much healthier life if compared to other communities ... we lived in harmony with nature, in isolation from mundane affairs ... our mind was clear and our body was so strong!

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The isolation of aristocratic abodes is taken here as a symbol of Nambudiri estrangement from any corrupting material activity of self-sustainment and from the encounter with the ‘outside’ world. The emptiness and simplicity of past illams7 is recalled as a sign of privilege, and of a healthier relation with nature: as if the refined architecture in itself sufficed to provide shelter for aristocratic lives. Interestingly, men’s narratives also emphasize the absence within illams of apparently ordinary objects such as combs, bangles, or perfumes to retrospectively highlight past detachment from more mundane and aesthetic considerations. In these instances, the house is often set in contrast to ‘outer’ events, and to the problematic nature of transformations taking place in the past. For instance, the recalling of how houses hosted healthier ways of life is frequently accompanied by reflections on how ‘fast’ and ‘noisy’ the protests and reforms taking place in the village or in the nearby city were, or by referring to the wider continental struggle for independence. Metaphors of outside ‘speed’ and ‘rumour’ are used to provide contrast with the inner tranquillity and poise of aristocratic abodes.

Vulnerable Spaces The house is recalled as an ‘extension of the person’ (Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995: 2), which allows a synergic relation between spaces, bodies, movements, and minds. Nostalgic memories focus on the ideal unity between building and builder, which partly draws from a familiarity with the Hindu science of Vastu Shastra. This conceptualizes the building as a ‘test for the builder’s health and probity, his alter ego and is his second body’ (Kramrisch 1976: 52). Importantly, memories emphasize how the bodily and intellectual qualities of the (p.135) residents, as well as their actions, were able to affect the house as much as the illam was able to mould its inhabitants (Daniel 1984; cf. Moore 1989: 176–8). However, this permeability between houses and people, while being a source of prestige, is also seen as having subjected people to strict rules and limits. In this light, the synergy between architecture and its inhabitants also ambivalently appears as rendering both too fragile with respect to unconventional or nonnormative behaviour. This emerges clearly in relation to the principles governing the illam’s spatial boundaries.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Visual memories centre upon the importance of the nalukettu, the squared openair courtyard of the illam whose architectural elaboration was a source of prestige and identity for the entire lineage. The nalukettu is where Brahma (divinity) is located. It is the sacred heart of the illam, the space that ties together and balances the different activities of the house (Marriott 1976). According to Marriott (1976), the Hindu/Kerala house is structured around a distinction between four cardinal points (see Figures 4.2a and 4.2b). Each cardinal point is differently governed by the three encompassing principles of mixing/un-mixing, (p.136) (p.137) marking/unmarking, and matching/unmatching, which in turn prescribe different models of social interaction. The first principle (mixing/unmixing) creates a distinction between the western and the eastern parts of the house, and addresses the opening/closure of the illam to social interaction. Hosting guests in the kitchen, in reception rooms, and on the veranda for non-brahmins, the east is where the house opens itself to sunlight, and the place where daily activities and social interaction occur. Conversely, the west is where the sunlight is filtered: where sleeping and private life take place and food is stored.

Figure 4.2a Orientation of an ancestral house Source: Author.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The second principle (marking/ unmarking) structures a distinction between the north and the south and regulates people’s relations beyond the illam. The south is for the reception and encountering of guests, and is consequently more exposed to impure activities (Moore 1989). Among Nambudiris, the southern parts of the house were where lineage status was displayed through guest reception but also where the house became more vulnerable. As one Nambudiri man articulated: In the old days, Nambudiri servants had to pour out so much water on the floors after all our receptions and dinners!!!!...Otherwise we would have also become polluted and could not move freely …. It was like feeling that you need to have your house back … to repossess it ….

Figure 4.2b Plan of an old illam in Krishnapuram (until 1979) (not inhabited) Source: Author.

Houses, and particularly their southern ‘public spaces’, are recalled as vulnerable to outside contamination capable of dispossessing the owner from the right of internal free movement. Conversely, the north is where un-matching or ‘messy’ activities of reproduction related to birth, death, menstruation, widowhood, and eating take place. Two of the most remote areas of the house are located in the north: the anthapuram, women’s quarters, and the adukkala, women’s kitchen. The north marked the area where ‘social and physical processes of negative transformation such as separation, reversal and destruction’ (Moore 1989: 195) took place and where the women of the illam (antharjanam) were usually confined. This area was not only inaccessible to nonNambudiris but, following the rules of gosha (purdah), was also off-limits to all male members of the illam. Surrounded by secrecy and inviolability, it was where the status and purity of the lineage was protected from external contamination.8 (p.138)

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Importantly, the violation of these principles is recalled as a source not only of lineage embarrassment and shame, but as an offence to the house itself. Houses are, indeed, deemed to have a personality and vitality of their own (see Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). Violation of domestic spaces could prompt vengeful attitudes on the part of the house towards its people, and a dramatic change in family destinies. One popular folk story in Krishnapuram recalls the fate of a house where the past consumption of meat and the entrance of men into the anthapuram was so offensive for the illam that the house cursed its people until every member of the lineage entered into irreversible illness and died. Since the house did not want to be inhabited by other unknown people, it remained empty until it was demolished and hence, the story goes, released from the threat of inappropriate human actions. Narratives of the ancestral illam point to the centrality of gendered coordinates of purity and vulnerability in structuring high-caste domestic life (Moore 1989), and provide some similarities with the gendered division of the Kabyle house described by Bourdieu. Memories illustrate the importance of an underpinning double opposition (Bourdieu 1990: 275–7): the first opposition is ‘internal’ to the illam and refers to a distinction between the ‘dark side’ of the house (associated with womanhood, sexuality, and life cycle events) and the ‘light side’ (marking masculine activities and the reception of guests). The second opposes the house to the outer world, and addresses a distinction between the femininity of the ‘private’ domestic sphere and the ‘public word of men’. Nevertheless, it should be noted that houses also play an important role in Nambudiris’ representation of elitist masculinity, as it emerges in relation to life cycle rituals (samskaras). Rituals are recalled as crucial in framing Brahmin manhood in the attainment of men’s intellectual, spiritual, and bodily maturity as householders (Inden and Nicholas 1977; Madan 1981) and in reaffirming their belonging to a specific house. Importantly, illam architecture also embraced men within its logic of secrecy, albeit to a lesser extent than women. While the more exposed areas of the house allowed men access to a certain degree of public life, other areas marked the limits of Brahmin male sociability with respect to the more corrupting ‘public world of men’, due to status and purity considerations.9

(p.139) Houses, Histories, and Destinies

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The ideal conceptualization of houses as privileged shelters encounters more critical narratives of how illams have failed to maintain brahmin privileges across generations. This is particularly true for those elder or middle-aged Nambudiris who have had relatively close experiences with colonial transformations and reformist movements. Among these cohorts, leaving the ancestral house is considered as a break or departure point, which in turn opens up spaces for the realization of personal goal. Personal narratives of class mobility draw heavily from memories highlighting how illams were sites of sharp limits imposed on younger generations in terms of marriage, inheritance, and parenthood rights, and how the breaking of old customs was influential in releasing the potential of social transformation. It is in this light that we should interpret the conceptualization of ancestral houses as ‘sterile environments’ which allowed little space for the birth of children and for the growth into maturity of young Nambudiri men. In 2004, Vasudevan was in his early 1970s and living in New Delhi. He had moved to the city with his parents when he was two years old. His parents were outcast from their community after their decision to marry, his father being the youngest son of the illam and his mother a child widow. Between the 1930s and the 1950s the couple supported themselves thanks to Vasudevan’s father’s job as a pujari. Vasudevan’s father paid the emotional cost of outcasting not only in terms of family rupture but also in being downgraded from an aristocrat whose illam employed pujaris to working himself as a temple priest (an unthinkable occupation for Adhyan Nambudiris). In the mid-1940s, thanks to Vasudevan’s mother’s job as teacher, their conditions began to improve, eventually allowing Vasudevan to become a government civil servant and his brother to study as a doctor and migrate to the US in the late 1960s. In the following passage, Vasudevan roots his life history in the very possibility of being born, ‘thanks to’ his distance from his father’s illam: People in my father’s illam used to follow a lot of rituals, to fill their mouth with words about brahminism … but what was really going on in this house was that only [a] few of them really enjoyed life … some were more Brahmins than others, you see …. Houses were remaining (p.140) childless … empty, isolated from the rest of the world. You could not hear children cry in those big corridors … there was a lot of silence my father told me …. If I was born and exist [it] is because my father broke with his house and set our lives apart ….

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The Illam and Its Dispersion In this narrative, the meaning of the house’s isolated location within the agrahamam is reversed: it ceases to symbolize aristocracy and instead signifies Nambudiri isolation from history. Similarly, the emptiness of spacious architecture ceases to represent upper-caste simplicity, and comes to symbolize the absence of vitality and of children. While Vasudevan admitted that neither he nor his father had fully sympathized with the YKS, his recollection evokes the movement’s critique of the unequal distribution of rights to male members of the illam, which ‘made some Nambudiri more brahmins than others’. Among elder and mature middle-class men, the limited number of children being born in ancestral houses is today a symbol of the wider cultural and economic decline of the community. It informs a sense of inferiority with respect to the demographically stronger communities of Hindu Nairs, Ezhavas, and Christians. As Krishnan, a 65-year-old journalist, told me: It is because of our house rules that we are such a small community today!!! Look at Nairs or Izhavas of Christians … in the past, while we were sitting in our houses they were mobilising to become strong communities, they are the majority today in Kerala, and they hold the power … but I think they deserve [it] because they have been much smarter than us … with all our rituals and rules we were not able to step off our houses …. Many Nambudiris today conceive their own existence as a positive outcome of actions of aachara, the breaking of customs, and of the subsequent abandonment of ancestral houses. The attainment of certain class achievements such as modern English education, professional jobs, and international mobility are made meaningful by referring to a necessary detachment from illam ways of life. Stereotypical phrases such as ‘If I had lived in my mana I would not have been able to study’ or ‘If I show people my illam they will be running away from Kerala before the roof falls down on you!!!’ mould a biographical recalling which emphasizes the inappropriateness of old houses in modern times and in relation to modern expectations. (p.141)

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Biographies of middle-class Nambudiri men are particularly revealing of this tendency to critically set the ‘ancestral house’ in opposition to more positively valued historical transformations. Damodaren, aged 65, lived in a large and modern independent house in Ernakulam with his daughter’s family and his wife, his only son being employed in the US as an engineer. Damodaren was a retired chemistry professor at a university, while his wife Suma worked as a doctor. He came to open the door when I visited and while accompanying me to his studio he showed me with some pride all the recent home refurbishments they have made. He commented on how modern Nambudiri dwellings were very different from old illams, although many conservative and poor families still inhabited old houses. When I asked about his own illam he told me that it had been demolished, but that even if it was still standing he would not have gone there. Damodaren replied to the new questions this comment raised by drawing from his father’s history: Since my father was an apphan (younger son) and could not study with the support of his family, because by that time the illam was getting poor … say around 1932 …. So he started to hang around with the British, he was a smart type of man, he did not care about pollution rules … and he could learn English and work in Tanzania as a doctor. We, his children, could all study and find good jobs. He broke with the rules while the others were sitting in the pathayapura … like some poor families still do today because they have never wanted to change!!! In this recalling, the cumulative character of middle-class achievements is set against the immobility of those Nambudiris who remained in the illam’s compound without ‘engaging in any productive activity’. In Damodaren’s narratives, engagement ‘with the British’ made his father appear as an unconventional and smart man. Yet his father’s closeness with the British was also crucially motivated by the lack of financial and educational support ideally expected from elders. Rather than fully conceptualizing houses as a shelter from historical change, Damodaren scrutinizes and critically evaluates them against the backdrop of what ancestors have been able to deliver for future generations, condemning those who ‘stayed inside’ and praising those who left illams and entered into the flow of historical change. For Damodaren ‘the outer world’ is remembered through the idiom of the British presence and the possibilities offered by colonialism. In other (p.142) instances, it is the joining of reformist or nationalist movements that inhabits memories of movement outside the ancestral house. Hari, a 52-year-old senior civil servant living in Delhi and married to a lower-caste woman,10 recalled his father’s actions against the illam rules of untouchability and physical distance:

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The Illam and Its Dispersion He left the house to joined Gandhiji in the 1920s for the Vaikom Satyagraha to protest against untouchability … he could not go back to there after this and he lived with some Ezhava families until he married and moved to Mumbai, where I was born. […] My father has always had modern thoughts, he was very refined but also anti-conformist and it is because of this that he had a good career and that we could have a better education if compared to those who remained in the illam. In this passage, the protest against caste rules governing ancestral homes is merged within a wider contestation of prescriptions governing lower-caste access to Hindu temples. The double violation of house spaces and of the rules of purity governing inter-caste relations is inscribed within a narrative which celebrates the personal qualities of Hari’s father, which enhanced his capacity to improve the conditions of his children. Overall, men’s more critical narratives of ancestral houses should be understood in relation to a widespread model of middle-class masculinity—that of the selfmade man. Middle-aged and elder Nambudiri men take pride in explaining their own achievements in terms of sacrifice and hard work, and in highlighting how family pedigree has not necessarily provided those privileges that the wider society usually associates with brahmins. Narratives of hard work and sacrifice partly voice a novel form of masculine neo-brahminism (see Satyanarayana 1992) stressing how postcolonial policies—and particularly those related to reservation of places for OBCs and Scheduled Castes (SCs)—have compelled brahmins to sacrifice themselves in order to make way for the rise of other communities. At the same time, the same narratives offer a more endogenous condemnation of past Nambudiri refusal to engage with colonial and postcolonial routes of mobility, and particularly with education, migration, and professional jobs. In this light, Nambudiris often negatively compare themselves with other elites—like Nairs or Syrian Christians—who are deemed to have been more successful in capitalizing on land ownership, and stress similarities with the more recent success of middle-class (p.143) Ezhavas, Muslims, or lowerstatus Christians, who have had to engage with hard work, migration, and economic struggle in order to achieve contemporary well-being.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The movement away from the ancestral house is narrated in such a way as to draw a larger picture of transition from an isolated elite of the past towards the more engaging and challenging dilemmas of present class competition. Even in those instances in which life in urban houses is deemed as a symbol of ‘homogenization’ with broader Malayali middle-classness, the ‘old life’ is seldom an unquestioned locus of nostalgia among middle-aged and elderly men. The latter rarely consider their middle-class achievements in terms of continuity with the privileges of past generations, nor are they inclined to root their social and geographical trajectories of mobility into the territorial and architectural spaces of ancestral houses. Rather, routes of mobility are often praised as a necessary departure from the constraining kinship relations of old houses.

Running Around the House Memories of antharjanams are particularly powerful in supporting middle-class claims for a radical change from past house hierarchies and spatial rules. When Nambudiri men accompanied me to visit old illams, they were keen to show me the anthapuram to stress how pitiful and miserable the lives of Nambudiri women were. In some cases, these visits were occasions to recall traumatic events where, due to family debts, young Nambudiri women were given in marriage for huge dowries or, in the worst scenarios, sold to Muslim merchants of North Malabar. Men’s memories emphasize the spatial rigidity of gosha and of how seclusion translated into women’s lack of proper education, good manners, and labour skills. Through recalling life in the antharjanam, middle-class men often subscribe to past reformist rhetorics of women’s liberation from gosha as a pathway to progress (see Devika 2007a), and to celebrate women’s modern educational and labour goals as wider symbols of middle-class modernity. While women’s memories do not fully withdraw from this rhetoric of liberation, they offer a more nuanced depiction of their past position within the illam’s patriarchal architecture. In their narratives, the ideology of separation between house spheres progressively gives way (p.144) to a more dynamic visualization of women’s movement within the house, conceived in terms of a circular movement across supposedly inviolable spaces (see Figure 4.2a). Secret meetings among women during the day in the open space of the nalukettu, the drinking and eating of food prohibited in the antharjanam but brought from outside by servants (such as coffee, sugar, or onions), or entering into ‘open’ areas of the house often accompany less normative recollections of illams. Arya, a 76-year-old woman, was particularly excited in recalling an episode during her adolescence, when she used to run around the house while everyone was sleeping:

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The Illam and Its Dispersion My illam was a place of fun … there were so many restrictions for us that one could not help but try to escape them! And the house was so big that … you can imagine … no one could control everything at the same time … so, sometimes I used to start walking faster and faster in the house, ending up running, to go to the kizhakkini (eastern area) and then to move far to the tekkini (southern area) until I completed the circle … I was thinking … breathless, what if someone will see me? And then I thought I should have not cared … The above passage is indicative of a wider tendency among elder aristocratic women to interpret the extensive space of their old mansions as a positive resource for their own uncontrolled movements and for the violation of gosha. In contrast, smaller modern houses are deemed to be much more constraining and lacking in privacy. Large spaces offered room for everyday complicity among women across caste boundaries. In her written memories, Devaki Nilayamgode recalls her childhood encounter with Nair women entering the vadakke ara, the northern side of the house (Nilayamgode 2011: 36): For us their presence was source of perpetual wonderment. They had colorful blouses, bordered mundus with an upper cloth, plenty of gold ornaments and perfume. It was on seeing Subhadra and Bharathi that we girls suddenly became aware of our own uncouth appearance. The appearance of Nair women within the more secluded women’s quarter renders the antharjanam a space for physical closeness and affection with the more sophisticated and adorned women who, against convention, cuddle Nambudiri children in a maternal way. Interestingly, Nilayamgode’s memories also reverse male attitudes to the elegant simplicity of illams, in so far as she introduce objects (p.145) and ornaments which prompt admiration of their beauty and make Nambudiri women appear rough and uncouth in comparison. For Arya or Devaki Nilayamgode the violation of illam rules was possible during childhood or early adolescence, and was often confined to their father’s house. The husband’s house is often recalled in much more gloomy and frustrating terms in relation to personal freedom. Yet, the attainment of maturity as mothers and grandmothers also gave women renewed authority to challenge the house’s spatial separations. Devi, an elderly woman who belonged to an aristocratic lineage in Krishnapuram, used visual memories of ‘spying across’ the grates that separated the women’s quarters from male sociability to reverse her position within patriarchal hierarchies:

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The Illam and Its Dispersion They could not see us but we saw them! I made sure that I knew everything about family matters and also about financial affairs …. I remember one time … it must have been around the early 1940s …. I had already my three healthy children and I knew that [my] appen (husband’s father) wanted to mortgage part of our land to repay the debts … but I knew that this would put the family in further trouble. So I covered myself and entered the room … many were shocked … as we were not supposed to do so at that time. And I said in a respectful way that men should have gone out to work rather than keep mortgaging land and sitting in the house! Many did not speak to me for a while, and as a protest I went to spend some time in my ammathu (mother’s house) … but, your see … my own family (ente mana) was rich and had already financially helped my husband’s illam many times, so I after a while I went back home proud of myself and no-one dared to tell me nothing … Devi was strengthened by her position as a mother of ‘three healthy children’ and by her personal family wealth at a time when the decline of fertility in ancestral houses due to the persistent primogeniture system and widespread economic decline were felt to be particularly problematic for the community. Devi was thus able to step into male spaces of sociability and to assert her own ideas about the solution for financial difficulties, openly challenging the decision of the elder member of the family. Devi’s memories invite us to consider how the illam was not necessarily a space where one sex was totally subordinate to the other. Rather, ‘considerations of age, position in the kin network, marital status and moral authority were also crucial’ for the ‘subversion of gendered power’ (Devika 2011: xxvi).

(p.146) Building New Houses

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Gendered memories of past illams inform the ways in which Nambudiris have made sense of changing housing strategies and how modern dwellings are conceived and inhabited (Bahloul 1996; Carsten 2004; Tebbe 2008). Between the 1940s and the late 1970s the partition of ancestral houses often led to the construction of independent houses in rural areas. Although the architecture took some inspiration from the old illams, these houses were more modest in size and complexity. During these decades, newly built houses in Kerala habitually hosted one patrilineal branch of a bigger lineage (tavazhi)—usually a man with his wives and descendants—and reflected a persistent orientation towards joint living. Unlike houses built by Nambudiri migrants in other Indian cities—which from the beginning were more oriented towards a nuclear family model—houses in Kerala remained multigenerational and hosted children born from polygamous marriages. This is for instance evident in the progressive partition of the Pattala illam between 1934 and the late 1990s. We can trace the process as follows. In 1934, Parameshwaran left the ancestral house with his two wives and children and established his own tavazhi. It was not until 1963, when Parameshwaran died, that the children born by his two wives sold the bigger house to build two separate houses. Over the years, ‘old forms’ of joint living persisted but also intertwined with novel forms of inter-caste cohabitation and demographic growth. Between 1939 and 1948 Revi, the third son of Parameshwaran, brought his Nair wife and their children to live with him and his brothers’ families. This decision, which marked a break with past forms of joint living, was not uncommon at the time. It reflected at once the claim of young Nambudiris to be recognized as members of the wider family despite being married to a Nair,11 as well as the need of young couples to save money by temporarily sharing a house. Revi subsequently purchased his own independent house in 1948. The decades between the late 1930s and 1970s witnessed a considerable growth in the house’s demographic size, due to the marriage of all its male members. This period is today recalled as fulfilling the expectation of having ‘crowded and noisy families’, with ‘many kids around’, as my interlocutors frequently stressed. Yet, the increasing migration of tavazhi members and conflicts emerging from different (p.147) class trajectories among household members has led since the 1970s to the progressive fragmentation of house size and to the formation of smaller units.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Figure 4.1 refers to a Nambudiri house restored in the early 1980s after the previous house was demolished. Today, the land compound hosts three independent houses: the class trajectories of the first and the third family (Houses 1 and 3) have been relatively smoother than that of the second family (House 2). The first and third houses both host a couple in their fifties: salaried jobs or commercial activities, along with remittances from children working abroad, paid for their restoration. In contrast, the persistent unemployment and financial difficulties of the family inhabiting House 2 were visible in their much smaller and humbler house. As Shiva N., the owner of House 3, explained to me, House 2 hosted the descendants of the older head of the lineage. This man had never accepted the property’s partition in the 1960s and its members were known in the village for being particularly orthodox and reluctant to accept any salaried work. The presence of House 2 was a source of embarrassment for Shiva and his family, due to its poor appearance. In addition, his family had long ago ceased to have any interaction with the family living in House 2. Yet, buying new land was beyond Shiva’s grasp and his family had decided to remain where they were: The family living there (looking at House 2) do not speak with us … they say we are doing well with our business but we do not help them!!! But they have never worked, so they should blame themselves …. That’s why we separated …. We are a very respectable family!!! In these cases, the material visibility of lineage decline that appears in relatively poor houses is deemed to somehow invalidate the status renewal of more progressive families, particularly if they reflect different class trajectories. Against this backdrop a distinction between the unemployment of conservative relatives and the hard work of one’s own family is made to protect one’s own respectability. The late 1970s also mark a shift in housing preferences towards urban destinations. Many Nambudiri middle-class families prefer today to build houses away from ancestral land and to resettle in nearby towns or cities. This is partly motivated by the fact that ancestral land usually lies in quite remote rural areas, which are considered unsuitable (p.148) for working lives and for children’s education. As Shiva’s comments let us imagine, life in the ancestral land compound is also deemed to be charged with ‘too many family histories’ of rupture. As such, moving into a less emotionally charged residential space marks in many respects the beginning of a new family life.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion In this period houses progressively started to accommodate single couples, along with their children. Family size also progressively decreased as a result of Nambudiris’ involvement in family planning.12 But it would be misleading to assume that houses are planned uniquely to host small nuclear families. Rather, modern dwellings are often built based on a related set of considerations that address the impact of mass migration and of family planning on middle-class family lives. The first refers to the increasing need among Nambudiri families living in Kerala to host ageing parents or elder relatives who have been ‘left behind’ by migrant brothers, sisters, or more distant relatives.13 It is not infrequent to find young couples living in the same house with either the husband’s or the wife’s elder relatives. Importantly, agreeing to host relatives from the mother’s or the wife’s side of the family is often taken as a symbol of contemporary middle-class detachment from past patrilineal considerations. Similarly, houses are deemed appropriate to host children or adolescents whose parents are working abroad, as well as married women waiting to join their husbands in the diaspora. The building of a new house and the organization of its internal space often reflect middle-class families’ awareness of the unpredictability of family choices related to migration, and of the need to ‘save space’ for relatives who need to be looked after. Among lower and middle classes this often translates into one spare room for unexpected visitors, whereas among rich families specific corners of the house are reserved for incoming kin.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Many Nambudiris in contemporary urban central Kerala live in newly built brick houses with one or two floors. High ceilings, wooden architecture, large puja rooms, and spacious verandas have in most cases been replaced with more ordinary houses with small garden plots, roof terraces where clothes can be hung and vegetables can be dried, small puja rooms, and smaller bedrooms. Only a few of the urban middle classes can afford illam-style newly built houses, which have become the status symbol of more cosmopolitan families living in rich residential areas of Kochi or Ernakulam. A good example is (p.149) the house plan visualized in Figure 4.3: a palatial house built in the southern edges of Ernakulam in 1996 by a couple of rich business people, the husband being a Nair (Amitav) and the wife (Sumitha) a Nambudiri. This marriage provided the Nambudiri wife and her lineage with a strong connection to a rich matrilineal family. The latter, while superior in terms of class status and wealth, acknowledged the traditional prestige of Nambudiris in architectural sciences and consulted with Sumitha’s relatives for guidance in the construction of the family house.14 This was admittedly an act of ‘homage to the wife’s status’, but it also marked the increasing appropriation by middle-upper-class Nair families of a modernized interpretation of past illam (p.150) architecture. The large nalukettu at the centre of the squared plan of the house was dominated by a mobile roof which could be electrically opened to allow sunlight into the main reception areas and rain to be collected. All the main ground floor areas revolved around the squared central garden. This structure found inspiration in old houses’ much-celebrated synergy with nature and was seen by its owners as signalling a refined sense of health living. The presence of a studio on the ground floor, or a separate meditation/yoga room on the upper storey, plus two guests rooms, marked the lifestyle of a rich family, intentionally making visible not only their wealth but also a concern for intellectual and bodily well-being.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Continuity and Opposition

Figure 4.3 A modern Nair-Nambudiri While Amitav and Sumitha’s Nalukettu house in Kochi residential area house exemplifies upper-middleSource: Author. class housing, it also shares with more modest middle-class dwellings a concern with house orientation and respect for some Vasthu Shasthra rules. Modern houses have taken inspiration from the structuring of old illams in terms of light control and, to some extent, social interaction. When possible, the veranda and the reception room are rebuilt to face the south or the east, to mark the part of the house that is more open to the sun and to the welcoming of guests. Modern houses usually have a reception room which is accessible directly from the main door. The kitchen and dining room, while usually located on the northern side of the house, are today intentionally built in communication with the reception areas. Rooms are often placed on the western or northern side of the house not only due to climate considerations but because this is still considered more suitable for the preservation of family privacy. Furthermore, houses are sometimes built near available temples and rivers, a choice which is deemed to distinguish Nambudiris from other communities in terms of their past priorities of easy access to water and holy places. Nambudiris are keen to stress that, even in urban contexts, they try to preserve their well-being by building ‘healthy’ houses close to ‘pure’ places. Although the architecture of past illams still exercises a degree of fascination in middle-class imaginations—and Vasthu consultancy can be seen as a form of middle-class consumption like those related to astrology and horoscopes (see Guenzi 2012)—modern houses are (p.151) also conceived in a dialectical opposition to old ones. The presentation of a new house to a visitor is often accompanied by statements highlighting the differences between modern life and life conducted in past illams. This emerges particularly in relation to modern understanding and experience of rituals, consumption, inter-caste socialization and gender hierarchies. Rituals

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Tebbe (2008) argues how in nineteenth and twentieth century Germany (and Europe more generally) middle-class status was expressed through the creation or rediscovery of rituals, and through a related sacralization of the domestic space. Rituals constituted an ‘engine of memory’ (Tebbe 2008: 196) through which new generations connected with past ones (see also Connerton 1989). In a different way, the creation of modern houses among Nambudiris is marked by a partial rejection of (or a critical distance from) those ritual events and ceremonies that were strongly associated with ancestral houses. The establishment of modern houses can be seen as marked particularly by men’s abandonment of some samskaras (life cycle rituals) related to childhood and adolescence, like chaulam (children’s head shaving) and karnaveetham (the piercing of boys’ ears), others related to the attainment of mature Brahmin manhood—such as the samavartanam or the upanayanam—or the celebration of Vedic rituals (yaga). There are several explanations for this. First, Nambudiri men’s detachment from rituals can be inscribed within a wider and longstanding middle-class suspicion of those religious expressions increasingly associated with ‘blind faith’, generational hierarchies, and anti-modern stances (see Joshi 2001). Many elder and mature Nambudiris contrast samskaras and Vedic rituals with more ‘rational’ forms of knowledge, such as knowledge gained through scientific education or language instruction (van Wessel 2011). They also take pride in their own closeness to atheist movements, or Communist party membership, and stress how the abandonment of ancestral houses has initiated the process of secularization in their lives. Second, the refusal of samskaras or Vedic rituals should be explained in relation to the specific temporal dimension that characterizes modern houses in relation to ancestral ones: as a point of disjuncture (p.152) in the continuity between the past and the present that rituals usually entail. The dislodging of rituals from modern domestic spaces constitutes a form of active obliteration of the threads that connect modern class status with past aristocratic status. This obliteration also has a public dimension, as it takes into account the effects that the celebration of certain rituals might have on the wider neighbourhood. The reading of Vedic texts is for instance conceived as a welcome occasion of conviviality with kin and friends. They take place more easily in modern houses, and upper-caste Nairs or Christians are often invited to attend. But the celebration of other rituals is deemed to make modern dwellings appear as weird and obsolete places in the eyes of neighbours, and as material replications of ‘past superstitions’ (as I was often told). It is interesting to note how this tendency particularly characterizes houses in Kerala, while Nambudiri houses in the diaspora (especially in recent years) more often tend to welcome the retrieval of some rituals related to adolescence and maturity. Interviewed families living in London, Rome, or Dubai stressed how the fact of living abroad and in non-exclusively Malayali residential areas made them feel less worried about the possibility of appearing as ‘nostalgic brahmins’. Page 24 of 39

The Illam and Its Dispersion While atheism, secular stances, and concerns with past aristocracy underpin more radical Nambudiri positions, many other families find it difficult to celebrate samskaras in modern houses because these are deemed unable to accompany the person into the spiritual and physical preparation that rituals require. In this view, contemporary celebrations are devalued insofar as they reproduce only an aesthetic attachment to rituals without really leading to a transformation of the person. Frequent debates took place during my visits to houses about the need to recover the Brahmacharia for modern generations. Resistance from Nambudiri men addressed the unsuitability of modern houses: To follow the Brahmacharia you need to conduct a certain way of life. In the past you needed to abandon material concerns, to study, to wake up early to do yoga and meditation, old houses were prepared to host all this, they respected the person … but modern houses have not enough space, silence, purity to accompany the person towards the celebration. They are not alive, they just stay there when we build them!!! So, today rituals become just an empty box … done just for the sake of appearance! (p. 153) Having lost the capacity to actively accompany the person in his/her personal transformation, modern houses are set in opposition to old houses which possessed a life and energy of their own. Yet, interpreting this uniquely in terms of ‘loss’ or as a source of nostalgic attachment to past domestic life does not capture the subtleties underpinning people’s understanding of modern houses. The lack of ‘personality’ of modern houses is indeed valued in many circumstances as it allows inhabitants to be relatively less constrained in relation to consumption, social interaction and gender relations. Indeed, modern houses—in lacking the same level of normative constraints as illams—are also considered to be less vulnerable and, in turn, to allow more space for personal freedom. Food Consumption and Object Display

Lalitha recalls the first time she bought and ate mangoes in her new house. She ate almost half a kilo, to the point of feeling sick. She smiles at her own image of eating like a greedy child, despite being 34 at that time and a married woman with two kids: In my old house we could not eat mangoes, onions, meat … meat and onions I understood because in my family we were strict vegetarians, but why mangoes … only God knows!!! There were some strange rules like this in my old house … sometime I think it is because we wanted to show [ourselves] to be more picky than others, isn’t [it]? And:

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The Illam and Its Dispersion I like my place here … nothing compared to my ancestral life, but I feel more comfortable here. This house has no ears, eyes or tongue, it has bricks and cement and I like it for this: I do not have to be careful of everything!! Lalitha’s comments brilliantly capture a widespread tendency to conceive modern houses as less intrusive and prescriptive. Her house loses those human characteristics that in the past meant illams were understood as being in active interaction with their human inhabitants’ behaviours—leaving Lalitha free to taste formerly prohibited food. Sensorial experiences related to food consumption are imbricated in the historical interpretations of class trajectories as they ‘keep a record of material experiences’ related to family and house transformations (p.154) (cf. Seremetakis 1994). As in other parts of India, many Nambudiris expressed middle-classness not only in terms of opportunities to eat meals in modern restaurants (Conlon 1995), but also by referring to changing food habits at home (Donner 2011). Food, while usually cooked by women, was also delivered to the home from time to time in the form of pizzas or Chinese food, particularly at weekends. While concerns about vegetarianism remain widespread, it was a common opinion that consuming meat or fish in modern houses had fewer implications in terms of personal health or status reputation than this would have entailed in ancestral houses. Similarly, families were keener to accept food cooked by non-brahmins. It was not uncommon to purchase home-made food from neighbours: in Kochi some families I knew regularly bought fish biryani from Muslim neighbours for what they called their ‘Saturday dinner ritual’. Occasionally, they also accepted and consumed with me some gifts of food made by lower-caste neighbours. The search for detachment from past ancestral houses is also reflected in the widespread reluctance to bring or to show traditional objects taken from demolished illams in the modern home. Among return migrant families it is common to find traditional or ancient objects imported from north India or the Gulf countries, like tapestry or ceramics. Similarly, gifts from Europe, the US, or Malaysia are displayed in reception areas and shown to visitors as a sign of transnational connections or personal migration histories. Conversely, quite old and valuable objects like ritual lamps, palm leaf umbrellas, or pieces of wooden house furniture are either located in remote bedrooms or hidden in the loft. In some cases, this decision is explained by referring to the fact that the fine antiquity of these objects would contrast with the bulkier presence of modern consumer items like TVs or fridges. In other instances, however, it is linked to the fear of appearing to be nostalgic aristocrats or, as an elderly Nambudiri return migrant woman from the UK put it, as ‘royalist[s]’.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Overall, modern houses have undergone a process of de-ritualization and of increasing cosmopolitan exposure, producing different rituals of food consumption, socialization, and family reunion which have in turn introduced distance from past forms of ancestral life. This also emerges in relation to gender and inter-caste relations—although it does so in an ambivalent way.

(p.155) The ‘Open House’ Men’s narratives about modern houses often stress how the latter are built around two further determinant principles of distinction with past illams. The first addresses the loosening of spatial caste restrictions, while the second relates to the contemporary official refusal of any architectural boundary symbolizing gosha. It is a common idea among Nambudiris that modern houses should be ready to receive different people without any visible manifestation of prejudice or discrimination. Architecture clearly reflects middle-class conceptualizations of contemporary dwellings: as already noted, modern houses usually have a reception room which is accessible directly from the main door, and the dining room is often situated in a linked area. While the kitchen still tends to be a private space where unknown visitors are rarely welcomed, it is no longer confined in a remote corner of the house. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many Nambudiris openly refer to the fact that any form of caste discrimination would be a public offence and firmly reject the possibility that they would deny the visit of a lower-caste friend. Beyond this, middle-classness is often expressed by referring to the capacity to mix with ‘different people’ in the public as well as the domestic domain. In many cases, migration and experiences of and exposure to different cultures is praised for having endowed modern Nambudiris with novel forms of savoir-faire, heedless of distinctions of caste, religion, or nationality.

Figure 4.4 Savitri ’s house in Kochi’s suburbs (two-storey house) Source: Author.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The house of Savitri (Figure 4.4) is a telling example of this. Savitri is a 32-yearold woman who works as a radio journalist and novelist. She lives in suburban Kochi and is married to Sanjay, a member of the Communist party and a journalist himself. The couple live with their child in a large modern house together with Savitri’s parents and Shoba, her eldest sister. Shoba has a good job as a government officer in Kochi and is married to a man from the Ashari caste, also a member of the Communist party, who works as an electronic engineer in a private city company. When I visited Savitri in her house I was amazed by its extravagant architecture. The interior of the ground floor had a circular shape, with many spacious areas being accessible from the centre. A stage for artistic performances and children’s shows was placed in the southwestern corner, immediately beside Savitri’s studio and a semi-independent room which hosted political meetings. Savitri made clear that when her father built the house she (p.156) had also wanted a space for her work as a writer, as she needed her own silence and independence. She said that many Malayali women are active in intellectual work today, and that she regularly hosted numerous women friends in her studio who were interested in writing and reading. In the north-eastern part of the house there was a big dining room and kitchen, which was easily visible and accessible from the reception room. All the main bedrooms were located on the first floor, which was again structured around a circular path. This allowed people to walk from one room to another and also to see what was going on in the ground floor. Savitri’s father shared with me his thoughts about family lives, which he felt should be open to everyone: he was proud of the fact that both his sons-in-law had agreed to live in the same house, and that he treated them equally— irrespective of their different caste origins: It is easy for them to stay here. Sobha’s husband’s family is in Dubai and he is alone here. All the four of them are working in the city and our house is in a good location to commute for work, and there [is] enough space for everyone to have their privacy. (p.157)

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Shoba entered into the discussion by remarking that today Nambudiri women have much more power in the house, and that many things have changed, as her good job and her marriage proved. In presenting their house the family stressed the importance of interrelated changes in gender and caste relations: Nambudiri women were no longer confined in remote areas of the house but had the opportunity to go out to work and to mingle across caste divides. Migration and cosmopolitanism are important in middle-class discourses on modern ‘open houses’, but these discourses are also rooted in Nambudiris’ understandings of their identity as Malayali citizens and address Kerala as a symbol of progress and emancipation at the wider national level. Nambudiris like to reassert that, despite the unequalled conservatism of the past, they are today much more progressive and tolerant than their Brahmin counterparts in north Indian states or in Tamil Nadu. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that middle-class understanding of modern houses as ‘open places’ does not always involve complete disregard of caste hierarchies. The opening of houses to other communities is in some instances reasserted in paternalistic ways as a sign of Brahmin benevolence towards Malayali society. Furthermore, the ideology of the ‘open house’ reflects a situational understanding of caste relations. The visit of a lower-caste person to a modern house creates less tension as modern dwellings are considered less vulnerable than old houses in terms of contamination of the wider family reputation. Yet, the same people who displayed a relaxed attitude to receiving potentially ‘polluting’ guests in their houses were much less at ease with the same happening in their ancestral homes. Not infrequently, Nambudiri men could be seen going for ablutions after having had physical contact or a meal with a lower-caste person in their own natal village, while the same action was deemed inappropriate in their modern house. One old Nambudiri man, after hosting a rich Pulaya businessman for lunch, asked his wife to sparkle water in the place where the man had been sitting. She carried this out in an embarrassed hurry. She justified herself by saying that her husband was ‘old and a bit backward’, and asked me not to share what I saw with other Malayalis, as it would have been humiliating for her to let people know that they were behaving like this. Despite undeniable changes in the relation between caste and housing, as exemplified by Savitri’s house, the acceptance of lower-caste (p.158) people in modern dwellings is in many instances a matter of ‘aesthetic tolerance’ rather than of ‘substantial acceptance’. In parallel, the achievement of gender equality often represents a male rhetoric of middle-class modernity which is not always subscribed to by women in their own opinions and experiences.

No More Gosha? Women’s Critiques of Gender and Caste

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The Illam and Its Dispersion As mentioned above, my visits to modern Nambudiri houses were often accompanied by statements made by their male owners about the modernity of new homes in terms of women’s access to all parts of the dwelling. While men were usually more to the fore in receiving and entertaining guests, they also encouraged women to be present in the reception areas and to share moments of socialization. When men made dry comments about wives coming home from work in a hurry, sitting down straight away with guests, or asking their husbands to prepare something for them, these were usually along the following lines: ‘We have modern women now!’ (adhukkala antharjanam) or ‘Thirumeni (respected Nambudiri men) will end up in gosha one of those days!’ These remarks, while highlighting changes in women’s employment and family status, also addressed different gendered perceptions of modern house organization. Middle-class men take particular pride in showing how women of the house have easier access to its social life. For instance, both Shiva and Amitav—respectively the owners of the houses visualized in Figure 4.1 and Figure 4.3—remarked on how the house was built with attention to spatial freedom, and referred to the easily accessible kitchen as a sign of the status of modern women. As Shiva recalled: ‘We have no more antharjanams!!! So we planned to build a house which did not confine women in a remote place but [allowed them] to stay there … in the heart of the house’. Women usually remained silent and embarrassed during these statements and only shared their own views with me on separate occasions. Shiva’s wife, Manju, noted that this freedom of movement around the house did not extend to the studio, which remained her husband’s privileged work, reading, and meditation area. Manju noted how, (p.159) while she was also a working teacher with many interests, she had to find space in her room or in the kitchen to study because she had quarrelled with Shiva over all the times she used his studio: ‘He says I mess up his stuff. But it is not true … and he told me that I could work in the kitchen!!’ In a similar vein Sumitha, while proud of her status as a qualified woman with a job in her husband’s company, complained how certain areas were considered ‘too female’ while others were considered ‘too male’. As she told me one day:

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Well, you see, between me and you … the fact that they have changed the location of the kitchen does not mean that the lives of women have changed, isn’t it? The kitchen is still a female place for many Malayali men!!! Now I am working two times more than what my mother did. When I am back [from the] office I would also like to have my yoga session or to lie in the studio to read … but, although we have two servants, Amitav likes me to cook the dinner for him and the kids or to go to the supermarket to buy some stuff. No way he enters the kitchen and cooks … So sometimes I tell him he can enter without being afraid, because there are no more antharjanams sitting there not wanting to be seen!!! I found both Manju’s and Sumitha’s statements quite important in illuminating the tensions underpinning modern middle-class celebration of the ‘open house’. As Sumitha notes, the changed location of the kitchen does not per se question women’s positioning within its space, nor men’s refusal to enter the kitchen to participate in its activities. In the passage above, Sumitha sarcastically reverses the meaning of gosha by pointing out not the impossibility of women going outside the kitchen but men’s fear of entering it, thereby claiming for herself the right to be recognized as a working woman and to be supported by her husband in the running of the house (despite the privilege of having two housekeepers). Manju’s and Sumitha’s position is quite common among middle-class Nambudiri women who need to combine salaried jobs with household duties. In contrast to the case of Brahmin middle-class women in Kolkata analysed by Henrike Donner (2011), or the middle-class Ezhava and Nairs studied by Osella and Osella (2000), middle-classness among Nambudiri families is rarely built around the ideal of the housewife. Rather, modern house life is premised on (p.160) the idea that ‘a Nambudiri housewife’ casts the unwelcome shadows of antharjanam seclusion, and this is highly condemned within and beyond the community as a sign of backwardness. Among upper-middle classes the model of the working couple is often realized thanks to both husband and wife holding professional jobs in the public or private sectors. Among middle and lower-middle classes, the prospect of women’s unemployment or housewifery is more daunting than that of wives taking up semi-skilled or poorly remunerated jobs. For these families, the possibility of building a new house is more often than not dependent on the incomes of both husband and wife. Visits to modern urban as well as rural dwellings are often accompanied by statements about women’s jobs: while professional jobs are naturally celebrated as a symbol of renewed status, less prestigious jobs are also praised as they show the radical change in the position of Nambudiri women within Nambudiri houses.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Although this rhetoric allows men to subscribe to the ethos of women’s liberation from gosha, it does not necessarily challenge modern patriarchal hierarchies. Women, and particularly those in their thirties and forties, often complained about the ‘double burden’ of salaried work and family labour, and about the lack of support they received from their husbands in running the house. While the stories told to them by their mothers and grandmothers about old illams were rarely reported with admiration or nostalgia, they often commented that life in ‘nuclear’ families meant they were more ‘abandoned to their own destiny’—as one friend put it—than would have been the case in past dwellings (see also Osella 2012). Women often welcome the enlargement of house life to include women relatives coming from Kerala or abroad, as this promises them some emotional and physical support in domestic management and childcare.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Women also draw more actively from memories of antharjanam to question the spatial and social contours of modern houses in relation to inter-caste relations. While men focus more on the idea of the ‘open house’ in terms of social conviviality, women often tend to stress how freedom from caste rules is also crucial in their achievement of a balance between salaried work and domestic labour. Sreelatha is a 45-year-old Ayurvedic doctor working in Kochi. Before her marriage in 1998 she had practised and taught Ayurveda in Dubai and in Tokyo. Unmarried in her mid-30s, she reluctantly agreed to go back (p.161) to Kerala to marry a Nambudiri man—Neelangam. After the wedding, Neelangam changed his mind about migrating to Japan: he had a good job as a bank director in Kochi, and insisted that that Sreelatha could practise her profession in the city. As Sreelatha became a mother, she asked (in return for her sacrifice of a promising career abroad) to establish her Ayurvedic studio in two of the spare rooms of their large modern house (see Figure 4.5). The house had been built (p.162) by Sreelatha’s parents-in-law, who spent most of their time in their daughter’s countryside house to help her with childcare. Between 1999 and 2005 Sreelatha established her own studio within the house: with the agreement of her husband she carved out a visiting room (S), a toilet (T), and a medicine shop (A) in the western side of the house. She opened a separate entrance for her patients in the western side so as to keep her private life separate from her business. Sreelatha recalled how happy she was to be able to practice her job so close to her house and to her child. As she could not stop working in case she lost patients, she hired a part-time nanny to look after her son but frequently visited the adjacent rooms to check that everything was fine. ‘It was not like working in those luxury places abroad or like teaching a multicultural class, but it was good to be close to my son’, she used to say. Sreelatha also strongly emphasized how she had accepted clients independently of any consideration of their caste or religious affiliation, and often stressed that she had to have physical contact with patients’ bodies for treatment. One day she told me that while her husband’s family had supported the YKS in the past, and praised themselves for being progressive in the present day, they had started to question the habit of receiving patients ‘so close to the kitchen area’: I do not care … even if my mother or my mother-in-law do not like this touching of unknown people. They are like that … but I reply to them that this is what I was doing in Dubai and Tokyo!! And remind them that they wanted me for the marriage because of my good education and job … they are well-off but they never left Kerala!!! I am a professional and I should not care about caste or religious issues … for me every patient is the same ….

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Sreelatha draws from her education and professional training abroad to state the importance of adopting nondiscriminatory behaviours at work, and contrasts her experiences as a doctor with the lack of cosmopolitanism of her husband’s family. Beyond this, she also explicitly criticizes the praising of women’s qualities during premarital negotiations that do not translate subsequently into a real appreciation of their capacities. Interestingly, this is an attitude shared by many working women in relation to their post-marital house lives and house organization.

Figure 4.5 Sreelatha’s house in Kochi’s

suburbs (one-storey house) The fact that Sreelatha’s Source: Author. activities took place within the house progressively created conflicts with her parents-in-law. When I returned (p.163) to Kerala in 2007 for further fieldwork, Sreelatha communicated with regret that she had just had to close her studio and had opened a private small clinic in a nearby area. Her father-in-law had been particularly authoritative on the matter, and Sreelatha was very disappointed that, on this occasion, her husband had not supported her claim to continue what was for her a more convenient arrangement allowing her to combine work and maternity. Similar to Sreelatha, Kavitha—a 35-year-old woman—had to close the kindergarten she had opened in one part of her husband’s village house due to the criticism of her in-laws. Kavitha had lost her job as a nursery teacher in Kochi after her pregnancy and was also pressured by her family to return to work quickly in order not to ‘appear as a housewife’. After the closure of the kindergarten she had to start commuting daily between the village and the city for a new job in a private school.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Working and married women (particularly those aged between their late twenties and mid-forties) are often more critical of middle-class aesthetic celebration of contemporary ‘open house’ models, particularly when this does not translate into substantial transformations in how housework is organized between the couple or into an effective independence in managing house space. Renewed limits imposed on women’s mobility within the house or their socialisation across caste boundaries often critically raise among women the dilemmas of the effectiveness of the changes that have accompanied the movement from old illams to modern dwellings. As women like Sreelatha or Kavitha told me, ‘sometimes we think that nothing has changed’. Their narratives and experiences of houses point to the hiatus existing between the official middle-class celebration of modern houses as symbolizing liberation from gosha and the reassertion of modern forms of patriarchy, the latter demanding women to subscribe simultaneously to the modern role of the working wife as well as the devoted housekeeper. This chapter has illustrated the importance of looking at how different house memories are threaded into contemporary generational claims of class mobility, and how this moulds the construction and the social life of modern dwellings. The caste reformer V.T. (p.164) Bhattathiripad used to say that when an apphan (younger son) was born in old illams ‘there was no sound or movement, nor did any bubble emerge’ (Bhattathiripad 2013: 6). In his memories, silence stood for what he liked to call the ‘insignificance of old Nambudiri houses’ (Bhattathiripad 2013) with respect to the more exciting possibilities of his time. For him, ‘stepping out of the ancestral house’ held powerful symbolic and experiential meanings in relation to individual and collective transformation. It constituted a breaking point with respect to all consuetudinary norms, ideas, and behaviours that characterized an ‘obsolete past’ in the eyes of middle-class reformers. As in the colonial past evoked by V.T.’s memories, houses remain central in the ways middle-classness is expressed and projected in contemporary Kerala. The struggle over houses that marked middle-class engagement with colonial modernity eventually ‘staged domestic space as historical time’ (Burton 2003: 8), fact that made houses holding a continuous importance in the way contemporary middle classes recall and make sense of their histories of mobility. The analysis of house memories offers indeed important insights on how past events are threaded into present family experiences and ideals. By recalling how domestic space has been organized and lived through, Nambudiris not only construct a personal/family past, but also importantly engage with wider political histories ( Bahloul; Bloch 1995; see Carsten 2004).

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The Illam and Its Dispersion The ways in which Nambudiris engage today with their house histories invite us to reflect on not only how ‘the meanings with which houses are invested are not simply a source of stability’, but also how ‘they can be harnessed as a vehicle for change’ (Carsten 2004: 53).This chapter has suggested that the semantic articulation of illam memories follows an encompassing binary path, which in turn reflects the tensions underpinning the relation between houses and class change. On the one hand, old houses are celebrated as a sign of old prestige and as a shelter from more disruptive histories. Even in the present, house identity encompasses people’s other forms of identification related to ancestry, territory, and genealogy (Pine 1996) and inspire generational claims of modern status and distinction. A more indulgent depiction is usually offered by drawing from normative interpretations of how the house should be planned and inhabited. This recalling, which sometimes develops along nostalgic (p.165) lines, fixes an idealized architectural model into a timeless space of privileged conviviality. Illams are recalled as nurturing kinship continuity through the everyday sharing of rituals and food, and through intellectual and bodily activities which distinguished brahmins from the rest of Malayali society (see Carsten 2004: 35; 1995). This temporal attitude often portrays houses as idealized shelters, which are in turn set in opposition to ‘outer’ disruptive and uncontrolled historical events related to colonial reforms, migration, and the rise of once-marginalized communities (Bahloul 1992; Carsten 2004; Tebbe 2008). On the other hand, Nambudiris today also seem to be actively engaged in searching for distance between the stigmatized image of illams that inhabits contemporary Malayali imagination and the trajectories they have undertaken in recent decades. In this respect, the synergic link between ancestral houses and their people is symbolically broken in private and public memories to legitimize routes of class mobility. At the very moment in which ancestral houses are invoked as sites of permanence in identity (cf. Bear 2007), a self-imposed criticism tones down more nostalgic dispositions and paves the way to sharper narrative registers. The abandonment of old houses—and the resulting dispersion of generational qualities—is ambivalently praised as necessary for the achievement of modern identities. Memories, rather than stealing the house away from the intrusive motions of history, retrospectively locate it within the demands of colonial and reformist politics. In doing so, recalling allows history to filter and disrupt the architecture of kinship past. Modern houses, while lacking the uniqueness that characterized illams, are also conceived as spaces that are more carefree and less vulnerable to (non-normative) human behaviours.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion Generation and gender intertwine with histories of socio-geographical mobility in differently shaping dual narrative path on houses. More critical stances often reflect a closer engagement with the colonial past by elder Nambudiri men and women. The latter have more vivid memories of traumatic events of widowhood, outcasting, or isolation and tend to set their life histories in radical opposition with past domesticity. Among men, this attitude specifically marks an engagement with masculine models of the self-made man. In contrast, among younger generations of upwardly mobile (p.166) Nambudiris, house memories channel a claim towards the genealogical foundation of their present status, a topic which I return to in the last chapter. While younger women also often indulge in relatively more permissive memories of past house hierarchies, they also more openly challenge the perceived permanence (or persistence) of the past in present domestic constraints. The contrast between men’s and women’s house memories allows us to nuance the ideological middle-class opposition between the ‘closed old house’ and the ‘open modern one’, and to critically reflect further on the ways past caste and gender hierarchies feed into modern forms of patriarchy and brahminism. Overall, the ideology and experiences of the ‘open house’ reflect an ongoing tension which is typical, I suggest, of middle-class engagement with intercommunity relations across caste and religious divides. The opening of houses to interactions which were forbidden in the past—and a new gendered conceptualization of house spaces—coexist, and often clash, with modern constraints on women’s family and working lives and, more broadly, on social interactions across caste and religious lines. This tension is also expressed in the ways in which marriage and conjugal life are conceived by middle-class families, a topic to which I now turn. Notes:

(1.) For a discussion on the importance of houses in the definition of kinship in India, and on the relation between houses, joint family, and lineage see, among others: Inden and Nicholas 1977; Madan 1989 [1965]; Parry 1979. (2.) This partly results from the fact that villages in central Kerala originate from their historical development as residential bunches around the aristocratic abodes of Hindu Brahmins. The latter, while possessing a sacred and administrative authority over properties and inhabitants, also functioned as key politico-administrative units until the end of the nineteenth century (Mencher and Unni 1976). The combined impact of British and postcolonial land policies, migration, and the formation of modern Panchayat politics have eroded the extension of the territorial, symbolic, and cultural influence that radiated from aristocratic dwellings.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion (3.) Ashari traditionally belong to artisan castes. Their status within caste hierarchies was higher than that of untouchable castes such as Pulayas or Izhavas, but they were still subject to strict pollution rules in relation to Hindu Brahmins, Varma, and Nairs. In post-Independence India, Ashari have been categorized asOBCs and benefited from reservation policies. (4.) The same consideration does not fully apply to north Malabar, where restored Nambudiri houses are more prevalent. This might be partly explained by the fact that, in north Malabar (formerly annexed to Madras Presidency during colonial rule) British policy was for a longer period more inclined to preserve aristocratic privileges (compared to the policies of Cochin and Travancore states). Additionally, in contrast to Central Kerala, the presence of (and competition from) Christians and Tamil Brahmins was significantly lower (Fuller 1976; Panikkar 1989). In north Kerala Nambudiris continued to maintain positions of prestige, and families more straightforwardly benefited from the movement of younger generations to Indian cities and abroad from the late 1980s onwards. (5.) See the discussion on the Ambalayat family project and on the use of genealogies among middle-classes developed in Chapter 5. (6.) Azhiyakam are wooden grids which served as ventilators for rooms. They were built with an inclination that allowed air to circulate within the house. They also allowed people to look outside without being seen. (7.) As in the case analysed by Joelle Bahloul, the emptiness of houses holds some relevance in house memories. But while in the Algerian case emptiness stands for past poverty and deprivation compared to present French houses, among Nambudiri emptiness is retrospectively constructed as a sign of their own aristocracy, and detachment from worldly concerns such as consumption. (8.) The third principle transcends the relations between humans and addresses the asymmetrical relations between humans and gods. In this light, some parts of the house, and particularly those that are more vulnerable (like the north or the east), receive a higher degree of control ‘from the above’ by the divine guardians, who also imbue different parts of the house with different qualities (Beck 1976; Marriot 1976; Moore 1989). (9.) For instance the mahdom, located in the south-east area of the illam compound (Figure 4.2b) marked the space for the customary sambandham with Nair wives, whereas the pathayapura opened the house to visiting brahmins. Both were spaces of male sociability, where Nambudiri men could enter into acceptable social relations. Yet—in being places accessible only by higher castes and in being located near the main house gate—they also officially marked the spatial and relational limits of Nambudiri men’s legitimate sociability.

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The Illam and Its Dispersion (10.) I explore the role of inter-caste and inter-religious marriages in Chapter 5. (11.) See the analysis developed in Chapter 3, and the following Chapter on inter-caste marriages. (12.) See Chapter 6. (13.) See Chapter 6. (14.) I explore the importance of Nambudiri–Nair marriages in middle-class mobility in Chapter 5.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords Chapter five explores the meanings of genealogical records for the legitimation or critique of contemporary marriages, and particularly of love and/or intercommunity unions. The production of genealogical records and graphs can be seen as a relatively widespread exercise among Nambudiris, partly reflecting their status aspirations. This chapter will argue that the notes and narratives that accompany middle-class genealogies substantially contradict the aspiration of the YKS to create a ‘pure’ community of equal caste membership. While the YKS envisaged a genuine community of brahmins in which inter-caste marriages had no place, genealogical recalling unsettles the suitability of ‘proper kinship’ and points to the necessity of crossing borders in order to successfully achieve middle-class status. Keywords:   genealogies, love, inter-community marriages, hybridity, kinship conflicts

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity IN 2002 PRIYADATHA WAS A 75-year-old Nambudiri Brahmin widow, living in a suburban area of Kochi. A retired doctor with working experience in Africa and northern India, Priyadatha was enjoying the benefits of a good pension and the property of a two-storey house. Her son, married to an Anglo-Indian woman from north India, was working in Malaysia as an engineer and Priyadatha had been visiting him for longer periods until she felt too old to travel. In the same land compound, her daughter and her Ezhava (ex-untouchable) son-in-law had built a new big house, where they lived with two children after their return from Saudi Arabia. The couple had invested the savings earned through years of migration, and were running an Ayurvedic private clinic in the city. Priyadatha, who belonged to a prestigious lineage (mana) of a nearby village, had welcomed my intrusive curiosity about Nambudiris and shared with the women of her age an active interest in talking about what she defined as the ‘shadows and miseries’ of her community. Married to a Nambudiri throughout her life, she had nonetheless welcomed her children’s decision to break the customs of caste endogamy and let them free to choose ‘with whom they wanted to spend their lives’. To those who had objected these marriages, she advanced two main explanations. The first one located present hybrid marriages1 within a longer history of Nambudiris’ (p.168) conjugal and sexual mingling beyond their own caste. Not only past legitimacy of sambandham—and men’s attraction for the beauty of non-Nambudiri women—was often provocatively stressed, but genealogical evidences about the frequency of mixed marriages in her lineage history was used to unsettle the assumed unorthodoxy of such unions in the present. Her disenchanted position on conjugality was moulded by a historical awareness built through years of independent research carried out in local archives and old Nambudiri mansions in search of family records, as well as by collecting different family narratives. Despite Priyadatha not being particularly keen to define herself in caste terms and having ambivalent relations with her wider network of Nambudiri kin, she was a dedicated and passionate genealogist. She kept detailed records of her own and her husband’s lineage history, designing genealogical trees to annotate crucial events in individual and household life cycles. ‘It is to keep the trace of changes … and to be ready when Nambudiri made up stories about themselves!!’, she replied smiling when I asked her about the reasons for what appeared to be her main occupation after retirement.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The second reason she opposed to contrast social critique about her children’s marriage addressed what she considered the uselessness of caste membership, particularly in periods of crisis or overall fast social change. Like many other Nambudiris of her age, she liked to describe her personal life by evoking the symbolic transformation of Nambudiris from deyvam to manushyan, thereby apparently anchoring her own life history to the wider teleological transformation envisaged by E.M.S. Nambudiripad in the 1940s for a future community of modern brahmins. Yet for Priyadatha, becoming manushyan had different and often unpredictable meanings compared with the ones envisaged by EMS. She and her daughter were not ‘liberated’ by the yoke of the past by the YKS or Communism. Her life was determined by the necessity to work and study that followed years of poverty, isolation, and personal antagonism with her lineage. When her daughter decided to marry an Ezhava man, her support did not come from a ‘revolutionary’ political activism but from the idea that sharing Nambudirithan—caste exclusivity—through ‘proper’ kinship did not help her in hard times and that Nambudiris were not entitled to occupy any privileged position in Kerala, not even, as she stated, in the ‘marriage business’. Priyadatha, who like many others (p.169) remembered her past with a mixture of longing and disenchanted irony, was often emotionally divided between the ‘desire for genealogy and lineage as signs of permanence in identity’ (Bear 2007: 54) and the recognition that kinship ruptures have recurrently marked processes of decline and regeneration of her history as a middle-class woman. She used to remember herself that real kinship could only be made through edaparakkiuga, a term which describes the physical and mental disposition towards mingling with different people.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity In this chapter I use genealogies to explore how endogamic and hybrid marriages were given heterogeneous normative, relational, and emotional meanings in different moments of Nambudiri history, and how past marriage experiences inform present middle-class understanding of love marriages. Rather than placing endogamic marriages in the domain of ‘traditional’ normative family relations and hybrid marriages in the one of modern, spontaneous, and dis-embedded love (Giddens 1992), I look at both possibilities as contexts in which the need to comply with normative sides of kinship (Miller 2007) intertwines with people’s pragmatic considerations, personal desires, and historical contingency (Grover 2009; Osella 2012). I therefore look at endogamy and exogamy as an ensemble of marriage ideas and practices that have been influenced by historical events and circumstances in the wider political and social order (Caplan 1998: 3–4), and as contexts where people search for social recognition by ‘appealing to a set of collective norms’, while also ‘resisting encompassing claims as a condition of human freedom’ (Das 1995: 17; Mody 2008). Specifically, I shall consider here the meanings of contemporary genealogical practices, and discuss how their use can enhance our understanding of contemporary love marriages as practices socially embedded (Donner 2002) in a longer community history. The chapter discusses how historical narratives of marriages unsettle the relation between caste and kinship by questioning the validity of endogamy in generating modern class status. First, it argues how the recalling of hybrid marriages voices the centrality of ideas of impurity in folk understandings of contemporary middleclassness. By contravening colonial middle-class reformist ideas on the desirability of community purity, genealogical practice stresses how the crossing of caste and religious boundaries has been determinant in moving away from Nambudirithan—exclusive Brahmin status—towards (p.170) the achievement of modern class status. In this reading, becoming ‘human beings’ comes to signify the capacity to handle intimate kinship relations established through hybridity, and to live through not only the political consequences of this act but, more importantly for the people I have met, also the emotional and relational possibilities it discloses. Second, it is suggested how present liberal discourses on the permissibility of love marriages—while resulting from contemporary class achievements in neo-liberalizing India—find deeper roots in Nambudiris’ past engagement with hybrid marriages in times of politically charged family conflicts and of economic crises.

The Unruly Nature of Genealogies

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Catherine Nash notes (2002: 28–9) how genealogy is an ‘unruly subject that cannot easily be contained’ and that discloses different and often unpredictable ways of making and conceiving family relations. This applies well to Nambudiris, in so far as genealogical practices reflect at once the search of pedigree and the wish to open community history to the telling of heterodox lives, the desire of continuity in family relations and people necessary to confront with loss, uncertainty, closure, and heterogeneity in kinship relations. As the story of Priyadatha lets us imagine, the understanding of the temporality of marriage was partly facilitated by the rich presence of genealogical records among Nambudiri families. Graphic records constituted a family asset to which both urban and rural middle-class families devoted attention. My acquaintances referred to such records as one of the valuable elements their own houses were endowed with, and were often keen to share them with me with the same enthusiasm with which they displayed marriage photographs or videos. Sometimes genealogies mirrored a longer family practice (Finch and Mason 2000; Smart 2007) and the coexistence of shifting memorializing attitudes across generations. In other cases, genealogical practice represented an individual innovative endeavour. In both cases the genealogist could count on a rich set of (often contrasting) oral histories and written records which sometimes altered and reoriented the contours of his/her initial vocation. While genealogies might at first glance raise the spectre of a functionalist anthropology concerned with formal kinship lines of descent (p.171) and alliance (Bamford and Leach 2009), we can also conceive them as a ‘creative and imaginative memory practice’ (Kramer 2011: 381) through which is produced and made meaningful, and the self is constructed by either embedding or detaching the person from family networks, or both at the same time. The ‘apparent stasis’ of genealogies (see Bouquet 1996: 60) contains a degree of ‘personal electivity’ (Kramer 2011: 382), which reflects individual interest in recalling specific people, events, contexts, and connections. Genealogical practice among Nambudiris reflected a dialectic between a genuine interest in what was seen as a fading family heritage (R. Taylor 1982) and a commitment to the exploration of those individual trajectories that had departed from available kinship repertoires and opened to the subject new possibilities of existence (Saar 2002). Importantly, genealogies were conceived by my interlocutors as open to narration and interpretation. They visually embodied knowledge, but did not speak of themselves. They needed oral guidance in order to be understood. My time spent in visualizing genealogies was a time in which the explanation of certain events like birth, marriage, or death was accompanied by more personal and intimate narratives of how specific relatives had experienced the same events through direct or indirect engagement.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Genealogical recalling placed the understanding of marriage within broader considerations of its economic, emotional, and relational aspects, while also apprehending these considerations in specific historical moments. The visual presentation of life cycle events was threaded into more unconventional narratives of the problems, divergent opinions, affective choices, and unexpected outcomes surrounding them. Genealogists liked to take note of many different sides of kin marriages: their imbrication into family projects and arrangements as well as into complex affective apparatuses, the latter reflecting the love and care of parents towards their children as well as, in many instances, spouses’ personal desires. The inscription of a particular marriage within longer family traditions coexisted with the possibility of recalling those unions that generated breaks in family relations and prepared the ground for future alternative experiences and imaginings of conjugality. Similarly, and importantly, marriage histories were retrieved in the present less to trace the lines of aristocratic pedigree and more to highlight how past kin choices enhanced or inhibited certain forms of class mobility or of exposure to (p.172) migration contexts. By merging together different aspects of conjugal choices (normative, emotional, practical, contextual), genealogical recalling was a context in which the understanding of kinship norms was placed in dialogue with the personal experiences of the narrating subject (the genealogist) or of the character whose story was recorded in the genealogical diagram. Often, genealogical practice and narration mirrored people’s subscription to conjugal norms less than they mirrored a dialogue between community and personal expectations of marriages. This folk understanding of genealogy as both a site of official collective memorialization and a bearer of more troublesome, embarrassing, or challenging remembrances might explain why my meetings with genealogists opened spaces of discussion of hybrid and/or love marriages. Contemporary interest in marriages that did not conform to the overall pan-Indian ideal of arranged and endogamic union (Choudhury 1994; Kolenda 1978; Mayer 1996; Parry 2001)2 is certainly driven by Nambudiris’ common perceptions of ongoing changes in generational relations and in youth mobility that have occurred in recent decades. Increasing youth mobility for educational and migrant purposes makes parents aware that unpredictable individual choices might eventually conflict with family plans. In this light, the recalling of past (love or arranged) hybrid marriages establishes a basis on which to argue for the present legitimacy of individual choices. At the same time, recalling also reflects I believe a wider temporal perception of marriage norms as unstable and as subject to historical contingency. Memories of hybrid marriages channel Nambudiris’ interest in constructing a past where certain unions have been determinant in enhancing class mobility and moving away from the backwardness of aristocracy.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity It should be noted that most of the genealogists I worked with were middle-aged or elderly Nambudiris who had a closer engagement with the tortuous processes of disengagement with aristocracy, and who were relatively more critical of expressions of caste orthodoxy in comparison to younger generations.3 This might explain the significant space allowed in genealogical memories to hybrid marriages, although—as will become clearer below—different genealogists had very different interpretations of the meanings and outcomes of hybrid marriages in their relatives’ lives.

(p.173) From Meagre Lines … Many of the genealogies I saw covered large time spans, usually ranging from early-mid- nineteenth century to the present. They usually followed a descendant orientation similar to that inspired by the Christian tradition (Bouquet 1996), and connected lineage founders with patrilineally linked descendants. Yet, in approaching the present, diagrams moved from a spare visualization of illakkar (lineage members) reproductive events towards a more densely populated visualization of matrilineal kin (ammathu bandhan), of mahelere (women given in marriages) and of charchakkar (relatives obtained through marriages). This movement was often accompanied by the recording of exogamic marriages and of their descendants. Although there is no general temporal marker, the entry of previously obscured subjects begins roughly in the period of time between the 1930s and the 1950s.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Genealogical recalling predating the 1930s can appear more depersonalized and monotonous compared to that in subsequent decades. Nonetheless, it paved the way for the more passionate recalling of emotionally charged family events. Stories of the refusal of elder men to enter into polygamous marriages due to their love for their first wives, or of lineages accepting love marriages of apphans with Nambudiri women counterbalance more public memorialization of pre-reformist kinship life as structured around rigid generational and primogeniture norms. Subsequently, stigmatized kinship practices were sometimes recalled as contexts in which romantic attachment and personal choices could flourish (see also Raychaudhuri 2000).4 In a partly similar vein, the genealogical narration of sambandham, while reflecting Nambudiris’ intent to trace prestigious connections with royal families, also mirrored an emotional attachment with those who were formally ‘non-relatives’ (Tarabout 1990). Ravi, one of the genealogists I worked with, recalled how one of his illakkar fell in love with a Nair woman, Radha, with whom he entered into sambandham in 1894. Ravi’s idea of love not only drew from the public representation of the traditional attractiveness and sophistication of high-status matrilineal women5 but was also framed around notions of care and sacrifice. His ancestor was eager to take care of his ‘Nair’ children and eventually devolved part of his property to them. This resembles the story of Narayanan P. in terms of intercaste dedication beyond the codified nature of sambandham. However, one difference emerges (p.174) with respect to the lack of political significance ascribed by Ravi’s ancestor to his ‘Nair’ family dedication. While the event occurred at a time when sambandham were already subject to growing colonial and reformist scrutiny, it remains enfolded in more private memories. It points to the complexity of Nambudiri and Nair relations beyond the delegitimizing attitude of reformist movements and to how different Nambudiri individuals sought affective kin relations beyond caste affiliation. Overall, genealogical recalling is often oriented to map the fate of sambandham descendants, children’s eventual marriages, or geographical locations and reflect the genealogist’s pioneering aim to trace affective lines beyond community exclusivity and yet also the intent to maintain those genealogical connections that could infuse Nambudiris with a degree of modern ethos and possible social mobility.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Perhaps even more surprising is the sudden appearance in genealogical records related to the pre-1930s period of Nambudiri women who did not conform to the ‘conventional’ binary choice offered to antharjanams between endogamic marriage or spinsterhood. The elopement and marriage of Arya in 1877 with a Nair man from a nearby village graphically ‘sits’ aside the notes related to the veli (endogamic marriage) of Arya’s brother—and head of the lineage— Ramachandran. As I came to understand through the words of the present family genealogist Uma, this irreverent act of memorialization is a result of past complicity between Arya and the latter’s sister Devi. Uma had indeed inherited her genealogical passion from Devi, her grandmother, who was at the time of events so upset by the outcasting of her sister that compensated for the loss by starting to take note of Arya’s subsequent life. ‘It was a way to keep her closer’, Uma commented. Caught in the activity of recalling improper unions, the task was taken away from Devi and assigned to a male lineage member. Yet Devi continued secretly to cultivate this passion for genealogical records—records which have reached Uma. Uma was still in touch with some of Arya’s descendants and had visited some of them in Singapore. She was unconcerned about the fact that these ‘cousins’ (as she called them) were not considered Nambudiris. Uma’s curiosity and affection towards Arya’s descendants drew both from a personal fascination with Arya’s unconventional story, as well as from a sense of personal inscription within a longer women-centred genealogical tradition. (p.175) Genealogical memories reveal how kinship norms were relatively more flexible in allowing the expansion of meanings and practices underpinning men’s sambandham, while relegating antharjanams unwanted marriages to the domain of ‘non-community existence’ (Mody 2002). Still, the story of Uma’s ancestor also discloses the existence of multiple genealogical traditions even within a single family and women’s different perceptions of the possibilities of intimacy in their porous Brahmin-matrilineal milieu. Through genealogical recalling Uma and her foremothers resist the obliterating act of outcasting, and the silencing of women’s unorthodox marriages within codified family memories.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Scandalous marriages between Nambudiri women and low-caste men (scheduled caste) were recorded before this period, as is shown by the recording of a woman’s marriage in 1899 with an untouchable man from the Pulaya caste. Yet, I believe that their rare appearance in official genealogies stood for a normative warning to lineage women against indulging in even more controversial relationships. For instance, the 1899 marriage is graphically recorded with a cross on the woman’s name; she was outcast and then forgotten by subsequent generations. Interestingly, records of marriages between Nambudiri men and low-caste women before the 1930s are absent. While this may well result from the lack of such events in the genealogies considered here, private narratives on men’s sexuality point to the fact that while women’s sexual and conjugal relations with low-caste men were more likely to be thrown into the arena of public judgement, for Nambudiri men such intimacy remained tacitly tolerated as a form of sexual indulgence. A fieldwork extract is interesting in this respect. When I asked a male genealogist why there were no notes of Nambudiri men marrying low caste women before the 1930s, he replied: Nambudiri men never married with low caste women in the past, they did not need [to]. But men in my family had big sexual appetites, they were less civilised, and low-caste women were more free and relaxed than our own antharjanam … so whenever they wanted they abused their power as jenmis and slept here and there in the village, no one could really say no to them … and no one knows how many children of Nambudiri men are spread around our native village …. My interlocutor reasserts the common prejudice about the sexual immorality of low-caste women, while also highlighting aristocratic (p.176) men’s past disregard for purity considerations in their sexual lives. Aristocratic status allowed Nambudiri men to keep inter-caste sexuality in the safer domain of ‘public secrecy’. Importantly, and differently from women, the possibility that Nambudiri men could love low-caste women and enter into conjugal relations with them is silenced in pre-1930s memories. While the above words reveal a degree of complicity between the more permissive memories of my interlocutor and the sexual carefreeness of his male ancestors, they also inscribes past Nambudiri male (unregulated) inter-caste sexuality within a discourse of primitivism. This holds relevance for understanding how contemporary marriages between Nambudiri men and lower-caste woman—while not preferred —are to some extent accepted in the name of novel moral responsibilities taken up by modernized Nambudiri subjects, who are today able to frame their attraction and feelings towards low-caste women within the more legitimate context of conjugality.6

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Overall, genealogies that pre-date the 1930s/1950s unravel how the ‘efficacy of disciplinary power of both colonial morality and nationalist middle-class responsibility was considerably diluted’ (C. Gupta 2002: 195) and how individual experiences of love, desire, and care crept into the moral order of both official and reforming marriage systems. Gendered memories differently unravel the porousness of community contours and the possibility of relational, emotional, and intimate closeness between Brahmin and matrilineal milieus beyond the official (and yet shifting) gender ideologies underpinning sambandham practices.

… to a Crowded Picture From the 1930s onwards, many changes gradually occur in the style and content of genealogies. Genealogical recalling since this period is interesting because it reflects the coexistence of two interrelated tendencies in marriage memorialization. On the one hand, it reflects the intent to trace all possible connections between higher status Nambudiris and lower status yet upwardly mobile Nambudiri families. While these unions formally fall within the remit of legitimate caste endogamy, particularly in the present, in past decades they were likely to generate a relatively similar disdain if compared to the one related to intercommunity marriages. Marriage with a low-status (p.177) Grahmini Nambudiri could even be more criticized than one with a high-status Nair. On the other, it mirrors the increasing recording of marriages across caste and religious boundaries.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The previous orientation toward patrilinearity and primogeniture give way, first, to the recalling of marriages involving all male and female lineage members. Before the 1930s, lack of blood connections and equal caste status were key criteria in spouse selection among high-status families, whereas marriage between cousins was not unknown among lower-class Nambudiri families. Starting from the 1930s, however, lower-status Nambudiris progressively shift towards exogamic practices at sub-caste and locality level as a means of social mobility, thereby following a path of social mobility adopted by other communities (Kurien 2002; see also Osella and Osella 2000). Among aristocratic families, distant consanguinity among equal status families becomes desirable, particularly among conservative families. Genealogies carefully trace patrilineal or matrilineal connections between distant cousins with similar caste rank, although this is not necessarily prescriptive. Rather, this style of recording sometimes results from a couple’s demand to marry based on their own choice, and reflects the genealogist’s attempt to inscribe individual decisions within a discourse of wider family connections (Donner 2002). Distant genealogical connections have increasingly been considered by middle-class Nambudiris as a good background for a happy conjugal life, both in the context of love and arranged marriages. Among the aristocracy, marrying into an unrelated family of traditionally lower status started to become an option from the 1950s onwards. This can be partly explained by referring to the end of the primogeniture system and the resulting imperative to ‘marry off’ all children regardless of their family status. At the same time, the importance of traditional caste status is deemed to fade in favour of other considerations like migration potential, education, and labour opportunities. Connecting across Sub-caste Divisions

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity I believe that a denser genealogical style also allows Nambudiris to construct a connected community of otherwise dispersed families vis-á-vis the perceived demographic weakness of the community. Genealogists were often concerned that—unlike Nairs or Ezhavas or Christians—Nambudiris (p.178) constituted only a small percentage of the Malayali population. The recording of women’s marriages and their descendants—while expressing novel understanding of women’s centrality in the formation of the conjugal family and yet also in the circle of known kin—also reflects the aim to visualize the extension and intensity of intra-caste connections. A typical Nambudiri saying, mahelere velikal kariyum charchakkar vardhikkum, describes the fact that lineage women’s (mahelere) marriage (veli) increases the number of relatives (charchakkar) beyond patrilineally related families. While this saying is rooted in the past selective family appreciation of prestigious alliances even when they were made through women’s marriage, it has different meanings in the present. Many of my interlocutors retrospectively recognized the patrilineal lineage as a site of conflictual memories and relations, whereas the traditionally looser link with matrilineal kin was seen as providing the ground for more collaborative and emotionally rewarding relations. Memories revealed how, when patrilineal kin (illakkar) had failed in providing support to individuals, charchakkar had often soothed emotional distress and provided life alternatives to isolated subjects. The tracing of women’s descendants also relates to a wider consideration of the gendered hierarchies underpinning past genealogical practices. Powerful memories of antharjanams’ seclusion are threaded into folk discussions on the obliterating practices of past genealogies, and the silencing of women’s destinies in graphical recalling mirrors their spatial seclusion within ancestral houses or to their estrangement from the lineage as child-wives. Conversely, the genealogists I spoke with were keen to stress how modern recording of women’s destinies was consistent with the equal place women have seized in family care strategies. One of the elements that was often stressed was the end of child marriage. Although genealogies show that the practice persisted until the early 1970s among some families, overall women’s age at marriage tends to increase: from their early teens (pre-1960) to late teens (1970s) to their early twenties (1980-early 2000) to their mid-twenties (2000s onwards). Genealogical narratives on the end of pre-puberty marriage stress the importance of women’s changing marital age as a basis on which to assert community developments with respect to the past and to new middle-class status (Fuller and Narasimhan 2013; Hatekar, Kumar, and Mathur 2009). They also emphasize how this change reflects a growing parental inclination (p.179) to provide daughters with the same care and educational possibilities as sons. The importance ascribed to keeping daughters at home for a longer, and to being emotionally and materially concerned with their futures after marriage, underpins the graphic appearance of women’s marriage details and of their descendants in genealogical records.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Overall, the genealogies I saw had shifted from uniquely patrilineal principles to a more heterogeneous and multi-layered style. In revealing the possibility of renewed forms of kin ramification, genealogies aim at teaching possible alternatives in family relations (Bishop 2005). This pedagogical ethos, I suggest, also underpins the genealogical recalling of hybrid marriages. On the one hand, carving out novel spaces of hybridity reflects the intent to connect lineage history with that of other mobile social strata. This works particularly if these connections allow for a claim for the mimesis of Nambudiri identity within the more undefined, and yet less stigmatized (in comparison with past aristocracy), domain of middle-classness. On the other, it also aims at teaching contemporary generations that caste membership is not always rewarding in terms of providing stable kin connections or in endowing the subject with a happy affective family life. The Beauty of Hybrid Marriages

A significant shift in genealogical recalling addresses the recording of hybrid marriages beyond the familiar milieu of Hindu high-caste matrilineality. Particularly since the late 1940s, hybrid marriages of Nambudiri men and women gradually appear in genealogical recording and reflect the growing heterogeneity of conjugal unions across caste and religious divides (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2). Interestingly, Nambudiri women more often make hybrid marriages than Nambudiri men. Also, while conjugal relations with members of high-status matrilineal castes (Nair, Varma, and Warier) and other brahmins (north Indian and Malayali) attract the majority of Nambudiri men and women in the sample, women are also more likely to be found in marriages with men of usually stigmatized communities (Muslim, Ezhava, and Pulaya) than their male counterparts are to be found in marriages with women from such communities. In contrast to records pre-dating the 1930s, the name and surname of the nonNambudiri spouse is recorded alongside the names (p.180) and births of children. The name of the spouse’s caste or religious affiliation is not always reported. Some genealogies refrain from indicating caste affiliation, as this might have appeared as a form of discrimination, whereas others include the information to offer a clear map of the many connections of their own family. In many cases, however, genealogists kept a separate notebook where they noted additional information about the caste and class background of the spouse, his/ her education and profession as well as the couple’s geographical location. These notes sometimes acted as a panacea for initial hesitancy in revealing the history of unions that, in many cases, opened up cracks and tensions in family relations and compromised caste identity. Recording details about these unions did not necessarily reflect their unquestioning acceptance within the circle of kin, nor disregard on the part of the individual genealogist for wider family censorship. The inclusion of these marriages within genealogical diagrams was more often than not a source of family debate which might have led to family splits in terms of genealogical strategies. Page 14 of 47

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity I believe that the recalling of these unions resulted from genealogists’ attempts to frame possible disruptions within a narrative style emphasizing positive elements in the individual and family identity of the non-Nambudiri spouse. It is significant that if the spouse had a good education, a good job or a migration history as a skilled professional, the genealogist’s attitude in sharing information about the union was more relaxed. Memories of hybrid marriages with poor or uneducated non-Nambudiri spouses were thornier, with more difficulties around sharing them. Physical appearance and bodily gestures also mattered in the presentation of the non-Nambudiri spouse. In building the legitimacy of these unions, the genealogist usually emphasized the fair complexion of the spouse, their refined manners, or the respectful attitude that the person might have for the ‘different’ Nambudiri dietary culture (that is, vegetarianism). Importantly, the possibility of narrating hybrid marriage stories was partly rooted in the spouse’s ability to comply with social expectations of class mobility and to adapt to higher-caste bodily and behavioural codes. Yet, recalling not only reflects the benevolent indulgence of progressive brahmins towards once stigmatized communities. Nor is it unquestioningly premised around the possibility of concealing the non-Nambudiri (p.181) spouse’s identity through his/her assimilation. Recalling also mirrors an understanding of middle-classness as a temporal—although never definitive—hybridization of caste identity, particularly in a period when the relation between caste and kinship was increasingly put into question. As the following ethnography shows, the recalling of past hybrid marriages is also meant to evoke times in which marriage outside the caste represented a more appealing possibility.

Disappointing Sides of Kinship Norms

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Narratives related to the decades between the 1930s and the early 1960s point to the relevance of political activism in producing hybrid marriages, and warn against the danger of straightforwardly interpreting these unions in terms of personal love choices going against well-defined community endogamic norms. Rather, hybrid marriages should often be understood by referring to a relatively widespread discourse among reformist Nambudiris on the need to cut obsolete kin ties (bandham thakarkkuka) in order to generate a modern collectivity. In this discourse both endogamy and exogamy were endowed with novel possible meanings against consuetudinary practices. In the early decades of the twentieth century, and particularly under the rising influence of 1930s’activism within the Communist party, caste endogamy was certainly debated alongside the more challenging possibilities of inter-caste marriages. This is well reflected in the partly different positions of V.T. Bhattathiripad and E.M.S. Nambudiripad.7 Both caste endogamy and marrying out became highly politicized issues, and mirrored a persistent tension between the claim for a pure and demographically vigorous collectivity and a fascination with the possibility of ascribing new meanings to porous contours of longstanding intercommunity relations.8 Union with a non-Nambudiri spouse often resulted from involvement in political activities linked firstly with reformist movements and, later on, with the Communist Party. Marriage memories related to this period show how narratives of personal desires where enmeshed within an encompassing aim to both challenge and reshape the contours of community membership. The political importance of marriage across caste boundaries is particularly recalled in the present to voice a masculine rhetoric centred on the Nambudiri man, who (p. 182) challenged aristocratic constraints by entering into relations with women from lower Malayali castes or from different Indian caste and religious groups. Sentences like ‘my grandfather was a modern man, he married a Nair woman’, or ‘my father contributed to change Kerala society by being the first one to marry a Latin Catholic’ stressed forefathers’ contributions to the (supposed) erasure of traditional hierarchies and to the development of a progressive society. In a similar (yet paternalist) line, the arrangement of hybrid marriages for Nambudiri women is part of this masculine rhetoric of collective withdrawing from Nambudirithan (Brahmin exclusivity). Men’s recalling of past hybrid marriages often promotes the image of a heroic male disruption of kinship norms, and at the same time represents women as subjects whose life possibilities could be enhanced by such unions. As one male genealogist put it: In 1954 one of the women of my family was married to a Varma man. It was a properly arranged marriage by her elder brother who was a member of the Communist Party, although not all our family participated … the girl had never seen the man but they then lived a happy life, much better than if she had married an old conservative Brahmin!!

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The woman’s marriage is located here in a liminal zone where ‘traditional’ arrangements—such as lack of prior acquaintance between spouses, and elder (male) relative supervision—coexist with the crossing of caste boundaries and with the appreciation of the positive outcomes of this. Memories of hybrid marriages in this period unravel how these unions placed the couple in a twofold relation with the community. On the one hand, they created fissures with those community fellows who opposed reformist or communist politics and alienated the couple from the collectivity (Das 1995; Mody 2008). Indeed, they often resulted in outcasting. Yet, and importantly, they were also generated from individual sense of membership in an imagined community of modern Nambudiris, and they consequently met with sympathy from other fragments of Nambudiri (and Malayali) society. Narratives point out how another collectivity of reformed Nambudiris was ready to counterbalance the loss of kin and community ties. In the case of the marriage mentioned above, the couple was still considered as part of both the Nambudiri and Nair communities and their first son subsequently entered into an arranged marriage with a Nambudiri woman. (p.183) Past hybrid marriages do not necessarily put into question individual intention to be part of the community, nor are they remembered today simply to set the couple apart. Rather, hybrid marriages are recalled as events that both contributed to the birth of a modernized community and that also opened spaces of proximity with other Malayali communities, particularly with progressive Hindu Nairs, Syrian Christians, or Indian upper castes. These marriages certainly constituted exceptions, and in many cases disrupted available kin codes and lineage reproductive strategies. At the same time, these unions should be understood within a context in which the codes and contours of kinship norms and caste membership were already undergoing redefinition. As with pioneering endogamic marriages among young reformist Nambudiris, hybrid unions were the product of embedded individuals’ intent to question the anachronistic isolation of a decaying elite. Crucially, memories of inter-caste marriages in this period do not adopt a register that is completely different to that of endogamic marriage memories. Both forms of marriage appear as contested possibilities endowed with regenerative potential. As another genealogist stated: You see … in my family old norms were generally against men’s marriage… they were against social life we can say!!! So, at the end of the day, either you married within the caste or into another community, it was still a scandal for many!!! But this is how we became human beings ... by taking on the responsibility of our own actions and by mingling with others ....

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Against the backdrop of old kinship norms, both endogamic and hybrid marriages are perceived today as an important means of Nambudiri transformation. Hybrid marriages might have promoted the dissolution of caste contours but, more probably, they were also intended to place Nambudiris in a new leading position within modern Kerala (D. Menon 1999). However, as the opening quotation of Priyadatha story invites us to consider, women’s contemporary memories cast doubts on current interpretations of past hybrid marriages as politically liberating. Some narratives illustrate how despite their revolutionary aura these unions still resulted from elitist male decisions, and delve into the emotional grey shades of subsequent marital and family experiences. In 1954 Radha married a Nair man, Rajiv. The marriage was organized by Rajiv and Radha’s brother, both members of the Communist Party. Radha, (p.184) who during the time of my fieldwork had started to devote some time to genealogical practices, did not recall it as a happy moment: I accepted … because I loved my brother, I trusted his advises and I believed he really cared about me. But then I realise how snobbish this was, to preach for a revolution and then not asking me first. I was too young at that time … and, in any case, I guess, I had limited margin of freedom to say no. I was very scared because many of my father’s family stopped talking to me, also my own sisters avoided me for many years … they treated me as a strange animal …. and I felt terribly alone, so my husband was for many years the sole source of protection. Thanks to god our marriage went well, but I cannot imagine what it would have happened to me if divorced had occurred …. My brother married a Syrian Christian but I do not think he faced all the troubles I had to face …. Radha initially made meaningful her ‘acceptance’ of the marriage by referring to her love for her brother, a sentiment that partly replaced her doubts about her parents’ capacity to look after her: ‘they were too uneducated and backward to be able to decide about my life’, she added. Yet, Radha’s scepticism towards her family in this respect does not prevent the feeling of loss that resulted from being estranged from her kin. Difficulties in reconstructing a family life also produced tensions between Radha and her brother, with Radha reflecting on the shortcomings of apparently revolutionary acts by pointing out that her own opinion on the matter was never asked. In making sense of the post-marital difficulties she had to face, she also voices a critical understanding of the more vulnerable position of women who married out of their caste, relative to men who did so.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Other women’s narratives unravel how the politicization of hybrid marriages as ‘modern’ unions could allow personal choices to be negotiated. In the late 1960s, Mrinalini, the daughter of a renowned Nambudiri reformer, married a man from a scheduled caste. She describes this as her own choice—a choice which was nevertheless welcomed and accepted by her parents and several other relatives: I had met Nandanar, my husband in school, I was still so young! He made me feel comfortable from the very beginning: he was nice, polite, not as arrogant as some upper caste fellows ... He never wanted to marry before he had found a job, but he came to see my parents and he said he had serious intentions and that, if they had given permission, he would have asked me in marriage once he had settled down. I always knew that (p. 185) my parents would have had no objections. I grew up being told that caste differences are not good our society and that Nambudiri made so many people suffer in the past because of this. My parents always treated Nandanar as their own son, and never looked into his caste name …. The family’s longer history of political activism provides an important background to making personal feelings meaningful (cf. Lynch 1990) and to the way marriage plans are promoted to the family and the wider society. Mrinalini makes sense of her marriage in terms of independent appreciations of Nandanar’s personal qualities, setting him apart from the negatively perceived boldness of upper-caste men. Still, she retrospectively interprets her confident involvement as resulting from what she defined as the ‘more liberal outlook’ of her parents and of her admiration for her father’s political activities.

Decay Requires New Relatives Women genealogists’ narratives are more indulgent in delving into histories of hybrid marriages with stigmatized communities, and in recognizing how these unions have enhanced the economic conditions of their families and of Nambudiris more generally. This attitude emerges particularly in the post-1969 land reform decades and continues up until the mid-1990s, a time during which many families claimed to have entered narrower financial straits.9 Genealogies reveal that in this period both men’s and women’s marriages across caste and religious lines intensify: these still mainly involve upper-status Nairs or SyrianChristians or other brahmins, but they also increasingly include the marriages of Nambudiri women to more stigmatized Ezhavas, Pulayas, or Muslims.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Earlier interpretations of hybrid marriages as events orchestrated by political activists give way to more nuanced conceptualizations of the many agencies, emotions, and kin relations involved in these unions. It is in this period that the idea that a person might enter into a love marriage seems to have begun to develop and be debated as a legitimate possibility. As in other Indian contexts, love marriages among Nambudiris are interpreted—with reference to both the past and the present—as those unions based on the couple’s independent initiation of a premarital relationship, which is differently absorbed into subsequent family negotiations and arrangements (p.186) (Donner 2002: 83–4; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008b). Importantly, however, genealogical memories related to these decades invite us to consider how contemporary interpretations of love marriages are not temporally located in a time of socio-economic renewal. Nor do they straightforwardly reflect an assertion of modern middleclass status in neo-liberalizing India. While more liberal discourses on the progressiveness of companionate and/or love marriages (Donner 2002; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008b; Uberoi 2006: 29–30) would go on to mould Nambudiri interpretations of such unions in the late 1990s, these discourses are rooted in earlier ideas of love marriages as resulting from the failure of households to provide a good future for younger generations, and from the consequent loosening of generational hierarchies and caste restrictions. Economic decline and downward mobility, combined with occasional hybrid marriages in earlier decades, posed questions for the moral validity of parental choice in arranging endogamic marriages. Narratives related to this period often make sense of hybrid marriages in terms of bhavi illyayma, literally meaning ‘the lack of future’—an expression which refers to a situation in which family decline and parental inadequacy in arranging good marriages rendered children’s futures fragile and uncertain. Part of my conversation with one woman genealogist, Kavitha, about her niece Shalini’s marriage to a Syrian Christian in 1979 offers some insight into how parental authority and caste membership can be questioned in circumstances of economic decline: Kavitha: After land reform Shalini’s parents could not look after her. They not only lost land and started to face terrible problems, but they were also poorly educated, so they sent Shalini to live with some relatives in Kochi. It was a Christian neighbourhood, good families were living there ... unlike the village area where Shalini’s family was living, which was quite isolated and with mainly impoverished Nambudiris houses. She met this boy, Thomas is his name, very good looking ... from a respectable family of the area. They were first going in the same school, then he moved to Chennai to study and they remained in touch, they really loved each other … they were writing each other and when he came back home they saw, but he always behaved well, very respectful of her …. Once he finished the university and found a good job, he asked her to marry. Ester: What did the family think of it? (p.187) Page 20 of 47

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Kavitha: Initially they were shocked; especially the father did not want this marriage. They were still living in a joint family and they were also influenced by the elders who did not approve such unions … Ester: And then? Eventually they married … Kavitha: Some of us of the family went to speak with the people in the old house …. Shalini’s relatives in Kochi, me and my husband …. We were more educated, and also we knew that the boy and the family were good. We asked the parents if they were in the position to provide a better choice for Shalini … and we made them understand that this marriage would have made her not only happy but also provided her with a comfortable life. Shalini was never really cared for by her family, they had so many children that she did not receive much love … so why prevent her from a better life? Ester: What was their reaction? Kavitha: It took time … mother accepted and came to the marriage, father did not accept but he could not help … he recognized that it was a good opportunity and that, after all, he could not pay any dowry …. At the end some relatives came to the marriage, other did not, but they married in any case, and they are still together against all objections! A key element emerging from this passage is the contrast drawn between the backwardness of Shalini’s family’s rural isolation and the respectability of the urban neighbourhood where she was sent as an adolescent, and where she subsequently built her marital life. Shalini’s movement to a ‘respectable’ urban neighbourhood opened a space in which her marriage choice could be made acceptable—at least to some family members. In this context, the morality of caste endogamy is relatively marginalized in comparison to (more legitimate) class considerations. Relatives living in the old house are deemed to be unfit to make claims about marriage decisions, while better-educated relatives with professional jobs cast themselves as the ‘experts’, better equipped to participate in the marriage arrangements. This support also drew from considerations about the lack of care and love Shalini had received in the joint family she had grown up in, and the more dedicated attention she could enjoy in the new family environment.10 Considerations of care and love intertwine here with economic considerations and practical needs (Grover 2009; Osella 2012), questioning not only parental authority but the suitability of endogamic marriages for enhancing class mobility. Kavitha was very (p.188) particular in stressing how the Christian family had good connections in the Gulf and in the US, and how they eventually helped two of Shalini’s brothers to find well-remunerated jobs abroad.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The story I turn to now crucially unravels how Nambudiri moral and material debt to lower castes is inscribed in gendered narratives of class mobility. In 2007, Narayanan was a retired Nambudiri teacher living in suburban Kochi with his Varma wife and his 78-year-old Nambudiri mother, Umadevi. One afternoon, during one of my visits to the family, Umadevi suddenly asked me if I knew that she had shared a home for many years with an Ezhava co-wife. Smiling at my amazement, she continued with the conversation: Umadevi: In 1946 my husband fell in love with an Ezhava woman … Remeni-ceci was her name. We already had Narayanan at that time, who was three years old when it happened. Ours was an arranged marriage, he did not have many choices, neither had I … But for this lady he really had a deep sentiment. He did not listen to anyone …. Actually, I did not say anything as women in my family were not supposed to say anything. He married her in a second marriage and he was outcasted. We were all outcasted … so we moved to Trivandrum where Remeni had a good job as a civil servant … Ester: How was the life after this? Could you adjust to living with her? Umadevi: Women of my generation were accustomed to live with more than one wife … polygamy was still there at that time. So, after some time, I stopped thinking about Remeni as someone different from me, and I abandoned all these fixations with untouchability and food. Ester: What was your relation with her? Umadevi: She was a good woman … she was really a good person and I have a big respect and love for her. Of course I cried a lot at the beginning, because of being excluded from my community and because we were poor. My husband, after being outcasted, was working as a pujari in Trivandrum, making little money. All my family had outcasted me for something I had not done, but Remeni looked after me. She was younger but well educated while I barely knew how to read … and she always shared what she had with me. If she bought a good thing for herself or for her children, she bought for me and for Narayanan as well … It was at this point of the conversation that Nayaranan interrupted us with a more critical stance. He emphasized how—after his father’s death—he had brought Umadevi to live with him in a separate house (p.189) while Remeni had stayed in the old house in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) with his two half-brothers. Narayanan stressed how relations with his father’s family and with the Nambudiri community had gradually been rebuilt, partly thanks to his respectability as a teacher and partly thanks to the ‘distance from that Ezhava woman’. Umadevi, annoyed by his disrespectful attitude towards Remeni, scolded him: Page 22 of 47

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity You should not speak about her in this way … she had also been a mother to you. And do not forget that you could study thanks to her …. Her salary sufficed for all of us when your father was barely able to meet the end of the month. We only have to thank her …. Narayanan nodded with a more submissive, ‘Yeah, you are right …’ and remained silent for a while. Gender and generation overlap in shaping different perceptions of the relationship between hybrid marriages and class mobility. Narayanan was caught between the intention to keep up relations with his stepbrothers even after Remeni’s death and the need to repair the damage caused by his father’s second marriage by distancing himself from the house and locality where he had grown up after being outcast. This distance was deemed to be determinant in reconstructing durable relationships with his original Nambudiri lineage. His ambivalence towards hybrid marriages revealed the difficulty that persists in accepting marriages with individuals from stigmatized communities. Contrastingly, Umadevi was more concerned with acknowledging how economic difficulties as well as emotional distress were eventually eased by a collaborative relationship between the two women. Umadevi saw the good jobs of her two grandchildren—one working in London as computer engineer and one in Dubai as a private college lecturer—as partly due to Remeni’s dedication and care for the whole family. In making sense of her conjugal experience Umadevi certainly drew from available kinship codes of her time such as polygamy and women’s subordinate positioning with respect to marriage choices. We should interpret her emphasis on Remeni’s maternal role during their joint life in Thiruvananthapuram along similar lines. In this sense, her husband’s disruptive choice—while resulting in being outcast—becomes integrated into routine family life by making the unfamiliar familiar and by a process of (albeit partial) normalization (Das 1995; Mody 2008) of kinship relations. Yet, in the process, Umadevi also actively transforms the meanings ascribed to kinship, drawing from her experience in order to question (p.190) both the legitimacy of endogamic marriages and of elders’ authority in making decisions about younger generations’ marriages. She was highly critical of parents who objected to their children’s love marriages, arguing that marrying on the basis of external considerations might not necessarily lead to a happy family life: See my marriage was arranged, but then my husband fell in love with someone else … so isn’t it better to let people choose whom they want and to let them take up their own responsibilities? Divorce at my time was not a possibility I could contemplate … but how many arranged marriages take place which eventually end up in a break because the spouses are not happy?

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Umadevi herself approved of Narayanan’s marriage to a Varma woman and showed sympathy with her granddaughter’s intention to marry a low-caste Bengali man. With time she had also rebuilt relations with her Nambudiri family and community. Before old age restricted her movements, she had frequently visited her Ezhava relatives in different parts of Kerala, who also attended Umadevi’s elder grandson marriage with a Latin Christian woman. However, she had also made clear to her Nambudiri relatives that she was equally close to the Ezhava family she had spent most of her mature life with, and that she had no intention of sacrificing these relations in the name of pure caste membership. While the story of Umadevi may appear exceptional it was not infrequent among Nambudiris married to lower-ranked communities to acknowledge a moral and material debt towards the spouse’s family. Among my acquaintances this tendency certainly characterized elder generations who, more frequently if compared to new ones, had experience downward mobility from their past status.

Changing Perceptions of Hybrid Marriages

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The ethnographic discussion developed so far invites us to consider if, and to what extent, generational experiences of hybrid marriages—both as arranged and as love unions—have affected contemporary understandings of conjugality. The works of Veena Das and Perveez Mody provides important background for analysing to what extent Nambudiri hybrid marriages allow individuals to ‘break through collective tradition’ (Das 1995: 17), and yet also to ascribe new collective meanings to marital norms. Das notes how the disruptive prospect of (p.191) unwanted unions initially places the couple in a limbo of ‘non belonging’ and sets them against a community which remains scandalized by impure relations (Das 1995). Mody, in her studies of love marriages in Delhi, pursues a similar argument, by noting how love marriages—particularly when breaking community boundaries—bring the couple to be part of a ‘noncommunity’, before they are gradually re-socialized into their own collectivity (Mody 2008). Reintegration into the collectivity might be achieved through keeping the marriage clandestine, through denial of the relationship, through acts of violence or through gradually coming to terms with the new couple (Mody 2008). However, with time, the family and the community are deemed able to repair ruptures and to absorb individual choices within the legitimacy of official endogamic norms (Mody 2008). Both Das’ and Mody’s accounts draw from Bourdieu’s distinction between official and practical kinship, and place the difficult and embarrassing handling of arranged marriages in the realm of performed (as opposed to representational) kinship relations. Yet, their analysis leaves open the question of if and how, in the process of reintegration of unconventional marriages, official kinship is in turn transformed in its codes and prescriptions. Indeed, Das and Mody seem to implicitly conceive the healing of kinship ruptures as a process that does not substantially affect established kinship norms. However, as Béteille notes in relation to the growing practice of inter-caste marriages, it is crucial to try and understand whether ‘official rules and norms continue to carry the same meanings as they carried before’ (Béteille 1996: 163).

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity As mentioned above, hybrid marriages in Nambudiri history certainly represented disruptive events in the context of longstanding family practices and in the ‘customary’ coincidence between kinship and caste membership. Hybrid marriages led to outcasting and to the couple’s temporary location into a state of limbo characterized by social and emotional loss with respect to preexisting family and community ties. The reintegration of hybrid marriages followed different paths. In the case of unions which involved Nambudiris and upper-caste Varmas and Nairs, the disruption the union represented could be smoothed over by the Nambudiri spouse’s absorption into the matrilineal milieu, by appealing to the longstanding symbiosis between the two communities. More often than not, however, and particularly in recent decades, this strategy has coexisted with the (p.192) tendency to downplay caste identity and to appeal to the legitimate hybridity of a middle-class milieu of upper-status communities. Commenting on contemporary love marriages, one of the genealogists I worked with asserted the aesthetic and substantial historical proximity between meticulously selected strata, and claimed a longer family history of hybrid marriages: We are all connected …. I mean, in the past it was different because our community was much more retrograde than others, but now can you really make a distinction between a Nambudiri, a Nair or a Tamil Brahmin? Even with Syrian Christians we have come to have some similarities, also they descend from Brahmins …. Now we are all quite educated, well-mannered … we have experiences of life, so it is inevitable that marriage might occur between us, it was like this also in the past.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Unlike in the case of urban middle-class brahmins analysed by Fuller and Narasimhan (2008b) in the context of Tamil Nadu, contemporary discourses on the legitimacy of contemporary marriages do not necessarily reproduce a convergence between class belonging and straightforward caste identification. In Nambudiris’ middle-class marriage discourses caste identity is not necessarily perceived as resulting from a timeless generational repetition of endogamic unions. Rather, caste is in many instances understood as a form of belonging with porous contours, and with extensions and flexibilities that are temporally variable. The occurrence of a hybrid marriage in genealogical memories does not necessarily question present claims regarding membership of the Nambudiri collectivity. Of course, such claims may be contested, particularly by those for whom caste purity and endogamy represent the primary ideal. Nonetheless, today the possibility that middle-classness may be based on a community of socio-economic achievements and cultural orientations that crosses (limited) caste and religious boundaries is also promoted. In this light, marriages involving Nambudiris, Nairs, Syrian-Christians, or other Indian upper castes place the couple in a position that does not require the complete abandonment of caste identity. Simultaneously, caste identity is being marginalized in the name of more fluid, and sometimes more rewarding, connections. In these circumstances, children born out of hybrid marriages can follow different directions in their own marriages. For example, they may enter into an endogamic arranged marriage with someone from (p.193) either their father’s or mother’s caste. In other cases, they may enter into what we can define as a parallel marriage market of arranged hybrid marriages. Parents search through family connections for spouses who are known to have a mixed family background and who may perhaps encounter some difficulties in entering into ‘properly’ arranged endogamic marriages.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The reintegration of the couple into the community is more difficult in those circumstances in which hybrid marriages cut across the lines of legitimate upper-status middle-classness, as the stories of Narayanan and Umadevi have shown. In these cases, the mediating role of selected relatives in bridging the gap between the couple and the community becomes even more central. The couple is sometimes supported emotionally and materially by such relatives, and the couple’s reintegration is frequently partial and contextually determined. For instance, at family and community celebrations I attended during fieldwork Nambudiris with upper-status spouses were usually invited and mingled with the guests in a relaxed way. The lower-status spouses and children of Nambudiris were also usually being invited to private family celebrations and regularly gained access to grand-parents’ houses. However, there were still tensions around their participation in religious activities or their attendance at more formal celebrations in ancestral houses due to status and purity considerations.11 Those with direct experiences of marriage to a lower-status spouse, particularly women, might resort to rhetoric emphasizing the emotional rewards of such unions and the pedagogical value of lower-status communities’ sacrifices in order to achieve class mobility in the face of caste elitism, as opposed to the ‘modern’ negligence of caste considerations (this being a privilege of high-status middle-class families). These considerations warn us against identifying the longstanding presence of hybrid marriages in Nambudiri history as a source of erosion of community norms or as illustrating the ‘easy’ family handling of such unions. Based on the present analysis, however, it would be wrong to state that the reintegration of hybrid marriages into family practices and community morals has not altered perceptions of endogamic norms. Many middle-class families today have an ambivalent attitude to endogamy. Even when endogamy is advanced as an ideal, its suitability in practice is often valued in accordance with longer family or community histories and with the demands of the present. (p.194) Past hybrid marriages are recalled in the present to show the historical instability of norms: like endogamy, exogamic practices developed at critical moments in Nambudiri histories as possible family life alternatives. The fatalistic attitudes of many parents towards their children’s future marriages (cf. Donner 2002), partly build on the recognition that marriage norms have always been open to individual, family, and community contestations. The suitability of endogamy for the present day is questioned in the light of the recognition that collective upward mobility as well as happy family life has also been achieved in the past through hybrid marriages.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity I wish to return here to the story of Radha, as discussed previously, in order to analyse how her experience of an arranged hybrid marriage with a Nair in 1954 led her to redefine the meanings of her daughter’s marriage four decades later. In 1992 her daughter Perveez, having completed her engineering degree in Chennai in 1984, returned home with the news that she intended to marry an Ezhava man who himself had a degree in engineering and the prospect of employment in Kuwait. Radha and her husband accepted this choice, and celebrated the marriage by inviting a wide range of relatives: Some came reluctantly, some did not come … some shared our happiness for Perveez …. In any case, I felt I should not do the mistakes my relatives did in the past … isolating me. She had our support and we made sure the family as much as possible was behind her. In any case, marrying someone of your own community or someone your community had chosen for you does not mean that you will have an easier life …. Radha’s decision to accept her daughter’s marriage is only partly conceived in continuity with her own marriage. Certainly, her own conjugal experience allowed room for sympathy with and emotional understanding of her daughter’s choice. As she commented: ‘I have never been so particular about Perveez marrying someone from neither my community … nor a Nair man …’ Her respect for her daughter’s choice was rooted in her own unwillingness to unquestioningly accept family norms, and from her own critique of the disdain her family had reserved for her in the past. Against those who would promote arranged marriages within the community as the preferred norm, Radha’s view is that an inter-caste marriage chosen by the spouses may generate no more problems than would either an endogamic or hybrid marriage imposed on the couple. (p.195)

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Like Radha, many middle-class families I spoke with drew from past experiences of being outcast and marginalization, as well as from more rewarding memories of hybrid marriages, to question the normativity of endogamy. People’s dispositions towards a more contextual and flexible application of endogamic norms were accompanied by a critical evaluation of the kin–caste nexus. Kin relations are not only made meaningful among contemporary middle classes in relation to their capacity to embed the individual within a community of birth.12 Rather, they are made meaningful, challenged, and remade via consideration of the emotional, relational, and material possibilities they have disclosed in people’s affective lives, as well as in temporal class trajectories. Kinship across caste divides is conceived as possible and rewarding in so far is it provides the subject with the warmth and support that is seen as lacking in more conventional family settings. In this light, many families accept today the possibility of love and/or hybrid marriages by drawing from family histories emphasizing how a Nair daughter-in law, an Ezhava co-wife, or a Christian husband were able to care for and emotionally fulfil the needs of family members, or to provide them with better life prospects. Generational histories of hybrid marriages also nuance our understanding of present individual positioning with respect to the community. Many Nambudiris who experienced hybrid marriages seemed to me less inclined to see themselves as either outcasted or reintegrated subjects. While hybrid marriages opened spaces of uncertainty in individual identity, they did not necessarily—or not uniquely—result in people feeling a sense of loss with respect to community belonging. As stated above, these marriages were also conceived as a way to transform the collectivity in specific historical moments, while also linking Nambudiris to more progressive strata. Furthermore, hybrid caste backgrounds need not translate into the individual necessity to choose one collectivity, which the subject is willing or allowed to be part of. More often than not, they generate desires to traverse different social domains and to gain as much as possible from heterogeneous contexts (Mines 1999). As the 28-year-old son of a Nambudiri mother and a low-caste Ashari father told me: I am quite comfortable in both environments … I see my relatives from both sides, with some I get on well, with others not. But this happens also if you have both parents from the same community. And to those who (p. 196) ask me where I belong, or to those who say that I cannot be a Nambudiri I reply that many families claiming Nambudirithan have many skeletons in the closet and better stay silent!! I think that the beauty of my family is exactly that is made by very different people … that you can mingle with everyone.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity In this passage the possibility of family conflicts arising from hybrid marriages is normalized by referring to the fact that kinship is always open to conflicts independently of caste affiliation. As in the context of the Kolkata urban middle classes analysed by Donner (2002: 93–4), dichotomous stances opposing the safety of arranged marriages to the riskiness of love unions are rejected in view of the conflict and disappointment that may also characterize arranged marriages. Yet, here this logic extends also towards a more permissive inscription of hybrid marriages in family strategies. Certainly, as in the past, caste membership today can be denied to those who have entered into hybrid marriages and to their children. But possible rejection does not stand alone in voicing normative community positions, against which the agency of the couple is judged. Rather, more critical stances enter into dialogue with fragments of Nambudiri society emphasizing either the unimportance of caste or caste as an impediment to the achievement of middle-class status, or that the relevance of hybrid marriages for the reformation of a Nambudiri collectivity. This partially explains why people with a mixed family background may today feel quite comfortable in claiming their Nambudiri identity, while also connecting this to a more heterogeneous social milieu of middle-class Malayaliness.

Debating Love Marriages Today

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Lionel Caplan’s analysis of Anglo-Indian marriage histories (1998) highlights how the motives and directions underlying contemporary love marriages, while being rooted in colonial and postcolonial experiences, have also changed in recent decades. Available data show how hybrid marriages have continued to represent an opinion for Nambudiris since the early 1990s. In this timeframe they have tended to involve Nambudiri women and to cut across a wider range of communities, whereas the involvement of Nambudiri men’s is lesser than in previous decades and more frequently involves upper-status spouses. Some reasons for this difference will become apparent, but it (p.197) is important to stress first that these marriages have been progressively embedded in wider folk debates on ‘modern love marriages’ (purogmanam sneha vivaham).13 The meaning given to this expression resembles in many respects those offered to Henrike Donner (2002: 87) by (lower) middle-class Kolkata dwellers. It stresses the prior agency of the couple to initiate a relationship rather than the centrality of parental authority in selecting a spouse. When I asked my interlocutors what they meant by ‘love marriages’ they often referred to the ‘unplanned’ nature of the couple’s acquaintance and their reciprocal feelings. Folk discourses also highlight youth determination to present their choices as legitimate and, on the other hand, parental duty to take their children’s prospects seriously. Fuller and Narasimhan note how, among Tamil Nadu middle classes, love marriages are often deemed to be the result of ‘young people’s unfettered choices’ (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008: 751). Against this backdrop, a model of ‘companionate marriage’ is emerging and reflects the mutual collaboration of parents and children in pursuing marriages which take into account both youth aspirations towards ‘emotional satisfaction’ (Fuller and Narasimhan 2008b: 751) and the experience and wisdom of elder kin. In the context of the present analysis, these two models—love marriages and companionate marriages—are not understood as being in a continuum. In common with the past, both parents and prospective spouses combine personal desires and pragmatic considerations in their marriage ideas. Care is here a key criterion: the capacity of the other partner to look after the spouse economically, relationally, and emotionally, as well as his/ her sensibility and respect towards possible differences in family habits that might result from belonging to a different community. In making sense of their love marriages, couples often advanced explanations in which personal aspirations took into account the expectations of their respective families, and whether or not their parents would approve and understand the reasons behind their choices. Similarly, parents are often keen to recognize pragmatism in their children’s decisions as well as the value of desire or attraction. Ravi, a 48-yearold doctor living in Kochi, commented on his daughter’s intention to marry a Nair man:

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity My daughter is not a reckless person, she is a knowledgeable girl, she has always behaved well and she is well educated, responsible. I believe that she has taken into consideration many things before deciding to marry him and to introduce him to us. (p.198) Another parent commented on his daughter’s decision to marry an Ezhava man: In principle I would have been happier if she had married someone from our own community. But Badhra is now an independent woman: she is a lawyer, also politically active in women’s rights associations, and she knows what she is doing. We cannot object, it would not be appropriate … we have to respect her choice, we are decent people … too many sufferings we had in the past for people’s opposition to youths’ demands. Parents’ reactions to the news of relatives or friends having entered into love marriages reveal a mixture of surprised curiosity, knowing premonition and selfinstilled confidence about youth decisional skills. These attitudes draw from different historical repertoires. As the passages above imply, they are partly rooted in engagement with past marriage-related conflicts and resulting apprehensions about new generational conflicts. Parents’ condemnation of possible violent or outcasting practices also reflects Nambudiris’ subscription to a wider Malayali developmentalist ethos (Devika 2007b), centred on the invocation of the erosion of traditional hierarchies and of the progressive nature of the state. Nambudiris often associated violent reactions against the couple with ‘north Indian’ ways of dealing with love marriages and the possibility of inter-caste unions and contrasted them with the more permissive treatment hybrid marriages receive in contemporary Kerala.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Typical middle-class discourses on decency and respectability also hold relevance here. Sarah Dickey (2012) importantly notes how contemporary selfascribed middle-class identities emphasize, among other things, the importance of decency and deliberation in the aesthetic and behavioural presentation of the self. These ideas, Dickey argues, draw from traditionally high-caste values but simultaneously seek validation by other middle classes (Dickey 2011). Among Nambudiris, disenchanted attitudes towards love marriages unravel a concern with the avoidance of impulsive and uncontrolled reactions and with the need to attain a more reflexive handling of situations. In the context of marriage, being ‘decent’ for Nambudiris meant—not reacting strongly, violently, or vengefully against a proposed union in the name of official caste or family rules. Interestingly, while ideas of decency and deliberation drew in principle from upper-caste repertoires, they were not recognized by my acquaintances as (p. 199) practically inhabiting their traditional status as brahmins. In this light we should read Ravi’s somewhat reluctant acceptance of her daughter’s marriage to an Ezhava man, by asserting the backwardness of brahmins’ openly discriminatory attitudes against youth and lower castes in the past. Indeed, as mentioned above, the official acceptance of hybrid marriages with lower-caste women is also part of rhetoric of decency condemning past ‘uncontrolled’ male Brahmin sexual indulgence. Abhigyan, whose son married a Tamil woman from a low-caste, discussed his son’s need to behave responsibly: In the past Nambudiri men were sleeping here and there … no family control and they also had many sexual relations with lower-caste women. Today, if you really wish to do so you have to act in a respectable way: if you like a woman from a lower caste you have to marry her, and not pretending to act as an old jenmi. My son is a good person, he really cares for her, and always acted as a gentleman. Like Abhigyan, other people I spoke with stressed how inter-caste relations should in many cases be re-inscribed within the domain of more legitimate conjugal sexuality. The emphasis placed on the capacity of sons to take on responsibility and to care for the loved one marks a move away from a stigmatized form of aristocratic behaviour.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity In the cases of potentially thorny marriages, the educational and professional background and international connections of the spouse may be important factors in impacting on the likelihood and extent of family ostracism. In two cases of marriage between a Nambudiri woman and a Muslim man which I saw, the marriage was officially celebrated with a civil ceremony. The reception was hosted in a private marriage hall and was attended by family members (though not all of them). The idea that a hybrid union resulting from a love marriage should not be left to hidden or extemporary arrangements or ritualization was common in the city and (albeit to a lesser degree) in Krishnapuram. Parents were often involved in debating what settings, rituals, or reception would be most appropriate to provide the union with a certain degree of codification without at the same time making the event stately and pretentious. Families often stated that the celebration of hybrid love marriages should fit somehow in between total mimesis and open display, and should be shaped by principles of sobriety. Middle-class marriages between upper-caste Hindus were at times celebrated in the house of one of (p.200) the spouses’ parents, and involved separate rituals: veli rituals were followed for Nambudiris while the nonNambudiri spouse followed those ritual procedures conceived as proper to their caste/family tradition. In the case of marriage with a lower caste or a non-Hindu, civil marriage and a reception in a private marriage hall constituted a preferred option. There are predictably different degrees of variability between the official—often aesthetic14—acceptances of hybrid love marriages and the realities of parental and conjugal relations. In terms of locality, the rhetoric of decency and deliberation is emphasized far more in urban settings while in rural ones more controversial attitudes surface. While in Krishnapuram I did not come across of practices of outcasting or direct violence promoted against a non-Nambudiri spouse,15 spouses’ narratives pointed out how post-marital relations in villages were often fraught with more ostracism, not so much from parents themselves but from some kin and neighbours. Couples often lamented that while their social life was much more relaxed in Kochi, it was less so when visiting their parents in the village. Badhra, one of my closest friends, a Nambudiri woman married to a Pulaya man, frequently stressed how the official acceptance of her family and her friends of her marriage had not really translated subsequently into spontaneous and deep emotional relations. While Badhra never stopped visiting her parents and other Nambudiri families in her native village, bringing along her husband and daughter, she stated that beyond the ‘good manners’ of her polished caste fellows no one had shown real affection or concern for her three-year-old daughter: My marriage was celebrated, and many people come. Just to show off, to make people believe that today Nambudiris are progressive and modern … but in the reality they keep having a lot of prejudices against people like my husband. Page 35 of 47

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity The treatment Bhadra’s marriage received stemmed not only from her husband’s caste, but also from the fact that—in this case—class attainments could not compensate for his humble origins. In this context, Bhadra’s family—who were known in the village to be traditionally involved in the Communist Party—felt compelled to officially accept the marriage to keep the face of progressiveness intact, while reserving discriminatory attitudes for the everyday reality of kin relations. (p.201) Contemporary experiences and narratives of love marriages address two important transformations that have intensified among Nambudiris since the mid-1980s: migration and reduction in family size. Youth mobility for educational and labour purposes has considerably increased, though mobility is often gradual and depends on family assets. Middle-upper-class children are sent to Kochi or Thiruvananthapuram for college education and often attain a degree in Indian cities before trying to find a good job abroad. Lower-middle-class Nambudiri families sometimes receive support from relatives in Kerala or Indian cities to allow their children to study, with a view to future migration possibilities. Young Nambudiris today frequently hold higher educational degrees and have more exposure to Indian and international contexts than those parents who have stayed in Kerala. This intergenerational change sometimes underpins both parents’ and children’s conceptualisation of love marriages as resulting from the more knowledgeable position of younger generations. This applies particularly in the case of youngsters working in the IT industry in Indian cities or abroad, which has attracted a growing number of Nambudiris in recent decades.16 Parents frequently stressed how their children were experimenting with new working lives and how more prestigious jobs had given them a sense of independence and renewed security in asserting their own choices. As one teacher told me about his son’s marriage to a Bengali Brahmin: They both work in Delhi as engineers and they will soon move to the States. They see [each other] every day, work together, they took a master together in JNU … They know their own words better than what I do … so somehow they are better placed to decide about their marriage. I have always lived here in Kochi!!

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Parents often recognized that, in creating an exclusive milieu endowed with its own rules and codes, new job sectors endowed youngsters with the necessary skills to evaluate potential conjugal partners. In the above case, a generational shift from the father’s middle-lower status position towards the higher educational and professional status of the son combines with future exposure to international contexts to legitimize the greater suitability of a personal conjugal choice. However, migration also frequently acts as a potential substitute for past practices of outcasting in the case of less desirable hybrid marriages. The prospect of the couple’s transfer abroad may generate (p.202) parental anxiety,17 but it also allows families and communities to subscribe to an official rhetoric of acceptance while maintaining a spatial and relational distance from the implications of hybrid marriages. On the couple’s side, the prospect of relatively better jobs and an independent life abroad allow them a degree of carefreeness regarding family and community restrictions. Many younger couples working abroad commented on the fact that it was relatively easier to live out their relationships in their migrant destinations than in Kerala.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Migration overlaps with changing family sizes in several different ways. For parents, the acceptance of love marriages is often motivated by the fact of having only one or two children, who often live in migrant destinations. The insecurity generated by the potential lack of future care and emotional support in the event of a break in family relations often make parents more inclined to accept their children’s marital choices. Parvathi, an ageing Nambudiri widow, moved from Krishnapuram to Kochi to live closer to her daughter and her Muslim son-in-law, who had built a modern brick house after years of work in Saudi Arabia. At the time of my fieldwork Parvathi’s younger son was still working in Riyadh, so she had no other relatives to look after her. During our conversations she stressed her unwillingness to live in the same house with her son-in-law, advancing relatively common reasons (among Malayalis), around the incompatibility in food, rituals, and dressing habits between ‘different community cultures’ (Osella and Osella 2000). Nevertheless, she was adamant in stating that her daughter took good care of her and that she also entertained good relations with her son-in-law’s family. Children, while seeing possibilities in migration to pursue personal desires and aspirations, are often concerned with how their personal choices might impact on filial relations and on their capacity to care for their parents. Young Nambudiri men tended, in principle, to refrain from the possibility of marrying out of their caste in the name of heightened filial responsibilities.18 Frequent discourses addressed the commitment sons should hold towards their parents in small family contexts. The fact that parents can in many cases rely on only one male child impacts on the future marriage plans of sons: introducing a woman from a different community into their parents’ house is deemed to generate tensions and to impede their embodiment of a model of the ‘caring son’. These concerns also exist among Nambudiri women and, (p. 203) in common with young men, there were many instances of hybrid premarital relationships being ended in the name of subsequent caste endogamy. Still, the Nambudiri women I spoke with showed less concern with caste or religious membership when asserting the legitimacy of their marriages and reflecting on their commitment towards the care of their parents. Reversing in a way the discourse of their male counterparts, my acquaintances often stressed how the need to renegotiate care and affective relations in a context of heightened family vulnerability should lead parents to set aside obsolete concerns with caste exclusivity. In doing so, they drew from generational experiences of their foremothers while also building on their exposure to different educational, professional, and migration contexts.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Inter-caste marriages—and marrying out more generally—have recently (re)gained centrality in academic debates, particularly in relation to (upper and lower) middle-class expansion in urban areas (Béteille 1996; Grover 2009; Mody 2008) and in the diaspora (Osella and Osella 2000; Twamley 2013). This work has pointed out how, even in urban contexts, love marriages continue to be mainly endogamic at caste and locality level (Donner 2002; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008), although spaces of negotiability exist if the marriage involves closer castes or different nationalities (Donner 2002; Osella and Osella 2000). As such, inter-caste marriages have been analysed as one of the possible expressions of contemporary love marriages, the latter being differently understood as those where personal choice precedes, sometimes overlaps, and at times clashes with parental authority in arranging the union (Donner 2002; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008b; Mody 2008). In this literature, and with reference to the wider context of India, the notion of ‘arranged love marriages’ hinges crucially on caste endogamy and parental approval. In a partly different vein, present understanding and practices of (love and/or) marriages across community boundaries are to be considered to a considerable extent as the result of the ‘traditional’—and unique—marriage system of Nambudiris, as well as of the political meanings that both endogamic and hybrid marriages held at different times of this community history and activism. Rather than exclusively measuring the acceptability (p.204) of contemporary love marriages against a stable and dominant norm of caste endogamy, my Nambudiri acquaintances drew from an historical awareness of the instability—and unpredictable outcomes—of both community endogamy and exogamy and of the pathways of mobility that both models have either inhibited or allowed in their personal and family life. The adoption of an historical perspective on (love and arranged) hybrid marriages allows us to nuance the assumption that certain unions are predominantly the product of 1990s neo-liberalizing India, and to locate present forms of conjugality in a longer history of middle-class formation which takes into consideration continuities and novelties between colonial times and postcolonial Kerala.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Genealogies hold relevance in this process, and assume new meanings in the light of the many coexisting ways this practice is understood today among middle-class Nambudiris. Genealogical models have usually been understood as premised around ideas of sequence, essence, and transmission (Bamford and Leach 2009; Bouquet 1996; Bourdieu 1977), the latter being specifically rooted in elite concerns with pedigree. By drawing from recent reinterpretations of genealogies and by linking these to current scholarly debates on love marriages this chapter has attempted to offer a longer historical perspective on the relation between class mobility and changing marriage ideals and practices. Genealogical practices among Nambudiris today encompass many different coexisting styles and aspirations, with considerations of purity and status often leading genealogists to obscure or marginalize those events that are not in line with class and caste concerns. Yet, this tendency coexists with a genealogical interest in seeking and valuing in the present specific stories of encounter, dependence, and exchange across lines of caste and religious difference. In this respect, my interlocutors did not uniquely conceive genealogies as a means of resisting perceived forms of increasing social heterogeneity (see Taylor and Crandall 1986). Rather, genealogies unravel the multi-layered and ambivalent relations contemporary middle-class Nambudiri entertain with the emotional, practical, and relational realities of those hybrid marriages that differently inhabit family and community histories. Genealogies, I suggest, support and provide a background for what Lauren Erdreich (2006) defines as marriage talks: people’s (p.205) willingness, and sometimes their need, to share with an audience their conjugal desires and concerns, while also linking these to an appreciation of the social, economic, and political conditions of their lives. Erdreich suggests that in neoliberal contexts marriage talks are important sites in which to map claims of social differentiation from perceived past backwardness by invoking the modernity of personal intimacy. But she also notes how modern promises of intimacy, while ascribing legitimacy to personal realizations, have to confront with divisive lines of belonging, and with changing family and social expectations.19 The analysis developed in this chapter has suggested how contemporary understanding of love marriages in Kerala, and of the related possibility of crossing genealogical lines of community belonging, is rooted in a longer history of political reforms and of class (downward and upward) mobility. These processes, while predicating the greater suitability of rigid community contours, have also opened spaces in which the relation between the person, kin, and the collectivity has taken unpredictable directions. In contemporary middle-class understandings of love marriages, ideals of endogamy and caste belonging coexist with the recognition that the possibility of being part of a ‘community of birth’ is not automatically—or not always—a preferred option.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Contemporary debates on love marriages bring together people’s temporal understandings of the many sides of what might be constituted by a happy conjugal life: the need for emotional rewards, the sacrifice of personal care, and devotion in view of possible social ostracism, the desirable prospects of security and social mobility as well as the attainment of social recognition by others. These considerations create spaces where the ‘community of birth’ can be immolated in the name of more rewarding family experiences or more solid life prospects. The temporal location of hybrid marriages within a longer community history also allows spaces for the negotiation of marriage norms. Past official rejection of such unions can leave way to an official—if sometimes purely aesthetic—acceptance of hybrid marriages in the name of modern class status. At the same time, cumulative changes in generational relations, migration, and family structures can also allow people to assert the substantial legitimacy of hybrid marriages and of the resulting marital lives. (p.206) Table 5.1 Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages among Nambudiri men and women, 1877–2005 Nambudiri Brahmin Men

Nambudiri Brahmin Women

Bride Caste/ Religion

Bride Caste/Religion

Marriage Year (pre-1930)

Marriage Year (pre-1930)

1. Nair

1922

1. Nair

1877

2. Varma

1925

2. Pulaya

1899

3. Nair

1927

3. Nair

1909

4. Varma

1928

(1930-49)

(1930-49)

4. Nair

1931

5. Nair

1935

5. Varma

1934

6. Ezhava

1937

6. Ezhava (exUntouchable)

1935

7. Varma

1938

7. Nair

1939

8. Tamil Muslim

1945

8. Ezhava

1940

9. Varma

1948 (1950-69)

10. Syrian Christian

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1950

(1950-69) 9. Punjabi Kshatrya

1952

10. Warier

1954

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity

Nambudiri Brahmin Men

Nambudiri Brahmin Women

Bride Caste/ Religion

Bride Caste/Religion

Marriage Year

Marriage Year

11. Varma

1956

11. Ezhava

1958

12. Nair

1956

12. Nair

1958

13. Nair

1958

13. Muslim

1961

14. Varma

1959

14. Bengoli Brahmin

1965

15. Syrian-Christian

1960

15. Nair

1968

16. Jewish

1962

16. Ezhava

1969

(1970-89)

(1970-89)

17. Nair

1971

17. Syrian-Christian

1970

18. Warier

1972

18. Nair

1972

19. Ashari (OBC)

1974

19. Malayala Embrandiri Brahmin

1979

20. Latin Catholic

1974

20. Syrian Christian

1979

21. Syrian-Christian

1975

21. Muslim

1980

22. Pulaya (exUntouchable)

1976

22. Ezhava

1980

23. Nair

1979

23. Ashari (OBC)

1980

24. Nair

1982

24. Warier

1980

25. Gujarati Patel

1983

25. Ezhava

1985 (Div.)

(p.207) 26. Warier

1986

26. Nair

1984

27. Tamil Brahmin

1988

27. Ashari (OBC)

1984

28. Tamil Brahmin

1989

28. Ezhava + Pulaya (second marriage)

1995

29. Pulaya

1987

30. Nair

1988

(1990-9) 29. Bengoli Brahmin

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1990

1986 (Div.)

(1990-9) 31. Nair

1991

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity

Nambudiri Brahmin Men

Nambudiri Brahmin Women

Bride Caste/ Religion

Bride Caste/Religion

Marriage Year

30. Warier/SyrianChristian

1990

31. Varma/Punjabi Brahmin

1992 (Div.)

Marriage Year

32. Bengoli Brahmin

1993

33. Nair

1994

32. Nair

1994

34. Latin Catholic

33. Ezhava/SyrianChristian

2002

35. Ezhava

1994

34. Bengali Brahmin

2005

36. Tamil Brahmin

1995

35. Tamil Low Caste

2008

37. Nair

1996

38. Ezhava

1997

39. Ezhava

1998

40. Paraya

1999

41. Nair

1999

42. Potti Malayala Brahmin

High Caste/Status: Nair, Varma, Warier, Syrian-Christians, Other Brahmin/Kshatrya Low Caste/Status: Ezhavas, Pulaya, Paraya, Ashari, Latin Catholic, Muslims.

(p.208)

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1999 (Div.)

43. Warier

2000

44. Muslim

2000

45. Pulaya

2001

46. Latin Catholic

2001

47 Muslim

2001

48. Nair

2002

49. Tamil Brahmin

Source: Author.

1994 (Div.)

2005 (Div.)

50. Jewish

2005

51. Nair/SyrianChristian

2005

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity Notes:

(1.) In this context I use the expression ‘hybrid marriages’ to refer to unions across different caste, religious, and national lines of belonging. I am not fully happy with it, but I find it more suitable than a term like ‘mixed marriages’, as it implies to a lesser extent the pre-existence of well-defined and separated communities. It is also more encompassing than the ‘term inter-caste marriages’, as it takes into account marriages across different religions and nationalities.

Graph 5.1 Inter-caste and inter-religious marriages involving Nambudiri men and women, 1877–2005 Source: Author.

(2.) In relation to Indian widespread preference for endogamy, Johnathan Parry distinguishes between primary unions, which constitute the marriage union par excellence, and secondary unions which usually arise following divorce or extramarital relationships. The first typology is understood to represent the endogamic marriage par excellence, and is centered on ideals of indissolubility, strict caste regulation, and community prestige. In secondary unions the scope for individual choice is greater and is it easier to breach endogamous boundaries (Parry 2001: 786–9). (3.) See also Chapter 4 and Chapter 7. (4.) Raychaudhuri (2000: 369) shows how stigmatized child-marriage practices among Bengali Hindu bhadralok did not ‘preclude romantic attachment’ or the establishment of companionate relationships. (5.) See, for instance, the popular Malayali novel Indulekha, written by O. Chandumenon in 1889 and published in many English and Malayalam versions. Also see the recent diary of Devaki Nilayamgode (2011) on the contrast between the past unpretentious and yet insipid aesthetic of antharjanam, on the one hand, and the beauty and attractiveness of Nair women on the other. Past and present public representations of Nair women are also influenced by colonial fascination with and stigmatization of matrilineal women as objects of undisciplined sexual desire (see Kodoth 2001). (6.) See later in this chapter.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity (7.) See V.T. Bhattathiripad (1938), An Introduction to the System of Inter-caste Marriages, and E.M.S. Nambudiripad 1999 [1944]. However, there are important differences between the positions of the two reformers. V.T. Bhattathiripad more adamantly identifies inter-caste marriage as the most important, if not the only, way to dissolve caste exclusivity and to achieve a more modern and equal society. In this light, V.T. Bhattathiripad advocates for the equal rights of Nambudiri men and women to marry outside their caste. In a different vein, E.M.S. Nambudiripad seems to remain attached to caste endogamy as the ideal primary option in forging a novel Nambudiri collectivity. In his 1944 speech to the 34th YKS Ongaloor meeting, E.M.S. Nambudiripad eloquently links the immorality of men’s inter-caste marriages—namely sambandham—to the resulting persistent spinsterhood of Nambudiri women. He therefore provocatively argues for women’s right to inter-caste marriages as a way to challenge men’s indulgence in sambandham. The following passage is particularly revealing, ‘As long as there is the belief that a separate community called Namboodiri must and will exist this is the correct attitude. […] But at this time when Namboodiri women do not have the freedom for intercaste marriage, each Namboodiri who marries outside the community helps to enforce spinsterhood on a girl of his community; he is thus doing an immoral and anticommunity act. The Sabha and members of the community must work to repulse each Namboodiri from this. It is not enough to preach against sambandham like this, there must be preaching for the intercaste marriage of Namboodiri women as well; as against every Namboodiri who marries a woman from another community there has to be found a Namboodiri woman to marry a man from another community. I say that a solution can be found for this problem only in that way. If Namboodiri women can obtain the freedom to marry men of other communities in principle as well as in practice, sambandham need not be prevented at all’. In this light, intercaste marriage is thus advocated less on its own terms as a way to dissolve traditional hierarchies or as an expression of women’s rights, and more as a rebuke to young men who indulge in ‘obsolete and immoral’ forms of intercaste marriage. (8.) See the analysis of Narayanan P.’s diary in Chapter 3. (9.) See Chapter 2. (10.) See Chapter 6 for a more detailed discussion on family size and folk ideas about love and care. (11.) See the discussion on the rigid boundaries governing ancestral houses in Chapter 4. (12.) I take the expression ‘community of birth’ from a relatively recent article of Andre Béteille (2007), who uses it to differentiate caste from class while recognizing the many points at which they overlap. Page 45 of 47

Recalling the Beauty of Impurity (13.) I was told that the term purogmanam refers to the ‘modern’ being understood more as something taking place in the present and introducing novelties with respect to the past. Its meaning in everyday discourse is not necessarily pejorative. When my interlocutors wanted to emphasize a critical attitude towards the contemporary phenomenology of love marriages they usually used another word to signify ‘modern’: parishkaram. Although this does not have a negative meaning in itself, it is colloquially adopted to signify an event or a behaviour which unwelcomingly unsettles customary social expectations. (14.) See also the analysis of the aesthetic politics underpinning middle-class conception of the ‘open house’ developed in the previous chapter. (15.) I do not mean to imply that such instances do not exist. My analysis is partial insofar as it takes into account mainly the perspectives and experiences of Nambudiris or of individuals married to a Nambudiri spouse. (16.) See Chapter 2. (17.) See Chapter 6. (18.) It should be noted that Nambudiri men’s more limited involvement in hybrid marriages in the last two decades might be partly explained by the fact that young middle-class Nambudiri men—more often than women—are today engaged in contemporary politics of caste identity emphasizing the greater legitimacy of intra-caste unions. See Chapter 7.

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Recalling the Beauty of Impurity (19.) Erdreich develops her analysis in the context of Palestinian women’s marriage talk about possible intimacy with Jewish men in the state of Israel. She questions the relation between neoliberal democracy and intimacy developed by Giddens by showing how, in the context of Israel, this kind of intimacy— emphasizing the centrality of personal choices and conjugal love—coexists with another form of intimacy emphasizing individual bondage to genealogically conceived state membership. In this respect, individuals have to constantly negotiate between their individual desires and the limits imposed by Arab citizenship in the Israeli ethnocratic state, where hybrid marriages between Arabs and Jewish citizens are perceived as betraying ‘pure’ national genealogies (see also Povinelli 2002). There are many differences between the context of Erdreich’s analysis and contemporary neo-liberal Kerala, not least because the longstanding history of hybrid marriages in the framing of Malayali middleclasses allows perhaps comparatively more room for marriage negotiability. Nevertheless, Erdreich’s discussion is relevant insofar as it unravels the tensions between personal intimacy and family/group membership emerging from marriage talks, and how these are linked to wider aspirations and processes of social mobility. Furthermore, although Hindu–Muslim marriages are not the focus of the present analysis, Erdreich’s work can also shed light on the tensions underpinning such marriages in contemporary Kerala and India.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords Chapter six discusses how different family models— joint, nuclear, transnational, among others—are linked to class mobility among Nambudiri migrant families. The question of the relation between family size, sterilization and citizenship is analysed to show how sticking to the ‘one-child’ model is made meaningful by referring to a wider colonial history of family reproduction and creates dilemmas in the present. The chapter discusses how histories of procreation, childbirth, and care are recalled to illustrate the progressive move from a sterile community to a responsible community. While the sterile community describes a colonial past in which few Nambudiri children were born or accepted due to orthodox kinship norms, the responsible community accepts the sacrifice represented by sterilization in order to achieve models of modern motherhood and fatherhood. Changing family sizes, if combined with generational forms of migration, also produces anxieties among middle-class families on elderly and children care. Keywords:   joint family, nuclear family, sterilization, reproductive strategies, care, international mobility, class anxieties

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration GENEALOGICAL INTEREST AMONG MIDDLE-CLASS Nambudiris draws from considerations on the many ways generational conflicts, migration, and class mobility reshape the affective contours and everyday nature of family relations. On the one hand, genealogical interest reflects a widespread sense of insecurity related to the perceived weakening (or loss) of kin relations, and a resulting search for connections that might provide ontological security by including the self within a recreated collectivity (Basu 2005; Erben 1991). The descendants of pioneer Nambudiri migrants, who have left Krishnapuram since the 1930s and who live today in India or abroad, have often encountered difficulties in keeping wide kin connections in Kerala. This has partly been due to the disruptive nature of their parents’ migration and to prolonged periods of isolation. For them, genealogical practice constitutes a way to give new significance in the present to past relations that were formerly deemed tainted with ambivalence, tensions, or silences. Yet, and perhaps surprisingly, the researching of genealogical links does not always translate into individual interest in rebuilding kin connections, due to unsatisfactory encounters or persistent conflicts. On the other hand, genealogies represent an enterprise through which the individual migrant highlights personal and family class (p.210) transformations. This is mirrored for instance in some Nambudiris’ emphasis on tracing connections with those relatives who have engaged with skilled migration and who are successful professionals abroad, while minimizing the presence of embarrassing stories of less successful migrant relatives. In this context, genealogical records aim at making an ideological connection between upwardly mobile individuals and selected stories of kin’s privileged forms of mobility.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration In this chapter I discuss how ideas and experiences of the family are shaped by people’s gendered engagement with migration. I begin by analysing the relation between joint family living and ‘modern’ nuclear and small families,1 the latter often being seen as an outcome of colonial reforms and as a symbol of contemporary Malayali middle-class status. This analysis also shows how family planning and migration have deeply contributed to shape family ideals and ways of organisation centred on the nuclear/small family norm. These processes have also created space for the pursuit of alternative forms of household organization in order to meet demands relating to the growth and education of children and, particularly, demands relating to elderly care. Social reproduction—intended here as the array of work required to sustain intergenerational relations— emerges as a crucial theme, in relation to which middle classes both claim distinction in terms of morality and responsibility, but which is also a source of anxiety for the future. Family morality in relation to children and elderly care emerge indeed as a field where the established Nambudiri middle class claims renewed distinction with respect to newly mobile migrant strata (Gallo 2013). This emerges clearly in the way in which migrant remittances are made meaningful vis-á-vis confrontation with other communities. In the second part of the chapter, I delve into how money, and remittances more generally, are ascribed a social meaning in contemporary families and how both migrant men and women struggle to keep up with social expectations related to being able to economically support children and elders, on one hand, and meeting their duties as care providers ‘at a distance’, on the other.

Different Ways of Joint Living Historians have noted how the language of middle-class reformism that developed in the first decades of the twentieth century was (p.211) premised upon the invalidation of old family hierarchies and the affirmation of a model of ‘modern’ patriarchy centred around a more intimate and companionate relation between husband and wife.2 The (male) householder was expected to comply with his new duties by providing the woman with the necessary guidance and support in the ‘private’ domain of modern family life. In parallel, women were expected to meet family and social expectations by inhabiting the role of the educated and well-mannered housewife or, when possible, of the professional worker (Arunima 2003; Devika 2007b; Walsh 2008).3 The affirmation of modern models of gendered subjectivity and conjugality were therefore set in opposition to traditional forms of joint family hierarchies. Throughout the twentieth century the move towards what Devika calls the ‘small family norm’ (2008: 22) became part of the teleology of Malayali modernity and progress, and a hinge of women’s ‘liberation’ rhetoric.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration This teleological move is without doubt central in generational Malayali middleclass histories. Nevertheless, its scale, contents, and contours should not be taken for granted. While, as discussed below, the achievement of ‘small family norms’ certainly oriented the ways in which ‘modern’ kin relations were projected by Malayalis, this often coexisted in practice with more nuanced forms of family organization, the latter resulting from both practical and circumstantial needs as well as different affective desires. The decades between the 1920s and the late 1950s were witness to a progressive fragmentation and dispersion of lineages although this did not necessarily translate into a decline in joint family living. As in other Indian contexts, the joint family—rather than disappearing as a result of modernization—found new forms of existence and was assigned new importance as a source of security and comfort in period of deep social and economic transformations (Madan 1965; Vatuk 1972). A brief look at the anthropological debate on the ‘fate of the joint family’ in India is indeed useful here. The classical anthropological association between the nuclear family and modernization (Bailey 1958; Epstein 1962; Shah 1964, 1974) has been criticized since the late 1970s for its reliance on the assumption of a lineal development of residential models and family organizations and for its tendency to underplay how the nuclear family has also been an integral part of the developmental cycle of more extended families in the past (Madan 1981 (p. 212) ; Parry 1979). Specifically, the study conducted by Sylvia Vatuk (1972) in late 1960s urban India showed how the organization of joint families might result from processes of migration and mobility as a way to counterbalance situations of economic uncertainty in urban contexts as well as situations of relational and emotional fragility. More recent studies of urban middle classes in India have shown how joint living remains the ideal for many families, and often consists of a nuclear-extended unit comprising a son’s family and his parents. Joint living among urban middle classes has also recently been recognized as determinant in supporting middle-class strategies of modern education, with mothers and mothers-in-law taking up new duties and coming under pressure to provide their children and grandchildren with the necessary organizational and emotional support to succeed in private English schools (Donner 2002, 2005).

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration From different angles, recent scholarship on transnationalism has also invited scholars to consider transformations that have occurred in household meanings and functioning as a result of growing transnational practices related to migration (Gallo 2005; K. Gardner 1995; Gardner and Grillo 2002). These studies illustrate that migration has complicated the definition of a ‘household’ or a ‘family’: kinship, friendship, and neighbouring networks become central in the affective, economic, and relational organizations of ‘the family’ and render its outlines more subtle and shifting. Issues of migration and diaspora have also inspired the contemporary Indian movie industry, which has touched on the dilemma of whether Indian family values can be preserved in middle-class diasporic contexts. As noted by Uberoi (1998) and by Singh and Uberoi (1994), Indian movies, while flirting with gendered models of romance, courtship, and autonomy in depicting modern Indian families, ultimately rest on the reaffirmation of the patrilineal joint family and of parental (paternal) authority as the highest expression of ‘Indianess’. In this context, joint family life and norms are invoked in the present, often in implicit ways, to counterbalance the perceived dissolution of values that results from individual orientations towards self-gratification (Uberoi 1998: 332–3).

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration These studies invite us to consider how at both ideological and experiential levels, different family models have coexisted and sometimes overlapped among Indian middle classes. The analysis developed (p.213) in previous chapters has also highlighted several crucial features of Nambudiri families’ historical development, and it is worth returning to these briefly before we look closer at the link between family planning, migration, and care. In Nambudiri family narratives traditional class differences emerge as determinant in moulding the extent and ways of organization of ‘old’ joint family life. Among middle-class families of aristocratic origins, land properties provided a relatively secure grounding for the reproduction of joint family life, even after property partition started to take place more regularly following the enactment of colonial family policies, land reforms, and migration. Until the late 1970s, partition often led to lineage branches relocating to estate properties owned in nearby villages or city outskirts. Memories related to the decades between the 1930s and the 1970s often point to the temporal development of different forms of joint living—rather than a straightforward move from the ‘old’ joint family model towards ‘modern’ nuclear families. One key issue which can be seen to develop in many family trajectories from the 1950s onwards is that of men’s equal access to family property and to endogamic marriage. On the one hand, what we can call (with some approximation) ‘pre-reformist’ joint living is recalled as a site where family hierarchies prevented not only individual self-transformation into mature (male) householders and (female) companions but also the creation of deep affective bonds between parents and children. Memories point to how the showing of verbal and physical affection towards children by parents (and elders in general) was erased from daily life via concerns with norms, customary duties, and growing generational conflicts. On the other hand, newly established family rights are deemed to have moulded a novel family ethos based on ‘equality’ between beloved children. For a long time, sons remained the main beneficiaries of property rights and of family investment in education. However, since the late 1950s joint family life has been affected by a critical revision of ideas relating to women’s seclusion and subordination (see also Fuller and Narasimhan 2013). The idea that antharjanams should also receive good care and education is rooted in this period as a reaction to pre-reformist joint family hierarchies. Later it would go on to inspire the contemporary Nambudiri middle-class ethic of endowing both daughters and sons with similar life opportunities. I suggest that for many middle-class (p.214) families of aristocratic origins, many of the features often associated with modern family life—children’s equal educational rights, open parental affection for children, conjugal intimacy, or women’s initiation into salaried employment—partly find their roots in the form of joint living that developed in the aftermath of family and land reforms. In 2007, Nirmala Devi was a 68-year-old retired government employee living in Kochi. She recalled in the following terms how she had moved to a new family house in Kochi, aged 15: Page 6 of 34

Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration I had never had much contact with my parents in the previous old family house … there was much more severity and control, and even my mother was afraid of embracing me … Then my father with his brother decided to move to a new house here in the city: there were too many family conflicts and both my father and my uncle were progressive and could not cope with the elders. The life in the new house was different, more relaxed: there were still rules of pollutions for outsiders … but internally we were much more free in terms of movement, and of physical contact between us … I remember that my parents were embracing or kissing me much more often! We could go to school without fearing restrictions … all the daughters of the family started to have an education … we were six of us! I think we started to be a real family in that occasion …. My father, when he died, he left parts of his land and of his properties also to us, to the daughters of the family, and when we eventually partitioned the property in 1980 I also had my share of it. In the above passage, the cohabitation of different lineage branches that followed leaving the ancestral house is deemed to have generated novel forms of affective relations between parents and children. These are also made meaningful in terms of women’s greater range of movement both within and outside the house, as older spatial restrictions are deemed to have constrained also the possibility of physical expressions of family love. Similarly, as in other cases analysed, education for girls is initiated in the post-reform family setting (though it remains relatively limited in this period—the 1950s—in comparison to later decades). According to my data, the allocation of family or individual property to daughters was not frequent, but its appearance in family memories is often located in a movement between ‘old’ and renewed forms of joint living. The case studies discussed in previous chapters—particularly those of Narayanan P. and of Umadevi4—also invite us to consider the (p.215) blurred contours of caste relations that characterized novel forms of joint family life. The redefinition of joint family life was shaped also by people’s crossing of community boundaries through ‘modern’ marriages. It is not rare to find cases in which the new formation of joint family life between the 1940s and the 1960s included a man with wives from different caste backgrounds, and children. Kavitha, a 71-year-old retired doctor who lives in New Dehli, recalls how her father brought both her Nambudiri mother and his Nair wife to live in north India in 1948:

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration I must have been 12 at that time … my father had one child with Sunitha … my Nair amma …. I mean she was not my real mum in biological terms, but in Delhi we ended up calling her like this because we were living together. Anyway, he did not want to leave Krishnan, my brother, behind, so he took my mum, me and my two brothers, plus Sunitha and Krishnan, all [to] Delhi. We lived together for many years … a big joint family, and it felt good. Certainly it would have been unthinkable in the old family back in Kerala, but my two moms worked together and supported each other while my father was at work, he was a government officer and e was very busy … and when we grew up they also started to work. We grew up in this mixed environment, we had good English education, we are today all forwardlooking, as we also enjoyed our family life … In the passage above, caste difference is marginalized in the depiction of the women’s collaboration in running the family’s new joint life in Delhi. In retrospect, women’s reciprocal support is seen not only as having allowed the children to achieve a good education but also to have made space for an enjoyable family environment, which is turn constructed as important for the development of ‘more progressive‘ subjectivities. Migration outside Kerala plays a role in potentially lessening the ostracism generated by ‘unorthodox’ forms of joint living, although this does not necessarily imply that mixed joint families did not occur within the state.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Internal or international migration also provided lower-status Nambudiris with the chance to build novel forms of joint family life. The story of Kavitha P. analysed in Chapter 3 is symptomatic of the more frequent fragmentation and dispersion of family units among poorer Nambudiri families and of how migration between the 1940s and the 1980s allowed for the reconstitution of joint family life both at home and in the diaspora. In many instances, family histories attest (p.216) to how the initial situation of small family units was counterbalanced over time by the growing ranks of newly established households. In Kerala this was made possible, thanks to migrants’ remittances and investments in newly built and bigger houses. These were usually meant to host two brothers along with their families and parents, but also more distant kin who might be in need of help. In other Indian cities, joint family life was often a preferred option because it allowed for more efficient organization of child and elderly care, as well as enabling women’s employment. Among traditionally poor Nambudiri families, overall, joint family life during these decades importantly reflected the attainment of class mobility and is recalled in the present as having expressed a new lifestyle. In these narratives the aristocratic rhetoric of the revolutionary and progressive nature of post-reform joint family life is toned down in favour of an interpretation emphasizing how the possibility of building wider forms of cohabitation symbolized the end of hardship and marginalization. The story of Ambika exemplifies this. Born into a poor Nambudiri family, Ambika moved with her parents to Chennai when she was four years old. After several years, Ambika’s paternal uncle joined them in search of better job opportunities. In Chennai the two families initially lived together in the same house to limit their expenses and to allow them to send remittances back to their parents in the village. In the 1950s, however, the two brothers purchased land in the outskirt of Kochi and built a large house to host their parents and two unmarried sisters, and to which they returned in the late 1960s. Ambika’s memories of life in the new ‘crowded’ house are moulded by ideas of betterment and improvement: Before we moved to Chennai my family was very poor … all my brothers had left home in search of work, and we were living … me, my two brothers and my parents … in a small rented house, my grandparents were alone in the original village and we could not see them much. Things changed in Chennai … my father was working in the morning in a private company as [an] accountant and then in the local temple as [a] pujari. We were not rich but we could go to school and we could also help my uncle to come and settle with us. When we saved enough we were finally able to go back to Kochi and build a good house for all of us … And we could take care also of the elderly, which would have been much more difficult in previous conditions. (p.217)

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Among lower-status Nambudiris who have experienced migration since the 1950s, class mobility is often made meaningful by referring to the capacity to take care of elderly people. The building of new houses to accommodate a wider network of kin is contrasted with earlier dispersion of relatives and with the resulting fragility of intergenerational ties, the latter often coming to symbolize precarious life conditions. The accomplishment of intergenerational reciprocity becomes integral to a wider narrative of class mobility—particularly with reference to the decades between the 1940s and 1980s—a narrative which is centred on the capacity of previously isolated families to rebuild kin relations through migration and remittances. Certainly, in some cases internal migration and the prospect of short-term return brought this possibility closer in comparison to the context of international mobility, and I will come back to this point later in the chapter. Overall, and despite the class differences analysed above, it is important to note that the development of renewed forms of joint family life between the early 1940s and the late 1970s is not recalled in middle-class memories as antithetical to the formation of relatively modernist ideals of ‘responsible parenting’, ‘family happiness’, or ‘child care’. Rather, kin memories often locate these moral imperatives in a time of transition, during which old forms of joint family were partly abandoned in order to adopt newly gendered models of kin relations. Among lower-status but upwardly mobile Nambudiri families, migration and remittances allowed the possibility of a move away from small family life towards the reconstruction of larger kin networks (and, sometimes, cohabitation). While I certainly agree that reformist conceptualizations of the family opened spaces for the reframing of modern patriarchal relations (see Devika 2007a), women’s memories also show how their experiences of joint family living in the 1940s–1980s were based on a more rewarding emotional attachment to their parents and kin, as well as on unprecedented access to education outside the home. Interestingly, a more positive evaluation of intergenerational reciprocity finds its roots in this period, with middle-class families emphasizing how parental care increased with respect to earlier family contexts as well as how children’s attachment to parents and elders slowly emerged in contrast to earlier decades marked by intergenerational conflicts and, in general, perceived greater fragility.

(p.218) Meeting Citizenship Duties

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration One important element in middle-class narratives of modern joint family life addresses the demographic growth of the community. In part of the YKS debate over family modernity, the end of the primogeniture system and caste endogamy is considered as a way to reinvigorate a collectivity whose demographic strength is felt to be incommensurably limited in comparison with larger and rising Malayali communities like the Nairs, Syrian Christians, or Ezhavas. Indeed, in Brahmin narratives demographic strength is often seen as determinant in more successful trajectories of class mobility. Particularly among young Nambudiri generations, these narratives also retrospectively incorporate a critical evaluation of the reservation policies enacted since the 1990s: the demographic strength of traditionally lower status communities is taken as a key factor in enhancing both their political representation and lobbying power at state and federal level. The fragment below, related by a young Nambudiri engineer, outlines how past family reproductive strategies are evaluated by present generations in order to highlight a perceived loss of power among Nambudiris: In the last decades many communities have benefited from getting good jobs in the government, places in good schools … that’s because they are big communities and they can influence politics. And what did we do? If we had been less stupid in the past and we had made more children, then today, even with sterilization policies we could have been a bigger and stronger community! But now we are politically weak, just a small bunch of families … and very few youth! While contemporary family planning is not directly questioned as a source of demographic control, the failure to produce a large, strong Nambudiri community is located in a past when family rules prevented successful reproductive strategies, which could have ensured community success in the present.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Available records invite us to consider that the debate over contraception that developed in Kerala from the 1930s onwards did not translate into an orientation towards drastic reduction in family size among Nambudiri families until the late 1980s. One obvious explanation for this might be the fact that there were no mass organizational birth control provisions until later decades, with the first vasectomy (p.219) camp being held in Ernakulam in 1971. Yet, it is important to note here that, just as joint family life became a renewed symbol of status regeneration, having numerous children was considered in opposition to the perceived previous decay of Nambudiri lineages. Genealogies show that the formation of new residential units between the 1940s and the 1980s was accompanied by a renewed, albeit transformed (see below), emphasis on procreation. Many upwardly mobile families—and particularly those of aristocratic origin—recalled how procreation was determinant in moving away from a sterile community. In the fragment below the fruitlessness of the collectivity holds a double meaning, in so far as it addresses both lineage reproductive strategies as well as Nambudiris’ contribution to Malayali society: When we moved to the new house, my parents were very keen to have many children …. I mean my father and his brother were appen (younger sons), so in principle they could not have their own kids, that’s why they moved out of the village, they were eager to have their own big families … Nambudiris have always contributed poorly to the well-being of Malayali society….they were selfish in the family and with the Malayalis in general, and if people like my father had not done so, we would have disappeared in all respects!! This would have been a pity because Nambudiris have much potential to contribute to the economic and cultural development of this state!! The passage above is symptomatic of a wider tendency of elder middle-class Nambudiri generations to interpret a higher birth rate as a means of achieving both family happiness and visibility in public life. A low birth rate is symbolically associated here with the waste of essentialized community qualities, like intellectual skills and economic entrepreneurship, vis-á-vis the progress of Malayali society. This concern is also present among traditionally poor Nambudiri families. Memories of these decades point to how a relatively large number of children is regarded as an outcome of improved life conditions. As one of my interlocutors related: My grandfather could not afford to marry two times, and when my grandmother got sick and could not have more children, they had to be happy with two kids … in any case they could not have afforded more. When my grandparents moved to Mumbai they were luckier, they could achieve a better position and save money, and they had five children … and could send them to school and help them to find good jobs. (p.220)

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Here, a discourse centred on the need to find a balance between available resources and reproductive strategies marks out a past of deprivation. In contrast, the betterment of life conditions is associated with the possibility of procreation, although the latter is evaluated against the concerns of affordable education and labour stability. At the same time, a closer look at genealogies allows us to avoid straightforward assumptions about a uni-directional move towards higher Nambudiri birth rates. Between the 1870s and the 1940s, the number of children born within unpartitioned lineages was usually between eight and eleven, and these children were usually born out of the householder’s marriages with more than one Nambudiri wife. From the late 1930s onwards we see a gradual reduction of the number of children born to each couple, but more couples within a single lineage becoming involved in the household’s reproductive strategies. Despite the strong emphasis placed on having children among newly constituted families, new reproductive strategies also reflect progressive family concerns over the need to find a compromise between household/community demographic growth and the (perceived) ‘rational/efficient’ management of available resources. The following extract, taken from a conversation with a 63-year-old Nambudiri business man, highlights middle-class parenthood concerns from the early 1960s: I of course did not even think of having eight or ten children … like in the past, raising them uneducated … we all see how detrimental this was for our own community. I mean, especially in a situation where they were all of one father, who often did not take care of them or died soon after the marriage … and the other uncles going here and there without a place and a family! Also Kerala and India is a poor country, we could not have too many children … that would not contribute to development …. But I was sure that I did not want less than four … with two or three you feel alone and abandoned, like many elderly do today … with this one child policy … but in my youth we were really keen to have children, I mean a decent number of children … not too many but not too little!! And we could afford [it], we were in relatively stable financial conditions if compared with my parents …

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration There are several points of interest in this passage. Ideals of reproduction and parenthood are set in an intermediate position between irrational forms of past reproductive strategies—which combined (p.221) an ‘exaggerated’ number of children with the ‘inability’ of the old householder to meet his parental obligations—and the contemporary transition towards a one-child family norm that, as will become clearer below, characterizes many Nambudiri (and Malayali) families today. A critical evaluation of the current one-child policy informs our interlocutor’s retrospective articulation of his family reproductive choices as the ideal solution to overcome the fear of community extinction, on one hand, and to endow future generations with the necessary affective, cultural, and financial resources, on the other. Interestingly, this intermediate solution is conceived as a way to build family decency, insofar as it ideally enhances Nambudiris’ presence in Malayali society without over-burdening the state demographically. Overall, genealogies reveal how between the 1940s and the late 1970s middleclass reproductive choices sought rewarding family growth and parental relations, the latter being associated with the chance to have a ‘decent’ number of children and with the improvement of children’s life styles by not falling into ‘uncontrolled’ reproduction. This might partly explain why many middle-class families of both aristocratic and lower origins continued to have an average of three or four children throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with the one-child model (or occasionally two children) becoming dominant only in the early 1990s. Devika’s analysis (2008: 126–32) of the political rhetoric that has developed around the promotion of family planning since the 1970s allows us to better understand the tension mentioned above between concerns about demographic numbers and political strength and the public appraisal of state development potentials. From the 1930s onwards public debates over birth control in Kerala increasingly sacrificed pro-natalism in favour of a strategy aimed at wealth creation. The latter required less demographic pressure on land and available resources, as well as a process of domestication of individuals and their orientation towards more efficient investment in the home and in the public arena. Fathers were called to embrace a modern model of the responsible and equitable householder. Mothers were expected to develop their parenting abilities within smaller families, and to widen their life possibilities in terms of education, work and partners as a result of being ‘liberated’ from the burden of childrearing. Importantly, Devika notes that this rhetoric aimed to bypass (p. 222) community identifications and interests and to create a direct link between the state’s interests and responsible family units. Devika suggests that the success of this mixed rhetoric of development and liberation at popular level partly allows us to understand the willing acceptance of family planning among generations of Malayalis. Yet, community history and interests also played a role in shaping individual support or denial of the legitimacy of family planning.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration On the basis of the ethnography discussed above, we might ask why this rhetoric was resisted to an extent by Nambudiris until the 1990s. For a long time, mild support for demographic growth drew from the need to overcome a past of perceived social marginality, and from the intent to build more rewarding family lives as well as reconstruct Nambudiri centrality in wider Malayali society. However, similar concerns partly underpin the progressive acceptance of family planning. For Nambudiri men who underwent vasectomy in the early 1970s, engagement with and disengagement from community bonds both played a role. On one hand, sterilization meant to detach oneself from past community carefreeness and move towards the possibility of modernization. On the other, the sacrifice of sterilization—by denying the goal of building a demographically strong Nambudiri community—was simultaneously conceived as a way to demonstrate novel forms of community membership and loyalty to Malayali modernity. Nambudiri men were sometimes keen to talk about their vasectomies as way of proving their rejections of their ancestors’ reluctance to accept family changes. Like Narayanan, whose reflections are reported below, the elderly men I talked with were highly critical of the overall disdain of their community fellows for male sterilization: I have always taken pride in what I did in the 1970s … I had three children already and when the campaign began I accepted vasectomy. Few of the Nambudiris I know did so at that time … some were critical because they thought a man should not do these things, but many told me that I was betraying the community, as we needed to have children!! But what I think is that in the past we have been lazy enough to skip family change for a long time, and that it was actually the time to prove that we were also modern and that we had learned from our past mistakes! While Narayanan’s experience is probably exceptional with respect to Nambudiri men’s reluctance towards their own sterilization, his (p.223) words reflect a wider concern with the need to detach from community history while adopting a new collective identity as modern brahmins. Elderly women, meanwhile, often remained critical towards the rhetoric of liberation implied by birth-control discourse, and of the practice of sterilization, although the daunting awareness of the past seclusion of antharjanams had an effect in toning down enthusiastic support for large families: Women of my generations did not support sterilization … I mean it is permanent, once you have [it] done you cannot change. I certainly did not want to be submerged by children and stay secluded at home … and I told my husband that I did not want more than 3, but I wanted to remain free to decide myself without operations.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Many elderly Nambudiri women I spoke with shared a critique of younger women’s acceptance towards undergoing sterilization. This critique takes into account a series of concerns relatively widespread among middle-class elderly individuals. One of the most important of these concerns is a widespread fear over what are perceived to be rapid changes in intergenerational relations as a result of reductions in family size. For the elderly women I spoke with, young people’s sterilization constitutes an often traumatic interruption of the temporal chain of emotional and material support usually expected to be generated by sons and daughters-in-law through procreation. Having many children—but also many grandchildren—is often taken as a guarantee against isolation and abandonment, whereas the prospect of only one grandchild is conceived as leading to precarious kin relations in the future. The prospect of migration plays a role here, as elderly women fear that the eventuality of the only grandchild relocating abroad will take the pleasure of grandparenting away from them. Furthermore, the middle-class elderly women I spoke with were relatively unconcerned with the need to carve some free time and space for themselves (see Donner 2005)5 out of their grandparental duties. Rather, they stressed that the happiness of spending more time with a sole grandchild did not fully compensate for the desire to ‘be busier grandmas’, as one woman put it. The fear of being evicted from kin roles by the combining effects of sterilisation and migration also draws from an encompassing critique of young couples’ autonomy, in matters of birth control and reproduction (as (p.224) opposed to their consulting elder generations first). Many elderly women related how they came to know about the operation after ‘everything was done’. Often they were keen to blame their daughters-in-law for this. In her analysis of shifting generational hierarchies between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law in the context of developing India, Penny Vera-Sanso (1999: 578–9, 584) notes that gendered family hierarchies within joint families, and particularly the dominant model of authoritarian mother-in-law versus submissive daughter-in-law, should not be taken for granted. Instead, she argues that it should be analysed by taking into consideration the intertwining effects of economic positioning and family demographics. As in the context explored by Vera-Sanso, elder Nambudiri generations evaluate household upward mobility against the issues of personal well-being and authority as well as of future security. In this light while migration and birth reduction might be accepted in principle as means of socioeconomic improvement, in practice they are felt to have considerably reworked the traditional role of younger wives as mothers of future generations.

Family Size Dilemmas

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Among younger generations, the wish to carve out autonomous spaces from the elderly combines with the questioning of parental authority by sons and daughters-in-law on the basis of their own higher educational attainments as well as of compelling social responsibilities. This emerges clearly in the narratives of younger women, who have increasingly made sterilization an integral part of their conjugal family strategy since the late 1980s. Among middle-class families, birth control is usually considered as women’s responsibility, and young men, as they have in the past, largely remain sceptical about the possibility of vasectomy. The experiences of the women I spoke with illustrate how different gender hierarchies are played out in the decision to undergo sterilization. In some cases young middle-class women discussed their frustration at sterilisation having been imposed on them by their husbands, in some instances following the abortion of a second child. In other cases, women said that sterilization was their own decision, and that they took the initiative without consulting their husband or their mother-in-law. Migration (p.225) seems to play a key role in younger couples’ orientation towards the ‘small family’ model. Reluctance among husbands to have a second child is often motivated by concern over the financial constraints this would pose. Yet, financial considerations are not the only ones taken into account. In terms of migration, the fear of not being able to financially support more than one child in the receiving context combines with anxieties over the inability to devote adequate care to children and spend time with them. The following passage, taken from an interview with a 28-year-old private company employee in Doha, reflects wider anxieties among young migrants over having more than one child: It already took me three years to bring my wife and my son here … and these three years have been a nightmare, not being able to see him, as I had visa problems and could not travel, and had very little savings. And then you condemn your child to this life, without a father, and you think that you do not have the right to have another one … you will not be able to spend enough time, to love him enough …. Krishnan, a 42-year-old bank employee in Dubai, compared his migration history with that of his parents: I was born in Tanzania, my parents were there, and then we moved back to Delhi. We were two brothers and two sisters, but life was different at that time … my parents always moved together, in Tanzania they had family members and in Delhi, even if my mother was working, we had relatives from Kerala coming to help us. But now everything is more difficult. I can be fired at any time, and I have no citizenship, my wife has to work but we are more alone, it is not easy to get a visa for my mum, and it is costly. So with my wife we decided to stop after the first child and she got the operation during one visit back to Kerala. It is not the ideal for us, but it makes us feel safer …. Page 17 of 34

Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration In comparison with elder migrant generations, particularly those who moved internally to other Indian cities between the 1940s and the 1970s, contemporary international migrants often it find far more difficult to move as a family unit at the same time. Regarding South Asian middle-class migrants in the Gulf, Neha Vora (2008) and Andrew Gardner (2011) note that the adherence of many migrant families to a nuclear and patriarchal model is not necessarily, or uniquely, a result of cultural patterns, but should also be explained (p.226) by referring to stricter visa policies enacted by Gulf states (as well as others). In this context, while the nuclear family can gradually be reconstituted through migration, ‘the extended family can only be maintained across a transnational divide’ (A. Gardner 2011: 17). As the above fragments suggest, similar considerations can apply in relation to young couples’ fears over having multiple children. In Gulf countries, lack of citizenship rights combines with uncertainties linked to precarious private sector working conditions and the growing cost of private education and health to exacerbate young men’s insecurity with regard to fulfilling the roles of both household provider and caring father. Even among more successful and relatively stable skilled migrants in the UK or the US, distance from family networks and living costs in receiving contexts plays an important part in leading couples to refrain from having more than one child. In these contexts, having only one child is considered not only as less risky in terms of family resource management but also as a way to strike a balance between time-consuming jobs, physical distance, and good quality care. For the women I spoke with, having a large number of children would affect the possibility of them joining their husbands abroad, as the cost of raising and educating more than one child in Gulf or Western countries is considered by many to be a privilege of the middle-upper classes. Some women also pointed out that sterilization allowed them to be more independent from their mothersin-law while their husbands were away. They could concentrate their energies on looking after one child without having to rely too heavily on the help and support of elder kinwomen. As in other parts of India, young middle-class Nambudiri women are concerned about the challenges of ensuring a good upbringing and education for additional children and the sharing of duties with mothers-in-law is often seen as necessary in order to achieve good parenting (see Donner 2005). In this respect, having only one child is can commonly be conceived as more conducive to successful parenting but also to being directly involved in migration and work abroad.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Women are often expected to join their husbands abroad as soon as possible, although restrictive visa policies and financial constraints may cause delays in many instances. The young middle-class Nambudiri women I talked with were very keen to detach themselves, (p.227) at least at ideological level, from a model of the ‘woman left-behind’ that they see as more characteristic of lowerstatus communities. Staying behind is seen as a symbol of lower status and of women’s marginalization, as it is deemed to result from the husband’s precarious legal and financial conditions abroad. In Krishnapuram, as well as in Kochi, fewer Nambudiri women were keen to remain in Kerala in comparison to the middle-class Christian, Nair, or Ezhava women I spoke with. The possibility of staying behind in Kerala alone for years is viewed with disdain. Many women stressed their intention to find salaried work once they were settled abroad and often preferred the prospect of taking up unskilled work abroad than staying in Kerala with their in-laws. Among educated and working Nambudiri women who had met their prospective husbands when the latter were already in the diaspora, avoiding the spectre of housewifely life meant having only one child. Overall, the increased involvement in migration flows among Nambudiri families since the 1980s might partially explain why birth control became a more widespread practice in this period. Among lower-class Nambudiri families whose migration opportunities have remained limited, the enactment of land reforms throughout the 1970s and the lack of suitable work alternatives made migration a desirable social mobility strategy. Birth control started to be conceived as a solution to persistent economic decline and as a way of catching up with more successful middle-class families within and beyond the Nambudiri collectivity. Among young migrant couples of the consolidated middle class, anxieties over having a large number of children have been increased by interrelated concerns around the difficulty of maintaining salaried employment in the private sector and the growing cost of education and health. Furthermore, only upper-middleclass migrant families can afford to host grandparents abroad for prolonged periods to help with childcare, while the lack of extended kin networks in the diaspora makes having multiple children more difficult for middle-class families. Large families are deemed to undermine class status in a context of legal, economic, and social fragility and lead to fears of downward class mobility among migrant families (cf. Dickey 2011.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Among the young Nambudiri migrants I spoke with, it must be noted that small families, while often favoured due to practical (p.228) considerations or to anxiety over being able to provide adequate childcare, were rarely regarded as fulfilling in terms of intergenerational relations and family happiness. Frequently, middle-class men and women were keen to share their senses of frustration and lack of fulfilment arising from their decision to stick to the onechild policy. For example, while mothers accepted the advantages of better education and care that their only child would receive, they also contrasted the lone child’s home-centred and restricted sociality with what they saw as the more enjoyable and crowded social environment of their own childhoods. Memories of sharing and fighting with siblings are thus set against the loneliness of the only child who is deemed to be stretched between school, home, and extra-curricular activities without entering into spontaneous social life with peers. This is felt particularly strongly among urban middle-class women. In contrast, women in Krishnapuram could rely more easily on neighbouring relatives and friends in the organization of children’s leisure activities, with it being part of the children’s after-school routine to visit friends nearby. Differently, urban middle-class as well as migrant women often considered arranging their children’s social lives as an additional job due to their busier schedules and the greater distances they had to deal with. Despite the strong emphasis placed on children’s educational success and on homework, spending lot of time at home alone was not viewed as healthy. Indeed, the combination of a heavy homework load and the lack of everyday home socialisation were deemed to be responsible for children’s emotional distress. One mother talked about her 8-year-old daughter’s frequent crying crises as follows: I understand Sunitha, she has a hard life: go to school, then to tuition, then she comes back … here is alone, me and that’s it! My husband is working in Chennai and he comes back at weekends when possible. And in the last weeks my daughter [has] started crying often. In my childhood I used to play a lot with my brothers and sisters … but now they [children] are trapped in the home, everyone is busy. I often think we should have had more children, it was a big mistake.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Even among couples with two children, small families are seldom advocated as sites of rewarding family relations. For the parents I spoke with, children’s psychological instability and insecurity about school performance were exacerbated by a drier household routine (p.229) in terms of leisure and socialization. Beyond this, moral concerns about children being pampered by too much attention and spoiled by too many material goods form another strand of middle-class unease regarding smaller family size. In particular, this reflects men’s temporal engagement with past family principles. Wives are expected to strike a balance between dedicating enough care to their children’s physical and intellectual development (see also Donner 2005) and, on the other, not weakening children’s characters through excessive affective and material attention. Migrant men often shared their frustration with their wives’ expectations that they bring a lot of toys or other goods on their visits home, and blame their wives for imparting the wrong moral principles to their children: In my childhood we did not have all these goods, and even if we are doing well, it is not appropriate to give the impression that everything can be done and bought just because you are working abroad! I tell my wife that the fact that I am working in Dubai does not make me an emir! South Asians are also paid less than Arabs and working conditions are not good enough …We are struggling to keep a good standard and I am not happy with Janaki … our daughter … thinking that she can get everything she wants. It is not only a matter of money but of principle … how will she cope out there when she grows up if she believes that everything can be obtained easily? The above passage is similar to the narratives of many young migrant Nambudiri fathers I was able to speak with. Here, the appraisal of the hard working conditions of Indian expatriates in the Gulf and of the resulting insecurity over maintaining a middle-class standard (Vora 2009) is threaded into this father’s worries about the financial and ethical consequences of allowing one’s own child ‘easy’ access to consumption. While migration and remittances are determinant in parents’ growing investment in childrearing, the same processes are also seen as potentially disruptive to the ethics of parent–child relations as well as a source of conjugal tensions. Importantly, having the wife and child join the husband in the migrant destination is seen as one way to reconcile the realities and imaginaries of middle-class mobility. At closer quarters, family members are expected to gain a better understanding of migrants’ struggles: being together not only allows for more intimate shared family life, but also for a more grounded education for younger generations. (p.230)

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Overall, having a smaller family, and a child-centred family life, is seen as safer in relation to neoliberal economic conditions and transnational lives, but is not seen as not necessarily enhancing the quality of children’s lives. This tension becomes evident when families with one child (including non-migrant families) contrast their reality with that of middle-class families who have not aligned with the small family norm. The following extract from my field diary illustrates this: With Jaya and Narayanan Nambudiri we have visited some relatives near Thrissur. Jaya was very happy to take her only son Dipal: our hosts have 5 children and they live in the countryside, so Dipal could play and enjoy the open space. We played cricket on the house courtyard for nearly two hours and we had a meal all together before driving back to the city. Children were helping their mother with the preparation of the table and they were quite involved in the running of the family routine. The landlady explained to me that since she is working in a bank, and can have little help from her mother-in-law, she has to maintain a certain discipline in the house in order not to go crazy. The day after, crying, Jaya explained to me that Narayanan had compared the well-mannered children of our hosts with the ‘lazier and spoiled’ attitude of Dipal who, aged 9, needed his mother’s help with everything. According to Narayanan our host had done a better job compared to his own wife in raising more children and giving them a good education without attending costly private schools … whereas the decision to have only one child translated neither into better maternal care nor into the child’s capacity to adjust to circumstances. While rejecting Narayanan’s blame, Jaya shared with him the idea that in her childhood also the fact of having 2 brothers and one sister helped her to grew stronger in comparison to Dilep, who was deemed to be too dependent and fragile. —Kochi, May 2008

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration As the above invites us to consider, in many instances young middle-class couples with larger families represent an ideal which is contrasted with the less risky and yet less rewarding decision to invest in a single child. Crucially, women tend to be identified not only as the subjects who take up the responsibility of sterilization but also as the primary agents who must translate this decision into a successful maternal role in educating children. Failure to achieve this frequently led to conjugal tensions and to husbands placing blame on their wives. Here academic success is not the only relevant criteria; the capacity to adjust to changing circumstances is also seen as an important factor. (p.231) Perceived insecurity in class status (Dickey 2011) resulting from specific migrant life and/or working conditions prompts middle-class parents, and particularly fathers, to stress the need for children to become more adaptable and autonomous. This requirement, rather than being located in the appreciation of nuclear families, draws from the recalling of larger family models in the relatively recent past.

Narrating the Fall, Expecting Enhancement: Elderly and New Youth Responsibilities Care of the elderly also poses dilemmas within smaller and nuclear families. As the discussion outlined earlier suggests, birth choices are evaluated by different family members not only in relation to present needs, but also in relation to the temporal consequences of sterilization in terms of intergenerational (emotional and practical) support. Lawrence Cohen’s analysis (1998) is insightful with regard to how the ‘problem of ageing’ is crafted6 in India to voice a specific middle-class critique of modernity, and to reassert a timeless and reified understanding of the joint family as a site of a ‘morally superior Indianess’ (Cohen 1998: 104). Rather than conceiving the ‘narrative of the joint family’ as an expression of a quintessential Indian culture, Cohen invites us to place the narrative within a wider, contemporary politics of identity (Cohen 1998: 105): I find the repetition of the decline of the joint family suggestive of familism (or relationality, fluidity, dividuality and so forth), not as a static quality of ‘Indian culture’ or ‘the Indian self’ but rather as a site of anxiety and conflict, of the simultaneous manoeuvres of loss and recovery in the construction of personhood and community within the space of an urban Indian modernity. Against history, against the particular experience of postcolonial modernity of an urban middle-class, this repetition sustained the maintenance of an oppositional space of affect, memory and wholeness called the Indian family.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Drawing from Ashis Nandy’s (1983) analysis of the consequences of colonialism on Indian subjectivity, Cohen suggests how the Indian joint family constitutes a powerful alternative to the inferiorized self, as it allows personal and collective identities to be anchored to stable traditions of love, respect, and solidarity. The analysis developed in this and in previous chapters brings to light some continuities with (p.232) the scenario outlined by Cohen, yet also some important differences. Among my acquaintances, the joint family certainly constituted an important point of reference in the narration of personal and family trajectories, and in the framing of contemporary identities. Middle-class families’ anxieties over care in a context of expected socio-geographical mobility prompt many to craft idealized versions of the joint family as a space of affection and longing which is contrasted with the challenges of globalization or transnationalism. The narrative of the fall inhabits middle-class engagement and disengagement perceived processes of ‘Westernization’, and Indian family values are in general taken as a signifier of distinction from the ‘decadence and immorality’ of Western families. As for Cohen (1998) or Parry (2001, 2004), my encounters with middle-class Nambudiris were also often framed around a critical interrogation of ‘our’ family values and histories, and the contrasting depiction of a radically different ‘Indian reality’. In this respect, my ethnography partly travels in the interpretative directions outlined by Cohen, with the narrative of the fall constituting an integral part of middle-class identity politics of engagement and distinction from an overwhelming ‘modern’. However, among middle-class Nambudiris the equation of the Indian self with the joint family can hardly be placed in a de-historicized past or draw inspiration from uncontroversial memories of beauty, love, and support. As discussed earlier, ‘the joint family’—and the kinship ideals, norms, and practices that contribute to its existence—inhabits middle-class perception of its own historical formation in a rather contentious way. Rather than being located in a timeless dimension, joint living is evaluated in its different phenomenological appearances and debated in relation to personal and collective life trajectories. While middle-classness might in some instances be expressed through longing for ‘the’ idealized family, social positioning is also built around quite plural and realistic (Stacey 1996) understandings of family trajectories and kin relations, and imagined situations are compared and contrasted with lived realities (cf. Dasgupta and Lal 2007; Thapar 2000). Among Nambudiris, it is a temporally closer reality of joint family life, one that has partly resulted from interrelated process of reform, migration and class mobility, that is often longed for in family narratives, whereas a relatively more distant past becomes the repository of frequently disdained (p.233) kinship histories. In a similar line, a narrative register centred on the overwhelming decadence and spread of Western family values coexists with endogenous insights into Nambudiri and Malayali history, and the resulting intention to interpret present family lives as the outcome of deliberate kin and collective actions. Page 24 of 34

Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration A critique of the joint family is as much a part of middle-class politics of identity as its celebration, and different positions arise from circumstantial and historically grounded middle-class engagement with modern changes. This emerges clearly in the way middle-class Nambudiris today conceive the dialectic between elderly and migrant youth. Youth reliability in providing care and support to ageing family members is integral to middle-class elderly ideas of a ‘good old age’ (Lamb 2000; Vatuk 64–88). Reduction in family size and migration has complicated the attainment of the goal of long-term generational reciprocity, and has moulded gloomy middle-class depictions of present family lives. When talking about their future, many elderly Nambudiris I spoke with emphasized that distance from their children and the unpredictability of the latter’s work and life choices were a source of deep uncertainty. While upper middle-class migrants were sometimes in the position to bring their parents to join them, middle- and lower-class families often had to be content with rare, short parental visits or with seeing their kin during occasional trips back home. In these cases, years might elapse between each visit, often due to financial and legal constraints. Both at urban and rural level this has progressively translated into the search for alternative forms of kin organization, which have in turn unsettled both conventional forms of post-marriage patrilocal residence, as well as the potential nuclearization of modern households. Both in urbanizing Krishnapuram and on the city outskirts households were often organized around a couple or a married woman hosting her parents or her in-laws. Both elder parents and children were quite adamant in saying that joint family life should be open to unpredictable circumstances, and accepted the possibility of parents moving to live with a daughter if she was the only child or if sons were abroad. Similarly, families were often ready to host more distant (matrilineal or patrilineal) elderly kin or youngsters in order to provide them with good care. Among more affluent middle-class families, cohabitation in the same house may have been replaced by the (p.234) building of neighbouring houses within the same land compound. While the first house was usually expected to host a couple together with the husband’s parents, the other house could host the wife’s parents or a female relative’s family. The spectre of inadequate care provision makes many middle-class families readier to adjust to alternative family arrangements and organization. A practical departure from both the coexisting models of the patrilineal/patrilocal and the nuclear/conjugal joint family was essential in order to provide families with desired chances for socio-geographical mobility without withdrawing from much-valued duties of intergenerational care.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Different understandings of inter-generational dependency coexist in this context. The idea of ageing as a relational provision (Vatuk 1990) undoubtedly finds resonance among middle-class understandings of intergenerational relations. What ageing means is intimately dependent on the expectations of elders towards their children, and on culturally constructed ideas about youth (Vatuk 1990: 74–5). The elderly individuals I spoke with often shared the idea that a good old age was premised upon youth presence and care, as well as on the possibility of looking after grandchildren. At the same time, however, middleclass elders recognized the importance of youth mobility and migration, not only as a source of socio-economic improvement but also as a way to build personal and cultural skills. The idea of migration as an important youth life cycle passage has become key to the way class status is built and maintained, and is not extraneous to elders’ understanding of intergenerational relations. This expectation has gendered contours. In common with other middle-class Malayalis, sons are expected to somehow find a balance between ‘differently valued gendered identities’ (Osella and Osella 2000: 130), the latter ranging from the successful patron-householders provider, the cosmopolitan gulfan (Gulf migrant) and the generous yet naïve individual who sacrifices himself for sake of the family and the community (Osella and Osella 2000). Migration enhances and accelerates the individual transition towards maturity and manhood (Gallo 2005, 2006) as well as the creation of modern households; it is acknowledged among Nambudiri elders (and youth) as a legitimate yet risky life choice. It opens up (often conflicting) spaces for self-realization as well as the accomplishment of family duties (Mills 1999). Many Nambudiri middle-class elderly agreed with the idea that, for a son, (p.235) staying at home and not being exposed to international environments might be detrimental to his growth and his capacity to create a family. In addition, a good old age can be viewed as the outcome of the degree of freedom children are allowed in framing their own destinies. Importantly, such views among the elderly are also influenced by kin memories of past generational conflicts. Migration, while creating anxieties about the future and a longing for a protected space of affection, is pragmatically acknowledged as a form of departure from past limitations on youth mobility and self-development. As the passage below indicates, ageing is ambivalently linked to shifting ideas of youth duties as well as newly acquired privileges. Indira, a widow aged 62, lives in Kochi with her daughter and her two grandchildren. Her son-in-law works in Doha while her son’s family is settled in the US. Although she had visited her son in the US once, and had accompanied her daughter to the Gulf in the past, she did not feel comfortable with travelling and adjusting to new realities. Despite this, she was quite proud of the fact of having supported her children’s migration:

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Of course I would wish to have them closer, I am already lucky to have my daughter here with her children … but it also makes me feel good to have tried with my husband everything that was possible for our children, to go abroad and to find good jobs, and they have always helped us a lot, always been present at a distance. Now many youth all over Kerala go abroad, it was not like this in the past … we were not allowed to migrate, and now we cannot impede them to build their life, what [would] people think of us? It would not be correct …. As Indira’s words suggest, while ideas of old age express a desire to be embedded within a loving family unit (Vatuk 1990), age is also made meaningful by addressing the need to go along with modernist ideas of youth social and geographical mobility. The Nambudiri elderly I spoke with recognized the importance of indulging in youth educational and labour mobility because of its benefits in terms of the crafting of mature personalities and of good intergenerational relations. Ideas of a good old age are not necessarily located within an idealized or normative understanding of the joint family (see also Kakar 1978; Mines 1988; Vatuk 1990) but are expressed by taking into consideration the capacity of intergenerational relations to adjust to changing circumstances. For Indira, like for many Nambudiri elders (p.236) I spoke with, the chance to live close to a daughter’s family healed the absence of their sons’ families, and was generally considered a more valuable arrangement than living with distant kin. In the same line, elderly Nambudiris expressed their willingness to leave a son’s family in order to go to other parts of Kerala or India to support a daughter’s family, if necessary. For example, Rani and Aakash regularly left their Kochi city house and travelled to their son-in-law’s village to help with their grandchildren. In addition, elders often conceived potentially disruptive processes like migration as a way for youth to comply with family duties and to align families with the trajectories taken by other Malayalis. It is in this line that we should read the contrast Indira draws between past community impediments to migration and an ambivalent engagement with the rewarding yet unsettling aspects of migration processes in the present. The tension between localism and cosmopolitanism that underpins Malayalis’ engagement with migration and transnationalism (Osella and Osella 2007, 2008) also moulds the way in which middle-class Nambudiris conceive modern family lives in light of the routes taken by other communities. In this respect, while the attachment of migrant youth to essentialized notions of ‘Malayali family values’ is taken as a sign of intergenerational respect and of family commitment, their exposure to different national contexts is also recognized as a symbol of less constraining generational hierarchies and, in turn, as a legitimate route towards the consolidation of modern middle-class status.

Consumption, Morality, and Remittances Page 27 of 34

Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Family concerns on intergenerational relations form a key context in which the relational nature of middle-classness is lived out. Dickey (2011) notes how contemporary middle-class anxieties result from both a sense of fragility and potential downward economic mobility and, perhaps more crucially, from the preoccupation with losing social recognition in the event of failure to conform to modern expectations. The idea of a ‘watchful community’ (Dickey 2011: 589) reflects folk ideas about the importance of spatially defined relations of proximity—like the neighbourhood—in the recognition of and claim to middleclass belonging. In a similar vein, my Nambudiri (p.237) acquaintances were often concerned about other people’s perception of the ways their family relations were lived out through marriage, housing, or intergenerational care.7 All these dimensions of kinship were felt to be potentially subject to public display and judgement and this partly influenced the way Nambudiris engaged with their family histories.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration At the same time while Nambudiri anxieties gave voice to intergenerational efforts to detach from past forms of elitism, these anxieties can be seen to have arisen from a growing apprehension over being swallowed up by an expanding, undifferentiated category of middle-classness. This attitude, while addressing the relevance of (caste and religious) community-based distinctions, cuts across intra-community divides (see also Osella and Osella 2000), with Nambudiris trying to distance themselves from families that are more undesirably upwardly mobile, within and beyond their own collectivity. This is often pursued through an ideological connection between the typology of migration, money and family morality (Gallo 2013). While Nambudiri migration history is particularly recent in comparison to other high-status communities, a lot of effort is made to limit proximity with the public display of status enacted by the strata of the nouveau riche that emerged out of post-1970s mass migration.8 Unskilled or semi-skilled migration becomes associated with lower-profile destinations like countries in the Gulf or southern Europe. Among the well-established Nambudiri middle classes (though not unique to them), some forms of geographical mobility are viewed as more prestigious and representative of class status than others. For example, Nambudiri engineers in the US or UK are seen as representative of the natural elite inclination towards higher education and professional jobs. Contrastingly, Italy is associated with the perceived amorality of the aspiring new rich, while the Gulf becomes associated in local discourses with lowerprofile Muslim and lower-caste migration. Importantly, the legitimacy of modern class status as achieved through remittances comes to be assessed by elites according to the historical depth of migration histories and to the capacity to produce wealth only through skilled jobs abroad. As a result, de-legitimating certain routes of mobility—and the remittances thereby produced—is an integral part of how the established middle-classes shun social competition from below, often through the obliteration of (p.238) past histories of lower forms of migration. The insecurity that results from lower-profile typologies of migration is often associated by well-established middle-class Nambudiris with the inability of migrant youth to maintain regular contact and intimate ties with families back home, and with the resulting weakening of family bonds. In this respect, illegal flows are eloquently associated by elites with lower-profile migration. Similarly, the risk and pain endured by people who migrate illegally is seen as a symptom of their irresponsibility towards relatives left behind, who may not see their loved ones for years.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration In contrast, skilled migration to prestigious destinations like northern Europe or the US becomes not only the symbol of professional success but also a guarantee of migrant youth ability to maintain closer emotional and material links with kin in Kerala. Middle-class concerns with family integrity increased alongside the transformation of emigration from something done by elites into a mass phenomenon. They also address concerns about consumption, and migrant remittances in particular. Debased materialism (Van Wessel 2004: 111) and resulting moral concerns related to consumption (Liechty 2003) are influential in moulding Nambudiri middle-class perceptions of migrant money and of its use in relation to family needs. Legitimate middle-class status is expressed by the family’s ability to strike a good balance between youth exposure to cosmopolitan settings, their capacity to produce wealth and a persistent commitment to family care without becoming too involved in the display of consumption. In this respect, remittances are made socially legitimate (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) by the well-established middle class in relation to the provision of good care for children and the elderly, and disdained when they produce excessive consumption at the cost of intergenerational ties. As one Nambudiri lady told me: See ... those new migrants may avoid seeing their children for years but they are happy with the money, video-camera, gold, TV, and so on they either send home or receive from abroad. They fill up their kids with whatsoever things but then these kids will have no education and will not look after their parents!!!! This is how Kerala became ... thanks to these people. Here the emigration of the masses is associated with the uncontrolled decay of Kerala society, manifesting in the increasing monetization of generational relations. In this demeaning portrait, money sent back (p.239) for children will not compensate for the lack of good parental care; as a result, children become unable to live in society (vivaram illyatha-alla). Although the consumption of goods earned though migration is far from non-existent among established middle-class Nambudiri families, it is also perceived as denying legitimacy (see van Wessel 2004: 95–6) to intergenerational care. Nambudiri middle-class families who have engaged with skilled migration are often keen to depict themselves (in contrast to the masses) as pavan,9 innocent, to emphasize that their cosmopolitan experiences and material privileges have not led them to greediness or the showing-off of material wealth. This attitude unravels a conceptualization of youth as disentangled, in principle, from any material responsibility towards the elderly, and of the ‘(upper) middle-class households’ as liberated from any significant dependence on foreign money. In the words of one of my interlocutors:

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration When my son comes home from the UK I always tell him not to bring money or expensive things ... he has his life there, a good job and a nice house ... why should he waste his money for us? We are having a good life here ... there is nothing he can bring from abroad that we need!! We just want his love and to see him and we have enough money to visit him in London ... we do not need Gulf money in our family!! As Kurien notes, ‘the meaning attributed to money and the use to which it is put depends on the context within which it is obtained’ (1994: 158). As the passage above shows, members of the well-established middle-classes tend to trace a difference between, for instance, Gulf money, Italian money, and UK money, a distinction which becomes entrenched within a broader distinction between family morality and immorality. Gulf money becomes the symbol of a hypermaterialization of intergenerational dependency which has corrupted or replaced family solidarity. Concurrently, Gulf money is represented as necessary in order to make up for the inability of the household left-behind to ensure family subsistence. Italian money is disdained insofar as it results from a gendered stigmatization of women who ‘abandon’ their families to look after other people’s children or to clean Italian houses. In contrast, UK money symbolizes not only greater youth job security but also, importantly, the successful outcome of generational efforts, meaning that the family ‘back home’ is free from any material need regarding foreign money. The frequency (p.240) of remittances at the cost of physical and emotional absence not only expresses middle-class anxieties over contemporary transnational family lives, but is also stigmatized in order to create a distinction in relation to a growing and increasingly diversified middle-class milieu. Cohen (1998: 115) notes that, among contemporary Indian middle classes, the family achieves a new hegemony even as it is perceived as being in decline. This observation is relevant to the ways in which Nambudiris make sense of the relation between class, family size, and migration. Conceptualizations of class trajectories and citizenship are expressed by taking into consideration and evaluating deep family changes that have occurred throughout the last century, changes which have questioned ‘traditional’ forms of joint family life while introducing small family norms and nuclear household models. The families I spoke with certainly perceived these changes as potentially disruptive of an idealized order of good care provision and family well-being. The acceptance of family planning is more often than not motivated in relation to past histories of parenthood and childbirth. It voices a renewed sense of citizenship yet also carries with it the possibility of providing the care that children in the past are assumed to have been denied. At the same time, the sacrifice of sterilization also reiterates past failures in terms of generating a demographically strong community. Additionally, in a context of mass migration, the decision to have few children may imply for parents a future of loneliness.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration Classical anthropological critique (Parry 1979; Vatuk 1972), however, has warned us against a misleading temporal dichotomization between ‘traditional joint family life’ and ‘modern nuclear’ families. It is important to re-state the need to avoid an understanding of middle-class families as trapped between the longing for a de-historicized model of joint family life, on one hand, and the imperative of a nuclear/small family norm on the other. I believe that what emerges from the ethnography discussed so far is a more nuanced picture. The terms and contours of joint family life are part of historical narratives of class mobilities, and are disdained, accepted, and reworked according to present circumstances and to the influence of intergenerational (p.241) memories. Subtler forms of family organization emerge alongside the need to cope with migration and reduction in family size, with urban and rural families being ready to sacrifice the principles of patrilocality and of generational hierarchies in the name of youth mobility and exposure to cosmopolitan environments. The chapter has indeed highlighted how past generational conflicts are made meaningful today in order to mould a conception of youth in which normative expectations of filial duty are mitigated by the idea that children should have the responsibility to transform their own futures and those of their parents. In this light, although geographical distance is widely acknowledged as a source of loneliness and suffering, youth mobility is understood as a way of breaking from past constraints and allowing community regeneration. In this context, the nuclearization of households and their reduction in size has allowed a more flexible engagement with social and geographical mobility, which have in turn made modern middle-class families into units of consumption. Yet, largely in line with the analysis developed by van Wessel (2004), the nexus between family size and consumption—while recognized as an important factor in contemporary life—is also a source of anxiety vis-á-vis a constant confrontation with other middle-class families. Among Nambudiris, the intent to reassert the hegemony of (pluralized) family relations and morality results not only from apprehensions over the elderly care and the fate of children but, equally importantly, from the need to be at once recognized by, and yet distinguished from, the expanding, encompassing tentacles of middle-classness. It is this dialectic of embeddedness and disengagement from middle-class status, and its implications for intergenerational relations, that I wish to explore in the concluding chapter. Notes:

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration (1.) While ‘nuclear families’ and ‘small families’ can be used to refer to partly similar and interrelated realities, their meaning is not identical. Here I use ‘nuclear family’ to refer to a type of family ideal and organization centred around the conjugal couple and their (unspecified number) of children, a unity which is in principle autonomous from extended forms of household residence and organization. By ‘small family’, following Devika (2008), I mean a family model based on the principles of birth control and an ideal relationship between two parents and one child. Nevertheless, by making this distinction at conceptual level, I do not necessarily imply that these family models constitute antithetical realities at the level of experience, and with respect to more extended and involving forms of family organization. (2.) For a detailed analysis of this aspect, see Chapter 1. (3.) Previous chapters have already discussed how this model of modern patriarchy did not develop without critiques from reformist women and from Indian/Malayali women more generally. (4.) Analysed respectively in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5. (5.) Henrike Donner (2005) notes that among urban middle-class families in Kolkata, renewed grandparental duties resulting from the need to help a daughter-in-law in meeting grandchildren’s educational needs lead to a drastic reduction in elderly women’s free time—time which could ideally have been dedicated to religious activities and leisure. (6.) Cohen points out that at both policy and experiential level ‘the problem of ageing’ tends to be constructed as naturally resulting from interrelated processes of westernization, urbanization, and globalization. The decline of life standards among elderly people in India (and elsewhere) is ‘socially engineered’ (1998: 100–2) as states and societies actively and continually produce dependency in old age. In this respect, what Cohen calls the ‘narrative of the fall’ should be analysed and understood as the product of interrelated political, economic, and social forces. (7.) See also Chapters 4 and 5. (8.) See the analysis developed in Chapter 2.

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Family Histories, Reproduction, and Migration (9.) In the context of my research, the use of the concept of pavan to define migrant identity through money differs from that highlighted by the Osellas (1998). It does not connote the naive young man who is unwillingly exploited by community expectations in his spending of resources accumulated through migration. Rather, among the elites the term positively (and sometimes ironically) connotes a person who refrains from indulging in heavy, conspicuous consumption and maintains a disinterested and non-materialistic approach to kin and social relations.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords Chapter seven looks at intergenerational engagement with brahmins’ contemporary politics of identity through the perspective of irony. It delves into how older sections of Nambudiri society critically engage with contemporary political uses of the past for class claims and community building by neoorthodox Nambudiri youth. This section analyses the formation of the modern YKS in the 1990s, as promoted by educated Nambudiris— often living in the diaspora— to counter the (supposedly) persistent subordination of the community to more successful middle-class strata. The chapter suggest how contemporary attempts to reframe a fragment of ‘glorious history’, rather than allowing middle-class Nambudiris to escape from the ‘backward’ public representation, have the effect of exacerbating public perceptions of Nambudiris as the embodied antinomy of the present. Keywords:   Neo-Brahminism, intergenerational conflicts, caste orthodoxy, irony, youth, international migration

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration IN 2004, SANJAY WAS A retired doctor in his early 60s who had enjoyed a long career in the USA. He had left Krishnapuram in the mid-1960s, a time when skilled migration among Nambudiris was as much a prestigious as a scandalous act for many of his caste fellows. His tense relations with his original lineage were well known locally, but Sanjay liked to spend a few months of the year in the village with his wife, an American woman whom he had married after the death of his first wife, a Nambudiri widow. His ‘American’ child Vikram joined them in summer. Sanjay was very popular in the village for his non-conformist attitude, which he partly expressed in his disregard for some of the aesthetic and relational codes of caste belonging: he did not wear the sacred thread, barely stepped into his family home, and showed little interest in ritual or religious activities. During his stays in Krishnapuram, he liked to visit and dine with people from all caste and religious backgrounds. One night, during dinner, Sanjay had a heated conversation with Vikram due to the latter’s participation in some activities related to the recently established village branch of the Yoga Kshema Sabha, an association promoting the interests of Nambudiris and clearly inspired by its colonial antecedents. Vikram was brought into the (p.243) activities by his cousin Krishnan, a young migrant in the Gulf who was involved in promoting international links between organizations in Kerala and a Nambudiri association in Dubai, called Akram.1 Sanjay had been tacitly happy about the flourishing of a friendship between his son and Krishnan. He saw the relationship as helping to heal past conflicts between himself and Krishnan’s father. Yet, he remained suspicious of Krishnan’s outspoken ideas of Nambudiri intellectual and cultural superiority and of his aims to build an association to promote what Sanjay considered parochial interests. As he repeated, he saw Vikram attraction’s towards the new YKS as being at odds with the ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘secular’ education he had tried to give his son. Vikram defended himself by stating that he had always found the history of his community appealing, and that he wished to balance his father’s attitude with the ‘discovery’ of part of his ‘roots’ and culture. When Vikram invited me to participate in future meetings, Sanjay—visibly annoyed but reluctant to allow the situation to degenerate into a clash—made this seemingly detached (yet certainly ironic) statement: Be ready Ester … They will end up asking you to wear an immaculate white mundu and a sophisticated palm leaf umbrella! I observed, provocatively, that YKS people should not be sympathizing with palm leaf umbrellas. This received the following reply from Sanjay: Oh darling, you might be surprised by how forward, progressive and egalitarian those young fellows are able to be today!!!

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Irony emerged in the above statements as an important affective frame through which Sanjay expressed—and tried to control—conflicting emotions related to his personal history. Irony was intentionally used as a rhetorical device aimed at emphasizing perceived absurdities of contemporary Nambudiri public engagement, and the presence of competing versions of what class belonging should be (see Fernandez and Huber 2001). Specifically, irony addressed here what the speaker conceived as the improbable reification of a past activism which—while partly acknowledged for its earlier contributions—was deemed unsuited to the present day. Sanjay’s scorn also voiced a folk distinction which was shared by many elderly Nambudiris, as I later came to understand: this was the distinction between affective (p.244) attitudes—either of nostalgia or dissent—emerging from the ‘real experience’ of the past and therefore legitimate, and those resulting from the mere imagination of an idealized ‘long time ago’, which was deemed to be shared by young and well-off Nambudiris. In this respect, young Nambudiris’ participation in a project of recreation of castebased associations was delegitimized on the premise that the young people lacked any direct, emotionally grounded experience of past events. Drawing from these preliminary ethnographic insights, in this concluding chapter I delve into how the contemporary politics of identity that coalesces around the formation of the new YKS is made meaningful in specific normative projects of kinship relations. I explore here a different set of intergenerational relations if compared to the ones analysed in previous chapters. Rather than delving into the dialectic opposing, on the one hand, aristocratic and more conservative elderly brahmins and, on the other, revolutionary or critical Nambudiri youth of colonial times, I explore here the tensions underpinning the relation between the elderly Nambudiris of the present—who had direct or closer experience of past middle-class reformisms—and newly mobile Nambudiri youth, the latter involved in novel forms of community activism in the public sphere. While an accurate analysis of growing caste-based associationism and of its political ramifications goes beyond the remit of this section, I am interested here in exploring how specific kinship projects carried out by the young members of the new YKS become the object of public evaluation, and how these projects in turn shape intergenerational relations and dissent.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration The projects I take into consideration here are related, first, to younger generations’ emphasis on the rediscovery of those ritualized expressions of intergenerational dependency and love and, second, to the construction of purified ancestral pedigree through the framing of modern genealogies. Both projects, I suggest, express the growing attraction that ‘the village’ represents to young middle-class Nambudiri migrants, as a place of cultural embeddedness and community exclusivity. These kinship projects cannot really be seen as unique to present YKS supporters, but what interests me in this context is how the public performance of certain normative ideas of kinship expresses both youth understanding of class mobility and a (p.245) middle-class politics of identity based on caste exclusivism. At the same time, I wish to unravel how, through irony and scorn, dissonant voices—mainly (but not exclusively) those from elder generations—draw from personal kinship and migration histories to invalidate the historical ‘truth’ ascribed by youngsters to essentialized expressions of caste and kinship. The inclusion of irony within the sociological analysis of Nambudiri kinship and middle-classness, I suggest, is particularly valuable in grasping how people elaborate and cope with the ‘emotional dissonance’ arising from conducting lives across (sometimes) conflicting affective codes and temporalities. Irony has increasingly emerged under conditions of uncertainty driven by (post-) modernity and globalization to voice unequal distributions of power (Fernandez and Huber 2001; L.W. Taylor 2001). Through irony, people highlight the ‘incongruities between illusions and reality’ and between ‘ideas and practices’, and they search for a ‘critical distance’ from situations that can potentially overwhelm their position within society (Steele 2010: 95, 96). Irony can be considered as an ‘emotionally-charged value judgment’ that touches upon thorny ‘issues of inclusion and exclusion, intervention and evasion’; it can involve different degrees of emotional involvement (Hutcheon 1994: 2–4) both from the point of view of the ironist and of the interpreter (recipient) of irony. Following Wilson and Sperber, I consider irony not only as a figure of speech—intended to communicate the opposite of a literal meaning—but also as a performative ‘attitude of scorn towards general expectations’ (2012: 134). In this reading, the ironic subject is echoing a thought (a belief, a norm, a value) which is usually shared by a collective and assumes a provocative or mocking attitude towards the same thought. In doing so, the ironist puts into question a specific way of interpreting reality, and proposes his/her doubts or dissatisfactions with accepted (or proposed) truths. It is in this light that we can read Sanjay’s evocation of the palm leaf umbrella as a way of mocking the youngsters who claim an exclusive ‘Brahmin identity’, and of casting doubts on legitimacy of communal projects.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration My ethnography in this chapter aims to show how elder migrant generations use irony to critically engage with normative expectations about kin affective labour as it is enacted through specific projects of identity politics among younger generations. Irony also voices elder (p.246) generations’ embarrassment (Goffman 1956) towards all forms of public display of caste status that may lead Nambudiris to be perceived as backward, clinging to nostalgia for the aristocratic past.

The New Yoga Kshema Sabha In the early 2000s Krishnapuram witnessed a relatively intense (re)flourishing of Nambudiri organizations, a trend that partly mirrored a wider state tendency. In the village the physical presence of such organizations was visible, thanks to the establishment of small centres, usually—and significantly—close to old illams and/or (former) Nambudiri temples. Sometimes these were established close to other popular community associations like the NSS or the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP), marking the presence of Brahmin activism at the local level alongside one of the more influential organizations. These centres often followed a limited weekly routine of small meetings and occasional conversations. However, they could also become sites of intense activity around specific projects. These might include: the organization of ‘health days’, where free medical checks were offered to Nambudiri families (and, in principle, to other villagers as well); to the provision of educational and recreational activities for poor children; the organization of religious festivals in village temples; projects aimed at rebuilding small family temples; regular readings of the Bhagavad Gita and Vedic texts; instruction on the history and meanings of samskaras and other family rituals; the creation of Nambudiri websites; and the production of literary products on specific individual or important lineage histories. Particular concern was directed at the unwelcome appropriation by lower-status communities of the ritual and religious knowledge typically associated with Nambudiris, together with the number of non-brahmins and/or non-Nambudiris working as professional priests in the recent and remunerative rebirth of puja activities and temple festivals throughout Kerala, and India in general (Clémentin-Ojha 1997; Fuller 1992).

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Like other jati-associations in south India, the new YKS today is mainly structured around an ‘extended kin network with its attendant affective and material economy’ (Bairy 2013), which extends beyond the locality of the village to include relatives and fictive relatives living abroad. Migrant networks provided connections with other (p.247) Nambudiri-based associations—with different affiliations outside the YKS—in the diaspora, and members were united by a mixture of ‘genealogical’ and ‘voluntary’ forms of kin solidarity (cf. Baumann 1995). The revitalization of a kin and community past, together with a claimed affiliation to the former YKS, constitutes a key element of YKS activism in the present, which is supported in many ways through the literary production already analysed in Chapter 3. The common reading and discussion of the writings of oral histories of YKS ancestors is part of the association’s ‘rituals’ of knowledge dissemination and production. Potentially troublesome instances of unorthodoxy—like the history of Thaatri, the occurrence of inter-caste or interreligious marriages, or the more critical positions of V.T. Bhattathiripad or M.R. Bhattathiripad—are either silenced or nuanced through a homogeneous and deproblematized representation of a continuity between past revolutionary acts and the contemporary renaissance movement. This continuity is grounded in the persistent rhetoric of a marginalized yet inspirational Brahmin elect. In this respect, the past that the contemporary YKS admires appears to be located less in a de-historicized temporality and more in the gestures of meticulously selected ‘revolutionary’ ancestors. Crucially, however, these ancestors are also deemed to have initiated community transformations without having ensured either the protection of Brahmin knowledge or the substantial socio-economic betterment of their descendants, real or symbolic. Young Nambudiris today place great emphasis on the recovery of ritual and religious knowledge, with this being one of the foremost issues on their agenda. As the president of the YKS in Krishnapuram stated: Past YKS people were great in destroying our old customs, to challenge the backwardness of our community … but eventually they were not able to preserve our history … they were quite heedless of rituals, religion, many also became atheist. Nor it is different, we managed slowly to regain some wealth, we are middle-classes today … not poor like before, but we also lost our heritage and we are still isolated from mainstream society, we have paid a higher price here in Kerala. And Nairs, Christians … and now also Muslims here hold the upper hand in all terms … With migration now our culture is disappearing, this Wahhabism [is] being imported [into] Kerala through Gulf money and also other communities [are] shamelessly displaying wealth and status in public! (p.248)

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration These words are symptomatic of a wider tendency among young Nambudiris to conceive middle-classeness as a condition which has moved Nambudiris away from a retrograde past while also depreciating their historical distinctiveness. Remembering, from this perspective, can be seen as aimed at limiting the extent to which contemporary Nambudiris can effectively be assimilated with a broader ‘Malayali middle-classness’. The radical changes accepted by brahmins are deemed to have been more tortuous and painful than those implied by the upward mobility of formerly marginalized social strata. As in the past, confrontation with other communities is key to Nambudiri claims, although migration and remittances have added a new twist to this inter-community dialectic. The reference the YKS president makes to the perceived growing radicalization of religious otherness, due to Muslim exposure to Gulf culture and the consequent flow of Wahhabi-inflected ideas and styles of dress back to Kerala, is important here. In a different vein, the relative increase in living standards among different caste and religious communities also becomes the object of a moralizing discourse of (Brahmin) cultural drift. Yet, crucially, middleclassness, and migration are both constitutive of the new YKS ethos and organisation. While the YKS of the 1920s mainly comprised Nambudiris of aristocratic background, its contemporary version transcends traditional subcaste status to involve members of the upper and lower-middle classes, although internal class differences also reflect differing aims and interests. Furthermore, as will become clearer in the following sections, exposure to transnational networks is vital to the enactment of identity politics in Kerala. According to my data, the new YKS trend is partly rooted in the improvement of the economic and status conditions of the newer generations which, as outlined in Chapter 2, also draws heavily from migration and the effects of remittances. Specifically, remittances play a key role here not only in terms of monetary inflows but also in relation to renewed values and lifestyles, which in turn inform social relations among migrants and non-migrants and support novel collective claims (Levitt 2001). As vehicles of novel material, symbolic and cultural capital (Yeoh, Huang, and Lam 2005), remittances underpin migrants’ sense of connectedness with the sending context—both at household and community level—and also combat (p.249) migrants’ precariousness in the receiving context (Bacallao and Smokowsky 2007; Chavez 1994). Their uses and meanings should therefore be understood within the ‘larger social structure of communities’ (Kurien 1994: 758; Leinbach and Watkins 1998; Levitt and LambaNieves 2011), as well as in relation to people’s histories and contemporary status claims.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Many of the members who were active in the new YKS in Krishnapuram and Kochi had a multilayered relationship with international mobility. Some leading figures were exponents of those strands of Nambudiri society which had engaged with skilled migration since the mid-1990s. They therefore held professional and well-paid jobs. While they usually managed to visit Kerala and to be physically present and involved in local organizational and management activities of the centre once or twice a year, they were symbolically close to their fellows through internet exchanges and collaborative web projects, as well as through the gathering of financial and cultural resources thanks to their many networks abroad. In Krishnapuram they could count on the support of young fellows who had decided to return to nearby cities in Bengaluru or Chennai— thanks to the available opportunities in the IT sector (Fuller and Narasimhan 2007)—or to open businesses close to the original village. Occasionally, mature retired middle-class Nambudiris were keen to be involved in local activities and to back up the much busier and more mobile youngsters. Village branches were also attended by young lower-class Nambudiris (migrant and non-migrant) who were eager to build good connections in order to find better labour opportunities abroad, or to convert less prestigious migrant trajectories into higher status via their commitment to philanthropic or community activities (Gallo 2013; Osella and Osella 2009). In the first instance, modern professionalism and business was praised as marking a welcome disjuncture from past decline. However, it was also deemed insufficient to counter a sense of cultural loss, the latter being explained as a result of migration, urbanization, and flattening with ‘the rest’ of middle-class society. In this light, the emphasis placed on the re-appropriation of ritual and religious knowledge could be read as a means of rebuilding the legitimacy of Brahmin/Nambudiri symbolic capital with respect to the rest of Malayali society (cf. Fuller 1999). Furthermore, many new YKS members— particularly those who lacked a foreign passport, (p.250) could not count on a longer family tradition of skilled migration or on long-term jobs abroad—found in community activities a way to stem an overwhelming sense of insecurity in keeping up with the demands and expectations of middle-upper class belonging and of transnational lives. Among lower-class Nambudiris (migrant and nonmigrant), the appeal of essentialized notions of ‘Brahmin identity’ combined with a heightened sense of discrimination from the state in recent decades due to reservation policies in education and government jobs. Overall, poor Nambudiri families in the village seldom participated in community organization activities. In principle they remained among the recipients of the association’s activities, while the bulk of the movement was engineered by highly (or aspiringly) mobile middle-class Nambudiris. In this respect, community-based identity politics, rather than representing a contemporary alternative to class politics (cf. Béteille 2007), was intimately rooted in the recent growth of an internally heterogeneous milieu of (Brahmin) middle classes.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration We might usefully look comparatively here at the context analysed by Ramesh Bairy (2009) in the case of Karnataka. Bairy argues that the formation of Brahmin associations reflects an underlying tension between two apparently irreconcilable projects. On one hand, it stands for the intent to play out a ‘normatively appealing Brahmin’ identity which exalts orientalist notions of ritual sacredness and exclusivity while simultaneously reaffirming the (brahminled) uniqueness of Indian tradition. On the other, these associations face the imperative to improve the material conditions of the community vis-á-vis contemporary challenges. In the end, Bairy argues, the efficacy of modern Brahmin associations should not be sought in their capability to ‘ensure more favorable resource allocation’ (Bairy 2009: 112), but in their ability to act as ‘enunciators of the communities that they seek to bring into life and on whose behalf they speak to the outside’. Bairy appropriately distinguishes between corporate Brahmin associations and jati associations. The former are able or willing to encompass specific jati affiliations and to appeal to an encompassing Brahmin identity, to which the ‘otherness’ of an inimical state is opposed, by criticizing state intervention in the form of social justice and reservation policies (Bairy 2013: 98–9). These corporate associations are relatively more successful in pushing forward the visibility and interests of brahmins in the public sphere. In contrast, Bairy (2013: 117) (p.251) notes that jati associations are less concerned with the project of speaking ‘on behalf of a Brahmin identity that is under siege’, and are thus less shaped by (anti) governmental imperatives. Their primary interest lies in promoting community well-being through the agency of leading individuals who are embedded in a wider net of kin solidarity.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Drawing from Bairy’s insightful analysis, it is possible to state that the YKS lies— at least in its aspirations—in an intermediate space between these categories. The members of the YKS I spoke with not only found it difficult to establish collaborative relations with other Brahmin communities in Kerala—namely the Tamil Brahmins or the Konkani Brahmins—in order to establish corporate associations; often, they openly rejected this possibility. The conviction that Nambudiris, better than non-Malayala Brahmins, could stand again (see D. Menon 1999) as the re-generators of a society perceived as overly materialistic and culturally flattening merged ambivalently with the idea that other Brahmin communities in Kerala had benefited more from the colonial and postcolonial history of the State and were therefore less in need of pastoral attention by community associations. Among the YKS activists I spoke with (up until 2008), this disdain for a collaborative endeavour across Brahmin jatis was also motivated by the assumption that other non-Malayala Brahmins had become too close to the BJP and the RSS. Young Nambudiris rarely displayed support in front of me for political strands related to Hindutva. These were taken as an expression of the ‘otherness’ of other Brahmin communities with respect to ‘typical’ Malayali values of progressiveness, leftist tradition, and religious tolerance, although the same people often adamantly objected to inter-religious marriages or to adopting communal stances with respect to Malayali Muslims.2 However, other considerations prevent us from considering the YKS solely in terms of a locally based jati association. Indeed, what characterizes the YKS, and particularly (but not exclusively) its urban avatar in Kochi, is a construction of the state as inimical to Nambudiris’ interests, an attitude that is set against the devalued cultural and historical contribution of Nambudiris to Malayali society. While lobbying against reservation policies or pushing for the material betterment of Nambudiris appeared in many cases to have been (p.252) unsuccessful, it was certainly part of the YKS agenda to promote an alternative Nambudiri identity by ‘making public’ both the deservedness and marginalization of this community.

The Unsuitability of the Past

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration In order to understand everyday use of irony as a challenge to modern Nambudiri orthodoxy it is important to delve into the kind of public perception that people in Krishnapuram and Kochi, including a large proportion of Nambudiri society, have of contemporary community-based activism. While caste-based associations like the NSS or the SNDP were viewed with relatively greater popular acceptance, as historically grounded expressions of community interests and renovation, the recent public appearance of Nambudiri activism met with irritation and provocation. This should not come as a surprise if we consider the hiatus historically occurring between non-Brahmin caste associationism—which fought for a more equal redistribution of resources—and Brahmin associations advocating for the ‘morally untenable and unjustifiable’ (Bairy 2009: 91) bestowal of traditional and modern rights. In this respect, I strongly agree with Bairy (2009: 92) in stating that Brahmin associations (in our case the YKS), in representing a public anomaly, can be seen as exemplifying a ‘belligerent posture’. While it is undeniable that, as among Karnataka Brahmins, many Nambudiri families have failed to acquire or maintain material and symbolic capital, the public expression of community interest—particularly if expressed in the language of community exclusivity, and re-appropriation of religious/ritual knowledge—meets with the accusation of ‘brahminising’ secular spaces (Bairy 2009: 116). Beyond this, however, the ambivalent position occupied by Nambudiris in Malayali developmentalist attitudes (Devika 2007b) also plays a role in the context analysed here. The public display of narrowly conceived identities—particularly of those that appeal to an aristocratic pedigree dressed in the clothes of the modernized middleclasses—was (often instrumentally) conceived by my acquaintances as a threat to the values of inclusiveness (see Kaviraj 1990, quoted in Devika 2007b: 7) and progress of Malayali society, values rooted in the rhetoric of historical distance from a feudal and brahminical society. In the 2000s, the visibility of YKS meetings in (p.253) Krishnapuram drew dismay from the local middle classes in so far as these meetings were viewed as an unsuitable expression of anachronistic values. As the head of the panchayat, a woman from a former scheduled caste, provocatively stated: They might expect people like us to be their servants again! This Brahmin association is totally a shame for us as Malayalis. I mean, people are free to have their own associations, but there should be a limit of decency on the way these people show their feeling of superiority … we have a tradition to defend!

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration In the passage above, the retrieval of a community history of subordination is merged into an overwhelming claim over Malayaliness as a site of identity where past forms of discrimination have been eroded. While the statement marginalizes the (present) reality of agricultural labour dependency,3 it ironically evokes the absurdity of Nambudiris’ potential longing for past hierarchies, and advocates for a public morality of ‘caste negligence’. On a different note, uppercaste individuals, while often privately sharing similar concerns about the decay of Malayali culture as a result of migration and the need to rediscover traditional (upper-caste) Hindu values, also expressed dismay at what they saw as the shameless display of brahminism. As the Nair village head of the NSS commented: A new era of enlightening brahminism attends us, you see!!! We all can care about our own tradition, Kerala has many rich cultures and many different communities always coexisted … but this new Brahmin obsession for rituals, purity, superiority and difference is such a disturbing one, it takes us back to a century ago! In ironically describing new Brahmin associations as ‘enlightening’, our interlocutor here de facto opposes the attention paid by young Nambudiris to religious and ritual knowledge to the ‘official’ secularist educational ethos of Malayali society, where modern instruction is felt to be determinant in moulding social mobility. In common with other middle-class Malayalis I spoke with, while ‘private’ concern for community traditions could be tolerated in the name of inter-community coexistence and consequent cultural fertility—features themselves conceived as integral to Malayali distinctiveness—the making explicit of special identifications in the public sphere was daunting for Malayali modernity. As such, Nambudiri associationism (p.254) was not only a belligerent act, but also an embarrassing one: in allowing brahminism to resurface, it potentially invalidated not only Nambudiris’ claim to detachment towards feudalism but also tarnished the state’s distinctiveness. It is in this light that we should interpret the critical stances in some of the publications that were heatedly debated during my time in Krishnapuram. In both the passages quoted below, the importance of the YKS is acknowledged in relation to the past; however, its usefulness for the present is strongly denied. The first fragment is taken from the monthly magazine Bhashaposhini (November 2004). Written by a Nambudiri artist, the article recalls the outcome of the author’s personal participation in an old illam-based gathering of young Nambudiris, organized to celebrate community fellow artists and to debate Nambudiri involvement in pujas and Vedic education. Significantly titled ‘Chandi’ (literally meaning ‘waste’), the article unravels the awkward situation in which, rather than art, it is the status of an encapsulated community that is celebrated (Artist Nambudiri 2004: 2):

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration This honouring is welcome, but the organizers should have thought more broadly. They should have felicitated artists, not Nambudiri artists— because there are more deserving artists from other communities. I object because the narrow thinking takes the Nambudiris dangerously away from the mainstream, back to the past. The writer objects strongly to the taken-for-granted association between Nambudirithan and culture, and reasserts that different communities have long since gained access to artistic production in creative and original terms. Failing to recognize this, it is stated, divides Nambudiris from the rest of Malayali society and draws them back to a delegitimized past. In subsequent passages, the author of the article also ironizes on the perceived discrepancy between the invocation of status in the name of a purely intellectual search for knowledge and the interest in highly lucrative positions as pujaris in the contemporary temple and festival business. In the following passage, the temporal link between the past and present YKS is partly denied. The writer implies that, while there might be continuity between the conservative strands of the past and present YKS, the past reformism of more radical figures is certainly being betrayed (Artist Nambudiri 2004:3): (p.255) Those who preached revolution at that time are now the activist[s] of the YKS … not the YKS of V.T. Bhattathiripad but the model clamouring and fighting for rights and privileges! […] Their annual get-together and feasts are nothing but a show of vanity and orthodoxy. They cut themselves off from society and squeeze in their own fold. Rather than successfully allowing Nambudiris to escape from their ideological association with past backwardness, the link between the present and past YKS is perceived as an exercise in elitism, unsuitable for a progressive society. Present associational politics of memory, in claiming a resurgence of the past YKS ethos, are crucially confronted by interlocutors who challenge the legitimacy of the transformation of past ‘revolutionary’ stances into present demands (see Lambek 1996: 248–9). Turning to a second publication, the passage below is taken from the weekly magazine Mathrubhumi (2005, 23 –9 January ). Written by a non-Nambudiri observer, and titled ‘Is the Nambudiri Community Falling Back into the Abyss of the Hell?’ the article seems to accomplish a double task. On the one hand, while it takes for granted the historical contribution of Nambudiri middle-class activism, it strongly reaffirms the former YKS’s ‘cultural limits as a symbolic resource’ for the present (Appadurai 1981: 201). On the other hand, this unsuitability is rooted in the incompatibility between modern and secularized middle-class lifestyles and the communal appropriation of religious knowledge. As we read below (Vijayakrishnan 2005: 7–8):

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Those who cannot get acclimatised to the changing patterns of life, seek refuge in devotional practices and programmes, as well as in traditional arts and classical music. It is not surprising that the majority of the audience for such programmes are Nambudiris of the younger generations, mostly below 30. These youngsters are often the children of parents profitably employed in towns and cities, but nursing nostalgia for the respected life in their native homes. They still have the traces of feudalism and old-world tastes and appreciation for arts. Interestingly, in the above fragment, the achievement of middle-class status— partly depicted through reference to urban jobs and lifestyles—is implicitly conceived as being at odds with any nostalgic attachment to territorial or ritual expressions of past status. In the same vein, Nambudiris’ longing for specific forms of knowledge or ritualized practice is taken as proof of their former inability to move with the flow of changes in society ‘just like’ other communities. (p.256) As was briefly touched on above, beyond the public condemnation of caste-ism, it was in private conversations I had with Nambudiris (and non-Nambudiris) that irony emerged as a way to create a critical distance between personal progressiveness and public brahminism. To some extent, irony reframed people’s sense of embarrassment towards awkward events or situations by highlighting the ridiculous side of statements or behaviour which laid claims to truth. As Goffman notes in his classical study on social embarrassment (Goffman 1956: 267), when confronted with a situation of potential embarrassment a person ‘will avoid placing himself in a similar position’ and will attempt ‘saving his face’ as a way to protect his feelings. Yet, irony also allows the speaker to actively challenge the assumptions underpinning inappropriate behaviour, in this context by dismantling the assumed legitimacy of codes of purity and exclusivity promoted by others. Irony both aims at preventing embarrassment and simultaneously challenging the cultural codes of conduct that create embarrassment. Herzfeld (2001) has addressed the relation between irony, power, and social status, suggesting that irony is likely to flourish in contexts where social status is seen less in structural terms and more as the capacity to question specific understandings of past orders. Irony is a product of shifting social orders, and reflects the rising of new social hierarchies: it threatens demands of ‘absolute power’ or superiority by evoking the absurdity ‘of all claims to total transparency, certainty and referentiality’, and by depriving these claims of their past ‘immunity’ (Herzfeld 2001: 62–3). In this respect, the use of irony among Krishnapuram villagers in relation to the rise of Brahmin associations not only reflects a degree of unease regarding the spectral reappearance of past village structures, which in many cases may be entrenched with personal or family histories of marginalization and exploitation.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Beyond this, scorn also voices a broader rejection of those ideological or behavioural elements that seen as being at odds with a collective claim to be a progressive and developmentalist society. In their ethnography with exuntouchable Ezhavas, Osella and Osella note that lower castes often use irony through bodily gestures—such as mimicking the old normative habits of prostration in front of higher-caste people—as a way to challenge old-fashioned caste rules (Osella and Osella 2000). Overall, my acquaintances also used irony to question their sense of belonging to Kerala and the contradictions (p.257) of postcolonial modernity, through jokes like ‘real Malayalis live only in the Gulf’, ‘see how backwardly modern we are’, or ‘didn’t you see how much has changed here?’ Irony is often used by Malayalis to voice their unease regarding the hiatus between the official celebration of the state model of development and the generational struggle to achieve modern middle-class status, a struggle which is exacerbated when confronted with the reassertion of elitist identities. In a (partly) different way, the use of irony among more critical middle-aged and elderly Nambudiris voices a complex engagement with the emotional and reputational sides of new activism. While many of my interlocutors most probably empathized to some extent with the causes promoted by the new YKS, they nevertheless used irony to express dismay at the illegitimate appearance of such claims in the public sphere. Crucially, public performances of brahminism were considered to undermine not only the progressiveness of Malayali society but, perhaps more importantly, intergenerational efforts to detach from aristocratic elitism and to achieve middle-class status. For some people who had experienced emotionally difficult family ruptures or social marginalization within their own community, however, irony also addressed the difficulty of reconciling their own critical understanding of past power relations with the attempt to reconstruct renewed kin and community relations. Indeed, present YKS activism is not ‘confined’ to economic or political projects of identity politics but, as in the past, it also addresses specific interpretations of family relations and kinship norms. In doing so, it brings with it the production or revitalization of memories among elderly Nambudiris, who try to cope with the need to avoid further kin ruptures in the present while also creating a distance from new family orthodoxies. The two ethnographic vignettes analysed subsequently are symptomatic of how irony can serve as a way to challenge normative understandings of the (kinship) past, while also preventing relational disruptions.

Scorn and Generational Love

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Wilson and Sperber note that irony always has a normative bias, as it points out that certain situations, events, or performances do not always live up to normbased expectations: ‘Norms, in the sense of socially shared ideas about how things should be, are always available (p.258) to be ironically echoed when they are not satisfied’ (Wilson and Sperber 2012: 131). In Krishnapuram and in Kochi, the use of irony among elderly Nambudiris addressed, among other things and perhaps paradoxically, young Nambudiris’ renewed interest in the observance of ritualized expressions of generational hierarchies. Generational differences in migrant experiences—particularly the distance felt to exist between old forms of turbulent socio-geographical mobility and modern family support for youth migration—played a role in the way irony scorned any normative interpretation of intergenerational dependency. I started to reflect on this during my participation in YKS group discussions, which took place in an old Nambudiri illam located in a nearby village. On a one hot and somnolent day, Sanjay stepped into the house where I was living and asked me to get ready for a ‘class on family love’, stating: ‘As a Western woman you should not miss the rare opportunity to have a tutoring on real family values and to learn how to love your granny!!’ Sanjay was clearly making fun of the idea, somewhat popular among young Nambudiris, that there was a need to oppose processes of (assumed) ‘Westernization’ occurring through migration and consumption by investing in the rediscovery of Malayali/Indian family values. I burst into a laugh, partly thinking of my grandmother in Italy and how disappointed she in fact was about me staying so far away from our ‘Italian family’ for nearly a year. But when I went into the garden, I found an impatient Krishnan and a worried Vikram, who asked me: ‘Did my father already start to make his jokes about these people?’ The meeting was mainly attended by young Nambudiri men, although a few women actively participated. The discussion touched upon many issues, ranging from the need to reintroduce the celebration of all the sixteen samskaras to the study and celebration of other family rituals. This, it was felt, should bring new dignity to neglected family heritages, while also demonstrating youth concern for the well-being of the people in the house.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration The rediscovery of household rituals was part of a growing middle-class politics of identity which, while appreciating exposure to foreign encounters, also sought to reassert the distinctiveness of what were perceived as ‘typical’ Indian family values (Uberoi 1998). (p.259) In addition, it was understood by young Nambudiris as a necessary expression of kin love and devotion (cf. Inden and Nicholas 1977), the latter considered as being in decline due to international mobility and the resulting generational separation. During the meeting, the rediscovery of samskaras was inscribed within a broader discourse on aradhana. The latter term was used to normatively indicate youth love towards parents, elders and ancestors, and the humble and devotional acceptance of the world views and decisions of elders (Trawick 1990). Much emphasis was placed on the sensorial and ritual dimension of kin love (Lynch 1990), as this was enmeshed within the debated need to rediscover bodily experiences of food, music, scents, and rituals in the sharing of everyday family life, and to locate these experiences in the re-appropriated space of old Nambudiri illams. In this respect, youth emphasis on family love revealed a class-inflected desire to give intergenerational reciprocity and affection (Lamb 2000; Vatuk 1990) new ritualized expressions, while simultaneously marking the distinctiveness of Nambudiri identity. During the meeting, Sanjay remained in the corner of the room with a provocative gaze. He finally confronted the audience with the following statement: ‘You would have not wished to be such ‘good Brahmins’ had you experienced what my generation had!’ While normative understandings of intergenerational love are far from absent among elder generations, ironic invalidations of the truthfulness of certain conceptualizations of family hierarchy were generated in people like Sanjay, first, by the ideological association between concepts like aradhana and a specific essentialization of Brahmin identity. Second, the ‘goodness of such sentiments’ was made untenable by the lack of reference throughout the discussion of past family histories to isolation suffered as a result of the enactment of affective orthodoxies. By scorning the politics of ‘good sentiments’ espoused by his young fellows, Sanjay reminds us that, while migration, remittances, and consumption have by now been accepted as an integral part of present-day social mobility, his generation had to go through many difficult re-elaborations of kin affective codes. Some extracts from my field diary illustrate how, following the end of the meeting, irony (p.260) addressed the subject’s location within constraining social forces in order to challenge current views on family love:

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Extract from field diary (Kochi, 20–22 May 2005): Going back from our journey to Krishnapuram we gave a car ride to Krishnan. Before joining us Krishnan went again inside to the ancestral home pond for ritual ablution and greeted elder members of the mana (lineage) with the usual namaskhar, by touching their feet and receiving blessings from them. He said he was very sorry for his departure and looked forward to coming back soon. Krishnan started to cry and to ask for forgiveness for having to go. All these highly ritualized gestures, and his wearing of the traditional white mundu (garment worn around the waist), contrasted with the disenchanted attitude of Sanjay, who—dressed in jeans and a white tee shirt—ignored his aunt’s request to have ablution and who left the house with an irreverent ‘let’s go’ (pogam). In entering the car Krishnan asked Sanjay to let me sit in the front: he had ablutions and had to go to temple, and he did not want to be in contact with unknown people. Sanjay bowed down before his cousin and ironically opened the rear door for him. In the car, knowing that we both knew English, he said to us: ‘Ester, have you seen how my young cousin is devoted to our family?’ This statement did not receive any reply from Krishnan. Sanjay piled it on by adding: ‘Krishnan is a very good person, very beloved relative!’ Once Krishnan had been dropped off, Sanjay and I started to have a more relaxed conversation: Sanjay: Do you see how superior are they? The best people in Kerala!!!! Ester: What do you mean? Sanjay: They live out of the world … these young guys may travel abroad but they have remained here. They are so immature … they continue to feel superior … all show off devotion (aradhana) and good sentiments, but they are unable to live in the world!!! Ester: Is it because he has asked me to sit distant from him? Sanjay: Yeah, this is non-sense … as a foreigner, you know, you can be polluting … I just wonder what he does in the Gulf apart from longing for his beloved relatives!!! Ester: About good sentiments … what are real good sentiments, then? Sanjay: To me [it] is when you are able to accept difference, to face that we become different persons by going abroad…not pretending that we (p. 261) stay the same wherever we go!!! People here in my house…in my house, can you believe? …well, they have not accepted [me] for the way I am…is this love? Have they ever done something for me?

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Sanjay’s self-positioning with respect to ritualized affective expressions of aradhana raises many interesting points. For Krishnan aradhana took the form of a highly ritualized acceptance of his elders’ authority. In contrast, for Sanjay family love was predicated on the possibility of elders’ acceptance of the personal and collective transformations achieved through migration. From Sanjay’s perspective, young peoples’ unquestioning respect for intergenerational codes of obedience and community purity constituted forms of emotional immaturity. In his view, youth attitudes mirrored the reluctance of new generations to accept the emotional and relational changes entailed by sociogeographical mobility. His ironic statement ‘they are the best people in Kerala’ addresses the meticulous attention paid by Krishnan to greetings before separation as well as Krishnan’s requests to defend his caste exclusivity by sitting distant from me. Both instances, for Sanjay, symbolized a claim to superiority which was not legitimate in the present, and which meant Nambudiris were living ‘outside the real world’. Furthermore, while for younger generations the acceptance of these codes was considered integral to new elitist identities, for someone of Sanjay’s generation they were seen as a source of embarrassment in the presence of a Western researcher, backward and inappropriate for modern, cosmopolitan lifestyles.

Loyalty and Illusion: Migrant Men’s Irony on Nostalgia Irony unsettles (and pluralizes) folk and normative understandings of generational love and the latter’s association with contemporary identity politics. While youth understanding of aradhana emphasizes the acceptance of generational hierarchies, a contrasting interpretation links the ‘truthfulness’ of emotions to the capacity to accept the unpredictability of migrants’ lives. Irony also questions elder generations’ capacity to ensure a good life for youngsters, a capacity which is in principle inscribed in the relational understanding of aradhana. For pioneer migrants ruptures in kin relations inform the ways in which (p.262) they articulate their ambivalent relations to sometimes unrealizable concepts of ‘home’ (cf. Parry 2003) and the ways in which aradhana is critically understood. As one of my informants put it, recalling his family’s ‘conservative’ attitudes: If it was for their love … I would not have done anything here in Kerala!!! I had to leave the country to make a living, but they have never accepted this … In Kerala we all love each other so much, isn’t it? In this respect, irony grasps an emotional ambivalence towards family affective norms, arising from the tension between the possibility (and constraint) of honouring kinship expectations and the framing of independent destinies (cf. Mills 1997). By challenging kinship affective norms, irony unsettles existent ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild 1983): it draws from personal and community pasts to show how, through ruptures, elder generations can both provide identity but also deny it (cf. Peletz 2001). Page 19 of 29

On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration While irony unravelled similar dissonances in generational relations and affective codes between men and women, it also reflected emotional tropes that differed across gender lines. While men seemed more inclined to question visible expressions of homesickness and nostalgia among current migrants, women’s irony was often directed towards the narration of conjugal histories. Migrant men’s commitment towards the homeland is often viewed as a part of their filial duty and, more generally, of their masculine roles as breadwinners and householders (Osella and Osella 2000; Palriwala and Uberoi 2008). Among some Malayalis, engagement with ‘home’ implies an emotional work of connection, which often moulds folk understandings of nostalgia (gruhathuram). As in other contexts, nostalgia is voiced through the longing for the past and, specifically, through an emotionallycharged construction of an idealized period which is in turn juxtaposed with the present (cf.Cohen 1998). Yet, as implied above, cultural codes of nostalgia are often subject to ironic scrutiny, which reflects a folk distinction between affective attitudes emerging from the ‘real experience’ of the past and those resulting from the imagination of an idealized ‘long time ago’. Another field extract from my research in London illustrates this well. In the late 1990s a small group of Nambudiri migrants in the city had established weekly activities as part of a community global (p.263) network called Arya,† which was dominated by young Nambudiri men in their late 20s and 30s. Most were working as IT professionals in central London, although others were doctors, dance teachers, clerks, and petty businessmen. I was taken there by a Malayali friend, Kunjunni, a 62-year-old man who, like Sanjay, had played a pioneering role in community migration history. Before coming to London as a doctor, he had lived in Tanzania for many years with his family. He had married a Sikh woman from Punjab and rarely went back to Kerala. As a senior member of the ‘Malayali community’ in London, he had been asked to attend the meeting. He accepted the invitation ‘to look at what these young chaps have in mind’—that is, more out of a folk anthropological attitude than a real sense of involvement with community affairs. During the meeting we were offered Malayali food—made exclusively by Brahmin women, we were told—and witnessed the recitation of some Sanskrit passages from Hindu texts (the Bhagavad Gita). Young people in informal conversations praised the beauty of Keralan traditions and the need to go back to ‘real’ rural culture and to old village life ‘like our ancestors did’. The attendees greeted a young man who had resigned from his job in order to return to Kerala to study Ayurveda‡ and to restore his grandparents’ old house. His speech addressed the pains of living away from his family and the difficulties of leading a life that was not respectful of Hindu values.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Kunjunni had a disenchanted attitude throughout, bursting out with a sarcastic ‘So now you gained an idea of real Kerala!!’ as soon as we left. For Kunjunni what made the ethos of the meeting ‘fake’ was the fact that Nambudiris who claimed the past was the real repository of ‘true emotional attachment’ had no real experience of historical events, as he did. Kunjunni was critical of some of the expressions of emotional attachment towards Kerala—the consumption of Brahmin food, the recitation of mantras, and the exclusive caste milieu—as these conveyed a claim to superior status among newly middle-class Brahmin migrants. Among elderly migrant Nambudiris like Kunjunni, intergenerational love tends to be understood in historical perspective, by comparing their lives with those of younger and more fortunate Nambudiris. By distancing himself from such affective (p.264) expressions, Kunjunni also pointed to the different emotional trajectories of Nambudiris in previous decades who—by way of being banned from the community—did not receive the support enjoyed by younger generations today.

Roots, Routes … and Back to Roots: The New ‘Cosmopolitan Virgins’

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration One of the important elements emerging during my fieldwork in Krishnapuram was that migration and trans-local lives had contributed to frame young middleclass Nambudiris’ heightened (and renewed) interest in their own kinship history (Gallo 2015). The desire to rediscover a fragment of the family past related to the impact of colonial reformism was felt particularly keenly among young elite villagers and migrants. This desire encompassed a double intent. First, it aimed at achieving a degree of control over collective histories by generating and disseminating folk reflections on intertwining phenomena such as colonialism, international mobility, and generational histories. The village was constructed as the point of departure of dispersed community histories as well as the symbolic point of return of collected memories. Second, specific family projects fed a desire to rebuild a connection between people originating from the same agrahamam who were now living in the diaspora, and to refashion their relations with the village in a modernist light. Both of these aims demonstrated a shared youth feeling that colonial and postcolonial modernity had compromised traditional privileges and led to the undesired emergence of wealthy new middle classes and their ‘illegitimate’ violation of a place that was intimately felt to be sacredly ‘brahminical’. Young members of Nambudiri caste associations like the YKS or similar associations abroad were particularly active in this project. They were also supported by some elderly villagers who were nostalgic for a time when the agrahamam—the old brahmins nucleus of contemporary Krishnapuram—constituted a territorial and symbolic space of Nambudiri superiority and purity. A fragment of dialogue I had with a Krishnapuram-based activist, a young Nambudiri man in his thirties named Ravi, and his London-based cousin Rajit, outlines a relatively widespread interest among new middle-class generations in kinship history as a means of (p.265) re-inscribing individual lives within village-based memories, while also symbolically reproducing a mental geography of territorial belonging and exclusivity. Ravi: I was born here … and I do not know how it was when my grandparents were living here, but I grew up hearing stories about our ancestral house, our temples … now nothing is left. In the old land of my ancestors now there are houses of everyone, these new middle-class people … now everyone is middle-class, you see? And I always felt annoyed [at] the fact that my parents, my family, [have] spoken badly about their own history, they have demolished old houses, have sold lands to unknown people … they repeat [to] me that we have to accept the change, but I do not see any reason why we, as Nambudiris, should not care about our own history … about who we are ….

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Raji: There are many people who have left Krishnapuram [a] long time ago, including my family, and there is no more trace of them in the village … everything is lost. But I think we, our generation, should go against this and do something to bring into light our history, and our presence in the village … In these two passages, competing histories of migration and of social mobility are made meaningful by referring to the material and symbolic traces of the past within the territory of Krishnapuram. While past prestige is no longer visible within the agrahamam, the latter is deemed to have been increasingly inhabited by the unwelcome presence of unknown exponents of the middle classes. In the process, community history is felt to be both violated and fading. Importantly, among young Nambudiris the village emerges as a crucial end of transnational lives as well as an existential and relational domain in middle-class politics of identity. For young middle-class villagers, the rediscovery of village history allows to them to redraw nominal boundaries around a space which marked out past exclusivity. For young migrants in the diaspora, the composition of a caste history allows them to make a physically distant place into one that is emotionally close. Englund’s (2002: 267) concept of ‘emplacement’ holds relevance here. This concept, while overcoming the local-global dichotomy, provides an ‘inroad to understand how persons, through intentional motion between places, become involved in one another’s life projects, in the intersubjective making of subjectivity’ (Englund’s 2002). Middle-class emplacement in villages emerges (p.266) in people’s active involvement in the making of village history and sociality through genealogical recalling and the collection of memories. All activities express the ‘embodied situatedness’ (Englund 2002: 266) of a globalizing middle class which claims membership of a village while also being creatively involved in its transformation. We can explore this in more depth through the example of the joint project described as follows.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration In 2002 different sections of a Brahmin patrilineal lineage living in Krishnapuram, Indian metropolitan areas, Chennai, Delhi, London, and Dubai started a joint project to gather information about what became of the ‘Ambalayat kudumba [family] project’. Different subjects were mobilized to gather oral histories, find written materials, and take note of marriages, divorces, and other life cycle events involving scattered family members. Both Nambudiri caste and migrants’ associations were assigned the task of finding as much information as possible about the material objectifications of family memories. Research was conducted by family members living in Kerala and in different migrant destinations, in order to place the understanding of family destinies. Information was exchanged via emails, by post and during return migrant visits. During my interviews or email exchanges with family members, however, I came to realize that the aims underpinning the project varied according to different historical engagements with the village. For many young Nambudiris in Krishnapuram and in the diaspora, and for some elderly Nambudiris, the project aimed at reasserting ideas of caste purity and exclusivity, and at linking Krishnapuram into a continuum with prestigious migrant destinations. For other Nambudiri families—mainly comprising middleaged and elderly Nambudiris—both in the village and abroad, ‘the village’ emerged in more ambivalent terms. Among these families, and for the reasons that have already been outlined in pervious chapters, family conflicts related to inter-caste and interreligious marriages were often recalled to challenge the idea that ‘village history’ could be a container of kinship continuity and caste purity. While all the geographical strands of the ‘village identity project’ shared the intention to reintegrate past ruptures (Carsten 2007), diasporic voices alongside intergenerational differences also revealed a persistent dissonance in the interpretation of village histories and kinship memories. The outcome of the project was the publication of (p.267) a book in which old maps, pictures, and memories of the agrahamam were accompanied by a detailed description of villagers’ family life and networks. Significantly, more embarrassing stories about Ambalayat women living in the Gulf and marrying Muslim or low-caste men, about past inter-caste marriages, or about old Brahmin village mansions being sold to Christian families, were omitted.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration During the project I became involved in some family controversies that arose from different genealogical aims. Nambudiri women—particularly those aged between their late 40s and early 70s—showed particular dismay regarding the attempt to purify family genealogies by what they ironically called ‘virgin cosmopolitans’. This expression generated laughter during a tea I took with several Nambudiri friends during a gathering of Ambalayat family members in Krishnapuram. Some ‘dissident’ women coming from different locations started to speak critically about what they conceived as a ‘fake’ re-composition of a much more complex, tortuous, and emotionally fraught genealogical history. Two of the participants were themselves genealogists, and were angry with their younger nephews for having deleted some ‘unorthodox marriages’ from the project output. The expression ‘virgin cosmopolitan’ ironized on the orthodox project in multiple layers. Most importantly, it voiced what women perceived as the inconsistencies between young YKS activists’ showing-off of ‘modern’ life styles and their ‘narrow ideas about marriages and women’, to quote one of my acquaintances. In the ‘obsession’ with genealogical purity, an anachronistic concern was identified for the emphasis placed on caste endogamy and on the acceptance of parental authority over marriage decisions. Women often ironized about (some) young Nambudiri migrants’ idealization of the arranged marriage with a ‘good village woman’, who could join her husband in the diaspora while simultaneously ensuring that the preservation of ‘good brahmins customs’. This idealization was seen as marginalizing not only the potential of youth exposure to better marriages, but also the struggles to have their own marriage choices accepted that have been faced by other Nambudiri youth, and particularly women, in the present. As one of the participants at the meeting put it: Those village cosmopolitans like to have their own life when they are young, then when the time of marriage comes they turn into good Brahmins and want a pure Nambudiri wife that clear[s] their conscience!!! (p.268) Here, the speaker refers to the contrast that exists between the relative carefreeness of caste/religious boundaries during adolescence and the time before marriage, and the reaffirmation of the same boundaries from the perspective of becoming a householder (cf. Osella and Osella 1998). Significantly, mature and elderly women drew from kinship histories to approach the perspective of marriage with some fatalism about the ‘unexpected’, and scorned youngsters’ concern for respecting generational hierarchies and caste normativity.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration The expression ‘virgin cosmopolitan’ also provocatively questioned whether men ought to remain virgin while living ‘here and there in search of good jobs and good company’, as another woman commented. Indeed, village rumours about young Nambudiris not minding having sex with unknown women—where ‘unknown’ meant caste outsiders—while acting impeccably during their preparatory marriage-related visits to Kerala were one of the topics of my afternoon chats with some Nambudiri women. Women’s use of irony in my presence often aimed at establishing a common understanding of the difficulties related to living in a patriarchal society, where women’s movements and life choices were often publicly scrutinized. In this respect, some of my interlocutors both in Krishnapuram and in migrant destinations identified in the new YKS a reverse move towards more conservative kinship ideas. Badhra was a Nambudiri lawyer and feminist activist who had been born in Krishnapuram but now lived in Delhi. During one of my visits in the capital, she told me: I was asked to be part of the project but I said no straightaway … I have a kind of allergy for these spotless Nambudiris with the palm leaf umbrella in their brain!! I have some younger cousins like this. We have arguments, I sometimes speak out, and sometimes I keep quiet because I would not wish to enter into other family conflicts, but I stay away from their ‘rose family picture’ plans! I have my own memories and ideas about my family, and I have kept taking them with me while I was studying abroad and working here … and [I] would not wish to go back being a good Nambudiri village woman, not even in a book!! Here, Irony challenged a specific gendered understanding of family relations (Raheja and Gold 1994), and its reification within politically-inflected plans. For Badhra, as for other women I spoke with, genealogical recalling and kinship memories were premised (p.269) upon the acceptance of those routes that have detached her from specific community and family practices. By ironically calling her cousins ‘spotless brahmins’ and by scorning any rosy depiction of family histories, Badhra also contested essentialized ideas of village belonging as these were reasserted by the Ambalayat family project.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration Irony can represent an important means of nuancing our current understanding of ‘identity talks’ among contemporary Indian Middle classes, and of highlighting persistent ambivalence in their kinship affective relations, at home and in the diaspora. Some of the people whose stories have been recalled in this and other chapters experienced deep ambivalence with respect to generational affection and relations. Migration and social mobility emerge as possibilities rooted in kinship ruptures that, even if located in the past, remain charged with emotional distress in the present. As has been discussed throughout this book, generational love is deemed to have failed in elder migrant biographies to provide a source of emotional comfort and practical support, and it is this sense of dissatisfaction that is voiced through ironic attitudes towards certain expressions of family or community solidarity. This emerges clearly in relation to the community activities that coalesced around newly formed community associations like the YKS. Irony captures elder generations’ discomfort with public attempts at using a fragment of the kinship and community past in order to reaffirm brahminism—here intended as Nambudiri exclusivism—in the present. While some criticism certainly emerges from instrumental attempts at publicly ‘saving the face’ in view of possible condemnation for ‘anti-modernism’ or anti-middle classness, scorn is also used to bring out—while simultaneously controlling—emotional distress related to the retrieval of a kinship past that has generated conflict and suffering and that has accompanied histories of class mobility. It would be wrong to polarize generational positions along a line that opposes ‘liberal elderly Nambudiris’ to ‘conservative young fellows’, as liberal and conservative attitudes well cut across contemporary generational lines. Yet irony also addresses present gendered and generational worries about the translation of middle-class (p.270) trajectories—which are often deemed to have opened up spaces of hybridization and freedom from caste normativity—into equally modernist projects of community ‘insulation’. Irony addresses the fact that ‘old’ kinship affective norms are problematic in a context in which mobility leads people to experience unpredictable affective choices. Affective expectations from relatives in Kerala, or the celebration of community status by young people in London, meet with the criticism and disenchantment of those migrants who have experienced past and present expressions of community orthodoxy.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration It might well be argued that irony alone cannot grasp the complexity of emotions involved in the recalling of migrant histories nor the multiplicity of rhetorical devices used to make sense of emotional dissonance. We can note how the idiom of embarrassment is equally important in understanding Sanjay’s reaction to his cousin Krishnan, particularly considering my presence. As Goffman notes, confronted with a situation of potential embarrassment a person ‘will avoid placing himself in a similar position’ and will attempt ‘saving his face’ as a way to protect his feelings (1956: 267). In this respect, we can also interpret irony as a performative strategy to save one’s face in front of a ‘western’ researcher, by taking a critical distance from behavioural codes of caste purity that the ‘ironizer’ deems ‘backward’ or ‘anti-modern’. But irony not only allows Sanjay to cope with embarrassment and to place himself in a safe space of ‘appropriate cosmopolitan behaviour’. It also actively challenges the assumptions underpinning his cousin’s behaviour, by dismantling the legitimacy of codes of purity and physical distance his cousin Krishnan adopts. As mentioned in earlier analysis, irony both aims at preventing embarrassment, while simultaneously challenging the cultural codes of conduct that create embarrassment. Importantly, irony in this case does not per se disrupt the relations between the three participants involved in the situation (Sanjay, Krishnan, and me). Overall, its use is accompanied by a general tendency to display scorn for an unwelcome situation without entering into open conflict, the latter being viewed as triggering memories of past ruptures. As the ethnography analysed here has shown, irony is used by migrants (and non-migrants) in different destinations to voice difficult relations with kin in Kerala and in the diaspora. It challenges contemporary generational relations, by ridiculing the (p.271) neo-orthodox conservativeness of Brahmin youths. But irony also questions the reaffirmation in the present of folk notions of generational love and respect, by placing the latter within a critical historical recalling of kinship failures and ruptures. In this respect, irony both addresses ‘proper’ historical kinship relations as well as the generational dialectic between present lives and past ancestors. Yet, irony in this context does not aim to reaffirm or reproduce disruptions. Rather, I have argued that it underpins a tension between the willingness to produce an alternative understanding of official kinship and affective codes, and the desire to rebuild family connections while also preserving a critical distance from some of their normative biases.

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On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration For many pioneer migrants, mobility and displacement did not lead to a definitive break with families and community members. For them, emotional work required coming to terms with isolation and distance, and finding a way to re-approach the possibility of intimate connections while attaining maturity. They were adamant in stating that they did not want to enter into present conflicts, as past ruptures had already been too difficult to heal. Equally, however, my interlocutors refrained from keeping silent in those circumstances in which the ‘orthodox’ reaffirmation of community affective norms ‘obscured’ the imperfection of kinship relations and over-idealized the beauty of generational devotion. Irony, in this respect, served as a special kind of substitute for silence (see Bakhtin 1986; Fernandez and Huber 2001; Hutcheon 1994). By making a statement on the ambivalences of family histories and present middle-class brahminism, irony addressed the tension between the implicit promises of emotional closeness that kinship affective norms entail and the unpredictable realities of affective experiences, as well as the perceived inconsistency between middle-class family trajectories and middle-class claims to a new exclusivity. Notes:

(1.) Fake name. (2.) I have no insights into the real extent to which Nambudiris supported the BJP or the RSS in the 1990s and 2000s. Most of the families I spoke with who were willing to share their political orientation mainly supported the Congress or Leftist Parties, but I have not conducted systematic research on this. During my fieldwork I sometimes attended RSS meetings in Krishnapuram and in Kochi, and I rarely met Nambudiris there. These meetings mainly involved nonNambudiri Malayala Brahmins, Konkani Brahmins and, to a lesser extent, Tamil Brahmins. (3.) Even in today’s Krishnapuram, many people from ex-untouchable castes like Pulayas or Parayas are still dependent on local landowners (mainly Christians, Nairs, Ezhavas but also some Nambudiri families) for their employment and wages as agricultural labourers. (†) Not its real name. (‡) Traditional Indian medicine.

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Conclusion

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

Conclusion The Thin Elephant in a Crowded Shed Ester Gallo

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780199469307.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords The conclusion argues for a reconsideration of the place hold by kinship in postcolonial trajectories of social mobility. The reading of present middle-class modernities through the lens of kinship recalling and experiences provides a necessary balance to the ongoing focus on new middle classes as mainly enmeshed in political activism and economic strategies of mobility. The book suggests how, among Nambudiris, the historical move from nationalist engagement towards contemporary liberalization has been accompanied by the questioning of any kinship project based on unproblematic ideas of joint family, caste purity, and intergenerational hierarchies. Alternative ways of conceiving kinship have emerged, based on the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, as well as on the necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling. It suggests how middle-class identities are framed today not only by a nostalgic attachment to an idealized past, but also by a historically-grounded reconsideration of the importance of kinship ruptures in actively participating to global history. Keywords:   globalization, old and new middle classes, political history, memory, kinship

Ana melignalum toruttil kettillalloo-illa Even if an elephant becomes thin like a goat, you do not put it in the same shed with other animals (popular Malayali proverb)

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Conclusion THE AIM OF THIS BOOK has been to explore the relationship between colonial history, memory, and kinship from the perspective of middle-class intergenerational relations. It has focused on how specific historical events are retrieved in the present to mould kinship relations in order to legitimate trajectories of social mobility as well as contemporary politics of community identity among middle classes. In delving into the many connections between kinship, remembrance, and class the analysis developed in previous chapters has tried to bridge two main disjunctures in the existent literature. The first one addresses the need to bring the fruits of historical analysis on gendered family relations under colonialism into the anthropological understanding of present kinship. There is the need to interrogate continuities and novelties between, on the one hand, the way kinship and gender were object of public reflection and reform in colonial times and, on the other, the way ‘the family’ has subsequently come to be pluralized, elaborated, (p.273) discussed, and experienced among Indian middle classes, and across the private and public divide. The intent has been to map how people have experienced and made sense of colonial reforms across different generations and, through recalling, how kinship is understood and represented today in order to support middle-class claims.

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Conclusion Importantly, neo-liberalizing Kerala (and India), might be in an historical moment similar to that of the late nineteenth century, when deep changes in the colonial economy developed alongside family and marriage restructuring (Osella 2012: 242–3). In this context, the tracing of continuities and novelties between the colonial and contemporary understanding of kinship among Indian middle classes is key in order to avoid the more general risk of canalizing possible interpretations of modern families as exclusively the result of a fading ‘collective tradition’ and of the rise of assumedly spontaneous and dis-embedded intimacies (see also Osella 2012: 242–3).1 Indeed, this book has shown how, among south Indian middle classes, kinship has not so much faded in the rise of an individual ethos disentangled from the constraining realm of collective ties (see Weber 1968; Dumont 1985; Giddens 1990), nor has it been ‘been internalised as family’ and ‘confined into the private domain of the house’ (see the critique of: Carsten 2000; Strathern 1992: 133; Yanagisako 2007). Like in colonial times, among contemporary middle classes, kinship concerns and dilemmas are determinant in projects of class mobility, and they mirror a persistent tension between the normative and experiential sides of family life (Donner 2008, 2011; Srivastava 2013; Uberoi 1998). Among Nambudiris (and Malayalis more generally), kinship is not only lived in the private domain of the house, but it is spoken out, debated, and made object of different interpretations in the public sphere, through the writing/reading of diaries, through genealogical recalling, through house architecture, and through political engagement. All this, as the chapters have shown, discloses a heated folk debate over what kinship should be about and presented to a wider middle-class audience. Kinship talks are indeed parts of the aesthetic of Nambudiri middle classes and of the way Nambudiri search recognition from other middle classes. Still, kinship talks do not only express anxieties and claims in the present, but are generated and rooted in a longer historical dimension. Memory emerges among Nambudiris (p.274) not only as a discourse about family history, but as a constitutive feature of kinship in modernity: recalling gives shape to the material, ideological, and representational sides of kinship and allows for the threading of private histories into national political ones.

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Conclusion The second disjuncture refers to the hiatus elapsing between studies of colonial middle classes and those mainly focusing on the new middle classes that emerged in liberalizing India since the 1990s. The book has tried to nuance current representations of contemporary middle classes in India (and beyond) which have to a considerable extent focused on their economic and political orientations, and set ‘new’ middle classes in opposition to their colonial antecedents. In these analysis the centrality of gendered family relations in middle-class politics of identity as they emerged in colonial times has been somehow lost in current interpretations of the ‘new’ middle classes. In this respect, the book has tried to offer insights on the tortuous processes of class regeneration that has underpinned Nambudiri transformation from deyvam (god) to manushyan (human beings) throughout the twentieth century and how gendered kinship relation have remained central and been transformed in the process. The analysis of the relation between class, kinship, and memory holds importance in order to understand how distinctive features usually associated to ‘old’ or ‘new’ middle classes, actually merge to shape different moments of Nambudiri history. More broadly, the analysis of how kinship shapes middle-class identity projects in the private and public domain has aimed at contributing to the under-theorized link within anthropology between class and kinship (Cassidy 2002; Strathern 1981). To be sure, the exceptional history of Nambudiris makes the task of studying the place of kinship in middle-class formation a particularly appealing one. The exceptionality of this community partly draws from its past enmeshment in a sophisticated set of caste rules and gendered marriage practices, which has supported Nambudiri claims to aristocratic status. While the representation of brahmins as deyvam is certainly found in other parts of India (Madan 1981; Parry 1979), among Nambudiris their ascribed godly status found expressions in the possibility to entertain legitimate inter-caste relations with a high-ranking matrilineal milieu without indulging in any recognition of the kinship links generated through sambandham. (p.275) Their exclusivity was also manifested in the aura of secrecy and magnificence that their abode inspired in rural Kerala, with ancestral houses been the repository of sacred knowledge and ritual practices that were inaccessible to ‘common human beings’. Collective attachment to exclusive status partly contributed to mould another exceptional feature of Nambudiris that is the unwillingness/inability to be pioneer in transforming aristocratic status into novel forms of class mobility and to be at the forefront in middle-class seizing of colonial and postcolonial public sphere, like other brahmins throughout India have done (Béteille 2001; Chuyen 2004; Jodhka and Demerath 2006; Deshpande 2003; Fuller and Narasimhan 2008a; Harriss 2003; Singer 1972).

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Conclusion Somehow, Nambudiris were successful in partly withdrawing themselves from historical processes of structuration or, to recall the opening quotation of this book, in refusing to canalize their destinies into the flows of ‘mainstream’ (colonial) history. Nevertheless, prolonged decline, internal criticism, and the competition of once lower-ranked communities eventually forced Nambudiris to engage with processes of class mobility that had been for long disdained. While a restricted section of pioneer Nambudiris managed to catch up with other Brahmin fellows’ success between the 1930s and the 1970s, the majority could legitimately enter into the ranks of Malayali middle classes only in the late 1980s-mid 1990s. In these decades, both the traditional middle classes of Nairs and Syrian Christians, as well as the so called new middle classes of once lower community background, were already looking Nambudiris upside down as a symbol of class failure and, more critically, as the embodied antinomy of a progressive Malayali identity. To be sure, the conservativeness of Nambudiri was counterbalance in public discourses by the praising of some of their revolutionary ancestors, V.T. Bhattathiripad or E.M.S. Nambudiripad being some of the most famous expressions of the leading potentials of brahmins within Kerala history. Yet, folk discourses among Malayali middle classes also point out at how the revolutionary moments of Nambudiri history did not open spaces for timely and deep changes throughout the community. The trailblazing elitism of Nambudiris may command (often ironic) respect and fascination among present Malayali middle classes, but the burdensome past of aristocratic revolution which is evoked in contemporary (p.276) perception of Nambudiris somehow inhibits the recognition of this community as modern and successful middle classes.

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Conclusion This became to me further evident during one of the last days of my fieldwork in Krishnapuram. I was discussing with my friend Nirmala, a woman of low-caste origin, about the way people from her background look at Nambudiris today. Nirmala, who often defined herself as a middle-class woman and who witnessed the decay of a nearby Brahmin lineage, often referred to Nambudiris as being ‘so poor’ and ‘backward’, even if the families she referred to count today many skilled migrants and professionals and had managed to restore the old house in a modern fashion. For the lower strata of Malayali society, the recalling of past Nambudiri anachronisms serves as a backdrop against which to depict modern achievements across traditional social boundaries. When I provocatively asked if by falling down Nambudiris had become similar to the others Nirmala replied smiling in Malayali that elephants are not usually placed in the same shed with other animals. For her, as for many others, past aristocrats are like ‘elephants’. Even if they lost status and wealth, their holiness does not allow others to treat them in the same way as other people. While I initially took this as implying a persistent respect towards a community that had dominated material and cultural affairs in Krishnapuram, the hint of irony with which Nirmala spoke also let me realize that respect was not the only meaning implied in her circumstantial use of the proverb. While the relation between members of lower castes, like Nirmala, and the established middle class was no less fraught with competition and tensions than in the past, the relegation of Nambudiris to a temporal space of déclassé backwardness allowed Nirmala to construct a present characterized by liberation from past constraints. The proverb of the thin elephant reminds her that, unlike in other communities, the aristocrats of her village were unable to question their past status and to engage with the cumulative possibilities of history: as a result, Nambudiris are a bulky presence in Malayali society. They cannot be easily incorporated into the new portrait of Kerala’s developmental history. As Nirmala went on to comment a few days later, when we were discussing a recent neo-YKS meeting held in Krishnapuram, ‘the thin elephant might easily turn into a big one, leaving little space in the shed’. (p.277)

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Conclusion The peculiar position Nambudiris occupy within Kerala colonial history and postcolonial state development makes the recalling of family lives fraught with ambivalence (see Peletz 2001) insofar as, unlike other postcolonial elites in India (and beyond), Nambudiri are less self-confident in publicly asserting their Brahmin identity by celebrating inheritance lines from past generations (see for instance Chuyen 2004: 176–8). Nambudiris are little inclined today to unquestioningly accept the brahmin theology of debt (rna), an ontological and relational condition that connects present existences to elders and ancestors (Malamoud 1983). In this theology, individual life finds its own meanings in the processual effort to repay the ‘primordial debt’ contracted at birth through ritual sacrifices (debt to Gods), studying the Vedas (debt to maharishis, mythical ancestors), and procreation (debt to historical ancestors and elders). Rather, for many Nambudiris generational histories of decline translate into the common idea that family continuity and kinship solidarity are not always positive, or good for everyone.

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Conclusion Nambudiri ambivalent engagement with the past is framed by a simultaneous and contrasting desire to detach from a decadent past while also validating present status by rooting it into a rediscovered pedigree. The first impetus implies the blaming of ancestors for not having engaged with modern opportunities. The second generates among contemporary Nambudiri a memory politics centred around the rediscovery of a fragment of past that symbolizes a belated attempt at entering into mainstream history. It is in this context that we need to apprehend the political relevance of kinship memories related the YKS and the YJS. The actions of reformist movements constitute in Stephen Feuchtwang’s terms (2005: 180) a point of caesura in the temporal understanding of kinship and of its involvement in processes of class mobility. The YKS and YJS, in holding a ‘destructive and transformative impact’ on Nambudiri family histories, become in present memories a ‘unifying point of reference’—and yet also a contested one—(Feuchtwang 2005: 180-2). As such, points of caesura—while originating from history—are also produced in a retrospective way through the confluence of different kinship memories into a (relatively) unifying genre of recalling. They represent mythical points, insofar as they contribute to create a past while also allowing people to reconnect their destinies to wider and institutionalized (p.278) historical events (see also Bear 2001; Bloch 1995; Carsten 2007). In the process new identities are created, sometimes in dialectical position with one another. Feuchtwang (2005) notes how points of caesura inaugurate a present by demarcating a past, by creating ‘villains of the bad before’ and ‘heroes of the good after’ (Feuchtwang 2005). In identifying the foundation and activities of the YKS moment in history as mythical for middle-class biographies, I obviously do not intend to underestimate its historical relevance or to identify in the YKS the exclusive capacity to transform generational destinies. Yet, its importance lies in the fact that it voiced publicly the contradictions and tensions of a community engaged in a tortuous transformation from landed elite into a middle class in contemporary India. As in the past, in the present many memories of class mobility and related family change bring people to subscribe to, distance themselves from or negotiate the meanings of previous reformist movements. Indeed, the ascription to reformist movements of the generative capacity of novel ways of conceiving kinship relations is far from resulting into a coincidence of meanings between, on the one hand, the way the humanization of Nambudiris was projected by the YKS (and later on by fragments of leftist politics) and, on the other, the ways this transformation was made meaningful in generational experiences. Rather, it is a ‘dialogised heteroglossia’ (Mines 1999: 222) that emerges in contemporary kinship memories, as for the ‘heroes of the good after’ whose stories have been narrated here the process of becoming human beings brought with it unpredictable and often irreconcilable meanings.

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Conclusion Two meanings ascribed to the process of humanization of Nambudiris are worth recalling here, as they unravel some key elements in the way kinship comes to be understood among a fragment of contemporary middle classes. The first one is the important place assigned in contemporary memories to the generative role of kinship breaks in allowing the birth of modern families and related class status. Like in colonial times the birth of a new Nambudiri community was premised around the invalidation of some community axioms, in the present class status is built around the often painful, often ironic, recognition that contemporary forms of joint and/or nuclear livings, marriage, and parenthood were paradoxically the result of intergenerational disruptions. In the context of the present analysis, (p.279) kinship disruptions emerge out of crucial historical changes, with the latter conceived as potentially disruptive. Yet, and importantly, failures in kin continuity are not so much—or not uniquely— conceived as resulting from a lack of control over the past. Rather, kinship conflicts emerge as an idiom through which postcolonial subjects express their willingness to enter into mainstream history. In parallel—and differently from the case analysed by Laura Bear (Bear 2007b: 54), where disruptions might still lead to a desire for genealogy as a site of permanence in terms of identity— kinship is framed here not only by a shared sense of loss or by a collective search for a common past and more by ambivalent memories, highlighting how disconnection is at once compromising and desired. Central in the kinship memories analysed here is a pluralist moral evaluation of the past and a conceptualization of the present as the temporal dimension in which ancestral failures have yet to be amended. What is remembered is ‘not kinship as an easy and warm relationship or a safe place’ (Pine 2007: 113) but kinship as a disruptive and generative process, one which people have been involved in and excluded from.

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Conclusion The second element of reflection addresses the emphasis placed by many Nambudiris on the desire or necessity to cross caste boundaries. Particularly among present elder generations, recalling reflects an understanding of middleclassness as a process of hybridization of caste identity which—while preventing certain forms of continuity—it has also released new intimate, emotional, social possibilities, as well as pathways of mobility. The acknowledgement of the historical instability of caste in the present draws, on the one hand, from the historical evidence of the persistent importance of Nambudiri–Nair relations in contemporary marriage and parenthood practices and in the reciprocal forging of middle-class status. Genealogies showed how the colonial project of producing two separate and internally pure communities of modern Nambudiris and Nairs have found only a partial resonance in the persistent proximity and exchange between these two fragments of Malayali elites, a tendency that coexists with undeniable forms of competition between these two communities. On the other hand, in a significant number of instances, kinship memories acknowledge a moral and material debt towards kin from lower castes, and explain the birth of modern youth cosmopolitanism and liberalism in terms of a lesson taken by brahmins by once lower (p.280) and yet more progressive Malayalis. Yet, if compared to memories related to Nambudiri–Nair kinship, the recalling of more thorny unions remains more frequently folded in private family memories and is subject of harsher criticism even among kin.

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Conclusion Importantly, the analysis of unruly genealogies and of mixed marriages within class trajectories invites us to consider the understudied role of kinship in relation to class mobility and competition, and to ask which norms, ideologies and experiences are contested, reworked, and produced in the process. In South Asian studies kinship has been often studied in association with caste, and in Dumont’s tradition, as a ‘subordinated’ vehicle for caste reproduction (Lambert 2000). In this light, kinship—in reproducing caste—was conceived as unique: typifying a different society in contrast to the ‘Western’ world. It is not a coincidence that different scholars have recently reasserted the persistence of a longstanding ideological divide in anthropological studies of kinship and families: one that assigns ‘kinship’ to ‘other’/non-Western contexts while ‘families’ are assigned to ‘our’/Western societies (Carsten 2004; Kuper 2008; Strathern 1981). Yet, the analysis of kinship memories challenges this assumption by showing how kinship might subvert community affiliations through disruptions and regeneration, and may eventually challenge the premises of caste belonging if not people’s sense of identification with the collectivity. As such, the persistent importance of kinship in present Indian middle-class narratives can hardly be understood as a proof of an anachronistic permanence of the past in the present, or as mirroring the uniqueness of an Indian culture of kinship, which is to be contrasted with the modernist understanding of family relations among Western middle classes (see Carsten 2004; Strathern 1981). Rather, analysis developed in this book invites anthropologists to ethnographically engage with the under-theorized relevance of kinship and of kinship memories in class analysis.

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Conclusion What implications does this recognition have for the wider anthropological understanding of kinship in South Asia and beyond? The recognition of the selective nature of kin memories is highly relevant to our understanding of the importance of kinship in narratives of middle-class becoming and belonging. An analysis of kinship memories, I have suggested throughout, is important in terms of reconnecting traditional studies of colonial middle classes with those (p.281) in the present, and for the mapping of the possible continuities and discontinuities in kinship norms, experiences, and conceptualizations that may characterize contemporary class life with respect to the past. An analysis centred on the link between kinship, memory, and class also helps to reinforce the importance of ethno-sociological models of the person that, inspired by David Schneider’s work, have found influential expression in the analysis of kinship in South Asia (Daniel 1992; H. Lambert 2000; Marriott 1976; Inden and Nicholas 1977). This book has highlighted the distinctive coincidence between code and substance in Indian understandings of the person and of kinship relations, as through transactions of food, bodily qualities, or daily interactions the person is made in a way that places him/her in a state of constant openness —rather than impermeability—with respect to the outer world. It has been argued, however, that this model tends to over-systematize and generalize what is a much more fluid and complex reality at a phenomenological level (see Carsten 2001; see Good 1991). Similarly, I suggest here, the ethno-sociological model does not fully capture the temporal dimension of substance sharing, or the historical circumstances that might lead to the development of a kinship culture, that emphasizes also the burdensome nature of substance-sharing and the need to deny the possible transference of kinship qualities from one generation to another (and from the past to the present). As such, it is important to grasp the historical and political dimensions of the processual nature of kinship making, by looking at how, and under what circumstances, the continuity of kinship time through daily sharing comes to be contested, subverted and negated. Dipanakar Gupta’s work (2005: 180) reflects on the problematic presence in the present of normative memories concerning our past: Today the choice before modern societies is indeed a hard one. Now that citizenship has slowly made itself prominent, can modern citizens at last think in terms of identities that do not go back to their past? While we all want to belong, is it possible to satisfy this sense of belonging by reaching out to one another as citizens and not as descendants and carriers of a grand old tradition? If the inherited past is to inform our identity in contemporary nation-states, then the tendency to undermine citizenship is always a very lively one. With the past, not only are we committed to what our ancestors had done and suffered, but also to keep up animosities that the sense of citizenship cannot allow. […] Citizenship is not in tune with these passions and these memories. (p.282) Page 12 of 18

Conclusion While Gupta is more concerned with the passions that stem from the turbulent and traumatic effects of events like the Partition, the Holocaust or World War II, this book has engaged with the more personalized terrain of political history in the way it is retrieved in kinship memories (Bahloul 1992; Carsten 2007), while also addressing how kinship recalling is woven into contemporary politics of identity. Gupta sets the imperative to construct citizenship in the present—which should imply a disengagement from past loyalties to a ‘grand tradition’—in opposition to the reluctant attachment of modern societies to their pasts. For the middle classes whose stories have been discussed in this book, history remains determinant in the forging of contemporary identity in a way that appears ‘neither liberating nor benign’ (Bear 2001: 357). Nambudiri engagement with history reveals both fascination with and denial of past kinship relations. Rather than tracing a line between historical time and biographical time (Cole 1998; cf. Sutton 1998), temporal orientation among Nambudiris reveals a tendency to conceive historical time in a highly personalized and endogenous way and to bring historical disruptions right into the heart of kinship. In this respect, the temporal orientation of kinship relations—and their relevance in the present understanding of class status and citizenship—partly deludes Gupta’s invitation towards disengagement with the burden of the past.

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Conclusion As noted by Janet Carsten (2007: 90), an ethnographically grounded focus on the ambivalent relations between political history, kinship, and memory is needed in present times to counterbalance the tendency, prevalent in subaltern studies, to ‘over-privilege memory as a pristine domain of resistance against the colonial state, which miraculously survives the incursion of supposedly hegemonic colonizing projects’. In existent accounts of the place of kinship in memories of colonialism, the former emerge as a safe space of resistance from external turbulent history and as holding a conciliatory role in modernity, by allowing for the recomposition of genealogical continuity and by the healing of traumatic historical events (Archibald 2002; Cole 1998; Finch and Mason 2000; Halbwachs 1950; Koleva 2009; Krmpotich 2010; Morgan 1996; Sutton 1998). The ethnography analysed here joins a recent and critical reconsideration of the place of kinship memories with respect to political history: it unsettles the supposedly unproblematic nature of kinship in modernity and addresses the (p. 283) analytical incompleteness of metaphors of ‘genealogical transmission’ and ‘cumulative growth’ to explain modern self (Birth 2006; Carsten 2007; Day 2007; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Lambek and Antze 1996; Osella 2012; Povinelli 2002; Stoler 2002). It considers how—contrary to Giddens’ idea of modern intimacy (1992) as detached from the constraints of kinship bondages— genealogical lines might also create bondage between individuals, the community, and the state and deny complete sovereignty over individual destinies (Bear 2007a; Erdreich 2006; Povinelli 2005). Indeed, kinship emerges in Nambudiri memories as the problematic and yet constitutive ‘excess’ of modernity. It must be incorporated into the schemes of modernity and individuals must orientate their projects of self-determination in relation to it, yet it always remains a recalcitrant, controversial presence. The ambivalence of kinship in Nambudiri memories invites us to reflect more broadly on the historical disposition of contemporary middle classes towards their colonial past. Partha Chatterjee (1993, 1997) has advanced the hypothesis that modernity, despite being longed for, also reminds Indians of pasts of subjugation and leaves little space for creative engagement. Contrary to the Kantian conceptualization of Western modernity, which identifies in the present a safe shelter from a past which must be escaped, Indian ethos is, according to Chatterjee, moulded by the common feeling that it is the past that is the imagined temporality of collective fulfilment (Chatterjee 1993, 1997). However, the assumption that the past ‘for Indians is always imagined and not historical— and the only temporality of ‘collective fulfilment’ (Chatterjee 1993: 201, 1997) does not adequately highlight middle-class complicities with modernity and the contradictory spaces (cf. Joshi 2001) inhabited by people at the very moment in which the past is invoked.

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Conclusion Chatterjee’s interpretation of modernity can to some extent be threaded into scholarly readings of present middle-class family ethos, with this ethos depicted as centred on what Lawrence Cohen (1998:103) calls the ‘narrative of the fall’. This narrative constructs the past as a nurturing cradle of family unity and harmony while also forging contemporary middle-class identity in terms of the irreversible loss of family values. Cohen highlights how notions of love and unity are constantly located in an idealized joint-family past, whereas (p.284) the ‘narrative of the fall’ (1998: 103) is pivotal in contemporary Indian middle-class politics of identity. In this line, other work has highlighted how frayed intergenerational solidarity is increasingly considered by Indian middle classes as a symptom of the loss of authenticity induced by Westernization (Lamb 2000; Saradamoni 1999). Studies on movie culture or consumption have also shown how the myth of a pan-Indian (read Hindu) model of ‘idealised joint family’ (Dasgupta and Lal 2007; Srivastava 2009; Uberoi 1998) is constantly reaffirmed and longed for against the ‘corrupting’ effects of contemporary family phenomenologies. Most recently, Saavala (2012) maintains that the Indian middle class is united by a discourse depicting the pursuit of modernity as leading to the loss of those practices and moralities that support traditional family values. In these accounts, kinship emerges as an ‘oppositional space of affect’ (Cohen 1998:105), where the wholeness ascribed to the (past) Indian family is repeatedly set against the history of postcolonial modernity.

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Conclusion Drawing and yet detaching from these interpretations this book had advanced two main interrelated claims. The first questions the dominant portrait of modernity as an exogenous force driving uncontrollable changes, in which kinship memories constitute a ‘safe space of affection’ through which political history is placed at a distance. Rather, the analysis developed in this book has tried to show how modernity may emerge as an historical dimension in which control over collective destinies is claimed, and where kinship is configured at once as an obstacle to and as a source of participation in turbulent historical times. It is argued that an analysis centred on the relationship between kinship, memory, and class is important in order to go beyond a representation of modernity as a uniquely disruptive process, and to look at modernity as an ambivalent space in which control over history is reaffirmed to enhance modern privileges. The book shows how historical disruptions do not necessarily—or exclusively—lead to a collective sense of loss or longing for an idealized past. Rather, the analysis demonstrates how ruptures are ambivalently conceived as desired ways to enter mainstream history and claim middle-class status. The YKS is barely remembered as a product of exogenous forces. Instead, it is conceived as an intimately authentic attempt to master individual and collective social mobility through family change. Importantly, this endogenous insight does (p.285) not necessarily translate into self-celebration. Contemporary kinship dilemmas result from diverging positions taken within ongoing folk debates on penalising the elitism of the movement, on its liberating effects or on its failure to fulfil its promises. As such, central in the kinship memories of contemporary middle classes is a historically rooted and pluralist moral evaluation of the past, as well as the conceptualization of the present as a temporal dimension where ancestral failures are yet to be amended.

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Conclusion Second, the book argues for the need to go beyond a widespread representation of middle-class status as forged upon a structural nostalgia for the ‘good old days’, and to develop an ethnographically grounded analysis of how deeper histories of family ruptures are retrieved in contemporary memories to support claims of social mobility. Furthermore, the intergenerational link between past and present middle classes gives us an important perspective from which to nuance the current focus on ‘new’ middle classes, which are often superficially addressed in terms of consumerist lifestyles and the embracing of ethics of liberalization. The ‘narrative of the fall’ certainly holds important explanatory power in the understanding of middle-class kinship modernity, and the studies mentioned above undeniably grasp some features of the place occupied by family morality within middle-class politics of identity. However, the analysis developed in this book suggests the need to engage with a nuanced and ethnographically based analysis of middle-class memories in contemporary South Asia (and beyond), and of the ways in which memory-work reflects a multivocal engagement with the past and constructs heterogeneous kinship cultures in the present. In turn, this allows us to go beyond the essentialist representation of the ‘middle class’ as a pan-Indian configuration (cf. Dasgupta and Lal 2007), united by a common disposition towards the past. Existent ethnographies, while not explicitly concerned with the relation between memory and kinship, point to how modern family changes actively made in the twentieth century are today considered by postcolonial subjects as a means of disentangling present community identity from past stigmatization. In their ethnography of ex-untouchable Ezhavas, for example, Osella and Osella (2000) analyse middle-class family trajectories in relation to the peculiar model of Malayali development, where literacy, low birth rates, and health services inform a Malayali (p.286) sense of distinctiveness from other Indians as progressiveoriented citizens. While modernity has failed to completely discharge the Ezhavas from the past, this failure has not substantially compromised their ’ ‘sense of affinity’ with modernity (Osella and Osella 2000: 9). This work reasserts the importance of looking at how, within South Asia, different engagements with the past may shape family changes and, I suggest, the work of kin memory. The assumption that the past for Indians is ‘always imagined’ and ‘not historical’ (Chatterjee 1998: 210) may prevent us from exploring how specific historical events are retrieved in memories to express kinship ideas and experiences (cf. Bloch 1998). The overall depiction of new middle classes as ‘trapped’ between a longing for an idealized ‘kinship solidarity’, on one hand, and a desired individualistic ethos, on the other, remains in current representations largely at the level of (often nostalgic) ideological assumptions and needs to be tested by future contextualized social enquiries on the relation between history, kinship memories, and class. Notes:

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Conclusion (1.) See the critique of Giddens (1992) developed by Osella 2012 and other scholars working in the feminist, Marxist, or postcolonial traditions, discussed later in the conclusion.

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The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.299) Bibliography Ester Gallo

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Glossary

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.327) Glossary Ester Gallo

aajaras: term used to refer to events or actions that have produced the breaking of customs or traditions. Among Nambudiris it was adopted to narrate genealogical ruptures related to the behaviour of ‘unorthodox’ ancestors and, more generally, to the activities of community reformist movements. abhijaata: aristocratic: the term refers to those Nambudiri lineages which enjoyed the highest position within the community in virtue of their status and wealth. Abhijaata Nambudiris mainly include Adhyan lineages and part of Asyas ones. acchan: kinship term used by young Nambudiris to call firstborn of the family and therefore their elder brother. adhivedanam: traditional Nambudiri marriage system which differentiated between, on the one hand, the right to endogamic marriage for the firstborn son and, on the other, the limitation of marriage possibilities for cadets to sambandham with matrilineal Nairs. This system started to be progressively attacked in some of its features by middle-class Nambudiri reformers since the 1920s. Adhyans: the highest group of Nambudiri Brahmins in terms of status and wealth adukkala: women’s kitchen areas in old Nambudiri houses. (p.328) Akkithiri: Page 1 of 6

Glossary Asyas Nambudiris traditionally in charge of domestic rituals. ammathu bandhan: matrilineal kin. anthapuram: this term described the innermost areas of Nambudiri houses which were usually inhabited by the antharjanams. Women’s quarters were seizing the northeastern parts of the house and were close to the adukkala, the women’s kitchen’s area. antharjanam: literally meaning ‘the lady of the inside’, this term referred to Nambudiri women, and especially married ones. apphans: younger Nambudiri men of a lineage, cadets. Astha Vaidyans: Jatimantras Nambudiri traditionally devoted to the study of medicine. Asyas: Nambudiris who ranked immediately below the aristocracy. The term indicates a range of sub-castes formally dedicated to ritual and religious services. Bathathiri: Asyas Nambudiris who were traditionally assigned to the teaching of Vedas and high-status priesthood (see also: Thantris). bharathavu: husband. bhoomi: literally meaning ‘land’, it was often used by Nambudiris to indicate the lands attached to the ancestral house. brahastha: (o moosamboori): eldest member of a Nambudiri lineage, and usually head of the family. brahmakshetram: Nambudiri family temples. brahmaswom: land and properties of Brahmin lineages. charchakkar: relatives obtained through marriages. devaswom: land annexed to religious properties such as temples. deyvam (or bhudevan): earthly gods. gosha: convention of keeping Nambudiri women away from contacts with other people, and particularly men. The term also refers to women’s practice of fully covering while being in public spaces within and beyond the ancestral house. Page 2 of 6

Glossary gotra: Nambudiri lineage. It is limitedly used today in colloquial language. grahmam: village, or territory, of origin of a specific Nambudiri patrilineal clan. (p.329) Grahmini Nambudiri: Jatimantras Nambudiris, traditionally in charge of the administration and maintenance of Adhyan and Asyas family properties. janman: sacred right over land and annexed properties, usually exclusive to Malayali aristocracy (Nambudiri and non). Jatimantras: lower-ranked group of Nambudiri sub-castes which included doctors, administrators, soldiers usually working for aristocratic families. jenmi: landlord. kanakkar: tenants, who rented land from the jenmi on long-term lease. kanam: right associated to land which has been leased to kanakkar. karnavan: the head of a matrilineal lineage/clan, usually the eldest member of the family. kudumbakata: (see also illakkar) This term is often used in central Kerala as a synonym of illakkar, that is to indicate the members (men and unmarried women) of the same patrilineal lineage. However, other folk interpretations point out at how the term kudumbakata refers to a smaller circle of patrilineal kin that is those who have lived for long within an ancestral house. kudumbanathan: head of a patrilineal Nambudiri lineage, usually the eldest member of the family; householder. kudumbasangam: family event that gathers all the dispersed members of a kudumbakata into the original land of ancestors. In this occasion the offering to the god/goddess protecting the clan and the sharing of ritual meals reassert the unity of the kudumbakata and their membership into the land of ancestors. kllakkar (see also kudumbakata):

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Glossary In the area of my research, this term was used to indicate the member of the same illam, that is of a Nambudiri patrilineal lineage. If compared with kudumbakata people, illakkar is often used to refer to all the members of a lineage that have dispersed from the original ancestral house and that have in the course of history established their own (new) ancestral house while also remaining connected to other patrilineal members of the lineage. (p.330) illam (see also mana): This term is used to indicate both the members (men and unmarried women) of a patrilineal clan/lineage as well as the ancestral house. Illam indicates in colloquial language both the original ancestral house of the wider Nambudiri clan (gotra)—which was funded in the grahmam (village/territory of origin) and which has been in many instances demolished—as well as the ancestral houses that have been subsequently established by single lineage branches. mahelere: lineage women who were given in marriages. makkattayam: system of inheritance following the male line. mana (see also illam) Like Illam, this term is used to indicate the members of a Nambudiri patrilineal lineage, but the term is less used to indicate Nambudiri houses. mantras: Sanskrit verses. marumakattayam: system of inheritance following the female line. moosamboori: another term used to indicate the eldest Nambudiri male of the household. mundu: white loin-cloth. Mussad: term that traditionally indicated Nambudiri doctors, part of the lowerranked sub-caste of Jatimantras Nambudiris. nalukettu: quadrangular building. olakkuda: palm-leaf umbrella used by Nambudiri women to cover themselves in public. oppol: elder sister. pad:

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Glossary suffix added at the end of the Nambudiri lineage name, in sign of respect. Used to distinguish Nambudiris of higher status from the rest of the community. paddhiaggakhia: outcasting ceremony. panchayat: village administrative and territorial unit. parivedanam: Term used to refer to Nambudiri men’s rights to marry within the community independently from their order of naissance. pooram: procession of temple deities. puddava: piece of cloth usually given by a Nambudiri man as a ritual gift to a Nair woman to sanction the beginning of sambandham. puja: act of worshipping, carried out in houses and in temples. (p.331) sambandham: connection; relation. It is used to refer to the bond between Nambudiri men and Nair women, as well as to indicate Nair’s marriage. samskaras: life cycle rituals. slokas: prayers. Smarthans: Asyas Nambudiri, traditionally acting as judges in Nambudiri tribunals. smarthavicharam: Nambudiri trial initiated against community members breaking caste rules. Somathiris: Asyas Nambudiri, traditionally working as pujaris (ordinary priests) in family temples. taravad: This term indicates the clan/lineage and the ancestral house of matrilineal groups in Kerala, including Nairs and Varma. tavazhi: lineage branch. The term is adopted to refer to both matrilineal and patrilineal lineages. thantri: High-status priest. vaaram:

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Glossary feasting of brahmins at the local temple in connection with Vedic chanting. Vaidhikian: Asyas Nambudiri, ritual authorities within the community. veli: Nambudiri endogamic marriage. It could take a polygamous form, which resulted in the senior Nambudiri member of the lineage marrying up to three Nambudiri wives. The use of the term ‘veli’ expresses the idea of a highly ritualized and life-lasting Nambudiri marriage, which was contrasted to the looser ceremony linking Nambudiri cadets to Nair women and the temporal variability of sambandham. verumpattakkar: sub-tenants, who rented the land from the kanakkar and usually cultivated it, while also employing other agricultural labourers. ward: sub-panchayat division. yagam: elaborate fire sacrifice. Yatra Nambudiris: Jatimantras Nambudiris traditionally working as armed forces for abhijaata families. (p.332)

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Index

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.333) Index ambivalence (kinship) 31–6, 47, 54–5, 126–7, 189, 209, 262, 269–71, 277–83 antharjanam 44, 47–50, 62, 77, 96–8, 101–6, 115, 123, 213–5, 223 memories of antharjanams 143–6, 159–63, 172–5 aristocracy 1–3, 37–9, 42–3, 63–6, 89–97, 140, 172–3, 178–9 associations (caste/community) 4, 17–18, 33, 45–6, 51–4, 74, 87, 108–10, 120–4, 198, 244–6, 251–6, 265–7 Bear, L. 9–11, 105, 165, 169–70, 278–9, 282–3 Béteille, A. 3, 10, 13–5, 72–5, 87–79, 191, 203–4, 250, 275 brahmins 3–7, 17, 19–20, 27–8, 37–40, 43, 54–7, 62, 72–4, 86–8, 98–100, 140–3, 165–8, 185, 192–9, 223, 244–5, 250–3, 274–6 brahminism 56, 89–90, 108, 122–3, 140–3, 166, 243–51 Caplan, L. 11–12, 169–70, 196–8 Carsten, J. 2, 8–10, 16, 97–8, 122, 127, 132, 134–8, 146, 164–7, 273, 278–80 caste 6–7, 14–17, 22, 43, 126–7, 155–7, 192–3, 215–8, 253–4, 270–1, 280 caste and class 35–7, 87–91, 128–30, 237–40, 266 caste-based occupations 42–5, 280–1 caste hierarchy 5, 19–20, 22, 30–1, 37–8, 44–5, 157–60, 204–5, 261–3, 266 caste-based reformism (see also caste associations) 44–6, 52–4, 61, 65, 74, 99–100, 112, 244, 252–5 caste rules 28–9, 94–7, 113–14, 142–3, 160, 185–6, 274–5 inter-caste relations (see also inter-caste marriages) 56–7, 77–80, 129–30, 146, 151, 173–6 (p.334) colonialism 5, 17, 33–5, 128, 141–2, 231, 264–5, 272, 282–3 colonial history 5–7, 10, 27–8, 32, 272 colonial rule 3–4, 32, 292 colonial reform 25–6, 165, 210, 264–5, 273 conjugality 3–7, 30–3, 45, 48–52, 126, 168–71, 177, 191–2, 204, 210–11 debt 95–7, 122, 143–4, 188–200, 190–1, 277–80 Devika, J. 9, 17, 32, 35–40, 43–9, 57–8, 201–3, 113, 143, 198, 211–12, 217–22, 252 diaries 7, 21–6, 95–9, 119–23, 127–8, 273–5 Page 1 of 4

Index Dickey, S. 11, 15, 43, 89, 132, 198–9, 227, 231, 236 domesticity 9, 25, 33–5, 42, 45–6, 50, 165–7 Donner, H. 6, 11–15, 43, 57, 80, 87–9, 127, 133, 154, 160, 169, 177, 186, 194–7, 203–4, 212, 223, 226–9, 273 Ezhavas 17–22, 41–2, 54, 59–61, 71–5, 83, 90, 131, 140–3, 160, 167–9, 177, 185, 188, 192, 195–9, 218, 227, 257–8, 286–7 family 25, 31–2, 36–8, 40–2, 60–2, 70–3, 90–2, 98–100, 121–3, 142, 147–8, 153, 159, 175–7, 179–80, 191, 261–4 family crises 62–5, 67–8, 106–7, 115, 139, 170–2, 196, 203–4, 266–7, 285 family histories 24–5, 130–5, 195–6, 256–7, 271–4 family memories 21–2, 26, 118–23, 168–9, 175, 214–6, 218–20, 266–70, 266–70, 280–1 family migration 87–9, 198–99, 236–40 family planning 146–9, 201–3, 212–5, 218–9, 221–5, 227–30, 240–1 family reforms 45–7, 50–5, 110–12 family temples 70–2, 131–3, 246–7 Nambudiri Family Regulations 45, 52–3 nuclear family 35–6, 146–8, 178–9, 211–12, 216–17, 230–1 joint family 28, 67–70, 96–7, 103–4, 117, 127–8, 187–9, 209–210, 213, 232–4, 284–5 fatherhood 28–9, 110–12 femininity 48–50, 138–9 Feuchtwang, S. 9, 121–2, 277–8 food 133–7, 144, 153–4, 165, 188, 202, 259, 263, 281–5 Fuller, C.J. 6, 11, 32, 37–8, 42, 91, 127, 246, 287. Fuller C.J. and Narasimhan, H. 6, 10, 33, 43, 76, 178, 186, 192, 197, 203, 213, 249, 275 genealogy 164–9, 170–2, 279 genealogical transmission 8–9, 283–4 genealogical records 27–8, 171, 174–5, 179, 210 genealogical trees 21, 168–9 generations 172–5, 180, 186–9, 190–1, 201–3, 217–20, 223, 228–30, 234, 238–9, 244–5, 257, 260 (p.335) generational conflicts 198–9, 209–10, 213, 235, 241, 246 intergenerational memories 170–2, 231–3 Gough, K. 11, 30–1, 37, 72, 127 Gulf countries 154, 188, 225–7, 234–7, 243, 247–8, 257, 260, 268 house 4, 7, 20–3, 27, 39, 48, 69–70, 74, 81, 108–9, 115–16, 120, 127, 132–5, 157–9, 162– 3, 189–90, 193, 236–8 ancestral house 49–50, 76, 91, 105, 111, 129–30, 132, 140–3, 165, 185–6, 275–6 Hindu house 34–5, 138–9 house architecture 128–32, 137–41, 148–53, 155–7, 193–5, 273–5 house consumption 153–6, 178–9 house memories 60–3, 103–7, 133–8, 146–52, 166–7, 260–3 house rituals 89–90, 151–53, 168–9 household 14, 24, 45, 50, 65, 81–3, 92, 104–5, 138–9, 147, 160–2, 168–9, 210–11, 213, 220–1, 224–6, 228, 233, 240–1, 248 home 4, 31, 34–5, 47, 76, 81–2, 92–3, 107–8, 114, 117, 134, 141–2, 154, 158–9, 179, 186– 8, 195, 215, 218–22, 228, 235, 238, 262–3 inheritance 5, 8, 30–2, 50–3, 61, 64–8, 139, 277–8 irony 23–8, 128, 169–70, 243–52 Page 2 of 4

Index Kerala Model of Development (KMD) 17–8, 32–5 land 26, 36–7, 42, 54,70–1, 105, 134–5, 142, 147, 213–14, 221 ancestral land 64, 66, 149–50 land reform 30–1, 59–64, 77–9, 92–4, 114–15, 185–7, 214–15, 227–8, 234 landlord 37–40, 54–7, 63–5, 71–5, 89–90, 130–1, 278–9 temple land (devaswom) 37, 72–3 life cycle 8, 24, 28, 65–6, 97, 101–2, 138, 151, 168, 171, 234–5, 266 Malabar 17–18, 36, 38–42, 53, 66–8, 70–1, 144 Malabar Marriage Commission Report 38–9, 43 marriage 3, 11, 23–4, 27, 30–1, 38–9, 44, 50–1, 68–70, 87, 100, 139, 144, 150, 157–8, 173, 185–6, 220–1, 268–73, 279–80 arranged marriage 178–81, 188–9, 196 endogamic marriage 3–4, 31–4, 52–5, 64–6, 78–80, 110–13, 169–70, 183, 193–4, 213 inter-caste marriage 22–3, 27–9, 45–6, 55, 167–8, 176–9, 180–5, 203–5, 266–7 inter-religious marriage 23, 117–18, 180–5, 247–8, 252, 266–7 love marriage 35, 169–72, 173–6, 186–8, 191–2, 197–202 marriage talks 171–3, 204–6 widow (re)marriage 45, 47–8, 107–8 (p.336) masculinity 49–52, 128–9, 138, 143–4, 165–6, 182, 262–3 matrilinity 42, 49, 56–7, 61, 77–8, 111, 127, 150–1, 173–8, 191, 233, 275 Menon, D. 17, 40–1, 46, 54–6, 60, 65, 71, 183, 250–1 migration 3–6, 15, 17–23, 26–8, 37, 59, 65, 70, 74–7, 87–8, 92, 113–14, 117–8, 128, 142– 3, 147–54, 157, 165–8, 172, 177–8, 201–3, 210–3, 220–5, 234–5, 259–61, 265 Gulf migration 80–1, 225–8 migration and remittances 81, 227–32, 237, 248–9 skilled migration 78–80, 132–33, 238–41, 242, 249–50 modernity 7–11, 26, 32–6, 40–2, 46, 88–9, 95–7, 113, 118, 127, 143, 158, 165, 205, 212, 218, 223, 231, 245, 254–7, 264, 274, 282–6 monogamy 30, 43, 61–2, 113–14 motherhood 28, 103–4, 107–8, 115, 139–45, 148, 159–61, 175, 188–93, 203–6, 212–14 Nair Service Society (NSS) 41, 61, 74, 104–5, 214 Nairs 5, 17–8, 22–3, 30–1, 37–40, 43–5, 54, 60, 65, 69, 71–5, 80–1, 87, 110, 139–41, 152, 159, 177, 183–5, 192, 218, 247, 275–9 Nambudiripad, E.M.S. 39–40, 54–7, 95–6, 168, 180–1, 276 Nambudiripad, V.T. 44–7, 50, 95–6, 98–104, 107–110, 120–1, 164, 181–2, 247, 255, 274– 5 nationalism (Indian) 2–6, 10, 15, 28, 32–5, 40–2, 44, 57–8, 105, 108, 128, 142, 176–7 norms (kinship) 7–9, 11–12, 24–5, 27–8, 30–4, 37, 40, 43, 46, 50–1, 57–60, 91, 95–7, 102, 113, 118, 124, 129–30, 144, 153, 169–72, 175, 181–7, 190–5, 210–13, 221–2, 230–2 Osella, C. 12, 160, 187, 273, 283 Osella, C. and F. Osella 77, 81–3, 256 parenthood 7, 51, 125–6, 139, 220–2, 240, 278–9 party (political) 50, 66, 130–1, 6–7, 108–10, 297 Community Party 50–2, 54, 65–6, 151–2, 155–6, 180–5, 201–2 Congress Party 15–6, 44–5, 108–9 patrilinity 9–10, 30–2, 43, 48–51, 53, 99–100, 127–30, 133, 146, 148, 173, 177–9, 213, 233–4, 266 Page 3 of 4

Index polygamy 33–4, 49, 53, 61–5, 156, 173, 188–90 primogeniture (system of) 44–5, 50, 57, 100, 106–7, 145, 174–5, 177, 218 pujaris (priests) 61, 64–6, 75–6, 79–81, 139, 188, 216–7, 254 reproduction (social) 24, 27, 51–2, 137–8, 210–6, 221–2, 228–31 sambandham 5, 30–1, 39, 42–6, 53, 66–70, 110–1, 168, 173–6, 275, 290–1 samskaras 31, 65–6, 97, 100, 138, 151–3, 246, 258–9 Sarkar, T. 10–11, 31–5, 94, 98–9, 104, 132, 288–9 (p.337) Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) 18–9, 40–1, 46, 252 sterilization (programs/campaigns of) 27–8, 218–3, 225–8, 231, 240–2 Syrian Christians 37, 40–1, 69–75, 77, 80–1, 87, 90, 142, 183 transnationalism 212–3, 226, 230–32, 236, 240–1, 249–50, 265 Uberoi, P. 6, 11–2, 127, 186–7, 212–3, 258–9, 262, 273, 284 Varma 18, 31, 60, 69, 75–6, 179–83, 188–91, 206–7 village 4–5, 16, 23–4, 65–6, 70–3, 90–1, 109–10, 163, 174, 186, 236, 242–5, 249, 266–7 village economy 19–22, 77–81, 219–20 village ethnography 17–21, 35, 135–7 village memories 24–5, 60–3, 82–5, 105–6, 115–17, 129–33, 263–8 village politics 20–3, 73–5, 180–2, 200–3, 246–51, 253–4 village-city migration 33–5, 74–6, 88–9, 213–5 youth 1, 50–3, 60, 78–9, 82–3, 88, 100, 197–9, 218–9, 222, 261, 270–2, 279 youth culture 10–11, 234–5, 258–9 youth migration 87–90, 132–3, 172–3, 233–7, 240–2, 258 youth and politics 66–7, 245–7 youth politics of identity 28–30, 199–200, 244–9 Yoga Kshema Sabha (YKS) 4, 18, 25, 44–8, 59–62, 91–3, 110–1, 125–7, 242, 246–9, 277– 8 Yuva Jana Sangham (YJS) 25, 32, 44–5, 59–62, 83, 91–93, 110–1, 125–7, 278–9

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About the Author

The Fall of Gods: Memory, Kinship, and Middle Classes in South India Ester Gallo

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199469307 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199469307.001.0001

(p.338) About the Author Ester Gallo

ESTER GALLO IS LECTURER IN anthropology at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy, and Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), European University Institute, Florence, Italy. She holds a BA in philosophy and social sciences and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Siena, and has been Marie Curie Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Sussex. She has lectured in sociology, anthropology, migration studies and South Asian studies at the Universities of Sussex, Edinburgh, and Perugia. Her research interests cut across kinship, memory, migration, religion, gender, and class, with specific reference to Italy/Mediterranean and India/South Asia. She has published in English, Italian, and French in international journals (Global Networks, Sociology, Critique of Anthropology, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Migration Letters, Emotions, Space and Society, and Migrations Société Revieu) and has edited a book titled Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences (Ashgate, 2014). Along with Francesca Scrinzi she has co-authored a book titled Migrant Men, Masculinities and Reproductive Labour: Men of the Home (Palgrave MacMillan – Migration, Citizenship, and Diaspora Series, 2016).

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