Sree Narayana Guru and his Contemporaries:
Situating Modernity in Kerala

In contemporary social science discourses the term modernity refers to the socio economic and intellectual transformation that the western world had undergone in the modern period. But over the centuries it has become so universal that today it is possible to speak of modernity in non-European societies. The term colonial modernity is increasingly used to refer to the experiences of the colonised societies. While it is necessary to define the notion of modernity so as to flush out the concepts and categories that are useful for our analysis, it is difficult to have a singular definition of the term applicable to all historical contexts.

The very notion of colonial modernity articulates the fact that non-European societies had experienced cultural and social transformation comparable to European societies although they might differ substantially. In addition to colonial modernity, contemporary scholarship describes this phenomenon variously as modernity at large, vernacular modernity, and alternative modernity. In the traditional historiography of colonial India this phenomenon is referred to as nineteenth century renaissance, drawing on the concept of renaissance, in Europe but not problematising it. Most studies of the renaissance in the nineteenth century begin with the narratives and analysis of the transformation of colonial society in Bengal and the expectation of its repetition in other regions of India. As a result of it we have the replication today of renaissance in most regions of India although some of them could be late comers.

This situation demands a critique of the dominant modes of the historiography of the renaissance to situate colonial modernity in a historical perspective. It is necessary to deploy the insights that have been generated in the course of these debates to analyse the transformation that Kerala society had undergone in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The remarkable feature of this transition was the critique of caste and the transformation of the social landscape in which caste determined notions, of social hierarchy, dominated. This has brought together both the religious and secular domain as integral to the changes in modern times. This is a problem that requires further analysis. We find the coming of the notion of social equality, here, beginning in the mid nineteenth century from the anti-slavery activism of Protestant missionaries, the language of which were taken over by the twentieth century reformers. There are indications of a possible new brotherhood developing cuts, across castes, if one observes the radical thinkers of the period.

The proposed national seminar will address these questions by exploring the ideological world of Sree Narayana Guru (1856-1928) and his contemporaries in the nineteenth and twentieth century Kerala. Sree Narayana Guru could initiate a critique of the traditional society, and its caste based rigid norms, by using the traditional intellectual resources. His genre was the Advaita Vedanta which he used effectively to deal with the questions of difference. Sree Narayan Guru’s intellectual engagements created the necessary conditions for the efflorescence of ideas and movements. The Sree Narayan Dharma Paipalana Yogam (SNDP) the movement that he helped found bears witness to the ideas of modernity that was current at that point of time. There were substantially diverse responses ranging from critical intellectual engagements to social mobilization and resistance. We come across intellectuals who were engaged in religious and social critique such as Chattambi Swamikal, who made substantial contributions to this tradition of critique. In addition to an analysis of the ideological world of such thinkers, the seminar proposes to explore the experiences of various movements from the late nineteenth century to the first half of twentieth century –Ayyankali, Poyikayil Yohannan, Pandit Karuppan- to arrive at some meaningful conclusions on the negotiations of various social groups with the new socio-cultural forces that developed under colonial modernity. It is necessary in this context to draw broad parallels of the developments in Kerala with other parts of India.

Modernity goes along with the formation of the nation state and the establishment of the hegemony of the dominant social groups. This is related in certain ways to the emergence of the new cultural forms that are best exemplified in new literary genres. Similarly, it is important to observe the emergence of a common language that enables different social classes to interact in the public sphere irrespective of their intrinsic differences. One could identify the contests that had taken place in the field of Malayalam literature in the early twentieth century as seen in the challenges posed to the literary establishment by the litterateurs that belonged to lower castes such as Ezhavas. In colonial societies the availability and use of modern language is symptomatic of modernity. Similarly we come across substantial challenges to the dominant perception of nation state as circulated by the nationalists. Under the inspiration of Sree Narayana Guru, leaders of the SNDP Movement could bring in the question of untouchability and caste in the forum of Indian National Congress much before Gandhi could take it up. This movement could be viewed as an effort at challenging the nationalist imagination that was getting entrenched by then. These instances provide us valuable insights to understand the trajectories of the lower castes’ experience of modernity in colonial Kerala.

The foregoing discussion provides the general context of the life and works of Sree Narayan Guru.