Writing in/on Women:
Possibilities for a Gendered History of Keralam
Dr. Sheeba K.M.
Introduction
The discipline of history along with other social science disciplines,emerged within the context of the project of enlightenment modernity in Europe. This specific spatio-temporal location made these disciplines commonly inherit certain qualities despite their varied scope, focus and methodologies. That positivism1 operated as the binding philosophy in all of them had clear implications for knowledge building within the academia and the consequences thereof on the perceptions of social reality for different people the world over. As the legitimacy of these disciplines and their methodologies were established gradually over the non-European world, they began to define and determine the self perceptions of those terrains.
For the colonised, this meant they had now to be thankful for the 'discovery of their past' that had been done on their behalf and for the mirror that was handed over in which they could view the reflections of their histories. Uncharted territories passed from darkness to light as the colonial enterprise (or those who drew models from them) constructed knowledge that could ultimately establish, preserve and legitimate domination. But then, was it only colonial domination that was justified through these enterprises of knowledge building?
All modern disciplines made claims to objectivity and value-neutrality striving to keep in step with the scientific temper that enlightenment rationality had by then established as most desirable. However, the very terms by which knowledge was constructed through them had the unmistakable markings of the white, heterosexual, rational male as their subject; in the process effectively 'othering' numerous subjectivities. History, in particular has to be held guilty for its eurocentric, androcentric and sexist biases. Methodology was a facade for legitimating the violence committed in the upkeep of dominant world views. For women and other marginalised groups this has meant a systematic exclusion from the purview of knowledge and knowledge creation, thereby invisibilising their realities. How then can their experiences be brought into spaces that knowledge is professed to occupy?
This paper in trying to address these questions looks at three themes. Firstly, a theoretical critique of mainstream disciplines is attempted. Secondly, feminist alternatives to conventional research will be proposed and lastly, while exploring the dimensions of a democratic and inclusive research, possibilities for a gendered history of Keralam are sought.
I
Critique of ‘Modern’ Disciplines
Mainstream disciplines have been criticised of being 'male-stream' in their content and conduct. The philosophy informing the disciplines as well as the epistemologies, methodologies and methods built upon it rendered these disciplines as eurocentric, androcentric and sexist.
The positivist concerns of knowledge creation starts out from the premise that it would be possible to begin from the vantage point of theory and hypothesise on causal relationships between several variables. In positivist research, data is quantifiably collected through surveys, questionnaires and statistical methods. The assumption is that there is an objective reality out there in the past or present waiting to be picked up by the objective researcher through suitable methods and turned into a knowledge of social reality through objective and value neutral interpretations. The social world ,through this process , is assumed to become ordered and predictable and causal relationships between variables open to identification, measurement, drawing of certain patterns and thereby to prediction of social behaviour (Hesse- Biber et. al. 2004). A philosophy that reads as above and the deductive process involved have serious consequences on what can be included in the purview of knowledge.
Positivism, as the defining philosophy of the disciplines, has tended to create false dichotomies between the researcher and the researched where the researcher is assumed to be the knowing entity. This places the researched in a location of objectification by the researcher and marks out a distance between the two. The researcher's privilege can be at full play and the power associated with it will manifest in research. This actively constitutes a process of othering resulting in the scientific oppression of all who didn't resemble the researcher (Halpin and Tang 1989). Further still, positivism imagines emotion and rationality as binaries. Of the two, rationality was the index upon which a discipline was validated and given the status of a branch of modern knowledge. This has sustained patriarchal modes of knowledge building. On the one hand, it left out women who were associated with the emotional realm and on the other , it excluded women's emotions, values and imprints of experiences from the purview of research. Yet another limitation was that it precluded any possibility of an emotional relationship between the researcher and researched- a quality insisted upon by feminists.
When theory happens to be the starting point,where does that leave women? If the power of a theory is its ability to account fully the phenomenon it studies, then social science theories on women have little of it. What we have had till now is theory that purports to speak of human beings but that which in reality has not been sensitive to the specific realities of women. Even when women have been studied the perspectives and modes of study have remained masculine- with all the myths, beliefs and prescriptions about who women are and who and what women should be (Du Bois and Barbara 1989).
The conventions of science making -what is considered worthy of study and of knowing - exhibits a clear male bias. Naming which is the first step in scientific interpretation has the dual function of defining the quality of the named and of rendering those unnamed as invisible. This invisibility has been perpetuated by ways in which social sciences have looked at women. The person in social sciences is always male with female defined in terms of the other as derivations from the norm. Even our language is suspect: all humanity is subsumed under the pronoun 'he'.
In relation to epistemology, the researching subject is assumed to be transhistoric and universal. Knowledge produced was therefore believed to be impersonal and neutral to time and space. To add to this is the assumption that the researcher belonged to a universal group and not as differently situated on lines of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality,etc. Further the researcher himself was placed as a unitary and homogenous entity with neither any complexities or multiplicity of identities that could be imagined.
In terms of method, positivist understandings have made the subject of study an object of dominance, thus reproducing the experience of the oppressed or marginalised in the social world (Hesse- Biber et. al. 2004). The subject can contribute to the research only so far as in the answers given to the researcher's questions. The questions are mostly close-ended intended to generate quantitative data leaving little room to accommodate experience. What questions would be asked, what should be the design of the research project, what must be the topics of research and the manner of interpretation are all well confined within the preserves of the researcher, and reflects the power structures that the researcher is placed in. Read in this sense, any knowledge is essentially born out of the researcher's own locations and contains the fingerprints of his times (Sprague and Kabrynowics 1993).
The experiences of the marginalised in the contexts of their domination can hardly be imagined to be studied thus. Positivist philosophy and the epistemologies, methodologies and methods that followed from it did not allow ‘subjugated knowledges’[4] (Foucault 1980) from being discovered thereby rendering invisible women’s (and others marginalised groups’)experiences and their interpretation of these experiences. It was therefore imperative on feminist knowledge to expose the limitations of this enterprise and seek alternatives in this regard.
II
Feminist Alternatives
Feminist reflections on knowledge building challenged the dominant philosophy and epistemology of science and exposed the male dominated conventions of research. They drew largely from the women’s movements which they felt functioned much like “the boy in the folk tale about the Emperor and his clothes making it possible for people to see the world in an enlarged perspective because they remove the covers and blinders that obscure knowledge and observation (Harding 2004).”
In the early days of this challenge, feminist empiricists 2 began to undertake a research on women by including women in research. Otherwise known as the adding and stirring method, feminist empiricists believed that the biases in knowledge creation can be eliminated by becoming more scientific and objective. To them insufficient care and rigour in following existing methods and norms were the causes of sexist and androcentric results of research. The questions on what to study and how to study them could be subjected to correction through eliminating biases involved in their selection and subsequently an inclusion of women made possible. As a first stage this was definitely radical in that it involved a forceful questioning of the sexist and androcentric nature of research practices. This has given those studies more credibility since it was possible to stay within the contours of the discipline and to operate with loyalty to the existing norms and methods (Harding 2004: 42). Notwithstanding their critique, these feminist empiricists only attempted to explain the production of sexist research by operating within existing methodologies and without challenging the logic or philosophy of those epistemologies. There is, however, the need to go beyond feminist empiricism and ask whether it is a question of improper adherence to the methodology or a failure of the methodology itself. Feminist empiricism tried to critically address the androcentic practices in the disciplines but the objectivity they professed was unsuitable to examine the ‘cultural filters’ that research passed through. Criticizing this needed a critique of positivist practices and their links to hierarchies of knowledge.
Since every knowledge is now understood to be historically contingent, the object of knowledge, viz., the truth, is seen as the outcome of the process that discovers it (Alcoff 1989). The nature of the knowledge is therefore dependant on the process of its production. The knower has a subjective perspective. Knowing is not a relative process, rather,it is partial (Harraway1998).It is not an objective,unbiased, apolitical process as it was claimed to be. A rational and objective research undertaken very earnestly and with great caution can still invite dissent from marginalised groups since from their perspective the results forthcoming have the effect of producing, reproducing or legitimating dominant power structures. Where hierarchies of sex, gender, ethnicity caste, race, etc. prevail it is the view of the dominant that determines who shall know and can know and what can be known. These questions need to be raised invoking women’s experience as the location to start the journey.
Feminist Standpoint Epistemology
Since feminist empiricism had failed to address the question of epistemology, the idea of a feminist standpoint epistemology was put forward by feminist researchers (Harding 2004). The idea of a standpoint can be traced back to Hegel's idea of the standpoint of the slave3 that was later believed to have been taken up by Marx and others in formulating class consciousness. The starting point of standpoint theory is that the activities of the dominant groups limits what they can understand about themselves and about the world around them. This is born out of their inability to raise critical questions on received beliefs and dominant values of which they are a part of .On the other hand, the activities of those at the bottom of social hierarchies can provide starting points for everyone’s research and scholarship[5]. This is because the experiences and lives of marginalised peoples, as they understand them, provide particularly significant problems to be explained as research agendas (Harding 2004). Questions on these experiences had been devalued in the positivist pursuit of objectivity ,the answers to which will be located in the lives of the dominant groups whose practices have had crucial bearing on marginalised lives.
Standpoint theory holds that inquiry should begin from the point of women’s lives since this will generate less partial and distorted accounts not only of women’s lives but also of men’s lives and of the whole social order (Harding 2004). Donna Harraway (1988) has framed the idea of feminist objectivity which is in opposition to positivist's discussions on the concept as well as of relativist positions. She states that feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn to see .This knowledge is developed along with the research subjects who bring their own experiential knowledge, concerns and emotions to the project. It transforms both the subject and object of research.
Positioning, partiality and accountability may be delineated as the three key elements to feminist research objectivity. Bhavnani (2004) suggests three criteria on which these elements can be worked out to support feminist objectivity. The first principle was that research had to consciously refrain from re –inscribing the researched into the “dominant representations of powerlessness , into being viewed as without agency.” Bhavnani (2004)The second is whether one is conscious and cautious of the relationships of domination and subordination with which the researcher has to continuously negotiate. The third is the question of difference. Women may be placed at different locations of caste, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, region, nation, etc. These impact upon their experiences and the meanings they draw out of them in differing ways. The interests of the women in conflicting or contradictory locations between themselves may tend to be ignored, erased or even tokenised. Women as a category should necessarily be disaggregated in any analyses of their lives.
What acts as a fundamental principle in this epistemology is that it is linked to the cause of changing women’s lives for the better, retaining close ties with the women’s movement (Sprague and Zimmerman 1993). While feminist empiricists had tried to keep knowledge clear and clean from intervention by ‘politics, the feminist standpoint epistemology tries to problematise the relationship between knowledge and politics. This is vital in building knowledge for marginalised people (and those who would know what the marginalised can know) rather than for the use only of dominant groups in their projects of administering and managing the lives of marginalised people (Harding 2004).
Methods
Several strategies have been developed to enable feminist research at the level of methods. Data collection as the primary event in research has to be approached with great caution. Contrary to the positivist belief that data can directly lead to hypothesis, the same data may lead to contradictory hypotheses depending upon the subjective interpretations. Qualification and broadening up of what can constitute valid data should provide for the inclusion of silences and inarticulateness. Silence may be indicators either to the inadequacy of language to express an experience, or a refusal to articulate or pointers to the social reasons, personal difficulties or resistance to articulate. Kitchen talks, living room conversations, neighbourly chats are all useful entry points into everyday life and the negotiations of the everyday.Feminist research cannot proceed with quantitative data only.Though numbers are important as socially empowering as they indicate the degree of inequality or empowerment it is impossible to fit complex experiences into measurable variables .We may then end up perpetuating the existing modes of domination.
Interviews are the best suited methods for the collection of qualitative data. However the interviews should be structured in ways that keep the researcher- researched hierarchies at a minimum. Self - disclosure is the most desirable form of relationship between the researcher and researched. Taking feedback on interpretations made on interviews is helpful in minimising interventions by the researcher. Feminist research demands a conscious subjectivity (Klein1989) which is not an uncritical acceptance of a person’s statements but which acknowledges the subjective experiences of women. This will replace the value free objectivity of traditional research. Closely associated with this is the idea of conscious partiality achieved through partial identification with the researched as against spectator knowledge (Mies 1989). An approach from the existing social sciences that is useful for feminist research is that of ethnomethodology which uses the documentary method of interpretation in order to find out about and understand the everyday (Stanley and Wise 1989). Another guidance for feminist research is that vertical relationships of viewing from above should be abandoned in favour of horizontal bonding with the researched. The exploitation of women as research subjects have to be avoided and the methodology needs to enable interactive processes. Traumatic realities laid bare in the process of self disclosure create ruptures in women’s lives and therefore the idea of eliciting information and disturbing lives psychologically and physically has to be deplored. In such instances research can be conducted with the support of local groups that can act as support groups for the women researched.
Implications for history writing
In the context of a general critique of research within social sciences, the case of history as a specific discipline has to be examined. Micelle Perrot talks of the profession of the historian (as being) “a profession of men writing male history and the fields they cover with political history in the forefront those of male action and power” (Perrot 1988). Since history was stated to be the record of past events women whose lives, experiences and contributions went unrecorded found no place in history. Women were neglected in history as long as historians held the view that only transmission and exercise of power were worthy of their interest (Lerner 1981). As Uma Chakravarti and Kum Kum Roy(1988) have remarked, “those who were subordinated in real life can hardly be expected to have succeeded in worming themselves into a history which considered the realms of power to be its natural focus”
When women began to figure in history it was largely as victims of the social structure. The colonial writings popularized this idea.“The higher morality of the imperial masters could be effectively established by highlighting the low status of women among the subject population (Chakravarti and Roy 1988:320). The social reform discourse too largely perpetuated this idea and the victimhood was the take off point to launch the reforms. Women were pictured as cruelly subordinated within the overarching ritual ridden caste practices demanding a reformist (male) helping hand to pull them out of the quagmire of despair and oppression .Women also found visibility in history in complimentary roles. This was particularly so in histories of movements, especially working class movements. That the national movement under Gandhi’s leadership had been successful in making large scale participation of women possible is true. So did working class/peasant movements. However, to assume complimentarity for women who could be pictured as forging ahead shoulder to shoulder with men , without first problematising the conditions of women’s political participation, is deceptive. While speaking of the few women who have managed to find a place in history, mention is also to be made of the ‘great women’ in history[6]- women who have made it big due to their donning the roles of men as leaders or mobilisers of women. Here too only exceptional women who could brave the odds of a woman’s world and make it to the forefront figured in historical narratives.
As different from other Social Science disciplines, history demands delving into a bygone age. Since the subjects of study are located in the past, information about them may not necessarily be collected through interviews or in relationship with the researched, as suggested by feminist thinking. However, it is possible to place the relations between the sexes at the centre of historical research with the intention of encouraging a possible review of history and to seek fresh paradigms of inclusive historical thinking .It would mean making women “a focus of inquiry, a subject of the story an agent of the narrative” (Scott 1988). This calls for an active imagining of an organic relationship between the women of the past and ourselves.
Attempts to retrieve women and their history began with the image of women as victims and gradually tried to move towards drawing out women as agents of history, with their own forms of action and expression. This was not however to create a separate sphere and recreate yet another gender based division of labour. Neither was it to constitute a new discipline, a closed field of knowledge entitled women’s history with all the risks of isolation and indifference that that would entail (Perrot1988).Most historians among women, according to Joan Scott,“ employed the rules of language, accuracy, evidence and inquiry which make communication among historians possible … and acquired standing as professionals in the field of history” (Scott 1991.As women historians they were the feminist empiricist vanguards of historical knowledge. The initial process of ‘adding women in’ was vital since it exposed the androcentrism in history and replaced ignored, inaccurate or biased data by including accounts of women’s lives. Yet this proved ineffective since a critique of the conditions that made the discipline operational was still wanting. To make a claim about the importance of women in history is necessarily to come up against definitions of history and its agents already established as true or at least as accurate reflections of what happened or what mattered in the past (Scott 1991). The empiricist ‘adding in’ approach reflected feminist views in its theoretical frame but the methods used were still sexist. In this compensatory scholarship, answers from and about women continued to be evaluated against male standards. What became apparent after this exercise was that women were simply not left out of history, but the choice of areas, research, policies, theoretical concepts and methodology had not permitted satisfactory explanations of women’s experiences. What was called for was a research for women that took women’s needs, interests and experiences into account and aimed at being instrumental in improving women’s lives (Klein 1989).In history, these definitive goals were attempted to be achieved by renewing the discipline from the point of its methodology itself.
Research Agendas
In order to achieve a reconceptualisation of the discipline, what matters in history has to be framed afresh. “It is not enough to look at women’s participation in production, or at even their exclusion from control over production, or at the political arena and stop there. What is required is a modification of theory whereby an analysis of production…is extended to include social reproduction…(which) involves the day to day recreation of labour power which in contemporary societies involves cooking ,servicing the domestic area, biological reproduction and the socialisation of children” (Chakravarti 1988).Acknowledging the fact that hitherto history had already been preoccupied with the realm of politics ,it is important to equally attend to women’s political histories while writing a history of women. Women’s involvement in political movements, and the consequential shifts in consciousness and in modes of being need to be diagnosed (Sarkar 1999). This would entail a radical re orientation of the concepts of progress and regress .Remember for example how Joan Kelly Gadol writing on European Renaissance noted the human costs paid by women in Renaissance who were victimised with a loss of social autonomy (Gadol 1977). Our own towers of Golden Ages will start to crumble under the pressures of feminist research (Chakravarti 1983).
While opening up the concept of politics and the public sphere to feminist critique it is equally necessary to imagine other arenas through which women’s lives can be documented and understood. It is mandatory that women’s history imagine unconventional themes like memory, sleep, sickness, mothering ,sexuality, belief, food habits and the like to investigate the various social processes and how women negotiate their lives within them.
Data Sources
Official records, organisational or private papers , literary texts , legal treatises, etc are traditional sources that will need to be relooked at with a fresh eye and questions rephrased to position patriarchy at the vantage point. New kinds of sources may also be identified. Women’s writings, correspondences, biographical literature, diaries, photographs, lullabies, wedding songs, lyrics composed or sung by women in specific work locations ,etc., present excellent documentations of the everyday. The feminist paradigm can be built through an inseparable dependency of facts and feelings, figures and intuition, the obvious and the hidden, the doing and talking. In short it is the study of immeasurable qualitative phenomenon which encompasses the personal. This inclusion of the personal and everyday is crucial in writing feminist history.
III
Possibilities for a Gendered History of Keralam
Problem of Invisibility
Though the Sangham works ,dated roughly to the period of two centuries before and after the Christian era, make considerable references to women of those times ,it was not until Vijaya Ramaswamy’s brilliant analysis was published that women’s relationship to nature and work and how women in the Sangham contemplated social life could be illuminated. It provides enriching insights into the everyday (Ramaswamy 1989). There is a long silence on women afterwards, in the periods of migrations, settlement, solidification of caste hierarchies and political upheavals in the region. Perhaps Kannaki[7] is the lone figure apart from the mother goddesses qualifying as a female presence in Kerala’s early past!
Where silences finally gave way to visibility women tended to be underrepresented, the most common form being that women were made visible in history but only to be placed within the frames of masculine understanding. Women’s voices were unheard in writings that were explicitly about them. Discussions on Vadakkanpattukal[8] and Manipravalam[9] literature did not locate women’s voices in them. In more than two thousand years of settled life in the Kerala region, women remained grossly under- represented.
Sexuality as a Theme for Writing Women’s History
Sexuality is a useful entry point in exploring women’s lives. The term sexuality has a broad meaning encompassing erotic desires, practices and identities. It involves feelings and relationships and ways in which we are defined by others as well as the ways in which we define ourselves. Early feminists in the Unites States like Adrienne Rich(1976) and Shulamith Firestone(1970) held the opinion that women’s oppression in the patriarchal culture and society was linked to the identification of women solely with their bodies. The Women’s Movement popularly called as second wave feminism in the 1960s had opened up sexuality as a political issue. Thus aspects of life that had previously been seen as outside the public realm of politics could be placed on the political agenda.
The idea that sexuality, in its existing form, is oppressive for women does not always lead to an analysis of sexuality itself. Theorists have conceptualised sexuality as socially constructed, but precisely how this process occurs is a matter of much debate. The tradition in Marxist thought was to see sexuality as repressed by capitalism (MacKinnon 1996). Some Marxist and Socialist feminists turned to psycho analysis - a theory in which repression is a central concept - in order to explore sexuality (Mitchell1975). Radical feminists argued in terms of male domination and analysed sexuality in terms of patriarchal structures(Firestone 1970).
Sexuality needs to be problematised as a highly political question. What constitutes sexuality, what qualifies as deviance? How can agency be maintained within sexualised spaces? How are controls over sexuality devised as boundary maintaining techniques by the family, ethnic groups, community, caste or nation? How is gender expressed through bodies and how are they intertwined with social relations and ultimately the social structure? What are the possibilities for resistance? These are vital questions to be raised.
That the female body is placed in a social context significantly and that sexuality is culturally coded , gives space for an investigation of the processes by which a transformation of the culturally constructed norms on sexuality becomes effected. This brings to question the idea that such transformations are “bounded by the restricting nature of the dominant constructions based on gender, class, caste and regional applications”(Thapan 1995:38). Culture may exert its control not always through direct repression but through what Lois McNay calls the “more invisible strategies of normalization”(McNay 1994: 98). Apart from these socializing processes, women are continuously exposed to an array of social and cultural practices that shape their identities as women. Resistance to these social practices, however, take different forms and women often tend to subvert the given to make space for their own ways of perceiving,knowing and being. (Thapan 1995:40).As Rosalind O’Hanlon has observed that,“resistance need not necessarily take the virile form of a deliberate and violent onslaught. It could be of different kinds , dispersed in fields we do not conventionally associate with the political; residing sometimes in the evasion of norms or the failure to reflect ruling standards of conscience and responsibility(O’Hanlon 1988:194).If we have to argue for a productive view of women’s agency and not locate women as mere victims of the social order , we will have to start recognizing that individual responses are the beginnings for social transformation and that therefore they were not without a purpose.
In writing about women in Kerala’s past can these questions be posed effectively? It is pertinent to subject the sexual patterns of Kerala’s past as well as the understandings on the moral/immoral, normal/deviant women current in the historical knowledge on Keralam to critical analysis. Even more urgent is the need to look at the subjective negotiations of women to delineate agency within sexual spaces.
The brahmanical social order in India from very early times maintained itself on the twin pivots of caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy. The central factor responsible for the subordination of upper caste women was the need for effective sexual control of such women to maintain not only patriarchal succession but also the purity of caste (Chakravarti 2006:138).The high caste woman thereby bore the responsibility of preventing varnasankara (mixing of castes) and maintaining the ritual purity of castes through the controls placed over her sexuality. The purity/pollution concept was cardinal to the caste system and by extension to the value system that governed women. Where women had internalised these notions of control the system prevailed with their conformity whereas in situations of the ideological force weakening ,the brahmanical law codes had to be evoked for the maintenance of the social order. The presence of elaborate ideologies for restricting women’s movements and advocating their seclusion in brahmanical texts are admissions of the presence of non conformist women who could virtually break down the brahmanical order(Chakravarti 2006:140).In the event of consent failing to become operational it had been advisable to employ coercion to bend women into conformity to the social order. The primary responsibility of punishing errant wives lay with husbands who were to suffer in the first degree due to their sexual lapses. Where they failed, the male members of the family could step in, even use physical force to ‘correct’ her. In the last instance the king, through the apparatus of state, would bring the nonconformist wives back into obedience and perform his duty in the upkeep of the patriarchal state. The Arthasastra cites several such punishments that are to be meted out by the state in this regard(Chakravarti 2006 :151).Such evidence points to the obvious nature of sexual controls on the high caste women that were operational within the brahmanical social order in order to keep it intact. Here the collusion of the caste order with the state have to be demarcated to arrive at the apparent ways in which patriarchal controls on female sexuality operated as well as to look at the subtle ways in which women negotiated with these controls.
The trial peculiar to the Namboodiri Brahmins in Keralam known as the smartavicharam was a unique mechanism for the regulation of the Namboodiri women’s sexuality .Any Namboodiri woman whose chastity was in doubt could be brought to this trial before the Smartan ,a vedic judge.There were elaborate procedures for the conduct of these trials which involved the sanction and supervision of the Raja and concluded with the pronouncement of the guilty –of both the woman as well as the men involved with her- as outcastes. The Sankarasmrti ascribed to Sankaracharya (Bhaskaranunny 2000:120-130) outlines the procedures for the trial. When a Namboodiri householder had reasons to believe that his wife has had adukkaladosham (literally meaning trouble to the kitchen, here denoting committing adultery) he should along with his caste - men announce his suspicion to the other members of the clan. The woman’s dasi(Nair woman escort) is first questioned and in the event of the dasi confirming the suspicions, the woman who would henceforth be referred to as sadhanam[11],would be transferred to the anjampura (fifth room outside the nalukettu or quadrangle) and closely guarded against undue influence or to prevent her from committing suicide. (Menon 1973reprint [1878]).The Raja had to be subsequently notified and stipulated sum of money paid to the exchequer upon which he would send four brilliant mimamsakars(scholars in vedic scriptures),a smartan, as well as other officers to assist in the trial. If the woman does not admit guilt the trial cannot proceed. Once the woman admits guilt the names of the men are elicited and finally through the swaroopamchollal (pronouncement of verdict) she along with the men would be excommunicated. An ostracized sadhanam was dead , for all practical purposes , to her family and her death rites were performed .
The initiative for the trial by the householder may prove suicidal both economically and socially. Prolonged trials could be expensive for the householder since food and boarding expenses for the committee members in addition to payments for each member may leave him in dire financial straits. However, these reasons did not act as absolute deterrents in the initiatives taken for the trial by the caste members indicating the pressures of the claim for purity and ritual superiority of the Namboodiris. If the householder had happened to have had sexual relations with his wife after her act of adultery he would lose his caste as he had then technically slept with an unchaste Namboodiri woman. It is opined that many householders opted to keep silent over such issues since it was very rare for a sadhanam to emerge innocent after the trial.[12]Inspite of this, cases were reported from the Puramendekkadu Illam(Illam was the Namboodiri household) in 1870,Kottachiral Illam in 1897,Thottapaya Illam in 1898,Ashtath Mundanad Illam in 1899,1902 and 1916,Parayath Thekkumpuram Illam in 1899 ,1902 and 1908,Padinjareppattu Illam between 1905 and 1920 and Kottamangalath Illam in 1917 and 1927,to name a few(Namboodiri1987:17).V.T.Bhattathiripad ,the noted social reformer of early twentieth century, refers to three Namboodiri girls who ran away from the Kambrath mana(name of the household) near Pulamanthol and had sexual relations with the eminent persons visiting the Travellers’ Bungalow there. (Bhattathiripad1997 :626).
The smartavicharam of Kuriyedath Tatri in 1905 is examined ina little detail here. These trials were not recorded before in history. It was only in Tatri’s trial that the Raja ordered for a change in procedure and instituted a trial of the men concerned(Purushavicharam) and this new procedure was documented. Since it was necessary to record the time and location of the acts, the statements recorded(Smartavicharam Records henceforth SR -140,141A, 141F, 141 E) could be read as biographical accounts of her life as they reveal various events in her life like as when she attained puberty, her marriage, occasions of local temple festivals, quarrels with her cousins, mother giving birth to a younger child , sister having a baby, watching a Kathakali performance, her friendship with other Namboodiri women who introduced her to other men and a variety of other details that can go into making excellent social history from a woman’s vantage point. Despite the fact that her statements were all responses to the questioning by the smartan ,resembling judicial testimony of our times and recorded by the officers in charge , Tatri’s descriptions of the occasions, locations, contexts, reasons and experience of her sexual acts comes through in ample measure.
Being cautious about valorizing this testimony one is prompted to ask whether a degree of manipulation by the officers recording her testimony against her favour should be expected. However, the pronouncement of the smartan is consistently to honour her testimony and to rule out any falsehood on her part. Regarding her sexual act with her father,while her father pleaded his innocence ,the smartan’s observation was that “it was impossible to believe that the woman would pass such lies about her own father”(SR 141 F).When this particular smartavicharam made provisions for fair trial of men accused and the men pleaded innocence, the smartan dismisses all such pleas as unreliable (Raja’s Diary,SR). The sadhanam‘s statements, on the other hand, were seen to be accepted as true .This is despite the fact that the trial assumed sensational proportions as Tatri named sixty four men of different castes and social statuses mostly from very reputed and wealthy families who stood to bear the brunt of excommunication and their families to face social ostracism and ruin once they were pronounced guilty.
Tatri’s responses to the questioning in the process of smartavicharam is proof to the complex nature of her relationships with the sixty four men. Despite the impersonal disposition of the responses that a judicial questioning elicits and records ,there are descriptions that are detailed in nature and do not follow a common pattern. The initial act is one of extreme violation where the ten year old is forced into sexual relations with an aged man. However not all follow in a similar mode. Several of her relationships are negotiations for securing a desired object like a book on Kathakali ,a beautiful mundu (lower garment) or to get the man to enact a particularly desired role in a Kathakali performance . Her second relation was with her music teacher Pushpakath Narayanan Nambyassan who asks her about the sexual act with the fifty year old Nambyattan Mooss Namboodiri who first violated her when she was barely ten years old. Tatri testifies, “he was my guru and I could not lie to him ….Later, on another occasion when I went to bathe he came over to the Kulappura(bathing tank) and made known his desire for a physical union with me. I helped him realize that desire then and there. That was the first time with him in 1068(Kollam Era, 1893 A.D).There was yet another occasion in 1073(Kollam Era, 1898 A.D).I had not given him any presents in lieu of the music training and asked him to come… to give him two mundu ….That night we had sexual union….He was dark and heavy with a bad lower tooth and must have been around forty years”(Tatri’s Testimony in Smartavicharam Records henceforth TTSR).Her childhood friend Mullayoor Madhavan Namboodiri had a secret relation with another woman .Tatri asked him casually about this to which he replied that “if I (she) were to let him have sexual intercourse with me (her) he would stop visiting that Warrier woman. I (she) agreed….That was in 1069(Kollam Era ,1894 A.D.)”(TTSR). Tatri had relations with her cousin Narayanan to persuade him to abstain from leaving his home to become a wanderer. “I tried to drill some good sense into him. He resisted and we broke up. Our mothers made us patch up again. I tried again and he told me of the problems back in his family….He said he wanted to leave the place and would like to have physical union with me before he left. I forbade him and tried to dissuade him from leaving. He refused to listen. However, out of a lack of guard on both our sides that night a physical union took place.”(TTSR).Her desire for renowned Kathakali artist Kavungal Sankara Panikkkar finds expression in a sexual act at a highly erotic moment as he performs the sexual union of the yearning Keechaka with Draupadi (Bheema masquerading as Draupadi in the play Keechakavadham).
The events and the men described are only a few among the sixty four she named. It was a medley group ranging from Namboodiris of most eminent Illams like Desamangalam to men of the Nair and Nambiar castes who were in charge of elephants. There were astrologers, performers, singers and actors involved. Also were included her close relations like her father, brother, brothers-in law(both husband’s brother and sister’s husband),uncles, grand uncle as well as a Nair servant from her natal home. The men were aged between seventeen and sixty. Tatri testifies to every detail of these relations, how, where, when and why they took place. They indicate the multiplicity of sexual expressions that refuse to fall into a monolithic pattern either of victimhood or of avenging the ills of the Namboodiri caste through falsely implicating the men. How must she have related to the sexual acts in these instances? It is likely that she differentiated between each sexual act, the ones she involved her desire in, the ones she bargained for objects with, the ones she did as part of obedience as she later reflects to have happened in the case of the relation with her own father. A few happened because she was caught in compromising positions (as when lying aside her uncle).She had to agree to Padinjare Madathil Venketeswara Pattar’s request in order to silence him. Despite this, she rejects his requests the third time stating clearly that she had agreed twice since she had feared that he would tell on her and that it would be difficult do so in the future(TTSR). Her sexual acts too were not of a homogenous nature. The questioning in the smartavicharam must indeed have been an act of transgression of her private spaces but Tatri is articulate enough to narrate the circumstances of each act. They are not acts of inadvertent omissions since she states that most of the men had had sexual relations with her more than once. That she is able to turn down the request for a repeated sexual act made through blackmail should help us arrive at the idea that Tatri was not wholly a victim of her circumstances.
Tatri was only twenty three years old when she was brought to trial. There was a long period of thirteen years when she carried on these relations. The people of the geographical location between Arangottukara(her natal home) and Chemmanthitta (her husband’s home) through which Tatri travelled widely must have had knowledge of her relations in secret .The restrictions on the mobility of the Antarjanams were successfully circumvented by her by following the stipulations of taking along the dasis with her and staying overnight or eating only in Namboodiri households . Tatri’s entry into the realm of Kathakali is significant. Kathakali has remained largely a male art form in terms of actors,audiences and content. Not merely Kathakali but singing too was forbidden for Namboodiri women, both rules being flouted actively by Tatri. Tatri testifies to her singing the padam(verses sung in Kathakali) while Kavungal Sankara Panikker performed(TTSR).The Purushavicharam instituted newly by the Raja saw many of the men accused trying to defend themselves. However in the questioning Tatri sticks to her admission of the sexual acts . One such questioning goes thus:
Kalpakassery Narayanan(N) to Tatri(T):Have you had relations with me? T:Yes.
N :When did it happen first? T: In the month of Meenam(Pisces) on the 27th.
N :Which year? T: Year before last.
N :Who aksed for the relation first? T: Narayanan did.
N :Who acted in the first instance of sexual union? T: I did.
N :When was the second time? T::On Vishu day.
N :Weren’t I away for officiating at pooja rites? T: It was your father and not you who had
gone for it.(TTSR)Such was the manner of questioning and responses that the contemporary newspapers reported that the sadhanam argued as smartly as a barrister[13].
The understanding that comes through forcefully is that despite the checks on the women’s movements and the codes of sexual control, transgressions did take place. The Namboodiri caste norms had forbidden the women from losing caste through breaks in ritual purity and pollution ,or from venturing out alone expect in the company of the Nair dasis . But once these requirements were fulfilled it was possible to create dents in the system of control. Tatri travelled widely with the dasis, visiting temples and watching Kathakali performances. The everyday life patterns and physical spaces of Namboodiri life at that time remained such that an ‘illicit’ physical union in a Pathayappura (outhouse) or any other corner of the residence would pass unnoticed. The elder Namboodiri men “remained away mostly in prayers or sambandam[14] or celebrations elsewhere. The younger brothers did not reside in the Illam(Namboodiri household).Only the male servants outside and the dasis inside would remain…An Antarjanam (Namboodiri woman) was to speak to the male servants only through the dasis but this was often flouted. The dasis may have connections with the men outside and may act as a medium for communication[15].
State as Enforcer of Sexual Codes on Women
The relationship of the ruling powers to the upper caste Brahmins was a continuous one in Keralam. By the twelfth century with the disappearance of the Chera power, the semi autonomous Brahmin settlements became almost completely autonomous. They were only nominally subject to the Rajas who did not have enough powers to control them. The ritual status , claims to superior knowledge and the fact that the ruling chiefs were inferior to them in caste hierarchy must have ensured this state of affairs. Another aspect of this relationship was that the women of the ruling houses accepted suitors in sambandham only from the distinguished Namboodiri families. These factors were unlike what obtained in the Gangetic belt and acted as the pivots on which the alignments between the Rajas and the Namboodiris were negotiated. Symbiotic in nature, the two groups drew on this situation to maintain their respective political and spiritual powers. The royal authority was already bound to maintain the social order and enforce caste rules in this regard. This meant that he had a not so indirect role to play in the regulation of female sexuality. The smartavicharams were conducted with the sanction, support and involvement of royal authority. The Raja was , through this act ,supposed to eliminate all men of evil(who would destroy the chastity of caste women) from all households and maintain and protect the varnasramadharma(stipulations on caste and the asramas[stages] in life)(Bhaskaranunny 2000:122). At the time of the smartavicharam of 1905, the then Raja of the princely state of Kochi, Rama Varma took an active interest in the trial not merely because of the large number of men alleged to be involved but also due to the promptings of the times that sought reform of such traditional judicial procedures. Therefore, what has to borne in mind is that we have in question a princely state that was actively under the cultural and social compulsions of colonial ideology. That the men accused were not allowed an opportunity to defend themselves as in the ‘modern’ legal practice in the West was a matter of serious concern and lead to the institution of the purushavicharam.
However, even while the Raja makes provisions for the trial of the woman accused of adultery, his manner of approach to her reveals a critical disjunction with patterns of state control on female sexuality elsewhere in India. Rama Varma while making all possible arrangements for the trial takes care to see that ,being a Namboodiri woman , she had the proximity of a well and tank for ritual ablutions where she was brought to the place of trial[16].Meticulous attention was paid to ensure her safety and the local Tahsildar was instructed thus: “what requires special attention is the placing of a suitable guard in the train by which the woman travels to see that no chance is given to let anybody to get into her compartment to influence her or give her any bad counsel or otherwise molest her[17] (emphasis mine).The then Superintendent of Police ,A.Subba Row is instructed that the place of internment of the woman is “properly guarded both day and night , and that the men…conduct themselves in a manner that will do credit to the Police Force….”[18]Irrespective of the offence and the wave of public indignation it raised, the language of the official royal discourse is marked by an absence of moral judgement. Simultaneous with the arrangements being made for the trial, measures were already initiated to locate a suitable place of residence for the woman after the trial. A correspondence from the Sarvadhikaryakkaran(officer) to the Peshkar(officer) informs that “his Highness is feeling anxious to know whether the residence arranged is anywhere in the midst of Christian houses and bazaar or in a secluded place. What is wanted is the latter”[19].The officers are equally anxious that the woman’s safety and welfare be assured and even though excommunicated she be not left to live among castes that would ritually pollute a Namboodiri. The Sarvadhikaryakkaran writes, “though she will be an excommunicated woman, she should not be made to live among the low caste Hindus or crowded bazaars of Christians, etc. She must be given a somewhat secluded residence which should be as close as possible to the riverside.”[20]
The woman’s excommunication would have meant merely a cosmetic loss of caste , marked only in her place of residence and relations with other caste members, and not in her patterns of daily ritual routine. Though the caste group would cease to hold her as a member, the state’s concern for her welfare remained. The Namboodiri woman’s sexuality was a concern of the state only so long as it defined and determined the purity of that caste. Once excommunicated the state’s need to enforce further punitive measures on her did not exist. This helps us arrive at an understanding of Kerala’s sexual past in relation to the caste ensemble where the sexuality of women other than the Namboodiri were available to men of equal or higher castes .Crossing of ranks in terms of caste in the matter of sexual relations (lower caste women having sexual relations with men of castes higher to theirs being the norm) was not banned and often the women of lower castes had no voice against the high caste men’s demands. That the patriarchal, patrilocal, monoandrous family as in the Gangetic plain with the pativrata model of wifehood did not obtain in Keralam is significant in this context. Therefore, the sexuality of the upper caste woman,once she was excommunicated and no longer an upper caste ,did not pose to a threat to the social order. Once she ceased to be a Namboodiri she would merely be viewed as joining the ranks of the women of the lower castes whose sexuality was not subject to such control.
The Raja’s concerns about her well being even after the trial is evident as he ensures a safe place and proper meals to her free of cost .The Sarvadhikaryakkaran writes that “if the residence already arranged does not suit the requirements, what you will have to do is arrange some temporary residence until a suitable one satisfying the … conditions is got and also to instruct meals to be given from the choultry (sic) until she finds proper accommodation and is able to cook her meals. Once she settles down she has to be granted a free daily ration of rice and groceries”.[21]Tatri did not have to lead a solitary life as she could be accompanied by her dasis and the rations were meant to provide for them as well.
What is discernible in Tatri’s case is that the state, perhaps under the impact of the ‘modern’ ways of thinking, articulates its relationship with the excommunicated woman within a nascent citizenship discourse[22]. This particular smartavicharam is located within a colonial context and Rama Varma ( hailed as a modern monarch credited with introducing railways in the princely state Kochi.) may have conceived of the woman as an individual citizen with rights to livelihood and welfare. Writing to the Diwan, the Sarvadhikaryakkaran states: “you must clearly understand that the woman after swaroopamchollal (the verdict of excommunication)is at full liberty to act as she likes to that the government has no authority or justification whatever to consider that she is under any restraint. She is a woman who has got full liberty of her person and property and the only reason for the requisition that the necessary precautions should be taken to see that she is not molested by anybody is that in as much as she has confessed to her immoral intercourse with so many persons of various positions in life , there may perchance be persons who moved by violent passions may be tempted to do her harm”[23](emphasis mine).The state of Kochi ,in stark contrast to the Maharashtra Peshwai of that time that held the women among the upper caste responsible in cases of adultery and reserved the severest punishments for them including murder, cutting off noses , tonsuring or abandoning in the forests((Chakravarti 1995),was committed to the safety of the woman who faced a possible backlash due to her ‘illicit’ relationships. Instructions were given to see that ‘the police or anybody else do not consider her to be one who is under any restraint or who has lost her liberty of action. She may freely move about wherever she liked and go away altogether if she wants and there is no need for anybody to escort her or do any such thing”.[24]There was the need only to find out “if there was any intention on the part of anybody to molest her as long as she chooses to reside there[25]”(emphasis mine).
The repeated use of the term ‘molest’ would suggest the use of force that could be sexual or otherwise that was expected to happen against the woman. It would also be a tacit admission of her earlier relationships being contracted out of her own volition or desire. Not intending to valorize traditional structures as non patriarchal , it needs to be delineated that the transformations from the ‘pre-colonial’ to the ‘colonial’ involved a systematic undermining of a sense of sexual morality that had evolved through traditions of lived life where polyandrous and polygynous relationships were neither taboo nor shameful, restrictions on the caste woman notwithstanding. With the entry of the modern legal discourse on the scene, patriarchal control could take new forms whereby men tended to be exonerated to a large extent. While the smartavicharam effected controls on women’s sexuality for preserving the purity of caste, it had also punished the men involved though in varying degrees. Under pressures of the colonial climate, throughout the trial of 1905, the legal validity and authority of smartavicharam came under serious criticism. The pronouncement of the verdict based on the sadhanam’s statements alone was seen as a major lapse. The newspapers decried the injustice of punishing the men on such basis, “how could anybody trust the words of a woman who openly admits her adulterous character? The number of men involved indicates that she was worse than a prostitute. She moved about freely and did what she liked. How can truth be expected of such a woman with absolutely no morals?[26]” The Namboodiri women and the smartavicharam were seen as prospects more dreadful than the plague.[27] The transformations in attitudes regarding women and their sexuality is notable. Despite controls on women’s sexuality, both the princely state and the smartan ,actingwithin the prescriptions of the caste structure, did not condemn the woman. The colonial state with its models of the chaste woman was introducing the idea of ‘adultery’ and ‘prostitution’ in describing the female sexual offender. The colonial legal system,that was instituted subsequently, with its insistence on fair trial and equal justice provided occasions for the men to be absolved without at the same time doing away with controls on women. While not subscribing to the view that the pre colonial state was favourable to women,what comes through is a shifting discourse on the sexuality of women.
Problematising Representation
Tatri assumes a contemporaneous proximity as she finds representation in short stories, novels, feature films and journalistic essays simultaneously as a spectacle of derision, awe and fear despite a hundred or more years having passed by after the trial. M.Govindan, ,the noted literary critic born of a Namboodiri father ,expresses the collective guilt of a community and feels that Tatri should be brought back not for another trial but for once own trial in her presence(Govindan1986:716). Matampu Kunhukkuttan’s novel Bhrastu (Outcaste)[28] portrayed Tatri as deliberately engaging in secret liaisons to avenge the ills on the women of her caste. This was the longstanding image of Tatri. Fiction transformed into history and the people of Tatri’s locality in their conversations presented this version as authentic reality. Alangod Leelakrishnan (Leelakrishnan1997) saw her similarly as an avenger of her tribe. Lalitambika Antarjanam,the foremost and powerful woman writer among Namboodiris in her short story Pratikaradevata(Goddess of Revenge) as well as Nandan’s Kuriyedath Tatri too saw her in a similar vein. Many more of these representations in literature stereotyped her as the victimized woman whose prolonged submission to exploitation led her to take revenge on the men. All of them , however, were unanimous in the admission of her sexual acts. While trying to glorify Tatri for her acts of revenge , the understanding was still that she was adulterous though for noble reasons. Tatri’s sexual acts were ‘explained’ in terms of a strategy, born out of victimhood ,for seeking vengeance against the community’s oppression of women. Tatri’s life became testimony to the need for reform of caste structures and it was no coincidence that after a mere three years the Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha was organised to fight for reform of Namboodiri practices. V.T.Bhattatiripad who spearheaded the reforms refers in awe to Tatri sas an “ unseen women’s guerilla squad fighting against the sexual anarchy of the patriarchal community”(Bhattatitippad1997:627).
Conventional voices decried her deviance while social reformers extolled her as the beacon of resistance and protest against the ills of caste ridden Brahmanism. Caught between the antipodes of sexual excess and symbolic moral protest (her physical acts of sexuality were conveniently invisibilised as a metaphor for revenge) she was posited either as a victim and denied any agency or attributed total agency (though moral only) as the flag bearer of protest that had inspired the social reformers to action. Tatri’s history, however, has to be read against the odds of the official versions within the reform discourses, public responses as well as in her representation in the past hundred odd years.
Opening up spaces such as these empowers us to look at the margins of everyday life where the codes of lived life are distanced from the established norms of caste, class and ruling powers. It helps generate knowledge about the complex nature of historical locations such as the sexual spaces of Kerala’s past and point to the grey areas where men try to exercise control on women’s sexuality and women attempt to reclaim them through subtle and devious methods. It impels us to look at patriarchy not as a monolithic structure prevailing unchangingly through history but as intersected by plural realities of caste, class, nature of the state, etc. which impact upon the multiple and even contrasting ways in which women experience oppression.
End Notes
1Positivism refers to a set of epistemological perspectives and philosophies of science which hold that the scientific method is the best approach to uncover the processes by which both physical and human events occur. The concept was developed in the early 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociologist, August Comte. He saw the scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, with the only kind of sound knowledge being that of science grounded in observation. His assertion was that scientific inquiry must be empirical: it should be based on the observation of facts with objectivity being an important concern. The goal of inquiry was to explain and predict and also to develop a law of general understanding. Research should be mostly deductive proved only by empirical means .As for the understanding of the relation of theory to practice – science was to be as value-neutral as possible, and the ultimate goal of science was to produce knowledge, regardless of any politics, morals, or values held by those involved in the research.
[4] Foucault describes this as “ a whole set of knowledges that are either hidden behind more dominant knowledges but can be revealed by critique or have been explicitly disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated :naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy , beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity.”(Foucault 1980:82)
2 Sandra Harding discusses feminist empiricism as the spontaneous consciousness of feminist researchers in biology and social sciences who were trying to explain what was and what wasn't different about their research process in comparison with the standard procedures in their field. They had been attempting to correct the gender insensitive nature of research .
3 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller with analysis of the text and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)Paragraph 179 Pg. 111.The Master-Slave dialectic(also translated Lordship and Bondage) is a famous passage of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel's philosophical system, and has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers. It describes, in narrative form, the encounter between two self-conscious beings, who engage in a "struggle to the death" before one enslaves the other, only to find that this does not give him the control over the world he had sought.
[5] This is not to argue that feminist standpoint can resolve or explain all social phenomenon or address every form of domination/exploitation or even act as the analytical category that may make others like class, caste ,race ,etc. redundant. However ,since one’s social context determines what one can know and cannot ,Sandra Harding’s remark that social situations-especially unexamined dominant ones are more limiting (Harding2004:43) makes sense. Dorothy Smith’s observation that “women’s lives can provide the starting points for asking new ,critical questions about not only those women’s lives but also about men’s lives , and most importantly ,the causal relations between them.”(Smith 1990:54) supplements the idea.
[7] Kannaki is the,heroine of the literary work Silappadikaram believed to be dated to the Sangham period.
[8] Manipravalam refers to the works attributed to the centuries between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries A.D. of Keralam which discussed erotic themes and described sensuous women to whom men flocked to.
[9] Vadakkanpattukal refers the ballads of North Malabar, Keralam attributed to the centuries between 12th an d14th A.D.They describe the martial exploits of the heroes Thacholi Othenan,Aromal Chekavar and the valiant heroine Unniarcha who was renowned for her beauty and prowess in martial arts. Evidence of social history is in abundance in these works.
[10] Smartavicharam refers to the trial of the Namboodiri woman who was accused of having had ‘illicit’ sexual relations with men other than their husbands by the Vedic judge smartan. Termed as ‘sadhanam’(literally a thing) she was shut inside a room and questioned through her Nair escort or dasi.Once she was proved guilty she would be excommunicated along with the men involved. She was thenceforth free to go with whomever she wished or live as she willed.
[11] Matampu Kunhukkuttan , renowned literary personality and member of a family of smartans explains that the word sadhanam, literally meaning a ‘thing’ or ‘object’ denotes in the grammatical sense the object from which the subject could elicit responses from . 2001..Personal Interview.Thrissur:26 September .
[12] Matampu Kunhukkuttan . 2001.( renowned literary personality) .Personal Interview.Thrissur:26 September.
[13] (Malayala Manorama daily. 05 July 1905).
[14] Sambandam refers to the liason sexual relationships contracted by the Namboodiri men with the Nair women which involved no marital obligations on the part of the men.The Nair men also contracted such relations with Nair women. The eldest Namboodiri male who could alone marry within the caste could also have many sambandam relations simultaneously, while the younger Namboodiri men had only sambandam relations.
[15] Malayala Manorama daily .12 July1905
[16] Correspondence of the Raja to the Diwan dated 02 June 1905.141 A . Smartvicharam Records(henceforth SR).Ernakulam Archives.
[17] Correspondence of the Raja to the Tahsildar of Mukundapuram dated 12 June 1905.141 A . SR.
[18] Memo to Superintendent of Police dated 15 June 1905.141 A . SR.
[19]Correspondence dated 14 July 1905.141 A . SR .
[20] Correspondence dated 12 July 1905.141 A . SR .
[21] Correspondence of the Sarvadhikaryakkaran to the Diwan dated 15 July1905.141 A . SR.
[22] How the state acted in earlier smartavicharam cases is not known for want of evidence.
[23] Correspondence of the Sarvadhikaryakkaran to the Diwan dated 15 July1905.141 A . SR.
[24] Idem.
[25] Idem.
[26] Malayala Manorama daily.31 May 1905.
[27] Malayala Manorama daily.22 July 1905.
[28] Matampu Kuhukkuttan himself admitted that the novel was pure fiction bearing no resemblance to
what must have happened to Tatri. .Personal Interview.Thrissur:26 September2001 ..
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Reports and Newspapers
Smartavicharam Records, Ernakulam Archives140,141A, 141F, 141 E
Malayala Manorama daily.31 May, 05 July ,12 July 1905.
Personal Interview
Matampu Kunhukkuttan , renowned literary personality .Thrissur:26 September 2001.
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