From myths to language: examining the renaming of Kerala

The all-party support for changing the name of Kerala to Keralam and the Union Government’s recent approval of the proposal raises questions about the historicity of the term Kerala. The historical difference between the terms is ambiguous at best. From a linguistic perspective, both Kerala and Keralam refer to a place/land. Hermann Gundert’s Malayalam dictionary (1872) mentions both Kerala and Keralam while defining the term “keram” (coconut tree). One common definition of both terms is also “the land of coconut trees.” Gundert takes a traditional view of Keralam as the land that lies between Gokarnam and Kanyakumari and mentions the legendary text “Keralolpatti” (The Origin of Kerala). The founding legend of Kerala is associated with Sage Parasurama (an incarnation of Visnu) who slew 21 generations of Kshatriyas and flung the blood-strained axe to the ocean, carving out a strip of coastal land called Kerala or Keralam (according to mythology), with the above-mentioned northern and southern boundaries. The history of the origins of Kerala has attracted historical scrutiny even as it is hard to determine its historical veracity. It is likely that at least some portions of the text are of latter-day origins and a response to the European ascendance on the Malabar coast. The historicity of the text is less important than how it has been received and what place it occupies in the historical, temporal, and spatial imagination of the Malayalis.

The entanglement of myth and legend with history is not specific to Keralolpatti or any such legendary texts. What is important, however, are words and terms that encapsulate Malayalis’ interaction with history and legends of Kerala. Could one say that the word “Keralam” has more historicity and cultural essence than the term “Kerala?” If yes, where do we trace that historicity and essence from? Is it going to be another set of texts or myths or legends that some consider to be more authentic and true representation of the history and culture of the region?

The historical context

Despite the founding legends of Kerala, if one looks at the modern history of the region from the 18th century to the 1950s, the region was a collection of native states, with the dominant ones being the states of Travancore and Cochin. Travancore was not a linguistically homogenous state; a considerable section of its population in the southern districts spoke Tamil who were also dominant in the administrative and commercial sectors of the state. The resurgent Malayali nationalism of the 19th and 20th century Travancore was rooted more in language and culture than in territorial identity. This linguistic sense of Malayali-ness was in turn instrumentalised to seek government offices and keep the growing significance of Tamils in Travancore at bay. Tamil Brahmins (sometimes called as Pattars) were seen as inferior to Malayali Brahmins (Namboodiris) and as foreigners in the state.

Is it possible to trace the existence of a territorial identity shaped by the imaginations around Kerala or Keralam among the inhabitants of the princely states of Travancore or Cochin in the 18th or early 19th century? If so, what conceptions of state and sovereignty could such an imagination engender in the 19th century? Arguably, we know very little about the potential of a Kerala state from the 19th century history of these states. However, when we come to the first half of the 20th century, the rising anti-Tamil and anti-British sentiments on the one hand and the growing influence of nationalism and communism on the other enabled conditions for cross-territorial affinities in newfound ways. Travancore, a pre-eminent princely state with significant strides in economic and social spheres and led by a Tamil Dewan, C. P. Ramaswamy Aiyar, had a fraught relationship with the United Kerala (Aikya Kerala) Movement. Part of the reason for this was the volatile constitutional debates at the all-India level that left the future of the princely states undecided. As late as June 1947, the legal position of the states was sound, and it was generally believed that they would be able to retain independence in some form. Travancore’s hallowed tradition of independence from both domestic and foreign powers (its Dewan claimed the state was neither conquered by the Mughals nor by the Europeans) was seen as a guarantee for its future existence as an independent country or a federal unit as opposed to Cochin or the poor British district of Malabar (part of Madras Province). Many factions of Travancore leaders, including the leaders of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (a communist party), at one time or the other were open to the idea of an independent Travancore. By the mid-1940s, United Kerala Movement had become a major political force in what is now Kerala. Kerala Varma, the aging ruler of Cochin, declared himself to be the patron of the movement much to the dismay of Travancore who imagined a separate existence from Cochin.

An identity based on language

Did the distinction between Kerala and Keralam matter to the leaders of the United Kerala Movement? If one examines the historical sources and nomenclature of the time, we see a preponderance of the term Kerala. The term Aikya Kerala itself has Kerala (Aikya Keralam was also a popular term) in it as did many publications of the time. Part of the reason why this distinction would have mattered the least is because Kerala was to be primarily an identity based on language rather than territory. That is, there was no pre-defined land of Kerala or Keralam that lent legitimacy to the demand for a united Kerala. Rather, Kerala was to be constituted by the people who spoke Malayalam on the western coast of India. This conception of Kerala did not fully align with the legend of Kerala’s origin either, for southern tip of India, Kanyakumari, which was seen as part of Kerala in the founding myth, was no longer seen as a viable unit of Kerala by the 1950s due to the preponderance of Tamil speakers in that region. Moreover, if the distinction between the terms were of such importance, it should have had an impact in the founding/naming of Kerala in 1956.

As Kerala or Keralam was not conceived as a pre-defined land of antiquity for the Malayalis in the 1940s and 1950s and that the historical and cultural distinction between the terms are not at times clear, the recent proposal for name change forces us to revisit the history of language, culture, territory, and state-formation in Kerala. Is Kerala an Anglophone term as opposed to Keralam, a properly Dravidian term? If so, how does one explain the fact that founding myths and legends of Kerala also uses the word Kerala indiscriminately and interchangeably with Keralam? Even if scholars come out in aid of the cultural and linguistic purity of the term Keralam, how do we account for the historical and conceptual repertoire of English language in a highly literate State like Kerala? How foreign is English language in a State where it existed as a medium of instruction and administrative language for many decades even before independence.

The fact that founding myths and texts lend equal legitimacy to Kerala (as seen in Keralolpatti, or terms like Keraliyan and Keralaputra, the latter used in Ashokan edicts) one the one hand, and that the political discourses and mobilisation that led to the formation of the State (which was indeed led by Malayalis) did not hinge so much on this distinction makes it all the more imperative for us to understand how history and historical forgetting are important in equal measure for claiming new regional identity.

(Sarath Pillai is an Assistant Professor of Modern South Asian History at the University of Calgary, Canada.His forthcoming book examines the history of various ideas and imaginings around federalism in British and Princely India.)