Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of the powerful feelings and imaginations one recollects in tranquillity. She is not a mere nauch girl of the mind who spins fiction, but a priestess appointed in God’s house to image the hard and secret realities deriving from mystic visions, opined Sri Aurobindo. Poet is the hearer of the Truth (Kavia=h satyasrutah) with the Seer-vision. One not a Rishi is not a poet (nanrushi kavi). Susceptivity of mind is the basic human quality. Poet combines this with farsightedness and boldness to call a spade a spade. “Never will I love a philosophy that doesn’t love an ailing soul”, sang a revolutionary poet of Kerala. The true and sincere poets boldly responded to justice being denied to the lowest and the lost. Inequality and the resultant injustice have down the lanes of history tortured man, violated his human rights and rode roughshod over his life’s aspirations. Shelley’s legendary bowing to the ‘Masque of Anarchy’ tells the universal value a poet holds and is expected to hold. So much is the poet’s social and moral commitment to human values so that his mind is stirred to see anarchy marching up and down. His susceptive mind knows only to wail and but cannot rest content with injustices. Pain caused by tragedy evokes poetry in him.
Anarchy and injustice put on different mantles. It may be in the form of religion, race, caste or any form of inequality or man’s inhumanity to man. There are natural and artfully made inequalities. In the social settings of natural inequality revolution is possible. But man-made inequalities are so artfully couched that they leave no possibility even of revolution. There, all the loopholes of revolutions are cleverly sealed off. This is what B. R. Ambedkar called “graded inequality”.
It was South India, especially Kerala, which saw the darkest face of caste discrimination that led to the total social breakdown and the consequent slavery of the general masses, especially the Hindus. Pre-independence Kerala was gripped by a social lunacy that could not be found anywhere. Men of foresight scanned the social heartbeats which they feared would entail the untimely demise of the system.
It was Swami Vivekananda who for the first time alerted the Keralites about the impending disasters of caste discrimination going uncontained. The neo-Vedantist, Swami like his Seer-predecessors saw that caste was cancer eating into the vitals of the Hindu society, putting it at sixes and sevens. His early sojourn throughout the length and breadth of his motherland that familiarised him with many sublime aspects of the national culture, exposed some unpleasant areas too of the Hindu life. Of them the most abominable one doing away with the prospects of national unity was caste system. Kerala society of his times was darkened with many inhuman customs – outcaste was forbidden from touching or even nearing the caste Hindus. Social orthodoxy worsened to such a heinous level that an outcaste coming within the sight of the high born was deemed sinful. They were forbidden from wearing neat and clean dresses, or ornaments. Forced to wear stone chains around the neck as ornaments, they aired out the goblins’ look. They hardly had human look. Such was the social ditch they were forced to plummet. Education was beyond their dreams. But it is a pity that it was the Brahmins who championed the cause of the Divine and had monopolised the lore who perpetrated all these undesirable social tendencies. Thus, tightly bound by the thread of priestly supremacy, the truths enshrined and embedded in the Vedas and a group of human beings who according to the Vedic teachings are the incarnations of the Divine suffocated. In south India, especially in Kerala, all those below the Brahmins were disparaged the Sudras. Even the Nairs, the modern caste Hindu group were written off in governmental records as Malayalasudras, leave alone others’ plight. So much had worsened the caste scenario of Kerala that its society urgently required to undergo a socio-spiritual revolution of the kind Swami Vivekananda envisioned.
The birth pangs of new society were well inlaid in the visions and teachings of Kerala’s master poet who invoked the very soul of India for the emergence of national renaissance there. Kumaran Asan who proved to be the greatest icon of Kerala’s socio-cultural renaissance was born on 12 April 1873 into the low caste Ezhava family of Chirayinkeezhu near Thiruvananthapuram. Narayana Perungudi, his father and mother, Kochupennu were particular about giving their child the best type of education available those days. He first started his Sanskrit education and later joined the nearby government school at Kaikkara, where he studied till he was thirteen. Though joined the school as a teacher, he could not continue, his having not been aged enough to hold a government job. Later, he worked as an accountant of a local wholesale grocer when he spent his time mastering classical Sanskrit. Readings in that language made him familiar with most of the ancient Indian literature making him capable to communicate with the soul of India.
Kumaran Asan’s meeting with Guru Sree Narayana, the great Advaita teacher proved a remarkable milestone in his life. Guru Sree Narayana was Kerala’s great Advaita teacher after Adi Sankara, and the teachings of the Guru imparted to Kumaran (as was lovingly called by the Guru) the ambrosia of spiritual education and bliss. To Kumaran Asan, Guru Sree Narayana was what Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was to Swami Vivekananda. The Guru had influenced him so much so that the Kumaran (young boy) that he was, was soon transformed to Asan (the Master), an epithet the people adoringly addressed him with throughout his life. Guru Sri Narayana’s initiation of Kumaran had so much expanded the latter’s spiritual horizon that his life became temple-centered, engaging in prayers, study of spiritual literature and teaching of Sanskrit. Kumaran became an important inmate of the Guru’s Asram (hermitage) at Aruvippuram where he was lovingly called Chinnaswami (Young ascetic).
For studying law, he moved to Bangalore in 1885 where he stayed with Dr. Palpu, another illustrious disciple of Guru Sri Narayana till 1898 when the latter left Bangalore for England. From there he moved to Madras where he spent a few months before he departed to Calcutta for higher studies in Sanskrit. At Calcutta he mastered Tarka sastra (science of logic) at the Central Hindu College simultaneous with studying English and actively involving in Indian Renaissance movement. Kumaran had to drop his higher studies at Calcutta owing to the outbreak of plague there, and returned to Aruvippuram. It was in 1900.
Asan’s life was influenced by the Vedantic movement of Swami Vivekananda from north India while he had already a strong Vedantic background under the tutelage of his Guru, Sri Narayana. Asan’s socio-cultural views were also to a good extent moulded by these two great saints. While his Guru from the south gave him the sublime background of the religion of humanism, the Swami from Calcutta gave him a strong sense of militancy. When the both combined, the young poet started spearheading the socio-cultural renaissance of Kerala more vigourously than ever before. He started his busy involvement in the activities of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) and became its secretary in 1904. The same year, he founded and edited Vivekodayam, a literary journal in Malayalam named after Swami Vivekananda. In 1913, he was elected to the Sree Moolam Popular Assembly (Sri Moolam Praja Sabha), the first popularly elected legislature in the history of modern India. He relinquished his position in SNDP in 1919 and a year later, took over the editorship of Pratibha, another literary magazine. An eminent educationist, spiritualist and social reformer, he knew, education alone would not suffice a national people. He, therefore, started his interference in the industrial sector of Kerala which was generally shy of investment. In 1921, he founded a clay tile factory, Union Tile Works, in Aluva but due to its polluting the nearby palace pond, he shifted the project to near Aluva river and handed over the land to SNDP for building an Advaitashramam. Later, he moved to Thonnakkal near Thiruvananthapuram, where with his wife Bhanumathiamma he settled for good, spending the evening of his life.
He died drowning on January 16, 1924, when Redeemer, the boat carrying him capsized in River Pallana in Alappuzha district. Asan Memorial at Kumarakoti near Pallana where his mortal remains were cremated continues to be a cultural center of South Kerala.
Asan, like Swami Vivekananda, believed, so long as caste system continues to eat into the vitals of the national life, India would not progress. This caste-based Hinduism, Asan did not respect. He would not accept anything discriminatory as the expression of the spiritual and hence his heavily coming down upon the caste system that was found rampant in his time. Warning the Hindus of the disastrous consequences of their becoming mad after caste, the Swami Vivekananda sarcastically said:
There is a danger of our religion getting into the kitchen. We are neither Vedantists, most of us now, nor Puranics, nor Tantrics. We are just “Don’t-touchists”. Our religion is in the kitchen. Our God is in the cooking-pot, and our religion is, “Don’t touch me, I am holy”. If this goes on for another century, every one of us will be in a lunatic asylum.
(Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, op. cit, Vol. III, p. 167)
The state the caste discrimination pushed the Hindu society towards was vulnerable. About one fifth of the Hindus crossed over to Islam and more than a million became converts to Christianity. The Hindu society in fact did little to help these destitute ones who were forced to bid adieu to their religion and the Gods they thus far worshipped owing to their having been ridden roughshod over by the Brahmin supremacy. Why that these people opted for Christianity or Islam? Swami asks. “Whose fault, is it? … Why should they have become Mohammedans? … Materialism, or Mohammedanism, or Christianity or any other ism in the world could never have succeeded but that you allowed them”. Suffice it to say, it was the caste discrimination that forced the outcastes to quit their mother faith. A body with internal strength would not succumb to any disease, Swami opined. Simply said, the caste system proved to be the Hindu society’s internal proletariat that made it to lay bound before all the cultural invasions aimed at mass-converting the outcastes and the destitute Hindus into Mohammedans and Christians. (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. III, pp. 166-167.)
It was indeed a Hindu’s highest misfortune that he could change only his religion, and not caste. In fact, to a neglected and untouchable lot, bound by hardship imposed on them by the higher castes, the only asylums were the doors other religions threw open before them. The callously neglected outcastes were treated like cattle. No wonder, these suffering lot escaped to other religions which they thought would accord them the status of equality and better living facility. “The Mohammedan conquest of India came as a salvation to the downtrodden, to the poor”. The advent of English administration to a good extent did away with many of the caste privileges. Almost one fifth of the Hindus crossed over to Islam and many escaped to Christianity. But what ailed Swami Vivekananda more than anything else was yet another Hindu folly that shuddered his conscience. Warning the South Indians that “… one-half of your Madras people will become Christians if you do not take care”, Vivekananda surprisingly said:
Was there ever a sillier thing than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right. What inference would you draw except that these Malabaris are all lunatics, their homes so many lunatic asylums, and that they are to be treated with derision by every race in India until they mend their manners and know better. Shame upon them that such wicked and diabolical customs are allowed; their own children are allowed to die of starvation, but as soon as they take up some other religion, they are well fed. There ought to be no more fight between castes.
(Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. III, pp. 295-295)
If this state would continue, Swami warned, half of the Hindus would become either Christians or Muslims. This neglecting attitude of the caste Hindus led to the conversion of more Hindus in the decades to come. For, so far as the outcastes were concerned once converted to other religions the higher castes who gave them so far only a canine status would begin respect them.
Conversion thus brought for them a new status of equality and also a panacea for their grinding economic poverty. This being the case, more and more people took to other religions. It was in fact the high caste tyranny and negligence that led to the massive conversion of the Hindus to other religions.
To speak of Kumaran Asan, he was a true disciple and follower of Swami Vivekananda. Like Swami Vivekananda, Asan felt, social reform is the definite precondition to all kinds of political freedom. Just the British quitting India would not be enough. A nation wherein any kind of slavery and submissiveness exist cannot be called free. Its people must be independent, enjoying freedom of growth in all their walks of life. He was to a good extent influenced by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar just as he was by Vivekananda. “… without social efficiency no permanent progress in the other fields of activity was possible, that owing to the mischief wrought by the evil customs, Hindu society was not in a state of efficiency and that ceaseless efforts must be made to eradicate these evils”, opined Ambedkar. (Annihilation of Caste, Maven Books, Chennai, 2020, p. 3) It was the social weakness of the Hindus that weakened India, and without removing it the nation cannot attain freedom, Ambedkar believed. Kerala’s poet, Kumaran Asan too toed the same line.
Many Keralite scholars upheld the view of Swami Vivekananda, and Kumaran Asan was the pioneer. Having taken an accurate stoke of the situation of Eranad in Malabar, blood-white with the cold-blooded murder of the Hindus during the Moplah revolt of 1921, this Master poet of Kerala came out strongly against the bloodbath. Lamenting on the miserable plight (duravasth/a) of the Hindus massacred by the “cruel Mohammedans”, Kumaran Asan called upon the former to cast aside their caste differences and unite to build up a bulwark for their self-defence. Like Swami Vivekananda, Asan exhorted the Malabari Hindus to change their age-old custom of caste and warned them that these customs, if followed any more, would change them too, (mattuvin cattanngale allenkil mattumatukali ningalettan) definitely into non-Hindus – into Christians and Muslims! It was the disunity among the Hindus that made them the scapegoats of fanatical orgy of 1921. Had the Malabari Hindus developed a fraternity that stood above caste interests and united, they would never have been the victims of Moplah fanaticism which devoured countless innocent lives. Definitely Kumaran Asan, the farsighted poet realised the dangers involved in the Hindu disunity. If the Hindus would go ahead with this age-old and worn-out caste system it would change them or convert them into other religions, Asan knew. Hence his meaningful call to the Hindus to shed their superficial differences and unite for self-defence. Asan vivifies the horrors of the 1921 fanatical orgy in his historical poem Duravastha (‘sad plight’ of the Hindus) He portrays Savitri Antarjanam, a Brahmin lady who seeks asylum in the thatched hut of Chattan, an outcaste to escape from the Muslim fanatics’ outrage. The poet touchingly called the spade a spade when he in his poem dealt with the Muslim fanatical orgy that blood-bathed Eranad and the surrounding places to forcefully convert Hindus into ‘Allah’s religion’. The Muslim leaders though later requested Asan to get the areas accusing them removed from his poem, he did not oblige. He wrote only what he witnessed and Asan was adamant. There are scholars in Kerala who believe, the demise of Asan, who was an expert swimmer, in a boat capsize was the result of a plot.
The unity and strength of India depended upon the unity and strength of the national community, the Hindus, Asan firmly believed. So long as the Hindus remain disunited, Indian would be at sixes and sevens. Hence the need of purging this national community of the rampant inequality that has been its bane down the millennia. Therefore, his efflorescence of unequalled literary effort leading to the unprecedented Socio-cultural revolution Kerala ever witnessed. He wanted to reform the Hindu society, and the icon he selected for this end was Bhagavan Buddha whose aim, if to quote Swami Vivekananda again, “was the reform of Vedic religion”. Hence his invoking the Buddha, his disciples and his disciplines. Buddha, the poet knew, could effectively speak to the soul of India which lives in its countryside, its lowest and the lost. His religion of compassion would be an effective tool to mesmerise people living in poverty, ignorance and negligence and bring revolutionary progress and enlightenment in their life.
His short poem Chandalabhikshuki was revolutionary. The story of the meeting between out caste girl and the Buddhist sage had been a much more spiritual theme as seen in Tagore’s mystical story, Chandalika. But in Malayalam literature, Kumaran Asan brought it right down to the social grassroots. The scene of the highly venerable sage as Ananda asking an outcaste girl to pour water from her pitcher into his cupped hands was definitely unimaginable to the conservative society of Kerala. The heroine, Chandalika was really upset and afraid, lest an outcast girl like her giving water to a highborn should invoke sin and social ostracism. But the discourse of Ananda to the innocent girl was enlightening. “It is not your caste I am asking, but water to quench the thirst of my parched tongue”. Nothing is greater than quenching the thirst of man who, irrespective of all differences, is God incarnate, the message of the poet clarifies. Asan’s poem was definitely a breach with Kerala’s past darkened with inequality and innumerable social ostracisms which were hindrances on the path of a nation in progress.
Again, he brought to Kerala another Buddhist icon, Upagupta through his poem, Karuna, proclaiming the supreme importance of mercy as the greatest religion of humanity. Teachings of the Master of Kapilavatsu could definitely bind a people together with the bond of love and mercy, Asan knew. Karuna, Asan’s short poem, has the divine love between the Ganika maid, Vasavadatta and the Buddhist sage Upagupta as its theme. While Vasavadatta’s love for Upagupta was just a temporal craving that made her wait to meet the latter till her last breath, Upagupta turned up to meet her only at the time of her death to give her the ultimate message of salvation. Compassion is the greatest quality that makes life beautiful. It is the divine love that holds people together. It is the greatest quality that holds a nation also together. Hence the national value of poetry, Asan believed. Through bringing in the ideal of equality by threading together a people divided into water-tight caste compartments, a nation could be built, the poet opined. He thus aimed at the unity and strength of the national community for an independent India, because socio-cultural reform through internal cleansing is the first step towards a free India, the poet firmly viewed.
M. P. Ajith Kumar
Former Kerala State President, Akhil Bharatiya Rashtriya Saikshik Mahasangh
References
Kumaran Asan, Duravastha (Malayalam)
,, Chandalabhikshuki (Malayalam)
,, Karuna (Malayalam)
Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works
B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste
C. Narayana Pillai, Thiruvithamkur Swanthryasamara Charithram (Malayalam)
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