What were the consequences of oppressive caste restrictions in South India?

The consequences of these oppressive caste restrictions and disabilities were many. They kept large majority of the South Indian Hindu population into unremitting social and economic backwardness by making them remain in ignorance and poverty. The effect of keeping them in this abject state of positive servitude was to give a very low status to Hindu religion itself.

The feeling dawned on many of them that they suffered indignity and indigence mainly because they remained within the fold of Hinduism. The moment they left it and embraced Islam or Christianity, they realised, their stigma was removed and they, in their new religious status, were free to secure all the civic rights which were denied to them as Hindus.

This naturally made large numbers of outcastes embrace Christianity in several parts of the Madras Presidency and the princely states of Travancore and Cochin. Hinduism lost all its meaning for them because their continuance in that religion only helped them to forego their natural rights; they donned its title as a worthless badge only to be sniggered at by the non-Hindus, and to be kicked by their own caste-Hindu brethren.

In other words, the orthodox caste Hindus and Hindu rulers together made Hinduism appear an inferior religion in the eyes of many Hindus, and consequently they cleared the way for the missionaries of the London Mission Society, Church Mission Society, Salvation Army etc., to convert lakhs of outcaste Hindus to Christianity.

Mackenzie has noted that during the year 1892 the work of the Salvation Army rapidly spread and in some instances whole villages in Travancore joined the Army en masse. It may be noted that a major cause swelling the ranks of Islam and Christianity in South India was the large-scale exodus of the depressed classes from the fold of Hinduism as a result of caste oppression practiced by the die-hard upper-caste men and the Hindu rulers.

The Brahmins’ traditional social primacy was furthered and extended into the political field by their early monopolization of English education and their consequent entry into lucrative and consequential governmental posts and professional occupations.

On account of their social position and intellectual superiority they were thus able to occupy key positions in the political life. The social segregation they practiced against the lower castes consequently was carried into the political life also. As this class was only a microscopic minority of the population of the country, its domination in political life produced strong feeling of resentment in the non-Brahmin community as a whole.

The result was that anti- Brahmin, non-Brahmin opposition groups started sprouting up in different parts of South India. This, in its wake, produced great social and political repercussions. The traditional respect extended by lower orders to the twice-born class gave way to overt disparagement and scorn. This was most prominently displayed in literary productions of late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Brahmin social superiority was deeply felt in the family circles of the Nayar community in Kerala; because it’s women-folk had to supply the ever-growing sexual needs of the Nambudiris and other Brahmins. The customary practice was for a Brahmin male, young or old, to contract temporary marriages with Nayar women, wher­ever they happened to stay, may be for a day, a week, a month, a year or longer.

The issues of these marriages had to be looked after by the mother or her brother and had no right to inherit the property of their father. These improvised husbands had no obligation to fulfill toward their wives in the matter of providing for their maintenance, so much so that this class of vagrant, irresponsible fathers became a liability to the society.

But the social consciousness was such that in the early period people looked upon this unnatural system of family connection as something meritorious. It is said that some of the Nayar ladies used to boast of the number of Brahmin husbands they had and children born of their wedlock used to consider themselves as fortunate in having been issues of Brahmin fathers.

Probably it was to settle the issue of property-inheritance by children and maintenance of the wife in this kind of family that the Nambudiri law-givers of ancient period evolved a peculiar system of inheritance called Marumakkathayam or materiliny. In later period this spread among a variety of people belonging to Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Thus besides Nayars some sections of Ezhavas, Mappilas and Christians also followed matri- lineal system of inheritance. Among the Tamils, the Nanchinad Vellalas and Krishnavakakkar too had adopted it.

Kshatriyas of Kerala and people of Tulu Nadu were also Marumakkathayis. In evolving this system the Nambudiris of Kerala probably had a capitalist motive, to prevent the partitioning of the landed estates belonging to the family among the several male issues. This could be possible if only one of them was allowed to inherit the entire property. The solution they found in establishing a rigid rule that only the eldest son could marry from his own community; others were allowed to take spouses from the Kshatriya and the Nayar castes.

That utilitarian marriage philosophy considering Nayar wives as harlots and acquisitive motive of the Brahmins are the basic factors of this system is clear from the old sanskrit sastraic treatise Sarvamatasamgraha, wherein the anonymous author, evidently a Nambudiri Brahmin answers his critic, the Charvaka, “Oh, damnable atheist, do you ask whether we will not be attaining hell after death for taking harlots alone instead of righteously-married wives belonging to our own community. For our practice, the Vedas themselves are authority.

They have laid this down as an Aapaddharama (a duty to be resorted to in distress). If all of us in Kerala marry from our community alone our wealth will be divided and thus lost and our heritage will be ruined.” As Dr. K.K. Pillai remarked, “Notwithstanding their great contribution to Kerala culture and to the sharpening of the intellect of certain classes of Keralites, the Nambudiris were responsible for the introduction of legalised prostitution and of an unnatural system of inheritance.”

The evil effects of this system of marriage and inheritance, in due course, assumed larger proportions and the system itself came to be damned with faint praise. Brahmins as promoters of this system and the consequent socio-economic maladjustment in the society also came under withering criticism. Matrilineal families turned out to be centers of intrigues and property disputes. The tyranny of the Karanavars, the maternal uncles, who managed the family and its property, destroyed the harmony of family life and split became inevitable.

The cause of the great increase in litigation in the 19th and 20th centuries in Kerala should be assigned to the failure of the artificial relationship between the uncle and the nephews and the father and the sons. As a result, in the early decades of the 20th century several Regulations had to be passed to put these matrilineal families on the track of patriliny.