Kerala both Red & Green.
'Rated by 'Traveller' as the third most popular destination in the world, Kerala offers something for every visitor - from lush green forests and wildlife sanctuaries to sandy beaches and palmfringed backwaters. Arvind N Das waxes eloquent on the vivacious people of Kerala and the amazing vareity of God's own country.
As you drive into Kerala from Karnataka, you notice the change. For one, there is continuous habitation along the road. For another, there is a plethora of party flags fluttering on long bamboo poles at every street intersection. Neither is surprising. Kerala, is after all, the most densely populated state of India. It is also the most politicised, a state where 90 per cent voting is common in elections, a state which had the first democratically elected communist government in the world, a state which was once called the "Yenan of India".....
PEOPLE AND POLITICS
The two features of Kerala which strike the visitor with immense force are people and politics. Not only are there people everywhere but they are also constantly on the move. There are children everywhere going to school or returning from there. Remember that the State has nearly universal literacy. There are workers scurrying about, beating the sultry heat to earn their daily appam.
Remember that Kerala is the most unionized state. There are Catholic priests and Hindu pandits, Muslim manlavis and even a Jewish rabhi or two, going about their spiritual preoccupations. Remember religion is serious business in Kerala.
But ehre are surprises too. Even as Kerala gives the impression of being intensely urbanized, indeed one long continuous conurbation spread along the highway, it also has deep agricultural enclaves and organised, unionized agricultural labour. So much so that clerks in the state secretariat take leave at harvest time to cut crop as agricultural workers. This is because the long struggle of farm labourers has made sure that not only are wages high but a part of the harvest wages are paid in kind. This makes for a very valuable supplement to income in a situation of continuous inflation.
But then in Kerala you meet agricultural workers different from those anywhere else. You might come across him toiling knee-deep in the mud of the paddy fields, sweating it out under the sun when the humidity is thick enough to slice off with a sickle. A few hours later you might meet him in a crisp white dhoti-kurta, sitting in the village library reading one of the 29 Malayalam newspapers that are published daily in the State. He could be a graduate in literature, aware as much of the dignity of labour as the futility of seeking a white collar job. Unemployment has led to the exodus of Keralites to West Asia where they have laboured and sent back remittances with which to build the pink and green "Gulf houses" which dot the countryside of Kerala today.
PLACES OF WORSHIP
Kerala is also dotted with places of worship and there is an amazing eclecticism which obtains there. There are temples, like those at Guruvayoor and Sabrimalai, venerated greatly by devotees. There are also many churches, among them the one where St. Thomas the Apostle is said to have landed bringing Christianity to India well before it found a home in Europe. And there is the Cheraman mosque, built when Islam had not yet spread among all the Arabs. European tourists are amazed to find the (Hindu) Swastika right next to the Star of David on window grills near the synagogue in Cochin's Jew Town and reformist Hindus are equally struck by the deification of Sri Narayana Guru who fought against the fossilization of caste and rituals.
But then, Kerala abounds in both paradox and irony. Its most distinguished intellectual is E.M.S. Namboodiripad, the nonagenarian Stalinist who led the world's first elected communist government. And the contradictions between its Syrian Christians and Latinh Catholics have more similarity with caste conflicts than with theological debates. It is not surprising to hear that when Vasco da Gama first reached there 500 years ago and saw an idol of Kali, the Mother Goddess, he bowed before it, thinking it to be a representation of the Madonna.
DESTINATION KERALA
The complexities are often missed by those who merely describe Destination Kerala as one more exotic oriental location. No doubt, its snake boats are impressive and the ayurvedic massages at Kovalam beach worth writing home about. Undoubtedly, the Chinese fishing nets tower over its owaters like fossilized dinosaurs and the aesthetics of the murals at the palace that the Dutch built for its rulers go beyond the erotic. And yet, Kerala is not just lazily gliding down the backwaters on a boat, nor is it endless processions clogging the streets of Thiruvananthapuram. It is more than tapioca and today, much more than steet-side appams and arrack.
LEGENDS AND MYTHS
First of all Kerala is topographically special, a land where geography mixes effortlessly with myth. The tale is told of the hot-tempered sage Parashuram who beheaded his mother with his axe. When remorse hit him, he threw the axe into the sea and the sea dried up till the place where the axe fell. Thus was created a small silver of land between the hills of the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, a land greatly endowed by nature and also a land whose men were enjoined by Parashuram to venerate their mothers. Hence, the amazing bounty which nature has bestowed on Kerala in the form of immensely valuable spices. Hence also the matriarchal system that still obtains in many parts of the State.Where myth and geography end, history and commerce take over.
Even in the time of Ashoka, the Mauryan kingdom had the Keralaputras as neighbours rather than subjects and the Cheras and Cheramans of later years have a proud ancestry. They were relatively isolated from the rest of the country by the high hill ranges on their east, not so isolated as to be deprived of the best of Indian culture, epitomised by the Vedic Gods of Grand Phenomena as well as Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. They were also insulated from the rest of the world by the sea, but not so insulated as not to provide ports of call for Arab, Chinese and European traders who flocked to the shores of Kerala in search of spices.
ARAB INFLUENCES
Some of the Arabs who came to Kerala, driven there in their dhows by the trade winds which they called mausam and the rest of the world got to know as the monsoon, settled down on the coast. They were referred to as mapillas which means bridegroom or child. Today, in the Kozhikode area in Malabar, there are clear Arab influences retained from those immigrants from yore, the people who are known as Moplahs. The Moplahs became both traders and tenants: in the former capacity they came into conflict with the Europeans who sought to impose monopoly on Malabar, as tenants they resisted the domination of landlords or jenmis. The Moplah uprisings have become history today bu the strains of Moplah music still find echoes in the melodies of the famous composer A.R. Rahman.
The Arab monopoly on the spice trade was ultimately broken by the Europeans who desperately needed pepper from Kerala. The reason for this requirement was that European grasslands would go under the snow in winter and since cattle had nothing to feed on, there was large-scale pre-winter slaughter. The addition of pepper was important to preserve the meat (or to kill the taste of putrefaction) and pepper became an immensely valuable commodity and wars were fought in Europe over pepper. Pepper, in fact, was used even as legal tender and Kerala reaped some of the benefits of this bounty of nature.
RUBBER PLANTATIONS
But while the Europeans took pepper and other exotic spices from Kerala, they also brought some commodities to the State. Rubber is one of them. Planters in Kerala's famous rubber estates tell the story of how the dense forests were cleared for this commercial crop. English planters used to scatter coins in the bamboo groves and let the local people know that money was to be made by those who were enterprising enough to find it. The tribes would cut the bamboo and get only a pittance for their efforts but the planters got cleared land on which to set up their estates. The rubber plantations of Kerala too, like much else in the State, survive on a combination of legend and commerce.
COCONUT COUNTRY
The connection between the post British rubber planters and the powerful Syrian Christian church is well-known. What is not so well-known is the role of the humble coconut in the economy and the culture and even religion. This commodity, which came rather late to India from its original home in Malaysia, floating across the Indian Ocean perhaps, was extremely important in clearing the coastal jungle. The land was otherwise so densely forested that it was not economical to put in effort to clear it till a crop could be cultivated which had multiple uses and hence extremely high value. Coconut became that crop, its fruit, kernel, husk, coir, trunk, bark, leaves, milk - everything is useful and it provided the economic rationale for clearing the land. It is lettle wonder then that the coconut, a later biological immigrant into India, has acquired pride of place in Hindu rituals.
Just a few hours drive from the lush coconut, rubber and spice plantations are the rolling hills with their tea and coffee gardens. And yet, such is the topographical and climatic difference between Kollam and Kottayam and Thekkadi that they seem like different lands. For a small state, there is amazing variety in Kerala.
And Yet, through this variety there is one unifying theme too: the theme of civilization and of modernity in the best sense of the term. Whether in terms of literacy and education, or empowerment and entitlement, or mobilisation and organisation, or public health and public telephones, or female life expectancy and dignity of labour - Kerala tops the list in India.
In addition, it is also amazingly beautiful, vivacious and exciting, a place not to be missed for the world......
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