Author: J Devika

Women Leading the Struggle for Social Justice: Naveen Prasad Alex

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[Naveen Prasad Alex’s short piece in Ala recounts the struggles of many women who rose above the social oppression that they suffered as members of the oppressed castes to lead struggles for social justice during the early twentieth century, often referred to as the ‘Malayali Renaissance’. In mainstream and feminist accounts of the social history of these times, greater visibility is often the privilege of women of the oppressor castes — especially those which renewed and refurbished their traditional sources of power and became part of the twentieth century Malayali new elites. This piece seeks to correct this bias, relying upon many important sources in Malayalam.]

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In Kerala’s present-day struggles for social justice, leaders like C.K. Janu and Seleena Prakkanam stand as powerful symbols of resistance, challenging systemic oppression and fighting for the rights of Dalit and Adivasi communities. Yet, their voices often remain sidelined. This ‘invisibilisation’ is not a recent phenomenon. Women have been at the forefront of many struggles for social justice during the Kerala Renaissance, but their contributions remain largely overshadowed in popular history. This essay shines a light on some such forgotten legacies, highlighting the leadership of women in the Kerala Renaissance while connecting their struggles to the ongoing fight for justice. By doing so, we challenge the narrow lens of history and honour the women who shaped Kerala’s social justice movements—past and present.

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Sanjayan’s ‘Joke’: Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma

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[This is a short piece from my translation of Amma’s autobiography Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum (translated as Wayfarer-Woman and the Wayside Lamps, forthcoming from Zubaan, Delhi). Amma was a feminist from the 1930s who, quite removed from her contemporaries, understood women’s emancipation as radical equality — and was punished for it. This piece is especially interesting because in it she responds to a humorist, Sanjayan, who made a sneering remark about her very-popular travelogue, based on her travels in Europe in 1935, titled Njaan Kanda Europe (The Europe I Saw), which was also published in English as A Peep at Europe. He suggested that it needed but one change — of the title, from Njaan Kanda Europe (The Europe I Saw), to Europe Kanda Njaan (I Who Saw Europe)!! The insecurity of modern-educated and reformist Malayali men about confident and individuated women was conspicuous in the remark. The following is Kalyani Amma’s reflections on this incident, written in the 80s, in the late 1980s. The difficulties with recall are obvious, but it is a remarkable work — a tremendous effort at self-assertion in a world that had punished her very severely for the life of ‘lived’ cosmopolitanism that she chose. The English version of the book that aroused so much envy in highly-educated male intellectuals is available online, thanks to the Punjab Digital Library. Here is the link. Please read it! ]

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The Position of Women: Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma

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[This is an article by Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma (known by her married name, Mrs C Kuttan Nair) appended to her well-known travelogue, A Peep at Europe (Njaan Kanda Europe in Malayalam), written after her tour of Europe in 1935 along with a group of Indian women under the leadership of Mrs Alexandrena Datta, a Scotswoman married to the Indian nationalist Dr s K Datta. It reveals her extraordinary perception of ‘Women’ as a global category and the necessity of establishing a position of equality between women of colonised and coloniser countries in addressing the question of patriarchal oppression. Interestingly, nowhere else in her writing did she evoke the fall-from-golden age narrative of Indian women’s past, or that of the freedoms enjoyed by Nair women! Clearly, these are merely props used to create a speaking position of equality with women of Europe. ‘A Peep at Europe’ is a truly remarkable work, especially for its deep awareness of the structural base of cultural difference, and the ‘politics of friendship’ that it performs. It is now available online, thanks to the Panjab Digital Library. It may be found here. ]

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K R Narayani Amma:  A Forgotten Pioneer

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Many first generation Malayali feminists remained invisible because they were overshadowed by their male relatives who had easy access to public life, but K R Narayani Amma was overshadowed by her famous sister, the formidable K R Gouri Amma, the stellar communist and public figure whose presence filled the history of twentieth century politics in Kerala.  Here is a short essay on her by M A Anooj, which throws light on this remarkable woman from the early twentieth century:

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Piano Woman: Annamma Tharakan

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[This is a short memory piece on Anna Tharakan (Pennamma to her loved ones) (1921-2021), who pursued her love for music from the 1920s till her passing in 2021. It is written lovingly by Reju George, as an FB post in the group Byegone Plantation Days (25 June 2024)]

Annamma/Pennamma Tharakan was born with an ear to music on Oct 15 , 1921 to a Syrian Catholic planter family in Kanjirapally.Her father K I Thomas was a First Generation Planter.

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Teresa Joseph Kalpurackal: Pioneer Planter

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[This post is from a Facebook post by Reju George in the group Bygone Plantation days, 3 June 2024. He is her grand nephew. Teresa Joseph belongs to a generation of Syrian Christian and Nair who chose to stay unmarried at a time when dowry rates were rising and dowry as groom-price was becoming pervasive across the elite communities. They chose professional work, and other kinds of economic and public activities, as Reju’s memories reveal. Teresa’s work as a philanthropist also throws light on a very poorly researched area of women’s history in Kerala.]

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 Translator’s Introduction: The Aloneness of K Kalyanikkutty Amma

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[This is part of my translation of her autobiography titled The Wayfarer and the Wayside Lamps, forthcoming from Zubaan, Delhi]

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For around thirty years now, I have researched and written about ‘the first-generation Malayali feminists’ — the outspoken and daring women who received a modern education in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century years and sought to clear their own unique paths in life. This was a generation which struggled to break free of the traditional order and seek out their unique place in the world on the one hand. On the other hand, they struggled against becoming mere adornments to bourgeois households, modernised caste-communities, or indeed, the newly- regional and national entities emergent in those times.

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Excerpt from the biography of E K Janaki Ammal: S Preetha Nair

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[Savithri Preetha Nair’s Chromosome Woman, Nomad Scientist — E K Janaki Ammal, A Life 1897-1984 is an extraordinary achievement. It carefully-lovingly- follows the life, times, and achievements of a woman achiever from Malabar in the early twentieth century, who was almost forgotten in Kerala till very recent times. Nair is a historian of science and independent scholar based in London. Below is an excerpt from the book — which reminds us of how women as knowledge-makers are so easily forgotten and rewarded so late. But speaking from Kerala, it might seem that Janaki was able to pursue science avidly only because she was outside Kerala — so hostile is this state to thinking women outside literature]

In 1977, when she was almost eighty, the Government of India finally decided to award Janaki a Padma the fourth-highest civilian award; a terribly belated recognition for the first Indian woman to be awarded a doctorate in the botanical sciences, the first woman to head a central government institution of science, the only Indian female presence at landmark international scientific conferences, and symposia, even up until the 1960s, and perhaps the only practising Vavilovian evolutionary biologist and plant ecologist, male or female, in the country at this time, precociously aware of the need to conserve forests and genetic resources in general. It goes on to show how little her science and its significance mattered to powers that be; that she was a woman and a nomad didn’t help either.

The belated recognition is ever more surprising given how close she was to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and V K Krishna Menon, in her capacity as a world-ranking expert on plant biology. Several male Indian botanists/agricultural scientists/geneticists, (almost all whom worked with her at sometime or the other except perhaps M S Randhawa, and most with far less research experience or international exposure) had been already honoured with a Padma…

… Speaking of the few women Padma awardees prior to 1977, these were chiefly in recognition of their contributions to ‘public affairs’, ‘civil service’, ‘literature and education’, ‘arts’, and ‘social work’; a few went to the field of medicine (nursing chiefly, but one went to a doctor), one to sports (Aarti Saha, 1960) and only two to scientists: Savitri Sahni ( Padma Shri ,1969, as science administrator rather than for a direct contribution to science), and Asima Chatterjee born 1917 (Padma Bhushan, 1975: earned her doctorate in chemistry in 1944 from the University of Calcutta). Perhaps Janaki (born 1897: earned her doctorate in 1931 from the University of Michigan) took consolation from Mary Poonnen Lukose (1886-1976) from her home state of Kerala, who was the first woman Surgeon General in India, but was awarded the Padma Shri as late as 1975, just a year before she died, at the age of ninety!

The Vibrant Life of KS Ammukkutty: Nipin Narayanan

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[Sadly enough, the high-point of militant working-class struggles in Kerala, the late 60s and early 70s, remains poorly researched. This piece on a militant communist is a treasure indeed.]

Illustration by:- Nipin Narayanan

The story of a woman-dalit agricultural worker without formal education who rose up to be a leader of the communist movement

– Nitheesh Narayanan

On 24 January 1970, a group of goons of the Indian National Congress and other groups who were part of the then right-wing government of Kerala attacked KS Ammukkutty — a 36-year-old leader of the Kerala State Agricultural Workers Union. She was on her way, along with a few other women comrades, to the place in Alakkode, Kannur district, where communist leaders had come for a discussion with the local landlord during a militant land struggle. The goons lurking in the forest grabbed her by the hair and trampled her. Beaten all over the body, she was left unconscious. Many thought she would not survive. It took almost one year of intense care and treatment for Ammukkutty to return to normal life. “I was lying unconscious for many days. I could not move from bed for months. It pained throughout the body and it took six months for me to eat even a bun,” the 86-year-old Ammukkutty recalls. The injuries it caused lasted long, perhaps for a lifetime.

Read the rest on : https://thetricontinental.org/asia/ammukkutty/

Mariyumma Mayanali Maliyekkal: A Memory

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[M M Mariyumma (1925-2022) is believed to be the earliest Muslim woman to secure an English education in Malabar, but her cousins the ‘Mayin sisters of Tellicherry’ — Amina Hashim, Ayesha Rauf and Haleema Abootty probably preceded her. This article relates her life.]

Today men and women enjoy equal status guaranteed by our Constitution. But there was a period when men dominated, especially in the field of education and occupation. Yet, there were people whose thought processes were ahead of their age. Such a family was Maliyekkal, a prominent Muslim family of Thalassery, Kannur. O.V Abdulla senior, a member of Maliyekkal was a well-known Islamic scholar and a commission agent in a tea estate. As a nationalist, ignoring the words of the religious heads, he made her daughter Mariyumma study at the Sacred Hearts English Medium Convent School.

Read the rest here: