K J Baby’s 1991 novel, Mavelimantam, is the story of the resistance of the Adiyor community against centuries-old slavery at a historical point where feudalism was joining hands with emerging colonial forces in India. Mileena re-reads the novel with reference to the concept of Dalitisation by Kancha Ilaiah.
Mileena Saju
Eera,
I was listening to a few folk songs on my Spotify. I have a separate playlist full of folk songs from different languages. But sometimes, I think about the thudichollus of your mantam, the lyrics of Javaraperuman, and the songs about your survival from thampuranlokam. Much of the folk songs that I listen to are folk in style, but not in nature, and do not extend more than a generation. They are so different from the songs of your mantam.
I’m in fact jealous of Baby mash, who captured the stories of your mantam without exoticising or romanticising them. I often think about the power of the myths, stories, and songs that your community shares. Everyone agrees to it, adheres to it, and identifies with it. This is the history that lives on, survives time and extends beyond generations.
I miss your songs. I miss your stories. I miss the myths of your mantam.
Missing you,
Mileena.
K J Baby’s 1991 novel, Mavelimantam, is the story of the resistance of the Adiyor community against centuries-old slavery at a historical point where feudalism was joining hands with emerging colonial forces in India. Kaipadan and Eera, the Adivasi protagonists of the novel, survive a life of slavery to herald a new period of equality in the semi-fictional universe of Mavelimantam. The novel begins with the grim reality of oppression— ‘It was for eight rupees that Ambu Nair pawned his slave Kaipadan to Subbarayapattar’ (Baby 2020, 15)—and ends on a joyous note of survival—‘The minds of the mantamakkal (members of the community) danced in delight; their bodies soon followed’ (214).
Adiyors belong to the hills of Wayanad. They were historically organised into different mantams, which K J Baby clarifies as gotrams. These mantams usually took the name of the place to which they belonged or the title of the janmi [feudal landlord] family that they were attached to. K J Baby focuses on the idea of the Adivasi mantam as a collective, and attaches them with the memory of Mavelikaalam (the era of Maveli) and with the myth of Mavelimantru (the ruler, Maveli):
A long, long time ago, we, too, had a time—the era of Mavelimantru.
One day, three deceitful lords visited the mantam. Mavelimantru greeted them with a full heart. When opportunity struck, the three lords captured the land and the people and murdered Mavelimantru. They brought in the viratapurushan and divided the masses into castes.(30)
Mavelimantam is a book of resistance and assertion against the economic greed of the feudal elite that resulted in the encroachment of Adivasi lands, the enslavement of Adivasi people, and their subjugation as polluted caste-bodies. The resistance is against the symbols, words, and images by which the caste-Hindus had created a thampuranlokam (the realm of the lords) in which the Adivasis were mere ‘bodies of labour.’ The novel traces the escape of the slave Kaipadan and his friend Eera from thampuranlokam to regain their Mavelimantam. Mavelimantam here refers to a new world order, in the model of their mythical past, which surpasses the oppression and injustices of the present order embodied by thampuranlokam. The feudal lords, in search of the escaped slaves, torture and abuse the community, but in vain. Realising the agency that they uphold as a mantam, the members of the community decide to follow Kaipadan and Eera, and flee from thampuranlokam. This is not a resistance of armed rebellion but of myths and thudichollus (songs) of the community. The myth of Melorachan and Kezhoruthi, the Adiyor ancestors who tried to escape from thampuranlokam only to be subdued by the goddess Mali, signifying the subjugation of the community itself, was redefined by Kaipadan and Eera’s escape, who are now seen as the new Melorachan and Keezhoruthi. Through the songs that unite the mantam and the stories about Kaipadan and Eera’s escape, the community attains a sense of togetherness.
The collective memory of Mavelimantam thus helps the Adiyors to reclaim their own space as an alternative to thampuranlokam. Mavelimantam portrays the Adivasis in their transformation from oppression to assertion, from ‘being Adivasis’ to ‘becoming Adivasis’. ‘Being Adivasi’ refers to the Adivasi identity constructed by dominant history, whereas ‘becoming Adivasi’ involves Adivasis’ own construction and negotiation of their identity in line with the politics of representation (Dasgupta 2018, 4). The novel vividly portrays the process of a particular community ‘becoming Adivasi’ through a recapturing of their past ideals and by recreating their own narratives. This negotiation is evident in the ways Kaipadan approaches his identity: ‘Let the masters treat us like cattles, but we shouldn’t do that to ourselves’ (19). Kaipadan also realises the need to assert themselves through their language. He asks, ‘who is there to protect our words’? (193). With Kaipadan’s dream of defeating and killing the goddess Mali, which symbolises the fall of the oppressive order itself, the assertion of Adivasi identity is complete (128).
The ideals of Adiyor mantams share much with Dalitwaadas (Dalit settlements), that underlie prominent thinker Kancha Ilaiah’s idea of Dalitisation (Ilaiah 2002). Dalitisation, for Ilaiah, is the process of accepting the ideals that guide Dalit lives in order to arrive at a new consciousness. This new consciousness is also what guides the process of ‘becoming Adivasi’. The attempt here is to extend Adivasi and Dalit worldviews to the rest of the society, countering the oppressive tentacles of Brahmanism, which signifies the opposite values—segregation, hierarchy, and exploitation (115). According to Ilaiah, it is imperative to resist Hinduisation for two reasons, firstly owing to the dearth of humanism in its philosophy, and secondly, as the history of religion itself is coming to an end (114-115). Ilaiah’s and Baby’s weapon, like that of Ambedkar’s, is the outright rejection of the ethos of Hinduism, which is irrevocably tied to Brahmanism, and an attempt to replace it with alternative ideals. Here, I explore property, labour, democracy, and family as important aspects in which the ethos of both Dalitwaadas and mantams are opposed to that of Hinduisation.
To begin with, the idea of private property has never found a place of pride among the Bahujan who engage in community life where the products of their labour are shared equally. They instead place value upon their collective labour, not in surplus production, believing that ‘our tomorrow is guaranteed by our labour’ (Ilaiah 19). Contrary to this ethos, the non-productive dominant castes, who do not value labour, require the security of their private property gained through what Ilaiah calls ‘Brahmanical investment’, the outright exploitation of the labour of the Bahujans (97). Mantams, like Dalitwadaas, are also outside the idea of private property. Everything is owned together as a community and everything is shared even in times of scarcity. In the novel, Kaipadan remembers how the slaves he toiled with kept a share of their food aside for him from day one—‘a handful; a very tiny share’ (27)—even though the food available was barely enough for them. The memories of a mythical past where the land was ‘ours’ as a collective whole rather than ‘theirs’ as an individual possession reverberate throughout the narrative. The era of Maveli was a period where everyone shared the fruits of their labour with the community with no corruption or exploitation. Today, while the thampurans (lords) often idly spend their time with lavish meals and lengthy naps, the Adiyors toil hard in the fields that were once theirs. The idea of Mavelimantam is also against the capitalist idea of surplus; it is ‘a small world along a river, where we cultivate only for our needs’ (115).
The second, yet more important, idea in the process of Dalitisation is Dalit-Bahujans’ ethos of valuing labour. They derive pleasure from their labour and do not attach much sympathy to the hierarchical separation of mental and physical labour. Adiyors, too, attach significant value to their labour and engage in physical and mental labour. But in thampuranlokam, where they are alienated from the fruits of their labour, the pleasure derived from the labour is minimal, as they are subjected to cruel punishments. Javaraperuman, an Adiyor elder, describes how they were tied upside down over bonfires and how the slave sons were made to ‘do things’ to their mothers. But during the intervals between their mechanical labour at thampuranlokam, mantamakkal (the people of the mantam) engage in creative labour, composing new hymns and weaving new stories for the future. ‘When spring adorns the forest, Javaraperuma, please compose a new chant, rhyming with the buzzing of these bees and the melodies of these birds’, requests Kaipadan (23). In the Mavelimantam of their hopes, labour indeed is pleasure, detached from its individual connotations. The constant engagement with their labour, be it physical or mental, also stands opposite to the Brahmanical idea of leisure.
The third important feature of Dalitisation is the Dalit democratic social system and their collective social consciousness as opposed to the authoritative social systems of Hindu society (124). The Adiyor social system similarly exhibits a deep sense of democracy. The mantam was the basis of the social organisation where decisions were often taken collectively. Elders were respected and often given due importance, but this importance never resulted in a hierarchy. In contrast, the enforcement of strict hierarchies is one of the ways in which thampuranlokam corrupts and manipulates the slaves. In thampuranlokam, the Adiyor have a leader, Jogimooppan. He serves as a mouthpiece of the masters: ‘Jogimooppan looked at us the same way the thampurans do’ (29). But in their resistance to the oppressive system, the Adiyors accept no leader, no hierarchy, and no gender division. Javaraperuman asserts, ‘Our dream is this—a place beyond the vision of the masters, a place where the masters cannot buy and sell us’ (212).
This democratic aspect can be traced down to the man-woman relationship, both in Dalitwaadas and in the mantam. In the Brahmanical structure, Ilaiah argues, households are marked by selfishness, inequality and cutthroat competition. In thampuranlokam, too, we find stark gender differences. The Hindu woman in the novel, Cheriyamma, is a victim of patriarchy. As Hindus are non-productive, their family structure finds meaning only in hierarchy and competition (126). But in Dalitwaadas, the family is not authoritarian. Even though patriarchy has its influence over Dalit social structures, husband and wife exhibit a fairly equal position (125-126). Men and women both freely engage in physical labour as there are no restrictions imposed on women as in Hindu societies. Women of the mantam are free to choose their partners or to have sexual relationships with them beyond the institution of marriage. But in thampuranlokam, women are mere machines to deliver new slaves and their bodies are the property of the master. What is interesting in the narrative is the determination of the Adivasi women and their strong opposition to thampuranlokam, evident from their oath:
Jevani and Eera, along with Champi, raised their hands and swore to the trees, wind, sun, moon, fire and water: ‘we swear on you that we will never birth a child into this world for the expansion of thampuranlokam (44-45).
Thus, through the ideas of property, labour, community, and family, the difference between the two opposite world orders is drawn. As Ilaiah notes, even though the Bahujan and Hindus occupy the same space in civil society, their cultural worlds are often opposed (114). The consciousness about their worldview, which upholds equality, cooperation and democracy, opposite to that of the oppressive and divisive ideas of Brahmanism, is what is central to the idea of ‘becoming Adivasi’ and to the process of Dalitisation. The novel Mavelimantam emphasises this consciousness: ‘Away from the eyes and ears of the thampurans, on a river bank, a small world, a world where we are equal’ (115). Eera adds, ‘my heart is full with the songs of the paths that we travel together as one’. The rejection of Hinduisation thus remains at the heart and core of both processes, and the objective remains the universalisation of the values epitomised by the Adiyor mantams and the Dalitwaadas. Only through Bahujans—comprising Dalits, Adivasis, and the marginalised among the marginalised groups—can a true revolution be made possible. As Ilaiah concludes, the future is that of the Bahujans (Ilaiah 128), and as Javaraperuman says, ‘Let the holy threats of the masters be broken’ (Baby 82).
Dear Mileena,
I still remember the days Baby mash was around. We used to talk and sing for hours. Our new bantam was just flourishing back then. Javaraperuman wrote new songs every day until he died.
The stories of our survival have been written down now. But writing is not remembering. It is not the memory of the mind but that of the words. One can’t separate our history from our myths, and our myths have nothing to do with the demands of history.
I will sing to you our songs the next time we meet. We miss you, mole.
Love,
Eera.
Note of Thanks: I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Drs. Sangeeta Dasgupta, S. Gunasekaran, and Saugata Bhaduri for their mentorship. Their profound knowledge and guidance have been instrumental in shaping my understanding and approach to this work.
Bibliography
- Baby, K. J. 2020 (1991). Mavelimantam. Kottayam: D C Books.
- Dasgupta, Sangeeta. 2018. ‘Adivasi Studies: From a Historian’s Perspective,’ History Compass 16, no. 10.
- Ilaiah, Kancha. 2002. Why I Am Not A Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy. Calcutta: Samya.
About the Author: Mileena is a Masters student in Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She can be reached at mileenaksaju@gmail.com
