Renovated ancestral homes have become a mainstay of tourism in Kerala. Soumithra investigates how ancestral homestays not only draw from existing caste and class hierarchies, but also play a role in sustaining these in the era of the supposedly free market.
Soumithra M. S.
You have heard so much about it, read so much about it and now you might want to experience it by yourself! Yes, we are talking about Wayanad, the real heaven in God’s own country, where the days are luminous with stunning village scenery and the nights reverberate the rhythms of drums, music of flute and husky recitals of aborigine tribe. If you are setting out to explore the beauty, the wilderness, the warmth and excitements of Wayanad, we are here to offer you an abode of comfort. ILLAM1,an ancestral abode built fifty years ago in traditional Kerala architectural is a perfect place where you would find bliss and harmony with a loving family. Surrounded by an organic farm, filled with fowls, cattle, rabbits and rich bio-diversity, ILLAM 2 offers you exquisite means for hangout. You can take a stroll through the spicy grooves enjoying the soft fondle of breeze. The green paddy fields a few steps away from your abode will fill your mind with happiness.
This evocative description of a particular homestay in Wayanad district of Kerala, featured on its website, highlights the appeal of ancestral homestays in Kerala’s tourist environment. Ancestral homestays—illams and tharavads 3 from years ago—are attaining popularity among the public in Kerala as homestays for international tourists and more local travelers. ‘Heritage’, ‘tradition’, and ‘vintage luxury’ are some of the key terms that people employ when advertising the appeal of such places. However, it is important to question the various commodifying acts that transpire beneath such benign phrases, especially when you consider the history of caste and class privilege that underscores the very survival of such houses/homes in a caste society such as that of Kerala. What role does caste and class play in the tourism sector through the physical structure of ancestral homestays? And how is the concept of ‘Kerala aesthetics’ embodied by ancestral homestays as tourist sites?
Through the aesthetics of a harmless and pleasurable site of tourist attraction, ancestral homestays not only valorize savarna 4 aesthetics but also help sustain caste hierarchies in the present. The existence today of homestays promoting ‘tradition’ and ‘vintage luxury’ often caters to a particular brand of ‘Kerala aesthetics’ which revolves around the historic ancestral homes of the savarnas such as Nairs and Brahmins. In functioning as a tourist destination, ancestral homestays thus make use of existing class and caste hierarchies that exist in Indian society. Sociologist John Urry, who is noted for his work in tourism and mobility, offers a useful framework to understand the deeper significance of the meanings and the consumption patterns associated with ancestral homestays. He describes tourism as a ‘collection of [semiotic] signs’ and the tourist as a purveyor of said signs—that is, tourism comprises a range of discourses and practices that convey specific meanings which the tourist pays for (Urry and Larsen 2011, 4). Urry also argues that tourism enables people to consume a place as if it were a product.
The descriptive terms associated with homestays underscore the fact that the age of the homestead is a major part of the appeal, and therefore the profitability, of ancestral homestays. Indeed, many of them are advertised as being over a century old. The survival of the savarna homestead over a long period of time, therefore, becomes central to the economy of ancestral homestays. The compelling feature that enables such homestays to compete with manorial motels with five-star ratings and ultramodern features is the concept of domesticity that is associated with these homestays. Reviews for one such homestay located at Mattancherry, Kochi, highlight the ‘delectable home fare’ prepared by the in-house chef and ‘antique furniture pieces’ along with ‘tradition’ and ‘warm hospitality’. Whereas the idea of tradition is frequently invoked, it almost exclusively signifies the rituals associated with savarna Hindu traditions. Throughout the house at various points, one encounters pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses alongside lamps and other artifacts that signal the savarna Hindu background of its owners. The survivability of the place for more than hundred years is directly linked to the caste and class background of its owners. What we are observing under the guise of aesthetics is a romanticized commodification of past caste glory and a reselling of old concepts in modern packaging. Ancestral homestays, therefore, function as sites where caste, privilege, and tourism intersect.
John Urry highlights in his work how the consumption of places, particularly the visual aspect of this consumption, is linked to various services offered. For example, the tour packages of one ancestral homestay in Kochi, which are provided as part of the homestay experience, include a bicycle tour of Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, a walking exploration of the Palace Road, Broadway Bazaar walks and ferry rides, a glimpse into the climate-resistant Pokkali form of rice farming, a rickshaw ride around the area, and Jewish and Muziris Heritage tours. The Jewish Heritage tours again rely on a commodified lens to view the daily lives of people belonging to a particular religion. The Pokkali Rice tour also involves the commodification of the livelihood of a group of farmers who belong to the lower caste and income strata of the community for the benefit of the homestay’s tourists.
Here again, the caste and class privilege of the homestay’s owners and their guests, to an extent, is visible. By converting themselves to a sort of curators of ‘local experience’, the savarna homestay owners employ the aspects of marginalized people’s lives that can be presented as a performance to their visitors, while the long-term social and financial capital of being purveyors of tourist experiences remain with the homestay owners. In doing so, the diversity of the native people and the power dynamics between them is submerged and an essentialized version is presented to the tourists. Additionally, it should also be noted that the services of savarna and lowered caste participants are valued differently in the tourism economy—while the savarna homestay owners act as producers of the tourist experience, the lowered caste members are mere performers in such an experience wherein they provide low-value services and continue to depend on the savarna homestay owners for regular business opportunities. Here again, the tourist gaze is colored by caste and class and renders the experiences of the non-dominant caste rice farmers to a subaltern form (Urry and Larsen 2011).
It is also important to consider the fact that within the feudal economic system that existed in Kerala prior to the arrival of the British, the Nair tharavadu and Brahmin illam were exclusive spaces for savarnas from which avarnas were excluded at all cost except in the form of household labor. Fort Cochin, in particular, has been the seat of the Cochin royal family till the formation of the state of Kerala in 1956. Its surrounding areas, including Mattancherry, have been centers of trade and have been traditionally occupied by savarna traders and landlords such as the Menons. Avarnas—caste groups against whom untouchability is practised—have been traditionally denied access to such parts of the city or to engage in activities such as trading. Even when they were allowed access, it was mostly as labor power to support the business and other daily activities of savarna traders and landlords. The very idea of ‘Athithi Devo Bhava’ (‘the guest is equivalent to God’), which the various homestays claim as underpinning their concept of hospitality, is rooted philosophically in oppressive caste politics that has traditionally denied access to members of non-dominant castes to such spaces.
With the arrival of the British, the joint family system and the sacrality associated with the tharavads and illams gradually gave way to the impact of a neoliberal market economy that encouraged business and trade. Today, the renting out of the ancestral savarna house to people irrespective of caste highlights the dominance of the capitalist market system in Malayali cultural and social environment. The caste system has undergone some modification to merge with the politics of the market economy. The possibility of lowered-caste members of the society to occupy these ancestral homes might have been non-existent a century ago. The existence of such a possibility in 2023 highlights the capacity of the agentic economic individual to extricate themselves from the social system of caste to a limited extent. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the possibility of such an occupation by avarna group members of the homestay, provided they can afford it, is still a luxury. Examining the context of responsible luxury, theorist Janssen describes luxury products as possessing two defining characteristics—scarcity and ephemerality—which I think is applicable in the context of homestays as vintage luxury products (Janssen 2014). It therefore only temporarily extends the privilege of consuming a savarna aesthetic. The real privilege of ownership of capital and labor remains with the owners of the homestay as descendants of the original patriarchs. Even when the avarnas are consuming such a space and its associated privileges, they are simultaneously partaking in the performance of a system that oppressed their ancestors and in today’s time is contributing to the economic advancement of the descendants of the same oppressors.
Additionally, the savarna household and the aesthetics associated with it become the signifiers of ‘tradition’ while the avarna household continues to exist as the ‘Other’ in opposition to the savarna who continue to build up on cultural capital and recognition. The profits reaped from such an endeavor continue to accrue disproportionately to savarna home owners than avarna owners due to century of existence unless you were a savarna in Kerala. Through the consumption of such spaces, the fact that it is nearly impossible to have built and owned a large two-floor house that can claim a long life—a ‘scarce and ephemeral’ luxury product—continues to add an aspirational quality to the lives and cultures of the savarnas. Savarna homestay owners, in turn, are re-appropriating the past privileges and glories of a savarna lifestyle.
References:
- Janssen, Catherine, Joëlle Vanhamme, Adam Lindgreen, and Cécile Lefebvre. ‘The Catch-22 of responsible luxury: Effects of luxury product characteristics on consumers’ perception of fit with corporate social responsibility.’ Journal of Business Ethics 119 (2014): 45-57.
- Urry, John & Larsen, Jonas. 2011. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. Third ed. London: Sage Publications.
About the Author: Soumithra has a Masters in English Studies with a minor focusing on Development Studies from IIT Madras. Her research interests lie at the intersection of caste, class and gender and the confluence of these categories in various ways to inform our daily lives.
Insightful article with refreshingly new perspectives.
Interesting analysis. But I don’t think Fort Cochin was ever the seat of the royal family as the article states. Again, it may not be quite right to describe Mattancherry as the hub of savarna traders. Gujarati traders, yes, but a large number of the big traders was Muslims, esp Clutch Memons.