Religion in Kerala
Hinduism is the most widely professed religion in
Kerala, with significant Muslim and Christian minorities.
Kerala has a reputation of being, communally, one of the most
religiously diverse and cosmoplitian states in India. According
to 2011 Census of India figures, 54.73% of Kerala's population
are Hindus, 26.56% are Muslims, 18.38% are Christians, and the
remaining 0.32% follows other religions or no religion.[2]
Various tribal people in Kerala have retained various
religious beliefs of their ancestors. Hindus constitute the
majority in all districts except Malappuram, where they are
outnumbered by Muslims. As of 2015, Hindus, Muslims,
Christians and others account for 42.87%, 41.45%, 15.42% and
0.26% of the total child births in the state, respectively.[4]
Consequently, Kerala's religious landscape is set to diversify
further in the future.
Nair
Historically, Nairs lived in large family units called
tharavads that housed descendants of one common female
ancestor. These family units along with their unusual marriage
customs, which are no longer practiced, have been much
studied. Although the detail varied from one region to the next,
the main points of interest to researchers of Nair marriage
customs were the existence of two particular rituals—the pre-
pubertal thalikettu kalyanam and the later sambandam—and the
practice of polygamy in some areas. Some Nair women also
practiced hypergamy with Nambudiri Brahmins from the
Malabar region.
Sambandham derives its meaning from two words-
Samadham (Consensus/agreement) and Bandham
(Relationship). So it simply means Consensual relationship, as
practiced in accordance to Matrillineal Laws of Kerala which
prevailed among upper caste Hindus of Kerala untill 1930s.
In short, Sambandham is much similar to modern day
Live-In relationship, but has a larger social and cultural
approvals to it.
In Kerala, almost all upper castes such as Nairs, certain
classes of Ambalavasis, Kerala Kshyatriyas and Nampoothiris
Males (barring the eldest one in the family) had this form of
relationship as primary means of sexual relationship.
Why so?
Its might be bit shocking for many Indians and even
Malayalees of today. But it was the hardcore truth that
MARRIAGE as we see today was a prohibited concept
among upper caste Hindus of Kerala.
There was no system of marriage as a permanent
social custom in Kerala among upper castes untill 1920s. So as
the concept of family also differs so rapidly
Sambandham tradition was required as the concept of
Family in a matrilineal system is quite different from the usual
context of family.
The concept of family and Sambandam
connections between a male and female. A male of Family A
may have relationship with a lady of Family B, but the family of
B doesn’t constitute the former. Same way a male of Family C
may have a relationship with lady of Family A, but essentially
not part of Family A,
For majority of Indians who follow patriarchy, family means-
Husband, Wife and their kids
In Kerala untill 1930s, family means Brother, Sister and
sister’s kids. There was no concept of Husband/Wife
relationship as so. This is called Matrilineal traditions or
Marumakathayam (Lineage of Nephews).
In Matrilineal tradition, every relationship is traced to female of
the house/family, not the men of the house. This makes females
of the house sole inheritors of family legacies and the lineage
By this, a house means its ladies as primary custodians and their
brothers who can live and manage the family properties for their
sister.
Typical family structure under a Matrilineal system. The head of
the family will the senior most of lady of the house- the
Matriarch. Featured is Ponathil House, a prominent Nair family.
One can see the matriarch and her daughters and sons all seated.
The family consists of the senior’s lady’s two sons and 3
daughters. The children of daughters of the house also featured,
but no children or wife of the matriarch’s sons being featured as
they were outsiders.
As marriage was prohibited, there was no concept of
husband and wife. A lady of the house enters into a
consensual relationship with an outside man. The primary
intention for such relationship is to reproduce. The man who
has entered into a consensual relationship, has no rights with the
lady nor the children born to the lady. He was just a short term
co-inhibitor of the lady at her house which can be terminated at
will of the lady or the man. Normally such men were identified
by the family though in many cases, they may be self identified
by the ladies themself. However the concept of Sambandham
was a family approved affair and hence people of lower castes
weren’t allowed into the system.
The children (both male and female) were identified as children
of a mother. Father was almost irrelevant as the lady may
have multiple relationships with many men. For the kids, only
mother and their uncle (mom’s brother) matters. The Mom’s
brother too may had many relationships with ladies of other
families and may have kids in that, but none of them identify as
his children. Rather for him, his sister’s kids were his children.
Typical family structure as of Travancore royal family pictured
in 1930s. The King and Queen wasn’t typical Husband and
Wife, rather Brother and Sister due to Matrilineal customs. And
in every protocol, the Queen and Queen Mother always gets
higher rank than the King.
This is common for all upper castes. For example in any
Kingdom of Kerala, the Queen will be King’s sister, not the
latter’s wife. Infact the latter’s wife was almost like a commoner
with no rights even to enter into the palace. Same way, the
Queen’s husband was not even a Prince (unlike UK), rather a
mere consort. And this also makes the King’s wife and Queen’s
husband almost irrelevant and they were seen as outsiders. They
had no rights in the palace/royal family nor any position of
importance.
Irrelevance of Marriage and family system, also made every
sexual relationship as relations of pleasure rather a social
institution. For kids, there was no concept of father as such. In
Malayalam, the original conceptual phrase to denote father was-
Ninte Ammaude Nair (Your Mom’s Nair, meaning one among
many nair men with whom your mom had a relationship). Today
this phrase has reconstituted as a lewd term as similar to calling
someone bastard, but in past it was so normal as the term bastard
itself had no meaning in such society where fatherhood was an
unrecognized concept. The only natural relationship for children
of upper castes were Mother, Aunts (mother’s sisters ), their
children (cousins brothers/sisters) and Uncles which happens to
be case of any joint family in those days.
The only exception to this will be Nampoothiris (Kerala
Brahmins). Technically they follow the concept of Patriarchy as
in any Vedic society. But inorder to avoid any partition or
division of land within the family, only eldest male within the
family was allowed to marry in typical way. Only he can marry
and bring wife to the house. Rest all Nampoothiri males in the
house cannot marry, rather should have Sambandham with other
communities. However for females within Nampoothiri
community, they cannot be polyandrous as in Nair or other
similar community. Rather they were expected to marry a
Nampoothiri man and with all typical rules of chastity.
Why this tradition?
Military conditions
Kerala had only one empire in its entire course of history- the
Chera Empire which fully collapsed by 12th century (1100s
AD). However by 9th AD itself, Chera Empire were facing
issues of disintegration and multiple fiefdoms started arising,
mostly supported by Brahminical powers (Nampoothiri orders)
With final collapse of Chera Empire, the whole land got
disintegrated to more than 586 principalities/fiefdoms/small
kingdoms etc.
In such a situation, wars became inevitable. Every slight
provocation ends up in a war and every war ends up in another
war for revenge (Kudipaka- revenge politics).
When I say war, one need not assume the typical war of large
scale battalions of army with multiple divisions of cavalry forces
and infantry units attacking each other in open fields as we see
in historical movies. Kerala’s geographical terrain cannot afford
to have such kind of wars. Rather it was mostly guerilla warfare
limited to small groups of men, say less than 100 or 200 at max.
In guerilla warfare, causalities will be higher. Its very unlikely,
even a victorious side to have all its majority of combatants back
in safety. This makes life of a warrior man, most uncertain. He
may die any moment, any day as his life was sworn for the
protection of the King and the state.
In this circumstances, it was hard for men to lead a proper
family life. It would make them conscious of their family safety
and future. Under matrilineal traditions, they have absolutely a
carefree life. There is no family life attached to them. They had
no responsibility of the children. This eased them a lot in event
of being martyred.
Another factor is that, when an enemy successfully invades a
country, its possible for them to eliminate the male members of
ruling family as well as key nobles etc. However under Hindu
Dharmic codes, its illegal to attack or kill a female. In most such
cases, females were mostly left alone respecting their status quo
as such. Once females had the entire property and access of
social rights in their names, even if males were eliminated, the
family continues as due to inheritance rights and lineages being
passed through female line, not male line elsewhere.
Conservation of land.
One key factor which lead to this social order was land
conservancy. Kerala has extremely shortage of habitable land.
2/3rd of Kerala is covered by forests, inhabitable mountain
ranges, rivers, waterbodies etc, leaving just the small coastal
strip and few valleys near to the banks of rivers closer to coastal
strip worth for habitation. As the land is extremely fertile, this
has pushed a very high population density, making land, the
most prized resource. In this situation, there was a massive need
of conservation of land holdings.
Once the Empire collapsed and rise of small principalities, land
was too fragmented. So the intention of all upper castes who
were the only landed community, had to preserve the land from
any sort of partition. This lead to this unique arrangements,
where males (who were most likely to assert independence from
a family and lead a separate family life) deny any right of
property holding. Under Matrillineal laws, a male member of the
family has only dwelling rights within the family and essentially
no rights of ownership. This is fully vested with the ladies of the
house. This system allows male members to be dormant within
the family as beyond the house/family, they have no ownership
rights. They were forced to manage properties on behalf the
ladies of the house, who could be more compromising nature,
especially when every other ladies in the house were their own
blood sisters. Even for Kings, they have right to rule only
because of their sister who were the sovereign authority. The
system thus proved very effective in consolidating land
resources for more than 10 centuries.
Better social status
In a caste society, where ultimate caste was that of Brahmins
(Nampoothiri), the whole system allows massive intermixing
each other without worrying any loss of caste status. In many
parts of India, a Brahmin to have a sex with a lower caste was a
capital offence and it used to be a grave offence in those times.
In Kerala, it was common. For the castes lower than Brahmin, it
gives more authority and status value in the society. For
Nampoothiri men, it gives a right to enjoy a sexual pleasure as
they have no institution of marriage in their community other
than for elder brother.
Better cohesion
For a family, siblings appears to be more cohesive than a
husband/wife. A brother and sister have a natural bond than a
husband and wife in an arranged marriage as in latter its two
distinctive individuals raised in two distinctive cultures coming
together. There could be less issues between a brother and sister
who were raised in same environment and have better more
respect to each other.
In this system, the lady of the house never moves out of her
family unlike patriarchal traditions where lady becomes part of
Husband’s family after marriage. So in Kerala traditions of
upper caste, the concept of mother-in-law/daughter-in-law
conflicts were unheard untill mid of 20th century. In patriarchal
family, a newly wedded bride definitely has an outsider tag as
she later joined into the family while being pretexted as a family
member.
So in Matrillineal law, every husband/wife is an outsider of the
family, formally declared so without any pretensions of
becoming a family member. A Sambandhakaran (male co-
inhibitor of the lady) can reside in the lady’s family, enjoy the
facilities in Lady’s home as an outsider, not as a family member
with full rights.
In royal families, the male consort of the queen had to sit away
from her and discriminated openly even in a common banquet.
For example, if Queen and her children were served 4 choices of
desserts, the consort will be given only 2 choices of dessert.
While lady consort of the King had no right to be inside the
palace at first place unless being summoned. In case of being
summoned, she has to remain only at forecourt, never in the
private chambers of the King (the law has been amended by
Cochin Royal family in 19th century to allow King’s consort to
stay with him with no special rights)
The intention of such concepts were to ensure- family concept
restricted to Brother and sister with the people with whom they
had relationships as outsiders.
The system worked well untill start of 19th century, primarily
because it served the above reasons.
The biggest advantage of this system was the society gave lot of
priority and independence to woman.
First and formost, every lineage passes through a female, which
means a family without a girl inheritor were all set to doom.
This gave the practice of prioritizing a girl child in every family,
a tradition still continued by most of upper caste hindus of
Kerala as well as Muslims untill 1950s (Muslims of Kerala had
same Nair status and their customs in Kerala were very much
similar to Nairs in every way).
Sambandam is the mirror image of Polygamy followed by men
in patriarchy societies. The polyandrous system allowed lot of
sexual independence for woman. Though they didn’t have
absolute choice of man with whom they wanted to have a sexual
relationship, the system gave a strong option to enter multiple
relationship, thus have a varied choice rather being stuck with
one relationship for a lifetime as of today. They were free to
terminate the relationship as and when they wish to do so.
Its was mostly like how Triple Talaq works against Muslim
Women today. Nair ladies used to have instant divorce system
against their male co-inhibitors (Sambandhakaran). To start a
Sambandham, the male has to gift a Mundu (Dhoti) to the lady
which marks the start of relationship. When a lady wishes to
terminate the relationship, she just gives the mundu back to man
and shows the door of her house. This simple ritual works much
in favour of lady just like how Triple Talaq works for men
today.
Another major factor was, the concept of paid prostitution was
much less, as both men and women had equal chances of N
number of relationships without any social stigmas. This has
pushed less sexual frustrations and less sexual assaults (ofcourse
it did exist against lower caste women) despite of the fact, most
of the ladies were barechested and semi naked in public sphere.
The system declined most by start of 20th century, as part of
Kerala Renaissance movement of 1900s. This was primarily
because by 1830s, most of the armies of Kingdoms of Kerala
were merged into British Indian forces, thus making a good
percentage of Nairs, jobless. They returned back to their homes
and became agriculturalists mostly. However the system was
designed to have less men back at home and more men means
more ego clashes. When younger men started travelling outside
Kerala, they being constantly mocked by others upon hearing
the concept. For outsiders, Sambandham violated every concept
of so-called Chastity of Sanskari Women and equated to the
concept of Prostitution. This lead to frustration by youngsters
against the system.
