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South Asia Research

DOI: 10.1177/02627280060587602006; 26; 5South Asia Research

Sanal MohanNarrativizing Oppression and Suffering: Theorizing Slavery

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NARRATIVIZING OPPRESSION ANDSUFFERING: THEORIZING SLAVERYSanal MohanMAHATMAGANDHI UNIVERSITY, KOTTAYAM, INDIA

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the particular process by whichmemories of the slave experience of Pulayas, Parayas and similarcastes are kept alive in contemporary Kerala by followers of thePrathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha, a social and religious move-ment of Dalits started in 190910 by Poyikayil Yohannan incentral Travancore. The article shows how, over time, theChristian orientation of the movement was modified by itsDalit leaders, making intricate use of re-memorizing the slaveexperience. The outcome is that new myths and concepts weredeveloped, evolving into new practices and discourses, includingprominently the narrativization of oppression and suffering andrememory of slavery as part of initiation rituals into themovement.

KEYWORDS: Adi-Dravidas, Dalits, identity, Indian Christianity,Kerala, missionaries, slavery

Introductory Overview

The Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha is a social and religious movement of Dalitsstarted in 190910 by Poyikayil Yohannan in central Travancore.1 Before goinginto details of their distinct rememory of the slave experience,2 a brief con-textualization of this movement will be useful. Yohannan belonged to the Parayacommunity and many of his followers and front ranking leaders were drawn fromthe Pulayas and Parayas, who used to be agrestic slaves engaged in agriculturalproduction at the bottom of the agrarian hierarchy in pre-colonial and colonialKerala. Referred to by different names regionally, they shared certain commonfeatures recorded by colonial ethnographers (Mateer, 1991: 3359). In the 20thcentury powerful social movements emerged, spearheaded by leaders of thesecommunities, that helped them to negotiate colonial modernity. Before this phaseof social movements, protestant missionaries had worked among them from about

1850 onwards and thousands had joined Protestant congregations. For examplethe Church Missionary Society in central Travancore, by the turn of the 20thcentury, had more than 35,000 Dalit Christians, more than half of their totalmembership.3 The social movements of the 20th century thus took place in the

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context of emerging colonial modernity among Dalits as a result of protestantmissionary activities.

The spread of Christianity among Dalits in Kerala and similar social groupselsewhere was not a passive phenomenon as is made out in conventional

historiography.4

Right from the beginning of missionary activity among them,Dalits in Kerala showed an intense desire to redefine their social selves byfollowing a variety of practices, albeit under the influence and control ofmissionaries. Mention may be made particularly of their acceptance of changedspatio-temporal notions and new conceptions of the body. There were definiteinstances of reorganization of the space in which Dalits were located, includingtheir small huts and places of dwelling and the newly constituted sacred space ofthe Church and the slave school: spaces which were not mediated by castehierarchy. The new notion of time was available in connection with daily prayers,attendance in Church and school.5 This coordination was besides the usualpractice of labour, intensely familiar from pre-colonial times. Modernity markedsevere contests in all these realms. The people who joined the missionary Churchbegan to introspect their position in it and the local society as they were graduallycoming out of their agrarian slave past, though their everyday life was stilldependent on the local landed gentry and in many cases their lives were not betterat all. While they remained halfway between modern agricultural labour and slavelabour peculiar to caste formation in Kerala, they had the desire to break awayfrom such a labyrinthine existence. They were disturbed by the existence of castedistinctions within the Church notwithstanding missionary assurances to the

contrary. Over the years these discontents acquired subversive potentials withinthe Church, leading to contests over access and proximity to the sacred space andobjects, as well as radical movements couched in religious idiom articulating bothreligious and mundane themes.

In this context the religious movement of Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha,sometimes referred to in missionary writings as a heretical movement, developedin Tiruvalla in central Travancore, Kerala. Poyikayil Yohannan, a Paraya Christian

who was initially with the Marthoma Syrian Church and other Churches like thePlymouth Brethren, founded the new sect in 1909. During the early phase of theSabha it imbibed the Christian worldview and was largely upholding Christiancosmology, as testified by oral traditions and documents of that period. After thedeath of the founder in 1939, the second rung of leadership took over andgradually schisms evolved within the Sabha. In 1950, one section of followersunder the leadership of Yohannans second wife Janamma declared themselves tobe Hindus in a public meeting near Tiruvalla.6 Afterwards they graduallytransformed the biblical themes and metaphors in their songs and the Christianpractices in their everyday existence. One section of followers who consideredsuch practices contrary to the teachings of the founder, under the leadership ofNjaliyakuzhi Simon Yohannan, the president of the Sabha after the death of

Yohannan, sued Janamma in court and obtained a verdict in favour of theirargument that the Sabha was Christian and not part of Hindu religion.7 Thecontest over this continued in the High Court of Kerala, which gave its finalverdict stating that it was neither Hindu nor Christian and that it was a brave

6 South Asia Research Vol. 26 (1)



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attempt to create a casteless society.8 This particular verdict was decisive,determining the social identity formation of this group that remained, for most ofthe 20th century, in a liminal space. The analysis of the foundational categoriesintroduced through the teachings of the Sabha shows that they created their own

myths once they reverted to Hinduism. All foundational concepts of their faithwere transformed into new concepts that later on evolved into new practices anddiscourses, including the rememory of slavery.

Religious Ideologies and Social Critique

Exploring the ideology of the movement, one finds fundamental ideologicalruptures in its later phases. We do not have systematic written records on the earlyhistory of the movement, the ideas of the founder and of those closely associated

with him, because this was a movement primarily of illiterate Dalits and discourse

was oral rather than written. But Church Missionary Society Records from 1910onwards provide important though fragmentary information regarding the activ-ities of the Sabha and the ideas of the founder and his close associates. Anothersource of information is the oral tradition of the Sabha, printed only recently(Poyikayil, 1996). This comprises mainly of songs sung during various ritualoccasions of the Sabha and in the families of the followers. These songs have ahistory and genealogy of their own, undergoing tremendous transformation in the1950s when the official Sabha and its leadership reverted to Hinduism. All thesongs, some circulated in print before 1950, were largely based on Christian

themes, mostly concerned with salvation of the soul and redemption from sins.These songs deployed Christian motifs such as the Holy Trinity, the cross thatsaves man, and the deliverance that the Holy Spirit offers. The use of these motifsindicates that the foundational canon of faith was the belief in biblical truth,though not accepted uncritically. It is difficult to confine the faith and practice ofthe Sabha followers in pure categories. The doubleness characteristic of such faitharising out of religious radicalism is a phenomenon observed in the religiosity oflower classes in other historical contexts as well (Orta, 1999).

In the Sabha, religious radicalism tending to the rejection of the canons of theChurch was observed even during the initial formative phase. For instance, the

Bishop of Travancore and Cochin, reporting to the Travancore state authoritiesthat enquired into the alleged support of Yohannan and his followers of the Sabhato the Germans during the First World War, observed on the Sabha that, [i]t isreligious, in that he proclaims himself as the new mediator or saviour andpreaches that people can only be saved(whatever he means by that) by coming tohim. In this way he is building up a sect, and denounces all existing ChristianChurches, and calls upon all Christian converts of Pariah or Pulaya origin to leavetheir Churches and join his sect.9 At the same time their self-representationmakes easy straightjacket conclusions impossible. For instance in one of the

memoranda submitted to the Diwan of Travancore State in 1920, they representedthemselves as a people,

. . . who have come together from different communities and castes, realizing thewitness of the Bible and the faith in the Holy trinity expecting to realize heaven and

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existing in the nomenclature of Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha thankfullyacknowledge the good things that have been done to us for all these days andbelieve that your reign marks the beginnings of a time of relief and blessings to usand we wish and pray to God for your enduring reign and eternal blessings up onyour descendants, as the minister holding central position in the administration ofthe Travancore state.10

In another memorandum submitted to Morris Watts, the Diwan of Travancore in1926, it was stated:

We the people numbering 10,000 belonging to Parayar, Pulayar and KizhakkePulayar who have been slaves for a long time, and are in the lowest rung of the

society in terms of landed property and education have come together in the witnessof the holy Bible and joined together in the nomenclature of Prathyaksha RakshaDaiva Sabha. We the original inhabitants of this land were for a long time steeped inslavery, and had to depend on others as we did not have our own land to stay and

we lived like animals without education, social reform and such civilizationalqualities. We are a poor people who subsist from the little income that we getfrom daily wage earning. Now in different parts of the state we have 63 parishesand there we have churches and schools for the worship of God and education ofour children.11

What stands out in the above passages are the ideological positions of the Sabhathat cannot be reduced to neat categories with well-guarded boundaries. Thefuture project of the Sabha was nothing short of the agenda of modernity couchedin religious idiom in which acquisition of landed property, education, social

reform and other civilizational qualities became singularly important.Contemporary representations of the founder of the Sabha and the world view

it projected help us understand the process of reinscription of the movementsfoundational categories in the postcolonial phase. The missionaries consistentlycharacterized Yohannan as invested with superb qualities, as a clever speaker, whohas caused great unrest among the backward classes, through false teaching; hissuccess being due in a great measure to the ignorance of the people, and the lackof someone qualified to meet him on his own ground.12 They were relieved tonote that his popularity was on the wane, but this turned out to be a prematureconclusion. As observed in the annual report of the missionaries for the year1916, it was around Tiruvalla that the effect of Poyikayil Yohannans falseteachings was chiefly felt. Two outstations had to be closed, the people havingbecome his disciples. To counteract this mans influence, Mr Stephens, amissionary in charge of the Tiruvalla mission station, wrote and published threeleaflets with wide circulation and travelled the district and Pastorates.13 Thechallenge put forward by the movement continued, as noted by the perceptivemissionaries:

It is claimed . . . that it is the only way of salvation, that its author is the sole

depository of revelation to the present generation. Some former adherents who for

one cause or another left the party, gave accounts of the sermons of the leadersand the doings in the jungle which is his headquarters. But these accounts werealways decried by Poyikayil and his followers. Outsiders are jealously excludedfrom these gatherings. If any are suspected of being present, the meeting at once




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disperses or is given an orthodox character. As far as can be ascertained it distorted

interpretations of Holy Scripture and introduced a kind of rapturous revivalism,

mixed with Animistic or some similar rites that constitute the doctrine and

practice of the cult. It cant be said to have lost its attractive power though somewho had been led away returned to the church. It attracted other Christians

besides those of outcaste origin, and, as has been said drew to itself the interest of

Hinduism, represented by the Ramakrishna Mission. Mr. Stephens cooperated

with the Pastors and other leaders in the parts most affected, which lie round

about his stations of Tiruvalla, in fighting this foe. He organised conventions inseveral places near Poyikayils stronghold, employed trusted men to work amongthe congregation and wrote and printed leaflets dealing with the heresy.14

An article published in the Diocesan Record under the title Concerning theHeresies pointed out that Travancore was not the only mission field of theChristian Mission Society (CMS) to encounter heresies.15 The radical dimensions

of the teachings of Yohannan in Kerala made the missionaries and the Churchhierarchy in Travancore view it as heresy. Considered in the context of suchmovements the trial in Travancore was not strange.16 The article exhorts theChurch to be prepared to resist strange heresies that might arise among believers.Regarding heresy, it was observed that psychologically such phenomena shouldappear where masses of primitive people had been transformed from heathenismto Christianity. Centuries of animism were bound to produce certain instincts of

which animism was itself the product or expression. The transfer of an animistpeople to Christianity with its totally different outlook and implications produced

mental and emotional ferment.17

The sudden transfer of an animist people to the practice and teachings ofChristianity offered them space for constructing their own ideological hybrid alter-natives. This is only reluctantly admitted by the missionaries who asked themselves

whether the new spirit of Christ had completely dethroned and abolished the oldanimist instincts. The second reason attributed to heresy was that the Sunday Servicesoften seemed humdrum to mass converts and the Christian discipline appearedirksome. A more tangible reason apart from caste and race feelings may have been theresentment of the have-nots against those who have, reflected in observations to theeffect that these poor sheep dimly feel that they are more likely to get what they wantby following some leader of their own.18

Prophecies were not deemed strange and the Church hierarchy identifiedpersonalities like Poyikayil Yohannan and Venkotta Yohannan19 in Travancorealong with heretic prophets from Africa. While the Church would like to dismissthem as insignificant, Travancore heretics, like many others, were blendingChristianity with non-Christian philosophy. There was an unwillingness to accordthe status of heretic to Venkotta Yohannan beyond the point that his ideas are justself-willed choice and it was not deemed fit to extend the privilege of beingheretic to either of the Travancore prophets.

Missionaries in charge of the Tiruvalla mission made all possible efforts tounderstand the teachings of Yohannan, sometimes by trekking through intractablestretches of jungle.20 In one such instance in 1916, missionaries sent three men tothe jungle where Yohannans clandestine convention took place. They crept up




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closely to listen and observe. On the third evening their presence was detected andthe preacher brought his discourse to a premature close.21 The three thereforerevealed themselves and had an interview with him. They had observed that

Yohannan generally gave his discourses on religious themes and when he suspected

outsiders listening, he would muddle the themes by discussing matters that wouldappear obscure to those not from the lower castes. He would refer to the historicalexperience of Dalit slavery in Kerala. In the latter phase of the Sabha, particularlyafter his death, some of his followers derived further notions of the slaveexperiences of Dalits in Travancore based on themes introduced by Yohannan.During the early phase of the Sabha its worldview was a pastiche of Christianthemes and a strong component of the historical experience of slavery andoppression. Writing in The Harvester Field, the Travancore missionary W.S. Hunt(1919) tried to give a contemporary assessment to the mass movement of

Yohannan. He had observed fundamental changes among Dalits that encompasseddiverse spaces, such as manner of worship, demeanor of outcaste converts, and apassing of the old simplicities. For a good many years, indeed, complaints of theiruppishness have been heard and certainly the community has been displaying theawkwardness of adolescence (Hunt, 1919).

There is a striking parallel to this missionary perception in the approach ofthe Travancore government to Dalit problems. Regarding the desire for socialdevelopment, the Travancore Government also felt that the Dalits were extremelyeager to move upwards and that their eagerness would endanger the status quo. Inreply to the address presented to him by the Pulayas of central Travancore in 1914

requesting him to grant them puduval(fallow cultivable lands) registered to them,the Diwan Bahadur M. Krishnan Nair replied:22

Every measure intended to ameliorate your social condition has to be thoughtfullyconceived and delicately applied. Government are convinced that the healthy well-being of the state depends a good deal upon your social and economicenfranchisement and they will only continue to push forward the history of yourcommunity that has already been written. But I may be permitted to remind youthat it is not in the interest either of the state or of yourselves that in the hurry to goforward, the pace of progress should be violently forced ahead and your interestsbrought into collision with those of the other communities whose active good-will and

sympathy are so essential for your progress. Your community should clearly bear this inmind and also remember that many a stronghold of prejudice and conservatism can bestormed only by time.

The paternalistic attitudes of the missionaries made them read meanings into themodernist desire for social transformation as awkwardness of adolescence. Itamounts to reading into the social selves of Dalits phases of human biographicalstages, particularly that of adolescence, an age of uncertainty before emotionalmaturity.

Yohannan is even reported to have said that in the Old Testament, you find

God the Father at work in the world, in the Gospels God the Son and in theActs, God the Holy Ghost. But in Travancore you see no God working, yet youare sure He would not leave His children without some revelation. An argumentfor the rejection of the book becomes that it was written to Romans, Corinthians




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and others, but contained no messages addressed to the Parayas of Travancore.Hence, [a] man must be commissioned to deliver that message (Hunt, 1919). AsGod appointed Moses, so has he appointed Yohannan, a Paraya, to deliver theTravancore outcastes from the bondage of the Christian Church. Yohannan sought

to be placed within the ideological world of the Church, but at the same timetranscended it when he derived his own critiques, including an alleged preferenceof God for younger sons that necessarily gave agency to his Dalit followers (Hunt,1919).

The image of a deliverer like Moses and the long struggle of the Jews undercaptivity was a potent imagery, repeated endlessly in missionary observations onthe position of Travancore slave castes. Similar readings appear even today in thediscourses of the Sabha.23 Similarly the favour that younger sons may receive is apotential metaphor that reworks the notion of preference that the despised wouldreceive in the Kingdom of God which, translated locally, refers to the position ofthe socially inferior lower caste Christians in Travancore society. Yohannanattached immense importance to certain passages, usually interpreting them with amixture of extreme literalness and fancifulness. The other heresiarchs tended todo this, too, and the tendency spread among the outcaste Christians. The termgenerations was to assume extraordinary significance in the later discourses of theSabha that introduced notions like the present generation to refer to the peoplecontemporary to Yohannan. Similarly, during his lifetime the ambiguous notion ofdescendants was introduced. After his death it was interpreted to mean his ownsons who would lay claim to reign. Hunt (1919) felt that some of his teachings

and acts were frankly antinomian.24

The Ideological World as Reflected in Songs

Having discussed the ideological aspects of the movement, we can now exploremore intimate aspects of religious life in the prayer songs of the Sabha of thatperiod (Poyikayil, 1940). These prayer songs open up a significant terrain foranalysis by social scientists and elucidate the history of the sect. These songs werecomposed in chaste Malayalam, quite different from the everyday language ofDalit communities. The use of modern language by subordinate groups in thecontext of colonial modernity and missionary Christianity has been identified asan instance of linguistic modernity by social scientists in similar contexts(Robbins, 2001) but is different from the process referred to as creolization inother contexts.

Language plays a crucial role in constructions of the images of slavery andbuilds primarily on social memory. In the example of the Sabha, the songs of theoral tradition as well as those that were printed and circulated are in modernliterary Malayalam retaining fine lyrical qualities. This language would be quitedifferent from the daily language used among Dalits during the first half of the

20th century when many of those songs were composed. This shows the instanceof linguistic modernity. Social historians have argued that it is necessary to treat[l]anguage as an object, a resource, for historical enquiry in its own right, ratherthan as just a window on to the past (Porter, 1991: 2). Similarly, it has been




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observed that the deployment of holy tongues, especially perhaps transcendentaland numinal, offered small, weak and marginal religious groups the only mode ofauthority they could realistically seek to command: the Highest (Porter, 1991: 3).The composition made use of modern Malayalam imaginatively, to be recounted

as ritual songs, even though it was not a holy tongue. This was definitelyimportant when considered in the context of collective cultural identity andhistory (Porter, 1991: 10). As noted in other situations in struggles for identity,emancipation and mastery, language ceased to be merely a medium of clearcommunication and became key to the collective soul. The use of modernMalayalam by the Sabha assumes significance here in that language becomes asemiotic cultural field in which negotiations take place.

To analyse the intricacies of worldview, we consider here the songs incirculation among the followers of the Sabha from its early phase, though theversion that is cited here was only published in 1940. Most of these songs(Poyikayil, 1940) focus on the Christian theme of salvation. In this period theSabha existed in a liminal space without as yet defining itself against the agenda ofthe nation state and being either Hindu or Christian. At the same time, some ofthe practices of the Sabha made missionaries think that they were not Christiansand contradicted the Bible. Missionaries could not understand the doublenesscharacteristic of the movement.

These early songs deal with Christian themes that were completely erased inthe later history of the Sabha.25 The foundational category here is Jesus Christ andthe faith reposed in him as the saviour. The ideas are expressed in a variety of

tropes deployed to create a world of its own; giving control over language andimagination. Their significance lies in that these people were slowly becomingliterate and able to use the modern language more competently. The text begins

with a song recounting the creation of the earth, followed by the story of Adamand Eve drawing on the book of Genesis. The song further develops their life andthe eventual fall and expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Edenforever, introducing the concepts of sin, redemption and eternal salvation(Poyikayil, 1940: 1). Because of its familiarity, this story has lost its esotericcharacter. But what should have been the impact of such a story on the lowercaste Christians who came under missionary instruction? For the first time thenotions of sin and salvation percolated into their minds through such stories, sothat such notions became part of their life world and began to provide them ameasure to arrange their everyday life and social validation.26 This has a directbearing on the validation of the social selves of the people, evident in one of thesongs that they used to sing (Poyikayil, 1940: 3):

Oh! Lord in the High! You are Great!

Up on this earth I am small

You can do any thing on your own

I can not do any thing on my own.

Though the rest of the song is on creation, every stanza recalls the position ofmen and women vis-a-vis the power of God. Significant for us is the category




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with which the image of man is constructed in these lines. While it can begeneralized as the condition of man/woman as a whole, in the context of theiragency it can be suggested that it refracted the condition of the people who sangsuch songs. While the might of God is narrated, the position of man is juxtaposed

as equivalent to the insignificance of Adams son. God is depicted in the song asowner of the whole universe, the Holy Being without sins, eternal, the strongest,

whereas mans corresponding position is that of a slave, sinner, finite and finallyequivalent to earthly dust. There is no doubt that these songs were composedusing already circulating metaphors and metonyms prevailing in the songs currentamong other Christian congregations and evidently provided some categories ofthought to the people, the fullest local extent of which became evident in courseof time.

One recurrent theme of the songs is the sufferings of Jesus Christ who diedfor the sins of all human beings and the salvation offered by the risen Christ(Poyikayil, 1940: 45). The songs celebrate the fact that even if people aresuffering in this world, there is space for them in heaven where they will enjoyeternal happiness. The introduction of categories such as suffering and salvationassumed deeper meaning in the vocabulary of the Sabha as well as in the projectof Yohannan. When describing the birth of Jesus Christ, the songs depict it as thecoming of the Lord in the garb of the wretched leaving behind the legion oftrumpet blowing angels. The garb of the wretched went on to assumeimportance as an icon that evoked memories of slavery once the discourse ofslavery was introduced in the later phase of the Sabha, and then the phrase

transformed as the garb of the slave. The image of suffering human beings issuperimposed on Christ who suffered torture and died on the cross. Certain othersongs are concerned more with the eternal joy that accrues out of divine love as ablessing of the Holy Spirit. Such songs characterize the eternal blessings that Godgives to the poor and lowly, widows and orphans, and they came to occupy acentral position in the Sabha discourses. The axiomatic representation of theorphaned slave children and their sufferings as their parents were sold to differentlandlords is foundational to the faith of the Sabha today, elevating the discourse ofsufferings to a higher plane. This concept has a surplus meaning when read in thecontext of the social sufferings of Kerala Dalits. It is this particular aspect ofsuffering that is deployed in the songs sung in the exclusive Dalit congregations(Poyikayil, 1940: 68).

Some songs in the volume focus on salvation, offered by the son of salvationwho has opened the door of salvation for everyone and admits those who aresaved into it (Poyikayil, 1940: 11). Those who are saved experience the ecstasy of

joy and sing hallelujah. He brings together people from the four corners of theworld and in the abode of Trinity they will interdine. Death is not there anymore.No more is sorrow and wailing and he would wipe out tears with his mercifulhands (Poyikayil, 1940: 12). The intertextuality of the lyrics quoted here indicates

that the theme is familiar; the reprieve that salvation offers to the despised Dalitsof Travancore becomes the key issue. They realize that happiness is denied to themin the prevailing structure of the society and are hopeful of the interdining thatawaits them in heaven. Its political significance becomes clear when one recalls




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that interdining was also a matter of much concern in the programme ofnationalists in the Gandhian phase. To the despised Dalits, songs woven aroundthe theme of salvation celebrate it as a grace of God. Only those who are savedcould know the true meaning of salvation. All those who are saved are made

members of the Sabha and they build it together with the Holy Spirit. The fullmeaning of salvation is revealed only in the end and is preserved without beingtainted. The song reaffirms the faith in salvation and the patient waiting for it.The final pronouncement is that they should not forget God.

Closely following the notion of salvation is the concept of cleanliness,27 one ofthe central tropes deployed in the missionary discourse and subjected to socialscientific analysis in other contexts. In Kerala its significance lies in that cleanlinesstakes on the unclean mind and body of the untouchable Dalits. The concept ofcleanliness is fundamental to the project of salvation. The Christian thought onsalvation is interwoven with the presumption of cleanliness. God is the embodi-ment of justice and purity; He is the one who purifies humans. Living in thecommunion of the saints and being clean, one enters the communion of thesacred saints. This is ultimately the great message of salvation that words fail toexplain. This song shows complete refuge in the divine project of salvation. Thereis an inadvertent allusion to the cleanliness of mind and body in the song(Poyikayil, 1940: 1315). The significance of these lines become clear when weconsider that in the course of the movement a lot of practices were devised tokeep the mind and body of the people clean.

Another song empathically proclaims that believers are saved when God

hears their tragic final cry. In the next stanza the question is raised what oneshould pay as a price for the salvation that is offered, and if not a price, whatelse one should offer? Then the realization dawns on the singer that s/he is saved

without being asked for payment. The song continues by proclaiming to theLord that they could never forget His love for them. The Lord took them in Hishands when everyone forsook them. And this love of God was unexpected(Poyikayil, 1940: 14, 16). There is an imbrication of the spiritual quest and thematerial everyday reality of the Dalits in Travancore in this song. This redeeminglove takes into account the despised as valuable human beings. For people whorealize the love of the Lord it has redeemed them from sin, eternal damnationand death and gave them heaven. When one beholds the holy face of God andof Jesus, ones foot does not sink to the ground and the burden of suffering isreduced. The thought of the power of the Holy Spirit fills their heart withtranquility (Poyikayil, 1940: 1718). Thinking of the Kingdom of God makesthem forget their life in this world. In these songs the theme of salvationthrough Jesus Christ is endlessly repeated. The expectation is that whatever bethe condition on this earth, they would be resurrected like Christ, leaving thisearthly body to enter the eternal kingdom.

In another song there is explicit mention of the waning caste distinctions that

are leading to the merger of various castes, with reference to a purified caste fromwhich the clan of priests emerges. There is another song that validates this as apractical necessity. This song, titled as Eternal Priesthood, begins by stating that

Jesus is the high priest and hence we all belong to the clan of priests. It further says




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that with purity anybody could be in the lineage of priesthood (Poyikayil, 1940: 31).In a different context, Hill (1986: 126) argued that the doctrine of priesthood forall believers, of the sovereignty of informed consciences, became subversive whentaken over by groups normally excluded from political life. In the case of the

Sabha, this subversive element was present as soon as there was a body of Dalitreligious men and women engaged in propagating the truth of the founder,

Yohannan. In the later phase of the Sabha they were instrumental in transformingit into a dialogic interpretive community. In such a context Dalits, otherwiseexcluded from political life, began to construct alternative structures of power.

The following stanzas develop the contrast between the priesthood of the Oldand New Testament. It recalls the processes by which Christ liberated priesthoodfrom rituals of the Old Testament and proclaimed it as open to everyone who hasa pure saintly heart. This notion refers to the priesthood that must have beendeveloping from among the Dalits themselves as they remained a separatecongregation, despised as unclean. The validation of priesthood is sought in thelineage and practices of Christ himself. The new priesthood can be authentic asChrist had united them, and henceforth they do not require myrrh andfrankincense as their prayers bear fragrance and illuminate the world, makinglamps and olive oil unnecessary. In the later phase of the Sabha the legitimacy ofthis new priesthood is sought in the Adi-Dravida past, as discussed further below.

In the context of affirming the faith, another stanza speaks of the decline ofcaste differences and distinctions of groups, living united with great happiness inone God. In a song titled Praise to Jesus the wretchedness of the lower caste self

is read in the image of Son of God, born in a stable in the garb of the wretched.Describing the second coming of Christ, another song alludes to the Kingdom

with no caste distinction and group rivalry. They expect a place where there is nosorrow and loud cry (Poyikayil, 1940: 39). The notion of cleanliness is carriedforward to the extent of equating it with the cleanliness of the soul that finds finalrefuge in the communion of saints. The gender dimension is surprisingly workedout in a song titled A Song of Christian Sisters, where the Christian sister of lowcaste origin experiences spaces of equality in domains least thought about(Poyikayil, 1940: 42):

Lucky, Lucky, I am lucky,

I am lucky

It is luck that heavenly King Jesus

Was born on this earth

Sin crept in through Eve

So salvation came through women

In this worldly reign the feminine figure

But in heaven equal to angels

The secrets of heaven without distinction

Luckily imprinted on my heart




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It is luck to sing in ecstasy

In heaven in front of the saviour

To have kept thus far alive

Upon this earth, is my luck.It was blissful for her to have experienced the heavenly blessings as she rejoices inthe Lord. While she continues to be a woman living the ordinary life of the lowercaste social world, she is hopeful of achieving the status of angel once she reachesheaven. She was equally endowed with the heavenly secrets that would have givenher insights into the ways of the Lord. God willed this without any considerationof gender distinctions. It may be considered here that this new religioussubjectivity provided some kind of agency to Dalit women in Kerala.

The significant theme of last judgment and the second coming of Christ

assume canonical status in the later history of the Sabha, when this notion isadapted to the image of Yohannan as Sree Kumara Gurudevan, as constructed bythe Sabha. He comes to offer salvation to the souls of the descendants of slaves

who escaped from the thralldom of slavery and suffering. That is a time when allthe powers of the worlds shall be shaken. But what remains without being shaken

will be the plan kettidam (properly planned building) that is built according tothe plan of Yohannan (Joseph, 1994: 64). Its importance lies in that Yohannanhimself was claiming a certain kind of revelation for his own people, combiningelements of prophetic revelation with pragmatic social intervention. While thiscontradicted some of the Bible teachings, it squarely reworked the Biblical notions

to stake his claim over the minds of his people. In all these songs we hear thevoice of the saviour who calls upon his people. Yohannan was deploying propheticpower to transform the peoples self-perception and the way they perceived him(Poyikayil, 1940: 545):

The God who has great knowledge

Gave great knowledge and consciousness

Removed ignorance completely

And thus came knowledge in me

The Holy Spirit resides in me

This is the abode of the saviour

In this earth we are bought and sold like animals

The owner had willed

Removed slavery entirely for us

Let us never forget the love of the owner

We were accused as wretched

On the earth by the elite

The God from the heavens willed

To nurture and remove the wretchedness.




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It is extremely important to see why and how the above song is different from thegenre of songs discussed so far. Here we find the theme of slavery introduced aspart of the Dalit experience in Kerala, textualized along with other themes. Thedistinction is sharply brought out when the song laments that they were bought

and sold like cattle until the owner willed to remove slavery out of his love forthem (Poyikayil, 1940: 545). While many of the sources cited in previoussections of the article provide clues that the notion of slavery as the livedexperience of Kerala Dalits was present, such themes were not clearly articulatedin the early songs. But the oral tradition of the Sabha, as well as testimonies givenby a number of informants, refers to the prevalence of the theme of slavery in thediscourses of Yohannan (Vijayakumar interview, 2001). The central question hereis the foundational character that the discourse of slavery achieves in the laterphase of the Sabha, reinscribing itself onto the foundational categories of thediscourses and songs that dominated till the 1950s. It is at this point in time thatthe social memory of slavery was actively reconstituted to serve a differentpurpose. This phase stands out uniquely as the phase of narrativizing the historyof slave suffering.

Narrativizing the History of Slave Suffering

This part of the article analyses in more detail the processes and discourses bywhich slavery was theorized by the followers of the Sabha. Insights drawn fromcontemporary social theory that explores similar contexts provide us a vantage

point in understanding the constructions of the Sabha. Gilroy (1993) theorizesslavery and slave sufferings in the contexts of ethnicity and resistance movements.He situates slavery in relation to modernity and foregrounds it as a problem thatmodern social theory has to deal with, suggesting a radical recasting of themodernity debate and the project of cultural studies to engage with the questionof slavery. Gilroy argues that Black slavery and resistance to it produced distinctivecountercultures to modernity that could evolve a critique also of capitalist socialrelations. Black musical culture is identified as one of the prominent artefacts that

was libertarian and at the same time offering a great deal of courage required togo on living in the present (Gilroy, 1993: 36). The philosophical inner dynamicof the counterculture is identified and the connection between its normativecharacter and its utopian aspirations of a politics of fulfilment which issimultaneously cultural, political and economic is visualized. It puts forward anotion that a future society will be able to realize the social political promise thatpresent society has left unfinished (Gilroy, 1993: 37). Reflecting on thefoundational semantic position of the Bible, this is a discursive mode ofcommunication. Though by no means literal, it can be grasped through what issaid, shouted, screamed or sung (Gilroy, 1993: 37).

Equally significant is the notion of a politics of transfiguration. This refers to

the emergence of qualitatively new desires, social relations and modes ofassociation within racial communities of interpretation and resistance and betweena particular group and its erstwhile oppressors. This politics, according to Gilroy,exists on a lower frequency where it is played, danced and acted, as well as sung




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and sung about; it would express the conspicuous power of the slave sublime. Thefailures or fulfilment of promises are located in the bourgeois civil society that hasto live up to its promises (Gilroy, 1993: 37). This particular interpretation issignificant for understanding the shouts, screams and songs that have been uttered

and sung by followers of the Sabha in Travancore. Evidence of the politics oftransfiguration is expressed in willfully damaged signs that transcend modernityand construct both an imaginary anti-modern past and the postmodern yet-to-come. Gilroy (1993) considers this as a counterculture and not just a counter-discourse that defiantly reconstructs its own critical, intellectual and moralgenealogy in a partially hidden public sphere.

It would be difficult to argue that such politics of fulfilment and politics oftransfiguration are fully discernible in Kerala. My contention is that we certainlycome across new desires, social relations and modes of association of Dalitpolitical and social articulation in Travancore, occurring in the religious and socialspheres and bearing the markings of fulfilment and transfiguration. According toGilroy the politics of fulfilment plays occidental rationality at its own game,necessitating a hermeneutic orientation that can assimilate the semiotic, verbal andtextual. The politics of transfiguration strives in pursuit of the sublime, strugglingto repeat the unrepeatable, to present the unpresentable. Its rather differenthermeneutic focus pushes towards the mimetic, dramatic and performative(Gilroy, 1993: 38). It is in this context that, according to Gilroy, the memory ofslavery is actively preserved as a living intellectual resource in an expressivepolitical culture by Blacks, helping them to search for answers to problems they

face in western modernity. It is at this level that Gilroys theorization is helpful inunpacking the agenda of social transformation in Kerala in relation to the historyof the Sabha. Slavery itself and its memory helped to enter the domain ofenquiries on the foundational aspects of modern social thought and to criticallyengage with it (Gilroy, 1993: 39). Even though not comparable to the refinedintellectual production of Black critical thinking, the Sabha experienced a criticalengagement with slavery, while mainstream social sciences and literature downplaysuch themes in Kerala.

Gilroy also argues that Black critical thinking is above all other criticaltheories on society, particularly Marxism, because of the primacy given to livedcrisis, even when the choice is between lived crisis and systemic crisis. It is due tothe fact that the process of self-creation is accomplished not exclusively throughlabour. For the descendants of slaves, work signifies only servitude, misery andsubordination. This theoretical position is appropriate in understanding the socialsituatedness of the lower caste slave labourers of Kerala in the 19th century andtheir descendants in the first half of the 20th century. As far as lived crisis isconcerned, the memory of slavery was later available to the erstwhile slaves only toa limited extent. There was initially no recalling of the slave memory to make it aresource for resistance. This does not mean that the collective memory of slavery

was not present even during the early decades of the 20th century. We find therendering of the memory of slavery in the discourses of the Sabha, rendered oncountless occasions, so that it enters the minds of the descendants of slaves andcreates somatic effects.




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Similarly, the nature of work in relation to lower caste slaves also underwenttransformation. Given the civilizational dislike shown by dominant castes towardsmanual labour, when the modern proletariat emerged, it was structured on thebasis of caste and related notions of work and leisure. The narrativization of

oppression is accomplished through the deployment of chronotopes used in theconstruction of the past.28 The notion of slavery as chronotope emerges in thesongs and discourses of the Sabha as singular and decisive; through it we can readsignificant moments in the Dalit history of Kerala. It appears that the notion ofslavery and sufferings emanating from it constitutes a unit of analysis for studyingtexts according to the rational nature of the temporal and spatial categoriesrepresented (Bakhtin, 1981: 425). The notion of chronotope is used here as ameans of studying the relation between any text and its times, and thus afundamental tool for a broader social and historical analysis (Bakhtin, 1981: 425).

The texts analysed below clearly identify slavery as the central organizingtheme. This particular feature reaches the realm of performative ritual andreligious discourses in the practices of the Sabha. The rituals were instrumental indefining the social world of the religious community by providing organizationalmyths. Following Barthes (1989), we consider myth as a semiotic system thatgenerates its own language.29 This particular insight helps in decoding thesemiotic language that the ritual discourses and practices introduced.

In the Indian context, Aloysius (1998) examined the significance of religiousdiscourses among Dalits in the colonial period; focusing on the emancipatorypotentials of lower caste religious ideology. The process of narrativizing history is

accomplished by invoking memories of oppression in a dramatic manner thattouches upon the inner space of people. To the oppressed, the oppression itselfbecomes central to the cognitive-volitional life of the excluded and nonprivilegedsections of the society (Aloysius, 1998: 7). The consciousness of oppression firstof all leads to an epistemological shift. All things social appear to be oppressedunder a new light; they themselves become a homogenous collectivity, unjustlysubordinated and subjugated; the various social phenomena hitherto accepted asneutral, given or having thing-like quality, now appear as emanations ofexploitative social relations. Society itself is viewed as constitutive of two groups,the oppressed and the oppressor, locked in conflicts (Aloysius, 1998: 7).Consciousness of oppression develops a different social praxis that enables acritique of historical and contemporary experiences. This finds further articulationin the formation of the religion of the oppressed, contingent upon the overall lifesituation, as a new interpretation, or selective appropriation or modification, oreven total rejection of old beliefs (Aloysius, 1998: 7). The notion of oppression isstretched further to include problems that fall beyond the pale of social classes andeconomic sphere, extended imaginatively to include conflicts arising out oflanguage, territory, ethnicity, race and religion, so that economic oppressionsometimes manifests itself in certain cultural forms (Aloysius, 1998: 7).

We can build here on such insights in analysing the notion of oppression andsufferings that certain forms of Dalit religiosity tried to develop in colonial andpost-colonial Kerala.30 Oppression in a larger context includes oppressions in thenon-economic sphere, particularly in the realm of cultural practices. This does not




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mean that cultural practices are uncontaminated by the economy. The mutualityof the economic and the cultural are taken care of by arguments on oppressionthat foray into the cultural field. Growing consciousness of oppression leads torealization of the existence of cultural, religious and other cleavages in society. It

has been observed that such cleavages surge forth in society particularly in timesof substantial socio-economic change. In the present analysis, this process isobserved to be necessarily non-linear, sporadic and even haphazard, leading to thenon-uniform and uneven nature of the consciousness of oppression at a givenhistorical time (Kleinman et al., 1997: 9).

Memories of oppression necessarily build on the notion of the suffering bodyof the untouchable, contrary to pre-colonial notions of the untouchable body asthe site of evil and pollution. By the time such discourses became prominent, theidea of the suffering body had gained acceptance. It is evident in the writings ofthe missionaries that in the process of salvation they required a sanitized body ofthe untouchable or that the process of salvation itself sanitizes the untouchablebody. This appears from the elaborate treatment of the living conditions of lowercaste untouchables that were undergoing transformation.31 Another importantsource of theorizing the notion of the suffering body and oppression is found inoral tradition, talking of observable social contradictions in an intimate manner.32

Ong (1988: 74) observed that in most religions the spoken word functionsintegrally in ceremonial and devotional life. This holds true for the practice of theSabha, too, as over decades it evolved emotionally charged discourses of slaveryand similar themes. In some of the songs sung in Travancore we find the elaborate

rendering of the sufferings and pains of the untouchable agricultural labourers(John, 1998: 334):

Yoked with buffaloes and bulls

We plough the fields

Plough the fields

Father is sold . . . thinthara!

We all wept . . . thinthara!

Mother is sold. . . . thinthara!

We wept disconsolately . . . thinthara!

The elder one is caught . . . thinthara!

Plantain was dug out

He was thrown in the pit

Covered with dried leaves and set on fire . . . thinthara!

The children who saw these cruelties ran into the forest. They asked the goddessesof the forests about their parents, but no answer was forthcoming. When theyoung suckling child cried out for milk, the elder children sang (John, 1998:334):

We have nobody

To feed breast milk




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To give shelter in a corner

To give a spoonful of gruel

We have nobody . . . thinthara!

We have nobody . . . thinthara!

Here we find the interplay of two distinct streams of theorizing oppression. Thefirst draws upon the missionary worldview of equality, while the latter is pre-colonial and draws upon common sense or the traditional conception of the

world held by the oppressed masses (Gramsci, 1971). Missionaries noted in detailthe living conditions of the lower caste masses that perpetuated their sufferings,highlighting the lack of adequate food, dress, shelter and their emaciated bodyvulnerable to diseases, making their everyday living and survival a great problem.33

The missionaries tried to cultivate a strong sense of hygiene among the lowercastes. Their initiatives in health care, referred to as medical mission show theimportance attached to modern medical practices. The narrativization of oppres-sions by Dalits goes further back in time. At a later stage the representatives ofDalits in the Sree Mulam Praja Sabha (Travancore Popular Assembly), placingbefore the government the problems of their people, sometimes providedgraphic representations of everyday sufferings of their communities.34 These spanfrom the particular role of the untouchable labourer in the processes ofproduction to the use of public space, and the consumption of food items that areconsidered unclean.

The present study seeks to understand how social experiences were articulated

in different contexts. The most emotionally recalled experience happens to beoppressions inflicted on the person of the slaves and their sufferings due to theharsh practices of slavery. The preachers of the Sabha create a real life effect ofsuch past oppressions through the imaginative use of particular tropes in theirrepresentations of slavery. Imaginative and performative ritual renderings of slaveryduring occasions such as Rakshanirnayam,35 the death anniversary and the annualfeast of the founder emphatically proclaim the significance of the concept ofslavery in the worldview of the Sabha. Here the centrality of the body and soul ofthe untouchable slave becomes explicit and we encounter gendered untouchablebodies undergoing severe pain. The following narrative presents extreme forms ofphysical torture that the female body had to undergo in the traditional caste-centric agrarian society.36

Slave women are forced to work for many hours without any respite evenimmediately after childbirth. Within a day or two of giving birth to a child, thelandlord comes to the hut of the untouchable labourer and asks the woman to goto the field for transplanting of paddy or weeding; a work that involves severephysical strain. The woman labourer will have to keep herself bent for long hoursin knee-deep mud and water without proper rest. She bleeds, as she is not allowedto take rest after delivering the child. A days hard labour exhausts her and she

hears at a distance the loud cry of her newborn child that gradually becomes afaint sobbing. She looks at the touting breasts suffering pain from the pressure ofmilk not being fed to her child. The strain on the body and mind and thetraumatic experience become unbearable. Picking up a bunch of paddy for




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transplanting, she feeds her breast milk to the tender mossy roots of paddy. In theevening when she returns to the child kept in a cradle hanging from the branch ofa nearby tree, what was left of her beloved child were ant-eaten mortal remains.

When she returns home, the elder children are anxiously waiting to see their

younger sibling and ask for the child to be carried and fondled. The motherbreaks down and gives the dead body of the infant to the siblings. This leads tocomplete emotional breakdown of those who recount the story as well as those

who partake in the ritual rendering and hearing it.37

Such ritual re-memory thus invoked creates a total identification with thosewho were oppressed in the past. It is significant to see what kind of transforma-tion the ritual community passes through during such renderings. As soon as theyhear the narrative of suffering and oppression, people break into tears and intensegrief overtakes the ritual community. Equally important is the recollection of cruelpunishments meted out to slaves. There are occasions when erred lower casteslaves were taken out to the wilderness and were implanted neck deep in pitscovered with soil, only the head propping up. The slave cries aloud to his masterto show him mercy. His wife and children plead with the master to set their fatherand husband free. But the landlord is determined to take revenge upon the erringslave and a cruel death awaits him. After implanting him, coconut oil was pouredover his head, inviting a colony of black ants that will eventually eat up the slave.Other forms of punishment meted out involved being taken in country boats tothe deeper recess of rivers or backwaters and being drowned by hanging stonesaround their necks, so that they never came up. Here again the wife and children

follow to witness the murderous orgy in vain; unable to take revenge upon thelandlords and their men.38

Another occasion of suffering and oppression is related to harsh work in thefields, recalled in a touching manner so as to create intense emotional unsettle-ment, sometimes by enacting scenes of harsh labour through verbal constructions,if not actual performance. There are songs depicting the harsh labour of lowercaste slave men being forced to plough fields yoked along with oxen. Narratingthe physical strain of the person thus forced to the yoke creates a mood of grief.He is unable to draw the plough keeping apace with the bullock in the splashingmuddy field and he falls down and then hears the whiplashes that leave mortalpains on his body. This pain is well recognized in the collective memory; it alsofinds mention in folksongs and eventually in the songs of the Sabha.39

Collective memory also recalls the harsh labour involved in reclamation of thebackwaters; akin to an agrarian revolution in colonial Travancore.40 This reclama-tion required tremendous labour power and large numbers of labourers. In theabsence of modern hydraulic management, untouchable labour became indis-pensable for various works related to water management, even before thereclamation of the backwaters. With reclamation the already entrenched depend-ence on untouchable labour power became more engrained and labour was made

available through both coercion and consent. The soil for reclamation work wasmined from the depths of the backwaters and transported to the work sites oncountry boats. Pulaya and Paraya labourers did much of this work. This particular

work and its harshness find elaborate treatment in the discourses of the Sabha.




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Songs depict the everyday aspects of continuous labour such as diving into thebed of the backwaters for blocks of mud.41

Sometimes flood barriers or embankments are destroyed during the monsoonand require the round-the-clock work of several people laying fresh materials to

rebuild them continuously and prevent them getting washed away by the swiftcurrents of the monsoon waters swirling into the backwaters. This particular worksometimes lasts for days and occasionally the movement of water will be so strongthat no effort will succeed in repairing a breach. Such instances have beenconsidered in popular belief as handiwork of evil sprits that will not be satisfiedunless they are properly propitiated.

During one such occasion of breach of embankments a Pulaya/Paraya labourercame to the household of a relative who worked for an upper caste landlord. He

was supposed to join for work the next day. It was then that a breach of the

embankment took place. The entire workforce was alerted, but even continuouswork for hours could not salvage the fields from the floods. The landlordapproached the local soothsayer who diagnosed the problem to be the wrath ofspirits who are to be propitiated. Fully aware of the plans of the landlord, the hostlabourer asked his guest to join the work. The guest was given the most arduous

job offilling the breached banks with mud blocks by diving down into the spacefor the embankment. As soon as this labourer dived into the water, there camedown upon him loads of mud blocks and other mixtures that fortified theembankment along with the live body of this untouchable worker. The days work

was over and the labourers returned home. The next day they saw the floatingbody of the elder of the workers, who had killed himself due to grief and feelingsof guilt.42

Apart from the structural features of oppression, certain aspects of everydaylife are depicted in the songs sung during important ritual occasions of the Sabha.One such song graphically describes the details of everyday work of untouchablelabourers who were the real force behind the clearing of forests without caring forheavy rain, biting cold and scorching heat; it was their labour that turned forestsinto agricultural lands. The song repeatedly intimates that no one else would havedone that work. Their condition is narrated as a people clad in worn-out clothes

working with a sickle hanging around the waist and the puttile (a container tostore grain made of the folds of areca leaves) and pala (areca leaf) to eat from.They are engaged in collecting grass, green manure, fodder, firewood and twigsand carry bundles of them on their heads and then go from house to house tosupply it for practically nothing. Describing the kind of food they eat, the songreminds the hearers of the sometimes fermenting gruel of the previous night,mixed with curry made of leaves that is neither tasty nor nutritious. Further theyeat tender leaves ofchembu (colacasia), thakara, a leafy vegetable that grows in the

wild, manthal or madanthal, wild roots eaten by dalits, nooron, chakon, nathu

(varieties of birds), crab and fishes like kari or koori and champu, the refuses ofmeat. They alone are the people on earth who use it much against their will(Poyikayil, 1996: 73). Reflecting on themselves, the songs recall the degradingnames by which they were known. The most common names were Azhakan,




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Poovan, Malan, Mailan, Chathan, Chadayan, Lechi, Maani, Thaali, Kuliri, Neeli,and Poliya.43

It is difficult to make a distinction between the narratives of oppression andnarratives of suffering, as both feed on each other. In the experiences of Dalits,

sufferings and direct oppression have a long history. The specific idea of thesuffering body becomes prominent only when the idea of human body in themodern sense of the term emerges and we can speak of sufferings as a majorexperience. In 20th-century narratives we come across definite recollections ofsufferings as a result of structural constraints of society as well as problems thataffect everyday life. It is theoretically significant to understand how socialmemories of slave sufferings were available for the lower castes in the early 20thcentury when these discourses evolved. We should not lose sight of the fact thateven after the formal abolition of slavery in Travancore in 1855, the slaveexperience remained alive in peoples minds. Slavery was still very much part ofthe social memory of lower caste people when the movement of Yohannan beganin 190910. For instance, the Travancore and Cochin Diocesan Record for themonth of May 1905, the official journal of the Anglican Diocese, carriedtestimonies given by people who were slaves, in the report of the JubileeCelebration at Chelakkompu, held on December 13, 1904:44

The first to speak was the oldest man in the Mettathumavoo congregation whohad himself experienced the oppression. He said he was a slave of a rich landlord.He had to work from early morning to very late in the evening under strictsupervision and could not be absent a single day without being punished. He had

seen men yoked with a bullock or buffalo to draw the plough and afterwardschained so that they might not escape.

Then an old man from Ayroor recounted his experiences.

Every morning people would be led out to work and would not be allowed to

bury their dead, even their father or mother, till the days work was over. Theywere sold, the father to one man, the mother to another and the children toseveral separate persons and would not be allowed to see one another afterwardsand under such cruel treatments some have entered the forests preferring to beeaten up by wild beasts than to lead such miserable lives.

The fourth speaker on the occasion was a teacher who had collected vital informationon the ill-treatment of people and their wretched condition 50 years ago:

The masters had power of life and death over their slaves. He had heard of one

mans head being cut off for stealing a yam, another burnt alive for running awayand a third being drowned for some trifling cause. They could not walk along theroads but only through jungles. They worshipped Gods made with wood, stone ormetal placed in groves, near which no women or child could approach. They werenot allowed to wear clothes but only leaves and barks of trees, much less carry anumbrella or put on anything on their heads.

The sufferings were part of the overall structure of stratification in the pre-colonialperiod and continued in different forms well into postcolonial times when newnarratives created new objects of theorization in the form of narratives ofsufferings. The ultimate cause for the sufferings of Dalits, according to narratives




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of the Sabha, has been their fall from the higher position that they once possessed.The fall was instrumental in their loss of all past achievements. In the narratives ofthe Sabha this has a gender dimension, as the fall of their mothers to themachinations of the Aryans eventually led to their being enslaved by the

marauding Aryans or dominant castes, leading to the beginning of the Dalitsjourney into the abysmal world of sufferings. Looking at the family as a unit, theSabha works out the notion of sufferings. The slave trade that separated childrenand parents has been the root cause of the sufferings that destabilized family lifeand brought anomie and alienation to people (Poyikayil, 1996: 29):

Those who bought our parents

Chained and dragged them away

Orphaned children roamed

In wilderness without anyone to help.

They didnt see anyone.

Infants died starving for milk

Time the eternal witness alone was pained.

These lines are of fundamental significance as they refer to the central precept ofthe Sabha and provide its essential theoretical moorings. It forms an essential partof the notion of history that the Sabha wants the contemporary generation torecollect as the authentic experience of Dalits. The sufferings as slaves were to last

for millennia together, which is something that cannot be forgotten. The slavetransaction was comparable to the transaction of cows and oxen, proclaiming theauthority of masters to sell off slaves (Poyikayil, 1996: 29):

If sold it is salable again

If to be killed could be transferred for it again

Sold as absolute property

How could we forget it?

Paired with oxen and buffaloes

Forced to plough the fields

Oh! God how do we forget the intense grief?

These experiences should be considered as figuring out the social being of theuntouchable labourers. In the discourses of the Sabha, they assume canonicalstatus as several other conceptions of slavery derive out of it, adding to thecentrality that the discourse of slavery possesses in the scheme of the Sabha.45

Transformation of Slavery as Imagery

We have so far seen that slavery as a social experience undergoes tremendoustransformation in the Sabha discourses and becomes an axiomatic foundationalistcategory. The notion of the past thus constructed enables analysis and explanation




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of past, present and future. When slavery is recalled as a historical experience,what we encounter is past. When the slave memory is recalled to negotiate theinner realm of the people, the project is oriented to the present. The linearity ofthe narrative posits liberation in future and critical engagement with a possible

future. This transformation is facilitated by the invention of categories thatproduce specific emotional effects on the people who recall the historical memoryof slavery.

The invented categories with which the emotional effects are created includeadimakkanneer (slave tears), adima yugam (age of slavery), adima shariram (theslave body), adima nukam (yoke of slaves), adimachangala (chain of slaves),adimayola (palm leaf document on slave trade) and adima bhavanam (slavefamily). Similar categories have been employed in creating the emotionaltransformation like adimamakkal (children of slaves), adima vargam (slave caste),and adima rakshakan (emancipator of slaves) and adima vimochanam (emancipa-tion of slaves). Categories of people who bear the marks of the above-mentionedconstructs are often referred to as Adi-Dravidas/Adiyar, meaning original in-habitants. Of late, there are other objective signs that have come to achievesignificance like adima sthambham, the image of a column of slaves that remindspeople of the sufferings of historical slavery.

Probing further what the notion of adimakkannir (tears of slaves) commun-icates, we find that it refers to the tears of ancestors who experienced theharshness of slavery and the tears that rolled down from their sunken eyes.Similarly it recalls the image of orphaned children wandering in the wilderness

after their parents were sold. While this is an often repeated imagery in Sabhadiscourses, duringfieldwork we were able to hear it from Yaramyavu who was 105years old at the time we met him. He was an untouchable labourer sold to aEuropean planter by his father when he was a boy. He spent more than fifteenyears in a tea plantation in Cheenthalar in the high ranges of Travancore.

Yaramyavu and his parents were in the CMS church and had been receiving thecatechism of the church. He recalled with intense emotions the experiences ofchildren who became orphans due to slave transactions and how they were sold.He recalled the songs sung by the slaves who looked back to the low lying landsfrom where they came when they climbed the rocky terrain to the high ranges,the last point from where they could have a glimpse of the low lying countryside.

One song narrates the tragic story of slave labourers who look back to theirown village from afar and cry. Obviously nobody consoles them.46 The notion ofthe tears of slaves in other contexts is powerful enough to create feeling of intensesufferings and pain as observed in the context of ritually significant occasions likethe Rakshanirnayam. This recounting of slave experiences reminds people of thesufferings of their ancestors under historical slavery.

This particular experience is part of the untold miseries that the oppressedDalits had to suffer through five millennia. It is at this point that discussion on

the age of slavery or adima yugam is introduced. When they recollect the historyof the indigenous communities, it is located in an imaginary homeland, the IndusValley or ancient Tamilakam, and the people are referred to as Adi-Dravidas or

Adiyar. Certain songs identify the land they had ruled as the geographical territory




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of Kerala. It is a nagging memory that Adi-Dravidas had among their ancestorspeople who were proficient in arts and crafts, science, political administration andstatecraft, poets and philosophers who could make rich civilizational achievementsbefore they were enslaved. In the discourses of the Sabha there is room for a

popular history of Ancient India with invariable references to scholars likeMortimer Wheeler and Sir John Marshall who conducted early archaeologicalstudies on the Indus Valley Civilization. It has been widely believed and recalledin ritual renderings that the founder of the Sabha had prophesied the existenceand eventual eclipse of Dravidian civilization much ahead of the latter dayresearchers who unearthed the Indus sites. This is foregrounded as an example ofthe cultural achievement of the Adi-Dravidas, from which position of historicalglory they declined due to the cunning of the invading Aryans, reduced to thestatus of slaves.

The other part of the story is built around the popular history of ancientTamilakam, otherwise known as the Sangam Age, when the predecessors of the

Adi-Dravidas led a highly developed social life without class and caste stratifica-tion and the condition of women, too, was appreciable as there were no genderdivisions as found in later centuries. But then this idyllic society underwentcatastrophic effects as the invading Aryans destroyed all their achievements bysubjugating their women who were as radiant as the sun. In certain songs theyrefer to the particular fate of their women being infatuated by the Aryans andgiving birth to what they call evil descendants. That is how the eventual fall tookplace. This fall leads to the age of slavery, lasting for millennia. This chain of

representations provides a clear case of decline brought about by womens sexualityand the need to control it. The idea of a sharp decline of Adi-Dravidas providesroom for their eventual salvation from the horrors of slavery. From the heights ofglory they were all banished to the wilderness, if not, they were forced to work forthe aliens. Many songs lament that there was nobody to write down the history ofthese experiences. This reference to a lack of history forms a major epistemologicalconcern of the Sabha.

The slave body (adima shariram) is a powerful construction that is imaginat-ively deployed by the Sabha and interpreted by its religious men (upadeshtakkals)

who conduct prayers and perform rituals during their discourses. First, it refers tothe body of the slave-caste women, men and children who had to undergo severesufferings. In that sense it is a genre introduced to convey the trauma of sufferingthat slavery inflicted on the body, sometimes gendered. Second, it refers to thebody of the founder of the Sabha, Yohannan or Kumara Guru Devan, who had toundergo severe suffering to redeem the descendants of slaves. In the later phase ofthe Sabha, the notion of his taking human form in the garb of a slave becomesprominent and thus the notion of slave body achieved the centrality of anessentialized core severed from the here and now (Poyikayil, 1996: 71). Theprocess of deification of the slave body is visible in the semiotic practices of the

Sabha today. The active moments of such a practice include the adoration of thecolumn of slaves as a site of memory, the veneration of the embalmed body of

Yohannan/Kumaraguruderam as Acharya Guru and also the appearance of thereligious men of the Sabha in the dress of slave agricultural labourers.47 Moreover




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in the songs of the Sabha, there are references to the suffering slave body acrosstime and space, creating a case for a particular theorization of the somatic slavebody. At this point the slave body becomes transhistorical, but with its ownparticular history and sociology of construction.

Images like the slaves chain (adima changala), yoke of slaves (adima nukam)and adimayola, the palm leaf document of slave transactions, are powerful iconsthat symbolize the dreadful practices of slavery. The chain of slaves foundexpression in the logo of the Sabha that depicts the hands of the slaves withbroken chains. In descriptions of the conditions of slavery, the chained parents oforphaned children act as a powerful metaphor. Similarly, when the image of Godis recalled, He is construed as the one who had undergone sufferings as He waschained as a slave.

The yoke of slaves (adima nukam) has a peculiar significance as it refers toDalit labourers being forced to plough the fields harnessed to the yoke along withdraught animals, as discussed above. During the ritual performance of discoursesby religious men of the Sabha, Dalit labourers ploughing the fields are depictedand/or narrated in detail to invoke memories of hard labour. The entire scene isgraphically recreated in all its gravity. The artefact of labour is graduallytransformed into something capable of invoking historical memories, creating adifferent icon of history. Similarly on the annual feast of the founder, theatricperformances enact scenes of slave labour. Various aspects of slave sufferings arethus represented in theatrical mode.

The category ofadimayola, documents of slave trade, also achieves a potential

that is comparable to the semiotic potential of other icons. The Sabha in itspublications quote from certain historical documents that describe slave transac-tions or documents containing details of slaves held by landlord families or thestate familiar to academic historians. The function of such writings is toforeground the fact that, historically, slavery existed in Kerala and they are bentupon providing powerful documentary proof for it. Adimayolais a much-repeatedphrase that is able to provide a rational justification for the critique of caste andslavery that the Sabha indulges in. Another important aspect of such documenta-tion is that Dalit labourers entered the domain of representation mainly due tothe violence of the system, both physically and epistemologically. Physical violenceis easily understood, as the practice of slavery mentioned in the documentsfrequently refers to separation of families and groups. Epistemic violence refers tothe fact that the events pertaining to the lives of lower caste Dalit labourers enterthe recording machinery as something that helps the violent transmutation of theknowledge they constitute as a social unit. Why did they find entry into thedocuments? It is mainly to affirm that such individual slaves were the property ofthis or that landlord and that the ownership right has been transferred to anotherlandlord. We may not obtain further information from such documents, but theyare relied upon in an altered context to highlight the violence that the system

perpetrated. This emphasis on the documents of slavery provides the necessaryground for the theorization of history for the subaltern Dalits. Documents onslave transactions are used here to evolve a powerful critique of slavery itself,thereby radically rephrasing a possible history.




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It is difficult to argue here that such a project of history is emancipatory, asthe categories and modes of thinking of such histories are not entirely free fromthe dominant conceptions of history. The notion ofadimabhavanam (slave home)is used to mean three distinct, but related identities. As a category constructed in

ritual usage, at a primary level it refers to a slave family with father, mother andchildren. Such a family is then dismembered due to the sale of family members.Secondly it refers to the macro-identity of all Dalits who had undergone the slaveexperience and more specifically it refers to the congregation of the Sabha or thepeople who have been able to experience the truth of Yohannan or Gurudevan inthe course of the Rakshanirnayam. It is through the ritually significant practice ofthe Rakshanirnayam that an individual becomes a member of the Sabha. Those

who have received the truth of the Sabha and Gurudevan eventually merge in thelarger family of the faithful that may be referred to as adimabhavanam in a

transformed form. At this point, the term no longer refers to the dismemberedfamily under slavery, but the merging of liberated souls who have come togetherin a ritual community. Third, it refers to the family of the founder of the Sabha,including himself, his wife and two sons, referred to as the sons of the era ofreign. This is the promised family that metaphorically stands for the reinstallationof all the families erased from memory due to slavery.

The categories of adimamakkal (children of slaves) and adimavargam (slaveclass) are usually employed to refer to Dalit communities