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Western Influences in Malabar

The country which, of all Indian districts, seems to have been most susceptible of and in fact visibly affected by those Western influences is the West Coast, and more particularly Malabar. It has for successive centuries been a conquered country and has been subject to all the various incidents of conquered life. Delightful simplicity of domestic life, moderation in the style of living and dress, blind and un questioning obedience to the ordinances of custom, reverence for the past and for seniors – these are similar phases marked the inner life and habits of the people of this country during the earlier stages of British’s political relations with it. They were clung to with a tenacity which, to ordinary minds, would have seemed almost incredible. They were
By a thousand tough and stringy roots

Fixed to the people’s pious nursery faith, and would have required no ordinary force to uproot them or even to shake them to their foundations. The result of contact with the West has been the gradual but ceaseless evolution of a system of life and habits and beliefs essentially fashioned after Western models, and the inauguration of an era of progress and of reform creditable alike to them that gave and them that took. Every phase of our society is passing through the crucible of Western civilization. Our old legal and political systems have been replenished from the rich and almost inexhaustible resources of the West. These are some of the inevitable incidents of a conquered life. In the continental countries which came into being on the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the conquerors learned much from the conquered. But as in Britain, so in our country, the conquered learned, and are learning, much from the conquerors. The West has been the source of illumination and object of emulation to us; and the broadening of our national vision has been due to our contact with it.

By far the most important direction in which the example of the West has affected our life and traditions is the eocial. The recent protracted legislation regarding Malabar marriages has considerably helped to reveal the gradual process of change in the national feeling of the day towards social reform in general and marriage in particular. The mass of official and periodical literature that has clustered round that historic legislation is illustrative of an almost complete revulsion of sentiment in favour of a provision for the maintenance of wife and children, who from time immemorial, in strict consonance with the received canons of the Marumakkathayam system of inheritance, were regarded as non-entities in the domestic economy of the land. The practice that is now invariably followed by fathers or husbands, of looking to the welfare and maintenance of wives and children in spite of the stringent rules of that time-honoured institution, is again illustrative of the changed aspects of our social conditions. Upon a careful perusal of the literature that our Marriage Act has produced it will be noticed that everyone of the numerous witnesses examined in connection therewith admits more or less unreservedly the necessity for, and propriety of providing for wives and children who are to be left destitute after the death of the fathers or husbands. Some of the witnesses went a step further and condemned the institution of Marumakkathayam outright as being unsuited to the conditions and requirements of a progressive civilization. The argument in favour of the growth of such a social liberalism based upon the statement now adverted to will gather additional strength from the consideration that the great majority of those witnesses who espoused the main provisions of the Act belong by instinct and tradition to the ranks of the conservative party that looks with horror upon the idea of laying.

“Irreverent hands upon the dear inheritances of our forefathers.”

The cry is still heard, though in the wilderness, of a deep-rooted custom and of a strongly conservative people, against the retention of a fossilized institution like the Marumakkathayam and its inevitable accompaniment, the joint family system. That system of inheritance, by which joint property is rendered impartible except with the unanimous consent of all the members, has been, and is still, assailed with pitiless energy by the extreme wing of our liberal section. Of course something may be said in favour of the system, though much more may be said against. Whatever its excellences or defects may be, the point is significant that so important an element in the sacred institution of Marumakkathayam is being viewed with disfavour and even relentlessly attacked. A decade or two ago it would have been deemed sacrilege to question the propriety and merits of such a sacred system; and be it assured that, but for the scrupulousness with which our courts of law have essayed to preserve its integrity, it would long ago have been washed away by the strong current of our altered notions of life and society.

Ideas of dress and manners are likewise undergoing modifications. Dressing after European style is considered to be a more convenient mode and one more in consonance with the spirit of the times. The great majority of the official and school-going population, more especially in the metropolis, take it as a matter of course to disguise themselves in European costume in society, though in the homes it is invariably discarded as an expensive luxury. I have known European gentleman characterizing such curious disguising as less respectable to Indians. Granting this position, the fact still remains that as a public costume it is more convenient. It has also become the prevailing fashion amongst the more advanced section of the community to crop and pact and brush and comb the hair after the Western style, of which shaving the face alone is likewise a necessary appendage. Some even keep the moustaches so as to twirl and twist them when inclined to do so as an appendage of what they style “the fashion” of the day. Along with these changes in dress men have come to view the wearing of ear-rings and any superfluity of costly ornaments as luxurious elements of indignity and want of stylishness and as symbolical of stationariness in national advancement. The dress of females is likewise passing through almost similar changes. They have begun to regard the conventional exposure of breasts as something derogatory to modesty and decency and to wear small jackets, usually called Ravikke, or at least to cover them with a piece of cloth. Female ornaments are also being discarded one after another as superfluous luxuries and as being opposed to fashion. The method in which many a social custom, surrounded as it is with a halo of sanctity, is being broken through is also remarkable. Many of our ceremonies, notably the birth and death ceremonies, are still in practice. There prevails likewise a singular reactionary feeling against the celebration of the tali-tying ceremony which some of the leaders of the community have not scrupled to publicly characterize as a “mock-ceremony” with no social or legal force. Anniversaries of births and deaths are likewise the subject of hostile comments. Fasts on the Ekadasi and other days and pollution by contact with and approach near the low-caste men is fast vanishing off the face of the land. I do not know of any man except he belongs to the higher castes who takes it into head to take a bath or undergo a purification ceremony even after a free mingling with low caste men on railways and other places of public resort. A decade or two ago it would have been considered a monstrous violation of religion even to think of such perverseness of conduct. But now it has become a thing as common as the air we breathe. Faith in astrology, horoscopy, omens, idolatry, sorcery, and witchcraft are gradually losing ground. It can by no means be asserted that the disrepute which these customs and ceremonies and beliefs have fallen into has become complete. No doubt some of these are still in vogue even amongst men of education and refinement. But where they maintain their ground at all it is due more to the effects of home influence and to the dread of public opinion and the resulting loss of prestige and status in society.

Our style of living and standards of comforts have also considerably changed in the direction of luxury and waste. The simple aliment of our forefathers has yielded to the luxurious repast of the West. Tea, coffee, cocoa, soda and lemonade, and other cooling and invigorating drinks have been bodily adopted into the menu of our daily meals and periodical festivals. Our old-fashioned and cumbersome conveyances, such as doolies and manjils and palanquins, have been almost replaced by the more convenient and modern coaches and broughtams, pushes and jutkas. Our mats have been replaced by chairs.

But with regard to drink a few words may not be wholly out of place. Drink never did form part of our national food, as may be evidenced by its complete and scrupulous exclusion from our public feastings and periodical festivals. I do not mean that people did not take to drink in the old days. But its extent of prevalence was restricted by classes, occasions, and incidents of birth. Old people did invariably take to it. But the junior members, where they did it at all, did so in constant dread of disfavour from the seniors. The younger generations, as a class, never took to it. But the growth of civilized notions has tended much to introduce this mischievous and elders has practically declined, and with it also the scruples in regard to drink ; and we now witness the sorry spectacle of the son drinking with the father, the elder with the younger brother, the daughter with the mother, the wife with the husband, and the inferior officer with the superior. The evil has been intensified by the substitution of the costly foreign liquor for the cheap country made article. The strata of the student population is being visibly tainted by it, the public functionaries esteem it an ennobling element of official virtue, and the educated masses treat it as an unavoidable attribute of fashion and refinement.

The influence of the West upon our law been of a mixed character. In the direction of our criminal law it has been of a healthy description. Before the advent of British rule anarchy, disorder, and blood-feuds constituted the essential features of public and private life. Life and property were supremely insecure. Might prevailed over right. And it was the work of the West to redeem us from our state of misery and insecurity. Human life came to be more respected and crimes of diverse sorts were put down with a high hand; and the slightest infraction of the rights and liberties of others is visited with the Sovereign’s displeasure and is dealt with under the guidance of that marvelous piece of legislation, the Indian Penal code. It is not meant that crime is unknown now. As long as human nature remains what it is, crimes must be and insecurity must prevail in regard to life and property. The several sanctions of the criminal law visited the delinquents with condign punishment proportioned to the degree of the heinousness or seriousness of the crime. It is owing to these severe sanctions that crimes have decreased. But revertheless it is a decrease and a state of things for which we are indebted to the West.

As regards civil law the respect extended to the right and property of others is indeed remarkable. Civil law in the sense in which we are prone to understand it now did not exist. In fact there was no necessity for it. Might was right. Where any respect for the rights of others was entertained it was based upon the sanctity of customs; and when Britain came upon the scene our civil law formed but a confused mass of heterogeneous customs. And the British courts have been scrupulous enough to preserve those customs intact by according to them, as one after another they came before them, authoritative judicial recognition; and the result has been our local law is now mainly customary law, therefore, has been in an essentially wrong direction. It has obtained greater rigidity instead of plasticity. In an age when “excelsior” is the watch-word of every civilized nation, the endeavour ought to be towards a relaxation of the rigidity which the law has acquired. But, instead of this, our British courts, in their anxiety to preserve the integrity of social and domestic institutions, have proceeded in an altogether conservative direction, and thee result is that our law has been daily gathering greater and greater rigidity. When disputes based on local customs crop up, the duty enjoined on our courts is to investigate as closely as available materials permit, the existence and nature of our customs and to recognize them as the law for their future guidance when questions of exactly the same type arise for adjudication. This judicial recognition was scrupulously confined to the letter instead of the spirit, thus rendering our law more and more rigid and less and less plastic. As our criminal law, embodied in a code of set rules replacing the despotic will of the Sovereign, is intended to afford better protection and security to person, so our civil law, systematized and arranged and redeemed from a condition of chaos and confusion, is aimed at in the direction of granting better security and protection to property; and this systematization and formulation of our civil and criminal law completed a work of pacifications and reconstruction which bas in no small measure redounded to the credit of the West.

This influence upon law has been extended even to the Native States of Cochin and Travancore. The policy of those States has been to emulate and imitate the British courts so far as the procedure does not clash with the conservative proclivities so peculiarly characteristic of them.

Politics, in the sense we understand them to-day, did not exist, the arbitrary will of the Sovereign being the guiding force in all public questions. Before the inauguration of the British sway the idea of man was merely as an individual distinct from the other members of the community, with no common ties or interests binding them together in a corporate whole. But now men have begun to realize that their political life has been engendered. They have begun to possess wider and more extended notions of political life and to regard themselves as members of a corporate body. In fact, they have begun to look beyond themselves and to realize their position as members of the great body politic. Ideas of local self-government and of taxation and legislation have taken root; and the fact that the cry now is for an increased share in the control and management of political affairs is significant as bearing testimony to the altered positions of our political life.
Last, and none the least, is the prominence with which our literary and linguistic life is getting changed under the civilizing influence of Western refinement. Our language was not one of which a nation could justly feel proud. Two centuries ago nothing like a Malayalam language was in existence. It was left to Tunchath Ezhuthachan, the great poet, to gain the envisable appellation of “Father” of our tongue, creating a language and a literature for it; which latter consisted merely translations of some of the more advanced of the Sanskrit works. Through his writings a host of Sanskrit words found their way into the language, and many of these have become practically naturalized into it; and the writers that followed him were useful only in introducing into it other elements of words. But the spread of Western education has given a great impetus to the development of our vocabulary and literature. The rich and almost inexhaustible store of Western knowledge has been unlocked for us; and we have been allowed to drink deep of the waters of Western science. The countries treasures of Shakespeare and Milton have been placed within our reach. In the stillness of our closet we read and admire the philosophy of Bacon and Mill; are made familiar with the masterminds of Burke and Gladstone; and are inspired by Thackeray and Dickens. We assimilate the science of Newton and Faraday. The examples of the great journalists of the West are before us. After a period of reception and assimilation we have entered upon one of production which augurs well for our future as a nation. This great intellectual awakening of ours in almost every branch of human activity has given birth to an active mental and literacy expansion. Dramas of the Shakespearean type, though doubtless not so grand in theme or thoughts, are in process of formation. Novels and other works of fiction have followed suit, and the recent growth of our journalistic and periodical literature has been a visible manifestation of the progressive strides in our march of political thought. Works standard English authors are being translated and are finding appropriate places in the abiding literature of the country. In short, a great stimulus has been given to the current native literature and vocabulary. The development of our native vocabulary has been keeping pace with the progress of our literature. The introduction of Western thoughts and modes of living has familiarized us with new ideas and new objects, which necessarily required new words to clothe them in for mutual communication; and the means adopted for meeting this increased demand were wholesale borrowing and naturalization from the English language, and the adoption from, or coinage of, Sanskrit words capable of expressing adequately the new ideas and naming new objects. The creation of a necessity for the adoption of new words for such purposes is but a common feature of all advancement in civilization and of all progress in refinement, and this process of expansion of our native vocabulary will have to be keeping pace with the introduction of new objects and thoughts which are the inevitable accompaniments of progress.

Principles of sanitary and medical science are being appreciated and studied. Western medical and surgical science is regarded in many quarters as being more effective and more easily productive of beneficial results in the treatment of diseases, as may be evidenced by the crowded attendance at our hospitals and dispensaries. This appreciation of the benefits of Western science has penetrated the lower strata of society; and the attendance at various hospitals and dispensaries will be found on examination to be equally divided between the higher and lower orders, if the latter do not predominate. Men meekly submit to Western methods of treatment and confidently entrust their precious lives to the care of our English doctors and apothecaries – a fact clearly testifying to the unbounded reliance placed in the latter and to our due appreciation of the improved system of the West.

Even in our architecture Western influence is being visibly felt. Instead of the dark ill-ventilated building of old we now see spacious and better-ventilated ones with door-ways and windows allowing of a much freer passage of light an air. The windows and doors are much larger, the bare smaller, and the sites selected much more healthy and sanitary. Evening walks for fresh airing have come into vogue; and the practice of raising buildings, storeys high appears to be in imitation of the style of the West. But be it noted that every improvement in the style of our architecture is effected, despite every other excellence, at the cost of solidarity and strength.

Foreign influence has been most appreciably felt in other and not less prominent directions. The decadence of the old martial spirit, for which the Nairs, the principle inhabitants of the land, have been famous, has been a visible result thereof. In the old days of feudalism in Malabar the Nairs formed the militia of the country, upon the constant intertribal wars, which formed the main characteristic of the feudal days. Mr. Herbert Wingram, a Judge of considerable Malabar experience, says: - “ From the earliest times, perhaps before the Aryan migration, there appear to have been a complete military organization amongst the Nairs of Malabar.” Francis Day in his “ Land of the Perunals” says:- “The Nairs were in ancient times the militia of the country held their lands on military tenure liable to be called out for active services when needed.” Such has been the warlike tradition of the people of Malabar. It was actively kept up in those old days and it was but a necessity then, regard being had to the imminent risk, life and property were then exposed to. This traditional war-like spirit has gradually decayed amongst us, as has been the case with every conquered country. In Britain the chief effect which marked the Roman conquest was to damp the martial ardour of the Britons. The presence in their midst of the Roman soldier, with whom the defence of the country lay, and who practically did the work for them, helped in bringing about this deterioration of their warlike spirit. Having been thus long unused to arms, their warlike-spirit decayed and they naturally enough relapsed into a state of languor and lassitude and laziness which rendered them unfit for future military action. Here, likewise, exactly similar influences have been at work and have produced a set of men utterly incapable of, and unfamiliar with, martial operations. The traditional warlike spirit has been practically killed, the people having been long unaccustomed to arms under the effective guidance and control of Britain, to whom is entrusted the work of defence. The expression “the Nair as a warrior” is no longer true, but remains a meaningless survival from an old state of things that has wholly vanished.

Thus it will be noticed that the age in which we now move is one of transition and revolution, in which one form of society is rapidly passing off and its place being filled up by other forms fashioned after alien models. The directions in which these foreign influences are felt amongst us are varied. In almost every branch of our daily life we see changes at work, changes mostly for the better. It is the educated masses that are responsible for welcoming and adopting them. Despite the progressive tendencies of the times, we also notice, particularly in the interior, localities yet unreached by the echoes of reforms, and persons who denounce the adoption and retention of these new-fangled notions. This is no ground for despair. The history of the world sufficiently shows that every reform is preceded by a revolution. Buddha , Christ, Mahomed, and Luther, and all the great reformers of the world, have had to pass through severe trials and toils before their efforts after reforms had found a permanent place in the great religious systems of the world. The comparative intellectual insolvency in which our women and the older generation remain constitutes an insuperable barrier to the steady march of civilized thought. Thus our homes remain essentially uninfluenced by anything foreign. Home influences from a powerful factor in moulding the life and character of a powerful factor in moulding the life and character of a people; and it is only with the withdrawal of those influence that we can except to find changes such as we have been noticing crystallizing themselves into any solid and permanent shape.