PVK talk given on ‘Kerala Piravi Day’ 2024 on A I R Trivandrum
As a political being Kerala is perhaps a baby or a toddler, but as a cultural and historical entity she is a young adult, energetic, aspirational and self-aware. She is now a global player. One can well imagine the gladness that swept through the people on the first of November 1956 when the state was born. Today, 66 years on, that languid place has both senior citizens who can recall that day and a new, brash generation of social media consuming youngsters who may be observing it from all over the world. Young, middle aged or old, in Kazhakkoottam or California, Tokyo or Transvaal, Pattikkadu or Paris, Shoranur or Shanghai, they remember the land that is home.
It is a long story, but can be narrated in a few minutes. Geography had a big role to play in it. The steamy, lush, biologically rich land that was Kerala had innumerable rivers, lakes, backwaters and streams joining one of the major highways of the marine world, the sea route that linked places in the far east, like Malacca, to the coasts of Gujarat, Iran, Arabia and all of the east coast of Africa. This was the world’s premier sea route till the west discovered the Americas. From about the fourth century of the common era ships and crew with merchants, traders, adventurers, chroniclers, map makers, explorers and others driven by hope of profit, gain or the instinct of the explorer, have visited these shores. Often, they have stayed, mixed with the locals and left permanent marks when they departed. This compensated the land for lack of contact with the great heartland of India. For those in Kerala, mountains and jungles made the passage to the Deccan and beyond very difficult, a problem now solved by bull dozers and railway trains.
Admiral Zheng He and his famous voyages are a fine example. In the early 15th century, Ming China was the world’s only super power. Zheng He assembled a huge fleet with over 300 ships and more than 20,000 men and made seven voyages across the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. His first three voyages, from east China with a fleet that inspired awe everywhere he went, ended at Calicut. Calicut was then the most important trading post on India’s west coast. His fourth and fifth voyages extended their reach to Hormuz in Iran and modern Mogadishu on the east coast of Africa. During these trips he added Cochin to his stop-overs. Obviously trade there was catching up with that at Calicut. His seventh and last trip once again touched Malindi, but with a detour that took him up the Red Sea to Jiddah, close to Mecca. Seven infusions of Chinese life into Kerala left their mark on the land and the people. Our homes, utensils, coastal fishing nets, plants and vegetables bear the signs of contact with China. It is said that Admiral Zheng He died in Calicut in 1433. His fleet returned to China but the impact of the trade and cultural exchange with an advanced civilization were important.
Zheng He did not stop in Kerala just to admire the scenery and to take on fresh water. The rulers of the ports where he stopped were rich enough and canny enough to pay him tribute. He loaded his ships with rice and cotton and pepper and ginger and other spices and aromatics that he could sell later or take back with him to China. It was an exchange that benefitted both sides.
In 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans and the land route to Europe was closed, more western navigators began looking for a way to get to Asia and beyond. As before, Kerala benefitted. Now one by one, a number of European powers, new kids on the Asian trade block, appeared. There were the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and, finally, the English. Each wanted an opportunity to set up trading posts in Kerala. Soon Kerala was part of a global economy. As goods and ideas moved around the world, they landed in fertile Kerala and seeded changes. Soon, Keralites began migrating to all parts of the globe.
Kerala has moved on and is no longer the land imagined by the Chinese or the Arabs or any of the European powers who sojourned here. It is not even what the mainland makes of it. Today, it is a land in which lakhs of non-natives reside and work. Many thousands from across the world are happy to make it a temporary home, either as tourists or even as immigrants settling down in a land more pleasant than their original homes. Its own sons and daughters, settled abroad in their millions, still connect emotionally, or on video calls, regularly with friends and family here.
In the nearly seven decades since its formation Kerala has been utterly transformed. From a predominantly agricultural, green, paddy field filled land to a mass of highways and buildings that imports coconuts and milk and rice. To a land where on public transport and in streets more languages are heard than its native tongue. Kerala is like some big cosmopolitan city that is shaping the future of the world.
The concept of Kerala as a unit is an old civilisational concept. 1956 marked the political and administrative expression of that idea. Can we peep into the future on such an idea? What will remain of the amalgam of ideas that made up Kerala? Two things, one suspects. A healthy sense of contrariness and an ability to work hard.
The contrariness finds expression in the Keralite’s love of satire and jokes. From Kunchan Nambiar to Jagathy Sreekumar, they have explored the range of satire from gentle irony to acidic sarcasm. Wherever he is, the Keralite takes his cartoonists’ mind with him. He will laugh at himself as often as he does at other people. He laughed at Vasco da Gama’s discomfort when served bananas and ripe jack fruit. Gama, so the story goes, was offered a leaf with bananas and another with jack fruit. Not being familiar with either, he waited for the Zamorin to taste them first. Sure enough, the Zamorin peeled a banana, eat the pulp and kept aside the skin. He then ate the bulb of the jack fruit and left the seed on the leaf. Gama, nervous, did the reverse, eating the banana peels and the jackfruit seeds. He had no idea why the courtiers were laughing at him. There is no historical authenticity to this tale but the innumerable stories of the strange ways of foreigners show that the Keralite was not always in awe of the foreigner. Or that he had used satire as a way of coping with the indignities that the powerful imposed on him.
It is the Malayali who pointed out that there is one place where the Keralite will never work very hard – Kerala. Elsewhere, he is a champion, creative, energetic, often less calculating than he might be. This has let him move to all parts of the world and prosper, if not survive on decent terms. The Keralite may no longer be found on top of the coconut tree, but he is at ease on top of trees of the corporate or educational or medical or scientific or the digital or the sporting world. Or at any other level where work and effort are rewarded, from worker to CEO or anywhere in between.
A recent episode makes this clear. In 2006 and ’07, a set of Indian workers were enticed to work in America. Fraud and force were used, including the false promise of green cards. On discovering the trickery, the men revolted. After a three-year struggle, which included a Gandhian satyagraha in front of the venerable symbol of modernity, the White House, the men succeeded. One significant fact was that at the centre of the struggle were a set of men in leadership positions, planning, organizing, protesting but always staying within the law. The leaders were mostly from Kerala. They were encouraged by their families and communities back home and by their sense of dignity and self-worth that came from knowing that they were among the best in the world at their jobs – the unglamorous but valuable one of welders who could work on oil rigs and refineries. Their spirits were kept alive by home cooked fish curry and very native jokes in Malayalam.
Today’s youngsters may not know that the world’s oldest, surviving dramatic art form is Keralan or that this land was enriched by mathematicians and thinkers and writers of rare merit. Or that the world’s leading academic publisher depends on a Kerala genius for software that enables sophisticated notations needed in science and maths to be composed flawlessly. If they do, they will celebrate these in their current first language, the short video format, not yet labelled his ‘matru bhasha’ or mother tongue. Whatever happens to this land or the world, the Keralite will work hard and laugh his or her way to the future. He will handle the future as he dealt with Zheng He and the Portuguese and the Brits who came calling to this land. With common sense and good humour.
P. Vijaya Kumar / PVK for AIR, 1 November 2024.
Note: Modified for my blog. Most of the modifications are stylistic, to make it uniform with the other blog posts.
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