The Enigma of Kerala

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It is, in other words, weird--like one of those places where the starship Enterprise might land that superficially resembles Earth but is slightly off. It undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a countercase, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.

Kerala emerged at the end of the eighth century, when a Hindu monarchy supplanted a looser, feudal structure. The trade contacts of the ancient and early medieval periods--Kerala's cardamom, pepper, turmeric, and other spices were constant attractions (our word ginger derives from a word in the local language, Malayalam)--eventually turned to more modern, and more exploitative, colonial domination. By 1792, the British controlled what is now Kerala, dividing it into three districts. The first hints of singularity came in that colonial era. In the southern two-thirds of the state, the British left the local princes on the throne. Hoping for an agricultural surplus large enough to satisfy both themselves and the British, these rajahs offered tax breaks for the reclamation of swamps and marshes, and they moved to give tenant farmers more control over the land. 'Development policy in the whole world is generally considered to begin in the 1940s,' says historian Michael Tharakan. 'But you can see the roots of it right from the beginning of the 19th century in Kerala.' To conclude, however, that Kerala under the British was becoming an enlightened and democratic place would be a mistake. The tradition of caste, bulwark of the Hindu rulers since the eighth century, was as strong as ever in the nineteenth. At the top of the heap were the Namboodiri Brahmins, followed by the Nairs--soldiers and administrators--and various artisanal classes. Below all of them were the Ezhavas, roughly a fifth of the population, who traditionally made their living climbing palms to harvest the coconuts, and the Pulayas, the local untouchables. Within the various castes, innumerable complicated subsets emerged, and the codes of conduct became ever stricter and more degrading over time.

Kerala is now less caste-ridden than any spot in the Hindu world; it is a transition more complete than, say, the transformation achieved by the civil rights movement in the American South. Looking backward, it is clear that some of this epic, and mostly peaceful, change can be traced to new economic conditions. As the British and the rajahs pushed cash crops instead of subsistence farming, and as more and more tenant farmers became involved with that market, the need for literacy, for instance, grew, and some of the old customs became financially ruinous.

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