Drama of the Early 20th Century,the Kerala Reform Movement and Namboodiri Women

Reformist Drama and the Yogakshema Sabha

Awareness of the massive influence and authority exerted by the aristocratic Brahmin community over Kerala society at the time germinated the necessity for revamping and transforming the community along modern lines. The fact that the feudal landlord system and caste hierarchy had confined and circumscribed the ideological machinery and aesthetic sensibility largely in upper-caste hands led to the earlier plays accentuating societal reform and women’s empowerment along upper-caste lines. They mirrored ‘every phase of life—[with] the Modern Drama showing each and all caught in the throes of the tremendous changes going on, and forced either to become part of the process or be left behind’ (Goldman, 1914, p. 7)

The realisation that the degenerate social structure had to be reformed primarily from within the upper strata invigorated the interweaving of the political, gender and cultural praxis in theatrical creation. Thus, the drama of this period can be broadly categorised and classified within the realm of social or community theatre, which ‘may be defined as theatre with specific social agendas; theatre where aesthetics is not the ruling objective; theatre outside the realm of commerce . . . [that] takes place in diverse locations . . . [where the] participants have been . . . often from vulnerable, disadvantaged, and marginalized communities’ (Thompson & Schechener, 2004, p. 12). The brahminical adaptation and appropriation of early theatre and drama resulted in the growth of a reformist theatre with an ideological accentuation on Namboodiri reform and women’s empowerment, thus emphasising the hegemony of the Brahmin caste over other communities and religions.

Consequently, drama was revamped to empower the Brahmin community’s women, who were addressed as anterjanams ¹ : ‘In Kerala the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century struggles against the oppression of women were focused mainly on the plight of anterjanams’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xviii). Elsewhere, J. Devika has observed that

[o]ne of the issues that received considerable attention in reformist literature and theatre was the “condition of Antarjanams”, and they were set up, again and again, as victims who needed to be “led” out of their plight, as if passivity were a necessary attribute of the oppressed (Devika, 2007, p. 128).

In fact, many opinions constantly reinforced the fact that ‘It was the miserable plight of the anterjanams that gave rise to the earliest stirrings of protest against patriarchal oppression in Kerala. Consequently, those struggles—and the literature that arose around them—are founding moments and founding texts for feminism in Kerala’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, pp. xv‒xvi). The propagandists of societal reform in theatre recognised the harsh reality that during the process of communal correction, ‘the images of the ineffectual Nambutiri and the passive and suffering Antarjanam take shape as the objects to be transformed through reform, and the subjects of Malayala Brahmin reformism are invited to identify themselves with these images and finally overcome them’ (Devika, 2007, p. 119). In fact, drama endeavoured to formulate a space challenging patriarchal constructions.

Theatre and social reform occurred simultaneously in proximity. Consequently, organisations such as the Yogakshema Sabha came into being. ‘V.T. Bhattathirippad’s Adukkalayil ninnu Arangathekku (from the kitchen to the scene of action) was first performed before the Yogakshema Sabha in 1929. It was acclaimed by young Namboothiri audiences, although older and more orthodox people remained severely critical of it’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, pp. xix‒xx). Accentuating the necessity to deconstruct the established hierarchy made the reformers aware of the deplorable plight of the Namboodiri women and its need to be confronted and tackled. The plays subtly implied that deconstructing the established hierarchy was a necessity.

The proponents of the Yogakshema Sabha and the Namboodiri reform movement were aware of the Namboodiri women’s lack of education as well as of the appeal that performance-oriented visual spectacles and traditional art forms such as Koodiyattom held for them. Accompanying this knowledge was the awareness and belief in performance as an effective tool for reform, which led to the deployment of drama for societal development. The theatrical production of these plays can be attributed to the realisation that ‘Theatre and society had to be mutually supporting and supplementing. One cannot be discussed without a reference to the other. One is actually for and because of the other, not at its expense’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 141).

Reformers of that period, such as V. T. Bhattathiripad, Premji and M. R. Bhattathiripad, made significant contributions to theatre literature through their plays that emphasised the need for the Namboodiri woman’s empowerment. Regarding the role of the Yogakshema Sabha and the theatre in reformism it is claimed that ‘Modern literature and theatre continued to be one of the most important arenas in which the internal conflicts and ruptures of Malayala brahmin reformism were played out, right up to the 1940s, after which the YKS remained more or less dormant for some decades’ (Devika, 2007, p. 129). The plays of V. T. Bhattathiripad, M. R. Bhattathiripad, M. P. Bhattathiripad (or Premji) and Lalithambika Anterjanam, actively associated with this movement, celebrated the cause of women’s empowerment.

V. T. Bhattathiripad’s play Adukkalayyilninnu Arangathekku attained substantial acclaim and approval. It was first performed in 1929 at the annual meeting of the Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha, and depicted the story of a Brahmin family of Vilayoor Illam. In it the characters of Thethi and Madhavan manage to marry after the death of Thethi’s husband, a 60-year-old Namboodiri man whom Thethi had to wed due to societal and domestic compulsions. The play closes with a speech supporting the liberation of Namboodiri women. According to E. M. S. Namboodiripad, on seeing the play, ‘The idea of fighting polygamy, opposing old persons marrying young girls . . . [etc] began to be seen by Namboodiri women as possibilities . . . . The transformation that this one single drama brought . . . could well be equated with that obtained through . . . meetings and newspaper’ (Namboodiripad, 1976, pp. 98‒99).

The playwright V. T. Bhattathiripad was an active participant in the Yogakshema Sabha and the Nambuthiri Yuvajana Sangham, while E. M. S. Namboodiripad, who later became the chief minister of Kerala, was one of the prominent organisers of such performances. Regarding the role of social reform movements in the plays, it has been observed:

The social, cultural and political movements of Kerala from 1920 onwards aimed at developing new means of expression, autonomy and creative participation of the individual in public affairs. Historically speaking, the organized attempt for this kind of expression in theatre can be found in the social revolt expressed in the play (Pillai, 2011, p. 139).

Observations of theatre critics such as Sajitha Madathil, while tracing the history of Malayali feminist theatre, draw parallels between V. T. Bhattathiripad’s play and O. Chandu Menon’s novel Indulekha. According to her, both the play and the novel encapsulated the progressive and reformative spirit of the Kerala renaissance, and she points out that the name of the main protagonist in both was Madhavan (Madathil, 2010, p. 73). The ‘play played a very important role in the reform movements. This fact is also borne out by the title of V. T.’s play itself, which was, needless to add, an indirect invitation to the theatre’ (Krishnan, 2013, p. xxvii).

M. R. Bhattathiripad’s play, Marakudaykkullile Mahanarakam, was hailed as another significant milestone in the protest theatre of Kerala. According to the critical overview,

In 1930 M.R. Bhattadiripad, another writer-activist, wrote a play which became an even greater success. Audiences reportedly wept as they watched it. Called Marakudaykkullile Mahanarakam (the hell behind the screen of the umbrella), the play is about a young anterjanam given in marriage to an old namboodiri (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xx).

Analogous to V. T. Bhattadiripad’s play, this play too dealt primarily with the evils of polygamy. Unable to bear the physical and psychological trauma inflicted by the elder wives and other family members, the central protagonist, Itiplathi, who is the third wife of an old Namboodiri, commits suicide. The play displays how traditional structures of domesticity crushed the Namboodiri woman’s desire for an independent existence.

The plays of Premji also caught societal attention due to their insistence on female emancipation. Premji’s drama Ritumati (the girl who attained puberty) was a prominent landmark in the history of Malayalam theatre, and depicted the story of Devaki, a Namboodiri girl brought up in a comparatively progressive maternal household but forced to go to her paternal household. It portrayed the traditional stigma associated with menstruating women and the confinement imposed on girls post puberty. It also demonstrated the societal humiliation to which Devaki was subject, including the insistence on adopting the traditional methods of dressing and avoiding the wearing of blouses. Her refusal and protests led to her being branded a lunatic. Despite this, her marriage was arranged with an old Namboodiri man. With the help of her brother Kuttan and friend Vasudevan Devaki was saved from the proposed marriage.

What distinguished M. P. Bhattadiripad’s plays was the lack of the female protagonist’s dependence on men. The heroine Devaki in Ritumati was an independent woman. Unlike the heroine Itiplathi in Marakudaykkulille Mahanarakan, who chose self-extinction as a method of escape, Devaki chose to perpetuate her fight against traditional norms. The passive anterjanam or Namboodiri woman, seeking paternal guidance for her liberation, was substituted by the independent female protagonist endowed with potential for emancipation.

In Ritumati, Devaki resists the efforts of her paternal family to rehabilitate her into the traditional household as well as societal endeavours to appropriate her into the domestic structure of the Brahmin household, while in Adukkalayailninnu Aranagthekku V. T. portrays the societal enforcement of tradition and custom on individual life.

The plays featured the necessity of remodelling the persistent patriarchy-oriented conventional domesticity from a feminist perspective, particularly in relation to its marital and familial aspects. They were a ‘protest against male domination, brahminical superiority and prejudices, early marriage of young girls to elderly Namboodiris . . . . The playwright addressed himself to these issues in a theatrical idiom which made change inevitable. The major plays that followed suit are “Rithumathi” (Premji), “Marakkudakkullile Mahanarakam” (MRB) etc’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 140).

The plays accentuated the necessity of repositioning women’s domestic status and broadening familial freedom to societal liberation. Progressive transformation of the institutions of family and marriage formed their major thematic concern. The protagonists were vociferous in their demand for the recognition of the institution of marriage as a domestic partnership that demands mutual consent rather than be a sphere of solely a man’s authority. They raised their voices against how ‘Often, very young Namboodiri girls were married to senile old men in an unnatural kind of relationship’ (Satchidanandan, 2015). Their opposition was further fuelled by their contempt for traditional societal discrimination towards women in the context of the institutions of family and marriage.

The main concern of such theatre was the growing necessity for educating women and promoting widow remarriage. It expounded the issue of the generation gap in some arranged marriages and the detrimental influence of the prevailing traditional customs over women. In fact, ‘Women’s liberation, modern education, the need for social involvement, the plight of widows etc have been the themes that inspired these plays . . . exhorting the audience to rise in revolt against social and cultural oppressions’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 140).

The plays elucidated the impact of tradition on women and explicated how ‘customs also required that anterjanams wore only white clothing, and that they had their earlobes lengthened to wear heavy dangling earrings. Clothing and body-marks were indices of caste status: to dress differently, therefore, would be to challenge the social order’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xiv). They critiqued the societal approach that insisted on marakkudas and veils for the anterjanams, vociferously stating their objections to the gender-based social ostracism of women.

Significantly, it has been observed that several of these playwrights of the progressive theatre were not primarily playwrights but men and women of letters who chose drama as an effective medium for resistance. Rather than emphasising the multiple nuances of the performative aspect of the theatrical medium, it was their conviction of the efficacy of theatre as a medium for conveying social messages that rendered the performances conspicuous. The plays of the time in fact went ‘back, in a new way, to the theatre’s greatest and most ancient opportunity: the opportunity to expose the present’ (Benjamin, 1977, p. 102).

The Female Playwright

Documentation of the history of feminist theatre in Kerala often begins after the 1960s. Most major theatre critics of Kerala’s feminist theatre had often failed to recognise the significant though minuscule contributions made before that time by playwrights such as Lalithambika Anterjanam, who was almost a contemporary of social reformers such as V. T. Bhattathiripad. ‘In 1909, the year in which Lalithambika was born, V. T. Bhattadiripad, a namboodiri angered by the ills prevalent in his community, founded the Namboodiri Yogakshema Sabha. This group established a magazine, [and] held discussions and debates on current social problems’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xviii). Elsewhere, Satchidanandan has remarked that ‘The reformist activities of the Yogakshema Sabha under the guidance of V. T. Bhattathirippad, M. R. B., Premji, Kuroor and E. M. S. Namboodiripad inspired her to put her writing to the service of her oppressed fellow beings’ (Satchidanandan, 2015). While substantiating the biographical aspects, Lalithambika Anterjanam’s memoir describes ‘her involvement in the theatrical activities of the reform groups and the stunning effects that the plays had on her society’ (as cited in Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xix).

Social sensibility and sensitivity characterise Anterjanam’s plays. Her play titled Punarjanmam (rebirth), ‘was finally published in 2004, 69 years after it was written and performed, and 17 years after the playwright’s death’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 76). The play became ‘the only work written by a woman among the plays which were written and performed in the thirties, to great acclaim’, similar to V. T. Bhattathiripad’s Adukkalayilninnu Arangathekku, M. R. Bhattathiripad’s Marakudaykkullile Mahanarakam and M. P. Bhattathiripad’s Ritumati (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 77).

According to Satchidanandan (2015), ‘Lalitambika’s play Punarjanmam (Rebirth, 1935), inspired by the radical theatre of the time, is a comprehensive critique of this inhuman system and a call for change’. The play was performed at a time when freedom for Namboodiri women ‘meant [a] new, active role largely within the domestic domain’ (Devika, 2007, p. 114). The plot revolved around a Brahmin girl and her desire and efforts to be liberated from the clutches of tradition and transcend the assumed fixities of gender denomination. The narrative delineates Tatri’s marriage to an old Brahmin and her subsequent widowhood and culminates with her second marriage to Narayanan, her childhood friend, despite stringent opposition from society. An early childhood affection and attraction between Tatri and Narayanan and their desire to marry had been opposed on the grounds of his progressive and radical ideas, which led to Tatri being wedded instead to an old Brahmin as his fifth wife.

In the play, Lalithambika Anterjanam’s portrayal of the distressed widow provides

her readers a heart-rending picture of the young girl, seated in prayer, her fore-head smeared with sandalwood and sacred ash, rudraksha beads and a tulasi chain around her neck, her throat parched because she had nothing to eat since the previous day, her hair dry and tangled because she was not allowed to oil it (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 80).

The play mocks the dreadful enactment of Tatri’s old husband’s funeral rites and the hypocrisy of the priest, who states that since her ‘husband died before the marriage rituals were completed … he had to be invoked into an image fashioned from sacrificial grass and the marriage rites had to be performed for Tatri and this image together’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 82). In fact, the abhorrent social practices and the repulsive domestic customs to which widows were subject are authentically illustrated in the play with the depiction of the domestic traumas encountered by Namboodiri widows and the need for social legitimacy of widow remarriage. Anterjanam, explicating the deplorable plight of Tatri who could not even ‘wear dry clothes because freshly-washed, wet clothes were necessary to preserve ritual purity’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 80), accentuates the social and cultural imperatives of discrimination enforced on widows. The play demonstrates the deterioration in the status of women even as Tatri’s jewels are sold to perform the funeral rituals of her husband, and illustrates how the ‘heady mixture of caste and patriarchal power had made most of the Namboodiri Brahmins of the time insensitive to their own dehumanisation and the suffering they were causing their own sisters and daughters as only the eldest in the family could marry Namboodiri women’ (Satchidanandan, 2015).

Turning metatheatrical in its second scene, ‘Narayanan reads out a play to Tatri—a play on revolutionary ideas. This play within a play again subtly suggests Lalithambika’s main theme, which is the victory of progressive ideas over blind devotion to tradition’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 80). Stark social realities are juxtaposed with the reform movements of the period: ‘The Yogakshema Sabha and its activities are referred to repeatedly in the play, not only by the members themselves but by the older generation who were determined to adhere to their orthodox ways and who felt threatened by these young rebels’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 81).

Anterjanam’s play became unique in the conscious portrayal of theatre as a medium of social reform, despite the fact that it was written for the purpose of enactment during a function marking the retirement of Subaramanya Potti, ‘a well-known poet and literary figure, who had been the headmaster of the Kulakuda high school’ (Krishnankutty, 2006, p. 78). Versatile characterisation is a specific feature of the play. In her preface to Savitri (p. xxiii), Dr R. B. Rajalakshmi states that the play depicted three kinds of characters.

The incorporation of the protagonists from diverse social streams imparted a democratic sense to the play, which portrays the issues of caste-and gender-inflected identities from the perspectives of diverse types of characters.

However, the most significant aspect of the play remains the social articulation of the female playwright for other women from her society. Discarding the voice of the paternalistic elite male reformer, an anterjanam had chosen to enunciate the tribulations of other anterjanams, making the play unique. It reflected the fact that ‘Lalithambika Antharjanam was inspired to speak for women by the miserable experiences of the Antharjanams (the women inside), the women of her own community’ (James, 1996, p. 160).

Lalithambika Anterjanam crafted the play with the awareness that

[m]ost women writing for the theatres of the 1920s and 1930s did so within the boundaries of realism, the dominant form of the day. Their ideas about the female condition filtered through into their work with a frequent and direct correlation between the author’s choice of subject and theme and their cultural position as women (Gale, 2000, p. 27).

In an interview with T. N. Jayachandran, transcribed in the work Antherjanam: Oru Padanam, Lalithambika Anterjanam acknowledged the fact that ‘No sooner does a woman write something than it starts a scandal . . . . Even women whose writings have been accepted by society, who are well-known and independent minded have had to endure a slur on their names’ (as cited in Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xxviii). In fact her theatrical creativity needs to be posited within this background. Anterjanam had earlier considered her writing as a

part of a purificatory ritual and that it will cleanse us of the sin we committed in the past, make us pure and whole again . . . [as] a similar process of purification has begun in literature too, and my recounting of these widows’ stories is part of this great movement (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. 171).

The positive and effective impact of drama on women’s empowerment could be attributed to its performance aspect, capable of instilling a spirit of emancipation in the psyche of even illiterate Namboodiri women who could comprehend the message embodied in the plays, all of which were staged at multiple venues for the widespread mobilisation of young Namboodiri women. Most of the plays were a desperate endeavour to infuse and inculcate an awareness in Namboodiri women about the societal and domestic evils faced by them. Ironically, in a reflection of the lack of freedom for women in the public space, ‘the women’s parts were always taken by young men since it was unthinkable at the time for namboodiri girls to appear on the stage’. Even so, traditional Namboodiris were infuriated by ‘an anterjanam without her umbrella and shawl, despite the fact that it was only a man acting the part’ (Krishnankutty, 1998, p. xx).

Drama and the Deconstruction of Patriarchal Society

The plays were not only of progressive merit but also of theatrical value. ‘The intention [was] to inspire the participants of the theatre movement with a sense of autonomy . . . . In these plays the diction and other means of theatrical expression were as progressive as the themes, enlightening the individuals regarding their complex situation in the society’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 140). They emphasised social reform, encouraged active participation of both the male and female audiences, and instilled in them an awareness of women’s issues in general.

Such theatre ostensibly categorised itself into a venue for the modification of the patriarchal societal attitude while endeavouring to incorporate gender equity. The Yogakshema Sabha and the Namboodiri reform movement employed drama as the tool for their reformist praxis. Parallel to the historic support of the Yogakshema Sabha, the progressive Unni Namboodiri movement and the weekly Unni Namboodiri also promoted the enactment of the plays. The young Brahmin community was aware of the immense transformative potential of drama. ‘Oppression was a common theme in these works and the purpose and motive was to protest against the causes and circumstances of such slavery’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 140). However, the plays and reformers fell under an elitist shadow as the progressive cause was mainly centred on the ‘upper caste’. Such circumscribing of the plays reduced and limited the possibilities of performance as a popular societal reformist tool in the face of caste and class distinctions.

The allegation of being a liberation activity under patriarchal favour engrossed Malayalam theatrical production during the 1920s and 1930s. Lack of active female emancipation in the staging and scripting of the plays during that time promoted this indictment. The plays of Lalithambika Anterjanam, published posthumously, and the play Thozhil Kendratthilekku (To the work place) by the women’s collective, published in 1948, were exceptions. The latter play ‘emblematically underlined the need for women to work; that too at a time when even men from the upper castes shuddered at the idea of work’ (Krishnan, 2013, p. xxvii). It was an endeavour to dismantle the patriarchal hegemonic notion of protection under the male reformer dramatist.

The plays undermined and deconstructed the politics of the patriarchal edifice. Even though early Malayalam theatre literature had addressed feminist issues and attributed significance to the Brahmin woman, the later percolation of theatre into the middle and lower strata of society proved handy in the reformist phase of Kerala society. Addressing the patriarchal ideological predicament in colonial Kerala society that had reduced the ‘singular’ position of women to a marginal space, the plays reflected the historical feminist dissent and protest against male monopolisation of culture and history.

The plays, moreover, portrayed the incisive reaction of reformers towards all modes of patriarchy and embodied ‘the transformation of forms and instruments of production by a progressive intelligentsia—an intelligentsia interested in liberating the means of production and hence active in the class struggle’ (Benjamin, 1977, p. 99). The social inter-textuality in this theatre literature became ostensibly associated with the early world of drama and other simultaneous reform movements in society and literature.

In short, the early-20th-century theatre literature reflected on the historical exclusion of women. Drama constructed a public platform for voicing historical dissidence against their marginalisation while simultaneously explicating the possibilities of social transformation. It became a social artefact that embodied the issues pertaining to the marginalised ‘elite’ women through colloquial idiom and expression.

The energy of resistance manifested in these plays contributed to the germination of later radical political theatre in Kerala, while challenging the established political and social hegemony. The plays echoed the fact that ‘theatre is both political and artistic. It should become the best means of cultural communion and communication’ (Pillai, 2011, p. 141). Thus, drama in fact embodied the annotative performance possibilities of the word and its potential in contributing towards women empowerment. It re-established the social validity of theatre, endorsing the opinion that ‘theatre . . . does not merely transmit knowledge but actually engenders it’ (Benjamin, 1977, p. 11).

So far, this paper has endeavoured to depict the multiple nuances and subtleties of 20th-century drama in relation to the shifting dynamics of feminist emancipation in the Kerala reform movement, accentuating the deplorable plight of Namboodiri women, who had languished socially. Aspiring to provide a coherent and analytical comprehension of their plight as the ‘subaltern’ gender in the elite Brahmin class, it has depicted the role of drama during the early-20th-century reform movement while portraying the ‘docile’, suffering Namboodiri women as the marginalised section. This paper has also addressed how these early representations proved instrumental in the germination and development of later politically and socially conscious theatrical enterprises.