The renaissance movement in Kerala can only be equated with the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa in the international level, Shashi Tharoor, MP, has said.
He was speaking after inaugurating an open forum on Kerala renaissance organised as part of a History Congress organised under the aegis of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
“Though the struggle for the civil rights of the oppressed people in Kerala occurred during the period of the British rule, the struggle was not against the Britishers but was against the oppressive elements in our own society, who tried to oppress the subaltern society in all possible ways. The social advancements and achievements in the human development index made by Kerala were the results of this renaissance movement,” said Mr. Tharoor.
Brotherhood
“We didn’t treat our fellow people from other castes as our siblings. Even B.R. Ambedkar had to insist on the insertion of the word ‘fraternity’ in the preamble of the Constitution from this reality,” he said.
During the 19th century, various movements were held in different parts of the country, like the movements led by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in Bengal and the movement led by Dayananda Saraswati in Punjab and so on. But what made the renaissance movement in Kerala different was that it was led by a section of oppressed people and commoners, while the movements in other parts of the country were led by people from the upper strata of society. Renaissance leaders like Ayyankali and Sree Narayana Guru first led a major movement against caste oppression in Kerala, which was later taken up by leaders from other sections.
Even the Nair Service Society (NSS) came up for the rights of the marginalised sections after the entry of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) led by leaders such as Padmanabhan Palpu and Kumaran Asan. The State that was once branded as a lunatic asylum by Swami Vivekananda has now become a model for the rest of the country, said Mr. Tharoor.
