Narayana Guru: I Consecrated an Ezhava Shiva

The act everything follows from.

Where: Aruvippuram, on the Neyyar river, in Thiruvananthapuram district.

When: Shivaratri, 1888.

What he did:

• He went into the river
• He stayed under the water for a long time, long enough that the people waiting became alarmed
• He came up holding a stone
• He set it up on the bank and consecrated it as a Shivalinga
• Devotees present are said to have chanted Om Namah Shivaya for hours

Why this was not a small thing

Consecration, pratishtha, was a priestly monopoly.

The installation of a deity was governed by agama rules, performed by qualified brahmana priests, with prescribed procedure. A man of an avarna community, who could not enter a temple and had to keep thirty two feet from a brahmana, had installed a Shivalinga and made it a place of worship.

It was, in the terms of the society, an impossibility that had just happened.

The challenge

The accounts say he was asked, by the orthodox: what right have you, an Ezhava, to consecrate a Shiva?

His answer, which is the most famous sentence in modern Kerala:

Njan pratishtichathu Ezhava Shivane.

I consecrated an Ezhava Shiva.

What that sentence does

It is a much sharper reply than it first looks.

Read one way: fine, you say the deity is caste bound, so this one is an Ezhava deity, and it is nothing to do with you.

Read another way: you have just told me that god has a caste. Listen to what you said.

Read a third way: it is a refusal to argue. He does not claim the right. He does not dispute the rule. He simply declines to be interested in the question, and points at the stone.

And it worked, in the sense that the shrine stood, people came, and the precedent was set.

The inscription

At Aruvippuram he had a verse inscribed, in Malayalam, and it is the movement's founding statement:

Without distinction of caste, without hatred between religions, all live here as brothers. This is a model place.

Note the two things it names: jati bhedam, distinction of caste, and matha dwesham, hatred between religions. Both, in 1888, and both refused.

What followed

He went on to consecrate a large number of temples across Kerala, and the number is usually given as around sixty, though counts vary.

Why he did that rather than campaign for entry to existing temples: because it was faster and it worked. Instead of asking to be let in, he built.

And the temples he built were open to everybody, which meant that for many communities they were the first places of worship they could enter at all.

His central formulation, in Malayalam:

Oru jathi, oru matham, oru daivam manushyanu.

One caste, one religion, one god for man.

What it means, precisely

Not: everybody should convert to one religion.

But: humanity is the caste. The species is the category. Whatever divisions exist within it are secondary to the fact that everybody in it is the same kind of thing.

And a companion line, which he used repeatedly:

Whatever the religion, it is enough that a man becomes better.

Which is a test rather than a doctrine, and it applies equally to every tradition including his own.

And a third:

Ask not, say not, think not caste.

Three levels: do not ask somebody's caste; do not tell people yours; and do not think in the category at all. The third is the hard one and it is the point.

His philosophical position

He was an Advaitin, in the line of Shankara, and this needs stating because his social work sometimes obscures it.

His argument against caste is not primarily a social or political argument. It is a metaphysical one:

• If there is one reality and everything is that reality, then the divisions between people are not real in the sense that matters
• A person insisting on caste is asserting a difference at a level where there is no difference
• The error is therefore not merely cruel; it is factually wrong

Jati Mimamsa, also called Jati Nirnayam, is his short work on exactly this. Its argument runs roughly: humanity is one species, as cows are one species; a cow does not marry a horse; the only jati that exists is the species; the rest is invention.

His works

He wrote in Malayalam, Sanskrit and Tamil, and the corpus is substantial:

• Atmopadesa Satakam, a hundred verses of instruction to oneself, his central philosophical work
• Daiva Dasakam, ten verses, described below
• Darsanamala, ten sections in Sanskrit on the systems of philosophy
• Jati Mimamsa and Jati Nirnayam
• Anukampa Dasakam, ten verses on compassion
• Kundalini Pattu
• Janani Navaratna Manjari
• Devotional works on Subrahmanya, Shiva, Devi and Vishnu
• Translations of the Thirukkural and the Ishavasya Upanishad into Malayalam

The Daiva Dasakam

Ten verses, and it is the most used thing he wrote.

What it is: a prayer with no sectarian content at all. It names no particular deity, no form, no tradition, and contains nothing anybody of any faith would need to object to.

Its content: an address to the one who is the source, asking to be carried across, comparing the divine to the ocean and the self to a wave, and asking for food and clothing for everybody and for the removal of unhappiness.

Where it is used: as a school prayer across Kerala, in schools of every kind, and at public functions.

Which was the design. He wrote a prayer that a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim and a person of no religion could all say without compromising anything, and Kerala has been saying it every morning for a century.

The SNDP

Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, founded in 1903, with Narayana Guru as permanent chairman, Dr. Palpu as the driving organiser and the poet Kumaran Asan as secretary.

Dr. Palpu is worth naming. He was a qualified medical graduate who was refused government service in Travancore because of his caste, went to Mysore instead where he had a distinguished public health career, and spent his life campaigning against the exclusion. He is the one who brought Vivekananda's attention to the situation.

The SNDP motto, and it is the most practically consequential sentence in the movement:

Vidya kondu prabuddharakuka, sanghatana kondu shaktararakuka.

Become enlightened through education, become strong through organisation.

What the movement actually did:

• Built and ran schools, in very large numbers, for communities excluded from existing ones
• Built temples open to everybody
• Campaigned for road access, school admission and government employment
• Ran industrial and vocational training
• Fought the temple entry campaigns

The temple entry movement

• Vaikom Satyagraha, 1924 to 1925: a campaign for the right of avarna communities to use the roads around the Vaikom temple, in which Narayana Guru was closely involved and which drew national attention
• Gandhi visited him at Sivagiri in 1925 during the Vaikom campaign
• Guruvayur Satyagraha, 1931 to 1932
• The Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936 in Travancore, which opened state temples to all Hindus, and which came eight years after his death and is a direct consequence of the movement he started

The Gandhi meeting

The recorded exchange is worth keeping.

Gandhi, arguing for a reformed caste system rather than its abolition, pointed to the leaves of a tree, observing that they were all different.

Narayana Guru is said to have replied that the leaves differ in shape but the sap in all of them is the same, and, in another version, that the fruit of a tree tastes the same whichever branch it comes from.

The two men did not agree, and the disagreement was about whether caste could be reformed or had to go. Narayana Guru's position was that it had to go.

The mirror

His most striking late act, and it is the logical end of the whole argument.

In his later years he stopped consecrating conventional images and started installing other things:

• At Kalavankodam, a mirror, so that the person who came to see the deity saw themselves
• At Murukkumpuzha, a temple in which the object of installation is an inscription reading Truth, Duty, Kindness, Love
• At Karamukku, a lamp
• At other places, the syllable Om

What the mirror is saying is not obscure: the thing you came to look at is what is looking.

And it comes from the same Advaita position as everything else he did. If there is one reality, then a stone from a river is an adequate object of worship, and so is a mirror, and the caste of the person consecrating it is not a coherent question.

Sivagiri

He established his ashram at Sivagiri, near Varkala, Thiruvananthapuram district, and it remains the centre of the movement.

He died there on 20 September 1928.

The Sivagiri Pilgrimage, the Sivagiri Theerthadanam, runs from 30 December to 1 January each year. Pilgrims wear yellow. It draws very large numbers and it is open to everybody without any qualification.

One. He built instead of asking.

He could have spent forty years campaigning for the right of his community to enter temples they were barred from. Some of that campaigning happened and he supported it.

But his first move was to build a temple. Take a stone out of a river, put it up, and worship there.

The general principle: where a gate is closed against you and the gatekeepers will not move, building your own is sometimes faster than arguing, and it changes the situation rather than petitioning it.

Two. I consecrated an Ezhava Shiva.

The reply refuses the frame. He does not claim the right, does not dispute the rule, and does not enter the argument. He accepts the premise out loud until the person who offered it can hear how it sounds.

Three. One caste, one religion, one god for man.

The caste is humanity. Everything else is a subdivision of a thing that is one thing.

And its companion, which is the usable test: whatever the religion, it is enough that a person becomes better. That applies to your tradition and to everybody else's, and it makes the comparison between traditions much less interesting than the question of what any of them is doing to the people in it.

Four. Ask not, say not, think not caste.

Three levels, and the third is the work.

And the legal position now: untouchability is abolished by Article 17 of the Constitution, and caste discrimination, including denial of temple entry, is an offence under the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1955 and the SC and ST Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989. The National SC Commission helpline is 1800-180-0203 and complaints may be filed at any police station.

Five. The mirror.

A man who had spent forty years installing deities put a mirror in a shrine.

It is the cleanest statement of Advaita anybody has made in a physical object, and it is also the last word on the question he was asked at Aruvippuram.

Six. Education and organisation.

Become enlightened through education, become strong through organisation.

That is not a spiritual slogan. It is a programme, it built schools, and Kerala's literacy and social indicators are in significant part a downstream consequence of it.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Om Namah Shivaya
• The Daiva Dasakam, ten verses, available in translation and used every morning in Kerala schools
• On Shivaratri, the anniversary of Aruvippuram
• On Chathayam in Chingam, his birth star, and around 20 September, his samadhi
• And the three levels, applied honestly: do not ask, do not say, do not think

A closing thought

He was born into a community that had to keep thirty two feet away from a brahmana, could not use certain roads, could not draw from certain wells, could not go to school, and could not go anywhere near a temple.

He learned Sanskrit anyway, read the Upanishads, went into the forest for some years, and came out.

On a Shivaratri night in 1888 he waded into the Neyyar river, went under, stayed under long enough to frighten the people on the bank, came up with a stone in his hands, set it on the ground and consecrated it.

When they demanded to know what right a man of his caste had to install a Shiva, he said he had installed an Ezhava Shiva.

And forty years later, in the last temples he built, he stopped installing images altogether and put up a mirror instead.

Who: Sree Narayana Guru, 1856 to 1928, born Nanu at Chempazhanthy near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, into the Ezhava community, which was avarna and subject to unapproachability rules requiring a fixed distance from higher castes and barred from temples, schools, certain roads and wells, and government employment.

His education: Sanskrit under Kummampilli Raman Pillai Asan, the Upanishads and Shankara, then years of solitary practice in the forests around Maruthwamala. He was an Advaitin, and his argument against caste is metaphysical before it is social: if there is one reality, divisions between people are not real at the level that matters.

Aruvippuram, Shivaratri 1888: he waded into the Neyyar river, went under, came up with a stone, and consecrated it as a Shivalinga, which as a member of an avarna community he had no recognised right to do. Asked what right he had, he said: I consecrated an Ezhava Shiva. The inscription he had put up there refuses both caste distinction and hatred between religions.

What followed: around sixty temples consecrated across Kerala, open to everybody; the SNDP Yogam founded in 1903 with Dr. Palpu and Kumaran Asan, whose motto is become enlightened through education, become strong through organisation; schools in very large numbers; and involvement in the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 to 1925, which Gandhi visited him about in 1925.

His formulation: one caste, one religion, one god for man. Humanity is the caste. And: whatever the religion, it is enough that a person becomes better.

His works: Atmopadesa Satakam, Daiva Dasakam which is used as a school prayer across Kerala and names no particular deity, Darsanamala, Jati Mimamsa, Anukampa Dasakam, and translations of the Thirukkural and the Ishavasya Upanishad.

The mirror: in his later years he stopped installing conventional images and put up a mirror at Kalavankodam, a lamp at Karamukku, and at Murukkumpuzha an inscription reading Truth, Duty, Kindness, Love.

Where: Sivagiri, near Varkala. The Sivagiri Pilgrimage runs from 30 December to 1 January, pilgrims wear yellow, and it is open to everybody.