One summer day in 1854, more than three decades before Narayana Guru established the Shiva temple in Aruvippuram, an Ezhava Shiva was consecrated in a temple in a central Travancore village. Its patron, Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, was a man as different from Guru as you can imagine — a warrior who took on the caste system in the state, which Swami Vivekananda called a “lunatic asylum”.
You’d expect him to find a prominent place in the annals of Kerala’s so-called renaissance, but the vagaries of historical memory consigned Panicker to oblivion. Now, Malayalam director Vinayan has sought to change all that with his new film, Pathonpatham Noottandu, released two weeks ago.
In many ways, it’s a positive step in a film industry that’s yet to shake off the weight of a certain savarna gaze, especially if you compare it to what’s being produced in neighbouring Tamil Nadu. Over the past decade, directors like Pa. Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj, and T. J. Gnanavel have built strong anti-caste elements in Tamil cinema that have no parallel in Malayalam films.
Writers and directors in the Malayalam film industry may be from ‘subaltern’ castes. But the scripts and stories have traditionally been allergic to tackling the issue of caste or even saying ‘Ezhava’. Such subjects have only been touched upon in a very topsy-turvy way like in the ’90s movies after the Mandal Commission protests.
In the past few years, an interesting genre of YouTube videos has emerged critiquing the depiction of caste in these old Malayalam films. Within that context, Pathonpatham Noottandu — a mass-market historical ‘epic’ — is a welcome addition to the conversation, and it gets many of the facts right. Unfortunately, it can’t escape the typical pitfalls of Malayalam historical ‘epics’.
The film is a mishmash of history, legend, and outright fiction — a fact that’s acknowledged in the disclaimer. But the time taken up by made-up stories could have been much better spent showing more of Panicker’s actual achievements.
Social and historical background
Panicker was born in 1825 in an Ezhava family in the Arattupuzha village in the Odanadu region. In the previous century, Martanda Varma had annexed the region during his blood-soaked campaign to build the Kingdom of Travancore.
The decades that followed saw a tightening of the screws on the lower orders of society. To meet the needs of the new military-fiscal State, Martanda Varma and his successors enforced an extractive taxation regime. At the same time, groups like the Ezhavas faced mounting untouchability restrictions and lost rights they once enjoyed. Many had served as soldiers and commanders under both Martanda Varma and his defeated rivals but were eventually excluded from what became Travancore’s ‘Nair Brigade’.
In spite of all this, the Ezhava aristocracy continued to exist, especially in Central Travancore. They were landowners, Sanskrit scholars, Ayurvedic physicians, and warriors who continued to train in their own kalaris. But despite all that, they weren’t any less ‘untouchable’. Panicker’s family was a prime example of this ‘aristocracy’ and owned a fleet of merchant ships that sailed in the Arabian Sea — Pathonpatham Noottandu documents that well.
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The man and the legacy
According to a 2019 Malayalam biography titled Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker by K. Vasudevan, Panicker was raised by his maternal grandfather Perumal Achan. At the age of 16, he took over his late uncle’s house and his trading ships. He soon founded his own kalari and built a fighting force comprising his followers.
When he was 29, he established the Shiva temple at Mangalam. This was an important time — Ezhavas had lost control of all temples to the ‘higher’ deities and were no longer allowed even to enter them.
This was also a time when women across Travancore were rebelling against its infamous restrictions on their clothing. ‘Lower-caste’ women were banned from wearing a melmundu — a shawl that ‘upper-caste’ Hindu women wore to cover their upper bodies. The Nadar women led the Channar agitation that began in 1813, and in 1859, a group of Ezhava women in Pandalam (not Cherthala as is shown in Pathonpatham Noottandu) staged their own revolt.
The conflict started when one day, an Ezhava woman dressed in a way that triggered the savarnas — mookkuthi (nose ring), left-parted hair adorned with jasmine flowers, achipudava (lower body cloth reaching the ankles), and a melmundu. Others joined her too. But the local savarnas couldn’t tolerate it; they attacked the women and cut off their noses.
When Panicker heard about the incident, he placed a special order for mookkuthis, arrived in Pandalam with his followers, distributed the ornaments to local women, and led a procession with them. The savarnas again tried to stop them but were routed in a clash. The agitation came to be known as Mookkuthi Samaram.
Panicker was involved in a few other struggles over the years, including a farm workers’ strike against his fellow landlords and another samaram (agitation) in which he distributed melmundus to the women of Kayamkulam. Such incidents inspired broader movements, and Ezhava women in other parts of the state followed suit.
Another major achievement was Panicker winning the right to perform kathakali for Ezhavas. This is something Pathonpatham Noottandu really doesn’t do justice to. Panicker’s feat is only briefly referenced much later in the film.
Panicker wasn’t the first Ezhava to form a kathakali troupe in Travancore — a family in the Kottayam district tried it in 1855 but had to back down after the local savarnas got the government to ban it. In 1861, Panicker formed his own kathakali troupe, and, as if on cue, the Nairs of Central Travancore petitioned the Diwan for a ban. The Diwan was none other than the famous T. Madhava Rao who decided to call both sides to Kollam to hear their arguments.
The Nairs argued along these lines: Kathakali includes roles that emulate the gods and Brahmins, so it’s sinful for untouchables to play these characters even during their pastime. Panicker presented arguments drawing on the history and rights of Ezhavas, which included a tradition of studying Sanskrit and the puranas. In the end, the Diwan ruled in favour of the Ezhavas — and said that if the savarnas still wished to show their ‘higher’ status, they could perform kathakali wearing two crowns.
This marked the start of a strong kathakali tradition among the Ezhavas of Travancore with Panicker’s troupe holding performances around the State. In the British enclave of Anchuthengu, where Travancore’s laws didn’t apply, Panicker went one step further — he staged kathakali performances where Pulayas (Dalits) played the role of Krishna and the Pandavas.
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Fact, legend, and fiction
Pathonpatham Noottandu is unfortunately preoccupied with one matter that’s spun out of all proportion and made the centre of the story. This is the theft of the salagramam (sacred stones associated with Vishnu) that a Brahmin was taking to the Padmanabhaswamy temple.
It’s known that this loss, and the royal government’s inability to do anything about it, occasioned a crisis of faith in Travancore. The ruler at the time, Ayilyam Thirunal, eventually turned to Panicker, who successfully retrieved the salagramam, caught the thieves and was rewarded.
In the film, the whole story is turned into an elaborate conspiracy involving corrupt royal officials, a disgruntled soldier, a greedy foreigner, and a Robin Hood figure called Kayamkulam Kochunni who is painted as the villain.
Then there’s the decision to incorporate the Nangeli legend into the film. According to this popular tale, there was a mulakkaram — literally, ‘breast tax’ — that lower caste women had to pay to cover their upper bodies. In the early 19th century, Nangeli, an Ezhava woman in Cherthala, was harassed by an official trying to collect this tax. In protest, she cut off her own breasts and bled to death. Her husband, too, killed himself by leaping into her funeral pyre.
This legend has been refuted by many scholars. Most women in early 19th-century Kerala simply didn’t cover their upper bodies. Mulakkaram was just a regular tax that lower caste women had to pay; the male equivalent was the ‘thalakkaram’ or head tax. The name wasn’t meant literally — paying it wouldn’t have given them any special right to cover their upper bodies.
In Pathonpatham Noottandu, Nangeli is also shifted forward in time — by 50 years — to show her as Panicker’s distaff counterpart, a women’s rights activist and trained martial artist who’s very proficient at stick-fighting. Her story still ends the same way.
But the film’s heart is in the right place. At least it wasn’t anything like Marakkar: Lion of the Arabian Sea (2021), which featured 16th-century Portuguese sailors in Napoleonic uniforms speaking in English, Malayali nobles in sherwanis, and Vasco da Gama murdering the heir to the throne of Calicut.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)