From: sirosh@cs.utexas.edu (Joseph Sirosh)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.kerala,soc.culture.indian
Subject: Kerala Today : Some thoughts
Followup-To: alt.culture.kerala
Date: 26 Jul 1992 18:31:30 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: cypress.cs.utexas.edu
Keywords: Literacy, Communism, Women, Revolution


      Kerala: Literacy, Women and a Dead Revolution.
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Kerala has been repeatedly cited as a model society for a developing
country in terms of literacy, health and women's emancipation.
Some agencies have attributed this to the status of women in Kerala.
I have always found this hard to believe. It seems to me that the fairly 
high status of women is a consequence of the literacy and good distribution
of wealth in Kerala, than vice versa. And I think communism had a 
great role to play in establishing this egalitarianism.  

Communism, by no means is a successful economic system - but it is a great
leveller. The way it worked in Kerala, it made a submissive, quiet
society very aware of a right to fight for rights. It pushed religious
awareness into the background. It brought in a much needed aggressiveness
into people. The poor became richer. In a quest for spreading communism
as a political force, the motivators went down to the lower classes and
spread the philosophy, not just by word of mouth, but through classes and
education. As people became more political, it was a sheer necessity to
keep abreast of the trends - newspapers and political literature became
popular. And this was among the economically backward people; the farmer
and the farmworker; the coolie and the industrial laborer. Precisely
the people who needed to be reached out to. The grassroots of society.
To this day, the first thing the farm laborer picks up in a tea shop
is the local newspaper.  

The communists didn't stop with the men. They reached out to the woman in
the fields, the woman spinning coir, and the woman servant. Any communist
demonstration had as many women as men, unless it was a violent one.
A generation grew up this way in Kerala - not the young generation,
but those born in the 40s and 50s and even early sixties. Precisely the
generation that spearheaded the spread of literacy and extolled the
virtues of an education.

The younger generation imbibed the tenets of communism too. But whereas
the older generation had something to fight for and fight against, the
younger one was left with a subdued corpse. Stabbing a corpse does no
good. Political survival and red blood demanded live antagonists . Besides,
there is nothing that forges a bond so strongly as combined aggression
against a common enemy. Youthful and misinformed imagination had no
trouble finding targets. Communism had begun to become a negative force.

The hardest period for a society comes after a revolution. Revolutions
reshape the society drastically. But the thoughts and deeds of a society
in revolution are seldom appropriate for its reconstruction. Revolutions
cannot persist. The lava of a revolution must be channeled to construct
a rock solid edifice. This did not happen. 

There we see the society in Kerala today. A revolution brought with it
literacy, emancipation, and high standards of health; its remnants 
propped up by selfish political interests brought in economic stagnation.
The pendulum is swinging back; to capitalism, to communalism, to corruption 
and to misguided politics. There's a lack of ambition; there's lethargy, and
looking inward is fashionable. We are a people in need of a direction,
a culture in need of challenges, a society in need of a niche in the
maelstorm of a world. 

Joseph Sirosh
Newsgroups: alt.culture.kerala