there are a few problems with the lede on polyandry only a small minority of nairs in central kerala practiced this the vast majority of those in the south and north didn't practiced it central nairs are mostly charna nairs who rank lower than kiryathils of the north and illath of south polyandry was widely practiced in kerala and the main practitioners of it were not nairs but lower ranking savarna castes such as kammalans sources about polyandry are written by a few european researchers who don't have first hand experience about this and many of them haven't even visited kerala the last recorded instance of polyandry among nairs date back to mid th century not there are travelogues written by many european explorers like duarte barbosa and none of them mentions polyandry but every single one of them mentions about the martial traditions of nairs i find it quite ironic that the martial history is completely ignored and pov prone issues like polyandry are given undue weight however a few evangelical christian editors who are super active here for the past months will disagree with this statement