BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF SREENARAYANA GURU

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF

SREENARAYANA GURU

Sree Narayana Guru was born in the year 1854 AD at Chempazhanthy, in the suburb of the city of Trivandrum, the present capital of Kerala State, India. In those days Trivandrum was the capital of a princely state called Travancore. Before Travancore came under the hegemony of the Maharaja Marthanda Varma there were eight feudal chiefs who were politically powerful and opposed to the ruling prince. One such chief was of Chempazhanthy. Narayana Guru's father was Madan Asan and his mother was Kutti Amma. He was the only son of his parents in the family of Vayalvaram, of which a small cottage is still remaining next to a Bhagavati Temple called Manakkal. Even though Madan Asan was not rich, he was of moderate means. His title, Asan, shows that he was looked upon with respect by his villagers. It is not known if he was a teacher. It is likely that Nanu, as Narayana Guru was called by his parents, learnt Tamil, Malayalam, and Sanskrit from his father.

Even though Kerala is today treated as one ethnic unit, there are many caste groups and local customs in Malabar or North Kerala, which are not known to the people of the South, formerly called Travancore. Hindus, Christians and Muslims live almost as exclusive communities. Hindus had among them Brahmins and non-Brahmins. In the days of Narayana Guru, non-Brahmins ranged from the most touchable to the least touchable. No rational sociological norm is implied in this classification. These castes have evolved and crystallized in relation to hereditary trades and work opportunities. The caste in Kerala has nothing or very little to do with what is popularly known as the fourfold division of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra. Even among the Brahmins there were sharp divisions based on their linguistic origin. There were Malayali Nambudiris, Tulu Pottis, Telugu Iyengars or Vaishnavaites and Tamil Iyers. Each one claims superiority over others.

Until recently Malayali Brahmins practiced the most heinous sociological crime of keeping women of a certain section of the Hindu community as concubines, without having the obligation of a responsible husband or father. As Travancore, Cochin and Malabar were under theocratic rule for a long time, these Nambudiris managed to keep the Rajas of these states in a socio-political hypnosis and got large areas of land and temples under their undisputed hegemony. They used the land and the favor of the Rajas to give a social acceptance to their illegitimate relationships which were known as sambandham.Certain powerful Nair chiefs were 'baptized' by the Brahmins with a hocus-pocus ritual of making them 'Raja-designate' to be symbolically born out of a golden cow. The priest's fee was the golden cow. Thus the Kshatriyas of Kerala are homemade products. Nairs were a martial class. They had gymnasiums conducted by Kurups, where they taught martial arts.

Besides Brahmins and Nairs, there were temple attendants such as Warrier, Pisharadi, Marar etc. All of them enjoyed certain social privileges that were not shared by the rest of the Hindu community. There was also a large community who acted as a buffer group between the touchables and the untouchables. They are known in Travancore as Ezhavas, in Cochin as Choyas and in Malabar as Thiyas. The common link between these three groups was their hereditary trade interest in extracting coconut and palm wine and running breweries. This factor does not exist any longer. Others now share this trade too. They show a definite left-wing protest in their attitude towards relating themselves to Brahmins. The price they had to pay was heavy. They lived more or less as outsiders to the Hindu Society. In the coastal areas like Tellicherry and Cannanore, they easily mixed with European adventurers and Arab pirates. Thus we can see there, many fair-complexioned and blue or brown-eyed Thiyas. Socially and economically they were under-privileged. In this group there are a number of families who remained as pockets of the last vestiges of the Buddhist culture. The Pali language, Sanskrit and Ayurvedic Medicine distinguished these families from others. Then there came the poorest of the poor, who were real children of the soil--the Bhumiputras. They were branded as untouchables. Kuravas, Pulayas, Pariahs and the tribals, all have their own traditions reaching back to antiquity. Perhaps the first Mohenjodaro drummer, Shiva himself, was a Pariah (para=drum).In one of Swami Vivekananda's letters, he writes of the despicable caste system of Travancore as the most horrid experience he had in his wanderings in India.It was into this dark chapter of Indian history that Narayana Guru came in the 1850s. His own caste is described as Ezhava. In his abundant sense of humor, he once described the Ezhava as an unrecognized weed in the garden of the caste scruples.

From the accounts of elderly people, it is presumed that the village of Narayana Guru had very good communal harmony. Ezhavas and Nairs jointly managed the Manakkal Temple of Chempazhanthy, and Nanu went to a village school of a Nair teacher. We do not hear that the sun-burnt peasants like the Pulayas shared this equality.A 'good' slave accepts the norms of slavery and shows his worth by making himself loyal to the creed of servitude. This was very true of the feudal system of 19th century India. Communities insulated with untouchability lived in relative peace. Narayana Guru's uncles, Raman Vaidyar and Krishnan Vaidyar were no exception, and indeed they cared very much for the preservation of their own insulated tribal clan.It seems the child Nanu had a natural ingenuity in discerning right from wrong and the essential from the non-essential. When Nanu's parents or uncles kept fruits and sweetmeats for divine offerings (pooja), he did not hesitate to partake of it before the puja was performed. When he was called to account for his action, his plea was that God would be happy if he made himself happy.When Nanu's uncles were meticulous in enforcing the customary convention of untouchability, the child wanted to show the silliness of it by running around and embracing all who were tabooed as untouchables. There is a touching story of Nanu's childhood-reaction to injustice which also reveals his consistency in opposing injustice with passive spiritual force.

One day when Nanu was going to school with other village children, a sannyasin with matted hair and clad in rags was also on the road. The usual look of the mendicant intrigued the mischievous imps. They started jeering and throwing stones at him. The sannyasin walked on as if he was not aware of what was happening. When Nanu saw this, he burst into tears. The sannyasin turned back and spotted Nanu walking behind him in tears. The kind mendicant asked Nanu why he was crying. Nanu said that he was crying because of his inability to stop the village urchins from pelting such a good man with stones. Hearing this, the sannyasin lifted the boy to his shoulders and brought him back to his parents. He blessed Nanu and told that he would one day become a great man (mahatma).Strange are the ways of picking up the threads of one's future affiliation and loyalty. The incident narrated above symbolizes hundreds of other acts of injustice against which, Narayana Guru protested in his life. He always employed a passive dynamism whereby he brought the powers of the heavens to the earth to correct the ills of the world. There is another episode of Nanu's childhood, which indicates how he was turned on to what can be described as the via negativa (nivrtti marga).

A death occurred in his family, when Nanu was of the age of six. He was shocked by the grief of the relatives. A couple of days after the cremation, the young Nanu was found missing. People searched for him everywhere. Finally they found him sitting in a wood, lost in thought. When he was questioned about this strange behavior, he said: "The other day when a dear one died everybody was crying. I thought, 'Now you will be sorrowful forever.' Hardly a day passed, and all of you started laughing as if nothing had happened. It looked strange to me." Of course, nobody kept any record of what he said, but he might have said something to this effect. What is important to note is his disgust for relativism and how he preferred to turn away from it as a remedy to correct the iniquities of social behavior.

Nanu's first teacher was his own father, Madan Asan. He had formal schooling in the village school of Chempazhanthy Pillai. Apart from Malayalam and Tamil he learned by heart, as was the practice in those days, Sidharupa, Balaprabodhana and Amrakosa. He was blessed with a penetrating understanding and a sharp memory from very early childhood. Although there were a few schools in Travancore and Cochin in those days, Nanu's circumstances were such that he had to satisfy himself with what he received from his father, his uncle Krishnan Vaidyar and the village schoolmaster. Nanu in his adolescence experienced restlessness and engaged in boyhood pranks which were characteristic of his inner untold merit and growth. Home and relatives did not attract him. Being very sensitive to moral and aesthetic values of a profound and universal order, he came into conflict with the crude and unhygienic life-patterns of people. He preferred to be alone or with his cows. Like the reputed cowherd of Brindavan, Nanu was also fond of sitting on the spread out branches of trees as his cows grazed in the green pastures below. Unlike Krishna, who played his flute, Nanu composed hymns and sang them melodiously.

Once Nanu's uncle, Krishnan Vaidyar, heard Nanu's voice coming from the foliage of a tree. He stood spellbound until the song was over, and, then went near by and asked the shy boy, from whom he learnt that hymn. When he realized Nanu himself composed it, he thought that it was a serious mistake not to allow the young boy to go to a proper teacher.During these years Nanu also took to gardening. It agreed with his sensitive nature to see seeds germinating and plants bringing forth delicate flowers and edible fruits.

In 1877 Nanu was sent to the family of Varanapally to be further educated under the guidance of a well-known scholar named Kummampilli Raman PillaiAsan. It was a custom those days for rich families to arrange for the higher studies of their sons, by honoring guest-teachers who volunteered to teach deserving students and providing them with free boarding and lodging. These teachers had no pecuniary motives. Seeing his amazing ability to grasp and digest the hidden meanings of Sanskrit classics, Raman Pillai Asan gave special permission to Nanu to be present with him when he was teaching other students also.Nanu was both studying and teaching himself. It was not difficult for his teacher to know what was happening within him, Raman Pillai Aasan gave special instructions to the chief of the Varanapally household to give Nanu facilities to live alone and spend time as he liked in deep meditation and self-discipline.

Even though Narayana Guru was blessed with a very critical and analytical mind, he was also evenly balanced with a sense of deep devotion. Mere logic chopping did not amuse him. He was capable of silencing any argument with a thoughtful query or a witty remark. However, he avoided arguments and spent long hours in meditation and self-study He underwent a great mystical change in his vision of this world. It was no more "out there" mechanically operating as a brute fact. The inner world opened up many new avenues to him. He was sometimes drunk with such inner ecstasy that he found it hard to articulate it in words. One such state of ecstasy is echoed in a verse he composed and sang in spontaneous exultation: t is difficult to gather more information about his childhood.

Prof. John Kurakar