workshop presentation- Dr. Ajay Sekhar

The Politics of Spirituality: Dissident Spiritual Practice of Poykayil Appachan and the Shared Legacy of Kerala Renaissance

Dr Ajay Sekher

In India spirituality is a complex and dynamic paradigm with plural dimensions. There are dominant and hegemonic streams of spirituality as well as divergent and counter hegemonic expressions of dissent and resistance based spiritual enquiries. The deviant and de-centered forms of spiritual pursuits that resist and counter the hegemonic worldview, ordering and spiritual canons could be termed as dissident spirituality in this context. Political dissent, resistance/rebellion against hegemony, and cultural difference could be identified as the key elements of this dissident tradition of practical and material spirituality. It is a down to earth spirituality that is ethical and political and an inextricable part of material life and struggles of the people. Foregrounding dissent and emphasizing difference are expressions of the ethical and political dimension of thought and praxes and inevitable part of the democratic way of life.
These political or practical spiritualities across languages and cultures in India have also contributed immensely to our composite culture, secularism and democracy at large in the modern era. In this sense numerous minor streams of counter hegemonic and dissent based indigenous ascetic traditions could be traced from early Vedic period onwards. The Kapila and Charvaka traditions, the Lokayata legacy, Ajivaka sects, Jain and Buddhist traditions and also later Sufi traditions could be identified as a people’s or Bahujan tradition of spiritual dissent and political resistance against the hegemonic Vedic spirituality, as they were attempts to probe the material misery of human life rather than the mystery of gods, and were aimed at the greater common good and welfare of the people (“Bahujana Hitaya, Bahujana Sukhaya”) in Buddha’s own words. In this context the whole history of India could be read as an epistemological, ethical and cultural conflict and struggle between the dominant Vedic or Brahmanical spirituality and the dissident Sramana critiques and Bahujan resistance of the hegemonic spirituality of Hindu imperialism.
This ethical conflict and political struggle are all the more evident and significant in the cultural contexts of Kerala renaissance that changed society, culture and polity in a drastic way in the first half of 20th century. As Buddhism that paved the foundations of egalitarianism and literacy in South India in B C third century itself, which was unfortunately obliterated and erased by the Brahmanic conquest by the seventh or eighth century, Kerala renaissance was also a challenge to caste and Brahmanism. It was also an ethical struggle against caste oppression, exclusion and internal imperialism. The hegemony of caste and Brahmanism was challenged and egalitarian social change was initiated by dissident spiritual leaders like Ayya Vaikundhan and Narayana Guru in late 19th century itself. Both of them used the religious and spiritual traditions as a platform to float radical and subversive democratic ideals.
While Vaikundha Swamy used popular and rustic forms of Vaishnavism and Hindu spirituality to introduce his radical ideas of human equality and brotherhood among the Bahujans of south Travancore (Nanjinad) by establishing an egalitarian sect called Samatva Sangham; Narayana Guru initiated a new secular and democratic practical spirituality encompassing the ethical teachings of all religions and emphasized the importance of the betterment of the human and the social. Both of them questioned caste and priestly mediation in spiritual practice and effected humane and democratic transformations in society. It is also important to note that both the sages came from untouchable Avarna communities in Travancore and attacked caste and Brahmanism through peaceful and ascetic ways.
We see politics and ethics prompting a spiritual revolution or rupture to provide a break in the struggles of the people against the dominant ideology and discourse of caste and Varna here. This radical and subversive spiritual tradition that arose with Vaikundha Swamy in early 19th c. South Kerala was specifically anti caste, spiritually rebellious and counter hegemonic. It also gave rise to skeptics and alternative spiritual explorers like Thaikad Ayyavu who in turn recharged Chattambi Swamikal and Narayana Guru for spiritually strategic and culturally iconic attacks on Brahmanism and its knowledge/power monopolies, hegemonic textuality or semiotics.
The same nexus of political and spiritual could be seen in the spiritual dissent of Poykayil Appachan or Sri Kumara Gurudevan (1879-1939). He was an early 20th century Dalit leader and social reformer of central Travancore who established a spiritual sect of his own called Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha (PRDS) in 1910. As a slave child he learned letters and spread the message of equity and justice among fellow outcastes. He strategically used the Christian façade for spreading the word of salvation and liberation among the excluded. He broke the stereotype of Dalit Christian identity by rationally critiquing the very foundations of the teachings of the church and burning the Bible. But Poykayil Yohannan also strategically and practically used the opportunities opened up by Western missionary intervention and evangelism for the liberation of the people at the bottom. His body of work maintains a practical and critical dialogicity with colonial textuality, modernity and evangelism.
Appachan established serious epistemological and theological debates and dialogues with the mainstream Christian churches. He worked with the Marthoma Church, Brethren Church and Verpatu Sabha. He also came out of these conformist spiritual institutions after expressing dissent and critiquing the social and political inequality that were lingering in them. He identified caste and Brahmanism at the heart of the evangelical discourse and Syrian Christian establishments in Kerala and attacked and critiqued it through his dissident speeches and songs that addressed the spiritual and material margins in society. Preacher Yohannan also used secret meetings and travel-meetings or camouflaged road shows of the untouchables in the wilderness to impart the message of brotherhood and liberty like the African American slaves in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Like Morrison he also reminded his people about the dehumanizing experience of internal imperialism and caste slavery that degenerated and de-spiritualized the people or subaltern classes. He was called Appachan or father by his followers as a spiritual master, guardian and savior amidst the past and present of extreme oppression, violence and all sorts of marginalization.
Appachan used his spiritual movement for the propagation of ethical and micro political ideas and discourses. He effectively materialized the democratic dissolving of various sub caste groups within the Dalit brotherhood of PRDS. Through his songs he addressed the excluded and suppressed subjects in history across the world and time. He effectively utilized the practical dimensions of dissent based spirituality to pursue the art of the possible. In this sense he resembles Dr Ambedkar who radically reinterpreted Neo Buddhism along with his democratic politics of inclusion and representation. Appachan democratically represented the people in Srimulam Prajasabha or the early legislative assembly of Travancore (1921-39).
His spiritual dissident practice was actually a social cover and moral legitimization for his democratic politics of inclusion, reform and representation. Addressing the marginalized and educating them to regain their lost human spirit, rights and social mobility were the real ethical and social agendas behind his spiritual pretext. This strategically liberating and practically social use of spirituality (first from within Christianity and then as an autonomous subaltern spiritual movement) links his life and efforts with that of Ayya Vaikundhan or Narayana Guru. These historic experiences from Kerala renaissance and the pan Indian Buddhist critique of caste Brahmanism reveal that spiritual dissidence is one of the most powerful forces of political activism, social change and cultural politics in Kerala and all across India. The counter hegemonic or specifically anti caste/Brahmanic thrust is a shared lineage and legacy among all the dissident spiritual movements and voices in Kerala renaissance, the Sramana critique and other minor dissident spiritual traditions of India.
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Dr Ajay Sekher, Akhila, Gandhinagar P O, Kottayam 8, Kerala, India
+91 9895797798 ajaysekher@gmail.com www.ajaysekher.net