An Irreparable Loss | MGS Narayanan
Illustrious Alumnus of MCC | A Soulful Tribute
27 April 2025 | #Reflections #Newspaper
Today’s The Hindu and The Times of India newspapers have prominently reported the passing away of prominent Indian historian, academic, and political commentator from Kerala, and an illustrious alumnus of MCC – Dr. MGS Narayanan, 92 years old, at his residence in Kozhikode.
A towering figure in Indian academic history, known for his extensive research and fresh perspectives on the history of South India, particularly Kerala, he is credited with debunking several historical myths and bringing a paradigm shift in the region’s historiography.
What makes Kerala Unique? Its Cultural Synthesis or Its Cultural Symbiosis?
Eminent historian MGS Narayanan sets out to answer this question through his painstaking historiographic research.
This blogpost hence seeks to give a few rare insights into the iconoclast that MGS really was, and how his bold and unorthodox views to history have contributed immensely to historiography and literary criticism.
Firstly, to begin with –
I chanced upon this rare and engaging conversation between eminent historian M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat – in which MGS talks about why he chose history, how his history professor at Madras Christian College influenced him, his career, etc.
Kesavan Veluthat: History was not one of the more attractive subjects for intellectual pursuit in Kerala at that time, in the 1950s, when you chose that. Historical writing and research were marked by extreme backwardness. What attracted you towards this subject, which was such a lacklustre subject at that time?
MGS: It was not history that attracted me. It was science, which frightened me. Because in the lab in high school, we used to see skeletons hanging and they (the students) used to catch hold of frogs, kill them and dissect them, paste them on the walls and all that. This frightened me. I couldn’t see blood or the suffering of people. So, in order to escape that kind of science, I took history.
But then having taken history, I had a good experience of having one of the good teachers of history, K.V. Krishna Iyer, who was the author of The Zamorins of Calicut. He wrote that book in 1938.
Kesavan Veluthat: After your distinguished performance in the Master’s in History from Madras Christian College, you settled down as a teacher in one of the colleges in Kozhikode.
This was perhaps one of the most productive periods of your literary activities, particularly the literary criticisms that you had written. Some of the trailblazing essays that you published on Vallathol (Vallathol Narayana Menon), on Asan (Kumaranasan), your introduction to Edasseri’s collected poems. This was the product of this period. How do you explain your shifted interest back to historical research from this?
MGS: In Madras Christian College, we had a professor of history, Dr Chandran Devanesan, who had a doctorate at that time and who was highly celebrated as a historian.
And I was attached to Heber Hall in Madras Christian College where he was also the warden. And not only he, his wife was a very sociable lady, very glamorous and all that, they used to invite us to their house and we used to spend very interesting hours in conversation with them, discussing this and that, arguing about this and that. It was that which gave me the training and the necessary equipment.
KV: Who was your guide?
MGS: Nobody knows. It was one Professor V. Narayana Pillai who was the history professor in Kerala University. So, I had to select a guide. He was the only one that was available.
He had no doctorate or anything. When I went to him with whatever work I was doing with the drafts and all that, he said -
‘Don’t come to me with this, I don’t know anything about it. I have never done any research and I cannot guide you properly. If you want to do any good work, there is a professor who is a friend of mine, Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai. He is a Malayalam professor, you go to him.’
I did not know him but with these words of encouragement, I went and met him.
By the time I had done something—I had questioned some of his work, criticised some of them. He went through [all that]. He said, ‘Narayan, if you think this is the right thing, you go ahead.’
That was something unbelievable. People had told me that his main work was moneylending. And he also asked me –
‘Do you want any help? I can give you money. You don’t have to pay me interest or anything or [produce] any written document.’
And when I said that I had disagreement with some of his work, he said –
‘Okay, go ahead, you go ahead with what you think is right.’
Now that was a good beginning for me. And with this UGC grant, I started working.
Then, as far as the old scripts were concerned, when I started studying, N.N. Kakkad was there. He was my classmate, a poet, and a good friend. So, he came with the idea that he also wanted to study old scripts and all that, and we started working together.
Gradually, I collected about 150 inscriptions of the Chera period, some of them are published, some of them are unpublished. So, I collected them. I never published them in one volume or anything but all of them, all the copies, all the texts were available to me. So, I thought that that could be made the basis of a PhD thesis.
And when it was done, I got the recommendation and appreciation of people like A.L. Basham.
Secondly, giving a peek into one of his highly insightful books on what makes Kerala unique -
The book titled, Cultural Symbiosis in Kerala, by MGS, published in the year 1972 by the Kerala Historical Society is an eye-opener of sorts.
In his preface to the book, MGS foregrounds the iconoclastic sweep that lies ahead in the pages to follow –
Says MGS –
Legends are often presented as history in Kerala so that we have a distorted picture of her past. These legends are mostly employed to glorify or condemn one community or another.
Fragments of truth are mixed up with legends by people who complain about the scarcity of source materials for a study of history in Kerala.
In fact there is no such scarcity but only the absence of proper study. The real obstacles for study and understanding lie in the complexity of Vatteluttu script and the obscurity of Old Malayalam language, not to speak of the lack of organised effort in this line,
says MGS.
He adds on to say –
When two organisms of different species live together and derive mutual benefit from the association, the partnership is called symbiosis, a well-known phenomenon in the field of natural science.
In ancient Kerala this type of relationship is found to have existed in the case of heterogenous religio-cultural groups like Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The massive organism of Hindu society offered hospitality to other creeds from time to time leading to a situation where peaceful coexistence of different communities became necessary and possible. This relationship was symbiotic but not parasitic, since it was an agreement for mutual advantage. The outsiders were treated as paying guests in Kerala.
These divergent religio-cultural units were not formed as the consequence of military conquests or even political conflicts in Kerala.
The Hindu monarchs and chieftains of the post-Sangam period ruled over a fertile agricultural tract the peace and safety of which were guaranteed by the Western Ghats on one side and the Arabian sea on the other.
This land itself was a secret shared between the sea and the mountain, an illegitimate child of the two natural forces, protected by and provided for by them in a special way. Therefore there was an assurance of plenty and of peace.
Thus Kulasekhara, the 9th century Cera king, who was also a playwright of considerable merit, could proudly declare that he was "master of Kerala made up of charming paddy fields."
The Cera kings presided over a comparatively peaceful agrarian community with a Brahmin (Nambudiri) elite which was dedicated to the classical ideal of Indian culture. At the same time these kings had under them small urban groups of merchants and artisans with non-Vedic or non-Hindu religious affiliations.
Brahminical Aryan society which had taken roots in Kerala atleast by the 7th-8th centuries A. D. needed the services of such foreign elements as it was allergic to the sea and full of contempt for the 'vulgar' professions of industry and trade.
In ancient and medieval Europe spices and pepper were essential to preserve the extra meat, produced by compulsory cowslaughter in winter, and to make it palatable.
In Kerala the gold and silver of Roman coinage was in such great demand that the chronology of Roman emperors could now be reconstructed with the help of the Roman coins in Kerala hoards alone. They continued in circulation for long centuries after the Roman empire!
In the long run there was beneficial cultural exchange effected in an organic manner, i.e. the new culture was absorbed silently by the major community through language, faith, art patterns, and even race-mixture while the settlers borrowed the style of life and thought from the local people.
To cite but one example, the vocabulary of the Malayalam language, originally Dravidian in character, has been enriched not only by Aryan, but also, though to a lesser extent, by Semitic and European languages. On the other hand words in Old Malayalam, like 'arisi" (rice), have travelled from Kerala through Greece and Rome to England and America.
Thus the multi-coloured carpet of Kerala society has been woven through centuries with Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and Islamic elements coexisting without losing their identity or even their contrast in character.
It must be remembered that each religion brought not only a creed but also a specific way of life. The major community was much influenced by these culture contacts-they received several non-Indian strains of plants like tapioca, papaya, cashew and tobacco from the Western world, Chinese pottery, gun powder and chillies from China, and the best imported Arab horses, and Persian scents, and Greek wine, and also the worst forms of sailor's diseases into the bargain.
Perhaps the best characteristics that the Kerala people acquired were temperamental adjustability and open-mindedness while the worst were a love of imitation and lack of self-confidence.
The minority groups were Indianised, Hinduised, and also Keralised. It may be pointed out that the Jains were almost completely absorbed in the Nayar community and the Buddhists in the Ilava community both typical of Kerala.
The Jews acquired a whole division of Malayalam-speaking 'Black Jews' in spite of all their notorious exclusiveness and racial arrogance. We have to add that Kerala was perchaps the only land where they received religious and social tolerance for centuries.
The Christians received Hindu names, rituals of worship like the use of native nilavilakku, and social customs like the wearing of tali by the bride. The Muslims constructed temple-like mosques, adopted matriliny in certain areas, and cultivated a new dialect of ArabMalayalam with its own folk-literature.
A common pattern is found in the early stages of the growth of non-Hindu pockets of culture in Kerala.
They are all associated with industry or trade while the Hindus built up their culture on an agrarian economic base. Jainism was cultivated by the immigrant traders from Mysore, Karnataka, and Pandi and their pockets are usually found along the Ghat ranges in Wyanad, Palghat, and Kulithura. (ibid)
Buddhism was at first popular in the Alleppey-Kottayam region where it was probably brought by sea by the early traders and toddy-tappers from Ceylon.
The Jews, Christians and Muslims operated from the chief harbour towns along the shoreline. They all found a hospitable soil and perhaps never faced religious persecution.
Atula, court-poet and chronicler of the Mushaka king Srikantha in the beginning of the 11th century, aptly describes the religious harmony in the capital city of Kolam in a single verse in his Mushakavamsa kavya, the earliest known work of dynastic history in the Sanskrit language. He states that "different deities coexisted in peace like wild beasts forgetting their natural animosity in the vicinity of a holy hermitage.
This phenomenon of the peaceful coexistence of different creeds has been loosely called synthesis by several scholars before.
Actually the abstract philosophical concept with Hegelian overtones does not convey the right idea in this case.
It is true that different creeds coexisted, but no creed could be described as the anti-thesis arising from the thesis of Hinduism, and no synthesis had ever been formed. In fact there was no confrontation but only accommodation and peaceful growth in parallel ways.
Barring Jainism and Buddhism which practically disappeared, the other creeds continued to maintain their identity but still there was more of mutual co-operation than conflict. Therefore the present writer has borrowed the term symbiosis from natural science to describe this historical phenomenon in Kerala.
Historians have generally indulged in sentimental praise of the social harmony that existed in Kerala in the past but few have attempted the analytical approach with a view to discover the secret forces at work, their characteristic strength and limitations.
The location of the state on the Western seaboard, at the centre of the international highway of sea-borne trade connecting the East and the West, made it a meeting point of many worlds, a melting pot of races and creeds, from early times.
At the dawn of history we find this land fairly well-settled by Dravidians in a semi-tribal state of civilization. There was a casteless community vertically divided into groups on the basis of topography and occupation.
The first Aryan pioneers must have peeped into this Dravidian country some five hundred or four hundred years before the Christian era in the course of their southward expansion.
They were mostly agriculturists lured by the possibility of cultivating virgin lands, and traders who risked everything for money, and a few missionaries who carried forward the banner of Vedic culture.
More and more Aryans followed in the wake of the Jain exodus into the South under Chandragupta Maurya and the Buddhist missionary activity organised by Asoka. They came in large numbers representing the more advanced civilization of the North. Did their penetration to the South result in bloodshed and rivalry between the Aryan and Dravidian communities?
Possibly not, though an occasional conflict of interest here and there cannot be ruled out completely. In spite of the scanty nature of evidence we are able to ascertain the fact that they were mostly men of peace and that they were generally welcomed by the ruling chieftains as the heralds of prosperity and culture.
The caste system, and the consequent separation between the communities, appear to have manifested themselves only at a later stage.
Sangam works mention the Brahmin pioneers with great respect as teachers councillors and ambassadors of kings, as the makers of new codes of conduct, and the importers of higher philosophy and literature. Sage Agasthya is the best symbol of the civilising mission of the Aryan race.
The slowness and the gradualness of the Aryan migration to the South, spread over many centuries, must have made it less conspicuous and irritating than otherwise. The new-comers as well as the old inhabitants appear to have recognised that the process worked out to their mutual advantage.
The Ilava people, i. e. the people of Ilam or Ceylon, came to settle down in Kerala in large numbers during the Cera period. Many of them were skilled workmen as toddy-tappers, plying their trade peacefully. But many others came as ‘Cekor’ or mercenary soldiers in search of service and adventure.
We know from the records of the 9th and 10th centuries that the Ilava toddy-tappers were protected by guild rules.
The ‘Cekor’ who came from Ceylon are celebrated in the colourful medieval folksongs of North Kerala. Since both the skill in tapping and the skill in fighting were in great demand in those days, the Ilavas got a warm reception though the rigidity attained by the caste-system prevented them from rising in the social scale.
A complicating factor in Kerala social pattern was introduced by the presence of small communities of Israelite and Syrian origin through the ages. When exactly the Jewish merchants came first to settle down in the ports in large numbers cannot be ascertained though proof of the existence of trade between their kingdom and our parts can be traced back to the Old Testament of the Bible.
According to Jewish legends a colony of their people reached our shores following the destruction of Jerusalem in 78 A. D. This may or may not be true. We have concrete epigraphic evidence of Jewish settlements called Ancuvannam in Kollam city by the middle of the 9th century.
How did the rulers and people of Kerala happen to show such hospitality to these alien people professing alien creeds and practicising alien customs? What lay behind such tolerance? Was it the expression of the nation's innate generosity or a cosmopolitan philosophy?
There is another, more significant, explanation. It is a fact that early Jews and Christians came to this undeveloped semi-tribal Dravidian society, devoid of naval power and coinage, with shiploads of gold and the promise of trade. The interests of trade must have induced harmony in spite of religious and racial differences.
Therefore the Christian church established by Mar Sapir Iso in the 9th century came under the protection of the state and the king himself ordered Ilavar, Vellalar, Tachar, Vannar etc. to co-operate with the settlers.
Thus it was probably the wealth of Joseph Rabban, the Jew, which endeared him to the Cera king Bhaskara Ravi at the beginning of the 11th ceutury when the country was organising resistance against Cola aggression.
Therefore the king was ready to grant the Jew and his successors in perpetuity the privileges of a chieftain exempting him from several taxes. In other words, charity began at the market place for it is difficult for us, with our inhuman caste system, to proclaim to the world that charity begins at home.
The dominant elite of this country possessed the wisdom to guarantee security of trade and freedom of religion to the settlers who came in the wake of trade. The Brahmin-Kshatriya prejudice against trade and navigation also induced them to leave such 'vulgar' affairs in the hands of the foreigners.
Thus it was not difficult for the Jews and Christians, and the Muslims and Chettis, and Europeans at a later stage, to gain entry into the society of Kerala.
The ruling circles could not anticipate that in the long run these numerically small groups who were economically powerful could prosper and multiply and pose a threat to their sacred empire.
MGS ends this introductory essay on a ‘harmonious’ note. Says he –
Harmony in social life will be achieved today not by reviving old habits or outloook but by developing a new balance.
This does not mean that the historical background is unimportant in solving the problem today. On the contrary, understanding the past alone can help us to get out of the prejudices which surround us and see reality face to face.
To conclude with a lovely paragraph from Sahapedia on MGS –
For M.G.S., there are no sacred cows, no sacrosanct assumptions and no unquestionable perspectives in his approach to scholarship.
All evidence, all concepts and all theoretical frameworks must be rigorously and repeatedly tested and verified.
Only a person of such great humour and generosity could have provoked so many strong reactions, prodded so many recalcitrant intellectual opponents, and promoted so many diverse and controversial arguments—and still maintained the deep respect of colleagues in India and abroad.
A spirit of benign irreverence captures the approach that M.G.S. has passed on to this next generation well.
Moreover, as a visionary academic leader, he played a crucial role in establishing a specialized library and museum of Kerala History and Culture at the University of Calicut. He was Head of the Department of History at the University of Calicut from 1976 to 1990 and served as the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities as well.
In short, M. G. S. Narayanan is remembered as a historian who significantly shaped the understanding of Kerala’s past and was known for his independent and courageous approach to historical inquiry.
Some of the titles of his books (that he had either authored or edited) bear testimony to this fact –
Sample this –
Notes of Dissent: Essays on Indian History, published in 2018.
This book brought together ten essays – ‘essays that are characterized by their dissent to the commonly accepted notions in the field, a first requirement for the growth of knowledge.’
In this book, M.G.S. Narayanan and Kesavan Veluthat have written a seminal essay on the Bhakti Movement in south India, an essay that was considered iconoclastic and highly subversive! In this essay, MGS challenges the notion that it was an anti-caste movement, and puts forth the argument that, the Bhakti Movement was, instead, ‘a reflection and legitimation of the emerging feudal formation in South India’.
Irreverent History: Essays for M.G.S. Narayanan
This is a festschrift that brings together essays in honour of Professor M.G.S. Narayanana historian who brought about a veritable shift in the paradigm of historiography in Kerala through his painstaking epigraphical research that led to the publication of his classic Perumals of Kerala (1972).
Finally, to sum it up from the blurb to his book –
“In all of his work, Narayanan has pursued a relentless quest for truth apart from fads in theory and expediencies in politics. That pursuit was carried out with a charm, originality, and boldness that nettled some, but, more importantly, encouraged many”.
Therein lies the USP of MGS!
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