Alcohol and the Social Fabric: Prohibition and the Ezhava Caste Uplift Movement

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In the late 19th and early 20th century, a caste group associated with an ancestral occupation of fermenting the sap of coconut and palm trees along the Malabar coast built a multidirectional caste uplift movement rejecting the legitimacy of the caste system that oppressed them. Through the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, the Communist Party of India, and the Indian National Congress, Ezhavas demanded the eradication of the caste system as well as increased access to public goods and government employment. This paper examines the roots of the caste prejudice against alcohol in late colonial India as well as the varied approaches of Ezhava leaders like Sri Narayana Guru, T.K. Madhavan, and Sahodaran Ayyappan towards caste uplift organizing.

This paper seeks to show the links between colonial regimes of governance, direct and indirect, religious organization, and capital in the formation of a negative prejudice against alcohol consumers and producers in late colonial Kerala and the discursive tactics of social movement leaders and political activists seeking to battle both the orthodox social formations of South India and the British Empire. Hopefully such explication will shine a light on the cracks endemic in bourgeois nationalist politics and the possibility of radical transformative politics in colonial society.