In the 1920s and 30s there was a Malayali bureaucrat in the British Indian civil services who faced an unusual problem. KPS Menon—in time to become a diplomatic legend—hailed from Travancore state in present-day Kerala. He had gone abroad to study, successfully passed the ICS exam, and upon his return, married. As his family and he moved from one posting to the next, they took along with them a helper—a Nair lady called Nani Amma. There was, however, one complication: like most Malayali women of her time, Nani Amma did not wear a blouse. ‘At first,’ wrote Menon, ‘she was stubborn’. It was only when they threatened to ‘refuse to take her with us to the [North-West] Frontier [Province]…that she gave in.’ After all, the Pathans of Peshawar would have been somewhat scandalised at the sight of a bare-breasted woman prancing about. For Nani Amma, though, defeat was not absolute—for ‘whenever we went on leave to Malabar, as soon as we crossed the Western Ghats into Palghat, she would throw off her blouse and be gloriously free.’[1]

The advent of the blouse in Kerala—and the notion that an uncovered female body is somehow intrinsically problematic—is relatively recent. To many, in fact, it would be surprising that in rural parts, as late as the 1960s it was not tough to find bare-breasted women. Today, however, popular ideas around this are convoluted. The general argument—urged sometimes even in academic circles—is that women of marginalised castes alone were barred from shielding their bodies, the assumption being that ‘covering breasts’ is a natural, universal component of female dignity, as opposed to a specific social convention. Worse, it is claimed, there was a ‘breast tax’ called mulakkaram, which required any ‘lower’ caste woman, should she desire to cover up, to dish out money to the government. An example in this regard is presented in the tale of Nangeli, an Ezhava woman who is believed to have chopped off her breasts and thrown it before the tax-collectors in protest. ‘Women,’ some scholars have claimed, ‘were denied the right to proper dressing nowhere else in India other than in pre-modern Kerala.’[2] Note here the word ‘proper’, because much will depend on whether propriety can be defined without delving into a culture’s own norms and historical context.[3]

What, then, is this context? Across vast swathes of India, it was at one time perfectly normal for women—like men—to move about topless. In the 1590s, for instance, Abul Fazl, the Mughal chronicler, wrote of Bengalis: ‘men and women for the most part go naked wearing only a cloth (lungi) about the loins.’[4] In Karnataka we have the eighteenth-century story of Tipu Sultan being offended by the sight of a bare-chested Lingayat woman, and cutting off her breasts.[5] In Tamil Nadu, similarly, women wore saris, but until a few generations ago did not always add a blouse with it. In fact, even where blouses were worn, visual material from the nineteenth century exists where the breasts are still exposed. That is, blouses were not necessarily breast-coverings. See, for instance, the images below, of a Brahmin woman, a ‘devadasi’, a lady of the ruling classes with her attendants, and a Parayar caste (Dalit) couple.[6] This is not to say that no women wore blouses that did cover the breasts, but only to note that breast-covering was not a uniform affair, with a standard logic. And as this essay will argue, the upset we today feel at the notion of bare-breasted women is the product of a specific gaze that was internalised, at least in Kerala, in the colonial period.

In exploring this subject, the first question to ask is: Were only women of marginalised castes bare-breasted, or did privileged-caste women also go topless?

Let us begin with some travellers’ accounts.

In 1623, Pietro della Valle, an Italian, arrived in Kozhikode, the seat of Kerala’s most powerful ruler at the time. In the city’s markets he noticed how men and women were ‘quite naked’, with merely a loincloth around their waists. The chief detail, suggestive of economic status, was that some wore silk, others cotton. On reaching the palace to see the king, this abbreviated sense of dress was again in evidence. Thus, when della Valle encountered two princesses, both were ‘naked’ except ‘they had a very small blew [sic] cloth wrap’d around their waists’. Befitting their status, they wore much jewellery, of course—a Malayali passion that continues—but fabric was scant. Indeed, the princesses were amused that their European visitors looked so ‘entangled in Clothes’. ‘Such,’ concluded the Italian, ‘is the power of Custom that their going naked seem’d no more strange to us than our being cloth’d appeared extravagant to them.’ The queen, ‘a Woman of ripe Age’, meanwhile, was also similarly dressed, with a blue cloth around her ‘lower parts’ and ‘abundantly adorned with Jewels.’[7]

Decades later, the Dutch captain John Nieuhoff interacted with another Malayali woman, this time in south Kerala. In a 1660s audience with the queen of Kollam, he noticed her guard of 700 soldiers, but also that ‘the Queen’s attirement’ was ‘no more than a piece of callicoe [cloth] wrapt around her middle, the upper part of her body appearing for the most part naked, with a piece of callicoe carelessly round her shoulders.’ In a picture made to commemorate the event the queen is shown wearing this upper shawl, but in a way that left her breasts visible; the cloth, that is, was not specifically a cover for the breasts. Indeed, as photographic evidence even from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows, privileged-caste Kerala women, who wore an upper cloth, did so more as a marker of status, than to hide their breasts. Covering breasts for the sake of it—as a ‘normal’, implicit aspect of female dignity—simply did not factor in their worldview. Today doing so is ‘normal’, yes, because we are conditioned this way; their normal, back then, however, did not place any such expectations on them.

John Henry Grose, an Englishman writing in 1772, followed in the same vein: ‘The women of [Kerala] are not allowed to cover any parts of their breasts, to the naked display of which they annex no idea of immodesty, which in fact ceases by the familiarity of it to the eye.’ Even Europeans, he added, not accustomed to this found titillation ‘wear off’ from the ‘frequency’—or, if you will, normalcy—of bare breasted ladies around them. So much so, that eventually ‘they view[ed] it with as little emotion as the natives themselves, or as any of the most obvious parts of the body, [like] the face, or hands.’[8] To cite KPS Menon again, in the context of his own community, ‘The Nairs had no reason to shun the mention of breasts’ in his youth ‘for there they were for all to see.’[9] This did not mean breasts were devoid of sexual interest (shortlisting brides for him, Menon’s sister-in-law catalogued their breasts as being like melons, papayas, and ‘golden goblets which would satisfy me’[10]). Only that, as with the male torso—which is not devoid of sexual allure either—nobody felt any contingent need to cover up.

Coming from this tradition, one can see why Nani Amma found it so strange to be forced into a blouse—it felt positively alien. So much so that when Menon moved to Sri Lanka, she asked ‘whether it was really necessary’ for her to wear a blouse even here—after all the climate, the landscape, and much else was reminiscent of home. He appears to have insisted that she should. Personally, of course, Menon wore ‘just a loin-cloth’ in the afternoons, because as a man it was still permissible to do this.[11] Yet for females the rules had been modified. Menon grew up with bare-breasted women, but with exposure to the wider world, he too came to frown upon that old tradition. He had absorbed (and was now endorsing) an external gaze in which women’s bodies necessarily needed covering up. To not do so became ‘abnormal’—or to channel the scholars referred to earlier, it was no longer ‘proper’.[12] Which is fine, given that sensibilities change over time in every culture. Trouble arises, however, when we project a modern dynamic into the past to trigger unhistorical outrage and a well-meaning but misplaced indignation.

But other than memoirs and Europeans’ accounts, do we have more evidence?

Europeans often tended to exaggerate ‘exotic’ elements in other cultures. In the matter of bare breasts, though, their centuries-old observations do stand the test of scrutiny. For in addition to written material, we also have photographic evidence from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to support their claims.

Consider, for instance, the above images. The picture on the right depicts the rajah of Cochin who came to power in 1895 in his everyday attire. The other features the rani of Cochin in the same period (probably his mother or aunt) who is dressed in the exact manner—with a mundu around the waist and her upper body bare. This image is on display at the Mattanchery Palace Museum in Fort Kochi even today. In other words, these pictures depict the king and queen of one of India’s most important princely states. They came from the cream of society,[13] and yet the rani had no qualms posing for the camera in her usual attire, bare-breasted. Because this was what tradition prescribed; this was the ‘proper’ notion of dress in her generation, even for women of high birth. Like Nani Amma, she had been raised in a culture that viewed both male and female bare-chestedness as equally acceptable. One can safely say, then, that among the aristocracy too, there was no great fuss about women—like men—freely airing their upper bodies.

It was the same with Brahmins. In her memoirs, Devaki Nilayamgode, a Namboodiri Brahmin, speaks of an interaction with two fashionable Nair cousins in her ancestral home.[14] These girls had, by this point in the twentieth century, taken to the cult of the blouse, presumably due to exposure to modern education. Subhadra and Bharathi, writes Nilayamgode, ‘had knee-length hair, wore colourful blouses, and zari-bordered mundus with an upper cloth, plenty of gold ornaments, and perfume as well.’ About her own Brahmin sister Nilayamgode observes at the same time: ‘She did not wear a blouse, had neither a zari-bordered mundu nor any jewellery’.[15] In other words, parishkaram (modernity) had not yet touched her sister, who continued to dress and carry herself in the old style—bare-breasted. While modernity was making blouses the ‘new normal’ in Kerala, orthodox elites were slow, even reluctant, to catch on. This applied to men as well, for Namboodiri elders frowned on the wearing of shirts too. As J. Devika notes, at a school set up by reformers for Brahmin boys, shirts were actively barred at first.[16]

Unsurprisingly, photographic material featuring Namboodiri females matches the pattern we saw with the queen of Cochin earlier. The first image below, for instance, depicts Nair women dressed in the garb of Brahmin ladies.[17] It is an unusual picture, that also explains certain social dynamics. Namboodiri women were ghosha, i.e., they could not, as per custom, be seen by men outside an immediate family circle. Nonetheless, during weddings, tradition dictated that the bridegroom ought to be received by the bride’s female relations. The result was an amusing compromise: while the Namboodiri ladies did not come out, their Nair servants would dress up as them to receive the wedding party! In other words, the picture below depicts Nair proxies, but in the customary attire of Brahmin women.[18] And what do we see? There is an upper cloth, but it is twisted and wound around the torso, as is done on ritual occasions even now.[19] The breasts, meanwhile, are exposed. The other picture of an elderly Namboodiri lady in traditional garb also features much jewellery but a bare torso.

Interestingly, when Namboodiri women moved in public spaces, on their way to the temple for example, they did cover up. They would shroud themselves with a long cloth (pudappu), holding a parasol, to ensure ghosha was not breached and no outsider cast their eye on them. One might argue that this meant Brahmin women covered their breasts in public.[20] While technically true, it would be a misreading. For in ghosha, they covered everything (see the brides here). Breasts were hidden only in the sense that arms, legs, shoulders, and indeed faces were covered. To assume from ghosha that Namboodiri women ‘covered their breasts’ on a routine basis is akin to arguing that the traditional dress of veiled Muslim women is the burkha. What matters is the everyday attire of Brahmin ladies. And insofar as Namboodiris were concerned they stayed, much like other Malayalis, topless.[21] Indeed, oral history has it that the first women to wear blouses were ostracised by conservative elements in the Namboodiri community. Just as the act of men wearing shirts also spelled rebellion. There was no difference.

Yet, with Brahmin women largely secluded from the public gaze, it is better to present examples of ‘high’-caste women who were not veiled. The first image below depicts a Chakyar man with two Nangiar women. Both groups are hereditary temple servitors, and their men wore the poonool (sacred thread). The Nangiars were not ghosha and performed in temples—in the second image a woman is visible seated on the floor. As these pictures show, females of this ‘high’ temple service caste were also topless. There is little to separate this poonool-wearing set in terms of appearance from a group of Kaniyans (a ‘low’ caste) in the third image. ‘High’-caste women participating in temple processions also did so topless, as the next image confirms. And just as men even now enter shrines in Kerala shirtless, historically women did so too. There are stray cases even today; the journalist (and my friend) Sruthin Lal, photographed a Nair nonagenarian in 2023 from his village near Kozhikode who even in the twenty-first century moved around bare-breasted. She had never in her life worn a blouse.[22]

Before proceeding, though, it may be worth noting that minimal clothing was not exclusive to women. Our obsession with female bodies—itself a product of the assumption that women in particular ‘ought’ to dress a certain way—blinds us to the fact that male semi-nudity was equally the norm.[23] On Brahmins for instance, The Cochin Tribes and Castes notes in a judgmental, self-consciously modern tone: ‘The Nambuthiris are very sparing in their clothing, and do not seem to feel the shame of walking about almost naked… when he is at prayers, he is…either covered by a small loin cloth or only with a koupinam, which is a repulsive sight to others…Their mode of dressing on religious occasions is…known as Thattudukkal…[which] exhibits a front covered by numerous folds hanging down from the waist to the feet, while the buttocks are almost exposed.’[24] The image below features the Azhvanchery Tambrakkal, the greatest Namboodiri dignitary, in this traditional attire. Here too, however, a ‘new normal’ would soon be applied. The Cochin rajah, for example, is reported to have prohibited these ‘orthodox nudists’ from carrying on this way, imposing a modern code of ‘decency’.[25]

In other words, what was once acceptable for men and women both, slowly became shameful. And it is from this prism that we today perceive Kerala’s historical clothing practices—and then take umbrage.

The matter of the upper cloth

It should be clear by now that ‘high’-caste women in Kerala had no qualms about bare breasts either, and that this was not cause for special concern among Malayalis. It was just as ‘normal’ as men lounging about (as they do even today) in lungis, with their torsos bare. Or to quote Sheikh Zainuddin Makhdoom from his 1583 text, the Tuhfat al-Mujahidin—which predates the European accounts described earlier—‘men and women, elders and youngsters, the rich and the poor, the kings and the subjects, all alike’ in Kerala ‘expose[d] their bodies’ and wore just a ‘short piece of cloth’ from the waist down.[26]

However, it is a fact that ‘upper’-caste groups did, usually when going out, carry a cloth, which in some contexts has been called a ‘shoulder cloth’ and in others a ‘breast cloth’. This garment is a source of controversy, the claim being that while savarna women could cover their breasts with it, the same privilege was denied to avarna women. By extension, the argument returns that ‘high’-caste women draped their torsos but the ‘low’ could not in any circumstances. While this claim is, in and of itself, simplistic, note once more (a) the focus on the female body (ignoring male bare-chestedness and shoulder cloth usage) and (b) the assumption again that ‘covering breasts’ is non-negotiable for women and their ‘modesty’; that there is something offensive or deeply ‘improper’ if women’s breasts are exposed, and so the cloth ‘must’ have been a breast-cover. In any case, before we examine the matter of the cloth, let us see what historical sources tell us about notions of ‘modesty’ in Kerala.

Writing in the nineteenth century, William Logan, author of the Malabar Manual, observed how ‘by custom the Nayar women go uncovered from the waist’. Indeed, ‘upper garments indicate lower caste, or sometimes, by a strange reversal of Western notions, [even] immodesty.’[27] Others like Mary Billington noted the same: that women wore a loincloth and ‘by a curious perversion of the views which generally obtain, it is indicative of immodesty of life and low caste to cover either shoulders or bust.’[28] The author of the Malabar Gazetteer affirmed these claims in 1908.[29] More memorably, the writer Aubrey Menen recalled his Irish mother’s meeting with her Nair mother-in-law in the 1920s. The Malayali lady received Menen’s mother ‘formally: that is to say, with her breasts completely bare.’ While by this time younger women had begun to blouse-up, Menen’s grandmother held on to the old ways. In fact, he joked, she ‘thought that married women who wore blouses and pretty saris were Jezebels’ and ‘in her view, a wife who dressed herself could only be aiming at adultery.’[30]

And yet there was an upper cloth. What was that all about? And was it intended as a breast-cover? The answer is in the negative. Note for example this studio photograph of Parampote Ammalu Amma, a Nair matriarch from Palakkad, circa 1929, with her grandson, MP Ramachandra Menon. Menon’s uncles were the freedom fighters MP Narayana Menon and MP Govinda Menon,[31] and in this picture the boy appears with a shirt on, demonstrating modern impulses. His elderly grandmother—with bhasmam on her body and a rudrakshamala, signifying orthodoxy and piety—is bare-breasted. Looking closely, one sees that she does carry an upper cloth, but it has been folded and placed in her lap as she poses for the camera. In other words, the cloth we assume was used to ‘cover breasts’ is present, but is not, in fact, utilised to conceal the lady’s upper body. Take also the image below with several photographs of Nair women: two use the cloth to cover their breasts, two simply have it thrown over their arms, and the last (‘Rural Nayar’) has no cloth at all. Even with the cloth, that is, women could stay bare-breasted.[32]

What then was the purpose of the cloth? As mentioned before, an upper cloth was a mark of rank and status. Even today at public functions, we honour dignitaries by presenting a shawl or placing it on their shoulders. To wear a cloth was a signal that one belonged to a ‘superior’ social category. By the same yardstick, if one encountered someone even ‘higher’, the cloth was removed as a salutation and an acknowledgment of one’s inferiority. This was not gendered or specific to women. In Nair families, for instance, nephews would never appear before uncles (karnavans) with an upper cloth; it was a sign of disrespect. An ordinary Nair villager passing a Brahmin would remove his cloth but he would do the same even with the local Nair lord. Today the emphasis is on how women had to take off the cloth before ‘high’-caste men. Yet the historical fact is that men did the same before ‘superior’ women; ‘lower’-status females took off the cloth before ‘higher’-status females; and that this practise was not exclusive to avarnas. Add the fact that ‘covering breasts’ was not a factor in Kerala, and the cloth’s intent comes into perspective.

Consider, thus, the picture above. It is a 1938 newspaper image showing members of the Koopakkara Potti family—a Brahmin household linked to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram—awaiting the arrival of the Travancore maharajah. All six males in it have an upper cloth, but it has been folded and tucked under the arm. Because they are about to receive their patron (and superior), the king. The image below, similarly, depicts Pareekshith Thampuran of Cochin at his desk; in his presence, the other person holds his upper cloth in his hands, and does not leave it on his shoulder. In the next picture of the same ruler, several of the men (including those wearing shirts) have upper cloths. But these are tied around the waist, for it would be lese majeste to sport a shoulder cloth near the maharajah. Two images further down show similar conduct around the Zamorin of Kozhikode. The same rules applied to women: if they had a cloth, and encountered a superior of either gender, they were expected to discard it. For example, if an ordinary Nair couple met a Nair lord on the road, both woman and man would remove their cloths. And if that grandee saw a princess, he’d do the same in turn.[33]

Of course, today when we read statements along the lines of ‘marginalised caste ladies had to take off their garments before high caste men’ it sounds troubling and loaded with a voyeuristic sexual quality. Yet if we suspend modern norms and view the subject in its historical context, we see that both genders were constantly removing the cloth in various settings: before elders, before social superiors, before god in temples (where even the king had to appear topless) and so on.[34] Outrage now fixates on ‘lower’ status women being bare-breasted before ‘higher’-rank males; but historical notes exist on how ‘high’-ranking women were as demanding. There is, for instance, the tale of a Nair woman whose breasts were cut off because she had not removed the cloth in the presence of another (‘superior’) Nair lady—the wife of Kozhikode’s king.[35] An eighteenth-century queen of Attingal similarly had a woman mutilated because the latter, under European influence, came into the royal presence covered up; it was a ‘mark of disrespect’.[36] As late as the twentieth century, a bodice-wearing Nair woman in the temple in Thirupunithura had it stripped off her because a princess was in the shrine.[37]

The issue was not so much, as we might assume, that ‘breasts were covered’. Not least, because the princess herself would have been uncovered within the temple. What mattered was that a covered torso around a ‘superior’ breached the rules of a caste-based order. Hierarchy, after all, pervaded everything in Indian society, including, for instance, language. Thus, Samuel Mateer, the missionary, recorded how a (Dalit) Pulaya would always, around a caste ‘superior’, refer to himself as adiyen (‘your slave’), and stand with a ‘hand over the mouth, lest the breath should go forth and pollute the [other] person’.[38] But ‘upper’ caste persons also followed these rules: Mateer adds how Nair men too would ‘stand with the left arm crossed on the breast and the right hand over the mouth’ in the presence of their elders.[39] In the palace in Travancore, junior princes referred to themselves as ‘your vassal’ before the ruling maharajah.[40] To their subordinates, they were all royalty, but in the family hierarchy, they had to behave as per their rank, assuming a supplicant tone. Depending on context, everyone submitted to these rules, from the ‘highest’ to the ‘lowest’, one way or another. It was not just ‘lower’ caste groups whose torsos had to be bared. Even ordinary Brahmins had to do this, in the presence of royalty (queens included) and in temples.[41]

Of course, to us today appalled by caste and having ingrained the sensibility that women should never be topless, it sounds outlandish that, like men, they bared their bodies. But given how (a) across the hierarchy and across genders, an exposed upper body was perfectly ‘normal’ and (b) that the removal of cloths (carried as a mark of rank) was a form of salutation, we might benefit from diluting our judgement. Avarnas (women and men) were indeed largely denied the upper cloth, but this was not to deprive them of a breast-cover per se. It was more an aspect of their caste status. And while we disapprove now of such hierarchies, to reduce this phenomenon to ‘lower caste women had to bare breasts before upper caste men, OMG that is terrible’ flattens and renders simplistic a more complex reality. Besides, there were ‘lower’-caste females who did enjoy the right to the cloth—and when some of their caste-peers sought the privilege, they too saw it as an affront and objected. This is what we will delve into in the next section, with a survey of the famous nineteenth-century ‘upper cloth’ revolts.

Fighting to cover breasts or for status?

Among the earliest authorities to insist that women should cover their breasts in Kerala was an obscure Muslim adventurer in the late seventeenth century. Popularly remembered by the moniker ‘Mukilan’, he was probably connected to the Mughal empire, which in this time had extended into southern India. This warlord did not linger for too long, but during his stint, he ‘imposed certain customs’ on people living between ‘Varkala and Vilavankod’. One of these was that ‘Sudra women should cover the upper part of their bodies with a cloth’.[42] Interestingly, a scholar recently argued that this ‘Mughal ruler’ (sic) has been ‘projected as an epitome of evil’ by ‘upper-caste Hindu historians’. Apparently, he deserves a better image, for he ‘could not brook the sight of lower-caste women roaming the streets with their breasts bared’.[43] As far as I can see, the original source does not say anything about ‘lower-caste women’; the term ‘Sudra’ in publications like the Travancore State Manual refers typically to Nairs. Besides, while an outsider like Mukilan may have been scandalised by bare breasts, it would have been news to Malayali women of all castes that there was anything even vaguely embarrassing about it.

Be that as it may, in the Mukilan episode, what we see is an outsider, shocked by local customs, imposing by decree the covering of breasts. Yet the first major instance of local women themselves asking for something (seemingly) similar appears only in the nineteenth century. And much of this was due to the work and influence of foreign missionaries in Travancore in this period, who brought in new ideas, new forms of mobilisation, but also an outsider’s (male) gaze towards the female body. And in the process while male bare-chestedness continued without controversy, women’s breasts generated decades-long agitation, violence, and more. It was from this period that ‘covering breasts’ as a specific, gendered affair really began to take root in the region and in public discourse. Hereon, with the spread of English education and ideas, Malayalis would start internalising the notion that the female torso must not be visible. That is, the parishkaram, which would touch Namboodiri women last in the 1920s, first reared its head in the early 1800s. And it all began with a ‘lower’-caste group called both Shanars and Nadars in south Travancore, who occupied a position matching that of the Malayali Ezhavas.

The Nadars were a large community of Tamil origin. Considered ritually ‘impure’, most were tenants and peasants under ‘higher’-ranking Nairs and Vellalas. The majority, given their caste position, faced several restrictions: they could not use gold, carry parasols, build grand houses, and importantly for our purposes, they did not possess the right to the upper cloth.[44] However, there were among them certain elites called ‘Nadans’ who had special privileges, including use of the cloth.[45] That is, within this avarna community, the average Nadar was denied the cloth while ‘higher’-status Nadans were not. In the early 1800s, with Travancore controlled by the British through two evangelical East India Company representatives (Col. Macaulay and then Col. Munro), missionary groups began arriving in the state. The Nadars were amenable to conversion as an escape from their degraded social position. Unlike Dalit populations which were smaller in number, their large size allowed a degree of heft to pursue social aspirations. Links to Nadars in Tamil Nadu also exposed them to the possibility of a better life. So, slowly they would lay claim to that special caste-based privilege: the upper cloth.

In 1812 Munro—who was effectively the ruler of Travancore—issued a proclamation stating that women of the Ezhava ‘and such like castes’ who had embraced Christianity could hereon ‘cover their bosoms as obtains among Christians in other countries’.[46] Shortly after, though, another order clarified that while Ezhava and Nadar converts could wear ‘jackets called coopayam’ of the type used by Muslims etc., they should not wear the upper cloth of Nair females.[47] In other words, they could cover their breasts if they desired (and as the missionaries wished), but they could not claim the status-marker that was the upper cloth. However, as a scholar writes, while the kuppayams (tunics) ‘satisfied the modesty of the European[s]’ in the missions, ‘it did not meet the social aspirations’ of the Nadars. This was natural: they came from a society where covered breasts by itself meant nothing; what they sought was dignity. And this was not served by blouses or tunics. The mark of honour was the cloth. And so, the Nadars began to seek ‘the upper cloth in addition to or instead of the kuppayam’.[48] In other words, at the core of the so-called ‘breast-cloth agitation’ was not a desire to cover up but a yearning for status.

Today these events are often presented as a fight by marginalised caste females to cover their torsos. But as mentioned, as early as 1812 permission was given in the form of kuppayams; if ‘covering breasts’ were the issue, the matter should have ended there. Trouble arose, however, not because these women covered up but because they aspired to the upper cloth. The result was recurring tensions, lasting till the 1850s, as Nairs objected to Nadars seeking this privilege. In 1829, the Travancore rani decried this ‘pretension of the [Nadar] women’.[49] It was clarified again that they could cover their breasts but not with the cloth, which was a caste-based privilege. Interestingly, elite Nadans too, who already wore the cloth as part of their ‘higher’ rank, agreed with the state. Some of them also believed that ordinary Nadars must not be granted the upper cloth.[50] Yet again what becomes clear is that these agitations were not about ‘covering breasts’, but about social mobility. Yes, to missionaries and Europeans ‘covering breasts’ was a cause in itself to promote a new sense of ‘decency’. Or to use another expression, ‘to civilise the natives’. What the converts themselves demanded, however, was not so much Western style ‘decency’, but dignity as defined by local norms and standards.[51]

In the following decades, the Nadars and Nairs clashed on several occasions violently. Nadar women, writes Dick Kooiman, ‘were publicly stripped of their breast cloth, without distinction always being made between the disputed upper cloth and the legally permitted Christian jacket.’ In this we can see that the Nairs objected to ‘low’-caste folk covering their upper bodies, attempting a return to a pre-1812 order of things.[52] The Nadars in turn fought back.[53] In 1858-1859 there were riots in south Travancore, when Nadars flaunted the cloth, and Nairs attacked them. The British authorities were sympathetic to the former and pressed the Travancore state to act. The issue culminated in a fresh proclamation. But there was nothing new here. The Nadars were (again) informed they could cover their breasts according to European norms of ‘decency’ by wearing jackets, or by tying a cloth under the shoulders ‘as the Mukkavattigal’ or fisherwomen.[54] What they could not do, it was yet again stated, was wear the blouse-free cloth ‘like women of high caste.’[55] The issue continued to simmer, and the aspiration of Nadar women for the cloth remained, officially at least, unmet.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, let me stress a key fact here: that in the ‘breast-cloth’ agitation, the focus of the women themselves was less on the ‘breast’ part, and more on the ‘cloth’. If they were fighting for a right to ‘cover breasts’, as popular imagination has it, they would have been satisfied was early as 1812 with kuppayams. Indeed, as an official later wrote, these tunics were ‘a more decent covering than the upper cloth’, decency being defined by Western standards.[56] The very fact that protests continued for a half-century afterwards suggests that the fight was never about ‘modesty’, ‘decency’, or an abstract right to ‘cover breasts’ as the missionaries saw it.[57] It was about rejecting caste disabilities and claiming a ‘higher’ position for the Nadars—aspects symbolised in the upper cloth. As we saw, in the way the Nairs wore it, the breasts were often exposed even with the cloth; but that is precisely what the Nadars desired. Interestingly, while Nairs were hostile to them, the Nadars, even in this age of protests, were just as hostile to castes further down the ladder.[58] This was not a movement to free all marginalised groups of caste-based oppression; it was one community’s desire to move up the social ladder.

Amusingly, when the missionaries first designed special jackets for their converts, many wanted nothing to do with them. Older ladies dismissed ‘these new-fangled customs’ while the younger often viewed the jackets with ‘abhorrence’.[59] Indeed, even a century later, by which time it was more and more ‘normal’ for women to wear blouses, many resisted it. J. Devika has collected several examples of women from marginalised groups avoiding the blouse. One reformer, thus, had a group of Ezhava ladies march in blouses. It began well but as people gathered, many of the women took off the garment and ‘put them on their laps.’[60] Among the Arayar, there were cases where force was used ‘to clothe women who refused to be reformed’,[61] while with the Thiyya women of Malabar, many held that only ‘prostitutes’ covered their breasts; dignified women had no reason to do so.[62] The reformer CV Kunhiraman’s mother-in-law, in fact, when she saw her daughter in a blouse lambasted her for dressing like an attakkari (dancing girl).[63] Just like Devaki Nilayamgode’s Brahmin sister, KPS Menon’s attendant Nani Amma, and Aubrey Menen’s Nair grandmother, these avarna women too thought the blouse an intrusion.

Put simply, across caste divides, women who never saw their breasts as problematic resisted the blouse. But as modern values reshaped society—the term ‘modern’ reflecting a mix of Indian ideas with Western morality—things began to change. And even ‘upper’-caste brides went, for example, from looking like the girl in the image above to the ‘decent’ sari-clad woman we are familiar with today.

Nangeli’s Tale: fact, myth, or something in between?

By this point we have covered several things. (a) That women in Kerala in general walked about with bare torsos just like Malayali men did. (b) That nobody, except outsiders, saw this as odd or strange or controversial till the colonial period. (c) That ‘upper’ caste groups wore a cloth on their persons loosely and (d) that this was not specifically a breast cover, but a symbol of status. (e) That missionaries introduced new ideas of ‘modesty’ for women in particular and yet (f) their own converts showed little enthusiasm for the blouse. And (g) that in time, even when modern education disseminated a new code of ‘decency’ and blouses began to be worn, there were still women—of ‘high’-caste and ‘low’—who found it jarring. All the above must be borne in mind as we examine the story of Nangeli, celebrated today in books, comic strips, and even statues. She is projected in popular imagination as an avarna woman who fought to ‘cover her breasts’, and who, through her sacrifice, marked a sharp rejection of caste and prevailing social mores. While the second part of the claim adds up, the first (on her demand to ‘cover her breasts’) does not agree with the historical record.

To start with, what is the popular story that one will most easily find circulating online? Nangeli and her husband were an Ezhava couple in Cherthala. As members of this caste, they were subjected to all kinds of oppressions, including the mulakkaram or breast tax. In a graphic retelling by Orijit Sen, thus, we read how avarna women had to pay this tax if they wished to cover their bodies. ‘To add insult to injury, the tax was calculated according to the size of their breasts: The larger the breasts, the higher the tax!’ An article in the Madras Courier makes similar claims. When girls ‘began developing breasts’ they would (‘naturally’, I suppose) wish to cover up. But this ‘entailed the humiliating experience of breast-size measurement’ by government agents. The only way to avoid the tax was ‘if women chose to bare their breasts.’ In other words, you either paid and covered, or you left yourself exposed to the leering gaze of men. This claim has been repeated by scholars even in academic journals.[64] One day, the story continues, tax collectors came to Nangeli’s door. She had had enough of these hideous taxes and so she cut off her breasts, and died in the process. That is the sum of the story as popularly believed today.

There are, however, wild exaggerations here. To start with, nobody was going about measuring women’s breasts. There is absolutely no proof (or even likelihood) of such a practice. Secondly, ‘covering breasts’, as we saw, was not a concept in Malayali society—the upper cloth was a status symbol, not a breast-cover, and a woman of Nangeli’s era would not have found it at all troubling to move around bare-breasted. It is unlikely, then, that she cut off her breasts to ‘fight’ for a right that meant nothing at all in that age. Then comes the tax itself. This too has been misunderstood. Starting from the 1750s, the Travancore government charged a poll-tax (i.e., a payment per individual) on Nadars, Ezhavas, Mukkuvas, the Parayar, Pulayar, and so on, all of these being marginalised groups. Headmen were chosen from these castes itself to ensure compliance, and around 1808 the amount obtained from Nadars and Ezhavas alone is reported to have been 88,000 rupees.[65] Then, in 1815, under Col. Munro’s influence, and pressure from Christian missionaries, these taxes were abolished by the rani of Travancore.[66] The tax Nangeli was resisting was this caste-based capitation, and not a tax to ‘cover breasts’.

Today, in fact, the story is retold with so much hyperbole, that many doubt it altogether. We must, however, be wary of dismissing Nangeli outright, for historical consciousness, especially among marginalised groups, is often condensed into song and lore. In a society where writing was the preserve of elites, expecting documentary evidence on an Ezhava woman is a bit unreasonable. Significantly, this tale of a woman cutting off her breast in protest exists in the lore of another group too—the Mala Arayan tribe in Travancore. As LKA Iyer recorded in 1937, the Poonjar rajah also charged a poll tax from Arayans in his province. ‘The head money,’ we read, ‘was popularly known as “thalakaram” in the case of males and “mulakaram” in the case of females.’ The tribes struggled to pay, and things got so bad that once when the taxman pressed them, the Arayans ‘cut off the head’ of a man for the talakkaram (literally ‘head tax’), and a woman’s breast for the mulakkaram (‘breast-tax’).[67] Note that beyond being called ‘breast tax’, this had little to do with breasts; the term just distinguished women and the rate they paid from the talakkaram or head tax paid by men. Under the Travancore government itself, in fact, there was just one expression used for both sexes, namely talayara.

Either way, this story of a woman cutting off her breast in protest of a tax clearly has some basis in oral history among the Mala Arayans. What can justifiably puzzle us is the recurrence of this, in almost the same style, with an Ezhava woman, as claimed in the Nangeli story. There are several ways to interpret this: that an existing narrative was ‘borrowed’ by another group to mark their own dissent; that a second incident did occur (for example, self-immolation as a mode of protest has taken place in various places—the practice likely emerged in one incident and then ‘travelled’ elsewhere); or, more uncharitably, that Nangeli is a fabrication that appropriates a tribal event and recasts it as part of another, more influential avarna group’s self-mythology in the course of its political mobilisation. The stage also grows bigger: from a small hill-territory it moves to Travancore more broadly, while the oppressor is no longer a local chieftain but the more well-known maharajah in Thiruvananthapuram. My own view is that as with the woman of the hills, it is possible that an Ezhava lady also cut off her breasts. However, suspicions about the Ezhava account are also understandable.

What we can say for sure, however, is this: that at least one avarna group’s oral history does record a woman who registered her protest by chopping off a breast. The breast tax, though, despite its name, was a caste-discriminatory poll tax, and not a payment to ‘cover breasts’. Viewed in this perspective, half of the melodrama wound around the Nangeli story—and the resultant outrage animating everything from Instagram posts to blogs—dissipates. It is important to view history through a sober lens, instead of getting carried away. Popular accounts tell a ‘good’ story, but it is not the historically grounded story.

The Triumph of the Blouse

By the middle of the twentieth century, it was clear that Malayalis—under Victorian influences and modern education—had, like people elsewhere, begun to expect women to cover the upper body. Naturally, this was a long process in which the torso was hidden in various ways, till the standardised sari and blouse became popular. Even the mundum-neriyathum that we now take for granted as the Malayali woman’s ‘traditional dress’ went through more than one iteration before assuming its final, present-day avatar.

Traditionally, the only women who wore tunics and blouses among Malayalis were Muslims and Christians. The influence most likely arrived from outside: in the case of the Muslims, via their links with Arabia and because of Islam’s specific definition of ‘modesty’, and for Syrian Christians in the form of religious dignitaries from the Persian church. What is interesting about the latter, however, is that at home their women too were typically topless. And given that they traditionally held an elite position in society, they also possessed the right to the upper cloth (unlike the ‘lower’-caste converts of the nineteenth century). See for example the image above from Sonja Thomas’s Privileged Minorities (2018). When I first came across this image, I asked in my own family. My grandmother, born in 1938, recalls elderly Nasrani ladies in her childhood who wore the chattayum mundum (with a tunic) on formal occasions and in church. For the rest of the time, though, they dressed like the lady in this image, bare-breasted with a loose cloth on, like her own Hindu relatives.

Among Hindu women, the internalising of the idea of covered breasts has a slow trajectory. As far as I can tell, it was in the early nineteenth century that Travancore’s queens began to cover their torsos and conform to colonial sensibilities. In 1810, the state was ruled by a woman called Gowri Lakshmi Bayi (below), though real authority was with the British representative, Col. Munro. He was the same Englishman who urged Christian converts to cover themselves, and visual evidence suggests that the rani began to do so too. This could have been because of her regular interactions with white men. To contextualise, years later Edgar Thurston would observe how Tamil women ‘with breasts partially uncovered’ would not be conscious of this with their ‘fellow-countrymen’. But if they encountered a European—aware of the latter’s views and gaze vis-à-vis the female body—they would ‘pull the cloth over’ their breasts ‘from a feeling of shame’.[68] It would not be far-fetched to imagine that the Travancore rani too (whose seventeenth century ancestor in Kollam was confidently bare-breasted) now felt the need to dress differently before such dominating figures like Munro.[69]

The result was a form of dress called both mulakachcha and methukettu. In this, in addition to the usual mundu draped around the waist, a second one would be fastened around the upper body, leaving the shoulders bare (see above). And through the course of the nineteenth century, this would become the official court attire of Travancore’s ranis. Soon it fanned out to the aristocracy, including elite Nairs. However, this did not end bare-breastedness. For instance, see the images below of Mangala Bayi, sister of Raja Ravi Varma, a Kshatriya related to the royal family. On the left she appears in a methukettu, but in her studio at home, painting, she is bare-breasted like everybody else. The methukettu, that is, was a formal dress, innovated in the nineteenth century. Similarly see also the next set of images. They feature the sister-in-law of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore in the twentieth century. In the first image she is dressed in the methukettu on one of her birthdays, but in the informal photograph taken with her sisters some years before, she appears like Nair (and Syrian Christian) ladies with bare breasts and an upper cloth thrown over the shoulder.

In Cochin state, meanwhile, innovation arrived in a different form. While the rani we saw earlier in the essay continued bare-breasted, younger princesses began to cover their breasts. Unlike in Travancore, what they did, however, was to take the upper cloth and hold it against the chest as the paintings here depict. In the subsequent photograph we can trace this advent of ‘decency’, generation to generation, in fact. The old princess in the centre holds a cloth against her breasts, but in an unconcerned manner, leaving herself exposed. The next generation hold the cloth more carefully, while the adolescents have blouses on as well. In Travancore too, the blouse began to be worn with the methukettu by the late Victorian period, while in Cochin the ‘cloth against the chest’ was formalised in a way that would see it tucked under the armpit and held in place. Even in the second half of the twentieth century, there were princesses in Cochin and Nair elites who dressed this way.

As the twentieth century progressed, and ‘modern’ sensibilities popularised the blouse, it went from being a strange new article to a sign of education and ‘progress’. Shirts signified the same with men: orthodox elders originally viewed it as bhrashtu (impure), but soon it became a mark of modernity and status. These images below of Cochin’s royal women show these changes—the first picture of a nineteenth century princess depicts the old ‘normal’ attire; then we see a princess with the breast cover, representing the ‘new normal’; and the last image is of a girl from the next generation, wearing mundu, cloth, and a long-sleeved blouse. These changes, it may be added, occurred in parallel with a number of other modifications: the old (painful) practice of lengthening the earlobe ceased, traditional hairstyles (which varied by caste) vanished, and among men kudumis (hair tufts) were cut off. Malayalis acquired a homogenised appearance in the way they wore mundus with shirts or blouses, with the upper cloth carefully draped across the torso for women.

From one perspective, this was a positive change, for everyone looked equal now in the matter of dress. From another, though, this Western-inspired ‘decent’ appearance also masks a sense of shame and embarrassment about erstwhile clothing practices. But then again, this is how all societies are—complicated and ever changing, both in their image of themselves, and how they perceive those who came before them.

*

A few years ago, I heard an amusing anecdote about how blouses and the covering of breasts were received in the Kodungallur Kovilakam. A ‘high’-ranking aristocratic house of royal descent (see a photograph below circa 1900), this large joint family had both an orthodox faction and, by the 1920s, a ‘progressive’ one which expected female members to cover up ‘properly’. Early in the morning, women of the kovilakam would go to the temple. Apparently, there were male relatives who waited nearby, flashing torches in the ladies’ direction to ensure they were wearing blouses. The women of course found this irritating, especially the older ladies. Some of them, in fact, even blamed illness and the occurrence of disease on blouses! By breaching tradition, they thought they had invited divine wrath. Eventually though, the ‘progressives’ prevailed and the blouse was normalised at the kovilakam. It is an entertaining story in many ways, but also encapsulates neatly the crisis of modernity Kerala felt in the colonial period—a crisis featuring women, politics around their bodies, and men’s assorted anxieties about breasts.

*

[1] KPS Menon, Many Worlds: An Autobiography (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 104.

[2] Binu KD & Manosh Manoharan, ‘Absence in Presence: Dalit Women’s Agency, Channar Lahala, and Kerala Renaissance’, 21 in Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, 10 (2021), 17-30, available at https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2672&context=jiws

[3] For instance, what is ‘proper’ in Uttar Pradesh (like women covering their faces with ghoonghats) will feel strange in Meghalaya. Should the women of Meghalaya be judged and analysed as per UP’s norms?

[4] Abul Fazl-i-Allami (HS Jarrett trans.), Ain-i-Akbari, Vol. 2 (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1949), 134

[5] Edgar Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1989 ed.), 386.

[6] The images are from L’ Inde Française: ou collection de dessins représentant les divinités, temples, meubles, ornements, armes, ustensiles, cérémonies religieuses et scènes de la vie privée faisant connaitre les costumes et les diverses professions despeuples Hindous qui habitent les possessions françaises de l’Inde et en général la côte de Corrmandel et le Malabar.

[7] Pietro della Valle (Edward Grey ed.), The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, Vol. 2 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1892), 366-368.

[8] John Henry Grose, A Voyage to the East Indies (London: S. Hooper, 1772), 244.

[9] Menon, Many Worlds, 6.

[10] Ibid., 72. That men and women could speak so freely about the human anatomy will surprise many today who have a stereotypical sense of how ‘proper’ people in the past were. But the historical record is full of such surprises that cause us to rethink our own preconceptions. For instance, in my research on the last maharani of Travancore I was quite astonished to find her discussing, in letters to her father, such matters as her menstrual cycle.

[11] Ibid., 104.

[12] In this Menon was not alone. My father’s grandmother, Pandaramazhakathu Kalyani Amma, was bare-breasted all her life and he often said how this was perfectly normal. But if his mother or sisters also moved about that way, it would have looked ‘improper’. Because the norms for their generation were different.

[13] It will also be of interest that among the Kshatriyas of Kerala and all its royal families, Cochin is generally held to be the highest ranking. At one time, for example, Travancore’s rulers could not sit before Cochin’s rajahs. In other words, this bare-breasted rani represents a very high-ranking family.

[14] The sambandham system of marriage in Kerala led to inter-caste marriages. Namboodiri Brahmins could marry matrilineal Nair women, Kshatriya women, Ambalavasi (temple service) women. Kshatriya men could marry women of the Ambalavasi and Nair castes. And so on. As a result one could have cousins of a different caste.

[15] Devaki Nilayamgode (Indira Menon & Radhika P. Menon trans.), Antharjanam: Memoirs of a Namboodiri Woman (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 36. EMS Namboodiripad also touches on the novelty of Namboodiri men wearing shirts. See Namboodiripad (PK Nair trans.), How I became a Communist (Trivandrum: Chinta Publishers, 1976), 38-39.

[16] J. Devika’s introduction in ibid., xxii.

[17] The image has been incorrectly presented in the scholarly article above as ‘four upper caste women participating in a procession as part of a temple festival’. See Binu KD & Manosh Manoharan, ‘Absence in Presence’, 27.

[18] For more on this, see V. Nagam Aiya, The Travancore State Manual, Vol. 2 (Trivandrum: Government of Travancore, 1906), 260.

[19] For instance, Marars do this during certain ceremonies in temples; men of the carpenter caste as well.

[20] See Aiya, Travancore State Manual, Vol. 2, 252 for instance.

[21] Some scholars have erroneously suggested that Brahmin women wore rouka blouses. This was only well into the twentieth century, and not traditionally. See Sonja Thomas, Privileged Minorities: Syrian Christianity, Gender, and Minority Rights in Postcolonial India (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018), 37.

[22] This ninety-something-year-old also has elongated earlobes—a vestige of another old tradition.

[23] J. Devika makes this point very compellingly in ‘The Aesthetic Woman: Re-forming Female Bodies and Minds in Early Twentieth Century Keralam’, in Modern Asian Studies 39, 2 (2005), 461-487.

[24] LK Anantha Krishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes, Vol. 2 (Madras: Government of Cochin, 1912), 282-282.

[25] IN Menon, The Rajarshi of Cochin: Autobiography and Biography of Maharaja Sir Sri Rama Varma (Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala State Archives, 2010 ed.), 152.

[26] Sheikh Zainuddin Makhdoom (S. Muhammad Husain Nainar trans.), Tuhfat al-Mujahidin: A Historical Epic of the Sixteenth Century (Calicut: Other Books, 2005), 41. The Persian ambassador Abdur Razzaq in the 1440s also similarly observed how this scant dressing was ‘common to the king and to the beggar’.

[27] William Logan, Malabar Manual (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2010 ed.), 134.

[28] See Journal of the Society of Arts Vol 43 (1895), 273.

[29] CA Innes, Madras District Gazetteers: Malabar (Madras: Government Press, 1951 ed.), 142.

[30] See Aubrey Menen, Dead Man in the Silver Market (New York: Scribner, 1953), 22.

[31] On Narayana Menon, see Faisal Babu M., ‘The Malabar Rebellion and MP Narayana Menon: Revisiting a Secular Nationalist’ in the International Journal of History, Vol. 7, 10 (2025), 8-11.

[32] In this regard, Edgar Thurston wrote how in Malabar women had no hesitation in ‘throwing off the slender wrapper which may cover her shoulders’, considering ‘the exposure in no way immodest.’ See Thurston, Notes, 531.

[33] For instance, whenever the brothers of Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi came into her presence, protocol required the ‘removing [of] their shirts, putting their sacred threads over one ear, and then’ bowing before her. As junior males before a senior female relation, they could not appear before her with a cloth on their shoulders. See Charles Allen & Sharada Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes (London: Century Publishing, 1984), 213.

[34] See for instance Mateer, Native Life, 340.

[35] Thurston, Notes, 386.

[36] James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs Vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1834), 250.

[37] M. Sahadevan, Towards Social Justice and Nation Making: A Study of Sahodaran Ayyappan (Palakkad: DG Sophia, 1993), 13.

[38] Samuel Mateer, The Land of Charity: A Descriptive Account of Travancore and its People (London: John Snow & Co., 1871), 45.

[39] Samuel Mateer, Native Life in Travancore (London: WH Allen, 1883), 111.

[40] Shungoonny Menon, A History of Travancore From the Earliest Times (Madras: Higginbotham & Co., 1878), 178-179.

[41] Elite Brahmins, whose status was high, did so only in temples. For example, while the Pottis of the temple in Trivandrum would never appear with upper cloths before the Travancore maharajah, figures like the Azhvanchery Tambrakkal could do so. The Tambrakkal was the only Kerala dignitary that the maharajah went out and visited, as opposed to having him come to the palace, when he was in Thiruvananthapuram. Similarly, senior Tamil Brahmin officials—whose traditional dress often included an angavastram—were permitted in later periods to keep these on before the maharajahs; ordinary Tamil Brahmins serving in the palace, however, would have to take off the angavastram.

[42] V. Nagam Aiya, The Travancore State Manual, Vol. 1 (Trivandrum: Government of Travancore, 1906), 313.

[43] Sheeju N.V., ‘The Shanar Revolts, 1822-99: Towards a Figural Cartography of the Pretender’, 307 in South Asia Research 35, 3 (2015), 298-317.

[44] Robert L. Hardgrave, The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 56-57.

[45] Dick Kooiman, Conversion and Social Equality in India: The London Missionary Society in South Travancore in the 19^th Century (New Delhi: Manohar Publications/South Asia Publications, 1989), 152.

[46] See Appendix XVIII (l) in CM Agur, Church History of Travancore (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990 ed.).

[47] Ibid., liii.

[48] Kooiman, Conversion, 149.

[49] Agur, Church History, Appendix XVIII, lvii.

[50] Hardgrave, The Nadars, 62.

[51] In this context, it is worth mentioning that even figures like Arattupuazha Velayudha Panikkar, an Ezhava leader, who is said to have distributed clothes to 1000 women around Kayamkulam, did not give them blouses. It was the upper cloth (and nose-rings) that he promoted—again a mark of status, not a simple ‘breast cover’ for the sake of covering breasts.

[52] Here it is important to stress that in addition to caste tensions, religious concerns also probably played a role. As far back as 1809 when Velu Tampi Dalawa led a rebellion against the British, he famously warned against the East India Company’s supposed Christianising goals in India. In the decades that followed, Nadar agitation for the cloth was often urged and supported by Christian missionaries, and led by converts, making this both a caste and religious affair.

[53] Kooiman, Conversion, 151-152.

[54] Here the breasts were covered but the shoulders were left bare. Nair women did not cover their breasts but threw the cloth over the shoulder.

[55] Hardgrave, The Nadars, 68-69.

[56] Aiya, Travancore State Manual, Vol. 1, 528. See also Agur, Church History, 932.

[57] Or as Mateer wrote decades later, how ‘we are struck with the fact that the Christian jacket seems to occur but too rarely in proportion to the number of converts…The Christians seem to prefer the respectable “upper cloth,” but it is insufficient as a garment for females.’ See Mateer, Native Life, 15.

[58] Kooiman, Conversion, 161.

[59] Ibid., 158-159.

[60] Devika, ‘The Aesthetic Woman’, 476.

[61] Ibid., 477.

[62] Ibid., 473. In this context, an early-nineteenth-century missionary’s remarks might be noted: that the most decent clothes (as per European values) were found among courtesans—for they knew that ‘to display her charms damps sensual ardour instead of exciting it’. See Thurston, Notes, 531,

[63] Devika, ‘The Aesthetic Woman’, 478-479.

[64] Binu KD & Manosh Manoharan, ‘Absence in Presence’, 24.

[65] Agur, Church History, 573.

[66] See the rani’s proclamation in Agur, Church History, Appendix XVII, liv.

[67] LA Krishna Iyer, The Travancore Tribes and Castes, Vol. 1 (Trivandrum: Government of Travancore, 1937), 165-166.

[68] Thurston, Notes, 531.

[69] The rani actively called Munro—the kind of man to physically flog public servants—her ‘elder brother’ and presented herself as a helpless ‘young female, quite unprepared and unqualified’ for power. See Menon, A History of Travancore, 378. It is not far-fetched to think that she would tailor her behaviour and even attire to his Christian sensibilities, since Travancore’s future depended greatly on his favour.