"Petition as historiography: Dr. Palpu and Kerala’s pasts" a talk by Prof. Udaya Kumar at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 21st May 2013
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to the Weekly Seminar on ‘Petition as historiography: Dr. Palpu and Kerala’s pasts’ by Prof. Udaya Kumar, Senior Fellow, NMML.
Abstract : Dr. P. Palpu (1863-1950) was a prominent campaigner against caste inequalities in Travancore. He was the first Vice President of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam and the principal architect of the “Ezhava Memorial,” a petition signed by 13,176 members of the Ezhava community and submitted to Travancore Government in 1896 demanding rights and privileges at least on par with converts to Christianity. While Palpu’s work as a campaigner and organizer are widely known, there has been little discussion of his social and historical thinking. This is mainly on account of the nature of his writings: Palpu’s preferred genre was the petition, and much of his writing consists of long letters of appeal and persuasion addressed to officials of the Travancore government, colonial administrators, and leaders of the national movement. In these, as well as in his public speeches, Palpu advanced a speculative history of Kerala society, an account of the emergence of caste differentiation, and a critical reading of some Hindu myths. He proposed that ancient Kerala was a prominent part of a transoceanic Buddhist empire. Through an invocation of etymological connections, similarities in customs, and putative links between religious practices, Palpu sought to bring in a larger geography and history into the imagination of Kerala’s past. He saw distorted versions of historical events in myths, and his reading of Hindu mythology is marked by a strategic use of literalism and ideas associated with a modern scientific common-sense. This paper attempts to outline Palpu’s main arguments on history, mythology, caste and ethics, and reflect on vital aspects of his distinctive idiom of social and historical thought.
Speaker : Prof. Udaya Kumar is Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and Professor of English at the University of Delhi. He was formerly Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University. He is the author of The Joycean Labyrinth: Repetition, Time and Tradition in 'Ulysses' (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), and several papers on contemporary literary and cultural theory and Indian literature. His research interests include autobiographical writing, cultural histories of the body, and the shaping of modern literary cultures. He is currently completing a book on modes of self-articulation in modern Malayalam writing, and working on the emergence of new idioms of vernacular social thought in early twentieth-century Kerala.
Related Events : Talks | History
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, First Floor, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to the Weekly Seminar on ‘Petition as historiography: Dr. Palpu and Kerala’s pasts’ by Prof. Udaya Kumar, Senior Fellow, NMML.
Abstract : Dr. P. Palpu (1863-1950) was a prominent campaigner against caste inequalities in Travancore. He was the first Vice President of Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam and the principal architect of the “Ezhava Memorial,” a petition signed by 13,176 members of the Ezhava community and submitted to Travancore Government in 1896 demanding rights and privileges at least on par with converts to Christianity. While Palpu’s work as a campaigner and organizer are widely known, there has been little discussion of his social and historical thinking. This is mainly on account of the nature of his writings: Palpu’s preferred genre was the petition, and much of his writing consists of long letters of appeal and persuasion addressed to officials of the Travancore government, colonial administrators, and leaders of the national movement. In these, as well as in his public speeches, Palpu advanced a speculative history of Kerala society, an account of the emergence of caste differentiation, and a critical reading of some Hindu myths. He proposed that ancient Kerala was a prominent part of a transoceanic Buddhist empire. Through an invocation of etymological connections, similarities in customs, and putative links between religious practices, Palpu sought to bring in a larger geography and history into the imagination of Kerala’s past. He saw distorted versions of historical events in myths, and his reading of Hindu mythology is marked by a strategic use of literalism and ideas associated with a modern scientific common-sense. This paper attempts to outline Palpu’s main arguments on history, mythology, caste and ethics, and reflect on vital aspects of his distinctive idiom of social and historical thought.
Speaker : Prof. Udaya Kumar is Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and Professor of English at the University of Delhi. He was formerly Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University. He is the author of The Joycean Labyrinth: Repetition, Time and Tradition in 'Ulysses' (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), and several papers on contemporary literary and cultural theory and Indian literature. His research interests include autobiographical writing, cultural histories of the body, and the shaping of modern literary cultures. He is currently completing a book on modes of self-articulation in modern Malayalam writing, and working on the emergence of new idioms of vernacular social thought in early twentieth-century Kerala.
Related Events : Talks | History
"Petition as historiography: Dr. Palpu and Kerala’s pasts" a talk by Prof. Udaya Kumar at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 21st May 2013
!["Petition as historiography: Dr. Palpu and Kerala’s pasts" a talk by Prof. Udaya Kumar at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 21st May 2013]()
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013
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