South Indian Studies 1, January 1996, 54-82

The Missing Male :

The Female Figures of
Ravi Varma and the Concepts of
Family, Marriage and
Fatherhood in
Nineteenth Century Kerala
R. Nandakumar*

This paper proposes to look at the female figures of Ravi Varma

as they appear in his portraits, genre paintings depicting
domestic scenes and the myhologicals, against the cultural
context of male sexuality of his day and the changing attitude
ttowards the feminine. It will be shown that these figures
CS
embody a concept of femininity that was wellin tune with the
Isocially privileged and ideologically masculine Brahminic
(Nambudiri) hegemony that had perperuated a system,
through customs and conventions as well as scriptural author-
ity, to "administer to their lust under the cover of the socially
validinsttution of matriliny. Among the non-Brahminicmatri
lineal castes of this society which never recognised marriage as
a legally valid institution, there prevailed, according to the
accounts of European travellers. from the fifteenth century
onwards and the surveys undertaken by the British,lvarious
socially acceptable forms ofpolyandry, polygamy, concubinage,
serial monogamy and the institution of visiting husbandds,
offering a social scenario that was all but promiscuous, to say
the least. These time-honoured institutions and customs that

formerky with tbe Institute

Art Historian f Advanced.
Studies, Sbimlg.
.
 THE MISsING MALE/ 55

went on unchallenged because of the ritual status of their

perpetrators the Nambudiri Brahmins - were gradually and
sparingly beginning to come under attack in Ravi Varma's own
day. While we are left with the question where to place Ravi
Varma against these contemporary liberal ideas about man
woman relationship and about women in general, e are
struck by the indirect possibility of his paintings responding
to an emerging, though aS yetvague, phenomenon hat envis
aged a new concept of womanhood-the wife-motherin place
of the mistress or paramour.This new concept of womanhood
which was still some way from being socially defined in terms
of an image and a ole, was collateral with a series of social
changes, like the legalisation of the institution of marriage,
disintegradon of matriliny, the economic decline of the joint
family (the taravad), formation of the nuclear family, the
economic independence of a professional middle class as an
emerging income group, money economy gaining precedence
Over the pre-industrial land economy and so on. In this sense,
these paintings (particularly the representation of women in
them, which is our concern here) can be seen toSignifyan
unconscious resistance to the valucs othe feudal, patriarchal
order even as they are part ofthelarger narratives reproducing
The ideology of thar ordcr. This urge to break away from the
vauesof thefeudat order that was already on its way out, was
as unconscious as the urge to identify with an emerging vision
of the sociery as envisaged by the ideals of the progressive
nationa bourgeoisie.
The apparentideological cormespondence in these works
berween theimageand cherealicy it sought to mediate on the
different levels of the personal, social and mythical, is riddled
with the contradiction between the artistic rationaleandan
unresolved soca vision. This can be seen by considering the
Temale figures in his works, compared berween those in the
portraits and the genres, on the one hand and, those in the
mythologicals and che genres, on the ther.
I
To consider the situation of woman and the narure of man
woman relationship in the social and culural environment of
the nineteenth-century Kerala is, in a sense, to understand the
 56 SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

unique matrilineal system among the non-Brahmin communi-

ties ofKerala and the extent of mundane and spiritual authority
the Nambudiri Brahmins wielded in that society.
In the Kerala tradition which continued well into the first
quarter of this century, there were two forms of marriage
practised by the non-Brahmin matrilineal castes of Kshatriyas,
Ambalavasis and Nairs. (Marriage, in any case, was not recog
nised as a legal institution until it was enforced by a series of
legislation by the British starting from 1896.) The first of this,
the talikettu kalyanam, was ritually required of the girls of
**

thesecastes to undergo before the age of puberty. On the

occasion of this socially celebrated ceremony, every girl child
of a family before the age of twelve was ritually married. The
ritual as such wastying a special pendant-tali -round theneck
of the girl child by the bridegroom' from traditionally fixed
tamilies in accordance witch the economic and social status of
the girl's family. After the conclusion of the ceremony that lasts
for several days, the 'bridegroom' returmed home as the ritual
did not entitle the couple to any marital partnership. Only that
thegirl was ricually legitimised to enter into marital relation-
ship with a man ofthe.same.subcaste.or.of.an upper caste:
[che bridegrooms] incurred no obligation whatever towards their
wives. The latter, however, were from this time considered to be
rmarricd', that is to say, free to enter into any union they desired,
in sambandham [the generic term for marriage in Malayalam].
From the age of puberty, their mothers looked for husbands' for
them among the younger sons of Nambudiris or in their own
cate...2
A Woman ofthematrilinea caste who has not undergone this
ritual before puberty, stands the risk of her child being consid-
ered illegitimate. As A.K.B. Pillai notes, the conscious motiva-
Ttions underlying the tali-tying ceremony originated from social
needs of these castes to adapt to the culture of the society,
which was moulded by Brahminical ritualism.° More than that,
observes Pillai further, it was the means of Nambudiris' direct
sexual access to matrilineal women, through socially recog-
nised marriage or otherwise which was made ritually legiti-
mate.* According to L. Moore, the man-woman rélationship in
the matrilineal taravads during the nineteenth century was 'of
as loose a description as it is possible to imagine'. He notes
 THE MISSING MALE / 57

that the talikettu kalyanam introduced by the Brahmins gave

a quasi-religious sanction to a fictitious marriage, which leaves
an unpleasant resemblance to the sham marriage ceremonies
Pertormed among certain inferior castes elsewhere as a cloak
for prostitution.?
The second form of marriage, sambandham, refers to the
actual marital alliance, of whatever loose a description, that a
Woman of the matrilineal castes contracts with a man of the
upper or same caste. 'Originally [sambandham] was a matter
of a free association between a Nambudiri man and a Kshatriya
or Nair woman already married in her own caste. Later these
unions, which took on a religious significance because of the
religious character of one of the partners, became
and institutionalised into a marriage system generaisca
founded on poly-
andry. This then became compulsory, not only in these two
castes but also in other groups, and gave rise to a newstructural1
mode of kinship relations."6 Among the Nambudiri Brahmins
who followed the law of primogeniture; only the eldest male
was allowed to marry within caste and the others were left to
look for marriage partners from the non-Brahmin matrilineal
castes of Kshatriyas and Nairs. This was obviously to ensure
that the family property was not frittered away through inheri-
tance among other clan groups, as marrying from the Kshatriya
or Nair communities did not entail any economic or material
obligation to
the Nambudiri males, So too wa it
women, as accepting any economic or material help for th
was un-
becoming of them as it was demeaning to heir family status.
Because of.the rigid customs in regard to pollution of ritual
purity, these women were not free to visit or stay with their
Nambudiri husbands and had to stay back for life in their
ancestral joint family where they would be visited by Nam-
budiri husbands periodically at appointed times. 'It was an
untenable situation as children of these Nayar women were
notrecognisedoicialy as oispring_of their Kshatriya or
Brahmin fathers and could not inherit the name or property of
the latter"'At the same time, access to Nambudiri ritualism and
the extent of involvement with them brought greater glory to
the taravad concerned and prestige to the karanavan as it
was an efficient means of social mobility. (A taravad comprised
SCveral smaller units called tavazhi, cach incuding a mother
 sOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

and her children.together with the maternal uncle. But the

eldest maternaluncle, called the karanavan, was the head of
family of the whole taravaa, holding absolute and unques
tioned authority over its administration as an overlord.)
The impact of unsteady marital relationships created by
the bifurcation of Nayar marriage [into talikettu and sambana
bam) and the institution of the visiting husband developed
serial monogamy nd led to both polygynous and polyandrous
situations.'° Polyandry among the Nairs has been much written
about, especially during the last century by foreign travellers
for whom it was a subject of bemused curiosity. A few excerpts
from the several such accounts are given below to provide an
idea of the socal scenario of the day.
Held by so loose a tenure, it might be supposed their frailties (of
the maiage partners] would not creatc domestic confusion, but
jealousy is by no means unknown... The Brahmins of all descrip
tions are courted with a caressing homage, the most obdurate
virtue could scarcely resist, nor do previous engagements opp0se
any barriers to their success, as the Nair compelled to resign his
mistress to more holy embraces, retires on their approach, not
venturing, however strong his claim or forcible attachment, to
interpose betwecn their enjoyments.9
Going back a little earlier, Duarte Barbosa who travelled
along the Malabar Coast in the beginning of the sixteenth
century notes:
The children [ofNair woman afier she is involived with three or
four Nambudiris who visit her in rurn and maintain her] remain
of the expense of the mother and of the brothers of the mother
who bring them up because they do not knowthe father; and even
if they should appear to belong to any persons in particular, they
are not recognised by them as sons, nor do they give anything for
for
them... 10

That this was not a thing of the past in the nineteenth century
and is substantially coToborated by contemporary accounts,
can be seen by looking at some scenes from the novel
dulekha, published in 1889. The scene of the whole novel is a
n
typical contemporary matrilineal taravad of great pomp and
InkaleKha
glory and ruled over by the despotic karanavan. Lakshmikutty
mma, the intelligent and. elegant mother of the heroine,
Indulekha, has herself sambandbam alliance with a senile,

ndmlekha
 THE MISSING MALE/ 59

imbecile of a Nambudiri. Another Nambudiri character, Suri

Nambudiri, no less imbecile and lewd, is fancying the beauti
ful, young, English-educated Indulekha who is in love with an
equally educated, progressive cousin of hers. With the conniv
ance of the karanavan, Suri Nambudiri is planning to have
sambandham alliance with Indulekha and is likely to visit her
any time. Lakshmikutty Amma with no objeetion to such an
alliance and with motherly affection, wants to let Indulekha
know about Suri Nambudiri's visit. She says to Indulekha that
Suri Nambudiri is expected there any time and that he would
announce his wish to have sambandham with her.
Indulekha: 'With whom?'
Lakshmikutty Amma: "With you.
Indulekha: 'Right away as he steps in?
Lakshmikutty Amma (laughing): May be right away, it seems.
And she adds a word of admonjtion: "These Nambudiries are
a curious lot, daughter. It is up to us to behave ourselves.' It is
obvious that the Nambudiri won't stand on ceremony and
would have the deal fixed straight away, as it is rouune 1or him.
What is to be noted is that the mother also does not find
anything indelicate or insolent, leav alone indecent in dhe
Nambudiri's approacb.
Another scene a little further on is more interesting to our
context. Suri Nambudiri, on his arrival at Indulekha's taravad,
is equally carried away by her mother, Lakshmikutty
Amma,
their servant maid and another cousin of hers, Kalyanikutty
The amorous advances and clownish pranks of this character
designs
are described at length with great relish. Finally, as his
did not succeed with Indulekha who shows_him his place
Suri
L(Something unthinkable in actual practice at that time),
|
Nambudiri decides to have sambandbam with the poor girl,
Kalyanikutty. Another Nambudiri character tells the old and
pitiable Kesavan Nambudiri, the regular sambbandbam part
ner of Lakshmykutty Amma, about Suri Nambudiri's decision
wrong
and in his excitement, Kesavan Nambudiri had it all
thinking that it is Lakshmykutty Amma, his mistress, whom Suri
feels agitatecd
amDudin is now desiring. Kesavan Nambudiri What is
and plans to leave in humiliation until he is clarified.
orinterest to note is that the old-imer Kesavan Nambudiri does
 60/ SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

not find anything against(customf Suri Nambudiri proposes

to have sambanabam at an hour's notice, almost off hand, with
the former's mistress, Lakshmikutty Amma. Nor ,that,
Lakshmikutty Amma would have any compunctions about
falling for that, in such an event.11
Now we know that lechery unrestrained lust, guilclessly candid .

whoring these are not the personal vice. of an:individual Suri

Nambudiri and that it is a prerogative of the people of his com-
munity who enjoyed it as a religiously ordained ritual, in the
culture of Kerala. This explains why such things as an inveterate
villain' would choke at saying or doing, are said and done by Suri
Nambudiri with the naive candour of a child.12
It was this sense of unabashed celebration of lust that charac
terised much ofthe elitist poetrof the day which has come to
be known as Nambudiri literature. In the well-known poem of
this kind, Puraprabandham, the Nambudiri poet is narrating
in the first personhis own lewd exploits as his lust ran rampage
a
among the women on a crowded festival day less indiscreet
and more restrained form of which can make for the present
day eve-teasing. The gleeful and smug celebration of lust in the
poem, its scurrilous narration caring the least for any civic
propriety was read and relished inthe society ofthe.dayas.
great poetry. When thepoet says in a certain passage that every,
woman has hergo-between, illicit lover and husband as per
custom even now as of old, it is the voice ofmoral and spiritual
authority. Similarly, when the poet conveys, the woman his
regards to her cuckolded husband, it was considered not as
tongue-in-cheek but as his generosityHe knows that the
woman would feelelated.
Sometime about the opening of the nineteenth century the
Kerala Mabatmyam and Keralolpathi were concocted, probably
by Nambudiris, and false and pernicious doctrines as to the
obligations laid on the Nayars by divine law to administer to the
lust of the Nambudiris were disseminated abroad.13

0Of these, Kerala Mahatmvgm invokes the authority of Paras

Mgth urama, creator of the land, whose decree is that: Among
the
the folk of this land, in this my country, among all castes, among
all Samantas and all other women likewise, let there be no
chastity. But for the wives of the Brmhmins and Dwijas let the
rule of chastity stand.'. Pillai notes that his Nambudiri inform-
 THE MISSING MALE / 61

ants constantly referred to the castes.belowchem as inherently

incapable of practisingmonogamy For their part, they con-
sidered hypergamous relations with other castes as Concubi
nage, jas condemning the victim fits very well
into the ideology
( and practice of dominance'.14

The foregoing outline should serve to show the nature and

extent of male sexuality as engrained in the social psyche of
nineteenth century Kerala. We have to note that though this
was mostly related to Brahminic dominance and though their
separatist ideology was well guarded by their ritual status and
customs of defilement, the power elites internalised those
values as representing_hegeinonY and tdentlied as cultural
traits, as it was a means to social mobility. We must also keep
in view the fact that most of the time-honoured conventions
related to matriliny and sambandham were beginning to come
under opposition and British legislation to regulate them was
under process and a few educated and enlightened Malayalis
like Sir C. Shankaran Nair and K.P Padmanabha Menon have IhomeK
condemned these practices strongly. The epoch-making novel
Indulekba (which had the rare distinction of having its first (
edition completely sold out within three months of its publi-
cation) had' brought home to the public through its bitter
sarcasm, the vulgarity of these senseless institutions.15 Such
attitudes currently in the air would be joined by the reformist
leaders of such non-Brahmin communities, a short whilefrom
then.
With this background, we now return to the paintings of
Ravi Varma, more particularly the female figures in them. To
begin with, as I have noted elsewhere,o an interesting case is
offered by a point of contrast between Ravi Varma's portraits
of Malayali women (excuding ceremonial portraits of royal
X
personages as in Mabarani Lacmi Bai, in the Sree Chithra Art
Gallery, Trivandrum) and the figures of Malayali womenin his
genre paintings of contemporary domestic scenes. The por-
traits of young Malayali girls, like the adolescent girl in An
Amma Thampuran of Mavelikara (Sree Chithra Gallery, Trie
vandrum) or the attributed A Young Girl (shown in the retro
spect at the National Museum, New Delhi, 1993) and those of
 Z/ SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

elder women like the old lady in An Amma Thampuran or of

some non-Malayali women like Mrs. Ramanatha Rao (Sree
Chithra Gallery, Trivandrum), depict different ispects
of the
condition of repressed womanhood of his day. These images
of women representtheir realllfe situation within the percep
tions of gender discrimination and regimentation that subject
them to male dominance for life. For lifec, as these women can
never leave their natal homes because of the matrilocal pattern
of residence ánd these homes were those large, crowded
taravads, ruled over by despotic karanavars. In this situation
ife was intenselylocal because of the pattern of residence, lack
of mobility and of communication with the world outside. The
Complex of controling attitudes in this society was defined by
that local life and its closed belief systems, engendering group
identity thatsubsumed any subjectively formed consciousness.
A regimentation of this kind that requires the woman to keep
the outside world away from her, renders her subjectivity
almost of no reckoning other than as a consciouSness of the
persona she evokes in herself her Closely guarded world of
he self into which she shrinks. This subjectivity that is with
held, as if in selfdefence, from any interactive functions, is
defined only agàinst the male other. Another aspect offeminin-
ity that has a psychic inscription in the symbolic order of
masculine agencyasTtsobject, is its traditionalassociation with
body and nature expressed in the concept of ritual pollution.
Inthis scheme ofthings bound by customs offiruardefiement,
castes lower to each in the hierarchy, and women in general,
as sources of pollution, are aligned with the life-negating and
the evil. Being the source of pollution which is the function of
body andd nature as opposed to mind and culture which are
masculine, puts them to a perennial state of seclusion and
degradation. The shrinking, withdrawn selfandinhibitedemo
LiOnality oft these igures in Ravi Yarma's portraits of them are
expressive of this degradation, which he captures on their
careworn, lack-lustrefaces and uneasy postures with remark
able awareness, that in itself is a comment on the real life
condition of womanhood of his day.
Complementing this concept is theimage of the grand,
old woman as thematriarch of thetaravad who1sat the same
time respectable and pitiable, as the one in the portrait of
 THE MISSING MALE / 63

Amma Tbampuran. Respectable because, being the begetter

in the system of lineal descendence and the moving spirit of
all material inheritance, an abstract authority accrues on her,
which is identified with family honour and rank. But this was
only abstract and in principle, whereas her matriarchalstatus
meant next to nothing in actual practice, before the rule of the
karanavan, to which she, like everybody else, was subjected.
In marked contrast to these portraits, the women in the
genre paintings like There Comes Papa or Veena Player, are B
Sprightly and vivacious, displaying a distinct extroversion. This
needs some elaboration. As described in the preceeding para- |
graph, the way the women in the portraits appear as shrinking
from the world outside is expressive of a subjectivity that is
withheld from any socially defined interactive functions. The
fact of woman's non-engagement (as subject) with the öutside
reality had its representation in the symbolic field as her
ontological susceptibility (aS Object) to the ever-engaging re-
ality of the other, which was one ofgeneralised male aspect
The male libidinal engagement with feminine susceptibility|
sublimates it into a kind of ethical moralism which posits the
attributes of that susceptibility, like modesty, in norms of femi
nine beauty. This accounts for the almost schizophrenic con-
cern with 'feminine modesty in its equation with morality,
endowing her with a particular social identity as cherished by
patriarchal authority (This is discussedlater in connectionwith
the norms of dressing.IrISTordiftcuirtoseE why most of the||
o epitets characterising feminine beauty that the erotic litera
ngna
ture ofthe day abounds in, like furtive glances, downcastlooks,
angw demurely gestures, blushing and so on, have a certain behav-
1oural connotation bearing on such a withheld outwardness

fed Sand passive susceptibility Thesignificance of the female figures

of Rav varma's genre paintings has to be seen against this social
Dackground and its ideological premises. These figures, while
looking away from themselves into the outer world (unlike the
women in the. portraits who shrink from i, are now confi-
dently a part ofit and are informed by a meaningfulness in
Telating totheir social location. This, I maintain, was colateral
a
with the emergence of the public sphere of life the location
for the increased need for self-expression by the privatised
individual through social interaction. Along with the gradual
 64/ SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

receding of religion into the private sphere, the freeing from

ascriptive, norms of identity within the authoritarian forms of
the family fold or caste hierarchy to more acquisitive modes,
accompanied by the emergence of new forms of civic con-
sciousness from the stage of passive subjects to activecitizens,
were characteristic of the social life of this period. Itwas only
natural that the increasingly privatised sphere oflife, including
*
religion, in this public, secular sphere of an emerging civil
SOciety, was more humanised, 'rational' and institutionally
modern, and thus sought expression in what caN be calcd the
ircalism of the age. The female figures in these genre paintings.
display a concept of womanhood that was incommensurate
with the actual condition of women and their cloistered life
within those crowded matrilineal joint families, subject to the
peculiar pattern of man-woman relationship. But they are in
keeping with vision as envisaged by the new middle class in
a
which she is the romantic spouse waiting for or receiving her
beloved, in the context of an idealised domestic realm with its
increased sociability and new patterns of subjective emotion-
ality dliferent from the fecewed generi tratS. The air of
warmth and extroversion that these figures breathe is embod-
ied in the thematics of the emerging private sphere and these
paintings åre a celebration of this contemporary phenomenon
that was more urban as felt in other parts of the country But
Ravi Varma being a frequenter to many of the urban enclaves
of enlightened sociability across the country, could have re-
sponded to this emerging phenomenon immediately.
These images of femininity mediate an implicit dualism of
their contextual significance and connotation in relation to the
nena local, prOvincial conditions of Kerala, on the one hand and, to
the larger 'Indian' conditions, on the other.The figures in the
two versions of Malabar Beautyl7 are no more of Malabar
(Kerala, that is) than of Indian identity A Nair Lady at 1otlet
(1873) has an alternate title, Lady with a Mirror', in which
sense she can be any 'Indian' lady, But conversely, in the Kerala
context, she is not just any Kerala' lady, but can only be
specifically Nair'. Though not designated by caste, the figures
in both versions of Malabar Beauty also are explicitly Nair as
understood in the parlance of Kerala. As this aspect of the caste
a determinant of feminine identity has significant cultural
2s
 THE MISsING MALE 65

connotations in the context of male sexuality in the nineteenth

century Kerala, we have to consider whether it was a concept
of womanhood tenable with Ravi Varma's social vision and
against which was constructed his artisticsubiect. It does well
to remember that, under the peculiar custom of Nambudiri
hypergamy with women of matrilineal castes, it was tradition
ally the Nair women who were courted by men ofupper castes
with claims to higher economic and ritual status, as mistresses.
AS we have seen earlier, in the nineteenth century this system:
of free association between man (same or upper caste) and,
woman (mostly Nair and to a lesser degree, Kshatriya) legiti
mised in the institution of sambbandbam gave rise to a
Situ
ation of socially acceptable concubinage and polyandry that
was nevr inhibited by any moral code or even civic propriety.
There was a whole genre of erotic poetry authored towards the
latter part of the nineteenth century almost exclusively by Q
Nambudiris, called Ambopadesam which is in the form of
instructions given to an initiate into the'art of courtesanship.
In literature it was open season for a kind of celebration of
libertine and licentious erotic indulgence that, as it was con-
cocted in high-flown verse, had its inevitable highbrow asso
ciations, catering to the lewd fantasies oftheleisure class.
The
image ofa voluptuous and languid seductress, with lewd and|
pert descriptions of the erogenous zones of her body that|
figures in such poetry, was a socially produced one in the field
of ideològical representations. And this image within the dis-
cursive productionof Tepresentations is endowed with aní
anonymous, though unmistakable caste identity that of the
Nair. To this extent the female figures of Ravi Yarma are in |
agreement with the dominant representations of the narratives
of femininity - the paramours of breeding and beauty with the
designated caste identity of the Nair. But only thus farand no
further. This can be seen by studying the image-text of his
paintings and the field of unconscious significatons mediated
in it.
The interchangeability of the titles points to an ambiva
lence of his pictorial strategy as much as the gemeralised visual
iconography, that are meant to divest these female figures of
the attributes of their essentially Kerala identity. To lift them
one sense,
out of the local, provincial conditions of Kerala is, in
 SUUIH iNDIAN STUDIES

an atopenent 1or the condition of womanhood that very few

of his more progressive contemporaries had realised to be one
of moral degradation. At the same time, the urge to align it to
the wider pan-Indian sinuation might have been in response to
the progressive themes of the national bourgeoisie emerging
vin the reformist narratives, elsewhere in the country.
Consider, for example, the very physiognomic features,
costume, hair-do and ornaments of his various female figures.
n such aspects, even the male cast of his mythologicals is
drawn from a mixed stock across the country. The figure of
Janaka in a small water colour in the Sree Chithra Gallery
depicting the breaking of the bow by Rama, is straight out of
the Rajput stock, while Viswamitra is a typical figure of an old
Malayali. So are the sari-clad, Marathi-looking female figureswn
his mythologicals where their simulated ancient-ness had its
contemporary reference through a concurrence with current
theatrical conventions. But the drapery of such a figure used
1or a contemporary Malayali woman as in A Nair Lady at Toilet
is so out of sorts with the habits of dress of the Kerala
society
of the day that it almost denatures her caste-designated Malay.
ali identity. In these paintings, the difference in costume from
what was in practice in the society of that time, is all the more
notable for the cultural norms regarding dress enforced by
custom in a society where life was intensely local and static. In
the portraits by, Ravi Varma, as that of the adolescent girl in An
AmmaThampuran, the mode of dressing depicted is closerto
the factual condition. This young girl in the first bloom of
youth, probably related to the artisr's wife, sits cool and com-
posed wvith no üpper garnment to cover her breasts. The
dress
ing of the older figure, probably the grandmother of
the girl,
consists of a thin, white cloth wound round the armpit and
tucked up above the breasts. This particular way of dressing,
at times over a blousé in che case of younger
women, is seen
in most of the paintings having reference
to Kerala domestic
scenes like There Comes Papa, Veena Player, Malabar
Beauty
etc. (see note 17), as distinct from the markedly generalised
non-Malayali drapery of figures in paintings with a metaphori-
calallegorical content, like In A Sense, We Are Equal, Music
Hath Cbarm, Alms Giving, etc. The way of dressing referred
to above, mostly without the blouse, was use only among
in
 THE MISSING MALE / 67

the royal lineage and Nair nobility of the Travancore region

which, togetier "with the hair-do and heavily crafted gold
ornaments typical of the period, attest to the hierarchical rank
and amiy honour of the non-Brahminic aristocracy. We are
informed by Ravi Varma's biographer N. Balakrishnan Nair that
the figure in There Comes Papa is modelled on the artist's
daughter.
In the nineteenth century Kerala, any upper cloch to cover
the breasts was practically unknown among women as a man
ner of dressing. The Nambudiri women who had to follow BaRe
strictly thegboshajsystem, used only a thin, white cloth across BARA
the shoulders, more like a shawl, and that too, when they went
out. Even the Nair women of social and economic status who
could use an upper cloth when they went out, in imitation of
Nambudiri women, were required to be uncovered above the
waist in the presence of Brahmin or other respectable-gentlea
men. And this, irrespective of the family status and honour of
the women. 'In the presence of persons of rank and position,
and the royal family, ancient custom required the women of
Nairs and low castes to uncover the bosoms and upper parts
of their bodies.l8 This late nineteenth century account com-
pares only favourably with those of a little later period. Says
Kinippayur Sankaran Namboodiri (b. 1891): '...those days...
here was no custom among the women of covering their/
bireasis: From the timethat I can remember the Kerala women
bad not even seen rowka [an upper garment for women the
irsi of its kind to appear in Kerala and no longer in use] or
Slbuse.. Women covering their breasts in the presence of
respëctable gentlemen was considered as immodest an act of
disrespect towards them. In his reminiscences of early child-
ood, KPS. Menon (b. 1898) notes:
he Nairs
were
had no reason to shun the mention of breasts, for there
hey for all to see. Women in Malabar wore just a loin-cloch
nd generally left the upper portion of their body uncovered.
bydhance a woman had cloth over her shoulders, she would
Eiemove it at the sight ofa respectable person lest she should seem
DErtinently overdressed,20
Elsewhere, Menon has this to say: 'Ordinarily, our women as
elf às men wore nothing but a loin cloth. As my soon as we
0ssed the Western Ghats into Kerala, Macqueen, Collector
 BninARA
68/ SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

in Trichinapoly...noticed the women's dress or undress and

exclaimed: "The scenery is getting distinctly picturesque."
This custom was required of everybody, irrespective of
rank
and wealth, to secure.easy recognition of the person's caste.
Nobody those days even thought against this custom that was
observed as universally honoured. 22
Incidentally, it is worth noting in this context, how the
heroine of the contemporary novel Indulekha is presented.
The dazzlingly.beautiful Indulekha in her late teens is well-edu-
cated in English as well as in Sanskrit, is trained in classical
music and plays piano, violin and veena. Concluding the
description of his heroine, the novelist says: "The breasts are
always seen only as covered with a jeri-bordered, White upper
ctot. This WAS aS a TulëTher way of dressing.4 Wecan nete
that the novelist is carefulnotto risk his heroinenglish-edu-
cated and westernised in mannersbeing.cOnsiderSdimpertl
nendyQVerdressedarimmodestwhichis.unbeCOming.of.a.
Nair girLotaristocratic lineage. After all, her use of a thin white
upper cloth over herrbaAre"breasts is not in violation of the
universally honoured' code of conduct for the Malayali
Women!
The.implications of this 'universally honoured' norm of
Xdressing.enforced by custom in the nineteenth century Kerala
can be realised in all its historical dimensions only when we
take into account a series of clashes by the underprivileged
with the dominant castes for securing the right.of.using.the
upper cloth..The better known, prolonged and more violent
of these was in the south Travancore area in 1858 now known
as 'the breast-cloth revolt,4 that led, to the legal granting
of
the right in the next year.
The correlation between the matter of costume and of the
identity of the female figures of Ravi Varma's genre paintings
raises some interesting questions. The view in regard to
women dressing. the upper part of their body that it was
immodest was the characteristic expression of fears of moral
outrage and anxiety of the dominant class when faced with
structural change and cultural shock. The unchallenged equa-
tion between female modesty and morality has never before
been caught in the defensive implications of an equivocation
between the challenge to male authority (in the form of mod
 tabR THE MISSING MALE / 69

ernity) and the adherence to tradition (morality stood on its

head). For the taditional view held by the dominant castes,
women covering the upper part of the body was not only
impudence and defiance, but it amounted to immorality. Buit
for a progressive and sympathetic view using an upper gar
ment Would be immodesty Only by a 'strange réversalOf
western notions', as it appeared to William Logan,, the then
Collector of Malabar.25 This 'strange reversal of western no
tions' of modesty can make it appear as a matter of
undress to
a less Sympathetic view and a "distinctly picturesque', as
told
by another Collector, Macqueen. Interestingly, Ravi arma had
the options of all these views available to him and might have
been equally influenced.by the values of all the three attitudes.
Like the author of Indulekba, Ravi Varma too could not
risk his
Nair beauties being considered immodest, that is to, say, to be
against custom, by making them look 'impertinently over
dressed'. Nor did he, by choice, paint exotic Indian counter
parts of Venus by taking an outside view of the 'picturesque-
ness' of the local hue - that was well within the artistic rationalee
of his 'realism' with_which he has never fully identified Ravi
Varma could disengage his temale figures from the eguation Spa
and equivocation between modesty and morality which was an
ideologically masculine construct, by assigning them a difter-
enespACe and this space was that of an emerging cOsmopoli-
tanism. Discussing the novel Indulekha, PK. Balakrishnan
notes bw the novelist's vision of life was informed by a latent
concept of cosmopolitanism. The characters in: Chandu
Menon's unfinished novel Sarada (1891), like Ramah Menon,
Shankaran and the girl child Sarada are, according to Balk-
rishnan, the symbol of a new cosmopolitanism that has out.
grown the regional boundaries of Kerala. It was, the picture of
India as a polity in its totality with people who know and
understand each other, that unfolded before him. "This India
is inhabited by one community of people who have redis-
covered humanity40 If this humanism mediates the dualposi
tioning of identities between the feudal and the bourgeois, as
in the case of Ravi Varma's images of contemporary women, it||
is the ncw cosmopolitanism that is theidcologicalisite of its
articulation. In Ravi Varma's paintings, it is as a space that is
still indeterminate and unengaged. One can see hoy all these
 SOUTH INDAN SIUDIES

traits with their characteristic contradiction and indeterminacy

were engrained in the bourgeois national consciousness and
in the political narratives of nationalism.
In these paintings depictng Malayali women in what are
apparenty domestic scenes, the space, as mentioned abqve,is
generally indeterminate. We would expect these figures, con-
sidering their warmth of emotion and extroversion, to be
related to theinterior living space that breathes the intimacy
of private litg. But they are not. Again, because of the unique
custom ofthe matrilocal pattern ofresidence, whethermarried
or not, she has to live in her natal home - her ancestral taravad.
She is only part of this collective set-up of the joint family and
an inheritor, perhaps, of the family pride that provides her only
nom of identity. This rank and honour of lineageareepito
mised in the institution ofthe taravad. So it only stands to
o
reason expect these female figures, the noble spouses that
they were, to have been presented before he background
details of the abstract glory of the taravad that would attest to
their hierarchical stature. What is more, such details were the
prided emblems öftheir owm identity.We note a conspicuous
exclusion ofthesefrom the iconographyofpantings Hike Tbere
Comes Papa, Malabar Beauty, Veena Plaer, WaitinZ,for the
Beloved, etc. We might well ask whetheritis that these women
have come out of the collective aspirations and condition of
life within the family and the ascriptive norms of identity
maintained by it, into a more personal one. Or, is it that the
ambiguity of their immediate spatial cöntext points to the
unresolved and undefined narure of the social location they
were to be assigrned in the gendered narratives of female
sexuality? We may answer: both and, perhaps, more.
The unresolved nature of social location where the indi
Vidualinserts himself or herself in the social ensemble was
brought about by, a series of drastic changes that occurred
within so short a span as half a century.
The period of fifty.years from the latter half of the nineteenth to
the rurn of the ceaury particularly the last quarter, has brought
about amazing ad incredible transformation in Kerala..fThe
latterhaltofthenineteenth centuryis abridgethat links thesetwo
epochs that is, before 1850, an agethatwas primitive and remote
and after 1900, an age that on all account is modern]. Those fifty
 THEMISSING MALE / 71

Years were the period when the life of Kerala took a leap across
two thousand years.27
*

The historical dimension and extent of these changes can be

seen in the way in which it wore down the ancient institution

tion. .
of the taravad and what it symbolised in this particular tradi
the whole social life in these extended families was
dominated by a conception of the world as divided between
oPposed forces, personified at the highest level by the divine
protector ruling over good and evil spirits.28 The order thus
produced on the symbolic level of representations gave legiti-
macy to the objective social conditions of rigid caste hierarchy
and notions of ritual status. But the relation to these objective
social conditions themselves, on the practical level, was a
reversal of meaning-representations on the symbolic level.
the empirical, practical level is produced "an imaginaryPicrure
O
of Soctal relaüons in which each group [read caste] situated
itsel, not in reference to the dominant group, but in refer
ence to that which occupied the lowesSt pOsiton.This
reversal between the symbolic order and the field of objective
sOcial relations negates the conflict of values by creating an
1lusion of harmonyIt is the institution of the taravad that
articulated such an illusion of harmony through the concepts
offamily pride and honour, the complex ofwhich is the cultural
capital of each unit. 1he mythical proportions that this complex
of cultural cápital took is familiar enough in the social annals
of the nineteenth century Kerala and is part of the ethno
graphic folklore of the period.
With the economic decline of the taravad, the increasing
cases of. litigation between the karanavan and the nephews,
changes in the land tenure system, dissenting views about
matriliny gaining more and more ground, leading to the legis
lation of 1896 and the economic independence of the younger
.
male members who have secured jobs under the British the
Naravad is no longer the abode of harmony that it used to be.
The karanavan' role 'which identifiedcome with the despotic
ordering ofthe political hierarchy',30 has under a cloud.
The karanavan by 1890, as Robin Jeffrey notes, has already
become 'a greedy villain and the taravad the scene of endless
dissension among aggressive mothers, layabout youths and
scheming elders. 31
 72/ SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

Considering the changes that were happening to the

institution of the taravad that has been turned into a hot-bed
of coercion and clashes, we see why Ravi Varma's idealised
imagesofwomen do notbelong there. The cxclusion from his
iconography of all details emblematic of the taravad and the
indeterminacy of spatial context are, I maintain, a reaction to
the social situation. Significantly, among allaof Ravi asVarma's
known works; there is neither a portrait nor figure in the
genre pantngs, of themost characteristic social archetype of
the day-the karanavan.Not only thekaranavan, but themale
protagonist of every description has invariably no repre
sentation in his padintings depicting contemporary Kerala do-
mestic sceries, even as the painting, like There Comes Papa, is
aboutbim. When, within the family and outside in the political
order, the situation was equally rife with conflicts, it seems Ravi
Varma was creating an idealised all-female world as aretreat, a
haven free from the tensions of familial and social life. We are
reminded, in fact, of cases from psycho-analytic accounts by
Girindrashekhar Bose done in Calcutta, during the 1920s, in
which 'a wish to be female' was commonly found among his
Bengali male patients. 'Considering the setting in Calcutta in
the 1920s and 1930s, such claims could be seen in sociological
terms as a desire to belong to the zenana, the separated female
world, a world imagincd to be al Bengali, untouched by the
stresses and conflicts induced by foreign rulers."54 The social
conditions and the life-worlds of the Malayali dominant classes
of this period being not much unlike that of the Bengali in its
conflicted relation to foreign rule, it appears that the idealised
domestic realm that Ravi Varma creates as an all-female world
to the exclusion of all male presence, points to a wishful urge
to retreat to a trouble-free zone.The matter of the indetermi-
nacy of space in these paintings has a bearing on such an
idealisation, as there is definitely no reference to the regi
mented and cloistered space of women's quarters as seen in
any taravad - the Kerala counterpart of the zenana. In a
painting like The Galaxy of Musicians which has apparently
no reference to the contemporaryKerala scene, it is the same
concern that is articulated, not themáticaly, But in terms of an
exclusive female cast of its iconography (The fact that this
iconography has a precedence in the painting ypical Cos
 THE MISSING MALE/ 73

tumes by his early tutor(Ramaswamy Naidu,docs not contra

dict this contention.) Considering the modes of behaviour that
pemitted only rigid, distant and formal man-woman relation
ship guarded by the patriarchal institutions, the romantic
yearnings that so expressly stir these figures cannot be disso
ciated from a positive vicw of womanhood. These women, in
their being torthcoming but not coquettisb, sensuous, but not
seductive, are thus outside the implications of the double-bind
between modesty and morality that was itself an expression of
the ambivalence of the deeper moral anxiety caused by the
conflict between modernity (as a threat to modesty) and tradi-
tion (in its conflation with morality, the cost of which is male
authority)Thus only could they be the noble spouses of-
breeding worthy of the new domestic realm. It seems that the
idcalisation that privilegecs these images wAs an attempt to
envisage afemininity redeemed from the crass degradation in
which it had sunk. A little like troubadour poetry of courtly
love appearing alongside Albigensian sexual heresy. Inciden-
tally,there have always been tales of omance, love and chivalrY
cxtolled in early Malayalam ballads, but the protagonists wercN
from among communities far down in the caste hicrarchy and
the lcast Brahminised.
We note that what are represented are not images of shy
nubile adolescents or voluptuous coy mistresses, but that of
adult self-assured women. These are women who have come
out of their withheld subjectivity and their outward glances are
suggestive of emotional reciprocity and a meaningful extrover
sion in relating themselves to the world outside. All these were
presupposed in the emerging social image and role of the
wife-mother, which is the look they recognisably wear. And this
image of the wife-mother is constituent of the concept.otthe
nuclear family as the siteof conjugal love55
TOwards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, matril-
iny has come under question from the few, though there was
was enacted
not much public opposition to it. Though the law
in 1896 granting legal status to sambandham, there was only
general apathy towards the law and it took another quarter of
a century for it to get any semblance of a social practice. That
is also to say that the female images of Ravi Vama we have
discussed, were adumbrated by concepts that are štill nascent
 SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

collective aspirations of the new middle class. They are

in the
markedly not in agreement with representations of femininity
Mn the dominant narratives of the
time. The level of realism of
these images and the level of reality they sought to mediate do
Pnot1orm any neat correspondence, as the terms for the vision
of this reality were far from settled with its own premises, thus 9
problematising Ravi Varma's use of realism.
Now, let us return to the structural changes that were
under way in the society of the period. As the younger male
members of the joint family have secured economic inde
pendence from the taravad and the karanavan through jobs,
they chose to stay away on their own after marriage. This
nuclear fymilyhad not only freed the women from matrilocality
of residence, it has also brought about new patterns of emo
tionality, in man-woman relation. The prevailing marital condi-
tion that keeps the wives in their maternal homes was not only
because such homes 'provide greater economic and emotional
security, but also because such needs are denied in the hus-
band's natal homes and by the husbands themselves.34 As
with
the women, so with the men for whom too '[the] familial
and
non-sexual emotional needs that were denied [them] by.mari-
tal instability were provided instead by che
matrilineal
taravad. In a situation where, for both sexes, the individual
identity is an adjunct to that of the family and where individual
aspirations are in conformity with the collective, the psycho-
behavioural orientations of inter-subjectivity become
conven-
tionalised and customary, sustained by the illusion of
mentioned carlier. The complex of generic emotionalharmony
traits is
circumscribed so that it is through affiliation
rather than
through reciprocity that their fulflment is sought.
Particularly
formalised was the man-woman relationship
that was as a rule
cool and distant.
The tradidonal patterm was that the husband
after supper in his
own house, would visit the wife in her
house and then leave her
the next morning... The relationship between
the husband and
wife was essentiaily physical. There was little
sharing of responsi-
bilities and ideas.She would not even speak or
hint to him about
her economic or personal needs, for it was a matter óf
shamc for
he tarauad to accept any help from him.36
 THE MISSING MALE / 75

ne images offemininityin Ravi Varma that we have beena

discussing are anything but that could be related to such
behavioural and emotional context. In the first place they don't|
belongto the cultural environgment of the taravad and jts
emotional ambience. Their loving gaze, confident of thereci-
procity it evokes and affectionate wargnth engendered.by.sex
ual partnership and its gratification, are suggestive of.che
intimacy and closeness of cohabitation. These images show a
*

care and respect for her role as wife which is born outof a
recognition of thepositive values of marriage and of the family.
a
In other words, new way of ffe that accommodates the
redefinedconcepts of marriage and parenthood and the needs
of sexual gratification in one ensemble, the intimate and
harmonioussocial unit ofchenuclear conjugal amily. This
meant a change in the way of life as the wife is now economi-
cally supported and emotionally cared for by the husband, n0
less than that in the quality of life brought about by increased
private means. As money economy was increasingly becoming
a term in social relations, it has introduced norms different
from the wealth-related abstract status that was sustained by
the terms of relation of land economy and family honour. Thee
younger men were entering more and more into clerical, legal
and administrative professions under the colonial government
and their economic independence from the taravad enabled
them to stay on their own, away from the ancestral joint
families. So intense was this trend that according to the Census
Report of 1881, out of the population of 23 lakhs in Malabar,
welve lakhs of people were employed with regular income.
Muchuswamy Iyer, president of the Malabar Marriage Commis-
sion mentions,
...the general practice in North Malabar for the wife to live with
her husband, not only when the latter has selfacquired property
but also with the permission ofthe Karanavan when he had no
such property and the growing practice of marrying at a distance
instead of in the vicinity as was the case prior to the introduction
of railways and the increased facilities of communication.
Apart from the changes in the economic structure of
familial relations, the break with the custom of the rigidly
localised place of residence in the natal home was also a
liberating influence on the woman whocan now find her place
 76 SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

in the world away from home as it was beyond her reach until
then. Logan's observation of the same phenomenon is charac-
teristically perceptive and sympathetic,
.but things are changed now that a Nayar usually marries one
wife, lives apart with her in thcir own home, and rears her children
as his own also. His naural afections.come into play, and there
is a strong and most laudable desire for some legal mode,
other
than those at present recognised, for conveying to his children
and to their mother all his selfacquired property.58
All the features that strike Logan as laudable, like marrying one
wife, staying apart in their own home, the fatherly affections of
the man coming into play, his private earning and
his desire
for the legal recognition of marriage as mode of entitlement
all point to the emerging role and image of the husband-father.
This concept of the husband-father, conversely, has posited its
female counterpart in the image of the wife-mother.
What strikes us most is that in this pleasant and sprightly
wortd that Ravi Varma portrays, the father-husband is conspicu
ously absent.In Tbere GomesPapa, the whole scene is centred
aroundthe absent figure of the father. This involves a curious
role-reversal between the person of the male as unrepresented
object in the painting and the discursive production of the
male self-image as it configures in the dominant narratives. We A
|know that in the discursive production ofmeaning the male is
never the missing object, because it is in his psychic inscrip-
tions as the universal subject that the feminine is always the.
particular object in the field ofrepresentation. The male coun
erparts are absent from this social space because, I maintan,
the concepts signifying their role and image as social actors ini
relation to the space which Ravi Varma envisions as the site of
the private sphere ofenlightened sociability were not available
to him, We must remember that there was no socially consti-
tuted image of the paternal role to identily with unlike,for
example, that of the patriarchal role of the karanavan.Kath
een Gough notes about the Nairs tha marriage. was the
slenderest of ties, while as social concept fatherhood scarcely
existed. "57 On the matter of father-child relation, Pillai's obser
vation also corroborates. the above. He says that children.born
to a Nair wife were rarely fondled by their Nambudiri fathers.
was not usual for a Nambudiri to þe affectionatelyfree.even
It
 THE MISSING MALE / 77

with his Nambudiri wife, or to fondle a Nambudiri child.40

This is the context for Logan's taking special note of the
laudable changes when a 'Nayar usually marries only one wife'
and 'rears her children as his own also' and when "his natural
affections come into play'.
Now we are in a better position to see why Ravi Varma
could not haveaccommodated a male protagonist as father in
There Comes Papa or as husband/lover in Waitingfor the
BeLOVed or Veena Player or Malabar Beauty FOr one,
the
image of the person of the husband or father as it was topically|
Z
present could have been mismatches to his idealised femalel
figures and misftits in the idealised realm he creates. Ravi Varma,
the cosmopolitan that he was in temperament and afrequenter
to the many abodes of sophisticated urbanity across, the coun-
try could have found that the dhoti-clad fellow countrymen ot
his, with their upper part left uncovered, with long tuft and
ear-studs, known for their clumsy. manners, leave much to be
desired. To him, they could have offered an iconography that
was quaintly archaic and uncouth. There was nomale image
forthcoming that could privilegeitselfby being.identitiedwith
that which was ideologically masculine as Constiruung ne
In
artistic setimage. the novelIndulekha mentioned earlier,
TMadhavan with whom Indulekha is passionatelyin love, isA
English-educated, westernised in habits, plays tennis and
cricket and is a sort of rebel. But his tuft that, when untied,, j
reachès down to the knees together with his ear-studs are the
distinguishing marks that, according to the novelist, enhance
his beauy
What is more, Ravi Varma could not have related them
emotionally to each other through gestures and expression
around the psychological motif of conjugal love, in terms of a
socially accepted behavioural code defining man-woman rela-
tionship, when such a code was not forthcoming in the public
order. Emotional reciprocity was withheld and inhibited, as
noted earlier, in allpsycho-behavioural modalities of inter-sub
jectivity, which instead were guided by rules of decorum betit
ting the rank of each. All the more does it become apparent
when we note that Ravi Varma has painted several non-Malayali
couples in his genre paintings and in sketches in his sketch
book.Incidentally, amusing though it appears,Ravi varmna
himself could not SIt with hiS young wfe and intee aaugater
 SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES

a
while posing for what purports to be family group photo- Pro1
graph. What his biographer describes as Ravi Varma at home
With his wife and eldest daugiter' are in fact simply two
5eparate photographs one in which Ravi Varma is sitting all
by himself and the other one in which his wife and child are
Seen exactly in the same place andin the same chair where he
sat as father and husband.
It is as if to mediate the contradiction that the person o
the male protagonist who is absent from this social space, as
social actor in the emerging visión of an idealised domesticity
as father or husband reappears in the mythical space of Ravi
T
Varma'snmythological paintings in the tetestialcast.ln the case
of the female figures inthemythologicals, they are an extension
or those in the genre paintings, by virtue of the discreetly
suggested social identity and class of the feminine cast beneath ,
its guise as various celestial beauties. The choice of puranic
themes in these paintings too, are mostly those that dwell on
the trials of marita duty in conflict with the self-abandon of
early love and the denouement which is a vindication of
rightful union, the abode ofwhich in the contemporary context
is the family{ (lncidentally, it is worth noting that the mainstay
of Indian popular films is stil the permutations of the theme
of the trials of marital duty and the misgivings ofearly love, the
nythical high drama of the final resolution being invariably a
SpA
moralistic vindication of theinstitutión ofthe family, the point
pf which is the upholding of the role of the wife-mother). The |
Lsocial and masculine vision that goes into the idealisation of
phese women as noble spouses ofbreeding, makes them merit
phe celestial in their manners of behavioural grace. The
im-
probability ofrelating the male to these idealised female figures
lin the genre paintings through gestures and expressions with
any amount of formal coherence, is overcome by the histrionic
and heroic behaviour with its gestural rhetoric in the my-
thologicals. The need for this transposed mythical space, being
the location of the male protagoniSt as the absentsocial actor,
to be more real than the indeterminate social space from where
he is absent, is related to the contradictory nature of his artistic
ideology. A contradiction which the 'realism' of Ravi Varma
could dissimulat through the simulated histrionics which at
the same time resolves itself by attesting to its lack of identity
with the real.
This contradiction was also leavened by the fact that there
existed an interface between the profane and the divine in
 THE MISSING MALE / 79

religious experience. In the lay religious sensibility, religious

experience öccupied a middle register between the protane
and the divine the divine, in the symbolic field of mythical
representation and the profane, in the discursive production
of mythical meaning. For example, in the practice of singing
romantic, even erotic songs before the closed doors of the
nuptial chamber by the bridegroom's relatives (called
vathiltburappattu), the analogies were drawn from Brahminic
gods in similar situations. There is also the belief that as
religious mediators, the Brahmin's ritual status endows him
with powers over the gods. That is why the Brahmin's person
is divine. On the other hand, in the more liturgical religious
sensibility of scholastic orientation in Kerala, devotion has a
tradition of being commingled with eroticism in a narural way.
This allows the gods to come down to the realm of the profane
without risking their divinity. When, in an oft-quoted adage,
music and literature are compared to the twin breasts of
goddess Saraswati, it is well in tune with the stock-in-trade
imagery of the erotic poetry of the day The identity between
devotion and eroticism as two scholastic pursuits is extrapo-
1ated through poetic legitimacy that was the privilege of the
scholastic order. In this tradition, mythical producion of
meaning was always a means of ideological legitimacy. Seen in
the ambience of this religious sensibility of both lay and scho-
lastic orientations, the interface Ravi Varma's social space
shares with the mvdhical space, is wellwithin the religious
experience of the time.
TO Concude, the images of women in Ravi Varma's genre
paintings relate to a particular moment in the social life of|
Kerala, made possible by. the matrilineal system becoming
gradually defunct, coinciding with the emergence of the nu
clear family, the redetinition of the paternal role and respect
for the social image of the wife-mother. But all these were
nowhere near being articulated in a coherent social practice,
(Pwhich takes at least another quarter century to come about. In
this worldsense, these paintings express the nascent aspirations and
view of new middle class that also signala breakwich
the
the feudal past, at the same time as it aligns with the national
bourgeoisie. Themythical productionofmeaning as anexTen:
sion or a reversal of the objective condiions, though was an
ideological legácy.ot the teudal past,had itsimplications to the
political idiombf nationalism as well.
80/ SOUTH INDIAN.STUDIES

NOTES
1 For example, Duarte Barbosa, Lopes de Castencda, Samuel
Mateer, and British officers like Ward and Conner, etc.
2 Genevieve Lemercinier, 'Relationships Betwecen Means ofProduc-
tion, Caste and Religion: The Casc of Kerala Between the 13th and
the 19th Century', Social Compass, vol. XXVIII, nos. 2-3, 1981, p.
179.
3 A.K.B. Pillai, 77he Culture of Soctal Stratificatton/Sexism: The
Nayars, Massachusetts, 1987, p. 156.
4 tbid., p. 156-57.
5 L. Moore, Malabar Law and Gustoms, quoted in
Edgar Thurston,
Castes and Tribes of South India, vol. V Madras, 1909.
6 Lemercinier, 'Relationships Between Means of Production, Caste
and Religion', p. 178.
7 Govindan Unni, Kinshtp Systems tn South and South-East Asia,
New Delhi, 1994, p. 110.
8 Pillai, The Culture of Social Stratificatton, p. 174.
9 Ward and Conner, Memoirof a Sturvey of ravancore, TravAncore
Sircar Press, Trivandum 1863, pp. 70-71.
10 Duarte Barbosa, quoted in PV Balakrishnan, Matrilineal System
in Malabar, Cannanore, 1981, pp. 247-48.
11 PK. Balakrishnan, 'Chandu Menonum Samuhya Pacchathalavum',
Bhasha Posbint, vol. 5, no.5, February-March 1982, pp. 73-75 (in
Malayalam). I have drawn on Balakrishnan's ideas to evolve an
argument. Sources from Malayalam quoted in this paper are
translated by me.
12 PK. Balakrishnan, ChanduMenon: Oru Padhanam, 1957, (reprint
1977).p. 124, (in Malayalam).
13 Moore, Malabar Law and Customs, quoted in Thurston, Castes
and Tribes, p. 201.
14 Pillai, The Culture of Social Stratification, p. 201.
15 0. Chandu Menon, Indulekba, Kottayam, 1889, (reprint 1971),
(in Malayalam). An interesting sidelight is the fact that Chandu
Menon, the novelist, who was a sub-judge under the British, iwhen
it came to expréssing his views officially on matriliny, was in
favour of it. He and Sir C. Sankaran Nair, were the members and
Muthuswamy Iyer, the chairman of the MalabarMarriage Commis
sion that led to the Act of 1896. Chandu Menon expressed his
views upholding matriliny in a dissenting note to the report of the
Commission.
16 R. Nandakumar, "Raja Ravi Varma in the Realm of the Public',
Journal of Arts.and Ideas, nos. 27-28, March 1995.
 THE MISSING MALE / 81

17A version of the Malabar Beauty (c. 1892) was one of the ten
paintings Ravi Varma had shown at the international cxhibition at
Chieago in 1893, for which he was awarded a medal for specific
merit' Thc citation takes special note of the paintings for the
cthnological value, not only do the faccs of the highcáste ladies..
give the various types of the localities, but... the details of costume
and articles. used in the social and ceremonial life.. The difter
ences between the figure in this painting and that in its version
are significant to note. The figure in the former docs not weara
blouse, unlike the other one, and is an improvement' on thhe
Kerala style of dressing, discussed later. The details herc are
characteristic of the leisurely, aristocratic life of her class.
veena she is holding (which is a sarod-like instrument in Iikc, the
the other
version), the wooden wall, the fan made of palmyra leaf hanging
on the wall, the brass vessel with its tall spout, the bras spittoon,
etc. With all this is the heavily rolled-up curtain which is an odd
1aPpendage to an outit of this kind in the given conditions of
Kerala, and lifts the whole scene out of its immediate
social
location.
18 Samuel Mateer, Land of Charity, London, 1871,
pp.61-62.
19 Kanippayur Sankaran Nambudiripad,
Ente Smararnakal, Kun
namkulam, 1963, (iá Malayalam).
20 K.ES. Menon, Many Worlds, O.U.P, London, 1965,
p. 6.
21 K.PS. Menon, My Dreamland' in Yesterday and
Today, Allied
Publishes, Bombay, 1976, p. 4.
22 P. Bhaskaran Unni, Pathonpatham Noottandile
Keralam, Kerala
Sahitya Akademi, Trichur, 1988, p. 34, (in Malayalam).
This
gives a vivid account of the habits of dress of nineteenth book
Kerala. century
.
23 O. Chandu Menon, Indulekha,
p. 37.
24 See R.N. Yesudas, The People's Revolt in Travancore:
ABackward
Class Movement for Social Freedom, Kerala Historical
Society,
Trivandrum, 1975.
25 The national dress of the Nayars is extremely scanty.
The women
clothe themselves in a single white cloth of fine texture reaching
from the waist to the knees, and occasionally, while abroad, they
throw over the shoulders änd.bösom another similat cloth.
by custom the Nayar women go uncovered But
from the waist; upper
garments indicate lower caste, or sometimes, by astrange.reversal.
ofwestern notions, immodesty, William Logan, Malabar Manua,
vol.1, 1906, (reprint 1951), p. 134. (See also p. 136.)
26 Balakrishnan, Chandu Menon, pp. 101-08.
27 tbid., Pp. 62-63.
 SOUTH INDIAN STUDIES
2/
28 Lemercinier, 'Relationships Between Modes of Production, Caste
and Religion', p. 181.
29 ibia., p. 194.
30 Pillai, The Culture of Social Stratification, p. 116.
31 Robin Jeffrey, Tbe Declinre of Nayar Dominance: Society
and
Politics in Travancore 1847-1908, Vikas, New Delhi, 1976, p. 181.
32 Christiane Hàrtnack, 'Vishnu on Freud's Desk: Psychoanalysis
in
Colonial India', Social Research, vol. 57, no. 4, Winter 1990,
p.931.
33 See, for a discussion on the emergence of the
nuclear family in
Europe, thejmportance the child got in that
set-up and an
iconographic tradition that came in its wake cighteenth century
in
paintings: Carol Duncan, 'Happy Mothers and other New Ideas in
Eighteenth-Century French Art, Tbe Aesthetics of Power: Essays
in Critical Art History, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 3-26. Also,
Philippe
Aries, 'Pictures of the Family', French Studies in History,
vol. I1,
ed. Maurice, Aymard and Harbans Mukhia,
Orient Longmans,
1990, pp. 159-188.
34 Pillai, The Culture of Soctal Stratification, p. 189.
35 ibid, p. 197.
36 ibid., p. 172.
37 Quoted in PV Balakrishnan, Matrilineal System, p. 108.
38 Logan, Maläbar Manual, p. 154.
39 Kathleen Gough, 'Changing Kinship Usages in the Setting of
Political and Economic Change Among the Nayars of Malabar',
Journal of tbe Royal Antbropological l1stitute, n0. 82, 1952, p.
73. Though she has later modified some parts of this statement
by emphasising 'he fundamental necessity to a Nayar of
having
both a ritual and a biological father of appropriate caste', the
reference to the social concept of fatherhood is not substantially
affected.
40 Pillai, The Culture of Social Stratification, p. 170.
41 N. Balakrishnan Nair, Raja Ravi Varma:ABiography,
Trivandrum,
1953, in Malayalam).