Nangeli: The woman who cut off her breasts
http://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/the-woman-who-cut-off-her-breasts/article17324549.ece
An interesting article* by Manu S Pillai, author of the award winning "The Ivory Throne"
Excerpts:
Excerpts:
Nangeli too was
recast. When Nangeli offered her breasts on a plantain leaf to the Rajah’s men,
she demanded not the right to cover her breasts, for she would not have cared
about this ‘right’ that meant nothing in her day. Indeed, the mulakkaram had little to do with breasts other
than the tenuous connection of nomenclature. It was a poll tax charged from
low-caste communities, as well as other minorities. Capitation due from men was
the talakkaram — head tax — and to distinguish female
payees in a household, their tax was the mulakkaram — breast tax. The tax was not based on
the size of the breast or its attractiveness, as Nangeli’s storytellers will
claim, but was one standard rate charged from women as a certainly oppressive
but very general tax.
When Nangeli stood up, squeezed to the extremes of
poverty by a regressive tax system, it was a statement made in great anguish
about the injustice of the social order itself. Her call was not to celebrate
modesty and honour; it was a siren call against caste and the rotting feudalism
that victimised those in its underbelly who could not challenge it. She was a
heroine of all who were poor and weak, not the archetype of middle-class
womanly honour she has today become. But they could not admit that Nangeli’s
sacrifice was an ultimatum to the order, so they remodelled her as a virtuous
goddess, one who sought to cover her breasts rather than one who issued a
challenge to power. The spirit of her rebellion was buried in favour of its
letter, and Nangeli reduced to the sum of her breasts.
*Source: The Hindu MAGAZINE, Sunday, February 19, 2017
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