kerala social reforms

Jothirao Phule (1827-90) and Sree Narayana Guru (1854-1928) are the two social reformers in India. They have significantly influenced and transformed the societies they lived in. Both were lived during the British colonial period in the societies subjugated by Brahmanical Hinduism. They have interacted with the hegemony and dominance of Hinduism, colonial rule, and modernity with different types of ambivalence. An attempt is made in this paper to discuss how Jothirao Phule and Sree Narayana Guru approached and interacted with Hinduism and colonialism. Phule was intellectually influenced by then prevailing Anglo American political philosophers like Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Sree Narayana Guru experienced the colonialism as a revelation of downtrodden from the clutches of caste-ridden feudalism. For Narayana Guru, colonialism helped the untouchables in Kerala to access the religion which he considered as a modernizing common good. Phule welcomed British rule as the divine dispensation to rescue the untouchables from the oppressed Hindu religion which he considered as an instrument of oppression.  Phule was deconstructing the Hindu religion by displacing its metaphysical centers by human liberty and equality. On the contrarily, Narayana Guru was reforming Hinduism without touching its metaphysical center. These differences of their approaches on Hinduism and colonialism reflected upon their social engagement and their impact on society. Based on these, it can be argued that Phule was a social reformer who dispensed Hinduism at large and, on the other side Narayana Guru was a religious reformer was reforming Hinduism and made religion accessible to the downtrodden.