Nair, a tribe to be extinct

We are a tribe of India! We are universal, we spread everywhere like a pandemic for We got uprooted in the long twists and turns of history. We are never mentioned as a minority nor do we get any special consideration, we are the people who mostly live in the glorious past ...how glorified still it has the stench of our blood. We are Nairs of Kerala and our blood flows through the veins and arteries of the backwaters of Kerala.

Where is our beginning most of us don't know, did we come from the north, as some historians say, or are we the owners of the land for which we gave our life? We don't limit to Kerala alone, there is a Nair Brigade in Indian Army, at least there used to be. Every Nair boy born was fed with the idea of fighting for the motherland . Kill or get killed...for the king. They fought with their own blood on both sides.

Nairs did not have the right to education at those times, we were prohibited from learning and writing but taught to fight, the Kalari became our birthright, and we believed in valour and pride ..but was it all beneath that pride we hid the great insecurities, our woman.

The Nair community was not the upper class. Our women had to fight the worst fight to cover our breasts. There was a time when Nair girls danced before so-called higher race bare breast, we were married against their right. We were violated as soon as a girl attained menarche those frightful days which every Nair woman was against. They ended it through pain and persuasion. They at times had the right to disown their partner, but it never made them as independent as the world and history believed and said but more insecure. Were they ever loved...were they ever honoured?

They say the matrilineal system protected women, Nair women had the power to fight and right on their land, but it was all bogus. The brothers and uncles ruled the family and the property, in matriarchy while the husband and father had the entire control in patriarchy. Women suffered whatever system it was.

Sometimes we married the cousins, the father's sisters son and at times Nair women married men of upper castes, Namboothiri or Kshatriya, but it was just marriage for namesake, there was a time people used to say by giving a piece of clothing and better leaf and tobacco loaf anyone could marry a Nair woman.

But we fought, we abolished the dance floors, we abandoned many horrible rituals, we did cover our breasts, and we always tried to keep ourselves safe while their men were sent to the war front to kill and die.

Nairs were and are talented people. The men were tall well built and handsome and the women extremely beautiful, they excelled in art. Paintings, drama, and later cinema and music and dance. Their culinary skills are exceptional 

Thus we Nair is a tribe, who are just a tribe alone ...sincere innocent people. We loved nature, we worshipped nature, the rain, the wind, the trees, and snakes. Our life was basically agricultural and trade-oriented and warfare.

Nair women were scared of the untouchability system because if an untouchable sees a Nair woman at night we belonged to them and this corrupt system also made higher caste people kings, even kings like Marthanda Varma to sell the Nair women of a particular Nair family to coastal men against their will.

Our history as a tribe began wherever it is full of pain, tears, bloodshed, and valour ..yet valour . We are the warrior clan and continue to be though pushed back to flee from our own land by systems like an unethical reservation system not based on equality but on vote banks.

We are a tribe ...losing to extinction.