Subdued for centuries by the Brahmin and the Nayar castes, regarded as outside the fourfold structure of the caste system, the Ezhavas, nevertheless, retained a pride even in their position as the leading caste of the outcastes, and during the nineteenth century developed a great will to rise above the limitations which society had laid upon them, a will personified most dynamically in the teachings of Sri Narayana Guru, who was himself an Ezhava. After completing a modest life of more than 30 years thriving in knowledge and rough experiences, this epoch is regarded as the completion of the meditative recluse the period at which Sri Narayana Guru is believed to have got Enlightenment. Sri Narayana Guru went to his hermitage in the hilly forest regions of Maruthwamala, where he practiced an austere life by undertaking yoga and meditative thought and followed severe sustenance rituals. Under the guidance of the Yogi, Nanu learned several Yogic practices like Hatha Yoga and this experience had a deep impact in the later parts of the life of Narayana Guru. Kunjan Pillai, who discovered and apprized the philosophy of Nanu Asan and his passion towards Yoga, acquainted him to a Hatha yogi, Thycaud Ayyavu. During those days Nanu came across Kunjan Pillai, who was later called Chattampi Swamikal. After the death of his wife and father, Nanu Asan carried on his life as a wandering Sanyasi and became a ‘Parivrajaka’ (who wanders one place to another in the pursuit of Truth).
The bride stayed with her parents because Nanu Asan soon after became a wanderer. His marriage was very simple with the sisters of the groom investing the bride along with the ‘Thaali’ (wedding knot) on his behalf. He started teaching in a nearby school and his knowledge earned him the name ‘Nanu Asan’.ĭue to pressure from his family, Nanu got married to a traditional village doctor’s daughter called Kaliamma. Nanu, with other students, was given teachings on Sanskrit language and drama, poetry and literary criticism, along with logical rhetoric. He stayed as a guest in the family home Varanapally close to Kayamkulam. He carried on his studies at home under the guidance of his uncle Krishnan Vaidyan, a famous Ayurvedic physician and a scholar of Sanskrit and his father, where he was trained with the basics of the Sanskrit and Tamil languages and traditional subjects like Balaprobhodhanam, Siddharupam and Amarakosam.Īt a young age, Nanu possessed a sharp mind and admitted in the reputed school, Kummampilli Raman Pillai Asan at a village called Karunagapalli, which was fifty miles from his home, when he was only twenty one years old.
Nanu was introduced into traditional education pattern Ezhuthinirithal, by a local school master and also a village officer called Chempazhanthi Pillai. He used to listen to his father with much interest while he narrates the tales from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to the common village folks.
His father was also a teacher, educated in Sanskrit and well-versed in Ayurveda and astrology. He was the son of a farmer called, Madan Asan and mother Kutti Amma. Narayana Guru was born in the 20th of August, 1856, in a village called Chempazhanthi which is situated close to Thiruvananthapuram. India as a whole may have produced its Gandhi, but Keralites are inclined to take more pride in their own great spiritual and social leader, the contemporary of Gandhi, the low-caste sage Sri Narayana Guru, with his tireless preaching of the doctrine of ‘One Caste, One Religion, One God.’ He preached for moral and religious universalism. Gurudevan, as he was fondly known to his followers, revolted against casteism and worked on propagating new values of freedom in spirituality and of social equality, thereby transforming the Kerala society and as such he is adored as a prophet. He was born in the family of Ezhavas, in a period when people from backward communities, like, the Ezhavas faced much social injustices in the caste-ridden Kerala society.
Sri Narayana Guru was a prophet, sage and Hindu saint and also a social reformer of India.