Breast Tax

The breast tax was supposedly forced by the landowning king on lower caste Hindu women, which was to be paid if they wanted to cover their breasts and was further assessed in proportion to the size of their breasts.[1][2][8] This was seen as a sign of respect towards the upper caste and the lower castes including Nadar and Ezhava women had to pay the "breast tax"[1] Dr Sheeba KM, Professor of gender ecology and Dalit studies says the very purpose of the breast tax was to maintain the caste hierarchy.[2]

The law resulted from Travancore's tradition, in which the breast was bared as a symbol of respect to higher-status people.[6] For example, the Nair women were not allowed to cover their bosoms while in front of the Namboodiri Brahmins or entering the temples, while the Brahmins bared their breasts only to the images of the deities. The women of the even lower castes, such as Nadars, Ezhavars and untouchables castes, were not allowed to cover their breasts at all.[7] With the spread of Christianity in the 19th century, the Christian converts among the Nadar women started covering their upper body, and gradually, even the Hindu Nadar women adopted this practice.[14][15] After a series of protests, the Nadar women were granted the right to cover their breasts in 1859.

Multiple historians have documented that uncovering one's breasts was revered as a symbolic token of homage from the lower castes towards the upper castes in the state of Travancore and a state-law prevented this covering which served to demarcate the caste hierarchy in a prominent manner and often served as the core locus of spontaneous rebellions by lower castes.[16][17]

During the time of Travancore, lower-caste women were not allowed to wear clothes that covered their breasts.[18] Higher-class women covered both breasts and shoulders, whereas lower castes including Nadar and Ezhava women were not allowed to cover their breasts, to show their low status.[18][19] They had to pay the breast tax if they wanted to cover themselves.[2][1] Uneasy with their social status, a large number of Nadars embraced Christianity, and started to wear long cloths. When many more Nadar women turned to Christianity, many Hindu Nadar women also started to wear the Nair breast cloth.[19] This led to violence between the upper caste and lower castes.[20]

From 1813 to 1859 several laws were enacted and removed by the Kingdom of Travancore regarding the upper cloth issue.[16][21] On one such occasion the members of the king's council argued that this right would remove the caste-differences and pollute the kingdom.[16][21] Agitations and violence continued against the lower caste Christian and Hindu women on the right to cover their breasts and several schools and churches were burned.[22] Several waves of violence continued for four decades.[20][7]

In 1859 the violence reached its peak when two Nadar women were stripped of their upper clothes and hung on a tree in public for covering their breasts by Travancore officials.[20][19] The Nadars revolted in ferocity and started to terrorize the upper caste neighborhoods and looted their shops. Thus the kingdom was forced to take action on the upper cloth law to bring peace in the kingdom.[20][7][19] In the same year, under pressure from the Madras governor, the king issued the right for all Nadar women to cover their breasts.[22][23][24] Yet they were still not allowed in the style of the higher-class women which the Nadar women did not follow.[25][26][27]

The village-legend Nangeli is about a woman who lived in the early 19th century at Cherthala in the erstwhile princely state of Travancore in India and supposedly, cut off her breasts in an effort to protest against the caste-based breast tax.[2][8][28]

The village officer of Travancore, came to her home to survey her breasts and collect the breast tax.[28] Nangeli revolted against the harassment; cutting off her breasts and presenting them to him in a plantain leaf.[29][30][28] She died soon from loss of blood.[28] According to local villagers, Nangeli's husband, Chirukandan, seeing her mutilated body was overcome by grief and jumped into her funeral pyre and committed suicide.[2]

Following the death of Nangeli, a series of people's movements were set off. Soon the place she lived had come to be called as Mulachiparambu (meaning place of the breasted woman).[2]

However, the story is not officially recognized in any of India's historical accounts and its authenticity is debatable.[2][28]

Manu Pillai argues that covering breasts was not the norm in Kerala's matrilineal society during Nangeli's life-span. Victorian standards of morality penetrated into the society decades later under British colonial influence, which led to subsequent class-struggles for the right to wear upper cloth.[12] He believes Nangeli to have protested against an oppressive tax regime that was imposed upon all lower castes, which got appropriated with the passage of time, in pursuit of a different patriarchal fight for the preservation of female dignity.[12][13]