The abundance of Onam

Onam unfolds a floral carpet for Maveli (From last year's Onam celebration in my school)

Onam celebrations have already got underway in Kerala though the actual festival falls on 4 Sep this year.  But Onam is a season in the state, not just a day.  It is a mega event which brings together flowers and music, dances and boat races, and of course the legend of Maveli or Mahabali. 

The legend is pregnant with the typical Malayali sarcasm.  Mahabali was an asura king, according to the legend.  Asuras are demons and are opposed to the devas or gods.  Mahabali (literally means ‘great sacrifice’) tilted the cosmic balance by refusing to be as evil as asuras are supposed to be.  He was too good, in fact.  He created a utopia in what now is Kerala.  He brought prosperity to his people who lived in perfect bliss.  There was no evil.  Onam celebrates the memory of that great king who made Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas a reality.  The most popular Onam folksong recounts the prosperity, equality and honesty that reigned supreme in beloved Maveli’s kingdom. 

The gods were unhappy, however, with this tilt in the cosmic balance.  An asura king is not supposed to be more benevolent than the gods.  So none other than God Vishnu took avatar as Vamana and punished Maveli by sending him underground, to Patala.  His last wish was granted, however: to make an annual visit to his beloved country.  Onam celebrates the return of Maveli to his people from Patala.

Malayalis are notoriously sarcastic.  Onam is a celebration of that sarcasm also.  Which other people would place a demon above the gods vis-à-vis benevolence?  Moreover, make the gods jealous of the demon?

Of course, there’s something much deeper than sarcasm about Onam.  Exile is one major theme of the Onam legend.  The king himself is sent into exile.  I wonder if there’s any people other than the Jews who lived in exile (diaspora and pravasi are two ubiquitous words in the Malayali literature).  Quite a few million people of Kerala (whose total population is about 36 million) live outside the country and a few million others live outside the state within the country.  Interestingly there are about 3 million migrant workers in Kerala, mostly people from Bihar and West Bengal.  It’s a wonder how Malayalis seek their El Dorado outside while people from other states discover their El Dorado in Malayalanadu.  (It’s also a wonder why these migrant workers don’t go to the state which is being projected as the paragon of development.)

But exile is a relatively recent phenomenon.  In those days when the Maveli legend was created the Malayali was not an exile in search of his El Dorado.  Though the exile theme may have played a role in the contemporary fascination of the Malayali with Onam, the origin of the legend may owe itself to something else. 

Could it be the aspirations of the subaltern people that gave birth to the legend? In his groundbreaking book, Jaativyavastitiyum Keralacharitravum (The Caste System and Kerala History), P K Balakrishnan (1926-1991) speaks about the subaltern status of the Malayalis in the ancient period.  There was no historical civilisation in ancient Kerala, according to Balakrishnan.  The geographical region which is known as Kerala today relied solely on the monsoon for all cultivation in those ancient days.  Extremely poor low class people did all the manual labour.  The yield from such climate-dependent cultivation was so limited that even the higher class people lived in semi-starvation. 

These semi-starved people could not even derive the benefits of the foreign trades that took place in those days.  A lot of spices and herbs were exported from Kerala to many countries.  These spices and herbs grew abundantly in the verdant and fertile lands which were fed luxuriously by the monsoon and tropical sun.  But the trades were carried out by people who came in from outside the region.  They made use of the indigenous people as slaves.  The traders became rich and the indigenous people continued to remain in poverty.  Even the local kings were incapable of imposing taxes effectively on these powerful traders. 

Could the legend of a benevolent and powerful king like Maveli have originated in such a historical context?  Maveli could have been the metaphorical realisation of a subaltern people who saw the wealth of their land being carried away by foreigners.  Vamana was perhaps the god of those foreigners, an inimical god?

Whatever be the origin of the Maveli legend, Onam today is a celebration of abundance.  Much of the Malayali affluence may have come from abroad.  The lifestyle of the Malayali has undergone so much change that it is no more quite Malayali.  The plain truth is that the Malayali has forgotten the old saying Kaanam vittum Onam unnanam (Celebrate Onam even if you have to sell what you have).  The saying implies that the festival was rooted in the longings of a people who didn’t possess much.  Onam was a creation of abundance.  In all probability, it was a harvest festival and little more.  But gods were required to add the necessary flavour to festivals.  Thus the Malayali invented Maveli and Vamana. 

Maveli the asura still towers above Vamana the god in the Malayali psyche.  In that way, Onam is also a celebration of the human rebellion against the divine oppressions.  Onam is a celebration of the abundance of humanity.  Let humanity dance.  Let humanity pulsate above the hatred sown by the devotees of alien gods.  Let there be an abundance of humanity.