Women and Breast Politics

Until a century ago, quite many women in Kerala had to go without covering their breasts because of the caste system that was in force. The latest issue of Mathrubhumi weekly [dated 1 Dec 2024] carries a few photos of some Nair women of those days. Let me reproduce two of them below. 

Notice the ornaments they wear

Up to the 1920s, Kerala’s women were confined to domestic roles. Their lives were regulated by their respective communities. Women belonging to Christian and Muslim communities were expected to cover their breasts while their Hindu counterparts had to leave them bare. Those women from the lower castes had no choice in this matter.

However, the Nair women enjoyed a remarkable degree of autonomy because of the matrilineal system that was followed by that community, though the eldest male member known as karanavar wielded the ultimate authority.

The Hindu system in those days upheld a lot of evils such as child marriage, denial of education to girls, restrictions on widows, and ban on women’s upper garments. The motives were varied and most of them not quite edifying.

Manu S Pillai, a young historian who has chronicled the history of that period in depth, writes in his book The Ivory Throne that women in Kerala “enjoyed a position of singular importance, not least due to its matrilineal system of inheritance…. Even their highly abbreviated sense of dress seemed outrageously uninhibited to the more conservative and culturally judgemental Europeans, for it was unusual for women to cover themselves above the waist. It was as if they all lived in a state of perpetual dishabille but the fact was that being bare-bosomed was considered perfectly respectable.”

You can notice that absolute lack of inhibition in the two photos above. Dress is mostly a matter of convention. Contrast the dress styles of women in western countries with those of their counterparts in Islamic countries. Which would you consider more civilised? Why?

I was motivated to write this because of the rising number of culture-guardians and culture-police in India these days. I thought of reminding them about how their own ancestors treated women in the not-so-long-ago past.

I must hasten to add that the issue of women’s dress in Kerala is quite a complex social issue. I hinted at the multifarious motives of men. Motives matter the most. In those days just as today.