Latest news with #GuruvayurappanCollege
Indian Express
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Opinion M G S Narayanan, the historian who dug out the pre-colonial history of Kerala
Not often does the demise of an academician make every scholar of the discipline in a region feel that he or she has lost a teacher. When M G S Narayanan departed on April 26, historians in Kerala, cutting across the political divide, felt that their mentor was gone. The contributions of MGS, as he was affectionately known, were not limited to advances in historiography. He left a deep mark on the thinking of three generations of Kerala historians, especially concerning critical engagement with sources. Born in Parappanangadi on August 20, 1932, Narayanan's major inheritance from his family was the rationally-grounded approach to life that he learnt from his father, a physician. He was only seven when he lost his mother. In his younger days, language and literature were his primary interests. During his secondary school years in Ponnani, he met K Kelappan and interacted widely with members of an informal collective of writers, artists, and activists called Ponnani Kalari, including influential public figures such as V T Bhattathiripad and N P Damodaran, novelists Uroob and N P Mohammad, critics M Govindan and Kuttikrishna Marar, and poets Edasseri Govinda Menon and Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri. Under Edasseri's influence, he also tried his hand at poetry. During his undergraduate days in Kozhikode, his dislike for history — developed during school days — turned into a love for the discipline, largely due to his conversations with the doyen of history writing in the city: K V Krishna Iyer. M G S went to the Madras Christian College for his master's degree in history. In his Madras days, K A Nilakanta Sastri and S K Nair became his major intellectual influences. When he commenced his career as a lecturer at the Guruvayurappan College in Kozhikode, he was a sworn Marxist, a position he distanced himself from in the early 1990s to become one of Marxism's most vehement critics in Kerala. His urge to know the precolonial history of Kerala was partially due to an absence of historical work on this period. He recalled that the mainstream textbooks of Indian history he read as a student never discussed Kerala, barring the mention that Shankaracharya was born in Kalady and that Vasco da Gama had landed in Kozhikode. His decision to go on study leave under a UGC scheme to pursue doctoral research was met with hurdles because the only university in Kerala at the time — the University of Kerala — did not have a history department. A retired professor of history at the University College, Thiruvananthapuram, where there was a history department, agreed to be the de jure thesis supervisor. However, V Narayana Pillai insisted that M G S should seek actual guidance from Elamkulam P N Kunjan Pillai, professor of Malayalam, whose knowledge of Kerala history was deeper than most history professors. M G S's doctoral work studied the Chera state of Mahodayapuram between the ninth and the 12th century with an enviable attention to facts. In the thesis, he did for the Cheras what Nilakanta Sastri had done for the Cholas four decades earlier. It was soon recognised as a classic, read and discussed widely, with enthusiasts declaring at times that it brought about a paradigm shift in the region's historiography. Few PhD theses written in India have so pervasively stimulated scholarship in the region. And yet, the thesis was read only in its manuscript form for forty years before it was formally published in 2013. Only in 1996 did M G S print a few dozen copies for private circulation. M G S was also one of Kerala's greatest history teachers. With no reliable textbook to fall back upon, he engaged students of Kerala history with primary sources such as inscriptions, registering major advances in pedagogy. Students recall his enviable understanding of Kant, Hegel and Marx, whose works he taught in his course on modern European intellectual history. M G S was also a great institution builder. Associated with the University of Calicut from the time of its inception in 1968, he developed the department of history with a fine syllabus and a wonderful library, museum and manuscript collection. He also encouraged the publication of unpublished manuscripts. He himself edited the Vanjeri Granthavari, a collection of palm-leaf land documents. He served as a member secretary of the Indian Council for Historical Research (1990-1992) and as chairman between 2001-2003. He also accepted research assignments at various times in London, Moscow and Tokyo. Though M G S wrote several books in English, he was prolific in Malayalam. He was among India's earliest historians to use the now-hackneyed theory of legitimation. In a groundbreaking paper that he wrote jointly with Kesavan Veluthat in 1978, he argued that the Alwar and Nayanar bhakti of Tamil Nadu was a religious ideology that unfurled as a state-driven initiative meant to fortify power. While many historians today are sceptical of these claims, the argument left a lasting impression on nearly three decades of historiography. In my estimation, his lasting contribution lies not in his doctoral thesis or the bhakti paper, but elsewhere. Pre-colonial Kerala was a deeply militarised region. M G S shed light on the extent to which the state, the brahmana oligarchy, the agrarian associations and even rituals and institutions of learning were militarised. His argument that the militia was modelled after the picture drawn in the Dharmashastras and Kautilya's Arthasastra perhaps stretches things too far. But the martial character of everyday life during the Chera period and the six succeeding centuries is a question we cannot evade anymore. The meetings that I had with M G S regularly at his residence in Malaparamba, Kozhikode, between 2005 and 2011 — when he spoke of Kerala history with fondly recalled autobiographical anecdotes strewn throughout — are vividly etched in my mind. He convened the Mananchira-Vellimadukunnu Road Action Committee and campaigned for the road relentlessly, courting arrest and prosecution on one occasion. Decades of struggle for the road ended in February 2025, when the government finally invited tenders. On April 28, the action committee gave a call to name the road after M G S. This is only one of the many ways of commemorating a wonderful life. Whether or not the road is named after him, M G S will continue to live in the hearts of Kerala's history lovers.
Indian Express
26-04-2025
- General
- Indian Express
MGS Narayanan, ex-ICHR chairman who offered a new perspective on Kerala's history, no more
Renowned historian and former chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Dr M G S Narayanan died at his residence in Kozhikode on Saturday. He was 92. Narayanan conducted extensive research on Kerala's history, offering a new perspective and interpretation, and authored several works, including on the state's Aryanisation. Hailing from Ponnani in Malappuram, Muttayil Govidan Menon Sankara Narayanan, who was later known as MGS in the corridors of historical research, began his career as a faculty at Guruvayurappan College in Kozhikode after obtaining masters in history. In 1968, he joined the University of Calicut as a lecturer and headed the history department from 1970 until his retirement in 1992. During that time, he was instrumental in establishing a specialised library and a museum of Kerala History and Culture. During his illustrious career as a historian, Narayanan served as visiting faculty at several national and international academic centres. He served as the chairman of ICHR from 2001 to 2003. Narayanan had been closely associated with the Indian History Congress from the 1970s and served at its various bodies for the next three decades. He became the president of the Indian History and Cultural Society in 2001. He also played a key role in establishing and promoting the South Indian History Congress, the Epigraphical Society of India, and the Place Name Society of India. His publications include three volumes of sources for Kerala History and a compilation of extracts from research works in the last hundred years of the Malabar region in Kerala. He discovered and published a Brahmi inscription of Bindusara from Sanchi, and several medieval Vattezhuttu inscriptions of Kerala.
