Ezhava

Clans and Kinship

Thurston (1909) describes two systems of exogamous houses, called illams. Among the Tiyans of Malabar, the illams of the father's side and the kulam of the mother's side are named in the marriage formula, and bride and groom must belong to different illams; ten illams are recorded for South Malabar and eight for North Malabar. In Travancore the Malayala Izhavas were divided into four exogamous illams, and also into four territorial groups called patikramams; the Pachchili and Pandi were separate sub-sections, and the Chovas of central Travancore had no illams. Inheritance differed by region: from father to son in the far south of Travancore, through the female line (marumakkathayam) north of Quilon and in North Malabar, and a mixture of the two in between; South Malabar Tiyans inherited through sons. These arrangements were changed by law in Malabar in 1925 and in Travancore in 1933.

The illams as Edgar Thurston (1909) gives them: ten for South Malabar and eight for North Malabar from F. Fawcett's account of the Tiyans (three names appear in both and are listed once), and four for the Malayala Izhavas of Travancore from N. Subramani Aiyar's. Spellings differ between sources; the site's search index uses some other forms, noted against each name.

In the Official Lists

• Other Backward Class (central list)

  Kerala

  The exact wording of the entry, and which of the names Ezhava, Thiyya and others it carries, was not checked.

The listing is the one Wikipedia gives, citing the central list of the National Commission for Backward Classes for Kerala (accessed 2017); the NCBC list could not be opened for this check, and Kerala keeps its own list, not checked here. Some Thiyya organisations of Malabar ask to be recorded as Thiyya rather than Ezhava, and in February 2013 the Thiyya Mahasabha objected to the SNDP Yogam treating the two as one community.

Checked on 2026-11-07 against the sources below. The lists are amended from time to time and can differ by district; for a certificate, the current order or the state's list is what counts.

Name and Origin

Edgar Thurston (1909) recorded the tradition that the community came to Kerala from Ceylon, the name Izhavan being taken from Izham, an old name of the island, and Tiyan from tivar, islanders; the South Canara Manual he quotes says the migrants brought the coconut palm, and in Travancore they were said to have brought varieties of the areca palm, champak and lime. Malayalam folk songs, as Wikipedia summarises them, tell of four men sent from Ceylon at the request of a Chera king to plant coconut groves. The anthropologist A. Aiyappan, himself an Ezhava, treated the coconut story as a belief rather than history. The word Eelam or Ezham appears in a Tamil-Brahmi inscription of about the first century BCE near Madurai.

History

Thurston records Izhava soldiers in the service of the rulers of Malabar and Travancore; the Panikkans of Ambanat house led the Izhava force of the Chembakasseri (Ambalapuzha) princes, and he lists the family titles Channan, Panikkan, Tantan and Asan, some conferred by former rulers. Some Ezhava families were physicians: the knowledge of Itty Achudan shaped the seventeenth-century Hortus Malabaricus. In 1896 Padmanabhan Palpu organised a petition of 13,176 signatories to the Maharaja of Travancore asking that Ezhavas be admitted to government schools and service. In 1903 Palpu and others founded the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, with Sree Narayana Guru, who preached 'one caste, one religion, one god', as its first president; Thurston (1909) gives its headquarters as Aruvippuram, where the Guru had consecrated a temple in 1888, and records its industrial exhibition at Cannanore in 1907. The Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 and 1925, led among others by T. K. Madhavan, campaigned for the right to use the roads around the Vaikom temple, and the Travancore Temple Entry Proclamation later opened the state's temples to all Hindus.

Faith and Worship

Thurston (1909) found that the Izhavas of Travancore had their own temples, with priests of their own community or of the Izhavatti, where Bhadrakali was most worshipped, and that they shared rights with the Nayars at shrines such as Saktikulangara and Chettikulangara; at Mayyanad an Izhava temple was dedicated to five lords identified with the Pandavas. Under the teaching of the reformer Thurston calls Nanan Asan, that is Sree Narayana Guru, new images were installed in many shrines of central and south Travancore, with daily worship by priests appointed by the community. Some Ezhavas became Christians under British rule, and a few Sikhs after the Vaikom Satyagraha.

Customs

Thurston describes Izhava houses of Travancore built like Nayar houses round a courtyard, facing east, and old kalari exercise grounds attached to the houses of families with the title Asan. Ezhava men perform Arjuna Nritam, also called Mayilpeeli Thookkam, a night-long dance in a skirt of peacock feathers, at Bhagavathy temples of Kollam, Alappuzha and Kottayam, and the Ezhavas of Malabar perform Poorakkali, a dance in eighteen stages around a lamp, at Bhagavathy temples in the month of Meenam (March to April).

Festivals

Notable Personalities