Kerala (Malayali)

The narrow strip between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, cut off by mountains from the rest of India and consequently more connected to the sea than to the interior. Kerala's pepper drew Roman ships, and coins from Augustus onwards turn up along this coast in quantity. That maritime opening produced an extraordinarily early religious plurality: Jewish settlement at Kodungallur claimed from the first century, Syrian Christians who trace their church to the apostle Thomas and were practising centuries before Europe reached India, and the Mappila Muslim community founded by Arab traders within a generation or two of the Prophet. Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498, and the Portuguese, Dutch and English fought over the spice coast for the next three centuries. Society was organised under an unusually rigid caste system - Vivekananda called it a madhouse of caste - alongside matrilineal descent among the Nairs, a combination found almost nowhere else. Reform movements from the 1880s, led by Narayana Guru and Ayyankali, attacked it directly, and the temple entry proclamation of 1936 came decades ahead of most of India. Kerala was formed in 1956 and elected a communist government in 1957, among the first anywhere to take power by ballot. Land reform and public education followed. The state has India's highest literacy and life expectancy and exports labour to the Gulf on a large scale. Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram are the main cities. The backwaters behind the coast form a connected lagoon system. Kathakali and Theyyam are the region's classical and ritual performance forms. Kerala's monsoon arrives first in India, usually in early June.

• Existed: 1200 CE – present
• Type: Entity