Vedadhikara Nirupanam

Vedadikara Nirupanam of Chattampi Swami infused a very powerful reformation movement in Kerala. It is a very large work written at many places during the wandering life of Swami, but we have got only a minor part. The work was completed in 1893, but was published in 1918. The custom that Sudra should not learn Veda that existed in Kerala and all over India is logically challenged in this work. Establishing with supporting evidence that Sudra and other low castes also have the right to knowledge; Swami launched a religious and cultural revolution. Swami’s attempt was to revive the purity of the Vedic culture as originally intended and make it universal. According to him Vedas are tools to distinguish between dharma and adharma. Vedic knowledge is essential for attaining moksha and hence it is required for every human being. So Vedas are universal and every human being has a right to acquire that knowledge. It is the first work in Malayalam or any South Indian language by any non Brahmin to question the false authorities weld by priestly class to keep away from the world of knowledge the majority of population. As all the customs, rules and norms related to social, economic and administrative matters relied for their authority on religious texts the relevance of Vedadikara Nirupanam goes beyond the barriers of religion. The work has given inspiration and support to the work of Sree Narayana Guru’. While Nitya Chaitanya Yathi read Vedadikara Nirupanam to his Master Nataraja Guru, the Master told that it was to be considered our luck that these papers had not got itself lit. So revolutionary was the content of the work. It was a bomb that was placed in the then world of social discrimination.

Extract from: Chattampi Swami: An Intellectual Biography. By R. Raman Nair and L. Sulochana Devi. Trivandrum, Centre for South Indian Studies, 2010

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