Author: Afeef Ahmed, Harvard University
Editorial Summary:
This paper reads changatham, now a casual Malabar word for friendship, as a linguistic archive of a vanished economic institution. Drawing on Portuguese chronicles, the thirteenth-century Payyannur Pattola, and colonial records, the author shows that changatham was a formal protection contract in which guards, largely Nairs, pledged their lives for merchants and goods, forming the connective infrastructure of trade across Malabar’s fragmented polity of landlords, rajas, and mercantile networks. Against narratives of quiet decline, the paper argues that the institution’s collapse— under Mysorean invasion and British abolition of protection levies — marked the disintegration of the indigenous economic order itself, ending a decentralised, resilient trading circuit and subordinating Malabar’s economy to colonial monopoly.
To call someone a Chengayi in Malabar, on the southern edge of the Western coast of the Indian Ocean of the Indian subcontinent, is to declare that he is affectionate. Chengay, or Otta-Chengay, is a term that is often used to denote this form of close-friendship in North Kerala, or Malabar. In the teashops of Malabar, the word changayi (friend) is tossed around with an easy, informal endearment. Through the medieval and early modern period, the region retained attraction from a diverse set of audiences that included merchants, sailors, saints, and importantly, colonial powers..
Yet, this endearment is a linguistic ghost of a political institution. Historically, changatham was a formal contract of protection—a guild-based security system where the “protector” offered their life as collateral for the safety of the “protected.” This institution is closely associated with the system of suicide squads, or cāvers. In his account of the suicide squads of Medieval Kerala, Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai shows us how Changatham was a sub-function of Cāver armies in the region. Citing from R.S Whiteway, Pillai observes the earliest mentions of this institution in the records of the Portuguese, where he uses the term ‘Jangada’ to refer to the institution. Whiteway observes that they had a jangada for each of their forts in Malabar. According to him, it was the Jangada’s duty “to defend anything entrusted to him with his life, and it was a serious matter to kill him, as it involved a blood feud with all his relatives” (Whiteway, p.12).
Pillai also notes instances where there were ‘Gangātas’ (as he spells) they had direct conflict with the Portuguese, while the latter was trying to loot the temples which the former were entrusted with the safety of. Apart from being mere mercenaries, the Jangadas had another major function in Malabar, which was to help traders and travellers travel safely from one place to another. Pillai also notes that this was altruistic, as they received no remuneration in return. But this aspect is contested by many others, including Gaspar Correia (d.1563), who was a Portuguese chronicler and a secretary to Afonso De Albuquerque, who explains the early exploits of the Portuguese on the Malabar coast. For Correia, the Jandages were maintained by the King as “they received the maintenance from the establishment” (Correia, p.328). Francois Pyrard shows us how the Jangayis had escorted him for payment (Pyrard, p. 340) and describes how they were kept by local lords and maintained by Kings for fixed wages.
Apart from these early modern European chroniclers, Paiyyannur Pattola, a 13th-century Malayalam poetic treatise, also bears evidence to the existence of these squads that go beyond the Portuguese period. ചാവളരെപ്പൊലെ നീയകലപൊവും, ചങ്ങാതം ബെണം പെരികെയിപ്പോള്, as the lines go, can be roughly translated as ‘you will go away now like Cavers, [you] need Changatham more [than ever] now”. The plot of the poem is the story of Nilakesi, a Malayali wife of a Tamil Chetty, who is committed to taking revenge for the killing of her brothers. The central theme, curiously, is of kudi paka, or blood feud, which Correia, Whiteway and many others associate the Changatham with.
It is not surprising that the reference to Cangatham in the poem, which filled the earliest evidence and images of how the Indian Ocean trade looked in medieval Malabar, is made by the Chetty, a major trading caste that served as the mercantile node between coastal Coromandel and Malabar. He cautions his son by reminding him of the need for Changatam, while he is going far away. This shows us how important and prevalent the institution was in those times as a security infrastructure. While the scholars talk about the stretch and relation of Changatham with Tamil/ Cola land and inscriptions and the Portuguese references, we do not see much reference to how this institution or practice was carried on, transcending the historical presence of different colonial powers in the region. Though Pillai states that this practice was ‘in vogue until the present police system came into force’, he does not provide any substantial evidence for his statement. Apart from this, the early scholars also viewed this institution as something external to the trade economy of the region, which was externally supported by these protector-friends when in need.
Thus, most of the studies show either a complete lack or dismiss it as a gradual death of Changatam at the outset of British colonialism. But a more careful examination of Changatam reveals to us how the disintegration of Changatam was not an external, uneventful unfolding, but rather symbolised the disintegration of the political economy of the region itself. Changadem (or Watching) Nairs were fundamental to Malabar’s political economy because they provided the structural “protection” (Changadem) that allowed trade to function within a highly fragmented political system. Their eventual disintegration, caused by external invasions and the subsequent British centralisation, signalled the end of the traditional Malabar economic order.
The Early Modern Malabar was mainly constituted by a triad, which included the autonomous Landlords (Janmakars), the Sovereign Rulers (Rajas), and the Mercantile Networks (Mappilas and foreign traders). The Changatam Nairs were the essential connecting nodes between these focal points of power by providing various functions. It had already become an institution that would act more like vigilant custodians of warehouses, and escorts to foreign merchants with juridical borders. In the period of EIC, these watching Nairs became integral for the smooth movement of trade, establishing customs and duties at juridical borders, and maintaining a trading infrastructure that connected the inlands of Malabar with the larger Indian Ocean World. Chandagems were necessary to ensure that the merchants were not disrespectful to the customs master and Head Nairs. The Changadems became a crucial presence in the inland trading points of pepper, ginger and other spices, which empowered the Nair aristocracy to abandon direct trade with Europeans and give preferences to indigenous agents and traders. Thus, they ensured a relative autonomy to the landholder by ensuring levies were paid and the routes were secured.
But the Early Modern Malabar was eventful enough to distort the existing order. The Mysorean invasions, which revolutionised the revenue structure and land relations, and the subsequent British interference destroyed the “checks and counter-checks” that maintained economic stability. The system began to fail when the Rajas, under pressure from Mysorean invasions and British demands, began to breach the Changadem contracts. By seizing goods or allowing their “protected” merchants to be harassed, they destroyed the trust that underpinned the entire transport system. The British struck at the roots of Nair power by banning feudal levies and “protection” money. Without these fees, the Changadem Nairs lost their primary means of subsistence. Many “Watching Nairs” and managers were driven into crime or destitution, such as burglary and smuggling of forest goods, as their traditional roles vanished. The British successfully “alienated” ordinary Nairs from their traditional aristocrats by offering them steady, year-round salaries. The former Changadems were transformed into British kolkars (peons) and police officers. The breakdown of the Nair-managed transport system, which had been highly adaptive and decentralised, allowed the British to replace it with a “centralised agency” with “monopolistic tendencies”.
This was not a mere end of a long-sustained institution of protection. Rather, this marked the end of free trading for the Mappila mercantile network and the loss of autonomy for the indigenous economic circuit, which included indigenous land-holders, petty cultivators and in-land indigenous traders, including Ravari Nairs. Thus, the gradual weakening and the subsumption of Changatam as a system into the newly-formed bureaucratic order of British rule was also the end of the long-run of a highly adaptive indigenous circuit of trade, which was autonomous and stunningly mobile. Thus, the Changadam was not just a cultural artefact but a prominent manifestation of the local political economy. Thus, the disintegration of it essentially was the disintegration of the earlier-mentioned triad. It effectively ended free trade in Malabar and subordinated the local economy to British monopolistic interests.
Eurocentric models of history often view these pre-modern guild systems as ‘primitive’ precursors to the modern state. A literary intervention into Changatham argues the opposite. The memories frozen in these everyday vocabularies connote a deep, affective trust, alluding to a system that was arguably more resilient to the colonial attempts of expansion than later state-centred models. When the Portuguese and later the British attempted to monopolise the spice trade, they struggled precisely because they could not “read” the grammar of changatham. The Chengayis were not just guards. Rather, they played an instrumental and infrastructural role that made trading circuits of Early Modern Malabar relatively autonomous and hard to disrupt despite the continuous attempts of the Colonial powers. Curiously, such a violent, complex and mainly important history of a structure of a specific political-economic arrangement does not find much space in the traditional historiography of Early Modern Malabar apart from the passing mentions of it as a cultural artefact, or an additional gloss to the martial-military tradition of the region. Thus, the Chengayi remains a reminder that the most enduring memories of economies are sometimes frozen in linguistic archives of the most mundane acts, at times like a call of endearment.
Citations
Pillai, Elamkulam P. N. Kunjan. “The Suicide Squads of Kerala (11th–18th Century).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 10 (1947): 318–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44137155.
Whiteway, Richard Stephen. The Rise of Portuguese Power in India. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1995.
Corrêa, Gaspar. Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and His Viceroyalty: From the Lendas da India of Gaspar Correa; Accompanied by Original Documents. No. 42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Pyrard, François. The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil. Vol. 1. Edited by Harry Charles Purvis Bell and Albert Gray. Hakluyt Society. 2017.
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Tellicherry Records Vol. XII / Talaśśērirekhakaḷ: Miscellaneous Correspondence. Kerala, India, 1796–1859. Shelfmark Ma I 765-12. Herman Gundert Portal. https://doi.org/10.20345/digitue.14812.