P Sanal Mohan, in Modernity of slavery tells the story of cherumas, kuravas, parayas, pulayas, and thanda pulayas the slave castes of nineteenth-century Kerala and their tryst with Christianity. These castes comprised nearly one-sixth of the population and were ‘owned’ by upper castes, princely states, and even Europeans.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when European missionaries began working among the slave castes, thousands joined the church. Their generational experiences, struggles, and memories shaped their collective self, and deeply impacted the emergence of Dalit consciousness in Kerala. This book presents and analyses the imaginations and articulations of the notion(s) of equality in the context of caste slavery, missionary activity, and socio-political transition in pre-colonial and modern Kerala.
