On Irony, Brahminism, and Intergeneration

Abstract

Chapter seven looks at intergenerational engagement with brahmins’ contemporary politics of identity through the perspective of irony. It delves into how older sections of Nambudiri society critically engage with contemporary political uses of the past for class claims and community building by neo-orthodox Nambudiri youth. This section analyses the formation of the modern YKS in the 1990s, as promoted by educated Nambudiris— often living in the diaspora— to counter the (supposedly) persistent subordination of the community to more successful middle-class strata. The chapter suggest how contemporary attempts to reframe a fragment of ‘glorious history’, rather than allowing middle-class Nambudiris to escape from the ‘backward’ public representation, have the effect of exacerbating public perceptions of Nambudiris as the embodied antinomy of the present.