Agraharams: A Legacy in Ruins
A few days back, my father introduced me to one of his “public park” friends — let’s call him Vaidyanathan (not his real name). After the usual pleasantries, my father felt obliged to mention, “You know, he’s from our ooru” (my father’s hometown, Kanniyakumari). My heart raced a little. Even though I don’t identify much with the place since I grew up in a metropolitan city, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Where in Kanniyakumari?”
He replied, “Nagercoil, Vadiveeswaram (வடிவீஸ்வரம்).”
My mind silently yelped, Oh god…
Hiding my reaction, I asked, “So do you have anyone still living there?”
He replied, “We used to own an ancestral house until a few years ago, but we sold it. There’s no reason to go back.”
“Oh, why would you do that, uncle? It’s in the heart of the town.”
“Yes,” he said, “but a lot has changed. Vadiveeswaram was originally a thriving agraharam when I was a boy, but over the years it gradually lost its originality. Our (Brahmin) community moved to cities for their livelihoods. Most people sold their houses to families from other communities, who then sold them to business owners. They demolished the old houses and built shops because of the central location. Ours was one of the few houses that remained, but the place doesn’t remind me of my past anymore. My elderly parents (Mr. Vaidyanathan is in his late 60s now) have moved in with me. When someone offered a hefty price, I decided to let it go.”
Damn. I was suddenly reminded of a famous non-vegetarian hotel in Vadiveeswaram (வடிவீஸ்வரம்) where I used to relish their mutton biryani. In fact, that restaurant was the only reason I would willingly accompany my parents on their Kanniyakumari trips. I remember the street — a few houses standing among many shops. The houses were wide, the streets were wider. I haven’t toured many agraharams to confidently generalise their structure, but the Brahmin settlements in and around present-day Kanniyakumari district were noticeably larger.
Vadiveeswaram (வடிவீஸ்வரம்) is only one of the many agraharams that have completely disappeared in and around Kanniyakumari, and Tamil Nadu as a whole.
The hotel I mentioned is adjacent to a small temple. That’s how agraharams were traditionally structured — usually near a water body, with two parallel lanes branching out from a temple, big or small. Suchindram (சுசீந்திரம்) is one such example. It houses the famous Thanumalayan Swamy Temple (தனுமாலயன் சுவாமி கோவில்), which didn’t begin as a massive temple complex; it grew over the past century. But there was a huge agraharam (past tense) in that little town. It was a thriving settlement when my grandparents — who would have been in their late eighties or nineties today — were alive.
An 87-year-old aunt of mine fondly recalls that all the houses in and around the Thanumalayan Swamy Temple (தனுமாலயன் சுவாமி கோவில்) once belonged to the Brahmin community. “Some homes were large, others small, but there was something very appealing about their day-to-day life,” she said. I remember walking to school through those lanes. Mornings were marked by the sound of Carnatic music; people would sing hymns. When I visited recently, I saw goats tied in front of a house that once belonged to a family who sang hymns to God. They must have sold it to someone from another community. Houses belonging to Iyengar families had the śaṅkha symbol on their doorways. Many of our school staff were Brahmins, and sometimes I would accompany a friend to her home — most houses had a veena.
My aunt added, “The community suffered acutely at one point. After Independence, government jobs became harder to obtain for many reasons. Priesthood alone pushed families into poverty. From the 1970s onward, they began moving out rapidly. Now only a handful remain.”
When my cousin got married a few years ago, her engagement ceremony was held in a small party hall near the temple. From the hallway, I could still see old agraharam houses squeezed between new buildings — the thinnai and the red-oxide floor still intact. I asked my cousin, who grew up there. “When I was a child, there were many such old houses. Now it’s different,” he said. Directly opposite the old house stood a modern building named Shalom.
My mother had a similar story. Her best friend, the late Mrs. Seetha, was from a neighbouring agraharam called Mahadhanapuram (மகாதானபுரம்), close to where my mother grew up. “She once took me home for lunch,” my mother recalled. “What struck me was the organisation. Everything was neat. No house was bigger or smaller — symmetry defined the settlement. The houses were narrow, like train compartments, with hardly any space between them. Through the rear entrance of one home, you could reach another. The neighbourhood was quiet. They weren’t the kind who stopped for casual chats. Her friend’s mother served the best meal I’ve ever had — fragrant, balanced, with no single flavour overpowering another. They were generous with ghee. Thick curd was served towards the end. The older women were immersed in chants and prayers. It felt a little unsettling because of the cold stares from neighbours — back then it was still unusual for someone from another community to enter the inner quarters — but her friend’s mother was kind.”
My grandmother had another story. When she was a girl, a young widowed Brahmin woman often visited their home. My grandmother’s father was well-known in the locality for his social welfare work. “She was beautiful,” my grandmother would say. “Her skin was whitish–pink, radiant. But despite her youth, she wore a light saffron madisar, because she was a widow. Her head was always tonsured, covered with the pallu of her plain saree.” My great-grandfather paid her generously for small errands, but despite her poverty, she never accepted cooked food, even if it was prepared by the brahmin widow simply because it was cooked in someone else's kitchen. Once my grandmother saw an insect on her forehead and reached out to remove it. The woman slapped her hand away, distressed: “You’ll make me impure.” My great-grandfather — a Congress supporter and a self-declared rationalist — was furious when he heard this and reprimanded her. She apologised, but my grandmother noticed how deeply the idea of impurity was ingrained. The woman was helpless — grateful and loyal to the family that helped her, yet unable to escape the conditioning of untouchability.
Kanniyakumari, whose demographics once included a significant share of the Brahmin community, has now seen that number shrink drastically. As I mentioned earlier, unlike other districts where villages had small Brahmin clusters, Kanniyakumari had large, village-like settlements. An agraharam wasn’t just a cluster of Brahmin homes — it was a micro-economic unit, often endowed with fertile agricultural lands so the community could remain self-sufficient. But most families have since sold their lands and homes and moved away in search of better livelihoods.
For reasons unknown, it pains me to see these once-vibrant agraharams vanish, with only fragments standing as silent witnesses to their legacy.
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