Samantan

Samantan Nair or more commonly Samantan (meaning "equal to" or "deemed to be"), was a generic term applied to dignify a group of sub-clans among the ruling elites and feudal lords of the Nair community in Kerala. The Samantan Nairs are members of the Kiryathil, Illathu and Swaroopathil Nair communities whose ancestors performed various Śrauta rituals (Hiranyagarbha) to achieve a higher status that enabled them to rule over the Brahmins.[1]

Samantan Nair
Regions with significant populations
Kerala
Languages
Malayalam
Religion
Hinduism
Related ethnic groups
Illathu Nairs, Kiryathil Nairs, Nambiar, Eradi, Swaroopathil Nair

Robin Jeffrey, an anthropologist, described the Samantans as, "A matrilineal caste ranking between Nayars and Kshatriyas."[2]

Dissent

Some Samantans have objected to their grouping with the Nairs, claiming that Samantans are a different caste from the Nairs. One of them, Nilambur Thachara Kovil Mana Vikrama (Elaya Thirumalpad), filed a complaint against the Collector of Malabar (William Logan) on his refusal to enter the Samantan as a caste separate from the Nairs. Even after submitting evidence trying to prove that Samantans are a separate caste, the judge refused to act against Logan, stating that:[3]

A consideration of all the evidence, appears to me to prove conclusively that the plaintiff is a Nair by caste. ... What appears to me, from a consideration of the evidence, to be the safe inference to draw is that the members of the plaintiff's family, and also the descendants of certain other of the old Nair chieftains, have for some time called themselves, and been called by others, Samantans, but that there is no distinctive caste of that name, and that the plaintiff is, as the defendant has described him, a Nair by caste.

The judge ultimately ruled that all Samantan Nairs are merely extensions of the Kiryathil subcaste of the Nair community.

References
  1. Mencher, Joan (1963). "The Nayars of South Malabar". Cornell University Press.
  2. Jeffrey, Robin (1976). The Decline of Nayar Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1847–1908. Sussex University Press. ISBN 0-85621-054-4.
  3. Castes and Tribes of Southern India By Edgar Thurston p.283-284
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