LEGEND OF KAPPIRI MUTHAPPAN IN KOCHI: A COUNTER-DISCOURSE AGAINST PORTUGUESE COLONIAL DOMINATION

Abstract

Kochi is a city dotted with remnants of trans-Atlantic slave trade practiced by European colonisers. Most people in Kerala do not know about coastal Kerala’s African connection. While Kerala’s cultural connections with Europe are well articulated through literature, museums and heritage sites, linkages with Africa and the forced migration of Africans to the Malabar Coast remain obscure and are recalled primarily through rituals and folklore. One such folklore is that of the cigar smoking African slave, locally known a Kappiri Muthappan.  Although it is unclear how these slaves came to be called kappiri, it is believed that the word might have been a corruption of the word ‘kaffir,’ meaning non-believer, “which is what Arab travellers called the people of Africa,” said historian M.G.S Narayanan. “Kappiri’ is the local slang for African slaves shipped to Kerala in the 16th century by the Portuguese.

Historian KL Bernard in his book ‘History of Fort Cochin’ discusses what came to be called Kappiri mathil (Kappiri walls) and their subsequent evolution into protective spirits called kappiri muthappan. He says,“In 1663, Portuguese, who had treasures made niches in their thick walls, tied up Kaffirs in them, placed their treasures beneath tied-up slaves and made them promise that the treasures would be kept safe till their descendants came to claim them. The niches were then plastered up with mortar,” (Bernard 12)        Over time, local beliefs took over and the wall niches where these slaves were chained up were reified and began to be worshipped. The local legend says that the slaves turned into spirits which were called Kappiri Muthappan.Possibly one of the prominent ones that is actively worshipped today, is the shrine in Mangattumukku in Mattancherry near Fort Kochi. There is just a simple black platform, without idols or symbols.The legend even found a place in the third edition of Kochi Muziris Biennale via the Dutch artist Gabriel Lester’s installation ‘Dwelling Kappiri Spirits’.

The paper tries to analyse the myth of Kappiri Muthappan from a subaltern perspective. It looks upon these narratives as a resistance mechanism of the resilient people to defy and live through the multi-pronged system of oppressive caste hierarchy, subverting these very structures. The myth would be studied as a counter discourse developed by some sections of subaltern-community who would have been culturally scarred by their stigmatised status in the caste order and in their struggle to find sustenance from the oppressive system. The customary practice in Mattancherry of offering prasadam(holy offering) to Kappiri Muthappan will be looked upon as a subversion and appropriation of the dominant European religious practices. Further, the scope of this paper is to study how the shrines of Kappiri Muthappan becomes a heterotopic space as conceived by Michel Foucault and how the concept of hybridity posited by Homi Bhabha becomes a third space for the coastal communities to withstand the marginalisation they face. Third space can be understood as a location and/or practice. As a practice it reveals a differential consciousness that according to Chela Sandoval "arises between and through [different] meaning systems" (Sandoval 180), capturing the movement that joins different networks of consciousness and revealing a potential for greater understanding. As a location, third space can be a space of shared understanding and meaning making.