Mamankam, Kumbh and the Grammar of Hindu Sovereignty: How Bharat’s Political Rituals Were Dismantled

The decline of Mamankam cannot be understood in isolation. It must be situated within a much older and broader Hindu grammar of sovereignty, in which political legitimacy, sacred geography, ritual assembly, and public participation were inseparable. Mamankam was not an anomaly of Kerala history; it was the southernmost expression of a pan-Bharatiya civilisational tradition that included the Kumbh Mela, Rajasuya Yajna, Ashvamedha, and other ritual-political institutions through which Hindu society organised power without divorcing it from dharma.

Held once every twelve years at Thirunavaya on the banks of the Bharathapuzha, Mamankam functioned as a sovereignty conclave. The Zamorin’s right to preside over it was not derived merely from military strength but from ritual legitimacy—an idea deeply embedded in Hindu political thought. This is precisely what makes Mamankam comparable to the Kumbh Mela, which also operates on a twelve-year cycle, aligned with cosmic rhythms rather than arbitrary calendars. Both institutions located political and social order within ṛta, the cosmic principle of harmony.

Across ancient Bharat, sovereignty was never a private affair of rulers. The Rajasuya Yajna publicly affirmed a king’s supremacy through ritual recognition by peers and subjects. The Ashvamedha Yajna tested sovereignty spatially, allowing the king’s authority to be challenged or accepted across territories. Even large tirtha gatherings like Kumbh were not merely spiritual congregations; they were civilisational parliaments, where sects debated theology, kings announced grants, alliances were forged, and social norms were negotiated.

Mamankam belonged squarely to this ecosystem. The famous Chaver tradition, often misunderstood through modern lenses as “ritual violence,” must instead be read as part of a dharma-based contestation of sovereignty. The Chavers did not act out of nihilism; they embodied the belief that illegitimate power could be challenged publicly, sacrificially, and symbolically. This was not anarchy—it was a deeply moralised form of political resistance.

The dismantling of Mamankam, therefore, represents something far larger than the end of a regional festival. It marks the systematic destruction of Hindu political institutions, beginning with pre-colonial invasions. The Mysorean campaigns under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan were not neutral military expansions; they targeted temple economies, ritual centres, and land-grant systems that sustained Hindu public life. When the Zamorin lost sovereignty after 1766, Mamankam became structurally impossible—not because society outgrew it, but because the civilisational scaffolding that upheld it was smashed.

British colonialism completed this rupture with bureaucratic efficiency. The colonial state could tolerate Hindu rituals only as depoliticised “religion,” never as sovereign institutions. Temples were stripped of land, festivals were policed, and ritual assemblies were reframed as law-and-order problems. Practices that once regulated power were dismissed as feudal, barbaric, or irrational. The Rajasuya and Ashvamedha had already disappeared centuries earlier; Mamankam was among the last surviving echoes of that tradition—and it too was silenced.

Yet the most insidious phase of erasure came after Independence, particularly in Kerala. Successive communist-led governments, ideologically hostile to civilisational continuity, have played a decisive role in reducing Mamankam—and similar Hindu institutions—to folklore without power. Marxist historiography, by design, struggles to comprehend Hindu political thought, which does not conform to class determinism or materialist causality. As a result, institutions like Mamankam are either reduced to caste conflict narratives or presented as spectacles of irrational violence.

This selective framing is revealing. Kerala’s Left ecosystem claims to champion resistance, yet Hindu resistance traditions are treated with embarrassment or suspicion. The Chavers are rarely honoured as defenders of sovereignty; instead, they are problematised, psychologised, or erased. Temple histories are fragmented, stripped of political meaning, and quarantined within “culture” pages, while the state retains control over temple administration and revenues.

In contrast, global analogues are celebrated. The Kumbh Mela, when recognised by UNESCO, is hailed as intangible heritage—but even here, the political dimension is carefully sanitised. Rarely is it acknowledged that Kumbh historically functioned as a Hindu civilisational council, shaping norms across regions and sects. Similarly, in ancient texts, the Rajasuya was not merely a yajna but a constitutional moment. Modern India, uncomfortable with its own civilisational past, prefers to see these as metaphors rather than institutions.

What emerges is a pattern: Hindu sovereignty rituals are acceptable only when emptied of authority. They may survive as tourism, spirituality, or anthropology—but never as frameworks of political legitimacy. This is the final stage of civilisational dismantling, where memory itself is controlled.

Reclaiming Mamankam, therefore, is not about romantic revivalism. It is about intellectual decolonisation. It requires recognising that Bharat possessed sophisticated, decentralised, ritual-based systems of governance long before Western political theory arrived. These systems balanced power with dharma, violence with sacrifice, and authority with public scrutiny.

When Mamankam is placed alongside Kumbh, Rajasuya, and Ashvamedha, a coherent picture emerges: Hindu society did not lack political thought; it possessed a different political ontology. Its institutions were cyclical, symbolic, and sacred—yet no less real or effective. Their destruction was not progress; it was displacement.

For Kerala in particular, recovering Mamankam’s civilisational meaning is an act of resistance against ideological amnesia. It challenges the assumption that modernity arrived only through colonial or Marxist frameworks. It asserts that Hindu society once governed itself through institutions that integrated land, ritual, honour, and sacrifice.

Mamankam’s silence, then, is not merely historical—it is political. And breaking that silence is essential if Bharat is to reclaim not just its festivals, but its civilisational confidence.

Credit : Organiser Weekly