EMERGENCE OF A KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
Role of Migrant Farmers in the Educational Progress of Malabar in the Twentieth Century
Keywords:
Education, Migrants, Malabar, Resource Mobilization, School Committees, Syrian Christians, Tribal PeopleAbstract
This article explores the role of a migrant farming community in transforming a conservative and backward society into a modern society. By establishing educational institutions in Malabar region of Kerala, India in the twentieth century, farmers from Travancore educationally revolutionized the Malabar society. Though these farmers were not formally educated, their thirst for knowledge prompted them to formulate various methods and techniques of resource collection for bringing educational progress in the hilly terrains of Malabar. Not only in school education but in higher education also they marked imprints in this wild jungle region of south India. Native people, especially indigenous tribal groups, greatly benefited from the educational institutions of the migrants. Educational institutions of these marginal farmers had impacts upon the feudal social fabric of a conservative society by liberating oppressed people from the clutches of caste system and landlordism.
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