Үндістандық Наир кастасы

Caste group in India
a Hindu caste

The Nair ('/n//aɪər/, ) also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom historically bore the name 'Nair'. These people lived, and continue to live, in the area which is now the Indian state of Kerala. Their internal caste behaviours and systems are markedly different between the people in the northern and southern sections of the area, although there is not very much reliable information on those inhabiting the north. Historically, Nairs lived in large family units called tharavads that housed descendants of one common female ancestor, in observance of Marumakkathayam law. These matrilineally defined family units along with their unusual marriage customs, which are no longer practiced, have been much studied. Although the detail varied from one region to the next, the main points of interest to researchers of Nair marriage customs were the existence of two particular rituals—the pre pubertal thalikettu kalyanam and the later sambandam—and the practice of polygamy in some areas. Some Nair women also practiced hypergamy with Nambudiri Brahmins from the Malabar region. The Nair were historically involved in military conflicts in the region. Following hostilities between the Nair and the British in 1809, the British limited Nair participation in the British Indian Army. After India's independence, the Nair Brigade of the Travancore State Force was merged into the Indian Army and became a part of the 9th Battalion, Madras Regiment, the oldest battalion in the Indian Army. The serpent is worshipped by Nair families as a guardian of the clan. The worship of snakes, a Dravidian custom, is so prevalent in the area that one anthropologist notes: "In no part of the world is snake worship more general than in Kerala." Serpent groves were found in the southwestern corner of nearly every Nair compound.

The origin of the Nair is disputed. Some people think the name itself is derived from nayaka, an honorific meaning "leader of the people", while others believe it stems from the community's association with the Naga cult of serpent worship. Christopher Fuller, an anthropologist, has said that it is likely that the first reference to the Nair community was made by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, dating from 77 AD. That work describes what is probably the Malabar coast area wherein could be found the "Nareae, who are shut in by the Capitalis range, the highest of all the mountains in India". Fuller believes it probable that the Nareae referred to the Nairs and the Capitalis range is the Western Ghats. There are large gaps in the known early history of the Kerala region, which in the 1st century AD is thought to have been governed by the Chera dynasty and which by the late 3rd century AD had broken up, possibly as a consequence of a decline in trade with the Romans. There is no evidence of Nairs in the area during this period. Inscriptions on copper plate regarding grants of land and rights to settlements of Jewish and Christian traders, dated approximately between the 7th and 9th centuries AD, refer to Nair chiefs and soldiers from the Eranad, Valluvanad, Venad (later known as Travancore) and Palghat areas. As these inscriptions show the Nairs as witnesses to the agreements between those traders and the successors to the Cheras, the Perumals, it is probable that by this time the Nairs were vassal chieftains. Certainly by the 13th century, some Nairs were the rulers of small kingdoms and the Perumals had disappeared. Trade with China, which had declined for some time, began to increase once more in the 13th century and it was during this period that two small Nair kingdoms were established. Both of these—at Kolattunad and at Vernad—contained major seaports, and they expanded by taking over the inland territory of neighbouring chieftains. Although trade with China once more went into decline in the 14th century, it was replaced by trade with Muslim Arabs. These traders had been visiting the area for several hundred years but their activities increased to the point that a third Nair kingdom, based on the port of Calicut, became established. There were also small kingdoms at Walluvanad and Palghat, away from the coastline. This period was characterized by continuous war between these various kingdoms, and most able bodied Nair men were assigned to fight in these wars. The large influx of travelers and traders to Kerala had left many early accounts of the Nairs. These descriptions were initially idealized by Europeans for its martial society, productivity, spirituality, and for its marriage practices. Some early examples of these works being John Mandeville’s ‘’Travels’’ (1356), William Caxton’s ‘The mirrour of the wourld’ (1481), and Jean Boudin’s ‘Les sex livres de la republique’ (1576). The Nair men are described as being polite and well mannered in old sources, and nearly all historical descriptions describe them as arrogant. Sources on Nair women are scant and were written by men, and these primarily comment on their beauty. The Portuguese arrived in the area from 1498, by which time the Zamorin (King) of Calicut had come to the fore. Arab traders had firmly established themselves at his port and although trade still went to the ports of the other two small kingdoms it was in relatively small amounts. Indeed, the kingdom based at Kolattunad had split into three even smaller kingdoms; and the ruler of Vernad had conceded considerable powers to local chiefs within his kingdom. By the time of European arrival, the title Nair was used to refer to all military castes. The Portuguese used the term Nair for all soldiers, and prior to 1498 the military or retainer Nairs are believed to have been called 'Lokar'. Gough states that the title Nair existed prior to that time referring to only those families that were involved in the military. The Portuguese had many involvements in South India, including their support of the Paravars in a trade battle over control of the pearl fisheries of Malabar, but in the Nair kingdoms their principal interest was to obtain control of the trade in pepper. In this they followed the Muslim Arabs, whom they eventually marginalised; and they were in turn followed by the Dutch in 1683. The British and French were also active in the region now known as Kerala, the former from 1615 and the latter from 1725. These various European powers combined with one or another of the Nair rulers, fighting for control. One notable alliance was that of the Portuguese with the Kingdom of Cochin, with whom they sided in order to work against the power of the Zamorins of Calicut. Although Calicut remained the most significant of the kingdoms until the 1730s, its power was eroded and the rulers of Cochin were freed from being vassals of the Zamorins.

In 1729, Marthanda Varma became the Raja of Venad and inherited a state facing war and refractory Nair chiefs. Varma curtailed the power of the Nair chiefs and introduced Tamil Brahmins to form a core component of his administration. Under Marthanda Varma's reign, the Travancore Nair Infantry (also known as the Nair Pattalam) distinguished themselves in battle against the Dutch at the Battle of Colachel (1741). The Nair army was re organized in the European style and had transformed from a feudal based force into a standing army. Though this army was still made up of Nairs, this had checked the power of local chiefs and was the first limit on Nair dominance. There had been Hindu–Muslim clashes during the medieval period, notably when Muslim armies from Mysore invaded and gained control of northern Kerala in 1766. The Nairs of Kottayam and Kadathanad led the resistance, and the Nairs managed to defeat all Mysorean garrisons except for those in Palakkad. Shortly afterwards, Haider Ali died and his son Tipu had become Sultan. The Nairs of Calicut and South Malabar had recaptured Calicut and defeated an army sent by Tipu to break the siege. This had caused the Sultan himself to intervene in 1789 during which many Hindus, especially Nairs, were kept captive or killed by Muslims under Tipu Sultan. Many Nairs had fled to the protection of Travancore, while others engaged in guerilla warfare. However the Nairs of Travancore were able to defeat the Muslim forces in 1792 at the Third Anglo Mysore War. After this, the East India Company established its pre eminence throughout the entire Kerala region. Nairs believed in spirits, which on some occasions they attempted to tame by performing various rituals. According to Panikkar, they believed in spirits such as Pretam, Bhutam and Pisachu. Pretam is the spirit of prematurely dead people; Bhutam, Panikkar says, "is seen generally in marshy districts and does not always hurt people unless they go very near him"; and Pisachu is spirit of bad air causing illnesses. Believing Pretam to be wandering around the place of death, they warned people to stay away from those areas between 9 am and 3 pm. They also believed in a comic elf called Kutti Chattan who would be prone to mischief. They believed in evil eye—that compliments from others had negative effect; they also believed that utterances of a person with kari nakku (black tongue) had a similarly bad effect. They also believed koti from a poor man watching someone eating a delicious food will cause stomach aches and dysentery.

The Nair traditionally practised certain rituals relating to births, although often only for those of the first born. Of these, pulicudi was the most significant to them. This involved rubbing coconut oil into the pregnant woman, followed by bathing, formal dressing, consultation with an astrologer regarding the expected date of birth and a ceremonial drinking of tamarind juice, dripped along the blade of a sword. The woman would also select a grain, from which it was believed possible to determine the gender of the child. This ritual was performed in front of the community and contained many symbolic references; for example, the use of the sword was believed to make the child a warrior. In the months subsequent to the birth there followed other rituals, including those of purification and the adornment of the child with a symbolic belt to ward off illness, as well as a name giving ceremony at which an astrologer again played a significant role. There were also various dietary restrictions, both for the woman during pregnancy and for the child in the first few months of its life. An elaborate fourteen day period of mourning followed the cremation, during which the family performed various symbolic acts around the pyre and were regarded to be highly polluted in ritual terms, thus necessitating not only that they took regular baths but also that any other Nair who might touch them must also take a bath. The period was followed by a feast and by participation in sports events, which also involved Nairs from nearby villages. Subsequently, the family stayed in mourning while one male member undertook a diksha, during which time he had to maintain a pure life. This involved him living with a Brahmin, bathing twice daily and desisting from cutting either his hair or his fingernails, as well as being prevented from speaking with or indeed even seeing women. In some cases the diksha might last for a year rather than the more usual forty one days, in which case there would be considerable celebration at its end. and even high status Nairs were noted as eating buffalo meat. The Nair avoided beef, and many did not eat lamb. In the modern day, alcohol is a component of Nair dominated festivals in Kerala. According to Gough, the villages were generally between one and four square miles in area and their lands were usually owned by one landlord family, who claimed a higher ritual rank than its other inhabitants. The landlord was also usually the desavazhi (headman) and in all cases their families were known as jenmis. These landlords were from the lineages of the royal families or feudatory chiefs; or were patrilineal Nambudiri families or the estates of temples operated by groups of those families. They were also from the lineages of the matrilineal vassal Samantan chiefs and, finally, the lowest jenmis in terms of ritual ranking were Nairs who had inherited from matrilineal ancestors to whom land and the concomitant headmanship had been granted by a king. In all cases, the landholdings could not be sold without royal permission. The villages were historically mostly self sufficient, with craft trades such as pottery and metalwork present in each of them. This meant that there was little need for close central control by the higher levels in the organisational hierarchy, and it also meant that trade between villages was minimal. Such traders as did exist were mostly concentrated in the port towns and consisted of immigrant Syrians, Muslims, Christians and Jews, with Hindu traders later arriving from other parts of India, as well as the Europeans. The Nairs were the sole members of the village organisations, which existed for such purposes as managing the affairs of the temples and, at one time, organising military training and deployment. A Nair family was considered to be part of the village organisation even if they had moved away from it. There were other castes in these villages, and other religious groups also, but they were excluded from the organisations. This arrangement was different from that found elsewhere in India, and another difference was that each house, whether for Nairs or otherwise, was usually in its own compound. There was no communal land, as existed elsewhere, and no communal plan for the village layout. The Nambudiri Brahmins were at the top of the ritual caste hierarchy and in that system outranked even the kings. They regarded all Nairs as Shudra. Below the Nambudiris came the Tamil Brahmins and other later immigrants of the Brahmin varna. Beyond this, the precise ranking is subject to some difference in opinion. Kodoth has placed the Samantan caste below the Kshatriya rank but above the Nairs, but Gough considers that the Pushpagans and Chakyars, both of which were the highest ranked in the group of temple servants known as Ambalavasis, were ranked between the Brahmins and the Nairs, as were several other members of the Ambalavasi group. She also believes that some Nairs adopted the title of Samantan in order to emphasise their superiority over others in their caste. The unwillingness of the higher varnas to engage in what they considered to be the polluting activities of industrial and commercial activity has been cited as a reason for the region's relatively limited economic development. Keralite traditions included that certain communities were not allowed within a given distance of other castes on the grounds that they would "pollute" the relatively higher ranked group. For example, Dalits were prohibited within 64 feet. Likewise, a Nair could approach but not touch a Nambudiri.

The Nair Service Society (NSS) was founded in 1914. Nossiter has described its purpose at foundation as being "  to liberate the community from superstition, taboo and otiose custom, to establish a network of educational and welfare institutions, and to defend and advance Nair interests in the political arena." As late as 1975, the NSS still had most of its support in the Central Travancore region, although it also has numerous satellite groups around the world. From its early years, when it was contending that the Nairs needed to join together if they were to become a political force, it argued that the caste members should cease referring to their traditional subdivisions and instead see themselves as a whole. Census information thereafter appears to have become unreliable on the matter of the subdivisions, in part at least because of the NSS campaign to ensure that respondents did not provide the information requested of them. The NSS also promoted marriage across the various divisions in a further attempt to promote caste cohesion, although in this instance it met with only limited success. Indeed, even in the 1970s it was likely that cross subdivision marriage was rare generally, and this was certainly the case in the Central Travancore area. These classifications are for the purpose of determining which groups of people in certain areas are subject to positive discrimination policies for the purposes of education and employment.

Nairs operated a matrilineal (marumakkathayam) joint family structure called tharavad, whereby descendant families of one common ancestress lived under a single roof. Tharavads consisting of 50 to 80 members were not uncommon and some with membership as high as 200 have been reported. Only the women lived in the main house; men lived in separate rooms and, on some occasions, lived in a separate house nearby. The families split on instances when they became unwieldy and during crisis among its members. When it split, the family property was separated along the female lines. The karnavan, the oldest male member in the tharavad, had the decision making authority including the power to manage common property. Panikkar, a well known writer from the Nair community, wrote in 1918 that,

The Nambudiri Brahmin tradition which limited the extent of marriage within their own caste led to the practice of hypergamy. Gough notes that

The disparity in caste ranking in a relationship between a Brahmin man and a Nair woman meant that the woman was unable to live with her husband(s) in the Brahmin family and so remained in her own family. The children resulting from such marriages always became Nairs. Panikkar argues that it is this type of relationship that resulted in the matrilineal and matrilocal system. It has also been argued that the practice, along with judicious selection of the man who tied the thali, formed a part of the Nair aspirational culture whereby they would seek to improve their status within the caste. Furthermore, that quote|  among the higher ranking Nayars (and Kshatriyas and Samantans) in contradistinction to the "commoner" Nayars, no two subdivisions admitted to equal status. Thus the relations set up by the tall rite [ie: the thalikettu kalyanam] and the sambandham union were always hypergamous.

Fuller argues that there is overwhelming evidence that Nair women as well as men had more than one sambandham partner at the same time, that "both men and women could have several partners at once, and either party was free to break the relationship, for any reason or for none, whenever they wished." He believes that both polyandrous sambandhams and hypergamy were most common in Central Kerala. In northern Travancore there appears not to have been as great a prevalence of hypergamy because of a relative scarcity of Brahmins living there. Fuller believes that in the relatively undocumented southern Travancore monogamy may have been predominant, and that although the matrilineal joint family still applied it was usually the case that the wife lived with the tharavad of her husband. Nancy Levine and Walter Sangree state that while Nair women were maritally involved with a number of men, the men were also married to more than one woman. The women and their husbands did not live together and their relationship had no meaning other than "sexual liaison" and legitimacy for the children. Gough has gone further than Fuller with regard to the interpretation of events in the north, believing that there is no evidence of polyandry in that area at all. She argues that all European travelogues describing polyandry came from the region of Central Kerala. Gough notes the differing personal experiences of earlier Nair commentators and that this could go some way to explaining the varied pronouncement: Panikkar, who queries the existence of polyandry, comes from the northern Travancore region; that A. Aiyappan, who acknowledges its existence, comes from Central Kerala; and that both have based their writings on customs they grew up with in their very different environs. A possible reason for the various rates of change across the region lies in the extent to which the various agrarian local economies were dominated by the Nairs. Nossiter cites this as one reason why it was "congruent with the role of a military caste in a feudal society." and explains that the decline in the traditional warrior role, the rise of an economy based on money, together with the ending of agricultural slavery and the effects of western education, all combined to cause the decline of the traditional practices. All of these factors were having an impact during the 19th century and they caused erosion of the social dominance which the Nairs once held, eventually reaching a point some time between World War I and World War II where that dominance was lost,efn|The attitude of Sir C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer during the 1930s reflected a concern among Hindus that the Christian population of Travancore was rising and that there was a consequent danger of the region becoming a Christian state. The 1931 census recorded over 31 per cent of the population as being Christian, compared to around 4 per cent in 1820.

The 1968 Socio Economic Survey by the Government of Kerala gave the population of the Nair community as approximately 14.5% (2.9 million) of the total population of the state.