Who was Narayana Guru? An IIT-Bombay-led project may offer clues

An ambitious, two-year project pioneered by a group of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-Bombay) professors and other researchers to archive materials related to Kerala Renaissance icon Sree Narayana Guru may help find a crucial answer to the debate raging about him close to a century after his demise. A section of people claim that the founder of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) had upheld ‘Sanatana Dharma’ while others contend that he was a social reformer who rejected the Chaturvarna concept and fought for the elimination of the caste system, two practices they identify with ‘Sanatanis’, or orthodox Hindus.

The digital archive titled “Narayana Guru and Twentieth Century Kerala” led by principal investigator Siby K George, Professor of Philosophy, IIT-Bombay, will be fully available online by May this year, people associated with the project told Open in multiple interviews. It will comprise two lakh pages, project consultant Dr Girija KP told Open. For his part, Dr George, who confirmed his association with the programme, said in an interview that he took a “sabbatical” from his academic duties in January 2023 and had monitored the project until returning to the campus to join work recently.

The archival material, according to a document shared by those involved in this massive effort, “includes magazines, rare books, and other invaluable materials published or generated in relation to Sree Narayana Guru and his movement since the beginning of the twentieth century.” It added that the resources comprise materials generously “offered for scanning” by the likes of Guru scholar G Priyadarshanan; Brahmavidyalayam Library, Shivagiri Mutt, Varkala; the Institute of the Science of the Absolute, Varkala; Narayana Gurukula Library, Varkala; Kollam-based Dr Vinayakumar; Sree Narayana Public Library, Irinjalakuda; Thalassery-based Vasumithran; Sree Jnanodaya Yogam SN Library, Jagannatha Temple, Thalassery, and Mahakavi Kumaranasan Memorial Library, Sree Sundareswara Temple, Kannur.

The document noted that this digitalisation project was sponsored by the Sree Narayana Mandira Samiti (SNMS), Chembur, Mumbai, and executed by a combined project team of IIT Bombay and Sree Narayana Guru College of Commerce (SNGCC), Mumbai, with the technical assistance of Informatics Global, Bengaluru, from 2023 to 2025. Besides George and Girija, others closely involved in the programme include Professor Pradeepkumar PI, Department of Chemistry, IIT Bombay; Prof Suresh Madhavan, TISS Mumbai; Naveena Suresh, SNGCC, Mumbai; Gautam Das, Project Fellow at the Kerala Council of Historical Research and Anish Damodaran of the SNMS. It was SNMS that provided Rs 42 lakh in funds for the project.

George said that some of the collected material will be uploaded on JSTOR, a digital library, for exclusive use by academics and researchers. Already, materials are available on JSTOR for the public. The material is hosted as open source by JSTOR in collaboration with SAOA (South Asia Open Archives) of the CRL (Center for Research Libraries), based in Chicago, which is a consortium of North American research institutions.

The original idea of a digital archive on Guru was conceived by PR Sreekumar, a writer and Guru scholar based in Ernakulam, said Pradeepkumar PI, who added that a rigorous study of the Guru is in order to cut through the clutter, a sad outcome of the scarcity of adequate literature on Guru.

Pradeepkumar adds that Guru has to be studied as a whole, not in parts. “Apart from his works, his conversations and actions should be viewed contextually and original sources need to be used to validate the statements. Currently, there is a huge lacuna in accessing the latter. Therefore, these resources will help serious scholars to have a fresh look on Guru’s universal outlook and humanistic approach in solving both social and psychological problems, and not to bracket him under any conventional labels,” says this academic who refused to comment about the ongoing debate about Guru. Neither did Professor George.

According to George, his primary intent was to analyse Guru not merely from his works, which is primarily his poetry and anecdotes, but also through the movement he was part of, his convergences and conflict with his associates. George believes that a modernisation of what is now Kerala was impossible had it not been for the awakening of its numerically preponderant community. Call it an irony, but the modernisation of Kerala was kickstarted by Guru who wasn’t Western educated or modern in a conventional way. Guru, however, had exhorted his followers to embrace Western education and earn money through entrepreneurial activities besides organising themselves to acquire greater wisdom to climb up the social hierarchy of his time.

The magazines that are part of the archive include those associated with Guru and his followers – Vivekodayam, Prabudhasimhalan, Sahodaran, Kerala Kaumudi, Mithavaadi, Deshabhimani, Navajeevan, Gurudevan, Yoganandam and so on. Dr Girija KP said the digitalisation project was done in multiple phases. The rare materials collected include the front page of the very first issue of Vivekodayam (1904); Guru’s disciple and acclaimed poet Kumaran Asan’s editorial in his Prathibha magazine; the front page of a 1915 issue of reformer and scholar C. Krishnan’s Mitavadi magazine; the front page of the Navajeevan magazine edited by Narayana Guru’s disciple Swami Sathyavruthan from 1922, and so on.

Sree Narayana Guru famously declared in 1916, “It has been some years since I left caste and religion,” expressing hurt at some people still claiming that he had an affiliation with certain beliefs. A war of words broke out recently after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that Guru was not a proponent of “Sanatana Dharma.”

DeshabhimaniGurudevanIIT BombKerala KaumudiMithavaadiNavajeevanPrabudhasimhalanreligious prioritiesSahodaransocial reformsSree Narayana GuruVivekodayamWeb ExclusiveYoganandam