https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tRLFtBWNStokgk6LNjkYwF6nb_GDFEaF/view?usp=sharing
PILLATHAANGI WISDOM OF
KALARIVIDYA:
POTENTIALITY FOR A NON-PATERNALIST CARING.
(draft)
p. k. sasidharan.
Introduction:
The present paper deals with two
aspects embodied in the pillathaangi tradition of kalarividya, a
traditional health care oriented self-defense practice in the state of Kerala,
South India.
Firstly, it identifies the term ‘pillathaangi’,
as a specific cultural insight of child caring on the basis of some of the oral
narrations prevails among the practitioners, instead of confining it as the
name of a stylistic tradition of self-defense training system. The
identification of Pillathaangi (literally, ‘child support’) as a
cultural wisdom of child caring involves an exercise of theorizing the inherent
potentials of kalarividya (kalari system of knowledge, literally,
‘training system of knowledge’, ‘kalari’ = place of training, ‘vidya’ =
knowledge). As the traditional wisdom
goes, the term ‘pillathaangi’can be understood as signifying a unique
idea of a master-novice relationship having the dimension of mother-child
(motherly caring) relationship. Such a caring approach is inherent in the
pedagogical situation related to the transmission of knowledge on life caring
skills, including self-defense techniques.
Secondly, it is concerned with the potentiality for a conceptual
adaptation of the pillathaangi insight. By dwelling on the wider welfare
potential of kalarividya the pillathaangi insight could be
extended to the domain of social and interpersonal relationships as a viable
ideal for approaching any case of vulnerability, since it involves a
non-paternalistic perception. That is, since the vulnerable condition of
childhood is seen as equivalent to any other case of vulnerability, all
vulnerable are eligible cases to be treated on par with the care rendered to
the child. Such an interpretative exercise may be understood
as that follows from the attempt to theorize the pillathaangi insight
(a cultural wisdom of kalarividya) as non-paternalistic
relationship between the master and novice.
As the possibility for an extension of the pillathaangi insight,
as a caring perspective for the wider context of the vulnerable, emerges
largely from a closer understanding of the so-called indigenous knowledge
tradition of kalarividya. And such a theorization also enables to
recover those marginalized liberative or welfare aspects of kalarividya.
Therefore, theorizing of cultural wisdom and traditional knowledge practices
seem to suggest the need for building resistance to all those contexts, which
keep them obscure and deformed. A theorizing of cultural and knowledge
practices could be defined here as an attempt to give all possible descriptions
of deeper layered sharing of ideas and sentiments among the community of
practitioners, especially those shared wisdom that are transmitted through oral
practices. This way, theorizing of cultural wisdom/traditional knowledge
practices becomes an explanatory task of stating how adequately those
traditional wisdom stand in relation to some distant times and different
contexts.
As viewed from the context of the contemporary world defined by
the perpetual conflicts in socio-cultural, politico-economic domains, theorizing
of local cultural wisdom and regional knowledge forms might be understood as
capable of aggravating divisional tendencies and tribal mentalities. Whereas,
in the context of ecological crises and threats being faced by the cultural and
natural sources required for survival and self-reliance of ordinary,
unprivileged people all over the world, the study of local and global significance
of cultural wisdom could generate values of emancipation and wellbeing.
Therefore, this attempt to theorize on cultural wisdom can also be viewed as being
part of a wider project of recovering regional/local traditions of knowledge as
a mode of resistance to the growing tendencies of cultural homogenization and
domination.
Problems of Theorising Cultural Wisdom:
The larger ideological and polemical context of the present study is
some of the perceived scientistic and philosophical tendencies to delegitimize
cultural wisdom or indigenous knowledge practices as invalid cognition. ......
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