freinds, i have been around kerala for some 3.5 years. i have interacted with keralites from all walks of life christians,muslims, ezhavas, theeyas,gulf malayalees....etc.
keralites have an identity problem. apart from a core language and geographical commonality they are a heterogenous lot. racially there is a lot of european and arab admixture. that is some 40% are descendents from this stalk. culturally a good 50% follow abrahamic religions. 10% are professed communists. caste hindus like namboodrees are minorities.
education is controlled by christian missionaries or christians. only christian student is given first rank in the class. churches openly advocate "christian first" ideology. the hindus had to tolerate these restrictions.
in the northern kerala some areas look like the arab coast of yemen or oman. one can easily find roots of centrifugal forces operating here.
for an average keralite a tamil is an inferior person both physically and culturally. they also do not like to call that malayalam is a dravidian language.
Hi Gandhi, I disagree with the statement that 'for the average keralite the tamil is inferior...' - actually in my family we are half keralite - my grand parents were born and raised in kerala and our ancestral home is still there.
Kerala as you described has a huge problem by way of infiltration of abrahamic religions. The weather and landscape of kerala do not lend itself to conducive modern work conditions so majority keralites (over 80%) work abroad. As far as I know they do not think tamils are 'inferior' - they just think tamisl and all others are not like them and they are a different breed. They do have considerable pride and ego, more visibly so than other states perhaps except for Bengal which has similar issues.But in a state with so much of mixed culture that is one way people can maintain themeslves but if you avoid subjects that provoke that they are quite fine.
a sociological study should tell us if they are because of abrahamic religions infiltrating. when you blame them for everything you should also check the positives.
(56% of Kerala residents are Hindus, 24% are Muslims, 19% are Christians,)
The state is known for achievements such as a 91% literacy rate, among the highest in India.
A survey conducted in 2005 by Transparency International ranked Kerala as the least corrupt state in the country( now of course one scandal has changed that)
Kerala has HUGE pluses - kerala is the cleanest state in all of india, even the poorest of the poor keralite will never use the street for a toilet - almost all of them brush their teeth and maintain personal hygeine. Keralites are very sensible with celebrities, there are no fan clubs or crazy movie fans. Kerala is the home of Ayurveda, the oldest natural medicine form.
As far as 'negatives' go - we are all products of our environment. To survive in a very multi cultural environment one has to develop a certain ego and street smartness - which are incidentally very common in States too for somewhat similar reason. Am not justifying that saying how it developed. Lack of trust and a certain slimy street smartness is usually the product of growing up in highly survivial oriented cultures.
I partially agree with Gandhi and partially with Malathi.Being a Palakkad origin person i can understand your comment. But Malathi's mail has the reason for this. We frequent a few temples in Kerala every year and one of them is Aariyankaavu. Here my great grandfather started a pooja which conduct every year. The malayalee priests and temple authorities there hate us!! Do you know why? We, as a group, tend to ruin the very sanctity of the place. Very other day of the year this temple, as every other temple inKerala, is incredibly clean. But after these 3 days the place is horrible with human refuse on the banks of the temple kolam, plaintain leaves all around with rotting food, saliva near every drinking water tap, etc. etc. Its truly horrible. Also our attitude towards rules like removing shirts before going into the sanctum sanctorum, standing in queue for the prasadam, unnecessary chatter inside the temple, etc. is remarkably bad.
The Malayaees too,whenever they visit our temples, do silly stuff but that doesn't mean we should be like that.
Being poor doesn't give us the right to be unclean. We just have to clean up our act.