Editing Kalaripayattu (section)

==== Decline and Resurrection ====
At the end of the 17th century Kalaripayaṭṭu was declared illegal by the British, and remained banned till India’s independence in 1947, due to an encounter of a British Captain with a kalari warrior, and his subsequent, presumably embarrassing, defeat. It remained alive only through the dogged and secret transmission of its practice and traditions by its masters. The investment of such an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and resources by a society in order to preserve this system that aimed to create cultural specialists of such embodied practices speaks to the true importance of the personal, social, ritual and/or cosmological realities that are created, enacted and perpetuated. (Zarrilli, 1998)

Kalaripayaṭṭu is an inextricable part of Kerala’s cultural and mytho-historical landscape, as a rich and vibrant part of Kerala’s, and by extension, India’s, cultural, spiritual, and educational heritage. Kalaripayaṭṭu is regarded as the fount of martial arts across Asia, as the oldest of the extant ones, which influenced other martial traditions of China and Japan. It is time that Kalaripayaṭṭu is given the recognition it deserves on a global scale, the same attention that others such as karate, kung fu, judo, tai chi etc. have received, given its “elder brotherly” status to all Asian martial arts. Kalaripayaṭṭu almost fell into oblivion, but is now being revived and is going through a renaissance thanks to widespread interest and the efforts of a few masters.

Kalaripayaṭṭu must be elevated, both as a traditional psychophysiological discipline and a ‘scientific’ system of physical culture, whose practice cultivates untold mental, physical and spiritual benefits — and not just as a fighting skill with practical benefits. In the coming decades, one of the agendas within Indic revivalism must be to exalt Kalari to the status it deserves, as an art, science, and a marker of the fierce martial tradition — a form of kṣatriyatā that formerly pervaded the Indian soil and would be indispensable to our civilisation once again in this age.