The Breast Tax (Mulakaram)

Image: medium.com

This robbed me off my sleep

Last night, I was searching for something to read. Something out of the ordinary everyday knowledge. It was a mistake. Certain knowledge can be quite burdensome as I stumbled on the Breast Tax called Mulakaram.

This is one of man's inhumanities to man in the name of religion and culture that will shock anybody to the marrows.

In the 19th Century India, the Breast Tax (Mulakkaram) was a tax imposed on the lower caste (Shudra) and untouchable (Dalit) Hindu women by the Kingdom of Tranvancore ( Kerala) if they wanted to cover their breasts in public, and it was in place until 1924.

According to this stupid law, lower class women should move about barebreasted before upper class people as a sign of reverence to the upper caste. And to help differentiate them from the rest.

The breast was bared as a symbol of respect to higher-status people only. A society where men even stare at the cleavage, these women faced the oppression with naked breasts.

Torn Self respect, deteriorated confidence and the noxious stares eating the very pieces of diligence everyday. And those who can't afford to pay this obnoxious tax will have no option that to move about barebreasted.

But if members of the lower caste and untouchable women want to cover their breasts when they go out in public places, they'd pay the government a tax on their breasts, as soon as they started developing breasts.

Image: medium.com

The tax collectors would visit every house to collect the Breast Tax from any lower caste women who passed the age of puberty. But the most disgusting aspect of this law is that the appropriate amount to be paid as tax was evaluated by the tax collectors depending on the size of their breasts.

And to carry out this evaluation, the tax collectors (men) had to take their time to touch the breasts to feel its weights, circumference and also total bust size and any whimper or complaint from the woman can lead to the cancelation of the evaluation, and the process started all over, a process many officials were said to love so much.

This continued until Christianity started making inroads into the region and offered these lower caste women the opportunity to escape both religion and taxation. More women readily embraced Christianity and started covering their breasts without paying the tax.

But when the leaders realised the advent of Christianity is bad business, they caused a revolt which led to rioting with many churches burnt down. In that state of lawlessness lower caste men formed militias to attack upper caste people and their businesses.

This continued until a woman named Nangeli protested against this law by cutting off her breasts and presenting them in front of the officer, she died of blood loss, which eventually resulted in mega protests.

Till date, Nangeli is regarded as an icon in Kerala India.

The leaders were eventually forced to scrap the stupid Breast Tax law.

After reading of this, I couldn't sleep.

Humans of this world?

I discovered it has an award winning movie too [titled "The Breast Tax" 2018, produced by Yogesh Pagare]

Written by Kelechi Deca