KOTTAYAM: Rich accolades were paid to the memory of Mannathu Padmanabhan on the occasion of his 140th birth anniversary celebrations organised by the Nair Service Society at Perunna on Monday.
Inaugurating the Jayanthy celebration, D. Babu Paul, former bureaucrat and social commentator, said that Mannam had walked ahead of his times and addressed the challenges of that age with ethical values commitments. “To successfully address the challenges of the 21st century one has to make timely interpretation of his works and not blindly follow his foot steps,” he said.
Mannam was a revolutionary and a social reformer who created a community from a squabbling mass. “Above all, he was a person of great self-esteem, ” Dr. Babu Paul said and pointed out that even the birth of the NSS could be traced to the dishonour suffered by the community on the occasion of a public function.
Mannam was the pioneering organiser who organised the teachers and lawyers much before he launched his struggle to reform and liberate his community from the feudal existence to the modern world. He transformed the marriage rituals of the community which were steeped in feudal traditions to a modern ritual marked by its simplicity, Dr. Babu Paul said.
He said Mannam was instrumental in naming the first college under NSS management after Mahatma Gandhi, the first memorial to the Father of the Nation in the State. He was also instrumental in renaming a village where the college situated after Raja Kesavadas, who still has not received the recognition he deserved. According to Dr. Babu Paul, the former Dewan of Travancore was the person who identified the possibilities of developing Vizhinjam as a major port 200 years before works have begun on it. “I want the Vizhinjam port to be named after Raja Kesavadas,” he said.
NSS president P.N. Narendranathan Nair chaired the conference. General secretary G. Sukumaran Nair welcomed the gathering. Travancore Devaswom Board president Prayar Gopalakrishnan spoke.
Writer C. Radhakrishnan and veteran Sanskrit scholar Muthukulam Sreedhar were honoured on the occasion.