KOCHI: The life and work of Dakshayani Velayudhan, the first Malayali woman from a scheduled caste community to earn a bachelor’s degree and a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, will now feature in the syllabus of the four-year BA honours history course at Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam.
The decision was made by the college’s board of studies. Dakshayani is an alumnus of the college.
Besides Dakshayani, another alumnus of Maharaja’s College, actor Mammootty, has also been included in the syllabus.
“Mammootty has been included in the major elective ‘History of Malayalam Cinema’, which second-year history students will start studying this year,” said Zakharia Thangal, history department head.
Citing biographies, he said Dakshayani graduated after overcoming various setbacks in an era when casteism was at its height.
In the section ‘Thinkers and Social Reformers’, Malayalam linguist and missionary Arnos Pathiri, reformers belonging to the Jewish community of Kochi — Abraham Salem and S S Koder, social reformer Hamadani Thangal who took the lead in establishing a college for Muslims in Aluva, Tapaswini Amma who worked tirelessly for the education and betterment of women, Kerala’s first Muslim woman lawyer Fathima Rahman, Maharaja’s’ first principal from a backward community P S Velayudhan, among other prominent Kochi residents who did not make it to mainstream history, have also been included.