THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The legend of Devashayam Pillai’s martyrdom forms part of a largely obscure historical narrative. Born as Neelakanta Pillai, he was a Nair noble in the palace of king Marthanda Varma and was executed following his conversion to Catholic faith under the influence of the Dutch naval commander Eustachius De Lannoy. ‘Nectar of the Gods’, a play in English by Gopikrishnan Kottoor, revisits the story of Devasahayam to reveal the layered socio-cultural milieu of the time and the circumstances that led to the gruesome execution.
The backdrop of a farsighted fuelling of the national pride that coalesced with a methodical building of the Hindu identity is what Gopikrishnan Kottoor foregrounds in his re-reading of the story of Devasahayam. The reign of Marthanda Varma witnessed an unprecedented expansion of the Travancore kingdom even as it battled the imperialist forces which were gaining better foothold in the south. The period was also marked by a strong revival of the Hindu identity. The King fortified his ambitious plan to establish a vast and unified kingdom with the religious sanction secured through a symbolic surrender of the state before the deity of Sri Padmanabha. The redesigning of the old Padmanabha Swamy temple into a gigantic structure helped consolidate the Hindu sentiments.
Kottoor opens the play with a stand-alone passage where the King articulates his submission of the kingdom to Sri Padmanabha and the vow to rule over it as a mere representative of the Lord. The playwright arguably sees this as the single event that sums up the socio-cultural context in which Devasahayam’s conversion gained potency as an act of sedition.
Kottoor’s play underscores that the conspiracy to annihilate Devasahayam and thereby the seeds of heresy that he sowed in the hearts of the subjects was sanctioned by the Kingdom, a fact that official history attempts to shy away from. The charge of sedition brought against him remain unfounded to this day though it was pressed by Hindu groups to object to his beatification. The play re-visits oral histories that coalesce to paint the picture of a layman, overwhelmed by the tangibility of a human God. Kottoor has imaginatively moulded the dialect of south-east Kerala - a cross between Malayalam and Tamil - to suit the dramatisation in English. The dialogues have the ease of everyday conversation and yet do not lose out on conveying the import of an emotionally charged backdrop. The remarkably visual quality of the play is perhaps a testimony to the poet’s mind at work. Kottoor is a widely published poet and ‘The Nectar of the Gods’ is his twelfth book.