Place · reform temple site · India
Aruvippuram
Also known as Aruvipuram, Aruvippuram Shiva temple, Aruvippuram Pratishta
Aruvippuram is a village on the Neyyar river in Thiruvananthapuram district, Kerala, where in 1888 Narayana Guru took a stone from a deep pool in the river and consecrated it as a Shiva image, the first such consecration by a non-Brahmin in Kerala society. The act, remembered as the Aruvippuram Pratishta, opened his campaign against caste control of worship. The SNDP Yogam, the Ezhava reform organisation, was founded here in 1903, and Shivaratri marks the temple's anniversary.
- Date
- 1888–None
- Function
- Social reform & movement
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.422, 77.097
Worth knowing
Local belief holds that the pool the stone came from, Sankaran Kuzhi, is where the sage Agastya gave his own worshipped Shiva linga to the Neyyar.
About the place
Placed at the Aruvippuram Shiva temple by the Neyyar, using the coordinates on the Wikipedia article.
Connections (3)
- FoundedNarayana Guru
In 1888 Narayana Guru, meditating in a cave by the Neyyar at Aruvippuram, took a rock from the deepest part of the river, a pool called Sankaran Kuzhi, and consecrated it as a Shiva image. Brahmins asked who had given an Ezhava the right to consecrate; his reply, that this was an 'Ezhava Shiva', became a famous retort against caste. It was his first major public act and the start of his temple-consecration movement.
- Historical linkSivagiri, Varkala
Aruvippuram and Sivagiri mark the beginning and the end of Narayana Guru's institution-building. The Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam was founded at Aruvippuram on 15 May 1903 through the efforts of Padmanabhan Palpu, with the Guru as founder president; the next year he moved his base to Sivagiri near Varkala, where his order of disciples, the Sree Narayana Dharma Sangham, is headquartered and where his samadhi has stood since 1928.
- PrecursorVaikom
The 1888 Aruvippuram consecration was Narayana Guru's first public challenge to caste control of temple worship, and the SNDP Yogam founded there in 1903 became a forum for the next step: between 1917 and 1920 temple entry for lower castes was debated, and resolutions introduced, at its meetings, while the Ezhava leader T. K. Madhavan pressed the claim in Travancore. That agitation fed the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924–25, which in turn influenced the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Aruvippuram" and "Narayana Guru".
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