A question in Keralam: What’s in an ‘m’?

Six or seven centuries ago, in a very different India, scholars were grappling with a very familiar question — the history of the Dravidian languages. It was a politically loaded subject back then, too. One man in the Sanskrit treatise Lilatilakam made a flawed argument for his own purposes: His native “Kerala bhasha”, together with the “Pandya” and “Chola” bhashas, all came under the broader “Dramida” category, while “Andhra” and “Karnata” did not. It’s the first known assertion of linguistic identity from Kerala, putting its language on the same level as literary Tamil. And now, in another moment of linguistic assertion, the state ofKerala is about to become Keralam— the name that has always been used in Malayalam. Both Houses of Parliament have passed a Bill in response to two resolutions of the Kerala Assembly. In a way, this will correct an anomaly — the official name of a state formed on a linguistic basis should be in its own language. Is it replacing an anglicised name? That’s debatable, given that the stem form of the noun in Sanskrit is also Kerala. That, itself, may come from a form of “Chera”, the Tamil dynasty that once ruled the region. Disputes about what’s original may go on; it’s the politics of the moment that tends to win out, as the author of the Lilatilakam knew well. Beyond politics and sentiment, though, lie some pragmatic considerations: There will be a cost to relabelling everything, and perhaps altering the names of institutions and establishments if the state chooses to do so. Those are decisions for the elected government to make, but it may be worth asking: What’s in an ‘m’?