Samantan

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Samantan Nair or more commonly Samantan (Sama + anta means equal distance or difference, rather risen from the common masses), Samantan was a generic term applied to dignify a collection of sub-clans among the ruling elite and feudal estate owners of Kerala belonging to the Nair community.

Robin Jeffrey, an anthropologist, described the Samantas as "a matrilineal caste ranking between Nayars and Kshatriyas and found in limited numbers in Travancore. They were more numerous in Cochin and British Malabar."^[1]

Dissent[]

Some Samantas object to their grouping with the Nairs, claiming that Samantas are different caste from Nairs. One of them, Nilambur Thachara Kovil Mana Vikrama (Elaya Tirumalpad) filed a complaint against the Collector of Malabar (William Logan) on his refusal to enter Samanta as caste separate from Nair. Even after submitting evidence trying to prove that Samantas are a separate caste, the judge refused to act against Logan, stating:^[2]

A consideration of all the evidence, appears to me to prove conclusively that the plaintiff is a Nair by caste. ... What appears to me, from a consideration of the evidence, to be the safe inference to draw is that the members of the plaintiff's family, and also the descendants of certain other of the old Nair chieftains, have for some time called themselves, and been called by others, Samantas, but that there is no distinctive caste of that name, and that the plaintiff is, as the defendant has described him, a Nayar by caste.

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