Channar revolt
Upper cloth controversy
The Channar Lahala or Channar revolt, also called Maru Marakkal Samaram, refers to the fight from 1813 to 1859 of Nadar climber women in Travancore kingdom of India for the right to wear upper-body clothes covering their breasts.
Background
In 19th century Travancore, baring of one's chest to higher status people was considered a sign of respect by both males and females. This applied to those of the lower status castes, such as the Nadar climbers. Even women of other dominant castes like the Nairs had to keep their breasts bare in the presence of Brahmin men. The Nayar women in Travancore were allowed to dress as they pleased by a Royal Proclamation in 1865. Brahmin women bare their breasts only in front of the deity in the temple. Before the arrival of Christian missionaries, it was common for women to go topless in Kerala in the 18th century.
Higher-class women covered both breasts and shoulders with a piece of material known as the upper-cloth unless in the presence of people of still higher-ranked communities, whereas Nadar climber women were not allowed to cover their bosoms, as most of the women in Kerala, to punctuate their low status. Uneasy with their social status, a large number of Nadar climbers embraced Christianity, and started to wear "long cloths," strengthened by their new belief system, which offered equal rights to all men (and women). When many more Nadars turned to Christianity, many Nadar women started to wear the brahmin breast cloth.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7899034. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1813, 1859 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Channar revolt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.