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International Journal Of Language, Literature And Culture(IJLLC)

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  4. Thadaka Reimagined: Vayalar Ramavarma’s Dravidian Queen and the Politics of Epic Revision

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Thadaka Reimagined: Vayalar Ramavarma’s Dravidian Queen and the Politics of Epic Revision

Dr. Soumy Syamchand


International Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (IJLLC), Vol-6,Issue-5, September - October 2026, Pages 1-6, 10.22161/ijllc.6.5.1

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Article Info: Received: 03 Aug 2026, Received in revised form: 29 Aug 2026, Accepted: 02 Sep 2026, Available online: 07 Sep 2026

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This paper reads Vayalar Ramavarma’s poem “Thadaka enna Dravida Rajakumari” as an act of epic revision that unsettles canonical Ramayana ethics by restoring voice, agency, and cultural specificity to a figure traditionally demonized. Situating the poem within scholarship on Ramayana plurality—from Sanskrit, Buddhist, and Jain variants to regional and tribal tellings in Wayanad and Kerala—the study traces how epic meanings are historically produced by power, ritual authority, and cultural displacement. Close reading reveals Vayalar’s double intervention: a feminist reclamation that rehumanizes Thadaka as a woman whose desire and subjectivity are obliterated by ritualized violence; and a postcolonial/ethno-cultural critique that recasts her as a Dravidian princess whose erasure indexes Aryanizing narrative processes. The poem’s landscape imagery, devotional registers, and rhetorical strategies are analyzed to show how local memory, temple performance (notably Tholpavakoothu), and place-based Ramayanas supply the cultural resources for this counter-narrative. By interrogating Rama’s moral authority and the interpretive violence that precedes physical killing, the essay argues that Vayalar’s revision destabilizes monolithic heroic frameworks and offers an ethical alternative centered on recognition, plurality, and the politics of memory. The paper concludes that “Thadaka enna Dravida Rajakumari” exemplifies how literary reimaginings can recover marginalized voices, challenge hegemonic traditions, and renew contemporary debates on gender, caste, and cultural identity.

Thadaka, Ramayana, Rama-Kadha, cultural identity, marginalized voices

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