Padmanabhan Palpu

Padmanabhan Palpu LMS, DPH (Cantab) FRIPH (London) (2 November 1863 – 1950) was a bacteriologist and social revolutionary. Ritty Lukose describes him as the "political father" of the Ezhavas, who are numerically the largest caste in the region now encompassed by the state of Kerala. In 1903, he founded the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (Society for the Propagation of the Religion of Sree Narayana, or SNDP) that had as its first president Narayana Guru, the Ezhava guru who sought an end to the caste system and preached his concept of "one caste, one religion, one god."

Life

Padmanabhan Palpu was born on 2 November 1863 in Petta, Trivandrum, India. His family were wealthy and educated members of the Ezhava caste, which at that time was considered to be a backward community among what Swami Vivekananda described as the "mad house" that was the caste system of Kerala. The Ezhavas were traditionally occupied as toddy tappers but many had involvements in ayurvedic medicine.

Palpu attended Maharaja's College in Trivandrum but was subsequently refused admission to Travancore Medical College in 1878. He attended a similar college in Madras and then went to England, where he furthered his medical training at London and Cambridge. Returning to India, he found that his low caste status prevented him from obtaining employment in the Travancore Health Service, which meant that he had to relocate to Mysore to get work.