Breast Tax - Money Taken From Women Of The Lower Caste For A Period In India

 For a period in India, women who wanted to close their breasts were charged a tax called the breast tax. A detailed look at this tax, one of the most interesting taxes in history.

Breast Tax
The "breast tax" system would have been collected by the king of travancore State, one of the oldest in them, in one of the 550 local-autonomous states that existed in British-ruled India. according to this system, women from lower castes were conditionally allowed to close their breasts. if they wanted to cover their tits, they had to pay taxes.
 
The King's officers went door-to-door collecting this breast tax from women of the lower caste who had passed puberty. but the amount of tax collected depended on the size of the tits. for this reason, the tax collector would examine the tits by touching them with his bare hands and calculate the tax depending on their size (it is necessary to take into account how this situation was abused by malicious people).

In fact, the purpose of this tax collection was only to humiliate the lower castes (or, in other words, to consolidate sovereignty over the lower subordinates). according to the system, upper-class women are allowed to close the breasts, but this permission is not granted to the lower castes. in fact, this happened when a person's social status was determined according to their caste. the circumstances required that the status of the person be understood from the style of clothing.

He is known for his work on gender ecology in kerala, India. as Sheeba km put it: "the purpose of the breast tax was nothing more than to preserve the caste structure. because dressing was seen as a sign of wealth and prosperity. the poor and the lower castes had no right.”

This tax was actually no exception. because in his book ‘Indigenous life in Travancore’, author samuel mateer mentions the existence of about 110 additional taxes imposed by the primitive state only on the lower castes. ultimately, the “breast tax” within the system, which ensures that the lower castes always remain on the lowest rung of the ladder while the upper castes thrive, was one of the worst of these additional taxes.

Revolt of the Lower Castes

The breast tax imposed in this form had created a constant injustice. this injustice, on the other hand, brought out a discontent against it. An incident in 1859 turned discontent into rebellion.

The incident was that two lower caste women were stripped naked in public by the travancore authorities for wearing upper body clothes. after the robbery, the authorities also hanged these two women in front of everyone as a lesson to the lower castes.

Determined to stop this injustice definitively, a brave woman named nangeli said, “Enough is enough.” nangeli was a member of the Ezhava caste in Kerala, one of the victims of this tax.

As he arrived at the tax collector's house to collect money, instead of giving money to the collector, he broke into his house and cut off his tits with a sickle. he reportedly presented his memes to the authorities on a banana leaf. then his body succumbed to excessive bleeding and he died the same day. her distraught husband also committed suicide by jumping into the funeral room.

Ultimately de Nangeli's death provoked a growing fire of rebellion and resulted in massive protests by the local people in the travancore kingdom against the King. the King had begun to fear for his life and, under pressure from the governor of madras, had to grant all women the right to wear upper-body clothing in 1924.


As a result, Nangeli's behavior ended a tradition. the place where he protested and cut his tits is now called mulachiparambu.


As his cousin's great-grandson maniyan Velu rightly said, “his act was not selfish, it was a sacrifice for the benefit of all the women of Travancore, and ultimately forced the king to take back the breast tax...”

Nangeli's Legacy still lives on

Nangeli's story is again brought to life by a local artist, murali. five years ago, while rummaging through a local bank's in-house magazine, I came across a small report on Nangeli written by a native from his area. fascinated by the story, he went to the small town called mulachhipuram, or ‘land of the breasted woman’. he was so impressed by Nangeli's story that he decided to immortalize her with his paintings.

Three of Nangeli's paintings were published in the book Amana-secret pictures of history, and he also had fifteen exhibitions in Kerala and other parts of India. as Murali proudly says of his mission: “if I can get people's attention, it can help convince this government to make this important act part of our official history.”

Yes, such women are rare. and their groundbreaking behavior is never approved by society, they are perverts (remember the witches in Europe). but such women, and only through their bold behavior, today's women benefit greatly from gender equality.

Indeed, the sacrifice of women like nangeli should neither be forgotten nor underestimated in the years to come.

As joan of arc rightly says: “A strong woman defends herself. a stronger woman stands up for everyone.”