In the early twentieth century, 927 out of every 1,000 Ezhavas in Travancore were illiterate; even after the elimination of legal obstacles, Ezhava students were barred from schools. Even if they were learned, jobs were difficult to find, as they were not inducted into government employment.A political awakening had been awakened in Travancore by the 1891 agitation against the autocratic rule in the state and the refusal to native communities of their rightful share in government positions.
The unrest, which had taken as its motto 'Travancore for Travancoreans', eventually culminated in the drafting of the Travancore Memorial (Malayali Memorial), a petition to the Maharaja by Nairs, Ezhavas, and Christians. Yet, the main interest behind the petition was that of the Nair community, and its main grievance was that the native upper castes were not being appropriately represented in the bureaucracy; the grievances of Ezhavas were touched upon only on the surface. The response of the sirkar highlighted the fact that 'Ezhavas were a [contented] people and if the government adopted a conscious policy to provide them with an opening in education and administration it would prove to be futile and generate tension and strain communal harmony.'. Realising that the Malayali Memorial had failed in their perspective, the Ezhava community, led by Dr Palpu, presented in 1895 a lengthy petition, written in English, to Sankara Subaiyer, Dewan of Travancore, tabulating the disabilities endured by them. Another memorandum was presented to the Maharaja in 1896. Both these, referred to as the Ezhava Memorials, called for admission to government schools and government service.
The Dewan responded by assuring the Ezhavas of special schools, which turned out to be an empty promise; only two primary schools were established for them.
Disappointment at the Dewan's reply gave rise to the Ezhava Mahajana Sabha in 1896, but the organisation was not able to make any considerable headway. It was only with the establishment of SNDP in 1903 under the religious guidance of Sri Narayana Guru that the Ezhava demands and struggles gained a significant fillip. The initial goal of SNDP was to eliminate the hindrances to Ezhava admission into government and government-aided schools. Subsequently, the Yogam began to concentrate on opening its own schools and colleges. The motto of Narayan Guru was 'Strengthen through organisation, liberate by education,' and this influenced the Ezhava community; under his leadership, SNDP brought Ezhavas not just from Travancore but also from Cochin and Malabar.
This is not to say that other communities were not hunting for similar opportunities. They, also, organized themselves and started trying to climb the social ladder, but their place was peripheral in this power game. English education, land control, and access to government positions were the three factors that influenced the status and power of each community during that time.
By the 1930s, education was a highly contested political question; although lower castes that agitated for education were usually escaping elite oppression of one sort or another, upper-caste interest in modern schooling was ostensibly connected to novel prospects of employment in the increasingly modernising states, to growing bureaucracy and welfare apparatus, and to economic prospects opening up following Kerala's economic integration into the world-system.
The availability of various communities on the social scale to education, land, and jobs was not equal nor defined by the same equations of benefit, but education was seen by all as the key to economic mobility and the new political space. The strong communities—the economically powerful and/or the caste powerful—prevailed.
In addition to Protestant missionaries, Syrian Christians also spent a great deal of money on education. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, we find the Syrian Orthodox Church registering an association to coordinate and oversee its educational endeavors. From the 1880s, Indian Catholics began to open schools, and they soon made excellent strides in this area: between 1882 and 1887, from approximately 10 to more than 1,000, the number of schools under Catholic control grew.
