Nellissery – 100 Agraharams Project

Nellissery – 100 Agraharams Project Agraharam 102 in the 100 Agraharams Project Radhe Krishna. In his Malabar Manual, William Logan names Nellissery among the nineteen gramams of Palghat — placing it firmly within the original count of Palakkad's Tamil Brahmin settlements. A warm introduction to the gramam comes from its president, Sri Narayanamoorthy, who shares a detail of real significance: the original migrants here were Vathimas. The Vathimas are a small sub-sect of Smartha Iyers, traditionally rooted in eighteen villages of the Thanjavur delta — names like Sengalipuram and Semmangudi. To find a Vathima settlement on the Palghat side of the Gap is to find a Cauvery-delta thread woven into the fabric of Palakkad. I am humbled, again and again, by what our forefathers built. Among Nellissery's many quiet acts of public benevolence stands one of lasting consequence — the very lands of today's Government Victoria College, Palakkad. The college began as a Rate School in 1866; it owes its permanent campus to the philanthropist Sri Nellissery S. Narayana Iyer, a Palakkad Municipality councillor, who donated the ground outright in the late nineteenth century. That single gift carried the institution to its elevation as a college in 1888. Festivals are precious. Rituals are precious. But institutions are precious in a different register altogether — they outlast their builders. The truest dharmic act is the one that endures across generations. What astonished me most in this episode was the sheer reach of the gramam's hand. The folk of Nellissery once held property as far east as Kanjikode — the Shiva temple we filmed there stands as living evidence of that span. It leaves me asking, with no small ache, what the land reforms did to the lives of our elders, and to the patient wealth of communities like this one — gathered over centuries, unmade within a generation. Ram Ram. Sriram Lakshminarayanan (Hari) 10th May 2026