The only landmark of Venmony, a quaint village on the banks of the Achankovil river near Chengannur in Alappuzha district, has long been the Chamakkavu temple, set within what was once a sacred grove teeming with monkeys. The Achankovil takes a surprising detour in front of the temple. For this writer, Chamakkavu holds a more intimate resonance: it is the family shrine where generations of newborns were ritually dedicated as symbolic slaves to its formless deity.

Yet this seemingly obscure village has produced two of India’s foremost scholars—cousins who not only shared a lineage but also their names and even their pet names. They are Dr M.A. Oommen, the economist, and Dr T.K. Oommen, the sociologist, who passed away recently at the age of 88 in Haryana. Both were affectionately known as “Baby” among family and friends. (Venmony is also the native village of BJP leader and former Goa Governor P.S. Sreedharan Pillai.)

Born into middle-class peasant families of the Mar Thoma Church, Malayil Abraham Oommen and Tharailath Koshy Oommen stood steadfastly for secularism, inclusivity and pluralism through their academic and public engagements.

KGK: The `Accidental Journalist’

Thiruvananthapuram’s barefoot historian

Kerala at 70; An election that could redraw the political map

Unny: Friend, farmer and saviour

“I was six years older than him, and we were close from childhood,” recalls M.A. Oommen (94). “I vividly remember how he fell grievously ill after a snakebite on the temple grounds. It took him months to recover.” He also remembers attending the centenary celebrations of their alma mater, the Mar Thoma High School in Venmony, in 2020, along with T.K. “I taught there for a year after graduation, when he was my student,” he says. The cousins remained in close touch throughout their lives. T.K. is survived by his wife, a former school principal in Delhi, and their two sons. “His wife, whom we call Babuji, called me a few days ago and said he had asked for me,” says M.A. Oommen.

According to M.A. Oommen, the village’s culture of communal harmony, their families, and the progressive ethos of the Mar Thoma Church played decisive roles in shaping their intellectual and moral outlook. “He was hardworking and deeply scholarly, but above all courageous—unafraid to take positions that challenged the establishment. That is rare among academics,” he says. He notes with pride that T.K. dedicated one of his books to the legendary Dalit leader Ayyankali. “We may be among the few from orthodox Syrian Christian families to have celebrated Ayyankali in our writings.”

From the quiet bylanes of Venmony, T.K. Oommen rose to global prominence. He became the first scholar from the Global South to be elected president of the International Sociological Association. A Padma Bhushan awardee, author of more than twenty books and an eminent teacher, he belonged to the generation of leading Indian sociologists such as the late M.N. Srinivas and André Béteille, who passed away in early February. An architect of modern Indian sociology, Oommen’s work engaged deeply with questions of identity, nationality and citizenship. He wrote and spoke consistently against religious intolerance, caste discrimination and the conflation of religion with nationalism.

As a member of the Rajinder Sachar Commission, which documented the socio-economic marginalisation of Indian Muslims, his contributions were widely acknowledged. According to Prof. Thirunavukkarasu of the University of Hyderabad, T.K. Oommen expanded the horizons of Indian sociology beyond its earlier preoccupation with institutions such as family, marriage and kinship, to include social and mass movements like the Bhoodan and Kerala’s agrarian movements. He described India as a “multi-national state” and took a firm stand against majoritarianism.

He chaired the Gujarat Harmony Project, which sought pathways to reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims after the 2002 communal carnage. By raising caste discrimination at the UN-sponsored Durban Conference against racism and xenophobia in 2001, he unsettled sections of India’s elite who were reluctant to internationalise the issue, recalled Thirunavukkarasu.

Dr Antony Palakkal, former head of Sociology at Kerala University, observed that T.K. indigenised sociology without parochialising it—re-rooting it in Indian realities at a time when the discipline was heavily circumscribed by Western theoretical frameworks. “For Prof. Oommen, sociology was never a mere assemblage of abstract theories. He saw it as a scientific instrument to grasp the pulse of a society in constant transition,” Palakkal noted.

After graduating in Economics from Kerala University in 1957, T.K. moved to Pune to pursue a master’s degree, marking the beginning of his journey in sociology. His doctoral thesis, supervised by the prominent sociologist Y.B. Damle, examined Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement. Later published as “Charisma, Stability and Change” (1972), it was considered a turning point in sociological scholarship. T.K. argued that despite the moral force of Bhave’s charisma, the movement ultimately failed to secure structural land redistribution. The International Sociological Association has described it as the first book by an Indian sociologist to analyse a social movement in depth. His book, “Doctors and Nurses” (1978), was among the earliest book-length sociological studies of a modern occupation. His Kerala-based work, “From Mobilisation to Institutionalisation: The Dynamics of Agrarian Movement in Kerala” (1985), remains a significant contribution.

After beginning his teaching career at Delhi University, T.K. served for decades at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was also a visiting professor at several universities worldwide. Former students recall his accessibility and intellectual generosity. “He was the next-door popular sociologist—an inspirational mentor who insisted that we develop clarity in presenting our ideas to audiences and readers,” wrote S. Sagarika, now a faculty member at Fakir Mohan University in Odisha.

M.A. Oommen recalls being instrumental in T.K.’s decision not to join the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram in the 1970s. “President K.R. Narayanan wanted him to join CDS, which was headed by their common friend K.N. Raj. When T.K. asked my opinion, I advised him to stay in Delhi. I believed it would be better for his career.” Kerala, he reflects, thus never fully utilised T.K.’s services. M.A. Oommen (94), himself a distinguished economist, was the first teacher of the Economics Department at the University of Kerala, the first economics professor at the University of Calicut, and the founder-director of the John Matthai Centre in Thrissur.

In its obituary, the International Sociological Association made a pointed observation about T.K. Oommen’s identity as a Kerala Christian. It noted that Christianity in Kerala predates European colonialism by many centuries, tracing its origins to the early centuries of the Common Era. This historical rootedness, Oommen argued, meant that Kerala Christians could not be dismissed either as less indigenously Indian than Hindus or as adherents of a purely Western faith tied intrinsically to colonialism. That layered sense of belonging—at once regional, religious and national—deeply informed his lifelong engagement with questions of pluralism, citizenship and justice.

© Mathrubhumi English