Kerala's Kalaripayattu Goes Global — And Comes Home to a Reinvented Martial Arts Scene

In Santiago, Chile, actor Eyal Meyer runs Mauna Kalari — a Kalaripayattu school he founded after first encountering the art in 2006 while studying theatre at the University of Chile. His training, which began with a phone call from filmmaker Marko Zaror ahead of the 2023 Chilean film The Fist of the Condor, has since drawn him repeatedly to Kozhikode's Hindustan Kalari Sangam, where he first trained in August 2011. Meanwhile, in Kerala — the art's homeland — the martial arts landscape is undergoing a quieter but no less significant churn, with Muay Thai, Karate, and MMA training camps spreading alongside a renewed popular interest in Kalaripayattu itself.

The Foreign Wave Hitting Kerala's Mats

In Thiruvananthapuram's JB Fit Club, 19-year-old Ann returned from Thailand in 2024 with a Muay Thai bout win in the minus-50 category at the Bangla stadium. Binu, another Kerala-based practitioner, has trained twice in Thailand. With Kerala's diaspora networks and cheaper flights making Southeast Asian training accessible, combat arts that arrived in the state only in recent decades are now shaping the aspirations of a generation that once only knew Kalaripayattu.

Karate's own entry tells a layered history. It came to Kerala "with a big bang" in the late 1970s, riding on the global excitement around Bruce Lee's 1973 film Enter the Dragon. Crucially, the Japanese art did not arrive directly from Japan but via Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. K. Nagulanathan, who teaches the Shotokan style in Thrissur, came to Kerala from Kilinochchi in Sri Lanka in 1981 to teach. He recalls that early learners "studied Karate in secret, as parents tended to frown upon it."

• ▸The Bruce Lee-driven Karate wave reached Kerala in the late 1970s, entering via Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, not directly from Japan
• ▸Nagulanathan arrived in Thrissur from Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka, in 1981 and settled to teach Shotokan Karate
• ▸Ann won a minus-50 category Muay Thai bout at the Bangla stadium, Thailand, in 2024
• ▸JB Fit Club in Thiruvananthapuram is among the new-generation gyms hosting mixed martial arts training

Kalaripayattu's Homegrown Revival

The most striking development sits inside Kerala's traditional Kalari system. S.R.D. Prasad, an octogenarian Gurukkal (senior trainer) running the Sree Bharath Kalari at Valapattanam in Kannur, reports a clear revival — including a Bengaluru cohort of adult learners he found surprising. His father, Chirakkal Sreedharan Nair, founded the same Kalari in 1948; Prasad himself trained under C.V. Narayanan Nair, one of the post-Independence figures credited with reigniting popular interest in the art.

Prasad's observation that "people are also more aware about Kalaripayattu's influence on other art forms" points to a maturing public consciousness. The art's vocabulary — including stances like Ashwa Vadivu (the 'horse stance'), visible when Eyal Meyer's character leaps and twists mid-fight in The Fist of the Condor — is now recognised across continents. Meyer's hope that a sequel will showcase weapons like the urumi (the flexible Indian sword) suggests Kalaripayattu is being read, even by foreign filmmakers, as a complete combat system rather than a curiosity.

What the Framework Says — And Where It Stumbles

Both Kalaripayattu and Thang-ta (the sword-and-spear art of Manipur, with a documented 1620 manuscript origin and royal patronage under King Khagemba in the 16th century) sit under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports' "Traditional Sports and Games" category. The NCERT's Indian Heritage textbook (Class XI, 2022) defines Kalaripayattu as "a martial art of Kerala that integrates armed and unarmed combat, therapeutic massage, and ritual performance" — a definition that captures why it cannot be reduced to a fighting style alone.

Yet the institutional scaffolding has limits. A 2023 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Culture report flagged duplication of bodies overseeing traditional martial arts and the absence of a central registry of practitioners or Kalaris. The convergence of funding shortfalls, unqualified instructors, and inadequate safety gear — particularly in newly opened gyms mixing Kalaripayattu with MMA-style sparring — has emerged as a documented risk to both heritage preservation and student safety.

• ▸Both Kalaripayattu and Thang-ta are categorised as "Traditional Sports and Games" under the National Sports Policy 2001
• ▸The Kerala ICH Act 2005 and Gazette Notification No. 45/2005 mandate Kalari registration with the state
• ▸A 2023 Standing Committee on Culture report noted institutional duplication and absence of a central registry for traditional martial arts
• ▸Kalaripayattu's curriculum integrates combat training with Uzhichil (therapeutic massage) and ritual elements such as the Pooja that opens every Kalari

Soft Power and the Question of Authenticity

Meyer's insistence that Kalaripayattu "is not a relic art" captures the central tension: Kerala's traditional martial art is simultaneously being preserved, exported, hybridised, and commercialised. The state's Kerala Kalamandalam and institutions like the Hindustan Kalari Sangam serve as anchors of authenticity, but the proliferation of MMA gyms in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi suggests the line between heritage transmission and fitness-trend adaptation is blurring. For policymakers, the task is no longer to "save" Kalaripayattu from extinction but to regulate a globalising ecosystem — one in which a Chilean actor, a Sri Lankan-origin Karate teacher in Thrissur, and a Thai-trained Muay Thai champion in Thiruvananthapuram are all, in different ways, participants in Kerala's martial arts story.