Breast Tax: The Most Weird Tax In History | A woman who cut off her breasts to protest the tax
There are many things in the world that are considered to be very unusual and weird. In this article today, there is going to be a discussion about an unjust tax that you have hardly heard of before, of course, you have already read the title. Do you know in ancient times the women had to pay breast tax? yes, this is completely true, so today we will talk about this topic in detail.
A few hundred years ago, when kings and emperors ruled India, there was a caste system that they also established in their kingdom. The Kingdom of Travancore, in the present-day Kerala state of India, whose king introduced the breast tax. According to this tax, the women of lower caste were not allowed to cover their breast without paying the breast tax to the government, as soon as they started developing breasts and these taxes were taken according to the size of the breast, that is, the larger the breast, the higher the tax.
This breast tax was started to maintain the caste system, in olden times the clothes of the people varied according to their caste so that they could be easily identified by their dressing sense. But then a woman protested against this tax, whose name was Nangeli and who was in her 30's and belonged to Ezhava caste. Both Nangeli and her husband were laborers and she too had to pay breast tax like the rest of the lower caste community.
But Nangeli thought that this tax system was very wrong, that is why she protested against it by covering her breasts and not paying the breast tax. When the tax inspector finds out that a woman was not paying the tax, he went to her house and asked her to pay double the tax amount for breaking the law. But even then she refused to pay the tax, then the tax inspector tore Nangeli's clothes and abused her in front of the whole village.
As soon as this happened, Nangeli ran to her house and brought a knife and angrily told the inspector that you would only be able to do it until I have breasts. On saying this, she cut off her breasts and presented them to the tax inspector.
Seeing this scene, the entire village was completely shocked and due to excessive bleeding, Nangeli died there on the same day and seeing her mutilated body, her grieving husband is said to have jumped into her funeral pyre. These sinister actions greatly influenced the authority to change its decision, and the breast tax was abolished immediately.