Narayana Guru, also known as Sree Narayana Guru, was a social reformer of India. He was born into an Ezhava family in an era when people from such communities, which were regarded as Avarna, faced much social injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala. He led a reform movement in Kerala, rejected casteism, and promoted new values of spiritual freedom and social equality.[1] He stressed the need for the spiritual and social uplift of the downtrodden by their own e�orts through the establishment of temples and educational institutions. In the process, he denounced the superstitions that clouded the fundamental Hindu cultural convention of caste.

He was deeply in�uenced by Vedanta and by ideas of social equality and social and religious reform. He taught religion and Sanskrit to local children and studied yoga with notable ascetics such as Chattampi Swami. He was an itinerant yogi for some time and Cyriac Pullapilly says that he was probably married for a few years but "his worshipful biographers ignored this part of his life out of reverence for his later ascetism".[2][3]In the course of his wanderings in search of enlightenment, Narayana visited Aruvippuram, where he and his followers erected a temple to Shiva in 1888, defying the tradition that this was done by Brahmins alone.[citation needed] As a youth, Narayana Guru turned away from the temple rituals of his local village and travelled widely, living an ascetic lifestyle and seeking religious understanding. He eventually became a schoolteacher and then a religious reformer.[4]