Solution:

• Mannathu Padmanabha Pillai was an Indian social reformer and freedom fighter from the south-western state of Kerala. He is recognised as the founder of the Nair Service Society. Padmanabhan is considered as a visionary reformer who organised the Nair community under the NSS.

• Mannathu Padmanabhan Pillai was born in Perunna village in Changanacherry, Kottayam District, British India on 2 January 1878 to Easwaran Namboothiri of Nilavana Illam and Mannathu Parvathy Amma. He began his career as a teacher in 1893 in a Government primary school. After a few years, from 1905 he changed his profession and started practising law, in the Magistrates Courts.

• On 31 October 1914, with the help of a few others, he established the Nair Service Society. His main ambition was to uplift the status of the Nair community. From 1915 onwards, he gave up the law practice and became full-time secretary of the Nair Service Society.

• Mannam revived and reshaped the old concept of village societies, the Karayogams, which practically set the tenor of family and village life. In 1924-25 the NSS persuaded the Travancore Government to enact the Nair Regulation which broke up the matriarchal joint family providing for paternal and maternal property to divided among all the children.

• Padmanabhan was involved with the Nair Service Society as its secretary for 31 years and as its president for three years. He was honoured with the title Bharata Kesari by the President of India. He also received Padma Bhushan in 1966.