Professor Kesavan Veluthat, in a significant departure from the existing scholarship, represented by K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, T.V. Mahalingam, and Elamkulam P.N. Kunjan Pillai, explored aspects of historical transition, political structures, settlement patterns, agrarian relations, religion, and ideology in early medieval Tamil Nadu and Kerala, thus changing the terms of the debate and reconstructing the study of South Indian history in ways that are irreversible. His more recent studies in the literary and intellectual traditions of Kerala have, by their ingenuity and provocativeness, overturned long accepted historiographical positions.