The centenary celebrations of the Vaikom Satyagraha were jointly inaugurated by Kerala and Tamil Nadu Chief Ministers Pinarayi Vijayan and MK Stalin on Saturday, April 1, 2023. The centenary celebrations will last for the next 603 days and will involve various commemorative events. The Satyagraha, a non-violent protest demanding access for lowered castes to the roads surrounding the Vaikom Sree Mahadeva temple, had begun a century ago on March 30, 1924, and lasted till November 29, 1925. It had come more than six decades after the princely state of Travancore officially declared its roads open for people of all castes in 1865. Even then, access to public roads had only remained on paper, and it was the people’s movement in Vaikom that finally opened them up to lowered caste persons.
On April 1, one only had to flow with the crowd on the streets of Vaikom, from the town’s Valiyakavala junction towards the boat jetty where the inauguration was held. Tens of thousands of people, young and old alike, arrived in Vaikom on Saturday afternoon to attend the inauguration of the centenary celebrations. Many had come just to catch a glimpse of the two chief ministers. As Stalin and Pinarayi rose to speak, the crowd that spilled over from the seating area climbed on desks and barricades, craning their necks and holding out their phone cameras to capture the moment.
People head to the Vaikom boat jetty, where the event was held. A poster of TK Madhavan is seen
CM Stalin opened his speech with a salutation for “my brothers and sisters of Kerala who speak Malayalam, a language that belongs to the Dravidian family.”
He recounted how the two chief ministers had met in Nagercoil less than a month ago during the bicentenary celebration of the Nadar women’s struggle for the right to cover their breasts. It was at the March 6 meeting that Pinarayi extended a welcome to Stalin to the Vaikom centenary inauguration. The Kerala CM had, on the occasion, said that the breast tax was a tool used by the Sanatana Dharma to divide people.
“The protests in Vaikom in 1924 did not just impact the social justice movement in Kerala, but also in Tamil Nadu and in India as a whole,” Stalin noted. He said that the success of the Vaikom Satyagraha was the result of the efforts of social reformers from both states — Periyar EV Ramaswami Naicker from Tamil Nadu, and TK Madhavan from Kerala. “Thanthai Periyar is a global leader,” he said. Stalin also spoke at length about Periyar’s contributions to the cause, including his period of incarceration and KP Kesava Menon’s book that recorded the Dravida leader’s role. Kesava Menon was one of the leaders from Kerala who launched the Vaikom Satyagraha.
Indian independence activist and Congress leader George Joseph was instrumental in bringing Periyar, the then president of the Madras Presidency Congress Committee, to Vaikom. Periyar was part of the Vaikom struggle for 114 days, 74 of which he spent in jail. As author and historian Pazha. Athiyaman writes, “To mobilise support, [Periyar] visited villages in and around Vaikom and delivered public speeches in several towns. His campaign tour stretched to Thiruvananthapuram and even further to Nagercoil.”
“Self-respect, rationality, socialism, equality, humanism, non-discrimination on the basis of blood and gender, women empowerment, social justice, scientific temper, and secularism were the ideals that Periyar upheld,” Stalin listed in his inaugural speech.
He concluded his address by stressing on the importance of such an event in a political atmosphere where proponents of Sanatana Dharma and communal forces are gaining strength.
Statues of leaders of the Vaikom Satyagraha Kunjappi, Bahuleyan, Govinda Panicker, Amachadi Thevan, and Raman Elayath, at Valiyakavala, Vaikom
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan began his inaugural address by describing the Vaikom Satyagraha as an unparalleled protest movement in Indian history. “I call it an unparalleled protest on the basis of factual historical contexts. The strongest link in the chain of renaissance movements that shaped Kerala, like the breast cloth struggles, the Aruvippuram Movement (led by social reformer Sree Narayana Guru who consecrated a Siva idol in Aruvippuram in defiance of Brahmin authority), Villuvandi Samaram or bullock-cart struggle (led by anti-caste revolutionary Ayyankali for access to public roads for lowered castes), Guruvayur Satyagraha (a protest demanding entry into the Guruvayur Temple), and others, is the Vaikom Satyagraha,” he said.
According to him, what makes the Vaikom Satyagraha stand apart is the fact that it was the first time that Kerala’s renaissance movement and India’s independence movement came together. “Until the Vaikom Satyagraha, Kerala’s social renaissance movement had been carried out in isolation from the freedom movement. If it hadn’t been for the influences of [Kerala social reformers] Sree Narayana Guru, Chattambi Swamikal, and Ayyankali, a satyagraha like the one at Vaikom would not have been possible. TK Madhavan, Narayana Guru’s disciple and Congress leader, played a crucial role in connecting it to the national movement,” Pinarayi said.
Madhavan was at the forefront of the Satyagraha, and played a crucial role in bringing Gandhi to Kerala for the first time, in connection with the protests in Vaikom. A year earlier, at the Indian National Congress’s Kakinada session in Andhra Pradesh, Madhavan had moved a resolution against untouchability.
Pinarayi called the Satyagraha a war cry against the “rot in social systems based on the principle of Chaturvarna.”
Recounting the role of Periyar and other Tamil leaders in the Vaikom Satyagraha, Pinarayi said that the people of Kerala and Tamil Nadu are fraternal populations united by the same “culture of resistance.” “The Satyagraha set an example to stand united in resistance. Standing on the soil of Vaikom, let me say that this unity will continue in the coming years and will be further strengthened. This unity will be a significant example to the country itself,” the Kerala CM said.
Pinarayi also said that the Vaikom Satyagraha disproves the allegation that political parties played no role in Kerala’s renaissance movements. “The present governments of both Kerala and Tamil Nadu were formed from organisations that were involved in the reform movements of both states in the early 20th century,” he notes.
“We live in a time when the Constitution and the values of the freedom movement are under threat. There are efforts to replace our Constitution with the teachings of Manusmriti… There are forces that block the progressive growth of our society. We should be able to identify and overcome them. We should focus on tackling larger dangers and not be stuck on small differences,” Pinarayi said.
The audience that had gathered to hear the chief ministers
As most of the crowd dissipated after the chief ministers’ speeches, a few small groups gathered on the grounds. A group of senior citizens, all natives of Vaikom, spoke to TNM about the event they had just witnessed. “This is a very important event. The Vaikom Satyagraha needs to be remembered and spoken about. More than that, it needs to be included in our school curricula and taught to the coming generations. The young should grow up knowing about the caste injustices that were perpetrated in this land, and the struggles led against it,” one of them said.
In the group was KK Jayappan, Vaikom town secretary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP). He spoke about how the Dalavakulam massacre found no mention in the speeches of either Pinarayi or Stalin. The Dalavakulam massacre took place in 1806, when around 200 unarmed Ezhava men who were leading a peaceful protest against untouchability and demanding entry rights into the Vaikom temple were butchered by the Travancore Diwan Velu Thampi Dalava’s Nair brigade and thrown in the temple’s eastern pond.
“If Dalavakulam was to be mentioned, the Ezhava community had to be mentioned. It could have been a conscious choice made to not mention the community,” he suggested. Anil, Sunitha, Leela and Suraja Chandran, who were with him, agreed.
However, both Leena Kumari and Thankamma TP, who spoke to TNM at length about the cruelties at Dalavakulam, had a simpler explanation. They believe that it is not the chief ministers who are at fault for the omission, but the officers who helped draft their speeches. When asked if they thought the history of the Vaikom Satyagraha is known as much as it should be, Leena said, “Those who write history will only write their versions. Much of what actually happened is not passed down to the common people.”
Two young Vaikom natives who spoke to TNM, Akhil P Mohan and Sujith K Ajith, said that the centenary celebrations offered a chance to know the history of the Satyagraha in greater detail. “I have heard about the Vaikom Satyagraha from the time I was a child. But now, once the preparations for the centenary began, conversations about the Satyagraha gained more currency. More resources also became available online, and I learned many more details about it,” Akhil said.
The Vaikom boat jetty, where the centenary celebrations were inaugurated on April 1
For Sujith, the inauguration was an opportunity to catch a glimpse of two leaders he admires – Pinarayi and Stalin. “Communal forces are gaining strength across the country. As someone who is opposed to communal politics, I believe the coming together of the two chief ministers is an important signal,” he said. While Akhil and Sujith also stressed on the need to teach their town’s history to the younger generation, Sujith’s young nephew who had accompanied the two men told TNM that he knew neither what the Vaikom Satyagraha meant nor who the leaders who had come to the event were.
When TNM approached Saddam Hussein and Thasni, both Vaikom residents, to know what they thought of the event, they said that they had come to attend it as it is rare that their town hosts such a large event. They also stressed that the commemoration of the historic movement was crucial. They too spoke of the importance of teaching history to the younger generations of Vaikom. “Everything is political,” Saddam said, speaking on the significance of the presence of the two chief ministers at the event.
Vijayakumari Shaji, Shobhana Padmanabhan, and several other members of Kudumbashree units in Kaduthuruthy were waiting for their bus back home when they spoke to TNM about the historic significance of the event they had just witnessed. “We first heard of the Vaikom Satyagraha from our grandparents’ generation, who had lived through the times when the struggles took place. Our young children who attended the event today will now tell posterity about this large event that they attended with their mothers, and keep alive the memory of the Satyagraha for another 100 years,” Vijayakumari said.