Men of privileged castes were dead against allowing people of all castes on the roads surrounding temples in Kerala a century ago as they considered the mere sighting of some of them as polluting. This meant that everyone from Nairs to the Brahmins – considered ‘upper caste’ Hindus – could occupy the roads, but not others like Ezhavas, Pulayas and other oppressed castes. It took 604 days of a peaceful protest between March 1924 and November 1925, in a place called Vaikom, between Kochi and Kottayam, to bring about a difference.
The Vaikom Satyagraha helped open these roads for everyone, while paving the way for further breaking of barriers like temple entry for all castes. Engagement and participation of leader reformers such as Periyar EV Ramaswamy, Sree Narayana Guru and Mahatma Gandhi brought it national attention. On April 1, Chief Ministers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu got together to celebrate the centenary year of the event.
It was not an easy victory, nor a complete one. The Satyagraha was a fight for access to the roads surrounding the Vaikom Mahadeva temple for people of all castes, who were otherwise forced to use roundabout paths to reach their destinations. When it ended, only three roads surrounding the temple were fully open to people of all castes. On the eastern side, where priests of the “highest order” lived, a separate path was built for the “avarnas” or the lowered castes to use. This had reduced the very purpose of the fight - which was to end the practice of untouchability and unapproachability.
Even so, what has been achieved was no mean feat. There are stories of people of oppressed castes trying to enter the temple in the mid-nineteenth century, and getting themselves killed for it, their bodies thrown to the pond nearby. Mary Elizabeth King, in her book Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and untouchability in South India, quotes folk historian NK Jose, alias Dalit Bandhu, who writes about these killings. Jose, in his book Vaikom Satyagraha Oru Prahelika, says it was only in Vaikom that people of oppressed castes used temple roads and tried to enter temples and lost their lives for it. Historians Rajan Gurukkal and Raghava Varier also report in their book History of Kerala: Prehistoric to the Present a series of attempts made by people of lowered castes, since 1803-04 when 200 Ezhavas tried to enter one of the temple roads in vain. Mary King records several instances of efforts made by lowered castes to enter temples or temple roads - in 1911, 1916, 1917, 1919, 1921 and 1922.
The 19th century witnessed several struggles that led to the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924. Mary King notes that, in 1836, social reformer Aiyya Vaikunda Swami established the Samatwa Samajam, to oppose untouchability. Ayyankali, a Dalit leader born in 1863, would take part in several movements to fight the caste system, including riding a bullock cart from Venganoor to Vizhinjam in Thiruvananthapuram at a time people of lowered castes were forbidden from entering the main street or riding a cart in front of privileged caste men.
Notably, the Travancore Royal notification of 1865 – reaffirmed in 1884 – said that public roads will be open to all castes, according to the book by Gurukkal and Varier. However, in 1887, the High Court of Travancore, said that "village roads" were different from "public roads" and the temple road of Vaikom fell under "village roads". So, it did not have to be open.
By 1891, Travancore’s two Ezhava graduates, Dr P Palpu (who had to study in Madras to get his doctorate because of the untouchability in Travancore) and P Velayudhan, prepared a petition called the Malayali Memorial, to stop the practice of employing “foreign” (non-Malayali) Brahmins for government jobs, and noting the discrimination towards Ezhavas.
When that did not work, Dr Palpu mobilised another petition called the Ezhava Memorial in 1896, making a point with the 13,176 signatures he collected that the community accounted for quite a lot of the tax paid to the government. In both the petitions a demand to access public institutions without discrimination on the basis of caste was made.
In 1905, at a meeting of the Sri Mulam Popular Assembly (named after the then Travancore King), an Ezhava member called Kochu Kunju Channar “raised the question of the teendal palakas”, Mary King notes. Teendal palakas were sign boards kept in temple roads, which said that people of lowered castes can’t enter these roads. In this way, such practices of exclusion and untouchability began to be raised in public forums.
Around this time the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), a socio-religious organisation was formed under the leadership of Sree Narayana Guru, a social reformer who famously said ‘one caste, one religion, one god for all’, Dr Palpu and Kumaran Asan, Kerala’s most known poet.
The SNDP, under Guru’s leadership, began building temples that would allow entry to all people, while the other temples continued to exclude certain castes. The Guru’s influence prompted new leaders to emerge and take up the fight. Prominent among them were TK Madhavan and George Joseph, who later joined the Indian National Congress. Mary King notes that Madhavan is viewed as the “progenitor of the Vaikom struggle”.
TK Madhavan / Courtesy - keralaculture.org
In 1919, Madhavan, who was also a member of Sri Mulam Popular Assembly, called for abolition of untouchability and unapproachability. In 1921, he and his colleagues held meetings across villages of Travancore and distributed materials to discuss the subject of temple entry. That year in September, he met Mahatma Gandhi during a session of the Indian National Congress in Tirunelveli (of Tamil Nadu). He was able to convince Gandhi about the need of the lowered castes to fight the restrictions on using temple roads and entering temples.
Two years later, at a session in Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh, Madhavan, along with other Congress workers Sardar Panikkar and KP Kesava Menon, persuaded leaders of the party "to include eradication of untouchability in the All India Congress Committee (AICC) agenda," Gurukkal and Varier note. Madhavan moved a resolution to form the Anti-Untouchability Committee in this meeting.
The immediate trigger for the launch of Satyagraha in 1924, according to Gurukkal and Varier, was the act of stopping leaders like Sree Narayana Guru and Kumaran Asan – both of whom were Ezhavas – from using a temple road in Vaikom. However, in Periyar EV Ramaswamy’s book on the struggle (Untouchability: History of Vaikom Agitation), another incident is mentioned as a trigger. An advocate called Madhavan (different from TK Madhavan who was a journalist) could not appear for his case in court since he was prevented from using the road to the court, because of his caste. The court was situated near the royal palace and the road leading to it was covered with panthals and ceremonies in honour of the king’s birthday. Periyar writes that this triggered the Ezhava community into protests and the leadership was taken up by Congress members KP Kesava Menon and TK Madhavan. They chose Vaikom as their protest venue.
Book by Periyar on Vaikom Satyagraha
Mary King quotes historian TK Ravindran to explain why Vaikom was chosen: “it was the worst spot where the evils of untouchability and unapproachability were preserved in their pristine purity”, he wrote in Vaikom Satyagraha and Gandhi. Located north of Travancore, it was also a town easily accessible by water and road from Kochi.
After the Kakinada Congress session, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) met in Kochi in January 1924 and assigned its member K Kelappan as the convenor of the Anti Untouchability Committee. In further meetings of the committee, it was decided that March 30 would mark the beginning of the Vaikom Satyagraha.
On the first day, the volunteers – numbering thousands, according to some accounts – read out Gandhi’s message of maintaining non-violence and walked towards the prohibited temple roads. They stopped 20 yards away from the teendal palakas (notice boards). From there, three men wearing garlands walked towards the prohibited area. These were Kunjapy, a Pulaya (Scheduled Caste), Bahuleyan, an Ezhava, and Govinda Panicker, a Nair. The police stopped the men using barricades and would only allow Panicker to pass through. But he refused to go unless all three were allowed. The three men sat down in protest for an hour and were then arrested.
From Mary King's book
Similar protests were repeated in the days to come, where men of privileged and oppressed castes walked together and were then arrested. Within weeks, all the leaders were put behind bars. This included Madhavan, KP Kesava Menon, George Joseph and K Kelappan, among others.
When 19 major leaders of the protest were jailed, they feared the Satyagraha would lose its focus and invited Periyar EV Ramaswamy to come to Vaikom and lead the struggle. He had been leading many such fights against untouchability in Tamil Nadu. Periyar began his journey to Vaikom as soon as he got the letter from KP Kesava Menon and George Joseph. Periyar, a champion of the non-brahmanical movements in Tamil Nadu, arrived on April 12, 1924, accompanied by 17 volunteers.
At first, he was received as a guest of the king, as Periyar and his family were known to him. Regardless of it, Periyar went on to make speeches in support of the Vaikom struggle and very strongly against untouchability. No god that becomes polluted by the touch of a man should be in a temple, he said. He was arrested and jailed for a month. During this time, Periyar writes, his wife Nagammal and his sister SR Kannammal became active in the protest.
In the early days, support for the Satyagraha came from across the country, and from people of varied religions. Akali Dal leaders even established a Lankar’ food hall for Satyagrahis. Periyar also writes of Swami Sraddhanand of Punjab, who sent 30 volunteers and money to feed the Satyagrahis in Vaikom. However, when word reached Gandhi, he asked people of other faiths and other parts of the country to refrain from taking part in the Satyagraha. This is corroborated in other accounts of the Satyagraha.
Mary King writes that in George Joseph’s communication with Gandhi, the Mahatma kept reiterating that this was essentially a Hindu question. He asked George to let the Hindus do the work and similarly requested Christians, Muslims and Sikhs “to retire from the struggle”. Mary also records that this exchange had caused Periyar to lose confidence in Gandhi, which is clear in his own writing. Gandhi was in fact dragged into the struggle, Periyar wrote. A statement reiterated by George Joseph’s grandson George Ghevarghese Joseph to Mary said: “Contrary to popular belief, the Vaikom Satyagraha was not initiated by Gandhi. It was practically forced on him by actions taken by people of different castes and creeds within Travancore.”
The accession of the Regent Rani to the throne made a major impact in the Vaikom struggle. In 1924, the year the Satyagraha began, the king of Travancore, Sri Mulam Thirunal, who was opposed to opening of temple roads to all castes, died. The next male heir in line was too young to take the throne, and in his place, his aunt Sethu Lakshmi Bayi took on the role of Regent Queen.
From Mary King's book
The Queen said she was welcoming of the idea to open the roads to all but had to take public opinion into concern. Periyar, who was arrested for a second time, has written that the meeting of Gandhi with Travancore’s Regent Maharani Sethu Lekshmi Bayi happened because Raghavaiah, the Dewan, did not want it to happen. In his book Ivory Throne, Manu Pillai writes that Raghavaiahhad underestimated Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
“The contest between ruler and minister spilled over from petty matters into the critical public issue of the Vaikom Satyagraha. The Maharani was obviously sympathetic while the Dewan stood obdurately against the movement,” Manu Pillai writes.
One of her first acts after taking charge was to release the prisoners arrested during the Satyagraha.
Meanwhile, the Satyagraha proceeded peacefully. The protestors spun khadi and sang songs about ending untouchability. The police took away the spinning wheels and complained about the singing. But the Satyagrahis did not stop the protest even during the Great Flood of 1924. Mary quotes a Mathrubhumi report about volunteers standing neck deep in water for three hour shifts, with boats ferrying them to and from their positions. The police too had boats, and stayed there to protect the barricades. An unnamed volunteer died by drowning in the flood, according to the reports.
Women were part of the struggle too. Sarada Ammal, TK Madhavan’s daughter, made speeches against untouchability while her father was in jail. Another day, three Ezhava women – Lakshmi, Karthoo Kunju and Kalyani – came from Mavelikkara (in Alappuzha district) to participate in the Satyagraha. More women came from Tamil Nadu.
The government then took a stand of not arresting protestors, evaluating that this will reduce the spirit of the movement and the sympathy they won.
In November 1924, another prominent leader of the time, Mannathu Padmanabha Pillai, led a procession of privileged caste members, against untouchability. It was called the ‘savarna jatha’. They walked 200 km from Vaikom to Trivandrum to meet the Regent Queen with a memorial petition with thousands of signatures asking her to open the temple roads to everyone. A similar jatha, of privileged caste persons was led by M Emperumal Naidu from Kottar in south Travancore to Trivandrum, to spread the word about the Satyagraha.
From Mary King's book
Both the jathas reached the Queen’s place and members of the two parties presented her with a “monster petition” comprising 25,000 signatures of privileged caste members, for opening all roads and public institutions to all subjects. The Queen received the petition and told the petitioners that a resolution regarding it is set to be placed before the Travancore Legislative Council during the next meeting.
The resolution was moved by the Council member N Kumaran, who was also the general secretary of the SNDP at the time. However, Kumaran’s resolution was defeated 22:21 during voting in the Council meeting of February 1925. Notably, an Ezhava member P Parameswaran, the brother of Dr Palpu, had voted against the resolution.
The next month, Mahatma Gandhi came to Vaikom. He met with the volunteers, the Queen and with Sree Narayana Guru. He was impressed by the queen, as Manu Pillai writes. But the queen, though sympathetic to the cause, conveyed she could not open the roads as tradition stood in the way. The most-talked about meeting in Gandhi’s trip, Mary King writes, was his meeting with the Guru, in which both leaders with differing views appreciated each other’s ideas.
Gandhi in Kochi / Courtesy - Manorama / Wiki Commons / Public Domain
Gandhi then engaged in an exchange with the Travancore police commissioner, Britishman WH Pitt, to reach an agreement. They agreed that the barricades would be removed if the protestors remained in the areas they were allowed to use. Further moves came from the part of the government in the months that followed, removing the restrictions on three of the four roads outside the temple. The eastern side was however still inaccessible to the lowered castes, and the Satyagrahis led by Kelappan refused to end their protest till all roads were open to everyone.
In a confusing order then released by the government, it was said that the eastern side will also be open except for an enclosed portion that won’t be accessible to Christians or Mohammedans or to “Hindus who have not got the right of worship in this temple nor even to caste-Hindus except during hours of service”. The protestors, somehow taking it to mean that all roads were open to all, ended their Satyagraha. Gandhi too sent word to withdraw.
The Satyagraha came to a close on November 23, 1925, a total of 604 days after it began in March, 1924. Similar fights would echo in other parts of the state - in Thiruvarppu and Suchindram. In another three years, the Travancore government would order that temple roads across the state be opened to all. And in 1936, the then ruler Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma signed the temple entry proclamation allowing people of all castes into temples.