A winding network of polders and canals dots the picture-perfect township of Vaikom, with the expanse of Vembanad Lake making it deeply scenic. The town, as such, has lanes crisscrossing, all of which leading to the centuries-old enormous structure of Sri Mahadeva Temple.
Idyllic charm meets history at Vaikom, a temple town on the western-most stretch of Kottayam. The venue of an epic struggle of social equality called the Vaikom Satyagraha, its influences are marked all over the township, though not entirely tangible.
The temple, the roads around it, the Indamthuruthi Mana, and an old jetty in a corner of the town where Mahatma Gandhi disembarked a boat to join the iconic event are some of the first remainders of this tumultuous yet progressive period in history.
The Indamthuruthi Mana at Vaikom served as the camp of upper caste orthodoxy during the Vaikom Satyagraha. | Photo Credit: Vishnu Prathap
And even as the States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu and many political organisations are to celebrate grandly a century of the event, the episode remains largely forgotten locally with the people here far more caught in the daily grind.
Outside, however, the Vaikom episode continues to be recalled often for its own intrinsic interest and as the beginning of what would go on to become a temple entry movement, which still continues nation-wide. The movement played a critical role in highlighting human rights violations in the name of hierarchical caste divisions in colonial India.
Caste struggles in Kerala did not start with the Vaikom Satyagraha. Far from it. “But in March 1924, the number of people who were prepared to commit themselves to such resistance reached a critical mass. And the pace and trajectory of these changes were in line with the nationalist movement,’’ points out historian P. Sanal Mohan, who has documented the history of caste struggles in colonial Kerala.
While the seeds of its origin can be traced to a decision by the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam in 1917 to promulgate a demand for temple entry for all castes, the satyagraha pursued a much limited objective of attaining all castes the right to use the four roads around the Vaikom temple.
The museum that chronicles the important events and personalities associated with the Vaikom Satyagraha. | Photo Credit: Vishnu Prathap
The issue had been first presented as a resolution at the Kakinada meet of the All India Congress Committee of 1923 by T.K. Madhavan and was subsequently taken up by the Anti-Untouchability Committee formed by the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee in January 1924. This was followed by a public meeting of the Pulaya community at Vaikom a month later.
At the instance of Mahatma Gandhi, the protesters dropped the initial idea of massive civil disobedience and launched the protest by sending only three volunteers from three different communities through the prohibited road.
Accordingly, three volunteers — Kunjappy, Bahuleyan and Venniyil Govinda Panicker walked hand in hand towards the barricaded road on March 30, 1924. Though Kunjappy and Bahuleyan — who belonged to the Pulaya and Ezhava castes respectively — were prevented from entering the road, the protesters stood their ground together and eventually got arrested. Taking their place instantly were three more volunteers and the protest went on for over a year-and-a-half.
The movement, according to Mr. Mohan, saw significant participation from Dalit communities, making it what experts regard as a ‘democratisation of the movement’. Numerous Dalit revolutionaries, especially from the Pulaya community, such as Amachadiyil Thevan, went onto emerge as the movement’s face.
“The interventions by Gandhiji, however, limited its caste question into a merely religious question. It, at the same time, helped the movement to evolve as a bridge between social justice and swaraj,” observes Mr. Mohan.
The old boat jetty at Vaikom where Mahatma Gandhi disembarked to join the Vaikom Satyagraha. | Photo Credit: Vishnu Prathap
Sukumaran Moolekattu, who has chronicled the history of the satyagraha extensively since the early 1970s and has authored the book Vaikom- an epic struggle, too highlights the democratisation aspect as a key point.
“It was indeed a complex mix of concepts and personalities. On the one hand, there was Gandhiji who wanted to keep it strictly as a Hindu reformist movement while on the other hand there was Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, who was strictly an atheist,” he points out.
The upper caste orthodoxy was not to concede under duress and hit back with full force. They arranged for the protesters to be exposed to unprecedented barbarity — from being beaten up to pouring irritants into their eyes.
Then came the great deluge of the 1924, flooding the temple and its premises. The satyagrahis, however, hardly relented and continued to protest neck-deep in the floodwaters.
The march of forward castes led by Mannathu Padmanbhan, which began on November 1, 1924, came as a major turning point, according to Mr. Moolekkattu. Barring some untoward interventions in the initial days, it took the erstwhile Travancore by storm and was accorded receptions at several points till it reached the royal palace in Thiruvananthapuram 16 days later.
“The march, along with a similar march taken out under M.E. Naidu from Nagercoil, did a great deal in mainstreaming the issue. Outside the Travancore State, it commanded a great attention and attracted participation even from the Akalis in Punjab. The public kitchen opened by the Akalis, however, had to be closed down on a directive from Mr. Gandhi,’’ says Mr. Moolekkattu.
The memorial to Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, who was in the forefront of the Vaikom Satyagraha and earned the epithet Vaikom Veeran. | Photo Credit: Vishnu Prathap
EVR (or Periyar), whose lead role in the struggle would later earn him the epithet Vaikom Veeran, joined the satyagraha on an invitation from George Joseph, who had already been jailed for leading the movement. Although busy spearheading various agitations in Tamil Nadu, EVR proceeded to Vaikom soon after handing over his charge as president of the Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee to C. Rajagopalachari.
Right from that moment, he was at the forefront of struggle in every aspect till its successful conclusion. Determined to reshape the protest into a citizen’s rights movement, he mobilised people across the princely State and was eventually arrested on May 21.
After a month of simple imprisonment, EVR returned to Vaikom and was arrested again and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for four months. The move, however, backfired for the administrators as it caused the protests to spread across south India.
After being released from confinement during a change of guard in the royal palace, EVR went to Erode on September 10 and got arrested. He later came to Varkala on March 12, 1925 and held meetings with Gandhiji and Sree Narayana Guru.
The entry of EVR to Vaikom, along with his wife Nagammai and sister Kanagammal, ensured that women too played an unprecedented role in the protest. These two women, along with several other women, prominently from the Ezhava community, emerged as leaders of the protest in their own right, going on to drive the women’s movement in India for the coming decades.
Gandhiji, on his part, attempted to reach out to the caste Hindu camp, though to no avail. His attempts to meet Devan Neelakandan Namboothiri, leader of the Brahmins, failed after being infamously denied entry to the Indamthuruthi Mana because of being a non-Brahmin.
A view of Sri Mahadeva Temple, venue of the Vaikom Satyagraha a century ago. | Photo Credit: Vishnu Prathap
The strike was declared withdrawn officially on November 30, 1925 following active consultations between Gandhiji and W.H. Pitt, then police commissioner of the Travancore State. The compromise formula stipulated release of all prisoners and opening of the roads on the northern, southern, and western sides of the temple. The eastern entry of the road, however, continued to be reserved for the upper castes, drawing criticism from the likes of EVR.
“It was a fight against discrimination that was deeply structural. Gandhiji, however, saw it as a tool to unify the Hindu castes but everyone else was firm on its scope as a social reformation movement. In fact, the term Hindu itself was anachronistic in Kerala before the temple entry proclamation of 1936,” says Satheese Chandra Bose, political scientist and an expert in Kerala modernity.
The issue of temple entry, according to Mr. Bose, became a topic of contention only because of the Civic Rights League, a broad movement of people from all religions that campaigned against inequality of rights in Travancore. “And given that there was no general consensus on the concept of Hindu, it should be regarded as a secular movement in a theocratic State,” he says.
As decades passed by, much of what the satyagrahis had done at Vaikom faded from immediate memory. Yet the political and cultural chain reaction it set off remains impossible to ignore.
Nowhere has the immediate impact of the satyagraha been more palpable than in the Indian democracy itself. “The Vaikom Satyagraha has been one particular incident that widened the scope of democracy from a mere test of majority to include social justice. In that sense, it paved the way for an internal revision within the concepts of freedom and democracy,” says Sunil P. Elayidom, academic and orator.
While also acknowledging its failure in equating caste discrimination to violation of human rights, Mr. Elayidom says the movement’s spirit comes roaring back in Kerala every time the communal-casteist forces rear their head. “This, I think, is the most important legacy of the Vaikom Satyagraha,” he says.
