Satyagraha that changed India

It was the first time they saw how a handkerchief made of khadi could intimidate an empire. Old-timers recalling the Vaikom Satyagraha of 19...

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It was the first time they saw how a handkerchief made of khadi could intimidate an empire. Old-timers recalling the Vaikom Satyagraha of 1924 say the streets of this temple town were overrun by outsiders overnight. Outsiders who looked and sounded different, yet bonded by what they wore.

The satyagraha was organised to demand that the roads around the Mahadevar Temple be thrown open to low-caste Hindus.

Narasimha Nayak, who was nine, was privy to most of the drama. ‘‘My late uncle owned the town’s biggest store then,’’ he says. There was little action except the odd outrage which would revive the flagging satyagrahis. Like when a farmer blundered across the police lines and his knees were cracked open with batons. The demonstrators kept up their picketing, rain or shine, while the police carried on their vigil. Till Mahatma Gandhi came along.

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Vaikom, among the three oldest municipalities in the state, is just 35 km from Kochi but hasn’t come very far.

‘‘The sense of being caught in a time warp is not altogether incorrect,’’ says advocate P.K. Harikumar, former municipal chairman of Vaikom, ‘‘but the reasons are structural and socio-economic. The decline of rice farming, the over-fished lakes and the eclipse of the coir industry have all contributed to Vaikom’s stagnation.’’

Nayak doesn’t agree. He and his younger brother, Raya, recall a time when life, at least for the privileged sections, was sheltered.

Earlier in the day, a procession, mainly of Muslims from Talayolaparambu, moved into Vaikom. Ahead of the marchers were bullocks and dolls representing residents of various parts of the country. The crowd kept swelling as more groups joined. Some 20,000 people greeted Gandhi with thundering cries as he got down the boat from Ernakulam.

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In that crowd was a short, dark youth who stood watching Gandhi. When the Mahatma left, he stood there, forlorn. Vaikom Mohammed Basheer, Kerala’s Gogol, was part of the moment and when he returned home that day, he told his mother: ‘‘Mother, today I saw Gandhi’’.

The 1920s were slack years in the Congress’ political campaign, and a decade of crisis for the Mahatma himself. His sojourn at Vaikom and his meeting with Narayana Guru helped him reprioritise the freedom movement’s goals and replenish his self.

On the political level, it convinced him of the need to confront casteism head-on and enlist the elites for this cause. It was a wise decision, one borne out by the fact that it was the Maharaja of Travancore who, with his Temple Entry Proclamation in 1936, ended a dehumanising chapter. The road from Champaran to Dandi, and further, was laid via Vaikom.