The Meaning of Vaikom Satyagraha
P. Radhakrishnan
If, as Will Durant wrote “[s] society is a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic, and when the past is put out through the door it comes in at the window,” the “Kerala phenomenon” of putting the past, or at least a major part of its malignant growth, out through the door, and ensuring that what came in at the window was only its moribund form, should remain a conundrum to the critiques of change.
In this sense, the Vaikom Satyagraha continues to be an important national event of historical and contemporary significance, though, reflecting the putrid political climate of the country, parties and organisations have used the occasion more to gain political mileage than to spread the meaning, message and significance of the Satyagraha.
How politicians could appropriate an event, which Mahatma Gandhi repeatedly claimed was a socio-religious movement, and refused to consider political, passes comprehension. How his pioneering role in the Satyagraha went unnoticed in the celebrations also passes comprehension.
When Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala in 1892, he was believed to have compared it to a “lunatic asylum” because of its caste system, which was the most rigid, oppressive and obscurantist. It was an intricate and elaborate enmeshing of status summations of entrenched privileges versus disabilities, involving religious, social, and economic and every other conceivable attribute of caste ranking.
As the minuscule Nambuthiri Brahmins, ensconced at the summit of the caste hierarchy, were the reference group for the caste summations below them, the nature and extent of the “lunacy” of this “asylum,” and the struggles of its victims to come out of it, of which the Vaikom Satyagraha was an important attempt, cannot be understood without a brief reference to the caste system,
Nagam Aiya’s description of a Nambuthiri in the 1875 Travancore Census Report sums up his “god-on-earth” status. To paraphrase it: His tenants bow down before him not simply as a landlord but as their royal liege and benefactor, suzerain master, household deity and very god on earth. His person is holy; his directions are commands; his movements are processions; his meal is nectar. He is the holiest of human beings. He is the representative of god on earth.
The worst form of social evil perpetrated to heighten and sustain this status was “distance pollution,” which the savarnas (the four varnas of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra) inflicted on the avarnas (those below the savarnas) as untouchables, unapproachables and unseeables. A Nayar may approach but not touch a Nambuthiri; an Izhava should stand 38 feet away from a Nambuthiri and 18 feet away from a Nayar; a Pulaya should never go before a Nambuthiri, and should stand 24 feet away from a Nayar and 12 feet away from an Izhava; and a Nayadi should remain “invisible.”
Important among the debilitating effects of this injunction on its victims was the prohibition on their use of public space used by the savarnas, especially temples and the roads around them.
The “Kerala phenomenon” refers to the drastic changes in these and other traditional disabilities, transforming the State from a “monstrous” into “model” society in modern India and making it the “first” in many respects: It is the first State where caste has lost much of its virulence as a social evil, and those (with the exception of tribals and fisher folk) traditionally living at the margins of society have moved to its centre with new-found dignity and self-confidence. It is the first to assiduously build up, under the leadership of class-based and Left-oriented political formations, State-wide grass roots movements of peasants, workers and other oppressed and exploited sections and to convert the enormous mass-base for gifting the nation with the first democratically-elected communist Government.
It is the first to experiment with coalition politics and stabilise it through coalition governance. It is the first to break the traditional caste-based land system – the monopoly over ownership and control of land by the entrenched castes, especially the Brahmins – by abolishing landlordism and tenancy, and conferring ownership rights on the cultivating tenants. It is the first to achieve “universal literacy”, high life expectancy, low birth rate, and better healthcare and public distribution system. Most important, Kerala is the first and probably only State where civil society – the most important arena in any democratic polity – has succeeded in wresting for itself from an otherwise obtrusive state the largest space as an autonomous sphere for social mobilisation and political articulation of democratic rights, aspirations and expectations.
These changes would not have come about but for the series of well-organised progressive movements challenging Kerala’s archaic, unjust and highly discriminatory and exclusionary social order, movements with an egalitarian thrust, which began to emerge in the late 19th century and continued in one form or another well into the recent past, Of these, the Vaikom Satyagraha was an important one.
The Satyagraha, though now part of India’s socio-religious history of early 20th century, itself had a brief history. This was its prelude: the rising aspirations and assertiveness of the Izhavas from the late 19th century; the conviction by the Travancore High Court of some of the Izhavas for entering and offering worship in a temple on the ground that their presence was “defiling”; the protest against this by the Izhavas in the Srimulam Popular Assembly and their request to the Government to publish a proclamation abolishing untouchability; the resolutions passed by the Nayar Samajams against untouchability; the attempts by the Izhavas in Travancore to remove the stigma by getting all public temples thrown open to all classes of Hindus; the interview by T. K. Madhavan, an Izhava leader and editor of Deshabhimani, with Gandhi at Tirunelveli in 1921, when he informed Gandhi of the disabilities of the community, and sought his advice on the proposed temple entry movement and the support of the Congress Party; Gandhi’s response that the Provincial Congress Committee should take up temple entry as an item of its practical programme; the resolution passed at the Kakinada Congress session in 1923, with Madhavan, then president of the SNDP Yogam, as one of its instigators, which committed the Congress to working for the eradication of untouchability; the letter to Gandhi from K. P. Kesava Menon, secretary, Travancore Congress Committee, informing him that it was taking steps to see that public roads used by the savarnas were open to the avarnas; of his appeal to the savarnas in Vaikom in early 1924 to allow the avarnas to use the Temple Road; of a procession arranged by the Congress consisting of Pulayas to pass through this road on the morning of March 1, 1924 but postponed at the request of several local friends who wanted some time more to educate public opinion, of fixing March 30 for the procession; of simultaneous attempts through lectures, leaflets and personal interviews to bring the orthodox people to the side of the Congress; of the brisk arrangements at Vaikom to start the Satyagraha if the authorities prohibited the avarnas from passing along the Temple Road; the prohibition by the authorities and the conduct of the Satyagraha from March 30.
The Vaikom Satyagraha was to establish the right of the avarnas to walk along the temple road. An avarna took with him another Hindu and entered the road. Three avarnas offered this kind of Satyagraha every day and courted arrest. The Satyagraha, which continued for 20 months, was unique in at least five respects.
One, it was the first pitched battle in the war against untouchability and unapproachability. Gandhi wrote: “The Vaikom Satyagrahis are fighting a battle of no less consequence than that of swaraj; they are fighting against an age-long wrong and prejudice; it is supported by orthodoxy, superstition, custom and authority; one among the many battles that must be fought in the holy war against irreligion masquerading as religion, ignorance appearing in the guise of learning… Victory in Vaikom, if non-violent, will no doubt shake the citadel of sacerdotal superstition in general.” Because of this Satyagraha, Vaikom, though of some importance in north Travancore (in the present Kottayam district), but of which no one outside Travancore, at the most the Madras Presidency, knew anything, suddenly leapt to all-India fame.
Two, the Satyagraha was orderly and non-violent, from start to finish; and the steadiness with which the organisers conducted it drew the attention of the whole of the Indian public.
Three, it had overwhelming public support and numerous volunteers, and was the combined effort of all Hindu communities. The savarnas, especially Nayars, apparently on Gandhi’s advice, led a procession from Vaikom to Trivandrum to muster popular support for the agitation and place the demand before the Maharani.
Four, as Gandhi believed, the Satyagraha had a meaning perhaps deeper than was generally realised. He wrote:
The young men who have organised it are stern in discipline and gentle in their dealings with the orthodox section. Some of them are suffering too the persecution of social boycott. They are not only being denied social amenities but are threatened even with the deprivation of their share in the family property: the public know much of what they are doing in the shape of picketing but they know nothing of the silent suffering some of them are undergoing at the hands of their families and caste men. It is that silent and loving suffering which will finally break the wall of prejudice. By their suffering they have attracted the attention of the world. Whoever knew Vaikom before the struggle commenced.
Five, Gandhi’ s great, and highly edifying role in the Satyagraha. He was at his Messianic best. Through the Navjivan, Harijan, and Young India, which he edited, interviews to the national and international press, public statements through the press, and regular correspondence with the Congress leaders and the organisers of the Satyagraha, Gandhi not only ensured wide publicity to the evil that was being fought and exposed and the means used for doing so, but also kept up the tempo of the Satyagraha and the high morale of the satyagrahis.
In June 1924, when there were attempts to disrupt the Satyagraha, Gandhi sounded an emphatic alert:
If the reports are to be relied upon, the Travancore State authorities have abandoned the innocent Satyagrahis to the goondas, said to have been employed by the orthodox opponents of the reform for which the Satyagrahis have been fighting… It is a serious thing if Satyagrahis are cruelly beaten by the goondas. Lime is thrown into their eyes and their khaddar shirts are torn from them and burnt… I hope the Travancore Durbar will immediately set the matter right.
At the same time, he issued a message to the Satyagrahis to remain calm, unperturbed and non-violent.
When, in a bid to break the deadlock, Gandhi visited Vaikom and other parts of Kerala in March 1925, he enthused the people as never before, and lent a feeling of euphoria to them by his presence, prayers, speeches, and meetings.
Accompanied by C. Rajagopalachari, Mahadev Desai, Ramdas Gandhi, and T. R. Krishnaswami Iyer, Gandhi met by invitation the local orthodox caste Hindu leaders, and discussed with them for over three hours his mission. He asked whether it was fair on their part to exclude a whole section of Hindus because of their supposed lower birth, from public roads which can be used by non-Hindus, criminals and bad characters, and even by dogs and cattle; asserted that the avarnas (suppressed classes as he preferred to call them) had as much right to use the roads as the caste-Hindus; and countered their position that the law of karma was responsible for untouchability, with his argument that man was the maker of his own destiny; if the Brahmins thought they were instruments in the hands of god to punish the untouchables who were violating their dharma, the untouchables would think they were instruments in the hands of god to impose injunctions on the Brahmins.
Gandhi made certain practical proposals for bringing the struggle to a speedy termination: arbitration, referendum or examination by select pundits of the Sankara smiritis – source of the injunctions on “distance pollution”. While asserting that reason is out of place in matters religious, the oppositionists beseeched Gandhi to prevent the avarnas from depriving them of their age-old privileges. They, however, refused to accept any of the proposals offered by Gandhi. Gandhi asserted that the position taken up by orthodoxy was wrong, unsound, immoral and sinful.
After his meeting with the Maharani in the Travancore palace, Gandhi announced that she thought that the roads at Vaikom and similar roads elsewhere should be open to all classes but, as the head of State, felt that she would be powerless, unless public opinion was behind her; and exhorted the masses to organise public opinion in a perfectly legitimate, peaceful and non-violent manner.
When the Maharani eventually announced in November 1925 that any road used by Christians and Muslims could be used by all Hindus irrespective of caste but that the temple precincts were to be used only by the savarnas; and when the prohibited roads on three sides of the Vaikom temple were thrown open, the one on the eastern side having been kept closed to avarnas and non-Hindus, the whole episode was seen as a major victory by all but the Hindu orthodoxy. Probably Gandhi, the Congress, the organisers of the Satyagraha and the Satyagrahis had not then realised that the Satyagraha was only the first step in the emancipation of the avarnas and prelude to a larger and long-drawn-out struggle for temple-entry. Many enlightened savarnas opened their private temples to the avarnas in the years that followed 1925.
Though the more conservative princely state of Cochin took a lot more time, in fact, more than a decade for issuing a similar proclamation, that is well beyond the peasant movements led by the Communist Party with revolutionary songs and reverberating slogans from Malabar, then under British rule as part of the Madras Presidency, engulfed it, Travancore had already set the example not only for Cochin but also for the rest of India.
No doubt, the Vaikom Satyagraha, the subsequent temple entry agitations, the Temple Entry Proclamations and the “Kerala phenomenon” in general have not made the State a land of milk and honey. While its democratic polity is characterised by corruption and related afflictions of the larger Indian polity, the unwelcome side-effects of the “Kerala phenomenon” include: (a) the highest unemployment rate in the country, especially among the educated, who probably are more wayward, with many frittering away their life without its benefits, presumably because of unemployment; (b) the highest suicide rate; and (c) the increasing neglect and helplessness of the aged, presumably because of large-scale migration by the youth.
Thus, Kerala still has a long way to go to be really a “model State”. However, as a response to the rapidly unfolding regional aspirations and their assertion, it may as well become a real model even in the absence of “state power” till now monopolised by the Centre.
The larger question is whether the rest of India has followed the Kerala example and learned anything from the travails of the avarnas and those championing their cause. The answer is an emphatic, NO, and going by Gandhi’s conviction that so long as there is untouchability India cannot be a complete swaraj, many parts, especially Tamil Nadu and Bihar, have a long way to go for swaraj.
[The author was Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org.]
Celebrate 100 Yrs of Vaikom. But Now Focus on Entry in Boardrooms, Judiciary, Media, Teaching
Dilip Mandal
The Vaikom Satyagraha in 1924-25 marked a significant milestone in the history of India’s struggle against caste discrimination. The movement, led by TK Madhavan, EVR Periyar, MK Gandhi, and Narayana Guru, was launched to protest against the ban on the entry of Scheduled Castes and backward castes to the public roads surrounding the Vaikom Shiva Temple in Kottayam. The movement continued for almost two years, and ultimately, it led to the temple entry proclamation in Travancore in 1936, allowing all Hindus to enter temples irrespective of their caste.
However, the question arises, has the temple entry movement served its purpose? The answer is both yes and no. While the movement has paved the way for the abolishment of caste-based restrictions in temples, with hardly any temple banning entry on the basis of caste today, the fight against caste discrimination is far from over. My argument is that the lowered castes need to move beyond the temples and focus on entering the domains of power and prosperity.
One major lacuna of the temple entry movement was that it did not address the representation question in the priesthood and temple management. This might have been too radical a demand in the 1920s. But today, the lowered castes must demand equal representation in these bodies to ensure their voices are heard and interests are represented.
The issue is not recent — the Sabarimala temple controversy incident shows that discrimination based on caste still exists in temple management, even when qualified lower caste individuals are available.
Tamil Nadu has taken a significant step towards dismantling caste barriers in temple priesthood by appointing all-caste, all-gender priests. The state government has taken a proactive role in diversifying the priesthood by allowing anyone who has completed the necessary training to become a temple priest. This move has broken the traditional practice of only allowing Brahmins to be priests in Hindu temples. This decision has received widespread support from all quarters of society, including from members of the lowered castes who have long been excluded from the temple priesthood. It is a positive development towards creating a more inclusive society.
But now the fight for egalitarianism has to shift the goal posts. Temples are still a centre of power and wealth creation with immense ritual and religious authority, but there are other arenas which are more important.
Fixing underrepresentation
One area where the lowered castes are underrepresented is education. Although the Indian constitution guarantees equal opportunities to all, the lowered castes have not been able to avail these opportunities. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students at the undergraduate level was found to be 23 per cent and 17.2 per cent respectively, compared to the national average of 26.3 per cent. This has resulted in a lack of representation in high-paying jobs, and therefore, it is imperative for the lowered castes to focus on education to break the vicious cycle of poverty and caste discrimination.
The underrepresentation of SC/ST/OBC communities in faculty positions in central universities, IITs, IIMs, and other higher education institutions is a long-standing issue in India. Data collected through RTI and other official sources show that reservations for faculty positions – 7.5 per cent for Scheduled Tribes and 15 per cent for Dalits – are not being filled in these prestigious institutions. 98% of the faculties in the top 5 IITs are upper caste. Despite the introduction of reservations in these institutions, the representation of these communities in teaching positions remains disproportionately low.
Another bastion that needs to be cracked is the media and news industry. The lowered castes are grossly underrepresented in the media industry. According to a survey, 90% leadership positions in Indian media are occupied by upper caste groups. The media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and influencing policy decisions. Lack of representation has resulted in the skewed portrayal of the lowered castes in the media. Therefore, it is essential for the lowered castes to enter the media industry to provide a more accurate representation of their community.
The lowered castes are also underrepresented in the higher judiciary. The judiciary is an essential pillar of democracy, and it is crucial to ensure equal representation of all communities in the judicial system. This is also required to mitigate the effects of cognitive biases. The Department of Justice recently informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice that 79 percent of all high court judges appointed in the last five years were from the upper caste (general category). Only 2 percent of them were from Scheduled Castes. This underrepresentation has resulted in the lack of sensitivity towards the issues faced by the lowered castes in the judicial system. Therefore, it is essential for the lowered castes to focus on entering the judicial system to demand justice and equal representation. This demand should be raised at all forums.
Lastly, the lowered castes are underrepresented in the corporate sector. Despite India’s economic growth, the lowered castes have not been able to benefit from the economic opportunities. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conducted a caste survey of human resources of private companies and the data was revealing. For example, SCs and STs are 19.1 percent of Maharashtra’s population, but their share in private jobs is only 5 percent. In Gujarat and Karnataka, SCs and STs are just about 9 percent of the staff strength. This problem becomes more acute at the managerial level. This underrepresentation has resulted in the lack of economic empowerment of the lowered castes. Therefore, it is crucial for the lowered castes to focus on entering the corporate sector.
While the temple entry movement was essential to end discrimination in public spaces, it is now time for them to move forward and seek representation in fields that have traditionally been dominated by the upper castes.
In conclusion, the temple entry movement marked a significant milestone in the fight for social justice in India. It was a crucial step towards ending discrimination and ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their caste, had access to public spaces. However, it is important to acknowledge that the battle for equality is far from over. The lower castes must now focus on entering the temples of power and prosperity, where they have been historically underrepresented. It is time for them to demand representation in politics, business, academia, and the judiciary to bring about meaningful change.
(Dilip Mandal is the former managing editor of ‘India Today Hindi Magazine’, and has authored books on media and sociology. Courtesy: The Print.)
