Malabar History journal

The movement did not consider the independence of India a simple political project. Rather, it imagined beyond its confines and marched ahead for the abolishment of untouchability against the lower castes. Kelappan believed that “as long as casteism lives, Swaraj (independence for India) cannot be achieved.” This paved the way for the Satyagraha at Guruvayur, which demanded permission for temple entry for the lower castes.

Also, a meeting was held in Kozhikode by a group of Congress leaders who demanded the buying of foreign clothes be stopped. However, the shopkeepers already had a stock of clothes for Diwali, and they agreed to stop buying after the stock was finished.

Picketing was the most common way in which the disobedience movement gained momentum. Among the shops that were subjected to picketing were those that sold foreign clothes and toddy shops.

Picketing against the selling of foreign clothes was held from April 1930 to November 1933 in Kannur and Kozhikode.

After the second civil disobedience movement in 1930, different kinds of struggles were experimented which were called ‘propaganda by agitation’. This included the ‘Kaadakam forest satyagraha’.The satyagraha began by a procession of volunteers moving to the Kaadakam reserve forest and cutting the trees there.

Court Satyagraha was another type of protest where volunteers moved inside the court during its working hours and raised slogans, distributed pamphlets, and spoke to boycott the British courts. This was experimented mainly at Kozhikode. Another way of protesting was to hoist the national flag. It was done in Thalassery and M.S.P. Maidan, Munsif Court, and the Collectorate of Kozhikode.

There were also train campaigns where the alarm chains were pulled, slogans were shouted, and speeches and pamphlet distributions organized.

Another strategy for resistance was to violate the curfews, which were regularly enforced in Kozhikode and Kannur until November 1933. Additionally, it was held in Nadapuram, Kannur, Koyilandi, Thalassery, Palakkad, and Koyilandi.

Criticisms against the civil disobedience movement.

The economically rich group of people from the Tiyya community among Hindus criticized the Congress party’s disobedience movements. Among the critics were those who received modern education, government officials and pensioners. The economically poor section among the Tiyyas of western Malabar also did not participate in the movements. They were small-scale farmers, tenants and workers and the Congress party did not have a chief programme at the time to organize all of them. However, eventually, some of the Tiyyas joined the party due to its nationalist orientation.

It was after 1934 that the peasant-worker associations gained momentum in Malabar.

References

• Gopalankutty, K. (2021). Malabar Padanangal. Kerala Bhasha Institute.
• Vimal Kumar, C. L. (n.d.). Salt Satyagraha in Malabar – A historical analysis. Research Guru. Accessed on March 14, 2023, from http://www.researchguru.net/volume/Volume%2012/Issue%202/RG144.pdf