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Malabar History journal

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KAVUMBAI STRUGGLE (Incomplete)

Kavumbai refers to a historic peasant uprising in the district of Kannur in December in 1946. This struggle emerged out of the growing presence of Karshaka Sanghams in the Malabar region during the 1930s and 40s.

About Kavumbai, E. K. Nayanar speaks, ‘it was a struggle for agricultural land, and for land under punam cultivation, or the cultivation of fallow forest land.’ The background of the WW2 made the Karshaka Sanghams demand an increase in agricultural production and for the distribution of agricultural produce amongst the poor. When the peasants demanded punam land belonging to the landlord for cultivation, he called the Malabar Special Police and they fired onto the protesting peasants, killing 4 of them.

It was only in 1998 that the Home Ministry recognized kavumbai, along with some of the peasant uprisings as part of the freedom struggle, and granted pension to the freedom fighters and their dependents. Even though it’s implementation is patchy on the ground, many freedom fighters got the recognition after almost 5 decades.

More recently, the story of Sarada and Narayanan, a couple that was separated because of participating in the uprising had been documented and circulated through a novel named ‘30 December’ authored by Santha Kavumbai. Apart from the struggle, the book also documents the story of Sarada, who had to separate from Narayanan, and was married to someone else after a year of waiting while he languished between jails and hospitals for nearly 8 years. Similarly, the oral history narrative of Sadirikka Blathur was recorded by the students of History, in University of Kerala about his experience participating in the Kavumbai struggle.