SCHLEGEL: SANSKRIT IS THE MOTHER OF ALL LANGUAGES

Aryan Migration was From India

Nationalism, as an ethos, is never the brainchild of the West and it never had its origins in Europe. German Nationalism as it began through the work of the German Romantics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, traced their intellectual and philosophical underpinnings to India.

German nationalism also grew as a reaction to political and cultural domination by the colonial powers of the West, Britain and France. While Indian nationalists looked towards their own religion, myth, and philosophy, the Germans depended on Indian philosophy and culture as the antidote to the pervasive materialism of the West’s philosophies. Indian nationalism, in turn, received much nourishment from German philosophers, like Schlegel.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772 – 1829), the German poet fascinated with India, was also a literary critic, philosopher, and philologist. His older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, was a leading figure of Jena Romanticism. Jena Romanticism is the first phase of Romanticism in German literature represented by the work of a group centred in Jena, a scholastic city in Germany, from about 1798 to 1804. The movement contributed to the development of German nationalism in modern philosophy.

The first to notice what became known as Grimm's law, Schlegel was a pioneer in Indo-European studies, comparative linguistics, and morphological typology, publishing in 1819 the first theory linking the Indo-Iranian and German languages under the Aryan group. (1)

Schlegel

Born into a Protestant family, Schlegel rejected religion as a young man in favour of atheism and individualism. He entered university to study law but instead focused on classical literature. As a writer and lecturer, he founded journals such as Athenaeum. In 1808, Schlegel returned to Christianity, with his wife, Dorothea Schlegel being baptized into the Catholic Church. This conversion ultimately led to his estrangement from family and old friends. He moved to Austria in 1809, where he became a diplomat and journalist in service of Klemens von Metternich, the Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire.

Schlegel, as a promoter of the Romantic movement, inspired English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Polish poets Adam Mickiewicz and Kazimierz Brodziński.

He was born in Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel, was the pastor at the Lutheran Market Church. He studied law at Göttingen and Leipzig for two years, where he met with German playwright Friedrich Schiller. In 1793 he chose literary work, as his career. In 1796 he moved to Jena, where his brother August Wilhelm lived, and there he collaborated with Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Johann Fichte, and Caroline Schelling, who married August Wilhelm. Novalis and Schlegel had a famous conversation about German idealism. In 1797 he quarrelled with Schiller, who did not like his polemic work. (2)

Schlegel published Die Griechen und Römer (The Greeks and Romans), which was followed in 1798 by Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (History of the Poesy of the Greeks and Romans). Then he turned to Dante, Goethe, and Shakespeare. In Jena, he and his brother founded the journal Athenaeum, contributing fragments, aphorisms, and essays in which the principles of the Romantic school were elaborated. They are now generally recognized as the most profound expressions of the subjective idealism of the early Romanticists. (3)

Schlegel decided to move to Berlin after a controversy involving his affair with Dorothea, a Jew, who was married to merchant and banker, Simon Weit. Dorothea Mendelssohn, the eldest daughter of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, was an author and editor whose work received little recognition during her lifetime. While married, she became active in Berlin’s dynamic salon subculture, and in 1794 she began calling herself Dorothea rather than her birth name of Brendel.

In 1799 she fell in love with Schlegel and divorced Veit that same year. Her relationship with Schelegel alienated Dorothea from her family; the couple left Berlin and travelled to Jena, Paris, and Cologne before settling in Vienna, where they married and converted to Catholicism in 1808. The two decades spent in Vienna were Dorothea’s happiest. Under Schlegel’s name, Dorothea published her only novel Florentin in 1799, and her edited volumes of medieval French texts in 1802.

In Berlin, Schlegel lived with philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher and met authors Henriette Herz, Rahel Varnhagen, and also Dorothea Veit. (4) In 1799 he published Lucinde, which was seen as an account of his affair with Dorothea, causing a scandal in German literary circles. The unfinished novel attempted to apply the Romantic demand for complete individual freedom to practical ethics. (5) Lucinde, which extolled the union of sensual and spiritual love as an allegory of the divine cosmic Eros, contributed to the failure of his academic career in Jena (6) where he completed his studies in 1801 and lectured on transcendental philosophy. In September 1800, he met four times with Goethe, who would later stage his tragedy Alarcos (1802) in Weimar, which was a failure.

In June 1802 he arrived in Paris, where he lived in the house formerly owned by French philosopher Baron d'Holbach and joined a circle including painter Heinrich Christoph Kolbe. He lectured on philosophy in private courses for Sulpiz Boisserée. Under the tutelage of Antoine-Léonard de Chézy and linguist Alexander Hamilton, he continued to study Sanskrit and Persian.

First Sanskrit Professor in France

Antoine-Léonard de Chézy (1773 – 1832) was a French orientalist and one of the first European scholars of Sanskrit. His father, Antoine de Chézy (1718–1798), was an engineer who finally became director of the École des Ponts et Chaussées. The son was intended for his father's profession, but in 1799 he obtained a post in the oriental manuscripts department of the national library. In about 1803, he began studying Sanskrit, and although he possessed no grammar or dictionary, he succeeded in acquiring sufficient knowledge of the language to be able to compose poetry in it.

In Paris sometime between 1800 and 1805, Schlegel's wife Dorothea introduced him to the Wilhelmine Christiane von Klencke, called Hermina or Hermine, who, extremely unusually for the time, was a very young divorcée who had come to Paris to be a correspondent for German newspapers. In 1805 they married and Helmina subsequently gave birth to two sons: the author Wilhelm Theodor von Chézy (1806–1865) and Max von Chézy (1808–1846), who became a painter.

Chezy

He was the first professor of Sanskrit appointed in the Collège de France (1815), where his pupils included Alexandre Langlois, Auguste-Louis-Armand Loiseleur-Deslongchamps and especially Eugène Burnouf, who would become his successor at the Collège on his death in 1832.

He is the author of numerous editions and translations of Oriental works. La Mort de Yadjnadatta (Paris, 1814, and with Sanskrit text, 1826) is a translation of a well-known episode of the Ramayana, describing the slaying of a hermit by King Dasaratha. A translation of another episode, the fight of Lakshmana with the giant Atikaya appeared in 1818. Chézy's most notable work, however, was the publication in 1820 of Kalidasa's famous drama, Abhinjana Sakuntala under the title La reconnaissance de Sacountala. This was the first time that the Sanskrit text of this masterpiece was printed. Other works of his are an analysis of the Meghaduta (1817), Anthologie érotique d'Amarou, a translation of Sankaracharya's Amarusataka, which appeared under the pseudonym of Apudy in 1831, and La théorie du Sloka (1829), a disquisition on Sanskrit metre.

First European Professor of Sanskrit

Schlegel's other tutor Alexander Hamilton (1762–1824) was a British linguist who was one of the first Europeans to study the Sanskrit language. He taught the language to most of the earliest European scholars of Indo-European linguistics. He became the first professor of Sanskrit in Europe. Hamilton seems to have been born in India, but Scotland is not impossible. He was a first cousin of his namesake, American statesman Alexander Hamilton. He became a lieutenant in the navy of the East India Company and arrived in India in 1783. While stationed in India he joined the Asiatic Society of Bengal founded by Sir William Jones and Sir Charles Wilkins. He also married a Bengali woman.

After the death of Jones in India, Wilkins and Hamilton were the only Europeans who had studied Sanskrit. Both returned to Europe around 1797. Wilkins remained in England but Hamilton went to France after the Treaty of Amiens (1802) to collate Sanskrit manuscripts held at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He completed the cataloguing in 1813.

After war broke out between Britain and France in 1803 Hamilton was interned as an enemy alien, but was released to carry on his research at the insistence of the French scholar Constantine Volney. Hamilton taught Sanskrit to Volney and others, including Schlegel and Jean-Louis Burnouf, the father of Eugene Burnouf. Hamilton spend most of his time compiling a catalogue of Indian manuscripts in the library which was published in 1807. Hamilton lived in Schlegel's house, the former house of Baron d'Holbach in Rue de Clichy, together with Sulpiz Boisserée and his brother.

In 1806 he was appointed at Hertford College, becoming the first Sanskrit professor in Europe. He became a professor of "Sanscrit and Hindoo literature" at Haileybury College. He assisted Wilkins with his revisions to his translation of the Hitopadesha. Following the end of the Napoleonic wars many German scholars came to study with him, notably Franz Bopp and August Wilhelm Schlegel.

Meanwhile, Karl Wilhelm Schlegel edited the journal Europa (1803), where he published essays about Gothic architecture and the Old Masters. In April 1804 he married Dorothea in the Swedish embassy in Paris after she had undergone the requisite conversion from Judaism to Protestantism. In 1806 he and his wife went to visit Aubergenville, where his brother lived with Madame de Staël. 

In 1808, he published the epic, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India). 

In 1808, he and his wife joined the Catholic Church in the Cologne Cathedral. From this time on, he became more and more opposed to the principles of political and religious liberalism. He went to Vienna and in 1809 was appointed imperial court secretary at the military headquarters, editing the army newspaper and issuing fiery proclamations against Napoleon. He accompanied Archduke Charles, Duke of Teschen to war and was stationed in Pest during the War of the Fifth Coalition. Here he studied the Hungarian language. Meanwhile, he published his collected Geschichte (Histories) (1809) and two series of lectures, Über die neuere Geschichte (On Recent History) (1811) and Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (On Old and New Literature) (1815).

Following the Congress of Vienna (1815), he was a councillor of legation in the Austrian embassy at the Frankfurt Diet, but in 1818 he returned to Vienna. In 1819 he and Clemens Brentano made a trip to Rome, in the company of Metternich and Gentz. There he met with his wife and her sons. In 1820 he started a conservative Catholic magazine, Concordia (1820–1823), but was criticized by Metternich and by his brother August Wilhelm, then professor of Indology in Bonn and busy publishing the Bhagavad Gita. Schlegel began the issue of his Sämtliche Werke (Collected Works). He also delivered lectures, which were republished in his Philosophie des Lebens (Philosophy of Life-1828) and in his Philosophie der Geschichte (Philosophy of History-1829).

Schlegel died in 1829, at the age of 56. Friedrich Schlegel's wife, Dorothea had two sons by her first marriage, Johannes and Philipp Veit, who became eminent Catholic painters.

Schlegel's India

Schlegel studied Sanskrit for over forty years, under the tutelage of Antoine-Léonard de Chézy and Alexander Hamilton – the earliest European scholars of Sanskrit. A pioneer of comparative linguistics, he pointed out the grammatical and syntactical similarities between Sanskrit and the Indo-European languages. He hypothesised Sanskrit was the ancient progenitor of this family of languages. In the influential book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India-1808), where he first argued that a people from India (the prototypical “Aryans”) had founded the ancient European civilisations.

Here he advanced his ideas about religion and importantly argued that people from India were the founders of the first European civilizations. Schlegel compared Sanskrit with Latin, Greek, Persian and German, noting many similarities in vocabulary and grammar. The assertion of the common features of these languages is now generally accepted, albeit with significant revisions. The pseudo-secularists are hell-bent on discrediting the Out-of-India model.

Schlegel found Sanskrit is the mother language. Based on it and migrations out of India, Schlegel explained the preponderance of disparate European cultures and languages as offshoots of a unified Aryan culture. In 1819, he published the first theory linking the Indo-Iranian and German languages under the Aryan group. He theorised that the word “Arya” had been what the Indo-Europeans called themselves, meaning, “the honourable people”.

Parallel to it, Indian nationalists were also formulating similar theories about the Indian origins of the Aryans based on Hindu religious texts. So, Schlegel’s work carried weight in India. Gandhi also took note of it.

Schlegel’s argument for “Hindustan holding [sic] the first rank in time” in terms of philosophy and metaphysics, appears in Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, published in 1909. Similarly, Bal Gangadhar Tilak put forward the theory of the Aryan homeland in India and the Aryans’ migration from India. The works of Aurobindo Ghosh and Dayanand Saraswati also popularised Schlegel’s version of the Aryans.

Gandhi's chief concern in Hind Swaraj is that India was slowly but surely accepting the 'modern civilisation' imposed on it by the British rulers. This included the so-called peace which in reality was 'nominal' as it was based on the strength of bayonets and in the process had made Indians "emasculated and cowardly". (7) The prevalent belief that Hindus and Muslims were sworn enemies and were separate nationalities was a 'construction' of the British for their own selfish purposes. About the British historical perspective on India, he writes, "they have (the) habit of writing history, they pretend to study the manners and customs of all peoples. . . and hypnotize us into believing them. We in our ignorance then fall at their feet." (8) English education in his opinion had 'enslaved' India and driven a wedge between different sections of people. (9)

Schlegel’s works are not only relevant to the early history of Indian nationalism, but to modern India too. Aryan migration from India westwards is known contemporarily as “Indigenous Aryanism.” It is still a contentious point of debate between the scholars of Hindutva and the academic historians of the ancient history of India. Indigenous Aryanism, the “Out of India” theory, is contrasted with the general “Indo-Aryan Migration theory”, which considers the Pontic steppe to be the area of origin of the Indo-European languages.

Hindutva scholars, based on evidence from Puranic versions of history, and interpretations of the, reject the migration theory in favour of an interpretation similar to Schlegel. Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages, and Indo-Iranian Aryans are the forefathers of their Western counterparts. An unbroken Vedic culture continues from the Harappan civilisation to the present and thus exists a pan-Indian history.

The Indo-Aryan migration model was previously termed the Indo-Aryan invasion model. Hindutva scholars point out that the Indo-Aryan migration models are part of the colonial scholarship manufactured to show the dominance of the white races over their darker-skinned Indians.

Schlegel's theory is in tune with the notion of an undisturbed ancient Hindu identity for Indians. Based on it, Hindus can be seen as the original inhibitors of Aryavartha, the original India, which include India's neighbours. A unified Vedic culture existed and still exists as a pan-Indian cultural ethos from the Indus Valley Civilisation period. This idea is reflected in the philosophy of people like M S Golwalkar and Veer Savarkar.

____________________

1. Watkins, Calvert (2000), "Aryan", American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), New York: Houghton Mifflin.

2. Ernst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory, 1993, p. 36.

3.Böhme, Traugott (1920). "Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von". In Rines, George Edwin (ed.). Encyclopedia Americana.

4.Speight , Allen (2007). "Friedrich Schlegel". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

5. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

6.Böhme, Traugott (1920). "Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von" . In Rines, George Edwin (ed.). Encyclopedia Americana.

7. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, p. 38.

8. Ibid, p. 46.

9. Ibid, pp. 78-79.

© Ramachandran 

THAPPAN NAIR WAS WITH GANDHI AT DANDI

He died after Dharasana satyagraha, in 1933

The Salt March, also known as the Dandi March was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Gandhi. The twenty-four-day march lasted from 12 March to 6 April 1930 as a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly. 

Another reason for the march was that the Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong opening that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi's example. Gandhi started this march with 78 of his trusted volunteers.

Among the 78, there were five from Kerala. The state of Kerala did not exist then, and in the list of 78, all five have been marked as belonging to Madras Presidency. The five on the list are Thevarthundiyil Titus, C Krishnan Nair, K Shankaran (Shankarji), N P Raghava Poduval and Tapan Nair. 

Thappan Nair

While details on four of them are available, the whereabouts of Tapan Nair remained a mystery. But now, Tom Jose, a teacher of History at Arakkulam St Maries' High School in the Idukki district of Kerala has cracked the mystery- He was not Tapan Nair, but Thappan Nair, and he belonged to the Vadavattath family at Ramassery, Palakkad. The hamlet Ramassery, incidentally, is known for its incredibly soft and fluffy idli, which is a bit flatter in shape than the regular idli. It was brought to Ramassery by a family that migrated from Kanjeepuram in Tamil Nadu.

Thappan Nair migrated to history at the age of 19, bidding farewell to his home and village, to be part of the freedom struggle and the non-violent army of Gandhi. Being not sure whether he will be able to return, he just told his family members that they will meet again, only if destiny deems so. Probably, he might have read about the Dandi march in the newspapers and would have felt the urge to join the march to history.

The Salt march spanned 385 kilometres from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, which was called Navsari at that time (now in the state of Gujarat). Growing numbers of Indians joined the march along the way, but 78 were there from beginning to end. 

The march was part of the struggle to attain self-rule. At midnight on 31 December 1929, the Indian National Congress raised the tricolour flag of India on the banks of the Ravi river at Lahore. Congress publicly issued the Declaration of sovereignty and self-rule, or Purna Swaraj, on 26 January 1930.

The Congress Working Committee gave Gandhi the responsibility for organising the first act of civil disobedience, with Congress itself ready to take charge after Gandhi's expected arrest. Gandhi's plan was to begin civil disobedience with a satyagraha aimed at the British salt tax. 

The 1882 Salt Act gave the British a monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt, limiting its handling to government salt depots and levying a salt tax. Violation of the Salt Act was a criminal offence. Even though salt was freely available to those living on the coast, by evaporation of seawater, Indians were forced to buy it from the colonial government.

Initially, Gandhi's choice of the salt tax was met with incredulity by the Working Committee of Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru and Dibyalochan Sahoo were ambivalent; Sardar Patel suggested a land revenue boycott instead. The British colonial administration too was not disturbed by these plans of resistance against the salt tax. The Viceroy Lord Irwin did not take the threat of a salt protest seriously, writing to London, "At present, the prospect of a salt campaign does not keep me awake at night."(1)

However, Gandhi had sound reasons for his decision. An item of daily use could resonate more with all classes of citizens than an abstract demand for greater political rights. The salt tax represented 8.2% of the British Raj tax revenue and hurt the poorest Indians the most significantly. Explaining his choice, Gandhi said, "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life." 

Gandhi felt that this protest would dramatise Purna Swaraj in a way that was meaningful to every Indian. He also reasoned that it would build unity between Hindus and Muslims by fighting an evil that touched them equally.

After the protest gathered steam, the leaders realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, "it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released."(2)

Dandi March

Gandhi's first significant attempt in India at leading mass satyagraha was the non-cooperation movement from 1920 to 1922. Even though it succeeded in raising millions of Indians in protest against the British-created Rowlatt Act, violence broke out at Chauri Chaura, where a mob killed 22 unarmed policemen. Gandhi suspended the protest, against the opposition of other Congress members. He decided that Indians were not yet ready for successful nonviolent resistance. 

However, the Bardoli Satyagraha in 1928 succeeded in paralysing the British government and winning significant concessions. Due to extensive press coverage, it scored a propaganda victory out of all proportion to its size.

Gandhi claimed that success at Bardoli confirmed his belief in satyagraha and Swaraj: "It is only gradually that we shall come to know the importance of the victory gained at Bardoli ... Bardoli has shown the way and cleared it. Swaraj lies on that route, and that alone is the cure ..." (3)

Gandhi recruited activists from the Bardoli Satyagraha for the Dandi march, which passed through many of the same villages that took part in the Bardoli protests.

On 5 February 1930, newspapers reported that Gandhi would begin civil disobedience by defying the salt laws. The salt satyagraha would begin on 12 March and end in Dandi with Gandhi breaking the Salt Act on 6 April. Gandhi chose 6 April to launch the mass breaking of the salt laws for a symbolic reason—it was the first day of "National Week", begun in 1919 when Gandhi conceived of the national hartal (strike) against the Rowlatt Act.

Gandhi prepared the worldwide media for the march by issuing regular statements from Sabarmati, at his regular prayer meetings, and through direct contact with the press. Expectations were heightened by his repeated statements anticipating arrest, and his increasingly dramatic language as the hour approached: "We are entering upon a life and death struggle, a holy war; we are performing an all-embracing sacrifice in which we wish to offer ourselves as an oblation." (4)

For the march itself, Gandhi wanted the strictest discipline and adherence to satyagraha and ahimsa. For that reason, he recruited the marchers not from Congress Party members, but from the residents of his own ashram, who were trained in Gandhi's strict standards of discipline. The 24-day march would pass through 4 districts and 48 villages. The route of the march, along with each evening's stopping place, was planned based on recruitment potential, past contacts, and timing. Gandhi sent scouts to each village ahead of the march so he could plan his talks at each resting place, based on the needs of the local residents.

On 2 March 1930, Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy Lord Irwin, offering to stop the march if Irwin met eleven demands, including reduction of land revenue assessments, cutting military spending, imposing a tariff on foreign cloth, and abolishing the salt tax: (5)

If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of this month I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the sovereignty and self-rule movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil.

After Irwin ignored the letter and refused to meet with Gandhi, the march was set in motion. Gandhi remarked, "On bended knees, I asked for bread and I have received stone instead." (6)

On 12 March 1930, Gandhi and 78 satyagrahis, among whom were men belonging to almost every region, caste, creed, and religion of India, set out on foot for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, 385 km from their starting point at Sabarmati Ashram. The Salt March was also called the White Flowing River because all the people were joining the procession wearing white Khadi.

According to The Statesman, the official government newspaper which usually played down the size of crowds at Gandhi's functions, 100,000 people crowded the road that separated Sabarmati from Ahmedabad. The first day's march of 21 km ended in the village of Aslali, where Gandhi spoke to a crowd of about 4,000. As they entered each village, crowds greeted the marchers, beating drums and cymbals. Gandhi gave speeches attacking the salt tax as inhuman, and the salt satyagraha as a "poor man's struggle". Each night they slept in the open. The only thing that was asked of the villagers was food and water to wash with.

Every day, more and more people joined the march until the procession of marchers became at least three km long. To keep up their spirits, the marchers used to sing the Hindu Bhajan Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram while walking. At Surat, they were greeted by 30,000 people. When they reached the railhead at Dandi, more than 50,000 were gathered. The march arrived at the seashore on 5 April.

The following morning, after a prayer, Gandhi raised a lump of salty mud and declared: "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." (7)

He then boiled it in seawater, producing illegal salt. He implored his thousands of followers to likewise begin making salt along the seashore, "wherever it is convenient" and to instruct villagers in making illegal, but necessary, salt.

Most of the marchers were between the ages of 20 and 30. They hailed from almost all parts of the country. Most of them simply dispersed after the march was over.

But, C Krishnan Nair (1902–1986), belonging to Thirumangalam in Neyyattinkara, became a Member of the First and Second Lok Sabha, representing Outer Delhi. Known as Delhi Gandhi or Nairji, he was nominated by Nehru as the first Chief Minister of Delhi in 1952. A true Gandhian, Nair politely refused and suggested instead, Choudhary Brahm Prakash, who was only 34 at the time.

Nair joined the Sabarmati Ashram in 1928, after studies at Jamia Milia, Aligarh and Delhi. After the Dandi March, he stayed at the Wardha ashram. In 1942, he participated in the Quit India movement. Since 1943, he served as the Vice-President and Chief Public Relations Officer of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) and as its President in 1952.

Shankar, Poduval, Krishnan Nair, Titus

Titus, born to Pathanamthitta Maramon Chirayirambil T K Titus and Eliyamma on 18 February 1905, served as governing secretary for Gandhi's Sabarmati Ashram milk project near Ahmedabad, after securing a diploma in Dairy development from the Allahabad Agricultural University. Gulzarilal Nanda, who later became the Prime Minister of India, was the secretary of another unit. Both of them were trusted friends of Gandhi. Gandhi used to call Titus, "Titusji." He died on 8 August 1980, at the Kasturba Hospital, Bhopal.

Raghava Poduval, born in Paruthipra, Shornur, had his education at Bhardwaj Ashtam and Santiniketan. After the Dandi march, he became a full-time khadi activist at Payyannur. He died on 20 December 1992.

K Shankarji, son of Raman Ezhuthachan and Lakshmikutty of Thiruvilvamala, belonged to Mayannur, Chelakkara, in Thrissur. He was only 16 (born in 1914) when he was marching to Dandi. He returned after the march and started a weaving centre. He died on 30 April 1986.

After the march, the wealthy Thappan Nair entered the list of most wanted criminals, and the Police conducted frequent searches of his home. But what happened to Thaappan Nair? 

Barrister A K Pillai, records in Congress and Kerala, that Thappan Nair got arrested at Dharasana, near Dandi and died in 1933, while he was active in the satyagraha movement. 

Fortunately, a framed photo of Thappan Nair adores the wall of the living room of the 250-year-old Bungalow, where he was born. He was the younger brother to four sisters. A Thappanji Memorial Lower Primary School exists at Ramassery, but no one in the school is aware of who Thaappan is. 

Thappan's relatives claim that his ancestors were the soldiers of the Zamorin army. A branch of the ancestral family migrated to Thrissur, and a few among them reached Ramassery.

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi records a letter written by Gandhi to Thappan Nair, on 7 June 1931, and it has been sent not to his home address, but to the Congress camp at Palakkad. In the letter, after advising Nair to read Young India regularly, Gandhi asks him to return to the ashram, if he finds it difficult to stay in his native village. Gandhi also pointed out that many who were part of the march had come to the ashram as inmates.

The letter:

LETTER TO THAPPAN NAIR

AS AT SABARMATI, June 7, 1931

 

MY DEAR THAPPAN,

I have your letter. You should diligently follow the columns of Young India. They might help you. So far as your immediate question is concerned, if you feel that there is no work for you there, you are at liberty to return to the Ashram. Many have done so.

Yours sincerely, 

SYT. THAPPAN NAIR 

CONGRESS CAMP 

PALGHAT (MALABAR)  

(Collected Works, vol 52, page 303)

It is clear that Gandhi's letter was in reply to a query by Thappan Nair, who had returned home. Obviously, he went back to Gandhi.

British rampage at Dharasana

From Barrister Pillai's account it is evident that after Dandi, Thappan Nair took an active part in the Dharsana salt satyagraha. 

Dharasana Satyagraha was a protest against the British salt tax in colonial India in May 1930. Following the conclusion of the Salt March to Dandi, Gandhi chose a non-violent raid of the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat, 119 km from Dandi, as the next protest against British rule. Hundreds of satyagrahis were beaten by soldiers under British command at Dharasana.

After Dandi, on May 4, 1930, Gandhi wrote to Lord Irwin, explaining his intention to raid the Dharasana Salt Works. He was immediately arrested. The Indian National Congress decided to continue with the proposed plan of action. Many of the Congress leaders were arrested before the planned day, including Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

The march went ahead as planned, with Abbas Tyabji, a 76-year-old retired judge, leading the march with Gandhi's wife Kasturba at his side. Both were arrested before reaching Dharasana and sentenced to three months in prison.[2] After their arrests, the peaceful agitation continued under the leadership of Sarojini Naidu and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Hundreds of Indian National Congress volunteers started marching towards the site of the Dharasana Salt Works. Several times, Naidu and the satyagrahis approached the salt works, before being turned back by police. At one point they sat down and waited for twenty-eight hours. Hundreds more were arrested.

On May 21, the satyagrahis tried to pull away the barbed wire protecting the salt pans. The police charged and began clubbing them. American journalist Webb Miller was an eye-witness to the beating of satyagrahis with steel-tipped lathis. His report attracted international attention. Miller's first attempts at telegraphing the story to his publisher in England were censored by the British telegraph operators in India. Only after threatening to expose British censorship was his story allowed to pass. The story appeared in 1,350 newspapers throughout the world.

Miller wrote: (8)

Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow.

Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. ..

Bodies toppled over in threes and fours, bleeding from great gashes on their scalps. Group after group walked forward, sat down, and submitted to being beaten into insensibility without raising an arm to fend off the blows. Finally, the police became enraged by the non-resistance...They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles. The injured men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police...The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.

Miller later wrote that he went to the hospital where the wounded were being treated, and "counted 320 injured, many still insensible with fractured skulls, others writhing in agony from kicks in the testicles and stomach...Scores of the injured had received no treatment for hours and two had died."

It is possible that Thappan Nair was beaten up at Dharasana and died later, due to the injuries.

Santosh Ambat, Thappan Nair's grandnephew remembers his father (Thappan Nair was his father's only maternal uncle) telling him that, when he was young,  whenever his uncle would come to vadavattath tharavad, they would reach into his bag which contained a lot of moustaches, beards and wigs etc, since he was being tracked by the British police. To move around India, Thappan Nair used them to disguise himself. The father of Santosh and his siblings would try these on themselves and enjoy them as kids do. One day, a telegram reached the tharavad saying 'Thappanji no more."

________________________

1. Letter to London on 20 February 1930, Ackerman, Peter; DuVall, Jack (2000). A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 84

2. Gandhi, Gopalkrishna. "The Great Dandi March — eighty years after, The Hindu, 5 April 1930
3. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi 41: 208–209
4. Gandhi, Mahatma; Dalton, Dennis (1996). Selected Political Writings Hackett Publishing, p. 108
5. Gandhi's letter to Irwin, Gandhi and Dalton, p. 78
6. Parliament Museum, New Delhi, India – Official website – Dandi March VR Video. Parliamentmuseum.org
7. Gandhi and Dalton, p. 72.

8. Miller, Webb (1936). I Found No Peace. Simon and Schuster, p. 193-199

I am indebted to the feature written by Raju Mathew in the Sunday magazine of Malayala Manorama, on 4 December 2022.

© Ramachandran 

CHINA AND A LESSON FROM GANDHI

A Lesson From the Trusteeship Theory

In his paper, Harijan, Gandhi enumerated his Doctrine of Trusteeship on February 23, 1947, when Mao fought for his people in neighbouring China. 

 

Gandhi was an economist of the masses. The fluid international conditions fraught with ideological tensions in the economic domain demanded a fresh approach to economic philosophy. The core of Gandhian economic thought is the protection of the dignity of the human person and not mere material prosperity. He aimed to develop, uplift, and enrich human life rather than a higher standard of living with scant respect for human and social values. Gandhi's idea of trusteeship arose from his faith in the law of non-possession. The world's bounties are for the whole, not for any individual. When an individual has more than his respective portion, he becomes a trustee for the people.

 The trusteeship formula of Gandhi reads as follows: 

 

1. Trusteeship provides a means of transforming the present capitalist order of society into an egalitarian one. It gives no quarter to capitalism but gives the current owning class a chance to reform itself. He felt that human nature is never beyond redemption.

 

2. It does not recognize any right of private ownership of property except that society may permit it for its welfare.

 

3. It does not exclude legislation of the ownership and use of wealth.

 

4. Thus, under state-regulated trusteeship, an individual will not be free to hold or use his wealth for selfish satisfaction in disregard to the interests of society.

 

5. It proposed a decent minimum living wage and a limit on the maximum income allowed to any person in society. The difference between such minimum and top incomes should be reasonable and equitable and variable from time to time, so much so that the tenancy would be towards obliterating the difference.

 

6. Social necessity determines the character of production and not by personal greed.

 

Gandhi wanted Zamindars/ Kulaks/ landlords to act as trustees of their lands and use them by tenants. This idea was based mainly on India being an agricultural country where more than 80 per cent of the population lives in villages. 

 

Gandhi's doctrine of trusteeship is a social and economic philosophy aiming to bring justice to society. It provides a means by which the wealthy people would be the trustees of the trust that looked after the welfare of the people in general. Gandhi believed that the rich people could be persuaded to part with their wealth to help the poor, and he held that labour is superior to capital.

 

He formulated the trusteeship theory after the Ahmedabad textile mill workers dilemma. He became more aware of the prevailing gap of interest between the owners and workers of the industries. Gandhi introduced the concept of trusteeship based on class cooperation in society. He believed that even the rich people are, after all, human beings, and as such, they also have an element of essential goodness that everyman necessarily possesses. The capitalist should be aroused by that element and won over by love. And persuade them to believe that they should utilize the wealth in their possession \for the good of the poor. The rich should realize that the capital in their hands is the fruit of the labour of poor men. This realization would make them perceive that the welfare of society lies in using money and resources for the good of others and not for one's comforts. It is a doctrine of moral responsibility and a practice of Non- possession.

 

Italian philosopher Thomas Aquinas said that bringing justice is the responsibility of the state and individuals by being empathetic, compassionate, and selfless. Gandhi's doctrine is akin to this idea. It is the responsibility of rich people to uphold the philosophy of trusteeship by being charitable. Trusteeship assumes great relevance nationally and globally, keeping in mind the growing inequality and poverty. 

 

Half of the world owned by 62

 

An Oxfam report reveals that one per cent of people in the world possess 50 per cent of the world's total wealth, and just 62 people own the same as half of the world. The wealth of the poorest half has fallen by a trillion dollars since 2010, a drop of 38 per cent. Despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period, it has occurred. Meanwhile, the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars to $1.76 trillion. The report also shows how inequality disproportionately affects women – of the current '62' richest, 53 are men, and just nine are women. 

 

A total of $7.6 trillion of individual wealth sits offshore. If the rich paid tax on this income, an extra $190 billion would be available to governments every year. As much as 30 per cent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be offshore, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year. It is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children in Africa to save 4 million children's lives a year and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school. The number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010. The annual income of the poorest rose only less than $3 in the past quarter of a century. Had inequality within countries not grown between 1990 and 2010, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty.

 

In India, one per cent of people own 58 per cent of total wealth. 

 

The Gandhian principle of trusteeship is closely related to the social responsibility of business. According to Gandhi, all business firms must work as a trust. Business people should change their attitude. They have no moral right to accumulate unlimited wealth while most fellow citizens live in poverty and misery. 

 

Few richest men in the world, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos, have rarely shown the principle of trusteeship. Even during COVID, the corporates were trying to make money by developing vaccines and reducing overheads by implementing the system of working from home. 

 

The crackdown in China

 

Several leading Chinese internet companies, including Tencent, Alibaba, Didi Chuxing, and eSuning, were fined 500,000 yuan ($77,345) for breaching the anti-monopoly laws in July 2021, as China stepped up its crackdown campaign against monopolistic behaviours that threaten to stifle market vitality. Alibaba paid a record $2.8 billion fine in April. Market regulators determined these companies to have breached the "concentrations of undertakings" provision under the anti-monopoly law in a total of 22 equity investment and joint venture deals, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) had said in a statement. 

 

Multiple subsidiaries of Didi - Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc - were among the penalized parties, days after Didi was removed from Chinese app stores by order of China's cyberspace regulator over cybersecurity issues. The probes of the 22 cases, which involved fields such as new retail, e-commerce, logistics, fintech, ride-hailing, and charging piles in the new-energy vehicle industry, started in March and April 2021. Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc and BAIC Mobility Co, a subsidiary of Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co (BAIC Group), failed to report to the SAMR about their joint venture before obtaining a business license. It violated Article 21 of the Anti-Monopoly Law and constituted an illegal concentration of business operators. E-commerce company Suning and a subsidiary controlled by China's largest online food delivery platform Meituan were also on the receiving end of fines. Many of the fined companies are there on overseas stock markets.

 

China has been ramping up crackdowns on its digital platform companies, as the digital economy accounts for a growing percentage of the world's second-largest economy and poses some serious risks. The government is seeking to regulate the market, curb the disorderly expansion of capital and inject vitality into the vital sector, which already accounted for 36.2 per cent of the nation's GDP as of 2019. The closure of 109 monopoly cases by SAMR marked the country's antitrust push was marked by 2020, with penalties totalling 450 million yuan and intensified anti-monopoly crackdowns on internet platform companies. Last year, the SAMR told 34 platforms - including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and Meituan - to thoroughly rectify their monopolistic behaviour, and tax-related irregularities or violations, within one month.

 

The crackdown was waiting to happen because the corporates were pretending to be bigger than the state and the people, shirking off their social responsibility. They could have taken a leaf out of Gandhi or Marx.

© Ramachandran 

 

GANDHI'S SPEECH AT CALCUT,1920

He Was Accompanied by Shaukat Ali

Gandhi and Shaukat Ali arrived at Calicut from Trichy on 18th August 1920 and at 6-30 pm; addressed a gathering of about 20,000 people on the Vellayil beach, Calicut.They were garlanded by Khan Bahadur Muthukoya Thangal,and their host was the Gujarati wholesale dealer of Crocin,Shyamji Sundardas ( Kallaji Baju).V R Krishna Iyer's father,V V Rama Iyer presided over the public meeting.High Court advocate K P raman Menon welcomed the gathering and handed over a purse of Rs 2500 to Shukat Ali for the Khilafat fund.Shaukat Ali was disppointed,since he expected more,says The Source Material for a History of the Indian Freedom Movement in India,Vol 3,Part I,pages 318-19.Ali was also not satisfied with Rs 500 he got at Kannur railway station on the return journey from Mangalore on the 20th.K Madhavan Nair translated Gandhi's speech at Calicut.

Mahatma Gandhi's Speech:

The Spirit of Non Co-Operation

I do expect that we shall succeed if we understand the spirit of non-co-operation. The Lieutenant Governor of Burma himself has told us that Britain retains the hold on India not by force of arms but by the co-operation of the people of India. He has given us the remedy for any wrong Government may do to the people, knowingly or unknowingly, and so long as we co-operate with that Government we become the sharers of the wrong. But a wise subject never· tolerates the hardship that a Government impose against their declared will. I venture to submit to this great meeting that the Government of India and the Imperial Government have done a double wrong to India and if we are a self respecting nation conscious of its rights, conscious of its responsibilities and conscious of its duties, it is not proper that we should stand the humiliations that both these Governments have imposed upon us. The Imperial Government have knowingly flouted religious !oentiments dearly cherished by the 70 millions of Mussalmans.

The Khilafat Question

I claim to have studied the Khilafat question in a special manner. I claim to have understood the Musalman feelings and I am here to declare that in the Khilafat question,the British Government have wounded the sentiments of Mussalmans,as they have not done before. The Gospel of non co-operation is preached to them and if they had not accepted it, there would have been bloodshed in India by this time. I am free to confess the spilling of blood would not help their cause. But a man, who is in a state of rage, whose heart is lacerated does not count on the results of his actions. So much for Khilafat wrong. 

I propose to take you for a moment to the Punjab, the northern end of India and what have both Governments done for the Punjab? I am free to confess again that the crowds in Amristar went mad for a time. They were goaded to madness by a wicked administration but no madness on the part of the people can justify the spilling of innocent blood and what have they paid for it? I venture to submit that no civilised Government l would have made the people to pay the penalty that had been inflicted on the Punjab. Innocent men were passed through mock trials and imprisoned for life. Amnesty granted to them was of no consequence. Innocent and unarmed men who knew nothing of what was to happen were butchered in cold blood without the slightest notice. The modesty of women in Jallian Wala who had not done the slightest wrong to any man was seriously outraged. I want you to understand what I mean by outrage. Their veils were insolently removed by an officer with his stick. Men who had not done any wrong were made to crawl on the ground with their bellies and all these wrongs remain unavenged up to this time. If it was the duty of the Government of India to punish men for incendiarism and murder of innocent persons it was doubly their duty to punish their officers who were guilty of serious wrong. But in the face of these official wrongs committed with the greatest deliberation,we have the humiliating spectacle of the House of Lords supporting these wrongs. It is this double wrong, done to India, that we want to get redressed and it is our bounden duty to get it redressed. We have prayed, we have petitioned and we have passed resolutions. 

Mr. Mohammed Ali, supported by his friends, is now waiting for justice in Europe. He has pleaded the cause of Islam, the cause of the Mussalmans of India, in a most manful manner. But his pleadings have fallen upon deaf ears. We have his word for it that whilst France and Italy have shown great sympathy for the cause of Islam it is the British Ministers who have not shown sympathy. It shows which way the British Ministers and present holders of Office in India wished to deal with the people. There is no good will, there is no desire to placate public opinion. The people of India must have a remedy for redressing this double wrong.

The method of the West is violence. Whenever people of the West have felt wrong justly or unjustly, they rebel and spill blood. As I have said in my letter to the Viceroy, half of India does not believe in the remedy of violence. The other half is too weak to offer it. But the whole of India is deeply grieved and it is for that reason that I venture to suggest to the people the remedy of non co-operation. I consider it to be perfectly harmless, absolutely constitutional and yet perfectly efficacious. It is a remedy, if properly adopted will end in victory. Victory is a certainty in it. And it is the age-old remedy of self-sacrifice. Are the Mussalmans of India who feel the great wrong done to them prepared for self-sacrifice? If we desire to compel the Government to the will of the people, as we must, the only remedy open to us is non-co-operation. If the Mussalmans of India offer non-co operation to Government in order to secure justice on the Khilafat, it is the duty of every Hindu to co-operate with their Mos!em brethren. I consider the eternal friendship between Hindus and Mussalmans as infinitely more important than the British connection. I therefore venture to suggest that if they like to live with unity with Mussalmans, it is now that they have got the best opportunity and that such an opportunity would not come for a century. I venture to suggest that if the Government of India and the Imperial Government come to know that there is a great determination behind this great nation in order to secure redress for the Khilafat and Punjab wrongs, the Government would then do justice to us.

The Mussalmans of India will have to commence the first stage of non-co-operation in real earnest.If you may not help Government, you may not receive favours from the Government. I consider that the titles of Honour are titles of disgrace. We must therefore surrender all titles and resign all honorary offices. It will constitute an emphatic disapproval of the leaders of the people against the actions of the Government. Lawyers must suspend practice, boys should not receive instructions from schools aided by Government or controlled by Government. The emptying of schools would constitute the disapproval of the middle classes of the people of India. 

Similarly have I ventured to suggest a complete boycott of the Reformed Councils. That will be an emphatic declaration on the part of the representatives of people and the electorate that they do not like to elect their representatives.We must equally decline to offer ourselves as recruits for the Police and the Military. It is impossible for us to go to Mesopotamia and offer Police or Military assistance. The last item in the first stage of non-cooperation is Swadeshism. Swadeshi is intended, not so much as to bring pressure on Government but to show the extent of self-sacrifice on the part of every man, woman and child. When one fourth of India has its self respect at stake, when the whole of India has its justice at stake, we must forego silk from Japan, Calico from Manchester and French lace from France. We must resolve to be satisfied with cloth woven by the humble weavers of India in their cottage homes. A hundred years ago when our tastes were not in foreign products we were satisfied with cloth produced by men and women of India. If I could revolutionise the taste of India and make it return to its ancient state, the whole world would reeognise the cult of renunciation: that is the first stage in non-co·operation. I hope it is as easy for you as it is easy for me to see that India is capable of undertaking the first stage of non·co-operation.

I therefore do not intend to take you through the other three stages of non-eo-operation. I would like you to rivet your attention properly into the first stage. You will have noticed that two things are nececssary in order to go to the first stage-an absolutely perfect spirit of non-violence is indispensable for successes and only a little measure of self-sacrifice. I pray to God that He will give the people of India sufficient courage and wisdom to recognise the virtue of non-co-operation. And I hope that in a few days we shall see some result from your activities in Calicut in connection with non-co-operation.

Mr. Shaukat Ali's address was confined to a special appeal to the Mussalmans with regard to the Khilafat question.

Mr. K. P. Raman Menon on behalf of the people of Calicut presented a purse of Rs. 2,500 to Mahatma Gandhi towards the Khilafat funds which gift was accepted with thanks.

(West Coast Reformer/ 20 August 1920).

Gandhi addressed a public meeting on 15 September 1921 evening on the Triplicane Beach, Madras. The Triplicane Speech:

The Moplah Rebellion

It was open to the Government. as powerful as they were, to invite the Ali Brothers and the speaker to enter the disturbed area in Malabar and to bring about calm and peace there. Mr. Gandhi was sure that if this had been done much of the innocent blood would have been spared and also the desolation of many a Hindu household. But he must be forgiven if he again charged the Government with a desire to incite the population to violence. There was no room in this system of Government for brave and strong men, and the only place the Government had for them was the prisons. He regretted the happenings in Malabar. The Moplahs who were undisciplined had gone mad. They had thus committed a sin against the Khilafat and their own eountry.

 The whole of India today was under an obligation to remain non-violent even under the gravest provocation. There was no reaso to doubt that these Moplahs were not touched by the spirit of Non-co-operation. Non-co-operators were deliberately prevented from going to the affected parts. Assuming that all the strain came through Government Circles and that forced conversions were true,the Hindus should not put a strain on the Hindu-Moslem Unity and break it. The speaker was however not prepared to make such an assumption. He was convinced that a man who was forcibly converted needed no "Prayaschitham." Mr. Yakub Hassan had already told them that those who were converted were inadmissible into the fold of Islam and had not forfeited their rights to remain in the Hindu fold. The Government were placing every obstacle in the way of the Congress and Khilafat workers to bring relief to desolate homes and were taking no pains to carry relief themselves. Whether the Government gave them permission or not it was their clear duty to collect funds for the relief of sufferers and see that these got what they required.

They did not yet know fully what measures the Government were going to take to repress the strength and rising of the people in this land. He had nb reasons to disbelieve the testimony given to him yesterday that many young men were insulted because they wore Khaddar caps and dress. The keepers of the peace in India had torn Khaddar vests from young men and burned them. The authorities in Malabar had invented new measures of humiliation if they had not gone one better than those in the Punjab.

(Madras Mail, 16 September,1921.)

Gandhi made five trips to Kerala – in 1920 to garner support for the Khilafat movement, in 1925 March 9-19 for the Vaikom Satyagraha, in 1927 October 9-15,25 for protesting against untouchability, then in 1934 January 10-22 for raising funds for the downtrodden when a little girl Kaumudi donated all her ornaments to him and in 1937 january 12-21 for celebrating the temple entry proclamation.

Gandhi found Kerala’s intellectuals and ordinary folk receptive and yearning for a free and fair society. A large number of people in the state were greatly influenced by his political and moral philosophy. A Christian youth named Titus Thevarthundiyil accompanied Gandhi during the historic Dandi March in 1930. It is a cinematic coincidence that when Titus followed the footsteps of Gandhi in Dandi, another freedom fighter from Kerala, K Kelappan Nair, popularly called Kelappan, led the Kerala Dandi march from Calicut to Payyannur in Malabar following the decision of KPCC to break the salt laws.





Gandhi made five trips to Kerala – in 1920 to garner support for the Khilafat movement, in 1925 for the Vaikom Satyagraha, in 1927 for protesting against untouchability, then in 1934 for raising funds for the downtrodden when a little girl Kaumudi donated all her ornaments to him and in 1937 for celebrating the temple entry proclamation.


Gandhi found Kerala’s intellectuals and ordinary folk receptive and yearning for a free and fair society. A large number of people in the state were greatly influenced by his political and moral philosophy. A Christian youth named Titus Thevarthundiyil accompanied Gandhi during the historic Dandi March in 1930. It is a cinematic coincidence that when Titus followed the footsteps of Gandhi in Dandi, another freedom fighter from Kerala, K Kelappanled the Kerala Dandi march from Calicut to Payyannur in Malabar following the decision of KPCC to break the salt laws.






People decorated the roads with Tricolour flags and festoons and offered food and refreshment to the satyagrahis. Caparisoned elephants greeted them as a mark of respect.

On the day of its arrival in Payyannur on April 21, ladies led by Gracy Aaron showered the satyagrahis with flowers and rice. Kelappan, in a two-hour speech, enthused the people with the ideals of non-violence and Satyagraha. After his address, there was burning of foreign clothes at the place. Kelappan, in all solemnity, scraped out some salt and thereby became the first salt satyagrahi in Kerala.

The Badagara session of KPCC in May 1931 resolved to launch anti- untouchability campaign as one of the programmes of the Congress. They chose Guruvayoor as the centre of the agitation and demanded the temple therein be opened for all castes. In this case too, the Satyagraha was started under the leadership of Kelappan.
On the day of its arrival in Payyannur on April 21, ladies led by Gracy Aaron showered the satyagrahis with flowers and rice. Kelappan, in a two-hour speech, enthused the people with the ideals of non-violence and Satyagraha. After his address, there was burning of foreign clothes at the place. Kelappan, in all solemnity, scraped out some salt and thereby became the first salt satyagrahi in Kerala.TheBadagara session of KPCC in May 1931 resolved to launch anti- untouchability campaign as one of the programmes of the Congress. They chose Guruvayoor as the centre of the agitation and demanded the temple therein be opened for all castes. In this case too, the Satyagraha was started under the leadership of Kelappan.