Mahatma Gandhi and the Guruvayur struggle

In this day and age when Guruvayur is a popular pilgrimage spot for people from all across India (and even Sri Lanka), it’s difficult to imagine that Dalits were not allowed into the Sree Krishna temple until June 1947. In 1936, the 24-year-old Maharaja Chithira Thirunal Balarama Varma passed the Travancore Temple Entry Proclamation decree, but this had no bearing on those who lived outside the princely state. Guruvayur was then in the Malabar district of the Madras province.

The organised movement for Dalits, then called Untouchables, to enter the Guruvayur temple began with the 1931 Satyagraha led by K Kelappan and AK Gopalan, both Nairs. One of the biggest supporters of this non-violent movement was Mahatma Gandhi.

In January 1933, the Manchester Guardian reported that Gandhi persuaded Kelappan to not fast, but said he himself would do so from the Yerawada Central Jail, if the upper castes remained adamant on denying Dalits entry to the temple.

“Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live,” Gandhi was quoted as saying by the United Press news agency. He said it would be “a living death” to witness the “degeneration” of the temple-entry movement, which he believed was “probably the biggest religious reform movement in India.”

In the same period, C Rajagopalachari sent a cable to the Guardian where he said that the onus was on the British to implement legislation that banned discriminatory entry practices, as the temple was in the legal jurisdiction of British India.

“Mr Rajagopalachari’s cable states that the Government is unwilling to permit the necessary bills to be introduced in the Legislature,” the Guardian said. “British authority is thus impeding the progress of social reform which Indian opinion demands,” the paper cited Rajagopalachari as saying.

When Gandhi’s pleas from the Yerawada jail were falling on deaf ears, he proposed a makeshift compromise formula where the Guruvayur temple would allow entry to Dalits, and those who didn’t mind their presence, for a few hours a day. The idea was rejected by influential upper caste individuals, while the Zamorin (Samoothiri) of Calicut, the main patron of the temple, did not take a formal stand.

“The Zamorin’s personal sympathies are believed to incline to the side of tradition, but on the question of temple entry, he has wisely taken up a neutral attitude and shelters himself behind the present state of the law, which makes it more than doubtful whether a temple trustee has any power to admit the untouchables into the precincts of a caste temple,” the Guardian added.

The Mahatma’s activism towards social justice made him unpopular among a section of people in Kerala who wanted casteist practices to continue. A wire report from 1934 said Gandhi was given a “hostile reception” in Palghat (Palakkad). “Hundreds of Orthodox Hindus today greeted Gandhi’s arrival with black flags and cries of: ‘Go back, Gandhi. Your anti-religious propaganda is sowing the seeds of disunion and violence,’” the report said. The Palakkad protestors blocked Gandhi’s car by lying on the ground, and had to be removed by the police.

Media reports of the time, however, seemed to suggest that a growing number of upper-caste Hindus supported Gandhi. The Guardian said “energy and enthusiasm” were on the Mahatma’s side.

Guruvayur became a symbol of the movement for social justice in Kerala in that era. “Not that Guruvayur is a temple of extraordinary importance, but it is situated in the stronghold of orthodoxy and traditional Hinduism, the Malayali-speaking country (sic) on the southwest coast, where the pure castes are more more pure and the impure pollute at a longer range than in any other part of India,” the British paper said.

The Travancore proclamation of 1936 did not lead to any similar changes in the Cochin state or the Malabar district. It would take another 11 years before Dalits in those parts of Kerala were legally allowed inside Hindu temples. Mahatma Gandhi was alive to witness these changes, but by that time, India was in the midst of the Partition and the communal violence and refugee crisis created by the division of the country.

Gandhi’s 1933 statement about Hinduism and untouchability remains relevant all these decades later. It’s a shame that there are still temples in India that do not allow entry to Dalits, despite this being illegal. Caste discrimination in various other forms also lives on across the country- something the Mahatma would be deeply ashamed about.