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‘I Had A Chain At My Waist’

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‘I Had A Chain At My Waist’
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Abject poverty, deprivation—in those days, these were the only things that flourished in my native Punnapra, in the Alappuzha district of Kerala. We did not suffer too much, though, because our father ran a grocery shop. He was a social activist respected by all. He had leased some land from some land-owners of Vendhalathara and cultivated it. He built a house there too. With the income from agriculture and the grocery store, we could make ends meet.

My school was in an area where upper-caste people lived and I had to walk past a temple to get there. The well-to-do, upper-caste folks would ridicule the less fortunate, beat and chase them away. Many children would discontinue their studies. I was once attacked and confronted with: “Who are you to walk this way to school?” I tried to stand up to them and return their abuses, but finally ran away. I told my father all this. He was not one to put up with any form of caste or religious intolerance. He made a chain for me to keep wrapped around my waist and told me to use it if I was stopped again. As expected, I was confronted again. I pulled out the chain and whirled it at my attackers. They ran away.

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My parents passed away when I was very young. I gave up school to join the Aspinwall Company. Trade unionism was buoyant in Alappuzha and the coir workers’ union had successfully boycotted work. Their most important demand was an increase in wages by one anna. Some of our demands went unmet, and the union was divided about discontinuing the strike. However, the union president, Krishna Pillai, taught us that we should withdraw the strike, strengthen the union and then take up the other demands. He taught us how to deal with situations. I first heard ems speak at a public meeting on the Alappuzha beach in 1938. When akg was hiding in Muhamma, it was my responsibility to take  secret letters and newspapers to his hideout. I knew him well. When I was 17, in 1940, it was my duty as a party member to organise the many unions—like the toddy tappers’ union, coconut-tree climbers’ union and so forth, and work among them as a leader. Three years later, I resigned from my job, established a Communist party chapter and became the secretary. We would eat what was given to us, bathe in the temple ponds and sleep wherever we could. In the mornings, we would set out for the paddy fields and speak to the workers there. We would go to their homes and understand their problems. We would invite them to join us at the party meetings. Many workers became cadres, and a strong paddy field workers’ union was created. We founded similar unions in other areas too. For three years, I was totally dedicated to this sort of work. We worked towards eradicating caste intolerance and because of the presence of the unions it gradually declined.

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The paddy workers’ union was very active in the Mangalam wetlands. The land-owners employed permanent and temporary workers. The permanent workers were like slaves and were given only half the wages of what the temporary workers earned. During the harvest season, the permanent workers got a bundle of grain as the day’s wages, and at the end of the harvest, after some phony calculations, about 10 to 15 measures of rice was given to each of them. But this time, the permanent workers at Mangalam demanded 100 measures of rice. And they began to strike—the harvested sheaves of grain were left without threshing for 12 days. The strikers withstood all kinds of threats and beatings. In the end, the landowners came down on their knees and agreed to give 100 measures of rice as wages. I stayed near Kavalam and engineered the strike from there. This strike set off huge tremors both in Kuttanad—the rice bowl of Kerala—and outside. It was pivotal in building the paddy field workers’ unions.

As told to Minu Ittyipe

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