Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and Mechanisms of Change
Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and Mechanisms of Change
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Abstract
In the 1920s, in the south Indian village of Vykom, a nonviolent struggle sought to open to everyone the roads surrounding the Brahmin temple there. For centuries, any person or animal could walk those roads but not the so-called untouchable Hindus, whose use of the roads would “pollute” the high castes. From April 1924 to November 1925, Mohandas K. Gandhi waged a satyagraha to gain access for excluded groups to these routes encircling the temple compound. (From Sanskrit satya [truth] and agraha [insistence], satyagraha has come to mean a campaign of nonviolent civil resistance.) As the 604-day campaign under Gandhi’s leadership persisted, it gripped British India and beyond, while revealing extreme forms of discrimination practiced by the upper castes: untouchability, unapproachability, and unseeability. Authors writing for Western readers from the 1930s onward offered romanticized accounts of the campaign, which spread the belief that a solution was reached to this particular conflict that stemmed from conversion of the high-caste Brahmins, whose hearts and minds were touched. The book substantiates a narrative of what actually happened at Vykom, including its controversial settlement. It also examines Gandhi’s concept of conversion through self-imposed suffering—the way that he insisted that social change would occur—as a dangerous presumption. Correcting misunderstandings, it addresses the rarity of conversion as a mechanism of change, and evaluates shortcomings of Gandhi’s leadership, which in this instance were based on certain faulty principles.
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Front Matter
- Introduction
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1
Travancore Society: Early Stirrings of Organized Opposition against Caste
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2
The Ezhava Community Awakens
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3
The Satyagraha
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4
The Maharani Regent and Travancore Governmental Change
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5
The Settlement
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6
The Vykom Compromise: Gandhi’s Role and Broader Implications
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7
Impact of Vykom on a Tool in International Theory
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8
An Historic Campaign Holds Contemporary Lessons
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Conclusion
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End Matter
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