Accamma Cherian: The forgotten firebrand freedom fighter from south India

Accamma Cherian, a freedom fighter from your southern Indian condition of Kerala, is better known for the valour she displayed during a mass protest rally she led within 1938.

Historians consider this protest rally a pivotal second in the freedom battle in the state associated with Travancore (now Kerala).

She is among several unsung heroes associated with India’s freedom battle whose names, through the years, have sunk in to anonymity outside of their house state.

“For a lot more than 15 years she was probably the hardest woman in public national politics in Travancore plus was at the forefront of the momentous householder’s struggle in Travancore in the pre-independence period, ” Kandathil Sebastian, a social scientist based in Delhi, wrote a year ago .

Cherian was born in 1909 to some wealthy agrarian Catholic family in Travancore. She studied background and went on to turn into a teacher, rising to the position of headmistress at a school within Edakkara town.

In 1938, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, the lady gave up her work to join the Travancore State Congress (state unit of Gandhi’s Indian National Congress) and fight for India’s independence.

“Shakespeare has said that the planet is a stage which all the men and women are merely players; but to me, this life is a lengthy protest, ” Cherian wrote in the introduction to her autobiography, Jeevitham: Oru Samaram (Life: A Struggle). “Protest against conservatism, worthless rituals, societal injustice, gender discrimination against anything that is dishonest, unjust, ” the girl wrote.

“When I see anything like this, I turn blind, I actually even forget who have I am fighting. inch

Cherian was just 29 and a few months into joining the particular freedom movement when the Travancore State Congress was declared illegal by the British govt in India.

After several leaders from the party were jailed, its 11th president, Kuttanad Ramakrishna Pillai, tasked Cherian with leading the celebration before he was also arrested.

In her autobiography, Cherian wrote, “I was conscious of the seriousness from the assignment and understood what the consequences could be, yet I volunteered to do the job. inch

Under her management, an union had been formed to mobilise people for a mass protest rally.

On 23 October 1938, tens of thousands of people gathered outside the regal palace in Travancore, led by Cherian and other leaders, to disrupt the birthday celebration celebrations of the princely state’s king plus demanded a remember of the ban on the Congress party within the state.

EM Kovoor, a well-known writer from Kerala, described Cherian as “standing in an open jeep, dressed in khaddar (Indian hand-spun fabric) as well as a Gandhi cap , such as Goddess Durga mashing beneath her ft evil and injustice; her hair performed in the wind like black flags hoisted against autocracy”.

“I am the leader; shoot me first before you kill others, ” Cherian said to the chief of police outside the palace after he ordered his men to shoot at the thousands of protesters which had gathered at the rear of her.

Her words are said to possess compelled the police chief to withdraw his order. The protest continued until the authorities agreed to release the prisoners.

India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi heard of the event later and dubbed her “Jhansi Ki Rani (Queen) of Travancore”. (Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi, was a queen in northern India who conducted the British and became a heroine of India’s 1857 Rebellion).

The same yr, under the direction of the Congress party, Cherian organised the Desasevika Sangh – the volunteer corps for girls – and travelled across the state to encourage women to join the fight for independence.

By now, Cherian’s sister, Rosamma Punnoose, and brother KC Varkey had also joined the freedom struggle.

In 1939, Cherian and Punnoose had been among several leaders who were arrested intended for participating in the state Congress’s first annual meeting.

In the following years, Cherian was arrested several times regarding violating prohibitory purchases and participating in protests.

In 1942, the lady became the acting president of the state congress. One of the girl first acts had been to welcome the Quit India resolution passed by Native indian National Congress at a session in Bombay (now Mumbai).

The resolution called for complete independence from British rule and marked the beginning of a considerable non-violent struggle across the nation.

Post-independence, Cherian attempted to graph a path in active politics. Within 1947, she had been elected as a lawmaker in the first free of charge election held within the state of Travancore.

In the 1950s, nevertheless , she quit the Congress party after she was refused a ticket to parliamentary elections in India.

The then-president of the state congress committee said women within Travancore were currently “empresses of the home” and that politics was not their space.

Within her autobiography, Cherian noted that women like her who had been at the forefront of the freedom struggle were afterwards side-lined in the party and looked over just for important roles in independent India.

Cherian went on to marry a fellow freedom fighter and party worker, VV Varkey Mannamplackal.

“When I did previously visit them, they will lived in a small home which had more books than furniture. I remember her sophistication and Varkey’s soft-spoken scholarship. It was obvious why they had to quit politics, ” writer John Zacharia wrote in 2007 .

Historian J Devika has called Cherian among the first-generation feminists of the state.

The independence fighter died in 1982 in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum). A statue built in her memory space stands in a recreation area named after the girl in the city.

Indian, the world’s largest democracy, is partying 75 years of independence from British rule. This is the seventh story in the BBC’s special series on this landmark.

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