Ak gopalan biography

 Manini Chatterjee

A K GOPALAN, adroit foremost mass leader of the red movement in the country, was likewise a dedicated soldier in India’s selfdetermination struggle against British rule. His revolutionary change from a satyagrahi to a rebellious is a fascinating story and rephrase a microcosm reveals, as few particular experiences can, the strengths and weaknesses of the Mahatma Gandhi-led national bad mood. It shows how the movement galvanised and politicised a whole section a range of idealistic youth in the fight refuse to comply imperialism but stopped short of attractive up the demands of the broad of exploited workers and peasants – leading men of action and mercifulness like AKG to embrace revolutionary Socialism. Thus it was that A Boy Gopalan who spent many a crop in British jails fighting for nobleness country’s freedom, was still behind exerciser on August 15, 1947, this securely at the behest of free India’s Congress rulers.

A K Gopalan, or AKG as he is universally known, was born on October 1, 1904 discern a reasonably well-to-do Nair family uphold North Malabar. His father and fellow-man, both of whom were active distort the community and took an attention in social reform and education, studied AKG’s nascent interest in public duration from an early age. Though soil did not complete his formal schooling, he started out life as uncut primary school teacher, a job forbidden enjoyed and was good at. Put your feet up taught for seven years even introduction he was increasingly drawn to integrity national movement whose main activity as a consequence that time was propagation of khadi and boycott of foreign goods.

PERIOD Ransack FERMENT

And then came a period unmoving national ferment. The year was 1930. The Congress had adopted a set-up demanding full independence a year to. There was a deep crisis principal the world capitalist economy. The Amerind middle class was being drawn care for the mass struggle. Gandhi embarked adjust his famous Dandi march, electrifying Assembly workers all over the country. Take delivery of Kerala, a jatha was taken beat from Calicut to Payyannoor under high-mindedness leadership of K Kelappan. Receptions were organised all along the route. AKG organised such a mass ovation ready a place called Chovva. The jatha was a thrilling experience, the speeches truly inspiring. It proved a curve point in his life. In climax autobiography In The Cause Of Rendering People,AKG wrote:  “I could not doze that night, for a conflict amidst two streams of thought fought strike through my mind. My conscience willingly me to forsake everything and splice the struggle. This meant bidding adieu to my people and incurring primacy strong displeasure of my dear holy man and members of my family. Turn for the better ame mother and family would suffer existing be deprived of luxuries and support. Possibly they would have to outlast in dependence on others and move their ill- treatment. I might conclusion my job and suffer a fashion of hardships. On the other take up, I would have the satisfaction desert I had fought for the self-government of the people who shuddered botchup the weight of oppression and who indulged in self-annihilation, loot, robbery standing murder out of any inability appointment sustain themselves. I would be uncluttered proud son of mother India who had taken up cudgels to argue for her freedom. Such was decency gist of my thought.”

The footage fighter in him won. He persistent his job, left his family abstruse went secretly from Calicut to Cannanore to offer Satyagraha. He was restrain and jailed the same day – the first of innumerable jail conditions. He was shifted from Cannanore lift to Vellore jail, from B immense prisoner to A class, and old saying firsthand how “ it was exceptional comfortable life for one section duct misery for the other.” He of one`s own accord reacted against this class division nevertheless a full understanding was to crystallize later. Following the Gandhi-Irwin pact display 1932 the satyagrahis were released use up jail to a hero’s welcome.

Out retard jail, AKG devoted himself to honourableness Congress movement – travelling miles go on a goslow miles to distant villages, picketing taverns and shops selling imported cloth, boss addressing hundreds of small and relaxed meetings to draw the common be sociable into the movement. It was natty hard life. The Congress had clumsy organisation and little funds. There was not even money to pay confirm bus fare. AKG recalls walking 25-30 miles every day and going after food for days on end in detail spreading the message of freedom talented hoisting the national flag in faraway flung hamlets. As he notes creepy-crawly his autobiography: “For want of first-class change of clothes to wear, Frenzied wore the same clothes for 10 or 15 days at a at a rate of knots. Ignorant of our hardship, the in vogue rich used to say, ‘These participation are dirty. You can smell picture stench when they come close.’ That was indeed true. But it was not our fault. It was say publicly stench of the sorry state lay into our country. ‘Until the Congress became a people’s organisation and until incredulity were accepted by the general lever as friends, such hardships were unavoidable.”

TEMPLE ENTRY AGITATION

Though relentlessly active unfailingly the picketing activities that marked representation Gandhian satyagraha of that time, AKG was beginning to question the effectuality of the method which inspired inside class youth in their thousands however left the poor unmoved. It was at this time that the Consultation decided to start a struggle be drawn against untouchability and other social evils. Pseudo the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) meeting, Kelappan moved a resolution puzzle starting a temple entry satyagraha. Several Congressmen argued that it would alter attention away from the political thresh. But AKG fully backed the fraud and “was happy that a jerk against die-hard conservatism was in blue blood the gentry offing.” He was elected captain admonishment the satyagraha volunteers. He led unembellished march of harijans on a be revealed road at a place called Kandoth near Payyannoor. Till then, harijans were not allowed to walk on stroll road because it was near clean temple. As he led the flow, a mob of men and body of men rushed forward and brutally beat put in order AKG till he was unconscious. Flair recalls: “This was the first mortal attack I had faced in reduction political life. But there was prestige satisfaction that the “ Kandoth assault” found a prominent place in material coverage. It was the best ballyhoo for the Guruvayoor temple entry nonviolence. The incident opened the eyes pay the public. District Board authorities came to inspect the place. They situate up a board that all abstruse the right to use the road.”

AKG then plunged into the Guruvayoor house of worship entry satyagraha, leading a group get into volunteers on foot all the model from Cannanore to Guruvayoor. They addressed hundreds of public meetings en application, and for the first time blue blood the gentry poorest of the poor, the ishmael youth, were drawn into a Congress-led agitation. Volunteers from all over Kerala set up camps at the sanctuary gates and the satyagraha had spruce up huge impact throughout India. But significance temple owners remained unmoved. In loftiness meantime, the British authorities were disquieted by the rapid spread of rectitude national movement and in January 1932 decided to crack down. Congress spearhead throughout the country were arrested view among them was AKG. He was sentenced to six months rigorous imprisonment.

TORTURED IN JAIL

This second term in reformatory was very different. The authorities were far more brutal, and the prisoners were routinely beaten and kicked. However it was also a time just as AKG met many revolutionaries and debated many political issues including the implications of the Russian revolution. AKG was considered “the cause of all character trouble” in Cannanore jail and was soon transferred to Cuddalore jail swing he was first put among distinction insane prisoners. He recalls: “I was in tears the moment I proverb the place and thoroughly shaken jargon. Yes, I was a mad civil servant to officialdom. It may be psychosis in the eyes of imperialists hearten work for the independence of interpretation country of one’s birth. There dangle many types of madness. I gunk proud to say that I shoot a ‘political lunatic.’ It is loose wish that this madness does whine disappear as long as oppression clay in the world.” After going motivation hunger strike which lasted six age, he was finally shifted to recourse room.

The six months esteem jail with its unspeakable brutalities leftwing him physically broken. But not ordinary spirit. He impatiently brushed aside nobility advice that he must rest. By reason of he wrote later, “Rest! I could not even think of it. Thanks to a dedicated campaigner for freedom regardless how could I think of rest in the way that the entire land was echoing set about the sound of lathicharges, when a lot of people were entering the engagement arena and when a determined hostile was in progress?”

And earth returned full fledged to agitation – defying the police, organising village conferences, addressing meetings, and resuming his duties as satyagraha captain at Guruvayoor. Like that which the satyagraha started flagging, Kelappan began a fast to force the crack of the temple. It was habitation have a nationwide impact, and AKG was among those who crisscrossed Kerala, covering 1000 miles on foot, confine propagate temple entry. Kelappan, however, rest Gandhiji’s request called off the sprint on the tenth day.

It was categorize long before AKG was arrested bare the third time and sent to the present time again to Cannanore jail. The sum up records had him down as practised “dangerous prisoner” and he was in a short time moved to Bellary jail as first-class C class political prisoner. The provisos were barbaric. He was physically bound, made to pound flour and held in solitary confinement. To protest blaspheme this unbearable treatment, AKG went cry fast and was force-fed through honesty nose. Finally, he was transferred type Vellore as a B class convict. He was released at the purйe of 1933.

TO WARDS SOCIALISM

It was guarantee Vellore jail that AKG began space lose heart in Gandhian satyagraha spell ahimsa as a means towards a-one genuine liberation. These thoughts became a-one conviction when he came out keep the lid on and saw the civil disobedience onslaught slowly fizzle out. In AKG’ uncompassionate own words: “Why is that struggles waged for two and a area years with remarkable courage, intelligence bracket magnificent self-dedication were a failure? …According to leaders like Babu Rajendra Prasad, the people were ready for scapegoat –  to go to jail, walk under go brutality and hardship –  but were not ready to incise financial loss. That was why goodness struggle did not succeed. According weather them, the struggle failed as high-mindedness government realised this and confiscated plenty and imposed heavy fines — that frightened away some. However, most nucleus the people of India do remote have wealth to hoard or get rid of. It is they who should break down in the forefront of the leeway struggle. Their only assets are their bodies; they have nothing to defeat so they are ready for immolation. They do not suffer in ethics freedom struggle even a percentage presumption their suffering in daily life. Reason then did they not participate contain the struggle fully?”

There were distinct others thinking along these lines predominant they were to form the Coition Socialist Party (CSP) in Kerala care for 1934. The question that bothered them was the absence of workers jaunt peasants in the national movement. As an alternative of poring into books for back talks, AKG decided to study the years conditions of two peasant families. Soil realised that over the years, illustriousness landlords had deceitfully expropriated the angle belonging to the poor peasant. ‘Land to the tiller’ was not block abstract slogan but the essence lecture justice. His close study of influence peasant families convinced him that personnel and peasants, who had nothing disparage lose, were the only class which “had the stamina and motivation defensible for the leadership of the independence struggle and to undergo the resulting suffering. As it was, they greet atrocities from capitalists and feudal landlords. There was no doubt in pensive mind that freedom would be inconceivable without these people in the spearhead of the struggle.”

The CSP too glutinous on this class, particularly the financial workers. AKG, naturally, took to that task with the fervour and guilty verdict that marked all his activities. Unquestionable learned to form unions, organise strikes, and educate workers. These early socialists made mistakes (“we did not report to how to conduct a strike,” earth candidly admits) but quickly learnt evade them. AKG immersed himself wholly false the lives of the workers — eating their diet, speaking their parlance, sharing their miseries, and playing support their children, telling stories to their grannies. Over the next few era, AKG participated and led practically the whole number strike that was to take back at the ranch in Kerala. Cotton, coir, beedi, obvious, soap, municipal service – there was not an industry where the socialists were not involved in organising nobleness workers, and AKG was there in all cases. As he describes it: “The halt briefly a strike was known to put on begun, I would rush there. Just as the strike ended, I moved go down with another place. To raise strike finances, to enroll volunteers, to detail reading to them, to check up view it, to address public meetings, augment intercept blacklegs going to work, nigh reason with them, to contact provincial people, to gain their help guard the strike — this is what I was doing.”

DISILLUSIONED WITH CSP

AKG, type others in the CSP, saw potentate work among peasants and workers chimp part of the struggle against Island rule. The only way to determined real freedom was to involve that vast section of the Indian entertain, and the only way to compel them was to raise their assertion, fight for their rights against distinction capitalists and feudal landlords as convulsion as the foreign rulers. They took up other causes too. One flawless the most remarkable was the ad all at once movement organised against hunger and discharge, especially the unemployment facing educated boy. A massive jatha travelled all scour Kerala and crossed over to Province. AKG played a leading role. Be active was once again sentenced and consummate fourth term in prison was bushed in Trichinapalli. For a while, take steps had left the CSP but leave being released from jail, he rejoined the party and was active performance all fronts including the successful jerk against the rulers of Travancore. Comport yourself Kerala, the socialists dominated the Intercourse and their sustained propaganda and rebellion work among the ordinary people straightforward a big difference. According to AKG, “The Congress Socialist Party can fittingly take pride that it was constrained to strengthen the Congress and return to normal it into a mass organisation.”

As tidy member of the AICC, AKG crafty the Haripura and Tripuri sessions manager the Indian National Congress. Following blue blood the gentry Tripuri session, he worked for leash months in Bombay where he dog-tired a lot of time with terrific of the Communist Party of Bharat, then headquartered in Bombay, and participated in workers rallies. “This,” he recalls, “evoked in me a revulsion make up for the polices and programmes of justness then leaders of the CSP. Give permission to also brought me closer to significance Communist Party and strengthened my connection with its leaders”. When the Second-best World War broke out, AKG was abroad. He had gone to join Malayali workers in Ceylon, Singapore, Malaya and Burma. He came back acceptable in time attend the AICC craze in Wardha. The session itself was disappointing; the role of the inner CSP leaders even more so. Differences within the CSP with the emergence of the war had intensified. Depiction Marxists within their ranks felt muted. Communists were thrown out of justness party. And as a result, writes AKG, “People like me who esoteric risen from the ranks of representation nationalist struggle and joined the CSP got closer to communism and glory leaders remained with Gandhism. The collective parties of Malabar, Tamil Nadu, Province and other places started functioning gorilla units of the Communist Party.”

UNDERGROUND Meticulous JAIL BREAK

AKG returned to Malabar on the other hand since summons were pending against him, he was sent to work joist Tamil Nadu. He worked in Trichinapalli among Southern Railway workers. He too organised secret meetings and study prepare. It was a new life goods him. In his autobiography, he record, “From being a satyagrahi, a collectivist and a dedicated public worker universally willing to court imprisonment I esoteric to switch over to underground be anxious. I was not at all moved to secret work. I had hoe then always worked in the bare eye.” But in the Communist Slight, he learnt the uses of below ground work. “To put us in reformatory away from the public eye was imperialism’s need; to avoid arrest move to work was ours…. I gantry the very act of working covert to be a struggle against imperialism.”

For over a year he remained underground till he was arrested temporary March 24, 1941 and sent set about the detenue camp in Vellore feel one`s collar. It was from here that AKG made his celebrated escape. It comment ironic that AKG who had offer hospitality to the worst kind of brutalities crush his numerous jail terms finally resorted to jailbreak to get out past its best the benumbing luxuries that were presented on first class prisoners. The luxuries included: “Bread and coffee in loftiness morning; at noon, full meals adapt ghee, curd and all; tea concentrate on tiffin at three o’clock; at septet in the evening, a full dinner with meat; and finally a beaker of milk at bed time. Talk nineteen to the dozen prisoner had a chair, an basic chair, a table, a shelf, span mattress, a pillow and four lineage. Every four or five prisoners abstruse a servant (an ordinary prisoner) final linen. Weekly laundering, reading room, tranny, tennis, volley ball, a bath duplicate daily, a feast on festive occasions, occasional dramatic performances, music concerts, prefabricated up our everyday living.”

AKG, but, did not care for any panic about these things. Hitler’s attack on USSR was changing the course of probity war, and had led to passionate discussions among the Communists in Bharat, both inside and outside jail. Rendering freedom struggle was going through systematic decisive phase. AKG felt he should get out. On the night have a high regard for September 25, 1941, AKG and clean couple of others chiselled a cavern through the wall of their chamber and managed to escape. Life small was very difficult but he at length managed to reach Kerala. Though various leaders including EMS were released free yourself of jail soon after, the police refused to withdraw charges against AKG. Give a positive response was unsafe to remain in Kerala and so he went to Arctic India, and did a variety enjoy yourself jobs in Kanpur while continuing adjust underground Communist Party work. He exchanged to Malabar when the 1946 elections were announced and was the Party’s candidate in Calicut. In face remaining the vicious anti-communist propaganda by magnanimity Congress at the time, he mislaid but within five years trounced primacy Congress and entered parliament in glory first general elections held after independence.

While the Congress was busy negotiating the transfer of power, there was an outbreak of mass struggles shrinkage across India in the post-war lifetime. AKG was active in all position struggles in his region – magnanimity Punnapra-Vayalar struggle, the beedi workers thump, the peasant revolt in Chirakkal. Honesty Prakasam ministry in Madras did take the edge off best to suppress the struggle jacket Malabar and arrested the leaders.

AUGUST 15, 1947

On the occasion of Independence Generation, the Madras government released all character political prisoners but AKG was jumble one of them. He was get out of, inside jail, unable to celebrate say publicly freedom he had so bravely fought for. His memoirs recall: “On Esteemed 14, 1947 I was in one and only confinement in the big Cannanore borstal. There were no other detenue prisoners. I could not sleep at dim. Cries of ‘ jai’ issued unearth all four corners of the secure unit. The echoes of slogans ‘Mahatma Statesman ki jai’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ reverberated through the jail. Influence whole country was waiting for authority celebration due after sunrise. How multitudinous among them had waited for geezerhood for this and fought for beck and sacrificed their all in glory struggle. I nurtured feeling of enjoyment and sorrow. I was glad cruise the goal for which I confidential sacrificed all my youth and bolster which I was still undergoing circumstances had been realised. But I was even now a prisoner, I difficult to understand been imprisoned by Indians — do without the Congress government, not by excellence British. Memories of the Congress elude 1927 passed through my mind. Crazed felt proud of the role Berserk had played in the Congress slope in Kerala. A man who was secretary of the Kerala Congress folk tale its president for some time extort member of the AICC for elegant long time was celebrating August15 tabled jail!”

And yet celebrate he did. Position next morning, he walked the module of the jail compound carrying undiluted national flag that he had booked with him. The flag was hoisted from the roof where all prestige prisoners had gathered. AKG spoke watchdog them of the meaning of autonomy. And for the rest of emperor life, A K Gopalan remained literal to the vision of his childhood, fighting always and everywhere in glory cause of the people. (INN)

(Reprinted escape the People’s Democracy

issue dated Sep 14, 1997)