Poykayil Appachan, practitioner of critique and co-option

Poykayil Appachan, also known as Kumara Gurudevan (1879-1939t), was a revolutionary Dalit leader and social reformer hailing from Eraviperur near Tiruvalla in central Travancore area.  He organised the early inhabitants of the region, who were subjugated and enslaved by the dominant upper caste Hindus and Syrian Christians who made it the most degraded forms of slavery in Kerala. The Prathyaksha Raksha Daiva Sabha (PRDS) movement he established encompassed all sections of Dalits across sub caste divisions.  He was an inspired orator, an instant poet and a learned organizer; he used carefully crafted songs and spirituals for organising people for their liberation and social emancipation. He made it to the Travancore Srimulam Prajasabha and initiated many legislative reforms for his people and similar depressed social sections.

Appachan’s efforts started bearing fruits with people outside the periphery of Tiruvalla came to form PRDS units in various parts of Travancore in early 20th century.  People from various Dalit communities co-operated with him and the movement, contributing to the general liberation spirit of the Kerala renaissance. He was also a member of the Sadhu Jana Paripalana Sangham which social reformer and Dalit leader Ayyankali founded in 1907.

Appachan’s speeches and songs created a subaltern space of ethical enquiry and resistance in Kerala in myriad ways and contributed to the democratisation of society and polity. They together paved the foundations of modern Kerala along with the pioneers of Kerala modernity such as Sree Narayanaguru, Chattambi Swamikal, Tykad Ayya, Ayya Vaikundhar, Sahodaran Ayyappan, Chavara Achan and Vakkam Maulavi.  The early contributions of Christian missionaries in education and healthcare in 19th century may also be remembered here.

Appachan’s unique praxis was to critically assess events. He co-opted the Christian discourses but defiantly critiqued the evangelical agenda of missionary work.  He hailed the fruits of modernity but rejected its colonial contexts.  He co-operated with many congregations and churches but left them all and founded his own sect outside the fold of Christianity and caste Hinduism.  His was a unique mode of social critique and subaltern uprising in the hybrid contexts of colonial modernity.  His strategies were often subversive and popular at the same time.  He was more into the politics of culture rather than into religious reformism.  

The careful organisational framework he created and the social operations he designed may be studied and analysed in the context of the current conjuncture of mass mobilisation of the people into the dominant folds by spiritual and cultural nationalism.

Appachan never tried to create a notion of glorious past as Pampadi John Joseph, the Dalit Christian leader who invoked the Cheraman Perumal connections of the Cheramar or Pulaya community of mid Travancore; instead he revived and revitalised the memory of slavery and rootedness in the soil from ancient times onwards and used it for a new social imagination and emancipation in the present and near future. History was important to him; but the present and the future were more important and significant. His songs and narratives have many lives and many presents and futures; they are resonating in the air as an unending melody, a unique one at that.

The writer is assistant professor, dept of English, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady