By Yogesh Maitreya, TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: The second Ayyankali Lecture was held at Tata Institute of Social Sciences on September 11, 2015. It was an important event, in which Dalit/Bahujan students were attempting to democratise the academic spaces, by introducing Dalit/Bahujan knowledge into it.
The event of exhibition and lecture were to commemorate the legacy of Ayyankali. Largely known as Mahatma Ayyankali, he was born in August 1863 and one of the earliest proponents of movement of ‘annihilation of caste’. Ayyankali worked and fought for the untouchables, especially in then the province of Travancore, to gain them civil and educational rights. He was well known for his fiery and radical thinking against caste. His influence is such that historian P. Sanal Mohan called him ‘the most important Dalit leader in modern Kerala’.
Commemorating his legacy and describing contemporary caste realities of Kerala, the lecture was organised as an event, including a speech by writer and intellectual from Kerala, Mr. Sunny Kappikad and, exhibition of sketch-art by an artist from Kerala on the Dalit/Bahujan aesthetic and portrayed of prominent leaders among them.
The program was chaired by Prof. Ramesh Kamble, a leading Ambedkarite intellectual from Mumbai University. In his lecture, Mr Kappikad threw light on Kerala model in which he said ‘entire Malayali community is facing socio-politico crises… you have to analyse the peculiarities of Kerala in pre-colonial and post-colonial era’.
Mr. Kappikad covered themes such as slave trades in Kerala, Brahminical rituals in Kerala, history of right to education, colonial invasion and crumbling structure of ritualistic society etc. during his lecture. Significantly, rectifying the different between other national leaders and Ayyankali, Mr. Kappikad reiterated that ‘he (Ayyankali) never demanded separate school for untouchable. He wanted his pupils to be studied in the same schools where Savarna students were studying and that was significant in the context of fraternity’.
After the speech, Prof. Ramesh Kamble summarised the speech and facilitated question/answer session.