The Vykom Satyagraha

THE Satyagraha Committee has done the right thing in restating the issue on which it is offering Satyagraha at Vykom. The committee, in the course of a recent public statement, says: “It is not the intention of this committee of the Congress to secure the admission of those classes into the temple, either at Vykom or elsewhere. The committee has no kind of mental reservation in the matter and wishes to state categorically that it is not its purpose to take advantage of the right of free passage along the thoroughfare in question for the purpose of forcing the entry of the Ezhavas and Pulayas… The Satyagrahis intend to establish the right of all the subjects of His Highness, the Maharaja, including the depressed classes, to pass along the public roads and pathways, of which the road outside the Vykom temple is one. The committee stands for what are, after all, the strict legal rights of the case, the only obstruction in its way being the order of the magistrate. What the Satyagrahis want is the maintenance of the legal and equitable rights of the depressed classes. The committee wants no more and will be content with no less. It will thus be seen that the Congress committee has no intention of interfering with the existing exclusive right of worship in the Vykom temple, which the Brahmins at present enjoy, but only to establish the undoubted legal and equitable right of Ezhavas and Pulayas to the use of public roads and pathways. It is one thing to insist that a particular temple will be used by only a particular class of people, and quite another to claim that even the public roads around the temple will be closed to particular castes.”

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