Fifty years after his death, the man hailed as “Kerala Gandhi” is a largely forgotten figure. Look up his awards and recognitions, and all you can find for Koyapalli Kelappan (24 August 1889 – 7 October 1971) is that India Post released a commemorative stamp in his honour in 1990. That seems like a scant tribute for such a remarkable figure. The Mathrubhumi, a newspaper he helped establish and of which he served briefly as its Editor, carried my tribute in Malayalam on his death anniversary yesterday; The Quint is a fitting place to remedy that neglect in English.

During our country’s independence movement, you could not speak of the Indian National Congress in Kerala without mentioning K Kelappan. A graduate of the University of Madras, he taught at Ponnani and at St Berchman’s High School, Changanassery, later serving as the principal of Karukachal High School, run by the NSS. It was while studying law in Bombay that he came under the Mahatma’s spell. Beginning his political career with Mahatma Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation movement — to support which he abandoned his law studies and became Secretary of the Congress Party in Ponnani taluk — and adopting the simple, ascetic lifestyle of his hero, Kelappan was soon seen as the foremost Gandhian in South-western India. And it is a social reformer and a Gandhian visionary that he is best remembered as

A Passionate Opponent of Caste Discrimination

Unlike many political leaders, K Kelappan was a man of action: he put his feet where his principles were. Trained in 'Kalaripayattu' from a very young age, he entered the fray in every satyagraha and agitation. He was frequently arrested and imprisoned by the British for his role in the freedom struggle. But like the Mahatma, he believed that the real struggle for freedom was not only against the British but against social evils in our own society.

He might easily have become a Minister either in the state or in the national government, but instead, soon after independence had been won, he left the Congress Party in 1951, believing he could serve the people better through Acharya Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party, of which he was a founding member and under whose banner he was elected to Parliament from the Ponnani Lok Sabha seat in the first-ever General Elections of 1952 (when the KMPP and the Socialist Party merged to form the Praja Socialist Party (PSP), Kelappan led the new party in Kerala). While serving as MP, Kelappan supported and worked for the unification of Kerala into a new linguistic state.

But as a Gandhian reformer, he soon tired of the speech-making in Parliament. After just one term, he left active politics altogether, preferring to serve as a Sarvodaya worker. When Acharya Vinoba Bhave started the Bhoodan Movement to persuade landlords to give land to the landless, Kelappan was the movement’s foremost voice in Kerala. Yet, he was a strong critic of Marxism and of the policies of the EMS Namboodiripad-led Left government. He established the Rural Institute at Thavanoor, which is now part of the Kerala Agriculture University.

Kelappan also spoke out against communalism of every kind, while upholding the rights of all to live in harmony, without encroaching on the legitimate aspirations of each other. He led the 'Thali Temple Movement' to rebuild an ancient temple at Angadippuram in Malappuram, which had been destroyed by Tipu's forces in the 18th century — an effort that had been disapproved of by the state government on the grounds that a mosque now stood nearby — and conducted a successful 'Satyagraha' for the reconstruction of the temple. Today, both places of worship stand side by side in Angadipuram, testimony to the harmonious flourishing of religious co-existence among the two principal communities.