Travancore was a princely state throughout, so the object of political action here was usually the durbar rather than the Raj, and the demands were about access before they were about independence: access to government employment, to schools, to public roads and to temples. That is why this region's landmark documents are petitions - the Malayali Memorial of 1891 and the Ezhava Memorial of 1896 - and its landmark campaigns are about a road at Vaikom and a seat in a legislature. The one large armed confrontation, in October 1946, arose from the coir and cashew labour of the Alappuzha belt rather than from any national campaign, and it is set down here as dated events. Congress organisation in the state was late: the Travancore State Congress was formed only in 1938, seventeen years after Non-cooperation reached British Malabar.
Velu Thampi's rising and the Kundara Proclamation1808-1809
The Dalawa of Travancore, in concert with Paliath Achan of Cochin, moved against the subsidiary alliance and the subsidy it required, attacking the Residency at Thiruvananthapuram and issuing a proclamation at Kundara on 11 January 1809 calling on the country to rise.
परिणाम: Company troops defeated the rising within weeks. Velu Thampi died at Mannadi in March 1809; the 1805 treaty terms were tightened and a Resident-Dewan governed the state for the next decade.
The Vaikom Satyagraha30 March 1924 - 23 November 1925
A campaign to open the public roads around the Vaikom Mahadeva temple to all castes. Volunteers courted arrest daily from 30 March 1924; leaders included T. K. Madhavan, K. P. Kesava Menon, K. Kelappan, George Joseph and E. V. Ramasamy. In November 1924 Mannathu Padmanabhan led a Savarna Jatha of caste Hindus from Vaikom to Thiruvananthapuram to petition the durbar; Gandhi visited in March 1925.
परिणाम: The north, south and west roads were opened in November 1925; the eastern road remained closed until after the Temple Entry Proclamation of 1936. The campaign made the road, rather than the sanctum, the test case that the rest of the coast then followed.
The Abstention Movement, Nivarthana Prakshobham1932-1936
A joint campaign by Ezhava, Syrian Christian and Muslim organisations for representation in the reformed Travancore legislature proportionate to their numbers, pressed by abstaining from the elections held under the 1932 reforms.
परिणाम: Representation was conceded in the revised arrangements of 1936, and the alliance of the three communities became a standing feature of the state's politics.
The events at Punnapra and VayalarOctober 1946
A confrontation in the coir and cashew belt around Alappuzha and Cherthala, following famine years in which the Cherthala taluk recorded heavy mortality, a labour dispute over wages and recognition, and the Dewan's proposal for a new constitution for Travancore. Workers' volunteer camps attacked the police camp at Punnapra in the last week of October - most accounts date this to 24 October, some to 25 - and on 27 October troops surrounded and cleared the camp at Vayalar. Martial law was declared.
परिणाम: Several hundred were killed. Estimates differ very widely, from figures in the low hundreds to more than a thousand, and no agreed count exists; the movement was suppressed and its organisation driven underground.