Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India The 1924-25 Vykom Satyagraha and Mechanisms of Change

In the 1920s, in the south Indian village of Vykom, a nonviolent struggle sought to open to everyone the roads surrounding the Brahmin temple there. For centuries, any person or animal could walk those roads but not the so-called untouchable Hindus, whose use of the roads would "pollute" the high castes. From April 1924 to November 1925, Gandhi waged a satyagraha to put an end to this blatant discrimination. Gandhi believed that the Vykom struggle would eliminate severe practices of untouchability, unapproachability, and unseeability, as the nonviolent activists would "convert" the high castes "by sheer force of character and suffering." Within a decade of the Vykom campaign, a narrative emerged that corroborated Gandhi's beliefs and cited the success of the satyagraha as testimony to his methods. This mythic narrative has persisted to this day

Mary Elizabeth King is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies for the UN-affiliated University for Peace, main campus, Costa Rica, and Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK.