IT WAS the chance discovery of an old photograph hidden in a family album, that triggered the train of memories of a
youth in the seventies spent in the turbulent days of emergency and
political struggles all over the country.
The 19 boys at the Sir Syed College at
Taliparamba in Kannur had been arrested following a demonstration in the
college in protest against the emergency declared on June 25, 1975. The protest
demonstration, called by the opposition students organisations in the state,
was held on July 11 all over the state. At the Sir Syed campus, police swooped
down and took into custody the 19 boys who led the demonstrations-- six from
the pro CPM Students Federation of India, five from the Parivarthanavadi
Congress, and eight from the pro Kerala Congress KSC-B. Among them 18 survive
today and most of them came together for a get-together the other day at
Kannur, at the residence of one of those incarcerated those days.
Ity was a demonstration that became memorable
because of the photograph of eight of those boys tonsured by the police while
in custody. They were picked up from the campus by the town sub-inspector
Aboobacker and his party, all of them taken to the police station, kept there
for the whole day with their dress removed except for their underwear, and then
summarily tonsured with a trimmer. Two of them-- SFI district committee member
K Jayarajan and KSC leader Zachariah-- were sent to jail charged under the
draconian law of DIR and the rest let off, with an undertaking to report at the
police station every week for the next many months.
Most of them were present at the get-together at
Kannur, and among them well known lawyer P K Vijayan, journalist K Sunil Kumar,
and others. They reminisced about those emergency days and the experiences of
the internal emergency in the country, in the presence of a young brood of
journalists who had barged in to cover the old boys’ get-together.
I had known P K Vijayan from the days he had
come to Calicut, as a law student at the Calicut Law College, immediately after
the emergency. We both worked in SFI those days. Now past 63, Vijayan happens
to be a senior lawyer with his offices in Tellichery, with a nice practice and
a reputation as an excellent criminal lawyer. Sitting at his home near the old
sessions court in Tellichery, one of the earliest courts in Malabar set up
during the days of the East India Company administration in the region, Vijayan
talked to me about the incidents and the developments that took place in the
wake of the students demonstration and police action.
“We were very few in the SFI those days and also
in the opposition students movements,” he said. There were rumblings of
protests against the emergency, but only stray incidents. He was a second year
degree student, with zoology as main subject, and he served as the area
secretary of SFI in Taliparamba those days. They held protest demonstrations,
mostly in the night with the students living in the college hostel taking part
and put up wall posters painted in red: Down with Indira, Down with
Emergency...
The police had taken note and on July 11 when
the open demonstration was taken out in response to a statewide call issued
by the united front of various organizations, they lost no time to apprehend
the students who were causing troubles for them. They were charged with holding
unlawful demonstrations in violation of emergency regulations. They were all
young and with a tonsured head and a defiant look, they spent the whole day in
the lock-up room with nothing on them except their underwear.
The incident would have been long forgotten, but
for the intervention of the legendary communist leader A K Gopalan who hailed from
Kannur and represented the Palghat Lok Sabha seat at the time. AKG had reached
Taliparamba a day or two later and he sent word to the boys to meet him at the
party office.
“At the time comrade K K N Pariyaram was area
secretary of the party and he sent me a message to the college that AKG wished
to meet us urgently,” remembered Vijayan. He searched for all the 17 who were
let off by the police, but could manage to find only eight of them and soon
they were in the presence of AKG who made inquiries about the incident,
how the police treated them and such matters. He then asked them to get
themselves photographed in the dress
they were in at the police station and they did so at the local photo studio,
handing over a copy to AKG.
“The Parliament was in session soon after and
AKG made a speech on how the police were making life miserable for ordinary
people under the emergency regime,” Vijayan said and recalled AKG had raised
their photograph in the House as an example of how even young students
were being harassed for simple acts of protests and peaceful demonstrations.
The rare incident of public protest by the
students and police action had been noticed by the senior political leadership
in the state, despite the fact that no newspaper reported anything on protests
and demonstrations.
“A few months later, EMS Namboodiripad, who was
one of the few senior leaders outside jail and active at the time, came to
Taliparamba,” Vijayan said. The veteran leader sent word to the young students
to meet him and they met him at the CPM office in the town. “EMS asked for
details and while explaining things, I complained the party did not give us
support,” Vijayan recalled. EMS, in his characteristic way, responded that the
party had to support many and so naturally they could expect little! “The next
day I received a scolding from comrade Pariyaram for complaining to EMS instead
of telling him about it,” said Vijayan.
Advocate Vijayan, a writer who recently
published three novels on the lives of legendary characters in Mahabharata and
Ramayana, remembered many incidents police harassment as a student activist in
the seventies. “We fought against heavy odds and with little support from the
leadership,” he said and remembered how he and a few others in the SFI had been
caught by the police later on when a government poster with prime minister
Indira Gandhi was seen defaced with a smear of cow dung. “I really did not know
how the poster came to be smeared with cow dung, but the police caught us
anyway and wanted me to lick the dung away with my tongue and clean up the
prime minister's face,” he said. But he refused, insisting he had not done it
and did not know who did it either. But the police inspector was insistent, but
then a policeman intervened with a suggestion, ” Sir, let him clean it up with
his clothes,” which was graciously accepted by the inspector.
“That saved me tasting the cow dung at time, and
you know why? During the days when we were reporting at the station every week
to sign the the register we had become chummy with the cops and that
saved us a lot troubles in those days of police terror,” Vijayan chuckled as he
walked down the memory lane on the student days in a period of youth turbulence
against emergency rule in the country.
