A Pioneer. A Revolutionary. A Hero.
One particular child hood incident made Ayyankali aware of the caste prejudices prevalent in Travancore society. While playing football with children of his age the ball kicked by Ayyankali fell on the roof of a Nair house. The Nair warned him not to play with diku young men. Deeply hurt, he took oath never to play with them. Then he went into a period of deep thought. He came out of a month of contemplation, a la Buddha, with a secret agenda - civil liberties for the untouchables.
During that time dalits were not allowed to wear proper cloths and were banned to enter into the main street of a village or ride a cart in front of dikus. Fearless Ayyankali decided to resist these inhuman conditions of dalits. To raise the confidence and will to fight among dalits he decided to take ‘direct action’ alone. He bought two white bullocks and a cart and tied big brass bells around the animals' neck. The dikus were horrified at the arrogance of this Pulaya. He wore a dhoti, wrapped angavasthram around his shoulders and tied a turban and drove the cart up and down the small market. This created a great sensation both among dikus and dalits. No dalits ever thought of doing such thing in their wildest dreams. Dikus were also very shocked at the daring of Ayyankali. Soon diku lumpens gathered to teach Ayyankali a lesson. On his way back home, he was stopped by them.
"What? Wearing a mulmul dhoti?"
Ayyankali pulled out a long dagger and told them in his booming commanding voice that any one that stops him will get the taste of the sharp weapon in his hands.
That day he exercised his civil liberty, banned so far for untouchables, and got away with it. The harness bells of his bullock cart rang loud each day in the street and market.
His success gave birth to pride and conscientised other Dalits and rankled the dikus.
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