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.