100 Years of Struggle, 100 Years of Service

In two months, she will be a centenarian. Her hundredth birthday falls on June 16. All who admire this great woman know well that these 100 years have been years of struggle and years of service.

            Krishnammal Jagannathan was born in 1926 to a landless Dalit family in Aiyankottai, Dindigul district, in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. Poverty and social discrimination were part of her daily experience. She observed that her mother, Nagammal, had to toil hard even in the advanced stages of pregnancy. She understood that only education and a sustained struggle for social justice could save the poor and the marginalized of this country.

            After her studies, she was drawn to Mahatma Gandhi and all that he stood for. She came to know Dr. T.S. Soundaram, a physician and social reformer, and her husband, Ramachandran, who were disciples of Gandhiji. The couple later founded the Gandhigram Rural Institute near Dindigul, which later became a Deemed University. Dr Soundaram asked Krishnammal to take care of Gandhiji during his three-day stay in Madurai. Krishnammal identified those three days as the moment that shaped the course of her life.  She became a committed Gandhian.

            She fell in love with Sankaralingam Jagannathan, another staunch follower of Gandhiji. Hailing from a wealthy family, Sankaralingam discontinued his college education in 1930 in response to Gandhi's call for non-cooperation and civil disobedience. Since he joined the Quit India Movement in 1942, the British put him in jail several times. Having decided to marry only after India won independence, they married in 1950 -- three years after India became independent.

            But soon after his marriage, Sankaralingam left for Bihar to join Vinoba Bhave in his padayatra.  Bhave believed that the only way to empower the rural poor was to help them own land.  So, he started his Bhoodan (gifting land) Movement. Along with his followers, he walked through the villages, met landlords, and appealed to them to gift one-sixth of their land to the landless. 

            After working with Bhave for two years, Sankaralingam returned to Tamil Nadu, and he and his wife Krishnammal started the Boodan Movement and the Gramdan (gifting an entire village) Movement.  For 14 years, from 1953 to 1967, the couple worked tirelessly for land redistribution for the landless. These two movements won about 4 million acres of land that were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several States.

            In 1968, in a place called Keezhvenmani in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu, 44 Dalit agricultural labourers, including women and children, were burnt to death by their landlord, who was enraged by their demand for a small raise in wages.  Responding to this horrendous tragedy, Krishnammal and her husband started an organization called Land for Tillers' Freedom (LAFTI) in 1981. Its aim was to bring the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table and obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable prices. By 2007, through LAFTI, the couple had transferred 13,000 acres to about 13,000 poor families. Inspired by their success, even the Indian government tried to follow this approach.

            In 1992, the couple began to address the grave problems caused by industrial prawn farms along the coast of Tamil Nadu. LAFTI’s awareness programmes made the villagers organize rallies, fasts, and demonstrations to protest against the prawn farms. They were beaten up by hired goons, their houses were burnt, and some went to jail because of false cases foisted on them. The couple filed a public interest petition in the Supreme Court, which finally recommended that all prawn farms within 500 meters of the coast be banned.

            When Sankaralingam  died in 2013, he was 101 years old. Krishnammal continues her mission for the poor, Dalits, and rural women. She has received several awards, including the Padma Shri, Padma Bhusan, Switzerland’s Summit Foundation Award, and Opus Prize by the University of Seattle, U.S. When she received the Right Livelihood Award along with her husband, the citation said the award was "for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as 'India's soul'".

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She has received several awards, including the Padma Shri, Padma Bhusan, Switzerland’s Summit Foundation Award, and Opus Prize by the University of Seattle, U.S.