Movie to relive Ayyankali Pada hostage drama of 1996
KOZHIKODE: On October 4, 1996, four people barged into the chamber of then Palakkad collector WR Reddy and took him hostage. They demanded to find a solution to the tribal land issue that has been pending for decades.
“Our prime aim was to bring the tribal land issue to the public conscience. The immediate provocation was the law brought by then E K Nayanar government to circumvent the High Court order to reclaim the alienated tribal land,” said Ajayan Mannur, a member of Ayyankali Pada that spearheaded the ‘action.’ The dramatic incident could soon become a point of public discussion with the release of the movie ‘Pada’ directed by Kamal K M, which will be released soon. Kunchacko Boban, Vinayakan, Joju George, and Dileesh Pothan are donning the main characters in the movie.
Armed with a toy gun and a fake bomb made of threads, the group kept the police on their toes for hours. The high drama ended when the authorities promised to consider their demands. “Though we succeeded in raising the issue and brought it to the public discourse, tribal people’s life is becoming miserable with each passing year,” Ajayan said.
“Adivasis are being evicted from the Western Ghats in the name of the World Heritage project. All are eyeing the huge funds that the United Nations pumps into such programmes,” said Ajayan, who is the secretary of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF). “Tribal people and Dalits are the victims of the mega projects,” he said. Police set the four -- Ajayan, Vilayodi Sivankutty, Kallara Babu, and Kanhangad Ramesan -- free as part of the mediatory talks to end the hostage crisis. “We were prepared to go to jail. So we were not carrying any money. We had only 35 paise with us at that time. Advocate Veerachandra Menon, one of the mediators, took us to Thrissur” he remembered.
Ajayan was arrested seven months after the incident and jailed for around six months. An appeal in the case is pending after the district fast track court awarded one-year simple imprisonment. “I do not know anything about the movie. The action by Ayyankali Pada was only one chapter in the protracted struggle for the alienated tribal land. People have the right to register the agitation in different forms,” Ajayan said.