Krishnammal Jagannathan
Encyclopedia
Krishnammal Jagannathan is a social service activist from the India
n state
of Tamil Nadu
. She and her husband, Sankaralingam Jagannathan (born 1912), have protested against social injustice
and they are well known as Gandhian activists. Her work includes upliftment of Dalits, the landless, and the poor; she has sometimes fought against governments as well as big industries.
She was earlier involved in the Indian independence movement
, along with her husband, and was also a close associate of Vinoba Bhave
. She has received several awards and recently has been listed for Right Livelihood Award
for 2008, which she would share with four others, including her husband.
family in 1926. Her first encounter with social injustice and poverty was by looking at her mother Nagammal who had to toil very hard and had to work even when she was in advanced stage of pregnancy
. Despite being from a poor family she managed university education and was soon involved with the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement. It was through Sarvodaya did she meet Sankaralingam Jagannathan, who was much later to be her husband. Sankaralingam Jagannathan hailed from a wealthy family, yet gave up his college studies in 1930 in response to Gandhi's call for non-cooperation movement
and civil disobedience
. At one stage Krishnammal even shared a stage with Gandhi and also met Martin Luther King. Sankaralinga later joined the Quit India Movement
in 1942 and spent years in jail before India gained its independence in 1947. Having decided only to marry in independent India Sankaralingam and Krishnammal married in 1950. She would later head the Salt Satyagraha
march in Vedaranyam
, this time not in protest, but to commemorate the platinum jublee of the event in 2006.
in Northern India on his Bhoodan (land-gift) Padayatra
(pilgrimage on foot), the march appealing to landlords to give one sixth of their land to the landless. Meanwhile Krishnammal completed her teacher-training course in Madras (now renamed Chennai). When Sankaralingam returned to Tamil Nadu to start the Bhoodhan movement the couple, until 1968, worked for land redistribution through Vinoba Bhave's Gramdan movement (Village Gift, the next phase of the land-gift movement), and through Satyagraha
(non-violent resistance). Sankaralingam Jagannathan was imprisoned many times for this work. Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres (16,187.4 km²) of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states.
After the burning of 42 Dalit
Christians including women and children in Kilavenmani in Nagapattinam district following a wage-dispute with the landlord in 1968, the couple started to work in Thanjavur District
in Tamil Nadu
to concentrate on land reform issues. It was this incident that would inspire the couple, Krishnammal and Sankaralaingam to start the organisation LAFTI.
The purpose of the organisation was to bring "the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table, obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable price and then to help them work it cooperatively, so that the loans could be repaid".
Although the initial response was lukewarm with banks unwilling to lend and the high rates of stamp duty, Krishnammal managed to go on and with the cause and by 2007, through LAFTI she had transferred 13000 acres (52.6 km²) to about 13,000 families. Through LAFTI, she also conducts workshops to allow people, during the nonagricultural season, to support themselves through entrepreneurial efforts like mat weaving, tailoring, plumbing
, carpentry
, masonry
, computer education and electronics
. LAFTI would gain such popularity that later even the Government of India
would implement LAFTI's approach to increase the peaceful transfer of land.
farms along the coast of Tamil Nadu. This time the problems were not from the local landlords, but from large industries from cities such as Chennai
, Mumbai
, Kolkatta, Delhi
and Hyderabad which occupied large areas of land for aquaculture
along the coast, which not only threw the landless laborers out of employment but also converted fertile and cultivable land into salty deserts after a few years when the prawn companies moved on. The prawn farms also caused heavy seepage of seawater
into the groundwater
in the neighborhood, thus the local people were deprived of clean drinking water resources. The result is that even more small farmers sell their meager land-holdings to multinational prawn companies and move to the cities, filling urban slums.
issued a ruling against intensive shrimp
farming in cultivable lands within 500 meters of the coastal area. It is said that because of the prawn farmers' local political influence, the Supreme Court judgement was not implemented on the ground. The legal battle around the prawn farms is still not resolved and the Jagannathans continue their struggle to establish non-exploitative, eco-friendly communities in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu.
These activities have gained for the Jagannathans a high profile in India and they have won many prestigious Awards: the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award (1987); the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988) and Padma Shri
in 1989. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award "for propagating non-violence." In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland), and in 2008 she was awarded 'Opus Prize' by the University of Seattle and also Right Livelihood Award
along with four others which included her husband. She is lovingly called as Amma (Mother in Tamil
) by her followers. She plans to use the award money for her projects rather than for herself. Inspired by Amma's contribution of enabling more than 11000 poor and landless women to become landowners, a M.Phil research dissertation is dedicated to Amma. The dissertation is titled as Aspects of Agrarian History of Tamilakam:Region, Women and Technology during 16th and 17th Centuries AD,submitted to Department of History, University of Hyderabad in 2009.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n state
States and territories of India
India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...
of Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
. She and her husband, Sankaralingam Jagannathan (born 1912), have protested against social injustice
Social injustice
Social injustice is a concept relating to the claimed unfairness or injustice of a society in its divisions of rewards and burdens and other incidental inequalities...
and they are well known as Gandhian activists. Her work includes upliftment of Dalits, the landless, and the poor; she has sometimes fought against governments as well as big industries.
She was earlier involved in the Indian independence movement
Indian independence movement
The term Indian independence movement encompasses a wide area of political organisations, philosophies, and movements which had the common aim of ending first British East India Company rule, and then British imperial authority, in parts of South Asia...
, along with her husband, and was also a close associate of Vinoba Bhave
Vinoba Bhave
Vinoba Bhave , born Vinayak Narahari Bhave often called Acharya , was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. He is best known for the Bhoodan Andolan...
. She has received several awards and recently has been listed for Right Livelihood Award
Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", is a prestigious international award to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". The prize was established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, and is...
for 2008, which she would share with four others, including her husband.
Early life
Krishnammal Jagannathan was born to a landless DalitDalit
Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...
family in 1926. Her first encounter with social injustice and poverty was by looking at her mother Nagammal who had to toil very hard and had to work even when she was in advanced stage of pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
. Despite being from a poor family she managed university education and was soon involved with the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement. It was through Sarvodaya did she meet Sankaralingam Jagannathan, who was much later to be her husband. Sankaralingam Jagannathan hailed from a wealthy family, yet gave up his college studies in 1930 in response to Gandhi's call for non-cooperation movement
Non-cooperation movement
The non-cooperation movement was a significant phase of the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule which lasted for years. This movement, which lasted from September 1920 to February 1922 and was led by Mohandas Gandhi, and supported by the Indian National Congress. It aimed to resist...
and civil disobedience
Civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. It is one form of civil resistance...
. At one stage Krishnammal even shared a stage with Gandhi and also met Martin Luther King. Sankaralinga later joined the Quit India Movement
Quit India Movement
The Quit India Movement , or the August Movement was a civil disobedience movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for immediate independence. Gandhi hoped to bring the British government to the negotiating table...
in 1942 and spent years in jail before India gained its independence in 1947. Having decided only to marry in independent India Sankaralingam and Krishnammal married in 1950. She would later head the Salt Satyagraha
Salt Satyagraha
The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagrahah began with the Dandi March on March 12, 1930, and was an important part of the Indian independence movement. It was a campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, and triggered the wider...
march in Vedaranyam
Vedaranyam
Vedaranyam is a municipality in Nagapattinam district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.-Geography:Vedaraniyam is located at . It has an average elevation of .-Demographics:...
, this time not in protest, but to commemorate the platinum jublee of the event in 2006.
Land to the landless
Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan believed that one of the key requirements for achieving a Gandhian society is by empowering the rural poor through redistribution of land to the landless. For two years between 1950 and 1952 Sankaralingam Jagannathan was with Vinoba BhaveVinoba Bhave
Vinoba Bhave , born Vinayak Narahari Bhave often called Acharya , was an Indian advocate of nonviolence and human rights. He is best known for the Bhoodan Andolan...
in Northern India on his Bhoodan (land-gift) Padayatra
Padayatra
Padayatra is a journey undertaken by a politician and/or prominent citizens to interact more closely with different parts of society, educate them about issues concerning them and to galvanize his or her supporters...
(pilgrimage on foot), the march appealing to landlords to give one sixth of their land to the landless. Meanwhile Krishnammal completed her teacher-training course in Madras (now renamed Chennai). When Sankaralingam returned to Tamil Nadu to start the Bhoodhan movement the couple, until 1968, worked for land redistribution through Vinoba Bhave's Gramdan movement (Village Gift, the next phase of the land-gift movement), and through Satyagraha
Satyagraha
Satyagraha , loosely translated as "insistence on truth satya agraha soul force" or "truth force" is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma...
(non-violent resistance). Sankaralingam Jagannathan was imprisoned many times for this work. Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres (16,187.4 km²) of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states.
After the burning of 42 Dalit
Dalit
Dalit is a designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as Untouchable. Dalits are a mixed population, consisting of numerous castes from all over South Asia; they speak a variety of languages and practice a multitude of religions...
Christians including women and children in Kilavenmani in Nagapattinam district following a wage-dispute with the landlord in 1968, the couple started to work in Thanjavur District
Thanjavur District
Thanjavur District is one of the 32 districts of the state of Tamil Nadu, in southeastern India. Its headquarters is Thanjavur.-Geography:...
in Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Pondicherry, and the states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh...
to concentrate on land reform issues. It was this incident that would inspire the couple, Krishnammal and Sankaralaingam to start the organisation LAFTI.
Land for the Tillers' Freedom (LAFTI)
Krishnammal along with her husband found Land for the Tiller' Freedom in 1981.The purpose of the organisation was to bring "the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table, obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable price and then to help them work it cooperatively, so that the loans could be repaid".
Although the initial response was lukewarm with banks unwilling to lend and the high rates of stamp duty, Krishnammal managed to go on and with the cause and by 2007, through LAFTI she had transferred 13000 acres (52.6 km²) to about 13,000 families. Through LAFTI, she also conducts workshops to allow people, during the nonagricultural season, to support themselves through entrepreneurial efforts like mat weaving, tailoring, plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...
, carpentry
Carpentry
A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....
, masonry
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...
, computer education and electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
. LAFTI would gain such popularity that later even the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...
would implement LAFTI's approach to increase the peaceful transfer of land.
The issue
From 1992 Krishnammal started working issues concerned with prawnPrawn
Prawns are decapod crustaceans of the sub-order Dendrobranchiata. There are 540 extant species, in seven families, and a fossil record extending back to the Devonian...
farms along the coast of Tamil Nadu. This time the problems were not from the local landlords, but from large industries from cities such as Chennai
Chennai
Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...
, Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
, Kolkatta, Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
and Hyderabad which occupied large areas of land for aquaculture
Aquaculture
Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the...
along the coast, which not only threw the landless laborers out of employment but also converted fertile and cultivable land into salty deserts after a few years when the prawn companies moved on. The prawn farms also caused heavy seepage of seawater
Seawater
Seawater is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% . This means that every kilogram of seawater has approximately of dissolved salts . The average density of seawater at the ocean surface is 1.025 g/ml...
into the groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
in the neighborhood, thus the local people were deprived of clean drinking water resources. The result is that even more small farmers sell their meager land-holdings to multinational prawn companies and move to the cities, filling urban slums.
LAFTI and prawn industry
To address prawn farm issue the Jagannathans organised the whole of LAFTI's village movement to raise awareness among the people to oppose the prawn farms. Since 1993, the villagers have offered Satygraha (non-violent resistance), through rallies, fasts, and demonstrations in protest of establishing the prawn farms. They have been beaten up by hired goons, their houses have been burnt, and LAFTI workers have been imprisoned, because of false accusations of looting and arson.Final victory
Undeterred by this, Sankaralingam Jagannathan filed a 'public interest petition' in the Indian Supreme Court, which in turn asked NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Institute of India) to investigate the matter. NEERI's investigation report highlighted the environmental cost of the prawn farms to the nation and recommended all prawn farms within 500 meters of the coast to be banned. In December 1996, the Supreme CourtSupreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...
issued a ruling against intensive shrimp
Shrimp
Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...
farming in cultivable lands within 500 meters of the coastal area. It is said that because of the prawn farmers' local political influence, the Supreme Court judgement was not implemented on the ground. The legal battle around the prawn farms is still not resolved and the Jagannathans continue their struggle to establish non-exploitative, eco-friendly communities in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu.
Upliftment of women
Krishnammal is also in working towards upliftment of women in Dalits and poor. She believes in mobilising women's cause by peaceful means.Further achievements and honours
Krishnammal Jagannathan, either independently or together with her husband, has established a total of seven non-governmental institutions for the poor. Besides this, Krishnammal Jagannathan has also played an active role in wider public life. She has been a Senate member of the Gandhigram Trust and University and of Madurai University. She was also a member of a number of local and state social welfare committees and a member of the National Committee on Education, the Land Reform Committee and the Planning Committee.These activities have gained for the Jagannathans a high profile in India and they have won many prestigious Awards: the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award (1987); the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988) and Padma Shri
Padma Shri
Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan...
in 1989. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award "for propagating non-violence." In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland), and in 2008 she was awarded 'Opus Prize' by the University of Seattle and also Right Livelihood Award
Right Livelihood Award
The Right Livelihood Award, also referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize", is a prestigious international award to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". The prize was established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, and is...
along with four others which included her husband. She is lovingly called as Amma (Mother in Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
) by her followers. She plans to use the award money for her projects rather than for herself. Inspired by Amma's contribution of enabling more than 11000 poor and landless women to become landowners, a M.Phil research dissertation is dedicated to Amma. The dissertation is titled as Aspects of Agrarian History of Tamilakam:Region, Women and Technology during 16th and 17th Centuries AD,submitted to Department of History, University of Hyderabad in 2009.