Accamma Cherian: “Jhansi Rani of Travancore”

Police threatened to open fire on her march. She stepped forward and told them to shoot her first.

A March Against Travancore’s Ban Need to Know

• Accamma Cherian was born on 14 February 1909, in Kanjirapally, in the princely state of Travancore.
• She earned a BA in History from St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam. She then taught at St. Mary’s school in Kanjirapally, rising to headmistress, before quitting to join the freedom movement.
• Travancore’s Dewan, C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar, banned the Travancore State Congress in August 1938. In October 1938, Accamma led a march of over 20,000 people, from Thampanoor toward Kowdiar Palace, demanding the ban be lifted and responsible government granted.
• When police threatened to fire on the marchers, she stepped forward. She is widely reported to have earned the title “Jhansi Rani of Travancore” for it. The exact original source of the title, though, is not firmly established.
• She was arrested on 24 December 1939, for violating prohibitory orders, and imprisoned for a year.

An Arrest, and a Return to Office Good to Know

• Ahead of the October 1938 march, the party asked Accamma to organise the Desasevika Sangh, a Female Volunteer Corps. She toured the region recruiting women into it.
• She was imprisoned alongside her own sister, Rosamma Punnose, who later became an MLA and a Communist Party leader in her own right.
• Under the ban, the Travancore State Congress saw a rapid succession of its presidents arrested one after another. After her own release, Accamma became its acting president.
• As acting president, she welcomed the Quit India Resolution, passed at Congress’s Bombay session on 8 August 1942.
• In 1947, she was elected unopposed to the Travancore Legislative Assembly, from her home constituency of Kanjirapally.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. Accamma Cherian’s October 1938 march of 20,000 people to Kowdiar Palace is often described as demanding the Dewan’s dismissal. What was it actually protesting?

Dewan C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar’s ban on the Travancore State Congress, and the denial of responsible government

A new tax imposed on Travancore farmers

The Dewan’s refusal to release political prisoners

A proposed merger of Travancore with British India

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A Quieter Life After Independence Great to Know

• In 1951, Accamma married fellow freedom fighter V.V. Varkey. They had a son, George V. Varkey.
• Accamma’s post-independence political career didn’t match her pre-independence prominence. She resigned from Congress in the early 1950s, after being denied a Lok Sabha ticket.
• She contested the 1952 parliamentary election from Muvattupuzha as an independent, and lost. She contested again in 1967, from Kanjirapally, and lost to the Communist Party’s candidate. Sources differ on whether she ran that year as an independent or as a Congress nominee.
• Her autobiography, “Jeevitham: Oru Samaram” (“Life: A Protest”), reflects her own bitterness. She felt the party never fully recognised her role in the freedom struggle.
• Accamma Cherian and A.V. Kuttimalu Amma were near-contemporary Kerala women leaders. Both led banned marches against colonial-era authority within a few years of each other, in neighbouring Travancore and Malabar.
• She later served on the Freedom Fighters’ Pension Advisory Board. This gave her a continued, if quieter, institutional role in independent India.
• Accamma Cherian died on 5 May 1982, in Trivandrum. A statue was later erected in her memory at Vellayambalam, Thiruvananthapuram.