Memories of a centenarian freedom fighter

When K.A. Baker Sahib began speaking, I had the strange feeling that history had suddenly ceased to be history. It was no longer something I had read in books or encountered in old newspaper files. It seemed to have happened only yesterday.

He spoke of the days when Regent Lakshmi Bai ruled Travancore as though he had seen her only the other day. He recalled how, responding to Mahatma Gandhi’s call, he boycotted classes and courted arrest for the first time. He remembered CM Stephen, who would later come close to defeating Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, coming to Kayamkulam and inspiring students to participate in the freedom struggle.

Baker Sahib will turn 105 next January. He is among the very few freedom fighters still alive. Rarer still are those who actually saw Mahatma Gandhi. Baker Sahib is one of them.

There is, however, one problem with meeting him. Once he starts talking about the past, there seems to be no end to it. One historical event leads to another. He does not have to search his memory. The names, dates, places and incidents appear to remain within easy reach.

One of his most poignant memories concerns August 15, 1947. While Jawaharlal Nehru was delivering his immortal “Tryst with Destiny” speech and India was celebrating freedom, Baker Sahib was confined to a small cell in Alappuzha prison.

He was released the following day when clemency was declared for all freedom fighters still in jail.

In all, he spent nearly two and a half years behind bars. At one stage, the British authorities had even announced a price on his head, forcing him to go into hiding. Persistent police harassment also caused considerable difficulty for his family.

It was during those dangerous days that Communist leader and later minister TV Thomas advised him to change his name. The British police were hounding K. Aboobaker, and Thomas felt that another name might make it more difficult for them to track him.  Thus, Aboobaker became KA Baker — a name that, conveniently, sounded more Christian.

And thus K Aboobaker became the man generations came to know as KA Baker Sahib.

At one point during our conversation, he showed me his left arm, which had suffered a blow from the police. He showed it casually, without bitterness or self-pity. The fracture had not deterred him from continuing his participation in the freedom struggle.

Independence brought immense happiness, but also disappointment. Baker Sahib was dismayed to see some people who had supported the Travancore Royal House and the demand for an independent Travancore subsequently joining the Congress.

He vividly recalled the political turbulence of those days, including the attack on Sir CP Ramaswami Iyer while he was attending a programme in Thiruvananthapuram. Soon afterwards, CP (as he was called) left Travancore, and the momentum behind the Travancore independence movement rapidly declined.

The Malayalarajyam, published from Kollam, was then one of the principal newspapers supporting the movement. Today, the newspaper is consigned to the dustbin of history.

Baker Sahib also spoke animatedly about CP and the political intrigues of the period, including what he described as efforts to undermine Muhammad Habibullah, the only Muslim to serve as Diwan of Travancore.

But his life cannot be confined to the freedom struggle. What makes his story more unusual is what he did after independence.

He never pursued a conventional career. Social service became his chosen vocation.

Some relatives could not understand why he spent so much time concerning himself with the poor. His answer was simple: his children did not suffer from want, while countless people around him could not afford even one wholesome meal a day. He could not remain indifferent.

The only public office he sought was that of a councillor in the Kayamkulam municipality. As a councillor, he helped build three roads.

One runs right in front of my house. It connects the Kayamkulam-Punalur Road with several villages that once had no proper road connection. I use it every day without always remembering that the man who helped make it possible was once my ward councillor.

Another connected the present railway station with the Kayamkulam-Punalur Road. Baker Sahib persuaded schools to send students to help build it. There was no money allocated for such work those days.

The third road replaced a narrow pathway used by Marthomites going to church. It was bordered by pineapple plants whose sharp thorns on the leaves often caught the garments of women. Baker Sahib built a proper road there.

These roads continue to serve generations, most of whom probably have no idea who helped create them.

I would like the road in front of my house to be named after Baker Sahib. It would be a small but fitting tribute to a man whose public life was devoted to ordinary people.

Politics took another turn. Disillusioned when former supporters of the Travancore cause joined the Congress, Baker Sahib left the party. His contacts with leftist leaders eventually led him to become one of the four members of the first Communist Party cell established in Kayamkulam.

He later left the party when it split in 1964. Since then, he has remained a free bird, doing his bit to the socio-economic development of Kayamkulam.

Yet he takes pride in one thing: he has voted in every election in which he was entitled to vote, including an election from the era when only taxpayers could exercise the franchise.

For a man who entered public life under British rule, voting means more than putting a mark on a ballot paper. It represents the freedom for which his generation fought.

Perhaps that is the most important lesson of Baker Sahib’s life. Freedom was not an abstraction for him. He paid for it with imprisonment, police beatings and an underground existence. After independence, he treated freedom not as a licence for personal advancement but as an opportunity to serve those who had little.

Baker Sahib now has some age-related problems, as one might expect from a man approaching 105. Yet his health remains remarkably good, free from diabetes and fluctuating blood pressure and his children and grandchildren are around him. He named his house Sauhrutham (Friendship).

Meeting him was like meeting a living archive. History usually speaks through documents, monuments and books. Sometimes it speaks through a person.

Nehru spoke of India’s “Tryst with Destiny” on the midnight of August 14-15, 1947. Baker Sahib, in his own modest way, had already made his tryst with destiny.

While the nation celebrated freedom, he was in a prison cell. Yet he had helped make that freedom possible.

And when KA Baker Sahib speaks, history does not sound distant. It sounds as though it happened yesterday.

May he live many more years, in good health and with the same enthusiasm for life and social service that has defined his extraordinary journey.

[AJ Philip is a senior journalist/columnist. Email: ajphilip@gmail.com]