#PanditaRamabai

“The historian P. Sanal Mohan has called Ayyaṅkāḷi the most important leader of modern Kerala — and most Indian readers, meeting that sentence, are meeting the name for the first time. Both halves of that fact belong in this chapter.”

“Rights are not granted; they are used. A man forbidden a road bought a bullock cart and drove down it. When the schools stayed shut to his people's children, he withdrew his people's labour from the rice fields until they opened — probably the first organized strike by agricultural labourers anywhere in India.”