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Where workers unite: Kerala to get India’s first labour movement museum
A 50,000-sq-ft space set to open in Alappuzha in July will celebrate the coir factory workers who formed the first labour body in India nearly a century ago, and fought in the freedom movement too.
Way back in 1922, India’s first labour body, the Travancore Labour Association, was formed in Alappuzha, in the then princely state of Travancore. It was formed to protect the interests of workers of one factory, Empire Coir Works. Over the years, it became a representative body for all workers of the flourishing coir industry in Kerala. This marked the beginning of the labour movement in India.
Now, at a 50,000-sq-ft museum set to open in Alappuzha in July, visitors can see how coir is woven, and revisit how the industry birthed the labour movement nearly a century ago.
The Labour Movement museum will display objects, photographs and information about the 2,000-plus labourers and martyrs who also participated in India’s freedom struggle.
It will showcase archival photographs and videos of the labour movement and a film on the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising of 1946 — a communist uprising in the princely state of Travancore against the ruler’s Diwan or prime minister, CP Ramaswami Iyer, sparked by new laws that gave him more powers and rumours that he was trying to declare Travancore an independent state not affiliated to the soon-to-be-Independent India. Over two days, during protests led by the Communist Party of India — then barely 20 years old as a party, but already a force to reckon with in the region — over 600 protestors were reportedly killed by soldiers of the ruler of Travancore.
The Labour Movement museum will be housed in the Kerala State Coir Corporation building, which is over 100 years old and was formerly run by the Volkart Brothers (Swiss businessmen who co-founded Voltas, the multinational home appliances company now part of the Tata group), says Nowshad PM, managing director of Muziris Heritage Project.
The two-storey structure is being restored by conservationist Benny Kuriakose, who is working with the state government on the larger Muziris Heritage Project under which these museums fall. The structure is built in the traditional architectural style of the region, with teak beams, a thatched roof and large, high-ceilinged rooms arranged around a courtyard. “Unlike in Mumbai, where all the old textile mills have been converted into real-estate, this project will conserve the old structures and convert them into museums,” Kuriakose says.
The Alappuzha Heritage Project will see the opening of 20 other such museums in the area, on themes ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to naval heritage. Also on the cards is the restoration of heritage structures such as the old Alappuzha port office, the Saukar Masjid (only mosque in Alappuzha without a minaret) and the Makham Masjid, the oldest mosque in the town, built in the second half of the 19th century.
