A modern society is judged not only by what it builds, but by whom it chooses to honour. Streets, ports, airports, museums and public institutions are not neutral objects; they are monuments of memory. Through them, a society declares its moral lineage. Who shaped it, who sacrificed for it, and whose legacy guides its future. Kerala now stands at a pivotal moment to make such a declaration: Vizhinjam International Port should be named as Ayyankali International port, the legendary anti-caste revolutionary who was born and lived in Venganoor, a village adjacent to Vizhinjam itself.

To name the port after Ayyankali is not an act of symbolic charity. It is an act of historical rectification restoring to the public sphere a titan whose memory caste society want to erase.

The Toussaint Louver

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