The monsoon rains are lashing Kozhikode in north Kerala, but they don’t seem to bother the elderly man, sleeping outside the District Collector's office at night. The cloth tent above offers little shelter. In the day he can be found sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with protesting Adivasi families: For nearly 70 days, 60 tribal families from Nilambur have been on an indefinite strike in nearby Mallapuram demanding the land long promised to them by the state.
Very much at the centre of this fight – its convener, its most constant presence, its moral backbone – is 96-year-old Ayinoor Vasu or ‘Grow’ Vasu as he is fondly called. The frail frame and gentle voice hold unbending conviction. At an age when most men retreat into silence and leisure, Vasu continues to throw his weight behind the dispossessed. “The government is cheating these [tribal] families in the name of technicalities,” he says, his eyes fierce beneath the wrinkles. “Land is their right, not charity.”
The agitation follows a 314-day hunger strike that the same Nilambur families had staged before the ITDP (Integrated Tribal Development Project) office in 2023–24.
That protest was called off after the District Collector assured them in writing that each of the 60 families would be given 50 cents of land within six months. But when 15 months later the state’s promises turned into excuses, the families returned to the streets to continue their protest. And Grow Vasu, once branded a dangerous Naxalite, spends most of his nights on the hard ground of the satyagraha pandal.
This is not his first clash with the state in recent years. In 2023 he spent two months in prison for his role in a protest against police action in Kozhikode district. The case dated back to November 2016, when he stood outside Kozhikode Medical College mortuary demanding a judicial probe into the alleged fake encounter killings of Maoists Koppam Devarajan and Ajitha in Nilambur forests.
He had refused to apply for bail when arrested. As in the past, prison did not break him; acquittal only sharpened his critique of state violence.








