The proclamation was granted, but it was not given freely. It closed twenty years of organised pressure.
The Vaikom satyagraha of 1924 and 1925 contested the roads rather than the sanctum: volunteers, including Ezhavas, Nairs and Christians, occupied the approaches to the Vaikom Mahadeva temple to establish a right of passage. It drew Periyar E. V. Ramasamy from Madras, brought Gandhi to negotiate in 1925, and ended with three of the four roads opened. The Guruvayur satyagraha of 1931 and 1932, led by K. Kelappan, targeted a temple directly and included a fast; a referendum of caste Hindus in the locality returned a majority for entry, and the temple's authorities still refused.
Behind the campaigns lay a longer social movement. Narayana Guru, an Ezhava ascetic who consecrated a Shiva image at Aruvippuram in 1888 with the announcement that it was an Ezhava Shiva, had spent forty years arguing that ritual exclusion had no basis in the tradition it claimed. His organisation, the SNDP Yogam, supplied much of the movement's membership.
The state also had reasons of its own. Conversion to Christianity and to Islam among excluded communities was substantial and was noticed. Sir C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, the Dewan, is generally credited with persuading the palace that the proclamation was the safer course.