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Malabar Rebellion Page & T.Pmd The Malabar Rebellion Introduction he Malabar Rebellion of 1921-’22 has been a topic of lively interest, Tand, at times, even of bitter controversy, ever since it broke out in August 1921 at Tirurangadi, a small town on the banks of the Kadalundi river in the erstwhile British district of Malabar, now in the Malappuram district of the Kerala State, India. From the beginning every attempt to examine and explain the rebellion has had to face the fact that it was not a simple act of revolt for easily discernible reasons. The complexity was soon confounded by a host of contradictory statements and declarations on the rebellion that made everything about the upheaval seem complicated and confused. The situation was so hopeless that in 1924 Mahatma Gandhi asked the public to conclude with him “That it is impossible to arrive at the exact truth (about the rebellion)” - Young India, 29 May 1924. The rebellion was an occurrence of considerable importance in the history of the Indian National Movement. The violent uprising started at a time and, ironically, as part of the non-violent non-co-operation campaign of the Indian National Congress against the British regime in India. It was an embarrassment to the nationalist leaders not only because it was violent but also because it seriously threatened to disturb the relationship between BOOKSthe Hindu and Muslim communities in Malabar, and by implication, in the whole sub-continent, when one of the basic aims of the nationalist campaign was Hindu-Muslim unity. It cast a shadow of gloom over the whole national movement, and in spite of the best efforts of Gandhiji and other leaders of the movement to dispel the gloomDC by throwing more light on the incidents of Malabar in 1921-’22, the ambiguity regarding many aspects of the rebellion continued to confuse all enquiries and discussions about it. All further developments in the national movement in Kerala, and to an extent in other parts of India, bore the marks of the violent events in Malabar resulting in tension between Hindu and Muslim communities. A proper academic study of the rebellion was impossible till all the official records, including the secret and confidential papers, became available for research after fifty years of the event, i.e., till 1971-72. Since then some academic attempts have been made to probe the history of the rebellion and these have yielded three valuable studies: Stephen 9 The Malabar Rebellion F. Dale, The Islamic Society on the South Asian Frontier: The Mappilas of Malabar, 1498-1922, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980; Conrad Wood, The Moplah Rebellion and its Genesis, P. P. H., New Delhi, 1987 and K. N. Panikkar, Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1836-1921, O.U.P., Delhi, 1989. Stephen F. Dale traced the ‘militancy’ of Mappilas from the times of the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast and viewed the Mappila uprisings of the 19th century and the Rebellion as part of the efforts to defend what he calls ‘the Islamic frontier’ of South Asia. Panikkar and Wood have explored the socio- economic conditions of the poor Mappila tenants and cultivators of the British district of Malabar to show how under conditions of real grievances religion (Islam) became ‘the ideology which enabled discontent to be translated into action.’ My work is different from these in being an account of the historical and immediate circumstances of the rebellion as also the events of the rebellion, followed by an analytical assessment which shows the rising to be basically political (anti-British) in motivation that made it much more than a rising against the landlords and the State in protest against the oppressive socio-economic conditions of the peasantry. The best account of the rebellion by a contemporary observer is Malabar Kalapam (‘Malabar Rebellion’-Malayalam, Calicut, 1971) by K. Madhavan Nair (1882-1933). Though published in the early seventies there is internal evidence to show that it was written soon after the rebellion (in 1923 or ‘24). Madhavan Nair, the first Secretary and later the first President of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, was involved in most incidents preceding the uprising and cannot be considered a totally unbiased observer. But as the most active Congress leader he had a unique opportunity BOOKSto observe closely the events leading to the rising and of the events of the rebellion. His acquaintance with the places of its occurrence and the people initially responsible for it, and his use of the statements made by a number of people—Hindus and Muslims, men and women-who witnessed the rebel activities and suffered from them DCas well as the military action against the rebels, made his work a notable contribution towards understanding rebellion. Other accounts of the rebellion by contemporaries have also been used as valuable sources in this study. However the, limitations of such accounts, including that of Madhavan Nair, have been kept in view. During the period of Martial Law administration of the territory affected by the rebellion, movement of people within the area as well as between the area and the outside world was restricted and controlled by both the British authorities and the rebels. This limited the direct knowledge of civilians about the incidents of the rebellion. The breakdown of all facilities of communication between the people of the 10 The Malabar Rebellion rebel area and those outside it made everyone depend upon rumours that mostly contained exaggerated and distorted versions of rebel activities. Most survivors of the rebel region appear to have been influenced by much politicized later versions of the rebellion making it difficult to gather reliable information from them. The attitude of the British government towards the rebels cannot be expected to be impartial; all the government records naturally reflect in one way or other the regime’s hostility to the rebels. However, the letters, reports and notes that circulated among the government’s functionaries involved in managing the situation, from the early signs of unrest to the final suppression of the uprising, could not but be objective in so far as the officers meant business. These materials kept in the Archive at Madras form an important source of information on the rebellion and its suppression, and have been used as such in this study. It is difficult to ascertain from all the information on the rebellion, from the versions of the happenings by the pro-rebels and the anti- rebels, the real motives that worked behind the violent activities of the rebels. The correspondence between the British officers in Malabar and the officers in Madras show that they (mostly the officers in Malabar) almost anticipated the uprising at least from the middle of February 1921. But it can be argued that the fear of the administration about violence from the Mappila Khilafatists led to certain measures of the district authorities which in turn were disturbing enough for the Mappilas of the Khilafat movement to rise in revolt. But whatever the immediate provocation, a rebellion of the force and magnitude of the one of 1921 could not have taken place but for very powerful long standing motivations, perhapsBOOKS not consciously felt by the individuals involved, but embedded in the living culture and belief system of the Mappila community. The Mappilas of interior south Malabar would appear to have aspired for political power of their own after the withdrawal of Tipu Sultan from north Kerala in late 18th Century. The turbulence of DCthe Mappilas in the early years of the British regime, in spite of the attempts of the British officers to redress their individual grievances and to pacify them, indicated the powerful thrust of the community to assert their desire for political seft-determination which was later nurtured by their religious leaders like Sayed Alavi Tangal and Syed Fazl Pookkoya Tangal of Mambram near Tirurangadi. The District Magistrate felt in the middle of 19th century that Sayed Fazl had established an imperium in imperium using his great popularity among the Mappilas, and took much trouble to induce him to leave the country. The Mappilas revenged the expulsion of their revered Tangal by murdering the powerful District Magistrate. Such incidents 11 The Malabar Rebellion clearly reveal the political dimension of the turbulence of the Mappila community in interior south Malabar. The political nature of the rebellion was evident to the British officers who closely watched the unrest that generated the rebellious rising as well as the various aspect of the rebellion, and their observations help in establishing the rebellion as basically a political thrust against the Bristish with a view to establish a Khilafat (Islamic) government. The long term consequences of the political aspirations of the Mappilas do not form part of this study. Discussions with Prof. Stephen F. Dale of the Department of History of the Ohio State University, U.S.A., Dr. M. G.S. Narayanan and Dr. M. P. Sreekumaran Nair, both formerly of the History Department of the Calicut University, Kerala, and Dr. M. N. Karassery of the Malayalam Department of the Calicut University, Kerala have helped me in the preparation of this work. Prof. P. P. Sudhakaran, formerly of the History Departments of the Colleges under the Higher Education Department of Kerala State, and Dr. J. Devika of the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, helped me with suggestions after reading the conculding chapter. Professor of English R. C. Thampy and Dr. M. Radhakrishnan read the whole text and gave me valuable suggestions to improve the presentation and simplify the language of this work. I am thankful to all these friends for their contributions.
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