Malabar rebellion

Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon, Governor of Madras during the Rebellions and later Viceroy and Governor-General of India

Malabar's agricultural system was historically based on a hierarchy of privileges, rights and obligations for all principal social groups in what British administrator William Logan sometimes referred to as the "Father of Tenancy Legislation" in Malabar,[21] describing it as a system of 'corporate unity’ or joint proprietorship of each of the principal land right holders:[22][23]

The Jenmi, consisting mainly of the Namboothiri Brahmins and Nair chieftains, were the highest level of the hierarchy, and a class of people given hereditary land grants (''janmam'') by the Naduvazhis or rulers'. The rights conveyed by this janmam were not a freehold in the European sense, but an office of dignity. Owing to their ritual status as priests (Nambudris), the jenmis could neither cultivate nor supervise the land but would instead provide a grant of kanam (a form of land tenure) to a kanakkaran (holder of tenure) in return for a fixed share of the crops produced. Typically, a Jenmi would have a large number of kanakkarar under him.

The Verumpattakkarar, generally Thiyya and Mappila classes, cultivated the land but were also its part-proprietors under the kanakkarar. These classes were given a Verum Pattam (Simple Lease) of the land that was typically valid for one year. According to custom, they were also entitled to one-third or an equal share of the net produce.

The net produce of the land was the share left over after providing for the cherujanmakkar or all the other birthright holders such as the village carpenter, the goldsmith and agricultural labourers who helped to gather, prepare and store produce. The system ensured that no Jenmi could evict tenants under him except for non-payment of rent. This land tenure system was generally referred to as the janmi-kana-maryada (customary practices).[22][23]

Map of the Madras Presidency, after the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War.

During the Mysorean invasion of Malabar, the Jenmi took refuge in neighbouring states. The tenants and the Nair army men who could not escape were converted into Islam, as described in William Logan's Malabar Manual.[24] Thus, Tipu Sultan's Kingdom of Mysore, having driven the Jenmi out of Malabar, reached accord with the Muslim Kanakkars. A new system of land revenue was introduced for the first time in the region's history with the government share fixed on the basis of actual produce from the land.[25]

However, within five years, the East India Company took over Malabar, defeating Tipu Sultan and ending his reign over the region. This allowed the Jenmi to return to their homes and regain the lands lost during the Mysorean invasion, with the help of the Company administration and its duly-constituted courts.[26] The Company introduced several Western juridical concepts, such as that of absolute property rights, into the existing legal system of Malabar. Up until then, such rights had been unknown in the region and as a result all land became the private property of the Jenmi. This legal recognition gave them the right to evict tenants, which was in turn enforced through the colonial civil courts.[23][25] In the words of William Logan:

The [British] authorities, recognised the Janmi as absolute owner of his holding, and therefore free to take as big a share of the produce of the soil as he could get out of the classes beneath him... (Gradually) The British Courts backed up by Police and Magistrates and troops and big guns made the Janmi's independence complete. The hard terms thus imposed on the Kanakkaran had, of course, the effect of hardening the terms imposed by the Kanakkaran on those below him, the Verumpattakkar. The one-third of the net produce to which the Verumpattakkaran was customarily entitled, was more and more encroached upon as the terms imposed on the Kanakkaran became harder and harder. (Government of Madras. 1882, Vol. I: xvii, xxxi–ii)

As conditions worsened, rents rose to as high as 75–80% of net produce, leaving the Verumpattakkar cultivators largely "only straw".[25] This caused great resentment among the Mappilas, who, in the words of Logan, were "labouring late and early to provide a sufficiency of food for their wives and children".[23] Resentment among the Muslim tentant population due to being vulnerable to rack renting, insecure tenancy, and eviction at the hands of Hindu landlords (jenmi) sustained by British courts, the Mappillas responded in a series of outbreaks, in which they wanted their own death, 29 in number, between 1836 and 1919 were suppressed.[27] These usually involved the violence against Nambudiri and Nair landlords.[27] During the nineteenth century conversions to Islam heightened dramatically as lower caste[28] Cheruman serfs embraced Islam so that they got liberation from the caste system and support from fellow Muslims to protest against jenmi tyranny.[29] The colonial government referred to the outbreaks as "Moplah outrages", but modern historians tend to treat them as religious outbreaks[30] or expressions of agrarian discontent.[31] The outbreak of 1921–22 sustained this tradition of violence in Malabar with one crucial difference: this time it had also a political ideology and a formal organization.[19][8][22]

Diwan Bahadur C. Gopalan Nair in his book, The Moplah Rebellion 1921,[32] writes thus:

...it was not mere fanaticism, it was not agrarian trouble, it was not destitution, that worked on the minds of Ali Musaliar and his followers. The evidence conclusively shows that it was the influence of the Khilafat and Non-co-operation movements that drove them to their crime. It is this which distinguishes the present from all previous outbreaks. Their intention was, absurd though it may seem, to subvert the British Government and to substitute a Khilafat Government by force of arms.(Judgement in Case No. 7 of 1921 on the file of the Special Tribunal, Calicut.) ...

Nair noted Ali Musliyar rose to prominence at the instance of a Khilafat conference held in Karachi. Furthermore, Musliyar was not a native of Tirurangadi. He had only moved in 14 years earlier. So, according to Nair, there was not class revolt he was handling. It was a Khilafat edifice prepared and passed from distant Karachi, possibly controlled by spiritual leaders of Islam.[33]

The Khilafat movement was introduced into the district of Malabar on 28 April 1920, by a Resolution at the Malabar District Conference, held at Manjeri, the headquarters of Ernad Taluk. On 30 March 1921, there was a meeting at which one Abdulla Kutti Musaliar of Vayakkad lectured on Khilafat, in Kizhakoth Amsom, Calicut Taluk. And at a second meeting held the next day at Pannur Mosque, there was some unpleasantness between the Mappilas on one side, and Nairs and Tiyyar, who resented the Khilafat meeting, on the other. The Mappilas mustered the strength to attack the place of worship belonging to the Hindu Adhigari of the village.[33]

The Malabar Rebellion witnessed many attacks on British officers in the region. The Madras High Court, which adjudicated in this matter, had passed judgements on each of the cases against the various Mappila rioters who were captured.[34] The Madras High Court said on the matter,

It appears also that on the night of the 20th of August, at Nilambur 16 miles from Manjeri a police constable at Edavanna, were murdered and at Tiruvangadi in addition to Mr. Rowley and Lieutenant Johnston nine other persons were murdered. The police station at Manjeri was attacked on the night of the 21st; public officers at Manjeri on the 22nd. On the 24th of August Variyamkunnath Kunhahammad Haji who is described as the rebel leader arrived at Manjeri. All these incidents had occured [sic] when the respondent made the speech already referred to, and it was in such dangerous surroundings that he made it and the reference to Tiruvangadi in that speech has a consequence, a particular significance. Subsequent events are that on the 26th of August a retired police inspector was murdered at Anakayam near Manjeri by Variyamkunnath Kunhahammad Haji and his followers and on the 25th of August his head was paraded on a spear; and it was common ground that the respondent was at Manjeri from the morning of the 21st of August until the 30th of August.

The District Magistrate stated that reliable information had been received about 180 forced conversions of Hindus and the actual total may run into thousands.[35] Roland E. Miller estimates forced conversions as in the range of 200 and 2500.[36] In the aftermath of this violence, the Suddhi Movement was created by the Arya Samaj. They converted over 2,000 Hindus who had been forcibly converted to Islam by the Mappilas. Sumit Sarkar in Modern India quotes an Arya Samaj source that claimed about 600 Hindus were killed and 2,500 forcibly converted during the rebellion.[16] Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji claimed to have killed the alleged British agents and spies responsible for the forced conversion of Hindus to Mohammadanism and killing others.[37][38] However, their leader, Swami Shraddhananda was stabbed on 23 December 1926 by an Islamist at his Ashram.

The following were the various leaders of the movement, who were sentenced to death following the Malabar Rebellion:[39]

• Ali Musliyar, leader of the rebellion
• Kunhi Kadir, Khilafat Secretary, Tanur
• Variankunnath Kunhammad Haji
• Kunhj Koya, Thangal, President of the Khilafat Committee, Malappuram
• Koya Tangal of Kumaramputhur, Governor of a Khilafat principality
• Chembrasseri Imbichi Koya Thangal, notorious for his alleged killing of 38 men by slashing their necks and throwing them into a well
• Palakamthodi Avvocker Musaliar
• Konnara Mohammed Koya Thangal

The Khilafat Committee in Nagpur (in January 1921) headed by Syed of Ponnani Juma Masjid extended full support for the Nagpur Resolution of Congress that called for non-cooperation. Syed was the highest religious authorities for the Moplahs and called for complete support of non-cooperation.[40] However Gandhi's tenet of non-violence was not accepted by the committee.[41]

In April 1921 a conference attended by Gandhi and Ali Brothers in Madras was attended in large numbers by Moplahs. Maulana Muhammad Ali of Ali Brothers made a statement that "if the Afghans invaded Bharat to evict the British, he would support them and fight the British and anyone else who opposed the Afghan invasion".[40]

A dispute between Nilambur Raja (a Namboodiri landlord) and V. Mohammad (a Moplah Khilafatist) in July 1921 lead to a police search of V. Mohammad. The situation escalated when hundreds of Moplahs and Khilaftists marched towards Raja's home carrying war knives, swords, and other weapons.[6] The mob was dispersed after the intervention of Khilafat Committee of Malappuram.[42]

District Collector E. F. Thomas request reinforcements of British Troop stating "it is with the deepest regret, that I inform Government that the situation is beyond the District officials".[6] The Governor of Madras wrote to Viceroy of India stating that "speeches on the Khilafat question combined with the resolutions of the recent All-India Khilafat Conference at Karachi have produced an impression on the mind of the Mappilla that the end of the British Raj is at hand".[6][40]

On 7 December 1921 two American newspapers reported the message received by the Friends of Freedom for India from Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji in a cablegram. In these two American newspaper reports the message was preceded by the following sentence: "Charges that the Moplahs of Malabar have put to death many Hindus and forcibly converted others to Mohammedanism were denied and characterized as part of a British plot to discredit the Moplah movement of India's independence in a cablegram from Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji..."[53][54]

In the message he said :

"A few cases of conversion of our Hindu brethren have been reported to me." the message said. "But after proper investigation we discovered the real plot. The vandals that were guilty of this crime were members of the British reserve police and British intelligence department, and they joined our forces as patriots to do such filthy work only to discredit our soldiers. There are Christians, Hindus and Moplahs amongst these British agents and spies.[38] They have decidedly been put to death.[55]

"We are at war with England. We are fighting for the independence of India, and we are doing exactly what the Americans did to free America from British domination. So anyone giving aid and comfort to the enemy will be se verely dealt with, irrespective of social position or religious affliation.

"Let the great people of the great land of Washington postpone judgment until they have a chance to know the full truth about the present war in Malabar."

[54][37]

B. R. Ambedkar, who advocated for the formation of Pakistan[56] in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India (1945),[57] wrote on the rebellion:[58]

The blood-curdling atrocities committed by the Moplas in Malabar against the Hindus were indescribable. All over Southern India, a wave of horrified feeling had spread among the Hindus of every shade of opinion, which was intensified when certain Khilafat leaders were so misguided as to pass resolutions of congratulations to the Moplas on the brave fight they were conducting for the sake of religion". Any person could have said that this was too heavy a price for Hindu-Muslim unity. But Mr. Gandhi was so much obsessed by the necessity of establishing Hindu-Muslim unity that he was prepared to make light of the doings of the Moplas and the Khilafats who were congratulating them. He spoke of the Mappilas as the "brave God-fearing Moplahs who were fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner which they consider as religious ".

Annie Besant, who wanted dominion status for India,[59] opposed the non-cooperation movement, supported the Montague-Chelmsford reforms, who had adverse effect on her popularity due to difference of opinion and later left the political field,[60] recounts in two separate articles in New India on 29 November 1921 and 6 December 1921 as to what happened to the Malabar Hindus at the hands of the Moplahs:[61]

Mr. Gandhi...can he not feel a little sympathy for thousands of women left with only rags, driven from home, for little children born of the flying mothers on roads in refuge camps? The misery is beyond description. Girl wives, pretty and sweet, with eyes half blind with weeping, distraught with terror; women who have seen their husbands hacked to pieces before their eye, in the way "Moplas consider as religious"; old women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish and who cry at a gentle touch...men who have lost all, hopeless, crushed, desperate...Can you conceive of a more ghastly and inhuman crime than the murders of babies and pregnant women?...A pregnant woman carrying 7 months was cut through the abdomen by a rebel and she was seen lying dead on the way with the dead child projecting out of the womb...Another: a baby of six months was snatched away from the breast of his own mother and cut into two pieces... Are these rebels human beings or monsters?

A respectable Nayar Lady at Melatur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers, who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence they were compelled at the point of sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence.

Annie Besant, who once led a walk out in the fifth District Conference held at Manjeri, Ernad taluk after the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms was opposed in overwhelming support in a resolution in the conference,[62] said on the rebellion:[63]

"They established the Khilafat Raj, crowned a King, murdered and plundered abundantly, and killed or drove away all Hindus who would not apostatise. Somewhere about a lakh people were driven from their homes with nothing but the clothes they had on, stripped of everything."

Here is the text of Resolution No. 3 of the Ahmedabad session of the INC, where Gandhiji was appointed as its sole executive authority, on 24 December 1921, in connection with the Moplah Riots:[64]

The Congress expresses its firm conviction that the Moplah disturbance was not due to the Non-Co-operation or the Khilafat movement, especially as the...Khilafat preachers were denied access to the affected parts by the District authorities for six months before the disturbance, but is due to causes wholly unconnected with the two movements and that the outbreak would not have occurred had the message of non-violence been allowed to reach them. Nevertheless, this Congress...is of the opinion that the...disturbance in Malabar could have been prevented by the Government of Madras accepting the proffered assistance of Maulana Yakub Hassan...

Here the rebuttal of D.V. Gundappa to INC's statement:[64]

We need not...consider the propriety of the blameless [Congress]. We are concerned chiefly with the spirit in which the Congress viewed...responsibility. Firstly, is the period of six months the maximum term for which the seeds of disaffection sown into the mind of a notoriously fanatical population could remain potential? Is it not possible to argue...that the preaching done before six months must have been remarkably good if it could take so fierce...a form in so short a time? ... if the message of non-violence was not allowed to reach the Moplahs, was any other message allowed to reach them? And who delivered it? Thirdly, if it is claimed...that...non-violence can quell any kind of armed rising, does it not follow that it should have been conveyed five years ago to England and France and Germany? On the other hand, if the claim...[is that]...non-violence can succeed only with a people in religious frenzy, are not those who first put them in such frenzy answerable to those who suffer its consequences?

Swami Shraddhanand in the Liberator of 26 August 1926:[65]

The original resolution condemned the Moplas wholesale for the killing of Hindus and burning of Hindu homes and the forcible conversion to Islam. The Hindu members themselves proposed amendments till it was reduced to condemning only certain individuals who had been guilty of the above crimes. But some of the Moslem leaders could not bear this even. Maulana Fakir and other Maulanas, of course, opposed the resolution and there was no wonder. But I was surprised, an out-and-out Nationalist like Maulana Hasrat Mohani opposed the resolution on the ground that the Mopla country no longer remained Dar-ul-Aman but became Dar-ul-Harab and they suspected the Hindus of collusion with the British enemies of the Moplas. Therefore, the Moplas were right in presenting the Quran or sword to the Hindus. And if the Hindus became Mussalmans to save themselves from death, it was a voluntary change of faith and not forcible conversion—Well, even the harmless resolution condemning some of the Moplas was not unanimously passed but had to be accepted by a majority of votes only.

The Viceroy, Lord Reading:

Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting of their houses in Ernad, etc, the forcible conversion of Hindus in the beginning of the Moplah rebellion and the wholesale conversion of those who stuck to their homes in later stages, the brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus without the slightest reason except that they are "Kafirs" or belonged to the same religion as the policemen, who their mosques, burning of Hindu temples, the outrage on Hindu women and their forcible conversion and marriage by the Moplahs.

The Rani of Nilambur in a petition to Lady Reading:[33]

But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully apprised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels; of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers;of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse; of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive; of our hapless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hell-hounds could conceive of; of thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder-mounds out of sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction; of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie or else smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard-earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a piece or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or chilly or betel-leaf - rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies.

Second Dorsets to deploy from Bangalore to Malabar in 1921

A conference held at Calicut presided over by the Zamorin of Calicut, the Ruler of Malabar issued a resolution:[66]

"That the conference views with indignation and sorrow the attempts made at various quarters by interested parties to ignore or minimise the crimes committed by the rebels such as: brutally dishonouring women, flaying people alive, wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children, burning alive entire families, forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those who refused to get converted, throwing half-dead people into wells and leaving the victims to struggle for escape till finally released from their suffering by death, burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in the disturbed areas in which even Moplah women and children took part and robbed women of even the garments on their bodies, in short reducing the whole non-Muslim population to abject destitution, cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus by desecrating and destroying numerous temples in the disturbed areas, killing cows within the temple precincts putting their entrails on the holy image and hanging skulls on the walls and the roofs."

K. P. Kesava Menon, who was the grandson of the Maharaja of Palakkad, and had been a part of the Khilafat movement said:[67]

"There is no doubt regarding the genesis of the rebellion in 1921. It was born out of police repression. Its chief cause was the excessive violence used by the authorities to suppress the Khilafat Movement, and not any Jenmi-Kudiyan conflict, or dispute regarding the mosque. When police atrocities became unbearable, they gave up the vow of non-violence, and decided to meet the violence (by the British police) with violence itself."

The English translation of the letter written to the newspaper The Hindu by Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji, as appeared in the newspaper on 18 October 1921:[68]

"Honoured Editor, I request you to publish the following facts in your paper. According to the Press Reports from Malabar which you will have got, Hindu-Muslim Unity in Malabar has thoroughly ceased to exist. It appears that the report that Hindus are forcibly converted (by any men) is entirely untrue. Such conversions were done by the Government Party and Reserve Policemen in mufti mingling themselves with the rebels (masquerading as rebels.) Moreover, because some Hindu brethren, aiding the military, handed over to the military innocent (Moplahs) who were hiding from the military, a few Hindus have been put to some trouble. Besides, the Nambudiri, who is the cause of this rising, has also similarly suffered. The Hindus are compulsorily impressed for military service. Therefore, several Hindus seek protection in my Hill. Several Moplahs, too, have sought my protection. Now the chief military commander [of the government] is causing Hindus to evacuate from these Taluks. Innocent women and children of Islam, who have done nothing and possess nothing, are not permitted to leave the place. The Hindus are compulsorily impressed for military service. Therefore, several Hindus seek protection in my hill. Several Moplahs, too, have sought my protection. For the last one month and a half, except for the seizure and punishment of the innocent, no purpose has been achieved. Let all the people in the world know this. Let Mahatma Gandhi and Moulana know it. If this letter is not seen published, I will ask your explanation at one time."

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was formed by K. B. Hedgewar in the aftermath of the Hindu-Muslim riots during Khilafat Movement and particularly due to those during Moplah Riots.[69]