SEE POSTS OF AUGUST 2011 FOR MAPPILA RIOT INCIDENTS

The incidents during the Mappila Lahala have been included as posts in August 2011. You can see them by clicking the '2011' icon and then the  'August' icon on the right side of the blog....I would welcome comments..any comments...

GANDHIJI and the MALABAR RIOTS

 E- Book on Gandhi and the Malabar riots written by C Shankaran Nair, President of the Indian National Congress.
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Gandhiji's comments on the Mappila riot

“ My heart bleeds to think that Moplah brethren have gone mad,I am grieved to think that they have looted Hindu homes leaving hundreds of men and women homeless and fondless and they have killed officers. I am grieved to think that they have endeavored forcibly to convert Hindus to islam and by all these acts they have done an injury. “

-          Sep 19, 1921 at Trichanapoly

“The Hindus, instead of running away to save their lives would have been truly non violent and would have covered themselves in Glory and added luster to their faith and won the friendship of their Mussalman assailants if they has stood bare breast with smiles on their lips and died at their post”

      -‘Young India’ May 29 , 1924

 “He who is kind to the cruel ends up being cruel to the kind.” - Old Talmudic saying

"Brutal and unrestrained barbarism" - Sri BR Ambedkar's comments on the riots

The Moplas were suddenly carried off their feet by this agitation. The outbreak was essentially a rebellion against the British Government The aim was to establish the kingdom of Islam by overthrowing the British Government. Knives, swords and spears were secretly manufactured, bands of desperadoes collected for an attack on British authority. On 20th August a severe encounter took place between the Moplas and the British forces at Thirurangadi. Roads were blocked, telegraph lines cut, and the railway destroyed in a number of places. As soon as the administration had been paralyzed, the Moplas declared that Swaraj had been established. A certain Ali Musaliar was proclaimed Raja, Khilafat flags were flown, and Ernad and Walluvanad were declared Khilafat Kingdoms. 

As a rebellion against the British Government it was quite understandable. But what baffled most was the treatment accorded by the Moplas to the Hindus of Malabar. The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at the hands of the Moplas. Massacres, forcible conversions, desecration of temples, foul outrages upon women, such as ripping open pregnant women, pillage, arson and destruction- in short, all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism, were perpetrated freely by the Moplas upon the Hindus until such time as troops could be hurried to the task of restoring order through a difficult and extensive tract of the country. The number of Hindus who were killed, wounded or converted, is not known. But the number must have been enormous

- Pakistan or Partition of India

Malabar’s Agony - Annie Besant writes on Gandhiji’s ‘Mappila brothers’

" It would be well if Mr. Gandhi be taken into Malabar to see with his own eyes the ghastly horror which have been created by his preaching and of his “loved brothers” Mohammed and Shaukal Ali. Mr. Gandhi asked the Moderates to compel the Government to suspend hostilities, i.e. to let loose the wolves to destroy what lives are left.  The Murderers, the looters, the ravishers have put into practice the teachings of paralyzing the Government by making war on the Government in their own way.

            How does Mr. Gandhi like the Mopla spirit, as shown by one of the prisoners in the hospital, who was dying from the results of asphyxiation?  He asked the surgeon, if he was going to die and the surgeon answered that he feared he would not recover. “Well, I am glad that I killed 14 infidels” said the ‘Brave, God-fearing Mopla’, whom Mr. Gandhi so much admires who “are fighting for what they consider” as religion, and in a manner they consider as religious”.  Men who consider it “religious” to murder, rape, loot, to kill women and little children, cutting down whole families, have to be put under restraint in any civilized society.

            Mr. Gandhi was shocked when some Parsi ladies had their saris torn on, and very properly, yet the God fearing hooligans had been taught that it was sinful to wear foreign cloth, and doubtless felt they were doing a religious act; can he not feel a little sympathy for thousands of women left with only rage, driven from home, for little children born of the dying mothers on roads in refugee 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 backed to pieces before their eyes, in the way “Moplas consider as religious”, old women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish and who cry at a gentle touch and a kind look waking out of a stupor of misery only to weep, men who have lost all - hopeless, crushed, desperate.  I have walked among thousands of them in the refuge camps, and some times heavy eyes would lift as a cloth was laid gently on the bare shoulder and a faint watery smile of surprise would make the face even more piteous than the stupor.  Eyes full of appeal, of agonized despair, of hopeless entreaty, of helpless anguish, thousands of them camp after camp, “Shameful inhumanity proceeding in Malabar “says Mr. Gandhi Shameful inhumanity indeed. Wrought by the Moplas, and where are the victims, saved from extermination by British and India swords. For be it remembered the Moplas began the whole home business; the Government intervened to save their victims and these thousands have been saved.  Mr. Gandhi would have hostility suspended – so that the Moplas may sweep down on the refugee camps, and finish their work”.

            Let me finish within beautiful story told to me. Two Pulayas the lowest of the submerged classes, were captured with others and given the choice between Islam and Death.  These, the outcast of Hinduism, the untouchables, so loved the Hinduism which had been so unkind a step-mother to them, that they chose to die Hindus rather than to live Muslim.  May the God of both, Muslim and Hindus send his messengers to these heroic souls, and give them rebirth into the faith for which they died."

 - New India, 29 November 1921

Mannur Holocaust ( Nov 8, 1921 )

Kalladithodi and Koormantara are 2 big towns which had arranged watchmen for protection. The attack which usually occured during the night occurred during daytime here. The weapons which were stored at Kalladithodi was seized.  On hearing sounds of gunfire people came out thinking that the army had arrived and were in turn confronted by the rebels. The rebels divided themselves into several groups.  One group went into a killing spree, while the other two groups engaged in  for setting fire to houses and looting. Since the rebels had come in large numbers, the atrocities were also aplenty. 

                        The rioters on 8^th November 1921 consisted of 500 men and continued their murderous rampage for two whole days.  They went down to the railway at Mannur. Some of them returned by boats. Sixteen boat loaded with men went to Tirurangadi.  Beside men, children and women were also killed in this raid.  After Mannur, the gang set fire to over 100 houses at neighboring Vallikunnu amsam.  The bodies of the slaughtered people were dumped into the river and Kerala Patrika paper reported 40 Hindus killed and a 7 months pregnant lady dead with the dead fetus protruding out of the slit abdomen.

                        The hideous massacre caused exodus of a large number of Hindus from this area.  'A' Company of M.S.P. from Ramanattukara reached on 9^th November morning and found houses still burning and saw many horribly mutilated bodies of Hindus. The MSP killed many rebels who had not left with the main party.  Four rebels were arrested by locals while setting fire to a Hindu house, one a Tirurangadi man wearing a Khilafat badge on his fez. This gang had very few guns but all carried war knives and peculiarly shaped clubs.

- Gopalan Nair P 57 / Madhavan Nair P 236 , 238

/ Press communiqué, Calicut 14^th Nov. 1921.

Murders – different strokes

Thenhipalam amsam on the route from Tirurangadi to Ramanattukara was attacked on October 10^th and murders committed.  Thirty armed rebels went to the house of the brothers Cheku and Velu asking accommodation for the night and on being refused butchered them while their sister fled.  Several other murders and lootings were committed here.

                        The murders at Tuvvur were after the Dorsets went through Ernad. The victims were men who assisted the troops. The coolies who assisted the Gurkhas were murdered at Vengur while in Muthumana Illam it was refusal to convert which resulted in killing.  

Those killed at Shornur were people who were not known to the rebel leaders and the murders were simple criminal acts. Harmless and poor Hindus, women and children were butchered by people who knew them all their lives.