Sunday, July 24, 2011

Mappila uprisings in Malabar


The period from1850 to 1920 witnessed a series of Mappila uprisings in Malabar. In Malabar the Mappila peasants rebelled against the landlords and the British. It was essentially a conflict between the landlords and peasants. But it was given communal colouring by the colonial state since landlords were Hindus and the peasants were Muslims.

The landlords resorted to repression. In their attempt to smother the peasant movement they also burnt the bodies of the rebels in order to produce a demoralizing effect. The peasants started looting the property and burning the houses of landlords as well as defiling temples. These acts gave an anti-Hindu turn to what was essentially a class conflict between peasants and landlords.

In 1921 a large-scale peasant rebellion brokeout in Malabar. Malabar had a population with a large proportion of Muslims. In Malabar Muslims are called Mappilas. They were mainly tenant cultivators. The Khilafat Non Co-operation movement had a profound impact on Malabar. The British Government prohibited Khilafat meetings and demonstrations. The arrest of Yakub Hassan, a Khilafat leader added fuel to fire. The peasant protest soon developed into a massive action. The protest took a form of an armed uprising. The peasants attacked government offices, burnt records, looted the treasuries and attacked unpopular landlords. But, the Government suppressed the rebellion.

3 comments:

  1. It was not a peasant revolt. The Mappilla insurgents had attacked many poor Thiyya peasants and spread terror among Hindu residents. It was a communal flareup to establish the rule of the Turkish Caliph in Malabar. The British were taken unawares in the initial stage. But soon they brought enough soldiers and crushed it to establish law and order in the troubled province.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even thought what you say is technically true, there is a wider issue to it. During the British rule of Malabar district, there had been a lot of conversion from the labourer classes of the South Malabar (Makkathaya) Thiyyas to Islam. The conversion need not be due to any pious reasons. Using the newfound social platform of Islam, these new converts refused to address their earlier social superiors with terms of ‘respect’. There had been instances when the upper castes were addressed by name, and they and their children mentioned as Avan/Oan, Aval/Oal, and addressed as Ijj/Inhi (Nee) by these converts. This had been met with vehement anger by the upper castes.

      On the side of the newly converted to Islam Thiyyas, they were also not ready to bear the same words on them from their erstwhile superior castes. Their only defence against such usages was to go in for violence. The fact is that everywhere in India, this is the only defence against such usages.

      In recent time, in Nadapuram area, the same issue had created communal clashes, which actually were the fight between the labour classes among the North Malabar Thiyyas and the gulf-moneyed rich Muslims. In fact, there had even been demonstrations by the Thiyyas labour classes in the locality, a few years back against the habit of the rich Muslims to address them as ‘Chekkan’ and ‘Pennu’.

      The Mappilla Lahala was not an anti-British rebellion. Indian academic historians can take a sip of some inebriating drink and write much more nonsense. Their writings actually do not have much . Connecting the spurs and triggers to Khilaphet Movement and to Gandhi’s verbal diarrhoea are also meaningless. The triggers for communal clashes are embedded in the local vernacular.

      The British connection was only to bring timely protection to the civilians who were caught between murderous mobs. If armed forces had not come in time, the place would have seen a massacre of an unbelievable level. Then again the fault would have been placed on the English administration, by the modern Indian academicians.

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete