Jihad and Genocide in Malabar
Ramachandran
31. One Blind Woman Too Cut Down
The Nilambur Kingdom was a former feudal city-state in present-day Kerala, situated near the Nilgiri range of the Western Ghats. It was ruled by Samantha Kshatriyas who were the vassals of the Zamorins of Calicut, with the capital located 25 kilometres north of Manjeri in Malappuram. Nilambur Kovilakam (palace) and Vettakkorumakan Temple are situated on the banks of the Chaliyar river and Nilambur is known for its unique teak plantations. The Nilambur – Shornur Railway Line was built by the British to carry wood and other products from these forests to the outside world. During the Mysore invasion, the dynastic rule came to an end.
On the night of 20 August 200-300 Mappilas in Pookkottur, with men from Melmuri, started for Nilambur.On their way, they looted the Edavanna Police outpost wounding the Thiya sentry with swords. At Nilambur, they uttered a Kootta Bank at the junction of the Kovilakam road with the main road and with the local Mappila Sub Inspector who joined them, they turned to the Kovilakam. They were opposed by the Hindu watchmen who fired on them; in retaliation, the Mappilas murdered 16 persons including two women, one of whom was blind. They broke into the Kovilakam and did enormous damage.
The group of rioters was not recognized by the residents of the Kovilakam for some time as the rebel convoy looked like a procession. The mob was attacked by Veluthedan Narayanan, a velichappad ( oracle ) of the Kovilakam Vettakkoru Makan temple (whose family still stays near the Kovilakam) and slashed several rebels in a frenzy and in turn was hacked to death. The rioters damaged the front door, but could not enter the Kovilakam.
Another group ran to the river and killed two women who were bathing. One woman pleaded for her small child who was sitting on a nearby rock.
An attempt on the temple was made through the Oottupura (dining hall) but the rebels could not enter the inner chamber as they were ignorant of the layout.
The Kovilakam women waited upstairs with boiling oil for pouring on the rebels and the men were below with guns. The rebel attack was repulsed. Subsequently, the family went to the jungle and suffered great hardship. A child was also born among the refugees during this flight. The refugees finally made their escape using covered boats down the Chaliyar. They arrived at Calicut on the morning of 21 September 1921.
Another group ran to the river and killed two women who were bathing. One woman pleaded for her small child who was sitting on a nearby rock.
An attempt on the temple was made through the Oottupura (dining hall) but the rebels could not enter the inner chamber as they were ignorant of the layout.
The Kovilakam women waited upstairs with boiling oil for pouring on the rebels and the men were below with guns. The rebel attack was repulsed. Subsequently, the family went to the jungle and suffered great hardship. A child was also born among the refugees during this flight. The refugees finally made their escape using covered boats down the Chaliyar. They arrived at Calicut on the morning of 21 September 1921.
In Nilambur, the Mappila population was largely a floating one, gathered from all over Eranad by the timber trade. There were men from Pookkottur, Tirurangadi and Melmuri and when the mob arrived, they found willing helpers among them, like Manjeri Moidu Haji, Kulappetta Rayan and Nalakath Moosa of Tirurangadi. It was local Mappila Karappan Unni Assan who assumed command for the time being. They felled the trees and damaged the bridge.
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| Nilambur Palace |
The gang was fed by the District Forest Officer Chandy, who returned from the Karimpuzha bridge on 21 August, but on 22, they commenced looting and on 23, they looted and burnt forest buildings at Nilambur and Nedumkayam. Chandy and his family were captured at Nedumkayam. Kuttumunda Pokkar Muslaiyar ordered their murder to prevent them from helping the troops, but the general view was for converting them to Islam. With the help of Mambat Mappilas, they escaped to Mambat on the 26th and left by boat to Calicut on the 30th, when Variyankunnath Kunjahammad Haji was hunting for them.
The massacre from Madras Mail, 17 September 1921:
The Sack 0f Nilambur
Nilambur is the Headquarters of the wealthy and aristocratic family of Thacharakavil Tirumulpad, a ruling chief in the ancient days. At 8 am on Sunday, August 1921, at which hour most of the Kovilakam guards were away, the Moplahs of Pookottur arrived in a very large body, armed with guns, swords and war knives and rushed to the palace gate. The small palace guard offered but feeble resistance. One of the men, a washerman by caste, fired on the Moplahs killing one man. He cut another Moplah down, but he was soon overpowered by the Moplahs who hacked him to pieces. The rest of the guards escaped into an adjoining house but the Moplahs pursued and butchered all the inmates including two women and a child. Seventeen persons were killed and two dangerously wounded in this house. In the meanwhile, members of the Nilambur family took shelter and shut themselves inside the ladies' palace, with the exception of Elaya Tirumulpad who stayed in his own bungalow with his family. The majority of the rebels went into the Senior Tirumulpad's palace and destroyed everything they found there. Property worth Rs. 35,000 was destroyed besides the records for 8 years which were burnt. While the bulk of the rebels were engaged in this direction, a large mob rushed towards the ladies' palace, where men, women, children, servants and attendants numbering about 150 souls had locked themselves in. Half a dozen doors were broken open by the rebels, and at last, they reached the door of the building in which women and children had taken shelter. Meanwhile, a rebel messenger came with some message which caused the gang to leave the ladies' palace and rush off to that portion of the palace which was being destroyed. After completing the work of destruction they went off in the direction of Pookottur, shouting and telling Nilambur people that they would return to Kovilakam after looting the Manjeri treasury. The whole of the family and servants were sent to the other side of the river into the forest. On the following day there was general looting and plunder all over the place and with the exception of the Kovilakam and about a hundred houses which were guarded, all the neighbourhood was looted.
A Mappila, Pannippara Unni Mammad was sentenced to be hanged in the case related to the murder of the blind woman Nani Amma at Nilambur Kovilakam on 21 August.The judgement by Senior Special Judge G H B Jackson on 30 October 1922 ( Case no 176 / 1922 ) described the event thus:
When the Mappila outbreak was imminent the Kovilakam or Palace authorities at Nilambur appointed a guard, the efficiency of whom may be gauged by the fact that its "arms were locked up at night lest they should be stolen while the watch slept".Two of its members Appunni and Sankunni Nair, servants of the Palace, were in the gateway about 8.30 am on 21 August 1921. A hundred Mappilas suddenly arrived, and they ran around the western wing and tried to hide. Two Mappilas, Pannippara unni Mammad and another attacked them with swords and then rejoined the main body which was proceeding to the Palace itself. A blind woman Nani Amma was in her yard west of the path and Unni Mammad cut her down. Appunni described this to Adhikari A Govindan Kutty Nair that afternoon.
Two more guards Krishnan Nair and Narayanan Nair were in the upper storey of the gatehouse. They looked through the window and saw Unni Mammad kill Nani Amma and the Mappilas cutting down whoever they saw. Krishnan Nair said that there was, and Narayanan Nair that there was not a trap door. Appunni saw Nani Amma's dead body with six cuts on it and fifteen other corpses.
On 20 August, at about 10 am, Muhammad Abdur Rahman, secretary of the Kerala Provincial Khilafat Committee with Moidu Moulavi and Moitheen Koya turned up at Pookkouutr. None of them were natives of Eranad or acquainted with it in any way. Rahiman was only 23; he was born in Azhikode, Kodungallur in 1898 in the Kingdom of Cochin. He completed his schooling at Vaniyambadi and Calicut. He attended college at Madras and Aligarh but discontinued his studies at Aligarh University to participate in the Non-cooperation movement and Khilafat movement in Malabar. When it was known in the morning that the Magistrate had taken out a force, Rahiman and others thought that Pookkottur was his objective and hence they reached there. They wired to their Calicut members via Manjeri that there was no trouble in Pookkottur. After sending the wire, Papadakaran Athan Kutti turned up from Tirurangadi with the story of the attack on the mosque, to get help from Pookkottur, and said that Melmuri Mappilas too have been invited. Karat Moideen Kutti Haji left for Melmuri-the Melmuri Mappilas then left for Nilambur to do the brutal murders.
Rahman went to Manjeri to fetch K Madhavan Nair. He came and spoke to the Pookkottur Mappilas; while he was speaking, another message from Tirurangadi came that the mosque had been destroyed and several people killed. At once, Madhavan Nair and his fled back to Calicut. But the Pookkottur Mappilas didn't go to Tirurangadi. Vadakkeveettil Mammad saw that the opportune moment has arrived for him to take revenge on the Kovilakam, and he despatched the Mappilas to Nilambur.
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| Nilambur Palace |
The Judgement transporting M P Narayana Menon to life ( Case no 128 / 1922 ) by E Pakenham Walsh, Special Judge records that Menon met the Pookkottur murder squad on their return. From the judgement:
One does not expect, and it would be out of place in a case of this sort for the defence to prove by specific evidence what it considers to be the causes of the rebellion, but one might expect the protagonist K Madhavan Nair, who is put forward on the defence side, to have formed his conclusions after some investigation. Instead of which he implicitly believes whatever is told him if it is to the discredit of the Government or the police without making the smallest enquiry of eyewitnesses and in many cases not troubling to know the names of the aggrieved persons or even the circumstances attending their grievances. For one incident, and it is a remarkable and instructive one, besides being closely connected with a specific charge in this case, he is good enough not to blame the Government as having given the provocation, and that is the massacre of 17 Hindus at Nilambur on the night of the 20 August, (the day the rebellion broke out) by a gang from Pookkottur. This one fact, occurring when it did is sufficient, to show that what had been so recklessly roused in the Mappilas was their religious fanaticism and both this incident and further incidents of the same sort which characterised the rebellion show that the rebel Mappila drew very little distinction, in fact none, between his hatred of the Government and his hatred of any Hindu who would not embrace the Muslim religion. It is very significant that these Pookkottur people should on the very first day of the rebellion have attacked not Government servants or the police (the policeman they killed at Edavanna cannot be regarded as more than incidental to the general massacre) but their countrymen the Hindus. They appeared to have understood Hindu-Muslim unity as either the elimination of the Hindu by slaying him or his forcible conversion to their own religion. All this is perfectly compatible with the idea of setting up a Khilafat kingdom, but it is not compatible with the rising solely caused by the provocation of the Government.
M P Narayana Menon, on 21 August 1921, near Manjeri, met the rebel Mappilas of Pookkottur who were returning from their murders at Nilambur under the leadership of Abdu Haji and addressed them:" They ( the Nilambur Thampuran ) ought to have been done to death because they are against Congress and Khilafat. We will have an opportunity again for it. Don't be sorry that the boys have been wounded. We must fight in right earnest. If you die you will go to heaven. If you win you get the country. You must reserve ammunition and powder. They should not be wasted as they are essential for attacking the soldiers. Swords and sticks will not be sufficient to attack our countrymen who are against Khilafat".
The Judgement records that this speech of Menon was at about 3 pm, congratulating the Mappilas on their massacre at Nilambur. The witness to this was P Aliyammu,a Mappila cultivator of Karuvampuram about a mile from Manjeri. He said on his way to his farm that afternoon, he met Menon and one Ladakkaran Aidru Haji. They were going along the road leading to Nilambur and Areekode. He joined them half a furlong this side of Areekode road. He asked Menon where he was going and Menon replied:"Some of our Khilafat men belonging to Pookkottur have gone to Nilambur. I heard that they were returning and I am going to see their return."
They reached a junction, Nelliparamb, of three roads where Aliyammu should turn to his farm. Menon asked him: "How is it you Manjeri don't help the Khilafat?"
Aliyammu replied that they had no strength and knowledge to do so. Then Aidru Haji said: "There come our men."
Aliyammu saw a crowd of about 100 Mappilas coming from the north to the south along the road from Nilambur. They were armed with guns, swords, spears and dagger knives. Aliyammu knew two in the crowd, Kollarambath Abdu Haji and Kundotti Paramban Mammutti.When the mob got about 25 feet distance, Menon took off his cap and held it raised over his head and shook hands with Abdu Haji. The Mappilas presented arms to Menon. He asked Abdu Haji: "What is the news of your Nilambur trip?'
Abdu Haji replied: "About 17 men have been killed and much property destroyed, property of the Nilambur Thampurans."
Menon asked: "How many Nilambur Tirumulpads have been killed?"
Haji replied: "None of them have been killed but there was firing at the gatehouse and they might have run away hearing the noise. I did not see them anywhere there."
Then Menon made the speech. Then the gang left the place for the south reciting Takbir. Aliyammu stood there until they were lost to sight.
Rajendra Varma, a professor of English and grandson of the Manavedan Raja of Nailambur palace says that no records exist of the killing of the 16 people at the palace now. ( 1)The Valiya Thamburatti ( queen ) had gone to pray at the Vettakkoru Makan temple of the palace when the Mappilas arrived at the palace. The news of the massacre reached the chief priest (Melsanthi ) and he locked up the queen to safety in the kitchen adjoining the temple and she hid inside a chempu or large vessel. She prayed to God to rescue the country from the brutal forces.
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| Vettakkorumakan Temple,Nilambur |
Guruvayur Kesavan
The Nilambur royal family fled and lived in two places: the Panniyankara palace of the Zamorin in Calicut and the Sakthan Thampuran palace at Trichur. Manavikraman Thirumulpad, the then chief of the Nilambur family died there; since it was the custom then to light the funeral pyre in one's own palace ground, a 6x 4 feet ground was bought in the Trichur palace compound for the last rites. The grave is still there and researchers have a tendency to term it as the grave of a Zamorin family member.
The Nilambur family stayed there for a year and the expense incurred by the Cochin palace was Rs 100,000. The Cochin king, Rama Varma XVI (1914-1932), who is known as Madrasil Theepetta Thampuran, the king who died in Madras, was proficient in the treatment for snake bites, and he was a Guru in this for Manavikraman. Though he was willing to write off the expense, Manavedan, who ascended the throne after the rebellion, decided to pay, by the sale of the elephants. The Nilambur palace had about 75 elephants, and an auction was held at the Thekkinkad grounds at Trichur.
Manavedan's sister, the queen, had taken a vow while at Trichur to offer an elephant to Guruvayurappan if calm prevails by God's interference. After returning to Nilambur, she revealed her desire to the new king and requested him to offer an elephant, which is of no use to them. The Raja, who had studied Matanga Leela, the treatise in Sanskrit dealing with the life and behaviour of elephants, told her that an offering to God should be perfect. He selected a young elephant of 17 years called Everest, with perfect features. The palace had elephants named David, George etc for the ride of Europeans. Everest walked all the way to Guruvayur with mahouts, and it surrendered at the feet of Guruvayurappan, on 4 January 1922 in a ritual offering, nadayiruthal. Thus, it became a temple elephant. Manavedan Raja bought a paddy field from the Kunnathur palace and donated it to the Guruvayur Devaswom, to meet the expenses of Everest.
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| Guruvayur Kesavan |
The Guruvayur Devaswom erected a life-size statue of Kesavan in its precincts as a tribute to the services he rendered to the presiding deity of the temple. Its tusks, along with a majestic portrait of the elephant, can be still seen adorning the entrance to the main temple enclosure. Its life is the subject of the 1977 Malayalam feature film Guruvayur Kesavan, released the year after his death.
In a settlement of palace properties some ten years ago, the Pookkottur palace was given to Udaya Varma, whose descendants sold it to a Muslim. It was pulled down.
Towards the end of the rebellion, the queen of Nilambur on behalf of the hundreds of Malabar Hindu women wrote a letter to Lady Reading, the wife of the then-Indian Viceroy, Lord Reading that unravelled the ghastly genocide by the Mappilas ( 2 ). Here’s the text:
Petition of Malabar Ladies to Lady Reading
To
Her Gracious Excellency
THE COUNTESS OF READING,
Delhi.
To
Her Gracious Excellency
THE COUNTESS OF READING,
Delhi.
The humble memorial of the bereaved and sorrow-stricken women of Malabar
May it please your gracious and compassionate Ladyship?
May it please your gracious and compassionate Ladyship?
1. We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.
2. Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully appraised 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 {140}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. These are not fables.
The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship—these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till death brings us peace. We remember how driven out of our native hamlets we wandered starving and naked in the jungles and forests; we remember how we choked and stifled our babies' cries lest the sound should betray our hiding places to our relentless pursuers. We still vividly realise the moral and spiritual agony that thousand of us passed through when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these bloodthirsty miscreants; we still have before us the sight of the unendurable and life-long misery of those—fortunately, few—of our most unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict coolies. For five long months, not a day has passed without its dread tale of horror to unfold.
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| Lady Reading |
4. We, Your Ladyship's humble and sorrow-stricken memorialists do not seek vengeance. Our misery will not be rendered less by inflicting similar misery upon this barbarous and savage race; our dead will not return to us if their slayers are slaughtered. We would not be human, however, if we could ever forget the cruel and shameful outrages and indignities perpetrated upon us by a race to whom we have always endeavoured to be friendly and neighbourly; we would be hypocritical if, robbed of all our possessions we did not plead for some measure of compensation to help us out of the pauperism now forced upon us; we would be imbecile if knowing the ungovernable, anti-social propensities and the deadly religious fanaticism of the Moplah race we did not entreat the just and powerful government to protect the lives and honour of your humble sisters who have to live in the rebel-ravaged zone. Our ambition after all is low enough; sufficient compensation to save us and our children from starvation, and enough military protection against massacre and outrage are all that we want. We beseech Your Compassionate Ladyship to exercise all the benevolent influence that You possess with the government to see that our humble prayers are granted. But if the benign Government does not consider it possible to compensate us and to protect us in our native land we would most fervently pray that free grants of land may be assigned to us in some neighbouring region which though less blessed with the lavish gifts of nature may also be less cursed by the cruelty and brutality of man.
We beg to remain,
Your Ladyship's most humble
and obedient servants.
___________________________________________
1. Interview with Rajendra Varma, by the author on 2 March 2021
2. Alice Edith Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, (née Cohen; c. 1866 – 1930), also known as Dame Alice Reading, was the first wife of Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, and a prominent philanthropist in colonial India.
She was born in London, the third daughter of Albert Cohen, a merchant in the City of London, and his wife, Elizabeth. She married Rufus Isaacs, then a newly qualified barrister, on 8 December 1887. He had considered being a stockbroker but his wife encouraged him to pursue a career in law. He was ultimately Solicitor-General, Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice.
Her title successively changed from Mrs Isaacs to Lady Isaacs on her husband's knighthood in 1910, Baroness Reading on his ennoblement in 1914, Viscountess Reading in 1916, the Countess of Reading in 1917, and finally the Marchioness of Reading in 1926.
In 1921, Lord Reading was appointed Viceroy of India. He was reluctant to accept, as his wife's health was delicate, but she persuaded him. She accompanied him to India and, despite continuing poor health, served prominently as Viceregal Consort. She also threw herself into charitable work, particularly with Indian women and children. She established the Women of India Fund in 1921 and National Baby Week in 1923, as well as supporting many existing charities. In 1926 she campaigned to construct a standard hospital in Peshawar, in place of Agerton Hospital. The new hospital was subsequently named Lady Reading Hospital. Later, upon the retirement of her husband in 1926, they returned to England.
She was awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal in gold in 1924. She died of cancer in 1930, aged 64.
© Ramachandran
