THE COMMUNIST DISTORTION OF MAPPILA REVOLT

This is an extract from the PhD dissertation by Patrick Hesse, submitted to the Faculty of Culture, Social Sciences and Education of the Humboldt University of Berlin, in 2015. The thesis is titled, "To the Masses" - Communism and Religion in North India, 1920–47.

Although communists had had no part in the moplah rebellion—in fact, the CPI hadn’t established so much as a single cell on the subcontinent yet—, it soon figured prominently in the localization of communism. In view of M N Roy’s anti-bourgeois stance in the Comintern debates on the agents of revolution in colonial countries, the Moplah rebellion was a much needed point of reference on two counts. First, it figured as a prime example of the militant mass struggle that Roy posited as the core of the khilafat and non-cooperation movements. Second, the uprising served to showcase the relative lack of radicalism in Gandhi and the Congress. Gandhi had condemned the insurgents because of their ample use of force. The communists, however, soon fashioned it into the beginning of revolution.

Neither the scarcity of reports nor the tenor of the few available pieces of information could detract from the communist determination to claim the rebellion. On the contrary, its initial perception through the lens of an Eastern revolutionary paradigm ensured that its pronounced fundamentalist component contributed to a positive assessment. A 1921 Inprecorr (International Press Correspondence, the international organ of the Comintern) article located the rebellion’s origins in religious outrage: Soldiers had entered mosques in a bid to arrest Muslim leaders and thus had desecrated the sites. This had caused “understandable” indignation among the Muslim population1.

M N Roy

Abdur Rab, founder member of the CPI, not yet fallen from Bolshevik revolutionary grace, felt vindicated in his view that Brahmins were no more than hesitant compromisers, whereas “the Muslims” had gone straight for “immediate revolution.”2 For him, the uprising was anti-colonial struggle par excellence. In a rare case of agreement between the two, Roy echoed this endorsement when he called for extending what had “burst out spontaneously at […] Malabar” to the entire subcontinent in the manifesto submitted to the 1922 Gaya Congress. Later, Roy even boasted to have had a hand in the uprising through his agents.3 While this seems presumptuous, his straightforward embrace of the rebellion leaves little doubt that its religious fanaticism did at least not contradict Roy’s aspirations.

Ironically, these first responses bore close resemblance to British assessments. The only difference was that they embraced the rebellion on the very grounds that led British officials to discount it as obstinate fundamentalism. Slogans such as the call for a khilafat republic had stirred the refractory Moplahs into action, and thanks to their inherent fanaticism they had taken the injunctions literally. The extent to which a social dimension of the conflict was gainsaid becomes apparent in a telegram to the Government of India, where F B Evans stipulated that there was no reason to suppose “that agrarian discontent was even a contributory cause of the rising”4 : Initially, the colonial and the communist point of view concurred in the cultural substance of the argument.

Only when cues to non-religious motivations of the revolting Moplahs became available did subsequent communist contributions switch to the emphasis of the rebellion’s purported materialist underpinnings. Referring to the report of a Kerala Congress committee tasked with an enquiry, the Vanguard approvingly quoted from a speech by the committee’s head, V. S. Gayatri Iyer*, characterizing the uprising as a consequence of “long standing and acute agrarian grievances.”5 The systematic destruction of public records demonstrated that forced evictions had been a core cause of the outbreak. Roy jumped to the conclusion that Iyer had “proved [!] that the rebellion was neither for the Khilafat nor directly against the British government […] [but] primarily against landlordism.”6

Yet, in the mid-1920s the rapidly worsening inter-communal climate forced Roy to reconsider the religious factor. The surge in communalism after the end of non-cooperation made it difficult to uphold the conviction that religion was just a relic, an ephemeral phenomenon bound to be swept aside by the strides of history (that is, the class struggle). Since all it had been swept aside in were the terminological regulations Roy had applied, in the end he came round to admit an “ugly character of religious fanaticism.”7 Still, this had been possible only because the conflicting classes had belonged to different religions. As to the basics, he remained convinced that despite a “certain religious character” the Moplah revolt had been “an agrarian revolt.”8 In the same measure that religious fanaticism had been emphasized earlier, communist commentary would henceforth belittle it to the extent that the rebellion acquired the halo of a revolutionary example for peasant communism.

Saumyendranath Tagore

And yet, the CPI-led Kerala state government’s bid to introduce pensions for veteran insurgents on rebellion’s golden jubilee in 1971 met with unequivocal rejection from senior CPI(M) opposition leader Namboodiripad (1909–1998). His claim—understandable from his biographical experience as an indirect victim since his family of wealthy landlords had had to live as refugees for half a year, but very unusual for a communist—that the uprising had been a communal movement seemed to indicate a comprehensive reversal of the rebellion’s embrace in communist quarters.9 What had happened?

Indeed, his assessment appeared diametrically opposed to earlier communist stances. Saumyendranath Tagore’s (1901–1974) pamphlet Peasants Revolt in Malabar, 1921, written after an extensive tour of the area during the early 1930s, constituted the first ‘native’ communist commentary on the rebellion. Certainly it was the first to rely on firsthand accounts. The text was a manifesto of radical dedication to a communist ‘history from below’ and of equally radical determination to preserve the materialist pristineness of popular self-assertion: Throughout the history of revolt among Moplahs, the “apparent causes” of outbreaks had been not religious, but “purely agrarian.”10

Consequently, Tagore portrayed the uprising’s communal dimension as a malignant rumor. “The Moplah peasants were not anti-Hindu by any means […] Not a single Hindu was molested or plundered in those days just because he happened to be a Hindu.”11 Victims among Hindus inevitably had been either class enemies or pro-British, and only those who had collaborated with colonial institutions had been harassed and robbed. Evidently, Tagore didn’t waste time with questions such as how exactly the rebels had told those aiding the British from those loyal to the insurgents. Instead, he extensively quoted allegations by Ahmad Hazi, a peasant leader during the rebellion, that it had been the government which had engineered the destruction of temples and the looting of Hindu houses in order to defame the rebels.12

Tagore’s reductive simplicity soon invited Namboodiripad’s criticism. As it was written during the pro-Muslim euphoria of the CPI’s ‘nationality period’, it is all the more remarkable to see Namboodiripad’s 1943 classic, A Short History of the Peasant Movement in Malabar spell out the rebellion’s motivations in no unclear terms: “The beginning of the riot was partly political and partly agrarian but very soon it developed into a communal movement.”13 Namboodiripad attacked Tagore and other “so-called Marxists” for neglecting a couple of “simple but relevant questions”—such as why the tenant movement and the subsequent rebellion had been restricted to Muslim-majority areas. Neither the bureaucracy nor the landlords had been partial towards Hindu tenants. Nevertheless, the latter had experienced the uprising as predominantly anti-Hindu. Also, Tagore had ignored the forced conversions, which “cannot by any stretch of imagination be explained away as part of a purely agrarian movement.”14

E M S Namboodiripad

Still, it was Namboodiripad’s very theoretical sophistication that eventually enabled him to arrive at a comprehensive absolution of the rebellious Moplahs, and in the end more or less confirm Tagore’s position. To begin with, despite admitting that “a certain percentage of the crimes are of a purely fanatical type” he was quick to identify culprits outside of the ‘masses’: What the corruptive khilafatist influence had been to Tagore, the mullahs were to Namboodiripad. Allegedly, it had been in their interest to turn “the anti jenmi [landlord] sentiments of the peasants into the anti-Hindu sentiments of the Moplahs.” It had come as no surprise, then, that the uneducated peasants had fallen for this. Rather, the remarkable fact was that there had been relatively few “fanatical outbursts”: 

“It clearly shows that with all his traditional illiteracy, backwardness and priest-riddenness, the Moplah peasant is much more a class-conscious peasant than a community-conscious Moplah.”15 

As to why the “class-conscious peasant” had taken a “partially communal turn,” then, Namboodiripad pointed to the withdrawal of Hindus from the movement when it turned violent. “The Moplah found that his Hindu compatriots […] deserted him; the military arrived to hunt him out of his abode; his Hindu neighbours helped the military against him.He naturally got enraged at them [!].”16 Having thus become victims both of the British military and the treacherous infidels, Namboodiripad considered it understandable that the Moplahs turned against Hindus, even common ones.

This rationalizing drive was topped off with a baffling appropriation of the movement’s leadership as suitable revolutionary material. Quite possibly this was a reflection of the CPI’s contemporary holistic embrace of resistive Muslim self-assertions, an embrace that tended to downplay rifts and differences in the exaltation of the greater Muslim cause. Consisting of “saintly Moplahs” strangely unconnected to the maligned ulema, the ideological (that is, religious) lapses of the uprising’s leadership were merely a matter of correct instruction and at any rate eclipsed by their merits as anti-British agitators and peasant leaders:

"Sincere anti-imperialists, they, however, think and speak in the terms of religion which had tremendous effect in rallying the Moplahs […] most of them were good material as peasant cadres if only there had been a good and efficient central leadership […] they showed their mettle as good organizers both before and during the rebellion."17 (emphasis added).

Namboodiripad’s reasoning was all the more remarkable because it concluded a text starting out with an attack on “so-called Marxists” for their ignorance of disagreeable communal facts. As an apparently much better Marxist, Namboodiripad could even imagine the very same leaders doing the very same thing under a properly, that is, communist-organized revolution.

A K Gopalan

His later positions display a similar, if somewhat more sophisticated rationalizing impulse. Emphatically sympathizing with the hunted and deserted Moplahs in a 1970 interview, his justification of their suspicions and aversions towards Hindus became more dogged in the same measure that the latters’ fears and apprehensions were devalued. Namboodiripad averred that the crucial, communally divisive factor had not been actual forced conversions, but rather the fear of them on the part of Hindus. Similarly, he estimated the number of killed Hindus to be quite low, as “it was not so much the number that mattered but the athmosphere [sic!] of tension.”18 Hence, he attributed the spike in the Malabar Arya Samaj’s popularity after the rebellion, which furthered the intercommunal divide, solely to Hindu phantasmagorias, outsourcing the irrational factor to the nonrebelling population segment that had developed essentially unjustified fear. The betrayed and beleaguered Moplahs, on the other hand, had had a rational foundation for their communal outrages as the few Hindus remaining in the area had actively cooperated with the British.19

In view of this background, it can be safely said that Namboodiripad’s seemingly contrary stance on the matter during the above-mentioned 1971 pension controversy originated in motivations of political distinction. Considering his other efforts to acquit the common Moplah peasant (if not the rebellion as a whole) from the charge of communalism, this was clearly an anti-CPI move designed to expose the rival party’s reactionary trends for political reasons rather than because of an evolution in his own positions. Mutual recriminations of the same pattern abounded in the years after the 1964 party split. Hence, the principal merit of Namboodiripad’s “most sophisticated analysis” (Robert Hardgrave) lies in the attainment of an impressive level of rationalization and exculpation, and in the inadvertent exposition of the mechanisms at work there.20

By temperament not prone to complicated theoretical analysis, popular Kerala communist leader A K Gopalan (1904–1977) confirmed the Moplah rebellion’s importance as a reference point for communist identification of resistive subjectivity. His 1973 autobiography confessed that the “Moplah rebellion excited [his] imagination.” Even while the rebellion had been “bereft of intelligent political leadership [and] well-conceived policy or programme, the brave deeds of my Muslim brethren who fought against imperialist oppression enthused me.”21 Notwithstanding their shortcomings, the rebelling Moplahs, braving the constraints of time and place, had managed to come out progressive in a political and a social sense:

"The class sense of Muslim peasants [of Malabar] has sprung from a century-long struggle against feudalism [!] [.…] The last of these struggles against feudalism took place in 1921 [….] There is no memorial yet to the countless martyrs who laid down their lives in the fight for land for the peasants."

Strikingly, Gopalan didn’t bother to explain away (or even mention) religious militancy. To him, one of the most renowned popular leaders of the South Asian communist movement to date and a native of Kerala to boot, the defining criterion seemed to be ‘activity from below’ plain and simple: The political self-assertion of a socially declassed population segment through a rebellion that counted landlords and foreign rulers among its enemies compensated for possible uglier aspects. Ideological motivations apart from those acknowledged by coarse Marxism seemed either irrelevant or non-existent to Gopalan’s perspective, mirroring the entire party’s blind proximity to fundamentalist currents.

__________________________________________

1. “The Revolutionary Movement in India,” Inprecorr, Roll No. 1921/3-B, 18.

2. Izvestia, May 11, 1922, quoted in Home/Poll/1922 Nr. 884, 5–6.

3.Home/Poll/1924 Nr. 261, 110 (quote); Petrie, Communism in India, 283.

4.“Telegram to the Government of India, Home Department, No. M. 163,” in Tottenham, The Mapilla Rebellion, 200. See also “Note on Malabar affairs,” in ibid., 32, and “Letter from the District Magistrate,” in ibid., 17.

5. Quoted in “Materialism vs. Spiritualism,” Vanguard, 1 August 1923. This was long after Roy’s embrace of the rebellion in his manifesto the 1922 Gaya Congress.

6. Ibid.

7. “Economics of Communal Conflict,” Masses of India, January 1925.

8. “The Calcutta Riot,” Masses of India, May 1926.

9.The state government had considered the rebels freedom fighters and as such entitled to special pensions. The central government refused to comply because compatriots had been among the rebellion’s victims as well, triggering an intense debate in Kerala whether the great rebellion belonged to the national movement or not. See Menon, Malabar Rebellion, 475–7.

10. Saumyendranath Tagore, Peasants Revolt in Malabar, 1921, PCJ CPI 2A, 5 (quote), 10–12. 351 Ibid., 16–18.

11. Ibid., 24.

12. E. M. S. Namboodiripad (interviewee), 3, 5 (quote).

13. Namboodiripad, “A Short History,” 179, 182.

14. All quotes ibid., 174–5.

15. Ibid., 184. This motive was dominant in Namboodiripad’s writings on the matter; see Namboodiripad, A History of India, 177.

16. Namboodiripad, “A Short History,” 184.

17. Namboodiripad (interviewee), 20, 22.

18. Ibid., 26.

19. Robert Hardgrave Jr, The Mappilla Rebellion, 90.

20. A K Gopalan, In the Cause of the People: Reminiscences (Bombay: Orient Longmans 1973), 9.

21.Ibid., 249.

* Note: It is V S Sreenivasa Sastri. There was no Gayatri Iyer in Congress and Gayatri is a female name in India- Ramachandran

MY BOOK ON MAPPILA REBELLION RELEASED

The book, VARIYANKUNNANTE KASAPPUSALA, (Mappila's Slaughterhouse), authored by me, has been released by Ram Madhav, former National General Secretary of the BJP, at Kozhikode. The copy was received by C V Ananda Bose. It is published by Kurukshethra Books, Kaloor, Kochi. Price Rs 400, pages 450.

The book is a compilation of the court judgements, on the Mappila Rebellion of 1921, and more.

The function was the national level inauguration of the Mappila Riots Victims Remembrance Year.

Ram Madhav is a member of the national rexecutive council of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and has authored few books. His latest is Uneasy Neighbours: India and China after Fifty Years of the War.

This is the seventh book on Mappila rebellion, I am associated with. I have written Malabar Jihad, and translated  The Mappila Revolt Gandhi didn't See, by Sir C Sankaran Nair and Moplah Rebellion 1921 by C Gopalan Nair. A Major work by me in English, The Complete History of 1921, is due for publication. Garuda Prakashan has agreed to publish, Wrath and Revenge in Malabar. I have also completed another book in Malayalam, Mappila Rebellion in Literature.

My first book in English, Militant Islam: Mecca to Delhi, will be published soon, by Garuda Prakashan.

GANDHI'S SPEECH AT CALCUT,1920

He Was Accompanied by Shaukat Ali

Gandhi and Shaukat Ali arrived at Calicut from Trichy on 18th August 1920 and at 6-30 pm; addressed a gathering of about 20,000 people on the Vellayil beach, Calicut.They were garlanded by Khan Bahadur Muthukoya Thangal,and their host was the Gujarati wholesale dealer of Crocin,Shyamji Sundardas ( Kallaji Baju).V R Krishna Iyer's father,V V Rama Iyer presided over the public meeting.High Court advocate K P raman Menon welcomed the gathering and handed over a purse of Rs 2500 to Shukat Ali for the Khilafat fund.Shaukat Ali was disppointed,since he expected more,says The Source Material for a History of the Indian Freedom Movement in India,Vol 3,Part I,pages 318-19.Ali was also not satisfied with Rs 500 he got at Kannur railway station on the return journey from Mangalore on the 20th.K Madhavan Nair translated Gandhi's speech at Calicut.

Mahatma Gandhi's Speech:

The Spirit of Non Co-Operation

I do expect that we shall succeed if we understand the spirit of non-co-operation. The Lieutenant Governor of Burma himself has told us that Britain retains the hold on India not by force of arms but by the co-operation of the people of India. He has given us the remedy for any wrong Government may do to the people, knowingly or unknowingly, and so long as we co-operate with that Government we become the sharers of the wrong. But a wise subject never· tolerates the hardship that a Government impose against their declared will. I venture to submit to this great meeting that the Government of India and the Imperial Government have done a double wrong to India and if we are a self respecting nation conscious of its rights, conscious of its responsibilities and conscious of its duties, it is not proper that we should stand the humiliations that both these Governments have imposed upon us. The Imperial Government have knowingly flouted religious !oentiments dearly cherished by the 70 millions of Mussalmans.

The Khilafat Question

I claim to have studied the Khilafat question in a special manner. I claim to have understood the Musalman feelings and I am here to declare that in the Khilafat question,the British Government have wounded the sentiments of Mussalmans,as they have not done before. The Gospel of non co-operation is preached to them and if they had not accepted it, there would have been bloodshed in India by this time. I am free to confess the spilling of blood would not help their cause. But a man, who is in a state of rage, whose heart is lacerated does not count on the results of his actions. So much for Khilafat wrong. 

I propose to take you for a moment to the Punjab, the northern end of India and what have both Governments done for the Punjab? I am free to confess again that the crowds in Amristar went mad for a time. They were goaded to madness by a wicked administration but no madness on the part of the people can justify the spilling of innocent blood and what have they paid for it? I venture to submit that no civilised Government l would have made the people to pay the penalty that had been inflicted on the Punjab. Innocent men were passed through mock trials and imprisoned for life. Amnesty granted to them was of no consequence. Innocent and unarmed men who knew nothing of what was to happen were butchered in cold blood without the slightest notice. The modesty of women in Jallian Wala who had not done the slightest wrong to any man was seriously outraged. I want you to understand what I mean by outrage. Their veils were insolently removed by an officer with his stick. Men who had not done any wrong were made to crawl on the ground with their bellies and all these wrongs remain unavenged up to this time. If it was the duty of the Government of India to punish men for incendiarism and murder of innocent persons it was doubly their duty to punish their officers who were guilty of serious wrong. But in the face of these official wrongs committed with the greatest deliberation,we have the humiliating spectacle of the House of Lords supporting these wrongs. It is this double wrong, done to India, that we want to get redressed and it is our bounden duty to get it redressed. We have prayed, we have petitioned and we have passed resolutions. 

Mr. Mohammed Ali, supported by his friends, is now waiting for justice in Europe. He has pleaded the cause of Islam, the cause of the Mussalmans of India, in a most manful manner. But his pleadings have fallen upon deaf ears. We have his word for it that whilst France and Italy have shown great sympathy for the cause of Islam it is the British Ministers who have not shown sympathy. It shows which way the British Ministers and present holders of Office in India wished to deal with the people. There is no good will, there is no desire to placate public opinion. The people of India must have a remedy for redressing this double wrong.

The method of the West is violence. Whenever people of the West have felt wrong justly or unjustly, they rebel and spill blood. As I have said in my letter to the Viceroy, half of India does not believe in the remedy of violence. The other half is too weak to offer it. But the whole of India is deeply grieved and it is for that reason that I venture to suggest to the people the remedy of non co-operation. I consider it to be perfectly harmless, absolutely constitutional and yet perfectly efficacious. It is a remedy, if properly adopted will end in victory. Victory is a certainty in it. And it is the age-old remedy of self-sacrifice. Are the Mussalmans of India who feel the great wrong done to them prepared for self-sacrifice? If we desire to compel the Government to the will of the people, as we must, the only remedy open to us is non-co-operation. If the Mussalmans of India offer non-co operation to Government in order to secure justice on the Khilafat, it is the duty of every Hindu to co-operate with their Mos!em brethren. I consider the eternal friendship between Hindus and Mussalmans as infinitely more important than the British connection. I therefore venture to suggest that if they like to live with unity with Mussalmans, it is now that they have got the best opportunity and that such an opportunity would not come for a century. I venture to suggest that if the Government of India and the Imperial Government come to know that there is a great determination behind this great nation in order to secure redress for the Khilafat and Punjab wrongs, the Government would then do justice to us.

The Mussalmans of India will have to commence the first stage of non-co-operation in real earnest.If you may not help Government, you may not receive favours from the Government. I consider that the titles of Honour are titles of disgrace. We must therefore surrender all titles and resign all honorary offices. It will constitute an emphatic disapproval of the leaders of the people against the actions of the Government. Lawyers must suspend practice, boys should not receive instructions from schools aided by Government or controlled by Government. The emptying of schools would constitute the disapproval of the middle classes of the people of India. 

Similarly have I ventured to suggest a complete boycott of the Reformed Councils. That will be an emphatic declaration on the part of the representatives of people and the electorate that they do not like to elect their representatives.We must equally decline to offer ourselves as recruits for the Police and the Military. It is impossible for us to go to Mesopotamia and offer Police or Military assistance. The last item in the first stage of non-cooperation is Swadeshism. Swadeshi is intended, not so much as to bring pressure on Government but to show the extent of self-sacrifice on the part of every man, woman and child. When one fourth of India has its self respect at stake, when the whole of India has its justice at stake, we must forego silk from Japan, Calico from Manchester and French lace from France. We must resolve to be satisfied with cloth woven by the humble weavers of India in their cottage homes. A hundred years ago when our tastes were not in foreign products we were satisfied with cloth produced by men and women of India. If I could revolutionise the taste of India and make it return to its ancient state, the whole world would reeognise the cult of renunciation: that is the first stage in non-co·operation. I hope it is as easy for you as it is easy for me to see that India is capable of undertaking the first stage of non·co-operation.

I therefore do not intend to take you through the other three stages of non-eo-operation. I would like you to rivet your attention properly into the first stage. You will have noticed that two things are nececssary in order to go to the first stage-an absolutely perfect spirit of non-violence is indispensable for successes and only a little measure of self-sacrifice. I pray to God that He will give the people of India sufficient courage and wisdom to recognise the virtue of non-co-operation. And I hope that in a few days we shall see some result from your activities in Calicut in connection with non-co-operation.

Mr. Shaukat Ali's address was confined to a special appeal to the Mussalmans with regard to the Khilafat question.

Mr. K. P. Raman Menon on behalf of the people of Calicut presented a purse of Rs. 2,500 to Mahatma Gandhi towards the Khilafat funds which gift was accepted with thanks.

(West Coast Reformer/ 20 August 1920).

Gandhi addressed a public meeting on 15 September 1921 evening on the Triplicane Beach, Madras. The Triplicane Speech:

The Moplah Rebellion

It was open to the Government. as powerful as they were, to invite the Ali Brothers and the speaker to enter the disturbed area in Malabar and to bring about calm and peace there. Mr. Gandhi was sure that if this had been done much of the innocent blood would have been spared and also the desolation of many a Hindu household. But he must be forgiven if he again charged the Government with a desire to incite the population to violence. There was no room in this system of Government for brave and strong men, and the only place the Government had for them was the prisons. He regretted the happenings in Malabar. The Moplahs who were undisciplined had gone mad. They had thus committed a sin against the Khilafat and their own eountry.

 The whole of India today was under an obligation to remain non-violent even under the gravest provocation. There was no reaso to doubt that these Moplahs were not touched by the spirit of Non-co-operation. Non-co-operators were deliberately prevented from going to the affected parts. Assuming that all the strain came through Government Circles and that forced conversions were true,the Hindus should not put a strain on the Hindu-Moslem Unity and break it. The speaker was however not prepared to make such an assumption. He was convinced that a man who was forcibly converted needed no "Prayaschitham." Mr. Yakub Hassan had already told them that those who were converted were inadmissible into the fold of Islam and had not forfeited their rights to remain in the Hindu fold. The Government were placing every obstacle in the way of the Congress and Khilafat workers to bring relief to desolate homes and were taking no pains to carry relief themselves. Whether the Government gave them permission or not it was their clear duty to collect funds for the relief of sufferers and see that these got what they required.

They did not yet know fully what measures the Government were going to take to repress the strength and rising of the people in this land. He had nb reasons to disbelieve the testimony given to him yesterday that many young men were insulted because they wore Khaddar caps and dress. The keepers of the peace in India had torn Khaddar vests from young men and burned them. The authorities in Malabar had invented new measures of humiliation if they had not gone one better than those in the Punjab.

(Madras Mail, 16 September,1921.)

Gandhi made five trips to Kerala – in 1920 to garner support for the Khilafat movement, in 1925 March 9-19 for the Vaikom Satyagraha, in 1927 October 9-15,25 for protesting against untouchability, then in 1934 January 10-22 for raising funds for the downtrodden when a little girl Kaumudi donated all her ornaments to him and in 1937 january 12-21 for celebrating the temple entry proclamation.

Gandhi found Kerala’s intellectuals and ordinary folk receptive and yearning for a free and fair society. A large number of people in the state were greatly influenced by his political and moral philosophy. A Christian youth named Titus Thevarthundiyil accompanied Gandhi during the historic Dandi March in 1930. It is a cinematic coincidence that when Titus followed the footsteps of Gandhi in Dandi, another freedom fighter from Kerala, K Kelappan Nair, popularly called Kelappan, led the Kerala Dandi march from Calicut to Payyannur in Malabar following the decision of KPCC to break the salt laws.





Gandhi made five trips to Kerala – in 1920 to garner support for the Khilafat movement, in 1925 for the Vaikom Satyagraha, in 1927 for protesting against untouchability, then in 1934 for raising funds for the downtrodden when a little girl Kaumudi donated all her ornaments to him and in 1937 for celebrating the temple entry proclamation.


Gandhi found Kerala’s intellectuals and ordinary folk receptive and yearning for a free and fair society. A large number of people in the state were greatly influenced by his political and moral philosophy. A Christian youth named Titus Thevarthundiyil accompanied Gandhi during the historic Dandi March in 1930. It is a cinematic coincidence that when Titus followed the footsteps of Gandhi in Dandi, another freedom fighter from Kerala, K Kelappanled the Kerala Dandi march from Calicut to Payyannur in Malabar following the decision of KPCC to break the salt laws.






People decorated the roads with Tricolour flags and festoons and offered food and refreshment to the satyagrahis. Caparisoned elephants greeted them as a mark of respect.

On the day of its arrival in Payyannur on April 21, ladies led by Gracy Aaron showered the satyagrahis with flowers and rice. Kelappan, in a two-hour speech, enthused the people with the ideals of non-violence and Satyagraha. After his address, there was burning of foreign clothes at the place. Kelappan, in all solemnity, scraped out some salt and thereby became the first salt satyagrahi in Kerala.

The Badagara session of KPCC in May 1931 resolved to launch anti- untouchability campaign as one of the programmes of the Congress. They chose Guruvayoor as the centre of the agitation and demanded the temple therein be opened for all castes. In this case too, the Satyagraha was started under the leadership of Kelappan.
On the day of its arrival in Payyannur on April 21, ladies led by Gracy Aaron showered the satyagrahis with flowers and rice. Kelappan, in a two-hour speech, enthused the people with the ideals of non-violence and Satyagraha. After his address, there was burning of foreign clothes at the place. Kelappan, in all solemnity, scraped out some salt and thereby became the first salt satyagrahi in Kerala.TheBadagara session of KPCC in May 1931 resolved to launch anti- untouchability campaign as one of the programmes of the Congress. They chose Guruvayoor as the centre of the agitation and demanded the temple therein be opened for all castes. In this case too, the Satyagraha was started under the leadership of Kelappan.

CRITIQUE OF GANDHI ON MAPPILA REBELLION

The Mappila Rebellion, 1921: Critiques Rise From The Flames

The idea of ahimsa as a policy that could be adopted and discarded left the door open for local Muslim interpretation. The Mappila Rebellion illustrated how far grassroots Muslims were from accepting it as a controlling principle. The rebellion, however, also revealed Gandhi’s selective utilitarianism in relation to Muslims, a critique that continues to be alive. In 1918 Gandhi had written to Mohamed Ali: “My interest in your release is quite selfish. We have a common goal and I want to utilize your services to the uttermost in order to reach that goal. In the proper solution of the Mohammedan question lies the realization of Swaraj.” In the case of the Mappilas there is a sense that Gandhi first aroused them and then abandoned them. On November 25, 2000, when I interviewed a revered leader of the Mappila intellectual renaissance and a former university vice chancellor he stated that there were three things that bothered Kerala Muslims about Gandhi: his stubbornness, his religious revivalism, and his virtual abandonment of the Mappilas.

The Mappilas of Kerala, now constituting approximately 7.6 million and approximately 21.5 percent of the state, had experienced the negative impact of foreign rule long before the British arrived. Vasco da Gama, landing in Calicut, Malabar, in 1498, had led the Portuguese incursion, introducing the age of European dominance. The Portuguese distorted a centuries-long period of harmony among Hindus, Christians, and Muslims, a process that I have described elsewhere. The end result was a disaffected and volatile Mappila community, whose members were the victims of a repressive landownership system, were suffering from impoverishment, and were given to frequent violent uprisings against what they deemed to be oppression. The noncooperation movement in its Khilafat aspect dropped like a spark into this tinderbox. A key event was a conference of the Kerala Congress in Manjeri, Malabar, April 28, 1920.

The conference brought the Khilafat movement to the attention of the Mappilas. In an action that some have regarded as the seed of the rebellion activists passed a resolution supporting that movement, a decision opposed by Annie Besant and other moderates. In the short run it resulted in many startling expressions of Muslim–Hindu amity, but in the longer run the Khilafat agitation aroused the religious and emotional fervor of the Mappilas to a high degree. On August 18, 1920, Mahatma Gandhi and Shaukat Ali addressed a large public meeting at Calicut. Exhortations to join action against the British and rosy promises of quick results were in the air. While Gandhi urged Hindus to support Muslim demands for justice within the context of appropriate means, Shaukat Ali was not so restrained, and those who were there recalled the stirring impact of his words.

Shaukat Ali (1873–1938), the first secretary of the Khilafat Committee, who operated in the shadow of his younger brother Mohamed Ali, deserves greater notice than he ordinarily receives for his leadership role. He was a bluff and hearty man rather than a reflective type, and was able to rouse people easily. Moved by his pro-Turkish sentiments and by governmental tardiness in granting Aligarh, his alma mater, university status, he left government service and went into opposition. Gandhi traveled extensively with him after his release from prison in 1919, and became very fond of him. He said of his companion: “There are many good and stalwart Muslims I know. But no Muslim knows me through and through as Shaukat Ali does.” Shaukat Ali, on the other hand, was quite outspoken on his disagreement with Gandhi in regard to ahimsa. Before coming to Calicut, in a speech at Shajahanpur on May 5, 1920, Shaukat Ali stated, “I tell you that to kill and to be killed in the way of God are both satyagraha. To lay down our lives in the way of God for righteousness and to destroy the life of the tyrant who stands in the way of righteousness, are both very great service to God. But we have promised to co-operate with Mr.Gandhi who is with us. . . . If this fails, the Mussalmans will decide what to do.”

We must assume that Gandhi realized that the basic Muslim view of violence differed from his own. Did he think that the experience of working together would modify the Muslim opinion and bring it into closer harmony with his own? Or, as is more likely, did he simply accept the limited possibilities, taking the practical approach? He seemed to recognize his own utilitarianism. Peter Hardy quotes him as saying, “I have been telling Maulana Shaukat Ali all along that I was helping to save his cow [i.e., the caliphate] because I hoped to save my cow thereby.”

There is no need to go into the details of the Mappila Rebellion and the suffering that it entailed for both Hindus and Muslims. The events came like a pail of cold water on the flame of Muslim–Hindu harmony. The Mappilas not only turned violently against their British overlords, but also against the landowning Hindu establishment in a six-month uprising beginning August 20, 1921. Hindu leaders shocked by the Mappila militance drew back from what had been initially regarded as a joint effort. The Mappila sense of betrayal was a major factor in the anti-Hindu nature of the rebellion in its latter stages. As some Hindus even aided British forces, Mappilas responded with killings, arson, robberies, and forced conversion. While the rebellion did not begin as a communal outbreak it ended as one. After six months the Mappilas were severely repressed, and suffered most with 2,266 slain, 252 executed, 502 sentenced to life imprisonment, thousands jailed in different parts of India, and many exiled to the Andaman Islands. The fact that the Mappilas later rose like a phoenix from the ashes to become a changed community that has become positively and dynamically involved in societal development is a marvel of Indian Muslim history. At the close of the rebellion though, they were stunned and silent. There were others, however, who were not silent.

Some of them were Muslims. The cultured and educated northern leaders of Indian Muslims felt trapped by the situation, damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t. Hakim Ajmal Khan took the middle ground, as the majority of Muslims did, in his 1921 presidential address to the Congress Assembly in Ahmedabad. He said, “I cannot close without referring to the tragic events that are daily taking place in Malabar and the prolonged agonies of our unfortunate Moplah brethren.” He blamed the government for provoking the disturbances and denounced the British “pacification,” but he also condemned the forcible conversion of Hindus. “There will be no Muslim worthy of the name who will not condemn the entire un-Islamic act in the strongest possible terms.” But the opinion that Gandhi had to deal with directly was that of Hasrat Mohani (1878–1951), the pen name of Syed Fazlul Hasan. An Aligarh graduate, Urdu poet, fiery worker for the Freedom movement, advocate of a forceful approach, and critic of ahimsa, he found no fault in the essential Mappila approach. As to their attack on the Hindus he argued that it occurred because of Hindu support for the British.

Gandhi made frequent references to the Mappilas in his letters and speeches between 1921 and 1924. His reaction ranged from criticizing some Mappilas to blaming the British to pointing to Hindu failure to a bare recognition of possible responsibility on the part of the Non-cooperation movement. In a Madras speech in the middle of the rebellion he had said, “I would like you to swear before God that we shall not resort to violence for the freedom of our country or for settling quarrels between Hindus and Mussulmans . . . that in spite of the madness shown by some of our Moplah brethren we Hindus and Mussulmans shall remain united forever.” He repeated the phrase “Moplah madness” frequently, and he advised Hasrat Mohani not to defend their actions. But he also blamed the British saying, “They have punished the entire Moplah community for the madness of a few individuals and have incited Hindus by exaggerating the facts.” As for the Hindu responsibility he declared, “The Moplahs have sinned against God and have suffered grievously for it. Let the Hindus also remember that they have not allowed the opportunity for revenge to pass by.” He gave the following advice to Hindus: “We must do away with the communal spirit. The majority must therefore make a beginning and thus inspire the minorities with confidence. . . . Adjustment is possible only when the more powerful take the initiative without waiting for response from the weaker.”

In regard to the crucial question of whether there was responsibility on his own part, or on the part of the Non-cooperation movement or whether his theory was at fault, Gandhi was not very forthcoming. He acknowledged the critiques saying, “Many letters have been received by me, some from wellknown friends telling me that I was responsible even for the alleged Moplah atrocities in fact, for all the riots which Hindus have or are said to have suffered since the Khilafat agitation.” Yet he felt that the significance of the Mappilas should not be overstated because they constitute a special case. Their response cannot undermine the validity or cause of nonviolence. He declared, “The Moplahs themselves had not been touched by the noncooperation spirit. They are not like other Indians nor even like other Mussalmans. I am prepared to admit that the movement had an indirect effect upon them. The Moplah revolt was so different in kind that it did not affect the other parts of India.” A Muslim historian, I. H. Qureshi, gives a less sanguine perspective: “The Moplah rebellion confirmed Hindu fears and provided the first nail in the coffin of Hindu amity.”

-Roland E Miller /  Indian Critiques of Mahatma Gandhi