THE WOMAN WHO SHOT LENIN

Questions on the Real Culprit Remains

Russia closed Lenin’s tomb at Red Square to the public in March,2020 due to the coronavirus scare.His 15o birth day fell on 22 April-Russian communists, led by Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, defied the coronavirus lockdown and marched to Vladimir Lenin’s tomb.The parade, which was attended by dozens of people, marched through Moscow’s Red Square to lay flowers on Lenin’s mausoleum.A policeman said that the Communist Party had received special permission to organise the event.Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Nationalist Liberal Democratic Party head, called for the arrest of those who participated in the parade.
On the 150 Year of Lenin's birth,I feel the first assasssination attempt on him should be revisited.It was a woman who shot him,and she was not a reactionary.

Fanny Kaplan had actually drawn a life sentence for trying the same trick on a tsarist official 12 years before, so you couldn’t say she was a reactionary element.

No, she was a member of the peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary Party, the SRs — the Bolsheviks’ onetime coalition partners who had splintered into left and right factions, the latter being shut out of power when the Constituent Assembly was dismantled by the dictator,Lenin.

A peasant herself, Kaplan was incensed at the Bolshevik power grab and shot Lenin twice at close range as he left a factory on 30 August 1918.

Taken immediately, Kaplan clammed up in interrogation.

My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatoi for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent eleven years at hard labour. After the Revolution I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it.

Even Rosa Luxemburg had called Lenin a betrayer of revolution in 1917 itself.

Realizing there was no information to be had from her, the Cheka had her executed four days after her crime — an affair organized by Yakov Sverdlov, the same guy who had recently disposed of the tsar.

On the same day Kaplan took her shots at Lenin, Bolshevik and Chief of the secret police,Cheka of Petrograd,Moisei Uritsky was  assassinated,by Leonid Kannegisser, a military cadet, who was executed shortly afterwards.The two murders helped justify the Red Terror officially initiated on September 2 — which saw thousands of politically-motivated arrests and executions as the Bolsheviks consolidated their hold on power.

Kaplan viewed Lenin as a "traitor to the revolution" when the Bolsheviks banned her party. On 30 August 1918, she approached Lenin as he was leaving a Moscow factory, and fired three shots, badly injuring him. She was shot on 3 September. The Kaplan attempt and the Moisei Uritsky assassination provoked the Soviet government to reinstitute the death penalty after its abolition on October 28th, 1917.

Relatively little is known for certain about Kaplan's (1890 –  1918 )  background. She was born into an Ukranian Jewish family, as one of seven children. There has been confusion about her full name. Vera Figner (in her memoirs, At Women's Katorga), stated that Kaplan's original name was Feiga Khaimovna Roytblat-Kaplan. However, other sources have stated that her original family name was Roytman  – corresponding to the common German/Yiddish surname Reutemann. She was also sometimes known by the given name Dora.

She became a political revolutionary at an early age and joined a socialist group, the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). In 1906, when she was 16 years old, Kaplan was arrested in Kiev over her involvement in a terrorist bomb plot, and committed for life to the katorga (a hard-labor prison camp).

She was instructed to assassinate the young governor of Kiev, however she never managed to do this because the bomb went off in her room before the attack almost killing her.

 She served in the Maltsev and Akatuy prisons of Nerchinsk katorga, Siberia, where she lost her sight (partially restored later). She was kept in the Maltzevskaya prison, where she was severely caned on her bare body as disciplinary corporal punishment. Fully undressed corporal punishment was not usual for political prisoners at that time. She was released on March 3, 1917, after the February Revolution overthrew the imperial government. As a result of her imprisonment, Kaplan suffered from continuous headaches and periods of blindness.

When released Kaplan moved to Moscow and later worked as a training specialist in Crimea, where she met Lenin's brother Dmitry. They were in a good relationship and it must have been a shock for him to find out later that a good friend of his was declared terrorist.

Depiction of the assassination attempt

Kaplan became disillusioned with Lenin some time around 1917, as a result of conflict between the SRs and Bolsheviks.The Bolsheviks had strong support in the soviets; however, in elections to a competing body, the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks failed to win a majority in the November 1917 elections and a Socialist Revolutionary was elected president in January 1918. The Bolsheviks, favoring soviets, ordered the Constituent Assembly to be dissolved. By August 1918 conflicts between the Bolsheviks and their political opponents had led to the banning of most other influential parties - most recently, of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SRs), who had been the Bolsheviks' principal coalition partner for some time, but had organized the Left SR uprising in July because of their opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Kaplan decided to assassinate Lenin because she considered him "a traitor to the Revolution".

Lenin had become a power hungry dictator,as he had shwn by dissolving the democratically elected constituent assembly after the so called October revolution.

On 30 August 1918, Lenin spoke at the Hammer and Sickle, an arms factory in south Moscow.As Lenin left the building and before he entered his car, Kaplan called out to him. When Lenin turned towards her, she fired three shots with a Browning pistol. One bullet passed through Lenin's coat, the other two struck him: one passing through his neck, puncturing part of his left lung, and stopping near his right collarbone; the other lodging in his left shoulder.

Lenin was taken back to his living quarters at the Kremlin. He feared there might be other plotters planning to kill him and refused to leave the security of the Kremlin to seek medical attention.Dictators are cowards-In the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel,The Autumn of the Patriarch,the dictator can be seen using his own dupe to find the enemies!

Doctors were brought in to treat him but were unable to remove the bullets outside of a hospital. Despite the severity of his injuries, Lenin survived. However, Lenin's health never fully recovered from the attack and it is believed the shooting contributed to the strokes that incapacitated and eventually killed him in 1924.

Fanny was executed in Alexander Garden, with a bullet to the back of the head. Her corpse was bundled into a barrel, and set alight. The order came from Yakov Sverdlov who, just six weeks before, had ordered the execution of the tsar and his family.

Uritsky

Some historians such as Arkady Vaksberg and Donald Rayfield have questioned the actual role of Kaplan in the assassination attempt. Vaksberg states that Lidia Konopleva, another SR, was the culprit, believing it would be all too comforting that Lenin narrowly avoided being assassinated by a woman whose personality is so far from the stereotype of a national hero. In particular, it is suggested that she was working on behalf of others and after her arrest assumed sole responsibility. The main argument put forth in this and other versions is her near-blindness. Another argument points to the contradiction between the official Soviet account (which states that angry workers who witnessed the event immediately seized Kaplan) and official documents, in particular a radiogram by Yakov Peters, which mentions the arrest of several suspects.

In the official announcement of the assassination attempt, Kaplan was declared a Right Eser (Right SR). Moisei Uritsky, People's Commissar for Internal Affairs in the Northern Region and head of the Cheka in Petrograd, had been assassinated nearly two weeks prior to the attack on Lenin.

While the Cheka did not find any evidence linking the two events, their co-occurrence appeared significant in the overall context of the intensifying civil war. The Bolshevik reaction was an abrupt escalation in the persecution of their opponents.

Moisei Uritsky  studied law at the University of Kiev. During his studies he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and organized an underground network for importing and distributing political literature. In 1897 he was arrested and exiled for running an illegal mimeograph press. Becoming involved in the revolutionary movement, he participated in the revolutionary Jewish Bund. In 1903, he became a Menshevik. His activities in Petersburg during the 1905 revolution earned him a second term of exile. Along with Alexander Parvus he was active in dispatching revolutionary agents to infiltrate the Tsarist security apparatus.

In 1914 he emigrated to France and contributed to the Party newspaper Our Word. Back in Russia in 1917 Uritsky became a member of the Mezhraiontsy group. A few months before the October Revolution of 1917, he joined the Bolsheviks and was elected to their Central Committee in July 1917. Uritsky played a leading part in the Bolsheviks' armed take-over in October and later was made head of the Petrograd Cheka. In this position Uritsky coordinated the pursuit and prosecution of members of the nobility, military officers and ranking Russian Orthodox Church clerics who opposed the Bolsheviks.

Leonid Kannegisser, poet and a young military cadet of the Imperial Russian Army, assassinated Uritsky on August 17, 1918, outside the Petrograd Cheka headquarters in retaliation for the execution of his friend and other officers.Following this event, along with the assassination attempt on Lenin by Fanny Kaplan on August 30, the Bolsheviks began a wave of persecution known as the Red Terror. Palace Square in Petrograd was known as Uritsky Square from 1918 to 1944.

Leonid Kannegisser

Fanny was trained by  Semenov. The group planned actions against Bolshevik leaders, namely Trotsky and Lenin, and as Semenov wrote in his memoirs, he considered Fanny the best candidate for carrying out the attack. However, why would he entrust Lenin's assassination to this near-blind girl with no experience in attacks at all? Everybody knew that Semenov considered male workers the best candidates.

There is yet another thing proving that Semenov wasn't sincere writing about Kaplan in his memoirs. The first two attempts to kill Lenin were made by terrorists Usov and Kozlov, but both attempts failed. Kaplan was mainly involved in other activities, such as tracing Lenin.

So who made the third attempt? Witnesses said it was a woman. It might have been Lidia Konopleva, a school teacher in the past and the organizer of crimes against two leading Bolshevik leaders Uritsky and Volodarsky. She was a brilliant shooter and she was the first to put forward the question of Lenin's assassination. However, in his memoirs Semenov wrote that it was exactly Kaplan who shot at Lenin. Interestingly, in 1920 Semenov was no longer an aggressive anti-Bolshevik and even joined the Communist party. By that time for people living in the Soviet Union Kaplan was a counterrevolutionary who put the “heart of revolution” under threat. And that was it.

Of course it is possible that Konopleva was arrested before August 30th and Fanny was instructed to shoot Lenin. Could that really be Kaplan however? None of the records say Kaplan ever used a gun before or exercised in shooting (Semenov would surely write about it in his memoirs). Her eyesight was as bad as before and it would be extremely difficult for her to make two shots, she would need glasses at least. None of the witnesses said she had glasses on when they saw her not far from the crime scene. But they said she had an umbrella and a small suitcase with her, which is rather strange, because these two items would definitely make her escape far more difficult. When Lenin left the factory it was about 10pm and it was getting dark. How could she having such a bad eyesight see anything in the dark?

Fanny Kaplan

Another thing is the testimony of Lenin's driver. When questioned on August 30th Gil,the driver didn't say anything about what the woman looked like. Many years later, when the Party decided to publish his memoirs he said the woman looked exactly like Kaplan (this was later included in the official version). He also said that Lenin didn't want to go to hospital but was taken home with the injury, and refusing help he got off the car and walked up the stairs to his appartment with two shots in his body.

In a couple of hours the Party announced that two people had been arrested. One of them, Alexander Prototipov was soon executed without any investigation. The second person arrested was Fanny Kaplan. The police officer who arrested her wasn't sure where exactly he did that. On August 30th he said he arrested her near the factory, but a week later it turned out that he arrested her on the Serpukhovka street.

An official decree on Red Terror was issued only hours after the Kaplan shooting, calling for all-out struggle against enemies of the revolution. In the next few months, about 800 Right SRs and other political opponents of Bolsheviks were executed. During the first year, the scope of the Red Terror expanded significantly.

The event is portrayed in Reilly, Ace of Spies, a 1983 British TV series. Kaplan has been the subject of or character in several plays including (Fanny Kaplan by Venedikt Yerofeyev; Kill me, o my beloved! by Elena Isaeva) and books (Europe Central by William T. Vollmann).

Leonid Kannegisser was also an Ukraine jew.

His father, Akim (Joachim) Kannegisser, was a mechanical engineer and the head of Russia's largest shipyards, the Black Sea Shipyard, and his mother was a doctor. Kannegisser graduated from a private school and in 1913 became a military cadet in the Mikhailov Artillery School of the Imperial Russian Army. Kannegisser studied economics from 1915 to 1917 at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute and was a member of Popular Socialists, a moderate left-wing anti-Communist political party. An admirer of Alexander Kerensky, on the night of 25 to 26 October 1917 (Old Style Julian Calendar), during the October Revolution, Kannegisser and several other cadets defended the Provisional Government at the Winter Palace. In 1917 he dedicated a poem to Alexander Kerensky.

On 17 August 1918 around nine o’clock, Kannegisser, wearing a leather jacket and an officers cap, turned up at the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, left his bicycle by the door and entered the building. Uritsky arrived in his car at around ten o’clock, and a few moments later he was fatally shot in his head and body by Kannegisser. After shooting Uritsky, he ran out into the street and tried to escape on his bicycle, riding quickly but was chased by a car. He threw away his bicycle and ran into the British embassy. Kannegisser left the embassy after having donned a longcoat and opened fire on Red Guards but he was arrested.

Kannegisser was tortured. He declared that he had acted alone and was executed shortly afterwards in Petrograd. Following his arrest, the Bolshevik authorities also arrested several members of his family and friends. After being released, his parents emigrated to Warsaw, where they died.

Kannegisser was part of a clandestine anti-Bolshevik group led by his cousin, Maximilian Filonenko, who had close links with Boris Savinkov, who gave the order to assassinate Uritsky. Viktor Pereltsveig, an army officer lover (Kannegisser was homosexual), was executed with a group of officers by the Cheka in the summer of 1918. Kannegisser decided to take revenge by killing Uritsky, who had signed the execution orders.

From childhood Kannegisser had written poetry and was a friend of Sergei Yesenin. He hosted in his house many literary meetings, where Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelshtam and others presented their poetry. A decade after Kannegiesser’s execution his poems were posthumously published by Mark Aldanov in Paris in 1928. A major part of Kannegisser's literary heritage is preserved in the closed files of the Central Government Archives of Literature and Art in Moscow.

MAPPILA RIOTS AND COMMUNIST DISTORTION OF HISTORY

The Soviet Role in Red Jihad

During the Great Purges of 1937-1938, Stalin had two Indians lined up against the wall and shot. One was Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, younger brother of Sarojini Naidu. He was a brilliant revolutionary, and a rival of M N Roy, one of the founders of the Indian Communist Party in Tashkent, which the CPM recognizes and the CPI doesn't. Virendranath, popularly known as Chatto, was executed by Stalin's police on September 2, 1937. He was the hero of Somerset Maugham's short story ‘Giulia Lazzari’. 

The second Indian to be killed was Abani Mukherji, who joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1918. He was a founder of the Indian Communist Party along with Roy. The party was formed using vulnerable muhajirs from India, who were on their way for a jihad in Turkey. The Ottoman sultan had been removed by the British at the end of World War I. The Muhajirs were trained in a military school set up by the Soviet Union in Tashkent. Mukherji was given charge of the school. Roy, together with Mukherji, concluded that the Turkey jihad was class war. No wonder, Mukherji, in his document on the Mappila riots of Malabar, prepared for Lenin, interpreted it as a class war between Hindu lords and Muslim peasants. 

This document, prepared in October 1921, was read by Lenin and handed over to his chief ideologue, and politburo member Nikolai Bukharin on November 14 with a note. The document was subsequently published in the German and French journals of the Communist International and was translated from the German Die Internationale by Eden and Cedar Paul and published in the March 22 issue of the journal of the British Communist Party, The Communist Review. While researching on Mukherji’s political life, I found the article in the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School, London. 

The existence of the document was never a secret. In fact, Pinarayi Vijayan, hardly an intellectual, observed in an article titled ‘Muslims of Malabar and the Left’: “Lenin had instructed Abani Mukherji, an Indian communist of that period to prepare a pamphlet after collecting all available facts regarding the agrarian issue in India and peasant struggles”.  

Mukherji’s essay was, however, the first Marxist interpretation of the Mappila Riots as  class war, and all leading Marxist historians, including K N Panicker, have subscribed to that view. It is regrettable that Panicker has not even mentioned the name of Mukherji in his thesis and book, Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1836-1921. If he had seen Mukherji's article and chose to omit it, it is deplorable and if he had not seen it, it is despicable.  

The contention of Mukherji that the Muslims of Malabar coast are the descendants of Arab fighters is unfounded;they are the descendants of the Hindu fishermen who were forcibly converted.There were massive conversions and widespread massacres during the campaigns of Hyderali and Tipu Sultan,if one is to go into the roots of the 1921 Malabar Jihad.Panicker cites the massacre of 34 Hindus on a day in 1921.Sober people never term a massacre a class war.Ofcourse,for Lenin,massacres were class conflicts,if we are to assess the killing of the Tambov peasants in revolt. For Stalin,purges of his enemies including Trotsky were class wars. 

Intellectuals who invested in land are called Bourgeois by Mukherji.There was no other option,and eventually they became the middle class in India,and the backbone of the Party in West Bengal and Kerala.To bracket them with Jenmis is sheer absurdity.The Hindu peasants too were down trodden and hapless.Muslim peasants alone doesn't constitute a class.The multitude of Hindus who were forcibly converted belonged to the working class.The tens of thousands of  ordinary soldiers of the Nair Brigade that was captured,converted or killed were from the working class.Out of 15000 nairs captured by Hyderali and taken to Bednur,only 200 survived.One among them,Velluvakkammaran Nambiar,converted as Ayaz Khan,became the Commander of the forces of Hyderali and his Governor.

A reason must be there for Marxist historians ignoring Mukherji's document. Clearly, the reason is that, Mukherji, while trying to interpret Mappila Riots as class war, also highlights the fanatic content of the rebellion. He observes that the Khilafat movement was coopted and subjugated by the fanatic Muslim clergy. He avows that the mullahs, forgetting the aim of the movement, diverted their rank and file, against their peace-loving Hindu neighbors. The Hindus were given the option," death or Islam". Thus, the Hindus were massacred, forcibly converted and if they refused, were hacked to death. They ransacked the military depot at Malappuram and looted treasury of 40,000 pounds. 

Of course, Mukherji’s narrative has lots of contradictions. He unabashedly compares the Malabar revolt to the peasant uprising in Oudh, proving that Marxists hardly read Marx – In The Annexation of Oude in the 28 May, 1858 issue of The New York Daily Tribune, Marx rightly pointed out that governor general Lord Canning had attached all the property of the peasants in Oudh. Mukherji should have known the difference between jihad and revolution. Maybe, he and the Marxists pushed for a revolutionary jihad – a Red Jihad. 

It is said that the Communists had no role in the Mappila riots.It is not so.In 1921, during the Mappila riot,a communist party was non existent in India.In Kerala a party was formed only in 1936,fifteen years later.What was in existence was the fraudulent N R I party formed by M N Roy in Tashkent.The so called Tashkent party had only 7 members.Two among them were Roy and his then live in partner, U S born Evelyn Trent.Others were Rosa Fitingo,Abani Mukherji,Muhammad Ali Muhammad Shafeeq and M P T Acharya.Rosa was Mukherji's wife.

This happened on 17 October 1920.

The two party members,Ali and Shafeeq were muhajirs,vowed to implement the Turkey jihad.A Soviet military school to train the Indian muhajirs was established at Tashkent with Abani Mukherji as its Chief.Among the 200 Indian muhajirs,only 26 joined the military school.These 26 militarily trained muslims could not go to Turkey; Afghan King Amanulla denied permission to the Soviet Union to smuggle weapons to India,to conduct revolution there.It is assumed that these 26 military experts joined the Mappila riots-the communists thus joined the Mappila force.It is then inevitable that they are committed to distort the history of 1921.Mukherji had two close contacts in Madras-M Singaravelu Chettiar and Dr Manilal.Chettiar presided over the founding conference of the Indian Communist Party in 1925,at Kanpur.

Chettiar,like Roy and Mukherji was a Comintern agent.Sir Cecil Kaye ( 1868-1935 ) who was the Director,Central Intelligence,during the Mappila jihad,wrote in his book,Communism in India ( 1925 ) that M N Roy had a role in the jihad.

Cecil Kaye,in Communism in India 1919-1924,writes:

"The Communist Party ( of India ) wasthe one which Roy had started at Tashkent and taken with him to Moscow.];it consisted of him and those Tashkent students who accompanied hm and who were to receive their final training at the University of Moscow.This was the ' Communist University of the Workers of the East' ,which was established in 1921 with the 'Narkomnatz' ( Peoples Commissariat of Nationalities ) at Moscow.After training,these workers to be utilised in Eastern countries,including India.The ' Commission appointed by the International ' was a sub committee called the Maliburo,whose detailed decision was as follows:

"A Communist group to be formed in Moscow whose work will be to-

1.Prepare propaganda literature in all Idian languages

2.Collect and train Indian revolutionaries and send them to India;

3.Select from Indians,now in Moscow,an emissary to India,who shall-

a.form a communist party in India;

b.establish liaison between between the Third International ,Gandhi and the Khilafat Party;

c.arrange for despatch to Russia of representatives from Gandhi and the Khilafat Party...

" In accordance with the above decisions,Nalini Gupta was selected as the emissary to India,receiving £ 200 for travelling expenses.His instructions were those set out under ( 3 ) above."

In 1920,the Soviet Party was considering the idea to use pan islamism and antagonism of the muslims  towards the British to spread communism in India.Sir David Petrie,the British Intelligence Chief in India after Cecil Kaye,wrote a sequel to Kaye's book,Titled Communism in India 1924-27.In it Petrie writes:

"( M N Roy) meanwhile received an accession of strength by the news of the arrival in India of one of his Moscow students,Shaukat Usmani,who wrote to him in Apri ( 1922 ) from Bombay.Thereafter Roy impudently claimed that his agents in India had been responsible for the Moplah rebellion."

Moulana Hasrat Mohani,who was Chairman of the Communist Party formed by Satyabhakta,justified the Mappila jihad and the conversion of Hindus to Islam.It was Mohani who coined the slogan,Inquilab Zindabad;t was Mohani who wrote the famous poem,'Chupke,Chupke,immortalised by Gulam Ali.

Marxist historians have a pervasive tendency to infer first, distort facts and then theorize. Thus, Fazal Pookkoya Thangal, leader of the Malabar jihad ,who had declared three fatwas against Hindus and hence deported to Arabia, has become an expert in class wars, in the eyes of Marxist historians like K K N Kurup. When jihad becomes class war, fundamentalists become Marxists. 

Mukherji too was a victim. The difference between him and contemporary Marxist historians is that he chose to reveal the truth, not hunting for platitudes. The fanaticism of 1921 is there in the document, making him a renegade. It is better to ignore him. He was not a historian, but a textile technologist, trying to weave Marxist draperies out of abundant absurdity.  

Both Chatto and Mukherji were Bengalis,sidelined by another Bengali,M N Roy.Comintern finally demoted them to the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.They made contact with Lenin's widow Krupskaya,and were killed by Stalin.Mukherji was shot on 26 October,1937.Execution by shooting was reserved for high ranking communists;Hanging was for the mediocre.  

JNANAPPANA-GITA OF MALAYALIS

Melpathur Refused to Read It

Today is Poonthanam day-aswathy in Kumbham.

Poonthanam was born in 1547 in the month of masi on the day of Aswini, at Keezhattoor, near Perinthalamanna in Malapuram district,into a Namboodiri Brahmin family. He married at 20, but for a long time, they had no children. He began to propitiate the Lord of Guruvayur by reciting the ‘[Santhana Gopalam]’ and a son was born. He called for a celebration and everybody known was invited, but the child died an hour before the Annaprasanam ceremony.Grief-stricken, Poonthanam sought refuge at Guruvayur and started praying with the puranic story of Kumaraharanam. The heartbroken Poonthanam, it is said, was consoled by Guruvayurappan himself, who lay down on his lap, for a moment, as a child. He considered Lord Krishna as his son and achieved enlightenement. In the Jnanappana he writes: “While little Krishna is dancing in our hearts, do we need little ones of our own?”. Poonthanam spent the rest of his life reading the Bhagavatham and singing the Lord’s glories in simple Malayalam. His magnum opus, the Jnanappana, was composed during this period. 

Poonthanam

The chief poems of Poonthanam are Jnanappana, Bhasha Karnamritam and Kumaraharanam or Santanagopalam Pana. Jnanappana (transliteration: The Song of Divine Wisdom) is a veritable storehouse of transcendental knowledge which is firmly rooted in the experiences of this world. In a language, absolutely free from regionalism and dialectal influences, unadorned with excessive rhetorical features, through a series of concrete pictures taken from contemporary life, the poet is able to drive home his perception of the short lived nature of the ephemeral aspects of life. His religious meditations flow uncluttered and unencumbered with irrelevant matter. Jnanappana has been transcreated into English by poet cum writer Dr Gopi Kottoor, the book “Poonthanam’s Hymns – The Fountain Of God” is published by Writer’s Workshop,Kolksata.It has also been translated by Vijay Nambisan,published by Penguin.

Bhasha Karnamritam is a devotional work intended to create devotion to Lord Krishna in the readers. Santanagopalam Pana tells the story of a Brahmin father who lost all his children and sought the help of the Pandava prince Arjuna. Arjuna proudly offered to help him preserve his next child alive, but he was unable to keep his word. The Brahmin abuses Arjuna to his great anguish and in his wounded pride he decides to commit suicide by leaping into flames. Krishna out of love for Arjuna, intervenes at the last moment and takes him to Vaikuntha from where they recover all the lost children of the Brahmin. Krishna’s infinite love for his devotees is thus the central theme, but the poem also makes its appeal because of its down-to-earth realism and unmistakable touch of authenticity.

Poonthanam Illam

Poonthanam preached Namasmaranam, or the constant remembrance of the Lord’s name, as the only way to reach Him. He emphasised the futility of material existence and advocated instead service to the Lord through the Nama japa, or recitation of the names of the Lord, as the path to moksha. At the end of each verse of the Jnanappana, the nama japa of ‘Krishna Krishna Mukunda Janardhana,’ stresses Poonthanam’s emphasis on nama sankeerthanam.

Over a period of time , Poonthaanam has acquired the status of most sought after commentator of the scriptures in Guruvaayoor Temple. One day an important dignitary had arrived in the temple. The authorities concerned asked Poonthaanam to vacate the main seat for accommodating the guest. Hesitatingly, Poonthaanam made way. However, thereupon happened one more incorporeal proclamation from the sanctum sanctorum:” Poonthaanam need not stay in the temple any more with unfriendly people as I have decided to come to your house. I will visit your house (on such and such date) and stay there for ever”.

Poonthaanam obeyed the divine command and proceeded to his house. On the destined day he was seen extending hospitality to the invisible guest at his house- apparently the visit by God. He constructed a temple to install the lord on the “left” side of the house and it had come to be known as the left side temple during his times.

According to legend, Poonthanam left this world in his body in 1640. When he announced his departure for heaven, he invited anyone who wanted to join him, which all the villagers declined. Ultimately, only a maid who had been nursing his ailing wife joined him on his heavenly journey.

He was a contemporary of Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri, another famous poet associated with Guruvayur. Melpathur, the author of the Sanskrit work Narayaneeyam, was a famed scholar who out of pride refused Poonthanam’s request to read his Jnanappana, a work in Malayalam.Legend has it that Guruvayurappan, impressed by Poonthanam’s humility and devotion preferred his works to those of Bhattathiri’s and once even rebuked Bhattathiri for ignoring Poonthanam’s Santhanagopala Paana saying he preferred Poonthanam’s genuine bhakti to Bhattathiri’s vibhakti.

Jnanappana can be considered as the Bhagavad Gita of Malayali Hindus. This is a darshanika kavyam or philosophical poem expressed in simple Malayalam for ordinary people. The Jnanappana is noted for its literary quality, the use of simple phrases, its philosophical strength and reflects Poonthanam’s deep bhakti to Guruvayoorappan. Jnanappana consists of 360 lines of verse written in the pana metre of Malayalam poetry The Jnanappana is noted for its use of opposing images through which Poonthanam draws out the cosmic acts of Krishna through the web of karma.

In the Jnanappana, Poonthanam, an ardent devotee of Shri Guruvayurappan, transforms his unbearable sorrow from his infant son’s death into a yogavishesham. He used this sad experience to build his Bhakti soudham or house of devotion and opens it for all devotees for all time. The line “unnikrishnan manasil kalikumbol,unnikal mattu venamo makkalai” (When the baby Krishna plays in one’s mind, does one need one’s own children?) expresses the poet’s grief at the death of his child and his deep devotion to Guruvayurappan even in that grief-stricken state. Even though the language is very simple, Jnanappana, or song of wisdom deals within it with the essence of the Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhagavad Gita, Bhajagovindam, Viveka Chudamani and Narayaneeyam.

The devotional hymn ‘Kandu Kandangirikkum Janangale’ is from the Jnanappana.

( Written on 28 February,2020.)

THERE WAS A TEMPLE WHERE BABRI MASJID STOOD

Excavations Proved It

The history of the excavations at Ayodhya proves beyond doubt that the Babri  Masjid was built after destroying a pre existing temple.The court verdicts have recognized the findings.Here is the c complete story:

In 1862-63, Alexander Cunningham, the founder of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), conducted a survey of Ayodhya. Cunnigham identified Ayodhya with Sha-chi mentioned in Fa-Hien’s writings, Visakha mentioned in Xuanzang’s writings and Saketa mentioned in Hindu-Buddhist legends. According to him, Gautama Buddha spent six years at this place. Although Ayodhya is mentioned in several ancient Hindu texts, Cunningham found no ancient structures in the city. According to him, the existing temples at Ayodhya were of relatively modern origin. Referring to legends, he wrote that the old city of Ayodhya must have been deserted after the death of Brihadbala “in the great war” around 1426 BCE. When King Vikramāditya of Ujjain visited the city around first century CE, he constructed new temples at the spots mentioned in Ramayana. Cunningham believed that by the time Xuanzang visited the city in 7th century, Vikramaditya’s temples had “already disappeared”; the city was a Buddhist centre, and had several Buddhist monuments. Cunningham’s main objective in surveying Ayodhya was to discover these Buddhist monuments.

In 1889-91, an ASI team led by Alois Anton Führer conducted another survey of Ayodhya. Führer did not find any ancient statues, sculptures or pillars that marked the sites of other ancient cities. He found “a low irregular mass of rubbish heaps”, from which material had been used for building the neighbouring Muslim city of Faizabad. The only ancient structures found by him were three earthen mounds to the south of the city: Maniparbat, Kuberparbat and Sugribparbat. Cunningham identified these mounds with the sites of the monasteries described in Xuanzang’s writings. 

Like Cunningham, Führer also mentioned the legend of the Ramayana-era city being destroyed after death of Brihadbala, and its rebuilding by Vikramaditya. He wrote that the existing Hindu and Jain temples in the city were modern, although they occupied the sites of the ancient temples that had been destroyed by Muslims. The five Digambara Jain temples had been built in 1781 CE to mark the birth places of five tirthankaras, who are said to have been born at Ayodhya. A Svetambara Jain temple dedicated to Ajitanatha was built in 1881. Based on local folk narratives, Führer wrote that Ayodhya had three Hindu temples at the time of Muslim conquest: Janmasthanam (where Rama was born), Svargadvaram (where Rama was cremated) and Treta-ke-Thakur (where Rama performed a sacrifice). 

According to Führer, Mir Khan built the Babri mosque at the place of Janmasthanam temple in 930 AH (1523 CE). He stated that many columns of the old temple had been utilized by the Muslims for the construction of Babri mosque: these pillars were of black stone, called kasauti by the natives. Führer also wrote that Aurangzeb had built now-ruined mosques at the sites of Svargadvaram and Treta-ke-Thakur temples. A fragmentary inscription of Jayachandra of Kannauj, dated to 1241 Samvat (1185 CE), and a record of a Vishnu temple’s construction were recovered from Aurangazeb’s Treta-ke-Thakur mosque, and kept in Faizabad museum.

The team of archaeologists of the ASI, led by former Director-General ASI (1968–1972), B.B. Lal in 1975–76, worked on a project titled “Archaeology of Ramayana Sites”, which excavated five Ramayana-related sites of Ayodhya, Bharadwaj Ashram, Nandigram, Chitrakoot and Shringaverapura. At Ayodhya, the team found rows of pillar-bases which must have belonged to a larger building than the Babri Mosque. In 2003 statement to the Allahabad High Court, Lal stated that after he submitted a seven-page preliminary report to the Archaeological Survey of India, mentioning the discovery of “pillar bases”, immediately south of the Babri mosque structure in Ayodhya. Subsequently, all technical facilities were withdrawn, and despite repeated requests, the project wasn’t revived for another 10–12 years, despite his repeated request. Thus the final report was never submitted, the preliminary report was only published in 1989, and in Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) volume on historicity of Ramayana and Mahabharat. Subsequently, in his 2008 book, Rama: His Historicity Mandir and Setu, he wrote, “Attached to the piers of the Babri Masjid, there were twelve stone pillars, which carried not only typical Hindu motifs and mouldings, but also figures of Hindu deities. It was self-evident that these pillars were not an integral part of the Masjid, but were foreign to it.”

B. B. Lal’s team also had K. K. Muhammed, who in his autobiography claimed that Hindu temple was found in excavation and said that left historians are misleading the Muslim communities by aligning with fundamentalists.

Accordingly, archaeological findings of burnt bases of pillars made of brick, a few metres from the mosque, indicated that a large temple stood in alignment with the Babri Mosque since the 11th century. In a trench at a distance of four metres south of the mosque, parallel rows of pillar-foundations made of brick-bats and stones were found.

In July 1992, eight eminent archaeologists (among them former ASI directors, Dr. Y.D. Sharma and Dr. K.M. Srivastava) went to the Ramkot hill to evaluate and examine the findings. These findings included religious sculptures and a statue of Vishnu. They said that the inner boundary of the disputed structure rests, at least on one side, on an earlier existing structure, which “may have belonged to an earlier temple”. (Indian Express, 4 July 1992.) The objects examined by them also included terracotta Hindu images of the Kushan period (100-300 AD) and carved buff sandstone objects that showed images of Vaishnav deities and of Shiva-Parvati. They concluded that these fragments belonged to a temple of the Nagara style (900-1200 AD).

Prof. S.P. Gupta commented on the discoveries:

“The team found that the objects were datable to the period ranging from the 10th through the 12th century AD, i.e., the period of the late Pratiharas and early Gahadvals. (….) These objects included a number of amakalas, i.e., the cogged-wheel type architectural element which crown the bhumi shikharas or spires of subsidiary shrines, as well as the top of the spire or the main shikhara … This is a characteristic feature of all north Indian temples of the early medieval period (…) There was other evidence — of cornices, pillar capitals, mouldings, door jambs with floral patterns and others — leaving little doubt regarding the existence of a 10th-12th century temple complex at the site of Ayodhya.”

The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) excavated the Ram Janambhoomi/Babri Mosque site at the direction of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court Uttar Pradesh in 2003. The archaeologists also reported evidence of a large structure pre-existed the Babri Masjid. A team of 131 labourers, including 52 Muslims was engaged in the excavations. On 11 June 2003 the ASI issued an interim report that only listed the findings of the period between 22 May and 6 June 2003. In August 2003 the ASI handed a 574-page report to the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court.

The ASI, who examined the site, issued a report of the findings of the period between 22 May and 6 June 2003. This report stated:Among the structures listed in the report are several brick walls ‘in east-west orientation’, several ‘in north-south orientation’, ‘decorated coloured floor’, several ‘pillar bases’, and a ‘1.64-metre high decorated black stone pillar (broken) with figurines on four corners’ as well as inscription of holy verses on stone in Arabic language” 

Earlier reports by the ASI, based on earlier findings, also mention among other things a staircase and two black basalt columns ‘bearing fine decorative carvings with two crosslegged figures in bas-relief on a bloomed lotus with a peacock whose feathers are raised upwards’.

The excavations gave ample traces that there was a mammoth pre-existing structure beneath the three-domed Babri structure.

Ancient perimeters from East to West and North to South have been found beneath the Babri structure. Beautiful stone pieces bearing carved Hindu ornamentations like lotus, Kaustubh jewel, alligator facade, etc., were used in these walls. These decorated architectural pieces were anchored with precision at varied places in the walls. A tiny portion of a stone slab is sticking out at a place below 20 feet in one of the pits. The rest of the slab lies covered in the wall. The projecting portion bears a five-letter Devanagari inscription that turns out to be a Hindu name claimed by VHP but is disputed and thus still unproven whether it is a Hindu name or not. The items found below 20 feet should be at least 1,500 years old. According to archaeologists about a foot of loam layer gathers on topsoil every hundred years. Primary clay was not found even up to a depth of 30 feet. It provides a clue to the existence of some structure at that place over the last 2,500 years.

More than 30 pillar bases have been found at equal spans. The pillar-bases are in two rows and the rows are parallel. The pillar-base rows are in North-South direction. A wall is superimposed upon another wall. At least three layers of the floor are visible. An octagonal holy fireplace (Yagna Kund) was found. These facts prove the enormity of the pre-existing structure. Surkhii has been used as a construction material in our country for over 2,000 years and, in the constructions at the Janma Bhumi, Surkhii has been extensively used. Molded bricks of round and other shapes and sizes were neither in vogue during the Middle Ages nor are they in use today. It was in vogue only 2,000 years ago.

 Many ornate pieces of touchstone (Kasauti stone) pillars have been found in the excavation. Terracotta religious figures, serpent, elephant, horse-rider, saints, etc., have been found.

The Supreme Court order recognised the deity Ram Lalla’s title rights to the disputed 2.77-acre Ayodhya land.In its judgment, the Supreme Court referred to an Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) report to observe that the Babri Masjid, which stood on the disputed site until its demolition in 1992, was not built on vacant land and that there was evidence of a temple-like structure having existed on the land before the mosque was built.