The seeds of Islamic separatism in north Kerala may well have first sprouted as early as the 1920s with the Malabar Rebellion, or the Moplah Rebellion, as it is better known. The rebellion was a violent upheaval against the British administration and local landlords in southern Malabar. Says Conrad Wood, a noted British historian, in The Moplah Rebellion and Its Genesis: “For a period of several months, from August 1921 to early 1922, British administration was effectual only within the range of the gun in an area of hundreds of square miles inhabited by a Moplah (Mappila) population of about four lakh.”
Modern historians prefer to list the Moplah uprising as part of the Khilafat Movement (1919-24), an Islamic movement that sought to protect the
Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. By 1920, the Khilafat Movement had been subsumed by the larger Indian National Congress-led nationalist movement to become part of the Non-Cooperation Movement, driven by Mahatma Gandhi’s desire to consolidate Hindu-Muslim unity as part of the freedom struggle. “Love at first sight” is how the Mahatma described his feelings for Oxford-educated Maulana Mohammad Ali Jouhar, one of the prominent Khilafat leaders.
The Moplah Rebellion that broke out in 1921 had one curious feature: the rebellion was against British rule but the victims were mostly Hindus; it was a campaign of murder and conversion. The events are best described in a passage from Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s Pakistan or Partition of India: “As a rebellion against the British government, it was quite understandable. But what baffled most was the treatment accorded by the Moplas to the Hindus of Malabar. The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at the hands of the Moplas. Massacres, forcible conversions, desecrations of temples, foul outrages upon women, such as ripping open pregnant women, pillage arson and destruction — in short all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism were perpetrated freely by the Moplas upon the Hindus until such time as troops could be hurried to the task of restoring order through a difficult and extensive tract of the country. This was not a Hindu-Muslim riot. This was a Bartholomew. The number of Hindus who were killed, wounded or converted, is not known. But the number must have been enormous.”
Gandhi later praised the ‘God-fearing Moplas’, and a resolution of the Congress Working Committee was worded carefully to assuage Moplah sentiment. The Khilafat Movement fizzled out in time and its leaders broke with the secular Congress. Many see the events as the beginning of minority appeasement.
The British brutally suppressed the rebellion, killing more than 10,000 rebels and capturing about 40,000 people. But the seeds had been sowed even earlier. Historians reckon 36 Moplah uprisings in the 19th century. Among them, the Manjeri uprising, Kulathur uprising and Mattannur uprising that occurred in the middle of 19th century were the most significant. “All the victims were Hindus, with the exception of two Collectors of Malabar,” notes Wood in his book.
Renowned historian MGS Narayanan says the 1921-22 rebellion was the volcanic culmination of these preceding uprisings of the 19th century. “From 1766 to 1800, Malabar was subject to Muslim conquerors—first Hyder Ali and later Tipu Sultan. Hyder Ali seized the lands of the Hindu landlords and indulged in forced conversion. The captured lands were given to Muslims including the new converts. Later, when the British took over after killing Tipu Sultan, they restored these lands to the former Hindu owners and elevated them as ‘village officers’, who functioned as the local henchmen of the British. In fact, this kindled the spirit of animosity between two communities,’’ says Narayanan.