Variamkunnath’s Hindu comrades

“M appila rebels declared selfrule in Malabar,” The New York Times reported on August 29, 1921, after Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji declared an independent state in the presence of a huge crowd of volunteers and the public in Manjeri. According to British records the rebels controlled an area of 2,000 square miles consisting of 200 villages of Eranad and Valluvanad taluks. It was an unprecedented challenge for the mighty British Empire and one of the biggest military campaigns since World War I was undertaken to recapture the lost territory. Fierce fights and brutal suppression followed. Variamkunnath was captured and shot dead after a summary trial on January 20, 1922, and British commandant Col ET Humphreys officially declared ‘the revolt has ended’.

The recent controversies have triggered a spurt in research and helped unearth new records that challenge many popular narratives about the Malabar Revolt. While Ramees Mohamed’s book ‘Sultan Variamkunnan’ has brought to light many interesting documents, including Kunhamed Haji’s letter to an American anti-imperialist organization on communal propaganda against the rebellion, the script of a 100-year-old British movie discovered by researchers under Dr P Sivadasan of Calicut University clearly exposes the colonial attempt to paint the rebellion as an outright fanatical movement.

While the colonial army unleashed brute force against the rebels and the public, the British officials were busy winning the war with well-oiled propaganda machinery. Within months after the revolt began, a 30-minute documentary film was produced by the publicity bureau under Gilbert Slater highlighting the atrocities against the Hindu landlords. With subtitles in English and in Tamil, ‘The Malabar Moplah Rebellion’ was widely publicized in India and abroad.

“The cause of the present Moplah outbreak was the excited state of religious fanaticism which has been aroused among the Moplahs,” so begins the script prepared by propaganda officer major Robinson of Bangalore regiment, but nowhere does it mention the exploitative agrarian tax structure, oppressive caste system, extreme poverty, Congress and Khilafat agitation, the factors that together contributed to the armed uprising. While Manjeri has been described as ‘the very centre of the fanatical zone’ the script goes on to say ‘almost every Hindu house where loot could be obtained was attacked and plundered.”

It was to counter this aggressive propaganda by the British that Kunhamed Haji sent out messages to the international audience. In a cable telegram to the New York-based anti-imperialist organization, ‘The Friends of Freedom For India’, he urged the people of America to wait for their judgment of the war in Malabar till they get correct details of the revolt.

“A few cases of conversion of our Hindu brethren have been reported to me. But after proper investigation, we discovered the real plot. The vandals that were guilty of this crime were the members of the British reserve police and British intelligence department and they joined our forces as patriots to do such filthy work only to discredit our soldiers. There are Christians, Hindus, and Moplahs amongst these British agents and spies. They have decidedly been put to death,” so reads the message reproduced in Ramees Mohamed’s book.

US dailies Detroit Free Press and The Baltimore Sun carried this report on December 7, 1921. The Hindu had also carried a similar letter from Variamkunnath on October 7, 1921.

While the role of the Hindu lower caste peasants in the rebellion was widely acknowledged, Mohamed’s book gives details of the presence of Hindu leaders on the war front. The first official meeting of the rebel council was held at Thekkekalam House of Pandiyatt Naryanan Nambeeshan and he himself presided over the meeting. Many upper-caste Hindu leaders such as Parambott Achuthankutty Menon and Poonthanam Raman Namboothiri were also present at the meeting. Minutes of the meeting were prepared by Kappatt Krishnan Nair, a long-time assistant of Kunhamed Haji, and the first two decisions of the meeting were strict warnings against the forcible conversion of Hindus.

Naik Neelandan and Naik Thami, two former soldiers, played major roles in the rebel army. Thami who was working as a peon in a court before the rebellion shared many secrets on the British action against the rebels to Kunhamed Haji. Many such details have been documented by a prominent local historian AK Kodoor, who had recovered Thami’s diary notes during his research.

According to Thami’s records, a trained army of about 75,000 fought the British and the British had to bring reinforcements in the form of Gurkha and Garhwal regiments and Chin and Kachin soldiers as the rebels shifted to guerrilla warfare. American journalist Thomas Stewart Ryan of Chicago Tribune, who travelled extensively with the British army, had reported the stiff resistance put up by the Moplah fighters against the British army.

When the rebels organized a guerrilla training camp in Vellinezhi in September 1921, according to eyewitness records, there were over 1,000 Hindu fighters in the camp, and food was provided by Olappamanna Mana, a prominent Hindu family in the area. In many cases, where the rebels attacked government establishments, the prime accused were people from the Hindu community. While Kurshikkalathil Keshavan Nair was the prime accused in the Cherpulashery police station attack case, Edachola Kuttappanikkar was named as prime accused and Chenampara Achuppanikkar was named as second accused in the Churiyod bridge attack case. Alikunnath Krishnan Nair was an accused in the Kuttippuram railway attack case and Appulli Keshavan Nair was accused in the Nellippuzha bridge attack case.

“The propaganda war against Malabar rebellion has a long history and writings based on colonial records have reinforced this narrative. But recent findings have helped dispel this impression to a great extent. It’s also important to note that all the rebels were convicted for ‘waging war against the British government’, not on charges of religious violence,” Dr Sivadasan said. “The best way to counter the Hindutva narrative of the rebellion is to enrich historiography of the rebellion by unearthing more source materials and interpreting them using more valid analytical tools. It will bring more clarity to the existing scholarship. Rather than an emotional enterprise, it should be corroborated by historical facts,” said Dr PP Abdul Razak, a retired history professor and executive council member of the Kerala Council of Historical Research.