THE MOPLAH GENOCIDE

OF THE MALABAR HINDUS

Sandeep Balakrishna

www.dharmadispatch.in
October 2019
 Part 1
How Mohandas Gandhi’s Pious Dictatorship Culminated in
the Genocide of Hindus in Malabar: The Hidden Details

On 24 December 1921, the pre-independence Indian National

Congress met at Ahmedabad for a discussion on the Congress
Subjects Committee and passed five or six resolutions. This was
truly a watershed moment both in the history of the INC and
that of Bharatavarsha. It officially appointed Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi the dictator of the Indian National
Congress, and what until that time was occurring in fits and
short spurts became a deluge: Gandhi‘s cult of Hindu-Muslim
unity which always meant the fatal kiss of death for the Hindus.
It also heralded Gandhi‘s two-decade-long reign of blackmailing
and manipulating Congress leaders who were stalwarts in their
own right.
Although an ardent admirer of Gandhi, the iconic D.V.
Gundappa (or DVG) minced no words in calling out the
Mahatma‘s maha bluffs from time to time. Writing on the
Ahmedabad Session, he notes[i] that “the most important part of
the central resolution of the Congress is that which appoints Mr.
Gandhi dictator”.
But first, let‘s read the actual text[ii] of the resolution itself.
“In view of the impending arrest of a large number of Congress
workers, this Congress, whilst requiring the ordinary machinery to
remain intact and to be utilized in the ordinary manner wherever
feasible, hereby appoints until further instructions Mahatma
Gandhi as the sole executive authority of the Congress and
invests him with the full powers of the All-India Congress
Committee including the power to convene a Special Session of the
Congress or of the All-India Congress Committee or the Working
Committee…”
Of course, back then, the whole country was more or less
engulfed in ―Mahatma‖ bhakti to notice that this was a
tremendous master-stroke of Gandhian manipulation. But it was
also a vastly different India. It was an innocent Bharatavarsha of
the proverbial Hindu masses who hadn‘t yet learnt, painfully
learnt, that getting their trust repeatedly broken at the ballot box
would become the norm for their children and grand-children
and great grand-children. Naturally, it was assumed that this
elevation was due to Gandhi‘s innate divinity and saintliness
that no one in India possessed and therefore no one within the
Congress questioned it. The Holy Ghost‘s anointment as
Supreme Political Saint was complete.
But why is it a master-stroke?
The Congress President at the Ahmedabad Session was a
nonentity named Hakim Ajmal Khan (I doubt that today‘s 80-
plus years old Congress bandicoots would‘ve even heard this
name) was ―unanimously elected‖ to the post. Because the then
President Chittaranjan Das was thrown in jail by the British. The
last of Gandhi‘s obstacles, the then equivalent of the Old Guard,
was out of his way. Here is how the INC website describes
Gandhi‘s formal appointment as dictator.
“Gandhiji was appointed as the sole executive authority of the
Congress and invested with full powers of the AICC. Chairs and
benches for delegates were eliminated and Khadi tents made their
appearance for first time”.
Equally, not everybody were conned by this Gandhian
hocus-pocus. DVG continues his observation, noting[iii] that
Gandhi‘s formal investiture into dictatorship was “…the formal
recognition and ratification of a fact that has long been in
actual existence…Such a moment is a crisis in the history of
that particular democratic body…as well as in the general history of
the country. If the dictator…fails, the party will perish and
the country’s history will necessarily follow the line chalked
out by other forces”.
This is clairvoyance that touches the upper reaches of genius.
History is witness that Gandhi‘s dictatorship culminated in
India‘s Partition and the industrial-scale bloodbath that accom-
panied it. Equally, the Congress as a party perished the day
Jawaharlal Nehru took over its reins. Its actual extinction is
playing out even as I write this. As to DVG‘s note about India‘s
history following the line chalked out by other forces, I humbly
submit my piece detailing how the Congress surrendered to
breaking India forces years ago.
The Forgotten Critics of Mohandas Gandhi
But it‘s quite amazing how in less than a decade after India
attained Independence, the criticism against Gandhi levelled by
his own contemporaries was near-totally erased from national
memory. The most marked instance of this is the demonization
and hounding of the legendary historian, Acharya R.C.
Majumdar. In its basic nature and tenor, this phenomenon isn‘t
different from whitewashing the history of the genocide and
oppression of Hindus during the medieval Muslim rule. Think
about it. For the longest time, even the criticism against Gandhi
by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, one of the most vocal and public
critics of Gandhi, was never quoted. The only other name of a
famous Gandhi-critic is Sri Aurobindo. Even Annie Beasant,
otherwise well-known and respected, had seen through
Gandhian guiles and spoke her mind publicly.
 Today, perhaps only a handful of people would‘ve heard of
names like G.K. Devadhar, K.P. Kesava Menon, Gopala Menon,
M.R. Jayakar, and the most trenchant critic of them all, the
intrepid and independent-minded C. Sankaran Nair. He was
among the first ones to see through Gandhi and as early as 1922,
wrote the stinging volume bearing a no-holds-barred title,
Gandhi and Anarchy, a pugnacious monument to the Gandhian
hoax. Small wonder that the book quickly went out of
circulation after Independence. Four decades before Acharya
R.C. Majumdar‘s blunt critique of Gandhi‘s Ahimsa creed,
Sankaran Nair had this[iv] to say:
“Mr. Gandhi…belongs to a class of thought which has attracted
some of the noblest minds in this world, but in applying his
gospel of life to politics, he has shown himself a babe and his
interference has been generally mischievous… There is scarcely
any item in the Gandhi programme which is not a complete
violation of everything preached by the foremost sons of India till
1919”.
See how this corresponds so well with my aforementioned
note on the Congress Party‘s Old Guard in those days?
But the story dates back a bit before Gandhi‘s formal
anointment as the pious dictator of the Indian National Congress
in the Ahmedabad Session - To his naked and shameless
support of the Islamic bigot-brothers, Mohammad Ali and
Shaukat Ali, in favour of retaining the decrepit and fast-dying
Khilafat in Turkey, which had no support in the Muslim world
in the Arabian Peninsula. In India, this project of Islamic
zealotry was given a grand title, “The Khilafat Movement”.
Gandhi‘s shamelessness was boundless. He claimed that it was
“love at first sight” when he met Mohammad Ali. And Gandhi‘s
unstinted support to it directly culminated in the bloodbath,
mass rapes, killing of infants and pregnant women, atrocities,
plunder, torture, and forced conversions of thousands of Hindus
in Malabar.
This ghastly incident continues to be known as The Moplah
Rebellion instead of The Moplah Jihad against Kerala Hindus.
Going by all recorded evidence—of which there is plenty—it is
not inaccurate to characterize Gandhi‘s support to the Khilafat
as a support to the Ali Brothers‘ jihad against Hindus.
Two things ensued as a consequence. Yet another of Gandhi‘s
grand plans to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity bombed specta-
cularly. Two, the selfsame bigoted Ali Brothers turned back and
spat on Gandhi in this fashion.
In 1924, Mohammad Ali publicly said this[v] in a speech in
Aligarh:
“However pure Mr. Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear
to me, from the point of religion, inferior to any Mussalman even
though he be without character”.
In 1925, he escalated[vi] it further:
“Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an
adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mr. Gandhi”.
Of course, Gandhi would remain undeterred as ever, chasing
his indigenous delusion of Hindu-Muslim unity, regularly
sacrificing hundreds of Hindu lives and temples, even
perversely advising them to gladly embrace and become the
proud victims of unceasing Jihad.
Like thousands of such Jihadi incidents against Hindus, the
Jihad at Moplah has not only been whitewashed as a ―rebellion‖
but has near-successfully been erased from the historical
memory of Hindus. The correct question to ask is this: rebellion
against what, who and why, and by whom?
 The subsequent parts will examine these questions in detail.
But here is a teaser.
“Let me finish with a beautiful story told to me. Two Pulayas,
the lowest of the submerged classes, were captured with others, and
given the choice between Islam and Death. These, the outcaste of
Hinduism, the untouchables, so loved the Hinduism…that
they chose to die Hindus rather than to live Muslim.”
That was Annie Beasant writing[vii] in New India after she
visited the relief camps set up in the Kozhikode and Palghat
regions in the aftermath of the genocidal and barbaric Jihad by
Moplahs against the trusting and unprepared Hindus of
Malabar.

Notes
[i] ―Indian Review Of Reviews.‖ D.V. Gundappa, et al. Dec 1921 –
Jan 1922, p. 212. Emphasis added.
[ii] Partial text of the Resolution of the 1921 Ahmedabad
Congress Session quoted verbatim in Ibid. Emphasis added.
[iii] Ibid. Emphasis added.
[iv] ―Gandhi And Anarchy.‖ Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Pp 8 – 9.
Emphasis added.
[v] ―Through Indian Eyes.‖ Times of India, 21 March 1924.
[vi] ―Through Indian Eyes.‖ Times of India, 26 April 1924.
Emphasis added.
[vii] ―Malabar’s Agony.‖ Annie Beasant. New India, 29 November
1921. Quoted in ―Gandhi And Anarchy.‖ Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Pp 133-
4. Emphasis added.
 Part 2
Hindu Voices from the Graveyard:
Unearthing the Tragic Stories of the Malabar Hindus
In less than two years, the appalling genocide of the Malabar
Hindus will complete a full tragic century. It was on 20 August
1921 that a plague-like pogrom descended upon the unprepared
and blissfully unaware Hindus of Malabar at the hands of
people they had trusted: the Moplah Muslims. Yet, nearly a
century later, this mini-holocaust of Hindus in Kerala has all but
been successfully buried, its memory almost wholly erased from
the Hindu civilizational consciousness.
But not everybody forgets, at least not the folks at The Dharma
Dispatch. And so, beginning with this, we will publish a series of
eyewitness accounts from some of the victims of the Moplah
Genocide of the Malabar Hindus—the voices of the dead
Hindu victims of Malabar, who were massacred for no fault of
their own except that they had trusted their own Muslim
neighbours to whom they had always been kind and
accommodative.
Presenting the first eyewitness account by Annie Beasant,
who visited scores of relief camps in and around the Kozhikode
region.
Annie Beasant:
New India, 29 November 1921
“It would be well if Mr. Gandhi could be taken into Malabar to
see with his own eyes the ghastly horrors which have been created
by the preaching of himself and his “loved brothers,” Muhommad
and Shaukat Ali. The Khilafat Raj is established there; on August
1, 1921, sharp to the date first announced by Mr. Gandhi for the
beginning of Swaraj and the vanishing of British Rule, a Police
Inspector was surrounded by Moplas, revolting against that Rule.
From that date onwards thousands of the forbidden war-knives
ware secretly made and hidden away, and on August 20, the
rebellion broke out, Khilafat flags were hoisted on Police Stations
and Government offices. Strangely enough it was on August 25 th
825 A.D. that Cherman Perumal ascended the throne of Malabar,
the first Zamorin, and from that day the Malayalam Era is dated
that is still in use; thus for 1096 years a Zamorin has ruled in
Calicut, and the Rajas are mostly Chiefs who for long centuries
have looked to a Zamorin as their feudatory Head. These are the
men on whom the true pacification of Malabar must ultimately
depend. The crowded refugees will only return to their devastated
“homes when they see those once more in safety in their ancestral
places. Their lands, which they keep under their own control, are
largely cultivated by Moplas, who are normally hardy, industrious
agricultural labourers.
“Our correspondent has sent accounts of the public functions
connected with my hurried visit to Calicut and Palghat, and that
which I wish to put on record here is the ghastly misery which
prevails, the heart-breaking wretchedness which has been caused by
the Mopla outbreak, directly due to the violent and unscrupulous
attacks on the Government made by the Non-Co-operators and the
Khilafatists and the statements scattered broadcast, predicting the
speedy disappearance of British Rule, and the establishment of
Swaraj, as proclaimed by the N.C.O. and Khilafat Raj as
understood by the Moplas from the declarations of the Khilafatists.
On that, there is no doubt whatever, so far as Malabar is
concerned. The message of the Khilafats, of England as the enemy
of Islam, of her coming downfall, and the triumph of the Muslims,
had spread, to every Mopla home. The harangues in the Mosques
spread it everywhere, and Muslim hearts were glad. They saw the
N.C.O. preachers appealing for help to their religious leaders,
naturally identified the two. The Government was Satanic, and
Eblis, to the good Muslim, is to be fought to the death. Mr. Gandhi
may talk as he pleases about N.C.O.s accepting no responsibility. It
is not what they accept; it is what facts demonstrate. He accepted
responsibility for the trifling bloodshed of Bombay. The slaughter
in Malabar cries out his responsibility. N.C.O. is dead in Malabar.
But bitter hatred has arisen there, as fighting men from the
dragon’s teeth of Theseus. That is the ghastly result of the
preaching of Gandhism, of N.C.O. of Khilafatism. Every one speaks
of the Khilafat Raj, and the one hope of the masses is in its crushing
by the strong arm of the Government. Mr. Gandhi asks the
Moderates to compel the Government to suspend hostilities, i.e., to
let loose the wolves to destroy what lives are left. The sympathy of
the Moderates is not, I make bold to “with the murderers, the
looters, the ravishers, who have put into practice the teachings of
paralysing the Government of the N.C.O.’s, who have made “war
on the Government” in their own way. How does Mr. Gandhi like
the Mopla spirit, as shown by one of the prisoners in the Hospital,
who was dying from the results of asphyxiation? He asked the
surgeon, if he was going to die, and surgeon answered that he
feared he would not recover. “Well, I’m glad I killed fourteen
infidels,” said the Brave, God-fearing Mopla, whom Mr. Gandhi so
much admires, who “are fighting for what they consider as
religion, and in a manner they consider as religious.” Men who
consider it “religious” to murder, rape, loot, to kill women and
little children, cutting down whole families, have to be put under
restraint in any civilised society.”
“Mr. Gandhi was shocked when some Parsi ladies had their
saries torn off, and very properly, yet the God-fearing hooligans
had been taught that it was sinful to wear foreign cloth, and
doubtless felt they were doing a religious act; can he not feel a little
sympathy for thousands of “women left with only rags, driven
from home, for little children born of the flying mothers on roads in
refugee camps? The misery is beyond description. Girl wives,
pretty and sweet, with eyes half blind with weeping, distraught
with terror; women who have seen their husbands hacked to pieces
before their eye, in the way “Moplas consider as religious”; old
women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish and
who cry at a gentle touch and a kind look waking out of a stupor of
misery only to weep, men who have lost all, hopeless, crushed,
desperate, I have walked among thousands of them in the refugee
camps, and sometimes heavy eyes would lift as a cloth was laid
gently on the bare shoulder, and a faint watery smile of surprise
would make the face even more piteous than the stupor. “Eyes full
of appeal, of agonised despair, of hopeless entreaty of helpless
anguish, thousands of them camp after camp, “Shameful
inhumanity proceeding in Malabar,” says Mr. Gandhi. Shameful
inhumanity indeed, wrought by the Moplas, and these are the
victims, saved from extermination by British and Indian swords,
For be it remembered the Moplas began the whole horrible
business; the Government intervened to save their victims and
these thousands have been saved. Mr. Gandhi would have
hostilities suspended—so that the Moplas may sweep down on the
refugee camps, and finish their work?”
“I visited in Calicut three huge Committee camps, two
Christian, and the Congress building and compound where doles of
rice are given daily from 7 A.M. to noon. In all, the arrangements
were good. Big thatched sheds, and some buildings shelter the
women and children, the men sleep outside. They are all managed
by Indians, the Zamorini’s Committee distributing cloths and
money to all, except the Congress committee, which work indepen-
dently and gives food from its own resource. At Palghat, similar
arrangements are made by the Zamorini’s Committee, and the
order and care in feeding are good to see.”
“Let me finish with a beautiful story told to me. Two Pulayas,
the lowest of the submerged classes, were captured with others, and
given the choice between Islam and Death. These, the outcaste of
Hinduism, the untouchables, so loved the Hinduism which had
been so unkind a step- mother to them, that they chose to die
Hindus rather than to live Muslim. May the God of both, Muslim
and Hindus send His messengers to these heroic souls, and give
them rebirth into the Faith for which they died. ”
Postscript: From now on, in any conversation or reference to
this horrific episode, please, always refer to it by its correct name:
The Moplah Genocide of the Malabar Hindus.

Part 3
Hindu Voices from the Malabar Graveyard: War Song of
the Moplahs and the Century-Long Massacres of Hindus

If we thought that the ghastly genocide of the hapless Hindus

of Malabar in 1921 at the hands of the Moplah Muslims was a
sudden or sporadic occurrence due to the sustained, inflamm-
atory preaching of the bigoted Khilafat gang, we are missing a
sense of history. Ever since the Moplah Muslims lost their near-
monopolistic clutch on trade and commerce with the Arabs on
the Malabar coast to the superior might of the Portuguese, they
sought other occupations and spread over different parts of
Kerala. They became hired farmhands, labourers, and did other
odd jobs working under the accursed infidel Hindus. One major
branch of these Moplahs became hired mercenaries or freelance
plunderers engaged in attacking well-to-do villages comprising
majority of Hindus. The nauseating pattern repeated: large scale
looting, arson, kidnapping Hindu women, forced conversions…
you know the rest. By the early 19th century, they had become a
constant source of scourge and concern even for the British.
In this rapacious and murderous endeavor, the Moplahs
were guided, inspired and motivated by a handy song titled The
Delights of Paradise. The West Coast Spectator, a weekly from
Kozhikode, ran an English translation of this ―song‖ on 6 July
1922. Here is the full text of the ―song.‖
“The pleasures of wealth or of family are not equal to an atom of
celestial happiness. Our most venerable Prophet has said that those
who die in battle can see the houris who will come to witness the
fight. There is nothing in this world to compare to the beauty of the
houris. The splendour of the sun, of the moon, and of the lightning
is darkness compared with the beauty of their hair which hang over
their shoulders. Their cheeks, eyes, face, eyebrows, forehead, head
are incomparably lovely. Their mouths are like corals of gold, their
teeth like seeds of the thali’ flowers. It is not possible for the mind
to conceive of the loveliness of their breasts and shoulders. If they
spit in the sea, the salt water becomes as sweet as honey, as
fragrant as attar. If they were to come down to this earth, and
smile, the sun, moon and stars would be eclipsed. Mortals would
die if they but heard the music of their voices. When they wear red
silk bordered with green lace of seventy, folds, their skins, muscles
and bones can be seen through. Such is the splendour of their body.
If they clap their hands, the clash of their jewels will be heard at a
distance of 50 years of journey. They clap their hands, dance and
sing, as they come like the swans to the battlefield. If a human
being were to see their beauty, their dance, or their smile, he would
die on the spot. Gently they touch the wounds of those who die in
battle, they rub away the blood, cure the pain, they kiss and
embrace the martyrs, give them to drink the sweet water of heaven
and gratify their every wish. A horse caparisoned with precious
stones will be brought and a voice will say: — Let my men mount:
let them dance with the celestial houris. Then the celestial
coverings will be placed on their heads, they will mount the
beautiful horse which will dance and leap and take them to heaven,
where they will live in unbounded joy”.
This is an excerpt from a full ―song‖ composed in the
memory of 47 Sayyidakkals (Martyrs belonging to the Sayyid
sect), who died fighting against the soldiers of Para Nambi, a
Hindu chieftain from Malappuram. The memory of this battle
subsequently became an annual festival for these Muslims, who
celebrated it as the Malappuram Nercha. As Sri Gopalan Nair
writes, “every Moplah out on the warpath carries with him,
whenever possible, a copy of the song.”
Some of the major aggressions of the Moplahs against
Hindus predating the gruesome climax of 1921, recorded by Sri
Gopalan Nair, who lists fifty-one incidents of unprovoked
assaults against Hindus by the Moplahs. Only the most notable
incidents are given below. Emphases added.

1. April, 15, 1837. Kalpatta, Ernad. Ali Kutti of Chengara

Amsom inflicted severe wounds on one Narayana Moosad and
took post in his own shop.
2. April, 5, 1839. Pallipuram, Walluvanad. Thorayam Pulakal
Athan and another, of Pallipuram Amsom, Walluvanad Taluk
killed one Kellil Raman and then set fire to and burnt a Hindu
Temple, took post in another temple.
3. April 19, 1840. Irimbulli, Ernad. Parathodiyil Ali Kutti
severely wounded one Odayath Kunhunni Nayar and another,
and set fire to Kidangil temple.
 4. April 5, 1841, Pallipuram, Walluvanad. Tumba Mannil
Kunyunnian and eight others killed one Perumballi Nambudiri
and another at Pallipuram, burnt the house of the latter victim,
as well as four other houses.
5. November 13th, 1841. Kaidotti Padil Moidin Kutti and
seven others killed one Tott‘asseri Tachu Pannikar and a peon,
took post in a Mosque, set the Police at defiance for three days,
and were joined by three more fanatics on the morning of the
17th.
6. November 17, 1841. Pallipuram, Walluvanad… some
Moplahs estimated at 2,000 set at defiance a Police party on
guard over the spot where the above criminals have been
buried and forcibly carried off the bodies and interred them
with honours at a Mosque.
7. December 11, 1843, Pandicad. Anavattat Soliman and nine
others killed one Karukammana Govind Moosad, the Adhigari
of Pandicad, and a servant of his; destroyed two temples and
took post in a house.
8. December 19, 1843. A peon was found with his hand and
his head all but cut off and the perpetrators were Moplah
fanatics.
9. August 25, 1849. Ernad and Walluvanad. Torangal
Unniyan killed one Paditodi Theyunni and with Attan Gurukkal
and others killed three persons and took post in the temple at
Manjeri: defiled the temple and partly burnt it.
10. August 22, 1851, Kulathur, Wallavanad. Komu Menon
and his servant were killed by 6 Moplahs who with three others
also killed Kadakottil Nambudiri and Komu Menon ‗s brother
Raman Menon. Severely wounded Mundangara Ravichan Nair
who subsequently died. They set fire to Rama Menon‘s and
Chengara Variyar‘s house. They then proceeded to Kulathur and
murdered the old Kulathur Variyar and two servants.
11. January 4, 1852. Mattanur, Kottayam. Choriyot Mayan
and fourteen others supported by a mob of two hundred
Moplahs butchered all the inmates; 18 in number, of Kalattil
Kesavan Tangal‘s house and extirpated the family, denied the
temples, burnt houses and finally fell on January 8th 1852 in a
desperate attack on the house of Kalliad Nambiar.
12. April-May, 1852. Ernad. Two Cherumas after embracing
Muhamadanism returned to their original faith. These Cherumas
were then working for Kudilil Kanrni Kutti Nayar who being a
peon was transferred from Ernad Taluk to Ponnani and
subsequently to Calicut to avert the impending danger to his life.
The Cherumas were also transferred to other Taluks as their
presence was considered a source of disturbance.
13. August 9, 1852. Kurumbranad. Three Moplahs took up a
position in the house of a village accountant (Puttur) and had
resolved to die as Sabjda (martyr). They wounded a Brahmin and
were killed by the Police on the 12th August.
14. September 16, 1853, Angadipwam, Walluvanad. Kuaaumal
Moidin and Cherukavil Moidin murdered Chengalary Vasudevan
Nambudiri.
15. September 12, 1855. Calicut. Three Moplahs at Valasseri.
Emalu, Puliyakunat Tenu, Cemban Moidin Kutti and
Vellattadayyatta Parambil Moidin escaped from their working
party of Jail convicts‘, at Calicut and proceeded to Walluvanad.
They roamed about the country and on 10th September reached
Calicut. On 12th they murdered Collector Mr. Conolly at his
Bungalow.
16. August 1857, Pomnala, Ernad. Poovadan Kunbappa Haji
and 7 others were suspected of conspiring to revenge the
supposed insult offered to their religion by the relapse of a Nair
convert, and to make an attempt to rid the country of the
Kaffirs… The conspirators were…taken prisoners and seven of
them deported under the Moplah Outrages Act.
17. 8th September, 1873, Parol, Walluvanad. Kunhappa
Musaliar visited the Velichapad or Oracle of Tuthekil temple,
struck him. several blows with a sword and left him for dead.
They proceeded to Kolathur and attacked a member of Kolathur
Varier‘s family and mortally wounded him.
18. Sept. 9, 1880, Melattur, Walluvanad. M. Ali deliberately
cut the throat of a Cheruma lad who had become a convert to
Islam and had reverted. He then wounded a potter on the next
day; he went to the house of one of his intended victims, when a
watchman shot Ali in the breast and killed him… 7 Moplahs
were deported.
19. June, 18, 1884. Kannancheri Raman who had previously
embraced and subsequently renounced Islam was attacked in a
most savage manner by two Moplahs.
20. 1st May 1885. A gang of Mappilas, consisting of T. V.
Veran Kutti and eleven others broke open the house of a
Cheruman called Kutti Kariyanand murdered him, his wife, and
four of their children, and set fire to the house and a
neighbouring temple. The person had become a convert to Islam
many years ago and had reverted to his original religion
fourteen years ago. The Moplahs retreated during the night of
2nd May to their own country side, and in the early morning of
the third they seized the house of a wealthy Nambudiri
Brahmin, landlord of Ponnundam, Ponnani.
21. In 1894, a gang of Moplahs in Pandicad started on the
war-path They wandered about, defiling and burning temples
wherever they could, besides attacking and killing such Nairs
and Brahmins as fell in their way. The troops and the Police at
last came up with them in a temple, when they sallied out with
their usual fury and had all to be shot.
22. On 25-2-1896 a gang of twenty Moplahs went out on the
war-path from Chembrasseri Amsom and for five days in ever
increasing numbers terrorised the country-side ; Hindus were
murdered or their ‗ Kudumis ‗ cut off, and they were summarily
converted to Islam. Temples were desecrated and burnt, Houses
were looted in the search for food, money and arms. Finally on
March 1st hard pressed by the pursuit of the troops, the fanatics
entered the Manjeri Karanammulpad‘s temple, determined to
make their last stand in a spot hallowed in their eyes as the
scene of the first triumphant act of the tragedy of 1849.
Twenty soldiers were guarding the treasury on the hill opposite
the temple, and with them shots were exchanged. At 9 A. M., the
District Magistrate with the main body of the troops came up in
great anxiety for the safety of the treasury-guard, and occupied
a hill overlooking the temple from a distance of some 750 yards
across a deep valley covered with trees and bushes. The troops
opened fire at once, and the fanatics, instead of taking shelter,
deliberately courted death offering themselves as a target to the
bullets on the open platform of the temple ‗howling, shouting,
waving their arms and firing off their guns.‘ Advancing steadily
with frequent volleys over the broken ground, the troops came
near enough to the Moplah stronghold to call upon the fanatics
to surrender. Hoarse cries of defiance were their only answer
and pushing on, the soldiers entered the temple almost without
opposition. A horrible sight met their eyes. Within the narrow
precincts were filled up the bodies of ninety-two Moplahs. Some
were still breathing, but the great majority were dead, and at
least twenty had their throats cut from ear to ear. They had been
murdered by their comrades to prevent their being captured
alive. A small gang of seven ‗Sahids‘ were still at large, but by
March 13th they had all been arrested or shot by the Police and
the outbreak was at an end.‖ (Malabar Gazetteer).
23. In February 1919, a gang of fanatics headed by a
dismissed Moplah Head Constable began to give trouble.
Following their usual methods they broke into and denied the
temples, killed almost every Brahmin and Nair who fell in their
way and finally died in resistance to the Police Force sent out
against them. In this one outbreak four Brahmins namely three
Nambudiries and one Nambudiri, and two Nairs were put to
death by the fanatics.

Part 4
Hindu Voices from the Malabar Graveyard: The Rani of
Nilambur Records the Misery of the Malabar Hindu Women

Geography is perhaps the greatest mute chronicler of history.

Geography doesn‘t lie, doesn‘t judge. It is the physical embodi-
ment of what is known as ‗detached witness.‘ Take Nilambur for
example. Just a century ago, it was a mini-kingdom, a vassal
state to be specific. Today, it is a mere municipality falling under
the jurisdiction of the Muslim-majority (70 per cent as per the
2011 census) Malappuram district. It is hard to believe that
Malappuram was home to the legendary Bhattadri, author of the
mellifluous Narayaneeyam as also one of the prime centres of
Sanskrit learning, astronomy, mathematics and Ayurveda.
In 1921, Malappuram was also one of the sites of the barbaric
Moplah Genocide of the Malabar Hindus. In 1921, the vassal
state of Nilambur was still in existence. After the savage genocide
of the Malabar Hindus was finally quelled, the Zamorin (the
correct name is Samuthiri) of Kozhikode called for a conference to
condemn the Moplah brutalities, and urged the British to take
action. The opening words of the Samuthiri should hopefully
serve as a lesson in courage to the ―Hindu‖ politicians of our own
time:
“That the conference views with indignation and sorrow the
attempts made in various quarters by interested parties to ignore
or minimise the crimes committed by the rebels such as
a. Brutally dishonouring women;
b. Flaying people alive;
c. Wholesale slaughter of men, women and children;
d. Burning alive entire families;
e. Forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those
who refused to get converted;
f. Throwing half dead people into wells and leaving the victims
for hours to struggle for escape till finally released from their
sufferings by death;
g. Burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and
Christian houses in the disturbed area in which even Moplah
women and children took part, and robbing women of even the
garments on their bodies, in short reducing the whole non-Muslim
population to abject destitution;”
But it is the letter written to Lady Reading (wife of the then
Indian viceroy Lord Reading) by the Rani of Nilambur on
behalf of the hundreds of Malabar Hindu women that unravels
just a sample of the ghastly genocide by the Moplah Muslims.
Here‘s the full and unedited text of the letter. Emphases
added.
 To
Her Gracious Excellency
THE COUNTESS OF READING,
Delhi.
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACIOUS AND COMPASSIONATE
LADYSHIP.
We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations
in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous
catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to
supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.
2. Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy
district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of
the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is
unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its
ferocity. But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully
appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the
fiendish rebels; of the many wells and tanks filled up with the
mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and
dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers;
of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides
and in the jungles, with the unborn babe protruding from the
mangled corpse; of our innocent and helpless children torn
from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our
husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive; of our
hapless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin
and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal
imagination of these inhuman hell-hounds could conceive of; of
thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder-mounds out of
sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction; of our places of
worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the
deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of
slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie, or else
smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth
of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and
prosperous to publicly beg for a piece or two in the streets of
Calicut, to buy salt or chilly or betel-leaf—rice being
mercifully provided by the various relief agencies. These are not
fables.
The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were
our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our
places of worship—these are still here to attest to the truth.
The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are
still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our
memory till death brings us peace. We remember how driven
out of our native hamlets we wandered starving and naked in the
jungles and forests; we remember how we choked and stifled
our babies’ cries lest the sound should betray our hiding
places to our relentless pursuers. We still vividly realise the
moral and spiritual agony that thousands of us passed through
when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these
blood thirsty miscreants; we still have before us the sight of the
unendurable and lifelong misery of those—fortunately few—of our
most unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable
families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict
coolies. For five long months not a day has passed without its dread
tale of horror to unfold.
3. Your gracious Ladyship’s distracted memorialists have
endeavoured without exaggeration, without setting down aught in
malice to convey at least some idea of the indescribably terrible
agonies which they and thousands more of their sisters have
been enduring for over five months now through this reign of
inhuman frightfulness inaugurated and carried on in the
name of the Khilafat. We have briefly referred without going
into their harrowing details to our heartrending tale of dishonour,
outrage, rapine, and desolation. But if the past has been one of pain
and anguish, the future is full of dread and gloom. We have to
return to a ruined and desolated land. Our houses have been burnt
or destroyed; many of our breadwinners killed; all our property
looted; our cattle slaughtered. Repatriation without compensation
means for us ruin, beggary, starvation. Will not the benign
Government come to our aid and give us something to help us to
begin life anew? We are now asked to settle down as paupers
in the midst of the execrable fiends who robbed, insulted and
murdered our loved ones—veritable demons such as hell
itself could not let loose. Many of us shrink from the idea of
going back to what there is left of our homes; for though the armed
bands and rebels have been dispersed the rebellion cannot be said to
be entirely quelled. It is like a venomous serpent whose spine
has been partly broken, but whose poison fangs are still
intact and whose striking power, if diminished, has not been
destroyed. A few thousands of rebels have been killed and a few
more thousands have been imprisoned, but as the Government are
only too well aware many more thousands of rebels, looters,
savagely militant evangelists and other inhuman monsters yet
remain at large, a few in concealment, but most, moving about
with arrogance openly threatening reprisals on all non-Moslims
who dare to return and resume possession of their property. Many
refugees who went back have paid for their temerity with their
lives. In fact, repatriation, if it is not to be a leap from the frying
pan into the fire, must mean for the vast bulk of your Ladyship’s
impoverished and helpless memorialists and their families a hard
inexorable problem of financial help, and adequate protection
against renewed hellish outrages from which immunity would be
utterly impossible as long as thousands of men and even
women and children of this semi-savage and fanatical race
in whom the worst instinct of earth hunger, blood-lust and
rapine have been awakened to fierce activity are free to prey
upon their peaceable and inoffensive neighbours who—let it be
most respectfully emphasised—because of their implicit trust in
the power and the will of a just and benign Government to
protect them, had suffered their own art and capacity for self
defence to emasculate and decay.
4. We, Your Ladyship’s humble and sorrow-stricken
memorialists do not seek vengeance. Our misery will not
be rendered less by inflicting similar misery upon this
barbarous and savage race; our dead will not return to us if
their slayers are slaughtered. We would not be human,
however, if we could ever forget the cruel and shameful
outrages and indignities perpetrated upon us by a race to
whom we have always endeavoured to be friendly and
neighbourly; we would be hypocritical if, robbed of all our
possessions we did not plead for some measure of compensation
to help us out of the pauperism now forced upon us; we would be
imbecile, if knowing the ungovernable, anti-social propensities
and the deadly religious fanaticism of the Moplah race we did not
entreat the just and powerful government to protect the lives and
honour of your humble sisters who have to live in the rebel-
ravaged zone. Our ambition after all is low enough; sufficient
compensation to save us and our children from starvation, and
enough military protection against massacre and outrage are all
that we want. We beseech Your Compassionate Ladyship to
exercise all the benevolent influence that you possess with the
government to see that our humble prayers are granted. But if
the benign Government does not consider it possible to
compensate us and to protect us in our native land we would
most fervently pray that free grants of land may be assigned to
us in some neighbouring region which though less blessed with
the lavish gifts of nature may also be less cursed by the cruelty
and brutality of man.
We beg to remain,
Your Ladyship’s most humble
and obedient servants.

Where is that text-book in ―independent‖ India that tells the

true story of this savagery? Where indeed is even a fissure in our
public discourse that gives space for this barbaric reality of
recent history, even in an outline form?
Moplah Rebellion? Really?