Mappila Muslims

"That at least for a hundred years before the Moplah Outrage of 1921 the region witnessed frequent acts of fanaticism by the Moplahs was observed as follows by a three-judge special tribunal constituted in Calicut to prosecute the offenders of the Moplah Outrage of 1921: For the last hundred years at least, the Moplah community has been disgraced from time to time by murderous outrages. In the past these have been due to fanaticism. They generally blazed out in the Ernad Taluk (county), where the Moplahs were, for the most part, proselytes drawn from the dregs of the Hindu population. These men were miserably poor and hopelessly ignorant, and their untutored minds were particularly susceptible to the inflammatory teaching that Paradise was to be gained by killing Kufirs. They would go out on the warpath, killing Hindus, no matter whom, and seek death in hand-to-hand conflict with the troops. In some cases they may have been inspired by hatred of a particular landlord, but no grievance seems to have been really necessary to start them on their wild careers."

"... I would say that the Hindu coolies of the Mohammedan tenants of the Brahmin and Nair landlords are worse off than their employers. I have nowhere seen such abject servility as in the Cherma of Malabar."

"About a fourth part of the inhabitants of Malabar are Moplahs, or Mahomendans, descended from the Moors and Arabians, who have settled there at different times, and married Malabar women: they are the principal merchants in the country, both for foreign and home trade: many are proprietors of trading vessels, navigated by Mahomedan commanders and seamen, in which they make an annual voyage to the Persian and Arabian Gulfs; and after disposing of pepper, cassia, cardamoms, cotton-cloth coir-ropes, and other productions of Malabar, they return with coffee, drugs, dates, and dried fruits. Those on the sea-coast use a corrupt language between the Arabic and Malabar: the Koran and the few books they possess are written in Arabic. The Moplahs engaged in commerce, and enjoying an intercourse with other people, are tolerably courteous and orderly; these in the interior, who are too proud to work or engage in agricultural pursuits, are generally an idle worthless race; parading about the country with a broadsword, or murdering time, in one of the swings already mentioned. These are of a most turbulent revengeful spirit, prone to mischief, especially against the Nairs, whom they consider as infidels, proud and haughty as themselves. When intoxicated with bhang, or opium, they frequently run amuck, and in a dreadful state of phrenzy, murder every person they meet, until they are overpowered and destroyed. The Nairs are at constant variance with the Moplahs; and the king of Travencore, jealous of their ambitious revengeful temper, keeps them in great subjection, and levies frequent contributions on their property; to which they reluctantly submit, from knowing they would experience the same treatment from other governments."

"The former group [North Mapiillas] was seen as relatively more upwardly mobile whereas the latter group [south Mapillas], according to Robert Hardgrave, was: ... entirely separate from those of the rest of Malabar ... The low state of their intelligence, the subservience in which they had hitherto lived, and the absence of any men of learning to instruct them in their new religion, even were they capable of understanding, all tended to provide a race which would prove an easy prey to fanaticism and lawlessness."

"It is therefore highly probable that Muslim traders, who frequented the coastal regions, near the important ports, lived there for long or short periods, and some of them might even have settled there on more or less permanent basis. But there is no reliable evidence to show, as has been maintained by some, that they settled in Malabar coast in large numbers in the seventh century A.D. Such a theory is mainly based on the traditions current among the Moplahs, Navayats, and Labbes of South India, but these are on a par with similar traditions current among Christians in the same region which have been rejected by almost all students of history. ... These are all very late traditions and cannot, in any case, be regarded as evidence for large Muslim settlements in Malabar in the seventh century, as contended by some Francis Day, who has recorded some of these traditions current in Malabar and studied the history of the Moplahs, is of opinion that the ‘“Muhammadans obtained no great footing until the ninth century A.D.” (456-7)"

"The Mappillas and other South-Indian Muslims, whatever their date of first settlement, emerged from obscurity several centuries after the rise of Islam. Probably they originally inserted themselves in local society by a special Islamic institution which was particularly vigorous among certain tribes of South Arabia and is still in vogue to­ day among the Muslims of the Maldives and Calicut, and which was called m utca, a ‘temporary marriage’.22 By this means they may have ensured themselves of a spouse in the harbours which they frequented, and this was of extra importance in Malabar on account of the strong taboos on commensality which developed here among the Hindus. The women with whom such marriages were contracted were often, if not always, of low fishermen and mariner castes. Their offspring multiplied in the harbour towns and belonged to the mother, in conformity to the matriarchal custom of Malabar, but was raised in Sunni Islam."

"Thus the Mappillas (Malayalam Mapila\ Tamil Mappilla, a contrac­tion of maha, ‘big’ and pilla, ‘child’, hence ‘big children’) grew as a foreign community mixed with the lowest castes of Malabari natives, emerging in about the thirteenth century as the privileged intermediaries of trade with the Islamic world. As Muslims they began to differentiate themselves from the Jewish and Christian business enterprises from the eleventh century, when the Colas sacked Quilon, disrupted the organi­zation of the trade guilds, and redirected the trade to the smaller ports. In terms of their social function, therefore, the Mappilla Muslims were merely the latest group of outsiders who came to dominate the overseas commerce of Malabar, taking over the role of the Greeks and Romans and their successors, the Nestorian Christians and the Jews. Since anti­quity, in fact, maritime activity had largely been in the hands of for­ eigners. On the other hand, the stereotype ritual isolation and the unusually rigid caste barriers and concepts of pollution of Malayali society were a relatively novel phenomenon, traces of which do not ap­pear before the eighth century. Such ‘brahmanization’ of the social order as occurred in the early medieval period adversely affected the still relatively open maritime orientation of Malabar in the earlier centuries, when Buddhism and Jainism held strong positions. It was in the period of the Kulashekhara of Mahadayapuram, in the eighth to twelfth cen­turies, that the natives of Malabar became almost exclusively agrarian-oriented and brahmans rose to dominance who fostered an increasingly obsessive thalassophobia among the caste Hindus, while permitting the Jews and the Muslims to seize the overseas trade.23 It is no coincidence that the implantation of Muslim communities becomes better visible the more caste prohibitions against trans-oceanic travel and trade seem to obtain a hold on the Hindu population and turns it to agrarian pursuits and production, away from trade and maritime transport. This, at least, is what the Tuscans and Venetians observe in the thirteenth century."

"The Mappillas, then, developed intimate ties with Hindu kings and with Hindu society, but in spite of such ties they made vigorous at­ tempts to prove the pure Arab origin of their religion and thereby to enhance their status vis-a-vis other Muslim groups, particularly the descendants of the Afghan and Turkish invaders of North India. As Buchanan noted in the early nineteenth century: ‘Being of Arabic ex­ traction, they look upon themselves as of more honourable birth than the Tartar Mussulmans of North India who of course are of a contrary opinion’.37 Some Mappillas say they have ancestors who escaped from the terror"

"Deflating the peasant rebellion theory, Wood too says:29 Almost without exception, every British official concerned with interpreting the Moplah outbreak was prepared to concede that all was not well with landlord–tenant relations in Malabar, and the grievance over insecurity of tenure was repeatedly stressed by them. However, explaining outbreaks as anti-jenmi (anti-landlord) manifestations posed difficult problems with which those Malabar Collectors most responsive to tenant grievance grappled with only very partial success. In particular, since Hindu tenants and labourers admittedly suffered quite as much, if not more, from the great power of the big jenmi, why were outbreaks confined to the Muslim community? Moreover, why should some of the assaults have been directed against Hindus who were not only not landlords, but members of the slave caste at least as vulnerable to the exercise of jenmi power as many of the assailants themselves? Failure by those who stressed the agrarian explanation for outbreaks adequately to answer such questions undermined their case for legislation to grant occupancy rights to tenants, a measure they urged as essential if the Moplah problem were to be solved."

"Characteristically, the preparations for an outbreak involved the intending participants donning the white clothes of the martyr, divorcing their wives, asking those they felt they had wronged for forgiveness, and receiving the blessing of a Tangal, as the Sayyids or descendants of the Prophet are called in Malabar, for the success of their great undertaking. Once the outbreak had been initiated openly, by the murder of their Hindu victim, the participants would await the arrival of Government forces by ranging the countryside paying off scores against Hindus they felt had ill-used them or other Moplahs, burning and defiling Hindu temples, taking what food they needed, and collecting arms and recruits. Finally, as the Government forces closed in on them, a sturdy building was chosen for their last stand. Often the mansion of some Hindu landlord (frequently the residence of one of their victims) was selected, but Hindu temples, mosques, and other buildings were also used, the main criterion being, apparently, to avoid being captured alive. As a Moplah captured at Payyanad temple in 1898 put it, it was decided to die there ‘as it was a good building and we were afraid lest we would be shot in the legs and so caught alive’. By the time the Government forces had surrounded them, the outbreak participants had worked themselves into a frenzy by frequent prayers, shouting the creed as a war-cry and singing songs commemorating the events of past outbreaks, especially that of October 1843 in which 7 Moplahs armed mainly with ‘war knives’ scattered a heavily-armed detachment of sepoys with their charge. The climax of the drama came when they emerged from their ‘post’ to be killed as they tried to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Divergences from this ideal pattern were frequent, but the essence of the Moplah outbreak, demarcating it from other forms of violence, resided in the belief that participation was the act of a shahid or martyr and would be rewarded accordingly. As one outbreak participant (who receded at the last moment and was captured) said in explanation of why he and his associates ‘went out’ (i.e. participated in the outbreak): ‘I have heard people sing that those who ... fight and die after killing their oppressors, become shahids and get their reward. I have heard that the reward is “Swargam” (Paradise).’ The pattern of the Moplah outbreak was dictated by the fact that participants had no intention of evading the heavy hand of justice. On the contrary, their objective was to compass their own destruction by hurling themselves in a suicidal charge against the forces sent to deal with them. In the words of a wounded Moplah captured at Manjeri temple in 1896: ‘We came to the temple intending to fight with the troops and die. That is what we meant to do when we started.’ The defining characteristic of the Moplah outbreak was devotion to death."

"Here’s a relevant observation from William Logan’s Malabar Manual: Tirurangadi, the adhikari of which was killed, lay close to the residence of the Arab Tangal or High Priest who was generally credited with having incited the Mapillas to commit these outrages. The Tangal died shortly afterwards and was buried at the Mabram mosque situated on the river bank opposite Tirurangadi. Fanatics who intend to commit outrages, and those who committed them do, as a rule even now, proceed to this mosque to pray at the Tangal’s Shrine."

"How did the Thangals and the other religions leaders maintain the solidarity of the Moplah community? What idiom and language did they use in arousing a collective awareness? Did they provoke and incite their illiterate followers into hostility against the landed upper classes between 1830 and 1880? These are very important questions but difficult to answer in the absence of adequate source material. It is, however, certain that some Thangals did provoke some of their followers into physical violence and, in their own interests, tried to turn the anti-jenmi sentiments of the poor Moplah peasants into anti- Hindu sentiment."

"Many analysts have noted that the massive growth in Moplah population is appalling and un-explainable in the ordinary course. According to the statistics given by Miller,(1976 Vol.11,Page 316) it was 42.8% during 1831-1851 and during 1891-1921 when the total population growth was 18% the growth in Moplah population was 35%."