Malabar rebellion

"I have given the subject every attention and am convinced that though the instances (of Mappila outrages) may and do arise out of individual hardships to tenants (Mappila and Hindu), the general character of the dealings of Hindu landlords towards their tenants whether Mappila or Hindu, is mild, equitable and forebearing' ... "it is no sin, but a merit to kill a Hindu Janmi who evicts" ... "Since land is with the Hindus and the money with the Mappilas, to get the land, the Mappilas encouraged (or resorted to) fanaticism" ... "And finally the result was that there was steady movement whereby in all Mappila tracts, the land was passing slowly but surely to the possession of the Mappilas""

"Sankaran Nair points out to several other tortures like skinning Hindus alive and making them dig their own graves before their slaughter. The Congress leaders disbelieved the stories from Malabar initially and Gandhi himself spoke of the ‘brave God-fearing Moplahs’ whom he described as patriots who were ‘fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner which they consider as religious’. He went on to add: ‘Hindus must find the causes of Moplah fanaticism. They will find that they are not without blame. They have hitherto not cared for the Moplah. It is no use now becoming angry with the Moplahs or Mussalmans in general.’ Ironically, his allies, the Khilafatists, passed resolutions congratulating the Moplahs for their heroism."

"The first warning was sounded when the question of condemning the Moplas for their atrocities on Hindus came up in the Subjects Committee. The original resolution condemned the Moplas wholesale for the killing of Hindus and burning of Hindu homes and the forcible conversion to Islam. The Hindu members themselves proposed amendments till it was reduced to condemning only certain individuals who had been guilty of the above crimes. But some of the Moslem leaders could not bear this even. Maulana Fakir and other Maulanas, of course, opposed the resolution and there was no wonder. But I was surprised, an out-and-out Nationalist like Maulana Hasrat Mohani opposed the resolution on the ground that the Mopla country no longer remained Dar-ul-Aman but became Dar-ul-Harab and they suspected the Hindus of collusion with the British enemies of the Moplas. Therefore, the Moplas were right in presenting the Quran or sword to the Hindus. And if the Hindus became Mussalmans to save themselves from death, it was a voluntary change of faith and not forcible conversion—Well, even the harmless resolution condemning some of the Moplas was not unanimously passed but had to be accepted by a majority of votes only. There were other indications also, showing that the Mussalmans considered the Congress to be existing on their sufferance and if there was the least attempt to ignore their idiosyncracies the superficial unity would be scrapped asunder."

"Dr. Munje said in another part of his report that, eight hundred years ago, the Hindu king of Malabar (now Kerala) on the advice of his Brahmin ministers, made big favor to the Arab Muslim to settle in his kingdom. Even he appeased the Arab Muslims by converting the Hindus to Islam to an extent to making law for compulsory conversion of a member of each Hindu fisherman family in to Islam. Those, whose nature is to practice idiocy rather than common sense, never can enjoy freedom even if they are in the throne. They turn the hour of action in to a night of merriment. That’s why they are always struck by the ghost at the middle of the day.”.... “The king of Malabar once gave away his throne to idiocy. That idiocy is still ruling Malabar from a Hindu throne. That’s why the Hindus are still being beaten and saying that God is there, turning the faces towards the sky. Throughout India we allowed idiocy to rule and surrender ourselves to it. That kingdom of idiocy – the fatal lack of commonsense – was continuously invaded by the Pathans, sometimes by the Mughols and sometimes by the British. From outside we can only see the torture done by them, but they are only the tools of torture, not really the cause. The real reason of the torture is our lack of common sense and our idiocy, which is responsible for our sufferings. So we have to fight this idiocy that divided the Hindus and imposed slavery on us……..If we only think about the torture we will not find any solution. But if we can get rid of our idiocy, the tyrants will surrender to us.”"

"“I had gone to Malabar immediately after the Malabar Moplah rebellion ended. I saw with my own eyes, 40 lakh Hindus living in abject fear of 10 lakh Muslims."

"In August 1921, exactly a year after the start of Non-Cooperation, time for which Gandhi had promised results, the Moplah Muslim community of Kerala installed its own version of home-rule, viz. Khilafat rule. A Khilafat kingdom was declared under one Ali Musaliar. It took the British several months to suppress this rebellion, and meanwhile pogroms were conducted against the local Hindus, involving murder, rape and forcible conversion to Islam... We may add, at this point, a more recent comment (1993) on the Moplah Rebellion and its political digestion by Gandhi’s Congress, by a Hindu historian. In his book Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism, Shrikant G. Talageri insists that ‘Halfway through, the Khilafat agitation was converted into a jihad against Hindus. (…) If the Khilafat agitation was ghastly and horrifying, the secularist response to it was a hundred times more ghastly and horrifying. (…) The Congress suppressed all reports about the atrocities perpetrated by the Moplahs against the Hindus, and Congress leaders condemned the British authorities for taking measures to quell the rioters.’ Further, he insists that ‘the Mahatma went out of his way to refer to the Moplah murderers as “my brave Moplahs”, and expressed admiration for their religious fervour. After 1947, Moplah rioters were classified as freedom fighters and made eligible for pensions paid by the Government of Independent India. And every year, to this very day, the Khilafat Movement is commemorated by a massive procession in Bombay, in which many Leftists and secularists participate along with Muslims.’"

"The rebels . . . captured beautiful Hindu women, forcibly converted them, pierced holes in their ears in the typical Mopla fashion, dressed them as Mopla women and utilized them as their temporary partners of life. Hindu women were threatened, molested and compelled to run half-naked for shelter to forests abounding in wild animals. Respectable Hindu gentlemen were forcibly converted and the circumcision ceremony performed with the help of certain Musliars and Thangals."

"It would perhaps interest Honourable Members if I were to preface my remarks with a brief reference as to the origin and cause of this rising in Malabar. The fact is that these Moplahs are an ignorant people, many of them poor and nearly all of them fanatical and entirely under the influence—as I learn from the information before me—of a bigoted priesthood. As I think all Honourable Members know they are descendants of Arab traders and soldiers who first came to the Malabar coast some time, I think, about 800 AD, and we are told that they later established themselves by intermarriage and conversion, or perversion, whichever term appeals to different Honourable Members of this Council, of the local residents to Muhammadanism. There have been many outbreaks of these people who now number about a million in the past, indeed during a period of about 20 years—between 1836 and 1853, there were 22 outbreaks, but the biggest one about which I have any information occurred in 1885 after which 20,000 arms including 9,000 guns were collected from the insurgents."

"Stanley Wolpert describes these riots briefly in his book A New History of India, “In Malabar, Muslim Moplahs declared a jihad (holy war) in August 1921, ostensibly in order to establish a new khilafat of their own, killing Europeans and wealthy Hindus wherever they found them and forcibly converting Hindu peasants and laborers to Islam”"