Is Malabar rebellion part of freedom movement ?

 

History makers

It is true that history is never properly recorded. If it’s proper how can an incident or a movement or a person from history be interpreted differently based on the historians believes and  political leanings? Then history is being made, never be an actual recording of incidents. History is made by each historian or group of historians or institutions according to their political and religious fancies. Therefore, the controversy over this will never end.

There are more than 100 books on the Malabar Rebellion. There are differences of opinion on what happened to the people at that time. Now the Malabar Rebellion, in the language of the British, the Mappila riots , is in discussion due to the suggestion of a 3 member committee appointed by the Ministry of culture,GOI on whether the martyrs of Malabar rebellion be deleted or not from the “Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s freedom struggle”. The committee says the riot was not against the British.It was  a clash between high caste Hindus, who were the heads of feudal set up that time, with the Muslims ,they were tenants of the land holdings. The Malabar Rebels were declared freedom fighters by the Kerala government in 1971. Until 2019, the central government was also on the same view.

 Here it is difficult to determine who is right and who is wrong. In fact, it was the injustice done by the feudal lords of Malabar to the tenants of the majority Muslim -Thiyya communities that eventually led to the riots. The Khilafat movement accelerated it. The feudal  lords in connivance with British rulers plundered the entire income of agriculture, including taxes and leases. The reality is that riots naturally turn into poaching. It will be the same whether it was the 1984 riots against the Sikhs, the Gujarat riots or the Taliban. The agenda of the British was very clear. The strategy was to divide and rule. It was easy to divide citizens as Muslims and Hindus, then the rest was assured everywhere in India. Britishers applied the same  card in Malabar. Ultimately, it was the Malabar community that lost. The helpless men, women and children were brutally hunted down. Only the nominal Britishers were harmed. It is true that the problem has largely turned into Hindu-Muslim riots. Its wounds are still not dry. Therefore, they are martyrs to the Left because of the landlord-tenant conflict. It is a communal riot for the BJP and the RSS as it has done great damage to the Hindus. It was a freedom struggle because it was a struggle against the British for the Congress. It is a historic event that always excites the Muslim League. Readers of history can interpret this according to their own position. History books would change when governance changes. Its tincture  will be different. Each generation should learn a new history and so on