100th anniversary of Khilafat: Communist-Islamist nexus announces Malayalam films to whitewash Moplah genocide of Hindus

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Khilafat movement, at least three Malayalam movies in praise of the Moplah genocide of Hindus, have been announced in Kerala. The Islamist-controlled Malayalam film industry goes on a Khilafat movie spree after the announcement of a film, based on the life of the notorious Hindu massacre Variyan Kunnathu Kunjahammed, by a film director Ashiq Abu. The move has triggered widespread anger and condemnation across the state as Kunjahammed was the chief of the jihadi force that led the anti-Hindu riots in Malabar during Khilafat movement in which thousands of Hindus were butchered, raped and forcibly converted to Islam.

In the film directed by Ashiq Abu, a hardcore Islamist in the garb of Communism, famous south Indian actor Prithviraj will play the title role. In a poster released by Prithviraj and others, the Islamist director and scriptwriters projected the Jihadi villain a ‘revolutionary hero’. The screenplay for the film was written by Ramees Mohammed, a Popular Front of India cadre who believes that cinema is the best way to ‘Islamise the society’.

Islamic radical outfits like Popular Front of India and Jamat-e-Islami, under the aegis of the ruling CPM, have been using 1921 scare to instil fear psychosis among Hindus. During the recent anti-CAA protests in Malappuram, the PFI-JeI extremists raised slogans like: “We haven’t thrown away the Malabar dagger that we had used in 1921.” They had also conducted several rallies, holding swords and other weapons with provocative sloganeering, to commemorate the anniversary of the Hindu massacre of 1921.

The Khilafat Movement of 1921 turned out to be genocide on Hindus in Malabar, northern Kerala, killing thousands of men, women and children. Hundreds of women were abducted and raped and forcibly converted. Thousands of men were converted and those who refused to convert to Islam were brutalised and killed. According to an estimate, about 5 lakh Hindus had to flee the troubled areas to save their lives. Islamic radicals burnt down houses and destroyed temples.

During the Khilafat, Kunjahammed established a Caliphate for a few days in Malabar, named ‘Al-Daula’, the Islamic State. However, Ashiq and his team claim, Kunjahammed founded a ‘Malayala Rajya’, an ‘independent nation’. The secessionist claim, which contradicts history, apparently hints at spawning the seeds of a religious separatist movement in Kerala.

A report published in Madras Mail (dated October 4, 1921) brings out the role of Haji. The report says, “Several recent reports show that between Variankunnath Kunhammad Haji and the Chembraasseri Tangal, it has been decided that all Hindus residing in villages at the mercy of rebel bands, should be put to death unless they accept Islam. Instances are mentioned in which Hindus had actually been forced to dig their own graves before being butchered. It is also reported that diabolical reprisals are being perpetrated against all persons known or suspected of supplying provisions to the military and police, one report stating that the Chembrasseri Tangal had ordered a Hindu to be flayed alive for supplying troops with milk. In villages like Melattur, Melmuri, Karuvarakundu and Toovur, the extermination of the Hindu population is being systematically carried on, but young women and girls who find favour with rebels are forcibly carried away.”

Condemning the Islamist-Communist efforts to glorify ‘1921’, Prajna Pravah national convenor Shri J Nandakumar said that the Mappila riots had nothing to do with the freedom struggle. “It was a planned massacre. Books like Malabar Kalapam written by K Madhavan Nair have mentioned the facts. Moreover, Ahmed Haji was a person with a shoddy background. There is a deliberate attempt from Leftists and a particular community to glorify him. Actors should desist from getting involved in such divisive campaigns,” he said.

“It is nothing but a sadistic act of a radical Islamic group. Exhibiting a movie in praise of Kunjahammad in Kerala is just like exhibiting before the Jewish people a movie hailing Hitler and Jewish persecution. Such moves are anti-humanist to the core which cannot be allowed in a progressed society,” Shri Nandakumar told Organiser.

Meanwhile, another CPM fellow-traveller P T Kunju Muhammed announced his latest movie ‘Shahid Variyankunnan’, based on the life of the same Kunjahammed. P T Kunju Muhammed is one of the directors of the CPM media venture Kairali TV.

The brutal Jihad against Hindus in Malabar had spread a wave of horror across the country, inviting shock, anger, and condemnation from various national leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Annie Bessant etc.

Annie Besant visited Malabar and wrote about the bloodbath taking place around her. She wrote, “Wilful murders of Hindus and arson were first begun in my own place. This contagion began to spread like wildfire and we began to hear of murders daily. Within a fortnight cold-blooded murders of Hindus became very common……A pregnant woman carrying seven months was cut through the abdomen by a rebel and she was seen lying dead on the way with the dead child projecting out of the womb. How horrible! Another, a baby of six months was snatched away from the breast of his own mother and cut into two pieces. How heart-rending! Are these rebels human beings or monsters?” These shocking words of Annie Besant were published in New India, 6th December 1921. Annie Besant continued to describe the deplorable incident of a respectable Nayar lady who was stripped naked and raped by the rioters in the presence of her husband and brothers, who were forced to stand close and watch with their hands tied behind.

C. Sankaran Nair, the former President of Indian National Congress and author of the book ’Gandhi and Anarchy’ wrote that, “For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar Rebellion.” Citing narratives available to him regarding the actions of the Mappilas during the rebellion, C. Sankaran Nair wrote a strongly worded criticism of Gandhi and his support for the Khilafat Movement, accusing him of being an anarchist. He was highly critical of the “sheer brutality” of the atrocities committed on women during the rebellion, finding them “horrible and unmentionable”. In particular, he referred to a resolution under the Zamorin Raja of the time and an appeal by the Rani of Nilambur. He further wrote:

“The horrid tragedy continued for months. Thousands of Mahomedans killed, and wounded by troops, thousands of Hindus butchered, women subjected to shameful indignities, thousands forcibly converted, persons flayed alive, entire families burnt alive, women it is said hundreds throwing themselves into wells to avoid dishonour, violence and terrorism threatening death standing in the way of reversion to their own religion. This is what Malabar, in particular, owes to the Khilafat agitation, to Gandhi and his Hindu friends.”

“The blood-curdling atrocities committed by the Moplas in Malabar against the Hindus were indescribable. All over Southern India, a wave of horrified feeling had spread among the Hindus of every shade of opinion, which was intensified when certain Khilafat leaders were so misguided as to pass resolutions of congratulations to the Moplas on the brave fight they were conducting for the sake of religion”. Any person could have said that this was too heavy a price for Hindu-Muslim unity. But Mr. Gandhi was so much obsessed by the necessity of establishing Hindu-Muslim unity that he was prepared to make light of the doings of the Moplas and the Khilafats who were congratulating them. He spoke of the Mappilas as the “brave God-fearing Moplahs who were fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner which they consider as religious “.

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.

“Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting of their houses in Ernad, etc, the forcible conversion of Hindus in the beginning of the Moplah rebellion and the wholesale conversion of those who stuck to their homes in later stages, the brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus without the slightest reason except that they are “Kafirs” or belonged to the same religion as the policemen, who their mosques, burning of Hindu temples, the outrage on Hindu women and their forcible conversion and marriage by the Moplahs.”

But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully apprised 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.