Ramasimhan and his family were butchered by Islamic fanatics in Malaparamba, Malappuram district on August 2, 1947, hardly two weeks before Bharat turned an independent country
Seventy two years are over since Ramasimhan, his brother Dayasimham, Dayasimhan’s wife Kamala, cook Raju Iyer and other members of family were butchered by Islamic fanatics in Malaparamba, Malappuram district on August 2, 1947, hardly two weeks before Bharat turned an independent country. What was their fault? Answer is simple: Ramasimhan and his brother and family members who were staunch believers of Islam left their faith and embraced Hinduism. The walls of the bungalow were stained with blood and flesh of the victims.
Their father Moidu Saheb was trained in rubber cultivation while working in Briton-owned rubber estates in the neighbouring Thrissur district. Then he started plantation in Malaparamba in a 600 acre land which belonged to Narasimha Moorthi temple. He got the nod of the custodian of the temple in this regard. The land was occupied under a lease agreement. A bungalow was constructed in front of the temple and Moidu occupied the house not only with his family but also with an ‘action team’. Unnyen and Alippu were his sons. Once occupied the bungalow Moidu and his people took out the granites and other parts of the temple and used them to beautify his bungalow. The Hindus, who were still in the shock and hangover of the bloody Khilafat riot of 1921, had to remain as mute spectators. There were in the grip of fear, poverty and were totally demoralised and disintegrated. The rich Unnyen led a luxurious life, of course, with all sorts of vices. But, it did cost him a fortune, he lost his health heavily.
Unnyen desperately tried all sorts of medical options, but in vain. At last somebody asked him to seek astrologers’ advice. He got the advice to renovate the dilapidated temple. An irony, because his father was instrumental in desecrating it. Gradually he became a Mahavishnu devotee. And, himself, his brother Alippu and wife and the former’s sons Moidu and Moidootty underwent parivarthanam or ghar wapsi (return to Hinduism) under the auspices of Aryasamaj. They renamed themselves as Ramasimhan, Dayasimhan, Kamala, Fateh Singh and Swaravar Singh respectively. They turned pure vegetarians. They led a strict Hindu religious life. It was more than enough to invite the wrath of the fanatic Muslims; they were proud of Tipus’s invasion, his onslaught against and mass massacre of Hindus and demolition of hundreds of Hindu temples in Malabar area. Their arrogance touched the skies after Maupila Riot aka Malabar Riot of 1921. (Leaders of both Communist Party of India and Congress, both holding pseudo secularist ideologies, term that riot ‘farmers rebellion’ despite the fact that more than 10,000 Hindus, most of them agricultural labourers, were killed, thousands of women raped, hundreds of children and babies butchered and thousands were converted into Islam. Even the mother of CPM stalwart EMS fled their native place and ancestral home, along with her children, to escape from the Islamic attack. EMS was hardly 11 at that time).
The “faithful killers” stormed into Ramasimhan’s bangalow and massacred all. Since Fateh Singh and Swarawar Singh were studying in Birla School, Delhi, they could survive. The temple was totally demolished. It is widely believed in Malabar that the massacres were engineered by Ramasimhan’s father-in-law. The old timers reminisce about their forerunners’ disclosures that the policemen came to the spot only after a couple of days. And, no Hindus dared to take over the dead bodies and cremate properly hence they were buried somewhere near the old Travellers Bungalow in Malaparamba. Even though the Madaras Court sentenced the culprits to imprisonment and some other punishments, the pseudo secular legislators succeeded in saving them from it, thanks to the appeasement politics which prevailed in Kerala even those days.
The fierce episode remained a blood stain in the Hindu psyche for several decades together. By the end of 1990s the Hindus led by late veteran RSS Pracharak C.P. Janardhanan and senior RSS Pracharak and former BMS national president late R. Venugopal took initiative to renovate the demolished Narasimha temple. The work was inaugurated by late Sankar Shasthri, the successor of late Dathopanth Thengidi as the second Pracharak in Malabar. The Ramasimham episode took place when he was the Sangh Pracharak in Malabar.
The renovated temple stands tall as the symbol of the regained Hindu pride in Malabar where Hindus were always victims at the receiving end once upon a time. This year Sangh-oriented movements organised several programmes to commemorate Ramasimhan’s martyrdom on August 2, throughout the state, of course as per the Corona protocol.
It has to be recalled that Islamic radical outfits like Popular Front of India and Jamaat-e-Islami, under the aegis of the ruling CPM, have been using the 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.
