The mastermind of Mappila riots, Haji and Ali, raised Khilafat Army. The slogans or battle cry, were neither against ‘Imperial rule’ nor in favour of ‘Nationalism’ but against the ‘Kafirs’, specifically the Malabar Hindus
The bizarre yet shocking 1921 Malabar genocide and forcible conversion of Hindus followed by the infamous ‘Moplah riots’ or ‘Mappila riots’ marked one of the earliest radical Islamic violence against the Hindus. This horrific wave turned out more critical during the Khilafat Movement. The unfortunate side of the story is that the whole episode of violence remained either inexplicable or deeply misinterpreted.
Comparing Islamist with Martyr
On the eve of the commencement of the centenary years of the Mappila riots, lasting wounds of violence have started throbbing the patrioteer and specifically to those who lost their everything and still living in the riot’s nightmares. But, for many, this still holds a political value. For instance, in Kerala, M B Rajesh, Speaker of Legislative Assembly, the communist, demonstrated his loyalty and unbreakable ‘illegitimate bond’ with the 1921 riot perpetrators and especially radical Islamist V K Haji, leader of Mappila riots when he compared him with Sardar Bhagat Singh.
Spreading Falsehood about Sangh
In the continuation of this, D Raja, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and National Secretary, CPI has made a disparaging remark about RSS-BJP and said that “misrepresentation of facts, distortion of history, appropriation of some historical figures and events while negating or falsifying others are standard techniques in the Sangh ‘toolkit’. However, this raised the question of its sanctity: does he misapprehend the so-called ‘toolkit’? Does Sangh (RSS) really need any ‘toolkit’ to expose clandestine intent of distorting the historical facts, to reveal their historical transgressions, and simply to expose their Hinduphobic mind? If yes, then for sure the alleged ‘toolkit’ is to highlight their transgression and the act of Hindumisia without adding any preservatives. The Sangh, since its foundation, serves the truth with its natural fervour; the Sangh doesn’t need any preservatives to make it more appealing and acceptable. The Hinduphobic bubble is swelling up fast which is bound to burst simply because the layers of lies, transgression of historical facts, masking the reality can’t last long.
Establishing Caliphate Rule
Now, on a historical note, the mastermind of Mappila riots, Haji and Ali, raised a Khilafat Army consisting of more than 60,000 Muslim soldiers with Turkish Caliphate flags. Contrary to the belief, the slogans, allegedly their battle cry, were neither against ‘Imperial rule’ nor in favour of ‘Nationalism’ or for ‘Swaraj’. Rather, the slogans were merely against the ‘Kafirs’ (i.e., non-believers of Islam or specifically against the Malabar Hindus). The aim was to establish “the Caliphate rule”, as pointed out by the then Deputy Collector, C Gopalan Nair, who listed 51 incidents of unprovoked assaults against Hindus by the Moplahs before the gruesome climax of 1921, in his “The Moplah Rebellion, 1921”. Let’s discuss some more untouched historical facts that the Communists and their supported historians intentionally ignored while writing about the Mappila riots in hasten manner. In “The Servants of Indian Society Committee Reports and in The Future of Indian Politics” (1922), Annie Besant said that “more than 1,500 Hindus were brutally murdered, 20,000 people were forcibly converted to Islam and private possession worth Rs 3 crore were destroyed or looted”. In her letter to Lady Reading, wife of the then Viceroy Lord Reading, The Rani Of Nilambur wrote that “to convey at least some idea of the indescribably terrible agonies which they and thousands more of their sisters have been enduring for over five months now through this reign of inhuman frightfulness inaugurated and carried on in the name of the Khilfat” … “of many wells and tanks filled up with mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest one’ who refused to abandon the faith of our father; of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungle, with the unborn baby protruding from the mangled corpse; or 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”… “Our place of worship (Mandir) desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garland used to lie, or else smashed to pieces”. This was the act of your “Man-kind Angel” Haji and Ali for Malabar Hindus who intend to bring the ‘egalitarian’ society after confronting the zamindars and Feudal landlords? Was that Sharia’s model of ‘Welfare State’?
The real issue was that thousands of innocent Hindus who worked as labourers, tenants, and craftsmen were ruthlessly slaughtered. At the same time, all the Muslim landlords were left alone and unaffected by the atrocities
Ambedkar on Massacre of Malabar Hindus
Above all, Dr B R Ambedkar himself, in his “Pakistan or Partition of India (BAWS, Vol. 8, p. 163)”, called this genocide on Malabar Hindus as “indescribable”. Dr. Ambedkar went on to describe:
The Hindus were visited by a dire fate at the hands of the Moplahs. Massacres, forcible conversions, desecration of temples, foul outrages upon women, such as ripping open pregnant women, pillage, arson, and destruction—in short, all the accompaniments of brutal and unrestrained barbarism, were perpetrated freely by the Moplahs upon the Hindus until such time as troops could be hurried to the task of restoring order through a difficult and extensive tract of the country. This was not a Hindu-Moslem riot. This was just a Bartholomew. The number of Hindus who were killed, wounded or converted, is not known. But the number must have been enormous”.
Was Dr Ambedkar a Swayam Sewak of Sangh? No. Dr Ambedkar was a champion of social justice, a bulwark of freedom, a constitutionalist, a political forerunner, and a true Indian patriot. As a matter of fact, the riots were set against a backdrop of widespread religious conversions. How can this be considered as the Freedom movement? Probably, we all may have accepted the distorted facts that the Muslims had assaulted and appropriated the properties of only feudal landlords and zamindars, who were the invisible hands of Britishers, but that was not the actual case. The real issue was that thousands of innocent Hindus who worked as labourers, tenants, and craftsmen were ruthlessly slaughtered. At the same time, all the Muslim landlords were left alone and unaffected by the atrocities. Why can’t we call it ‘Pogrom’ instead of calling it ‘riots’, then? As a result, the theory of the agrarian revolution comes crashing down.
Lastly, to conclude, historical facts can not be subjected to misrepresent reality. Nor can they be allowed to have forfeited in the hands of ideologically soaked and politically motivated historians. Rather, it is imperative to discuss the historicity as it happened in the past. There is no need to distort the nature of historicity merely to protect the social and political status or simply to fulfill the obligatory appeasement action. The Mappila incident was not a new phenomenon to anyone. It was indeed not a fight for ‘Swaraj’, but merely an act of radical Islamic jihadists, or it can be considered merely as a failed attempt to establish the wicked intent of ‘Ghazwa-E-Hind’. The freedom fighters who actually sacrificed their lives for real ‘Swaraj’, can’t be equated with brutal warmongers whose fervent act was to nurture radical Islamist jihadist social composition.
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