The barbaric Jihad against Hindus in the Malabar region can by no stretch of imagination be characterized as the “Moplah Rebellion.” Even the stray incidents of arson, capture of British officials, siege of police stations, etc do not qualify this appalling brutality to be termed a mere “rebellion.” The context is rather straightforward: the actual, on-ground savagery in Malabar was the violent climax of a bloodthirsty build-up that began about six months ago. In the cause of the so-called Khilafat Movement. In other words every single word that was written and uttered reeked of violent Islamism: a.k.a Jihad. In this vile project, the pro-Khilafat Jihadists regarded both the British and Hindus as they were wont to: Kaffirs begging for slaughter or conversion.
It is this “cause” that Mohandas Gandhi not only asked Hindus to support but also to willingly die for.
This is the short answer for the questions posed in the previous instalment of this series: the Moplah was a rebellion against what, who and why? And by whom?
But like the innumerable tragedies in Hindu history at the hands of the demonic forces of Islam and Christianity, the denial of the Moplah Jihad—a comparably recent event—has been hugely successful because even large sections of Hindus have either blindly swallowed this whitewashing or have near-totally forgotten it.
There is also an even more recent parallel to this.
December 6. Each year including and after circa 1992.
Peaceful areas in Bangalore like Shivajinagar, the vicinity of Lal Bagh, Sultanpalya, etc and their equivalents like Mumbra, Mira Road, Byculla, Dongri, etc…routinely have public walls adorned with wording like “DEC 6 BLACK DAY!” “DEC 6 DO NOT FORGET!” and variants thereof. The same day is also witness to a slew of opeds and columns in various “mainstream” publications on the same topic. Only, these pieces replace “Black Day” with “death anniversary of secularism.” And most writers of such pieces have Hindu names. It’s surreal. Eerie. Chilling.
Small wonder that the Moplah Jihad-deniers got away with routinely urinating on the sacred graves of their Hindu ancestors so easily.
But the Moplah Jihad is also notable—and therefore carefully buried under the wreckage of the Nehruvian history establishment—for another key reason. It marks a watershed moment in the manner in which the Indian National Congress party under Gandhi’s dictatorship irreversibly succumbed to Muslim fanaticism and violence. After this, the INC kept caving in until the fateful event of India’s partition. But before we shed further light on the painful details of the process, here’s a small taste of what happened to the poor Hindus of Malabar beginning in August 1921. Writes[i] C. Sankaran Nair:
“the Moplahs…themselves, armed and organised they took the Hindus unawares and committed atrocities too well known…butchered them and inflicted injuries on them far worse than death.
For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar rebellion. It broke out about the 20th of August. Even by the 6th of September the results were dreadful… The atrocities committed more particularly on women are so horrible and unmentionable that I do not propose to refer to them in this book…but I would point out…two other forms of torture…as having been resorted to in the case of men—flaying alive, and making them dig their own graves before their slaughter…
This is what Malabar in particular owes to the Khilafat agitation, to Gandhi and his Hindu friends.
There’s more. This time, Annie Beasant recounts[ii] in two separate articles in New India as to what happened to the Malabar Hindus at the hands of the Moplahs.
Mr. Gandhi…can he not feel a little sympathy for thousands of women left with only rags, driven from home, for little children born of the flying mothers on roads in refuge camps? The misery is beyond description. Girl wives, pretty and sweet, with eyes half blind with weeping, distraught with terror; women who have seen their husbands hacked to pieces before their eye, in the way “Moplas consider as religious”; old women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish and who cry at a gentle touch…men who have lost all, hopeless, crushed, desperate…Can you conceive of a more ghastly and inhuman crime than the murders of babies and pregnant women?…A pregnant woman carrying 7 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…Another: a baby of six months was snatched away from the breast of his own mother and cut into two pieces… Are these rebels human beings or monsters? ”
A respectable Nayar Lady at Melatur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers, who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence they were compelled at the point of sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence. ”
Note the date of Annie Beasant’s report on the Moplah Jihad: 6 December 1921.
About two weeks later, on 24 December 1921, the INC convened for the Ahmedabad Session, where it officially appointed Mohandas Gandhi as its dictator going forward. Here is the text[iii] of Resolution No. 3 of that session, in connection with the Moplah Jihad:
The Congress expresses its firm conviction that the Moplah disturbance was not due to the Non-Co-operation or the Khilafat movement, especially as the…Khilafat preachers were denied access to the affected parts by the District authorities for six months before the disturbance, but is due to causes wholly unconnected with the two movements and that the outbreak would not have occurred had the message of non-violence been allowed to reach them. Nevertheless, this Congress…is of the opinion that the…disturbance in Malabar could have been prevented by the Government of Madras accepting the proffered assistance of Maulana Yakub Hassan…
But the Gandhi-scripted and directed Resolution didn’t fool too many people. Here is how the iconic D.V. Gundappa calls[iv] Gandhi’s bluff in a searing rebuttal marked with delicious sarcasm:
We need not…consider the propriety of the blameless [Congress]. We are concerned chiefly with the spirit in which the Congress viewed…responsibility. Firstly, is the period of six months the maximum term for which the seeds of disaffection sown into the mind of a notoriously fanatical population could remain potential? Is it not possible to argue…that the preaching done before six months must have been remarkably good if it could take so fierce…a form in so short a time? … if the message of non-violence was not allowed to reach the Moplahs, was any other message allowed to reach them? And who delivered it? Thirdly, if it is claimed…that…non-violence can quell any kind of armed rising, does it not follow that it should have been conveyed five years ago to England and France and Germany? On the other hand, if the claim…[is that]…non-violence can succeed only with a people in religious frenzy, are not those who first put them in such frenzy answerable to those who suffer its consequences?
Unfortunately D.V. Gundappa and legions of courageous Hindus like him were no match for the skilled finesse of Mohandas Gandhi’s barbaric piety. The disgusting and craven Resolution No. 3 of the Ahmedabad Session of the INC was, in a way, bolstered by that other closet Islamist fanatic, Hasrat Mohani who gave a speech at a Muslim League meeting claiming that the Moplahs massacred Hindus because they were frightened. Why were they frightened? Because of an “English detachment” that “suddenly appear[ed]” in the locality,” which “somehow spread a rumour” that the “Hindu inhabitants…had invited the English army.”
Naturally, this selfsame Hasrat Mohani eventually became one of the prized darlings of the INC which hailed him as a freedom fighter because he coined the phrase, “inquilab zindabad.” He was also one of the founder-leaders of the Communist Party of India. A little-known fact was that Syed Fazl-ul-Hasan alias Hasrat Mohani was a trained Maulana. And was the colleague of the selfsame Shaukat Ali of the Ali Brothers of the Khilafat notoriety. Keeping true to the tradition of celebrating the heroes of pure Islamism, a postage stamp was released in Maulana Hasrat Mohani’s honour by former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari in February 2014. Hamid Ansari was recently outed by a former RAW operative as falsely implicating India’s foremost scientist, Nambi Narayanan.
This is the unfortunate chain of events set off by Mohandas Gandhi in that deadly Ahmedabad Congress Session from whose nightmare Hindus are still unable to recover.
We can conclude this series with the courageous and blunt letter[v] rebutting the aforementioned, infamous Resolution No. 3. The letter not only exposes Gandhi’s phony sainthood but tears apart his claims of being truthful. It was co-signed by K.P. Keshava Menon, K. Madhavan Nair, T.V. Mohamad, K. Karunakara Menon and K.V. Gopal Menon.
I urge the kind reader to read the letter in full and even memorize it if possible. Because Hindu lives and civilization are too precious to be left to chance or divine intervention. Because no Hindu in today’s Kerala can even imagine writing such a letter to their own political parties.
Truth is infinitely of more paramount importance than Hindu-Muslim unity or Swaraj, and therefore, we tell the Maulana Sahib [Hasrat Mohani] and his co-religionists and India’s revered leader Mahatma Gandhi—if he too is unaware of the events here—that atrocities committed by the Moplahs on the Hindus are unfortunately too true and that there is nothing in the deeds of Moplah rebels which a true non-violent non-co-operator can congratulate them for. What is it for which they deserve congratulation? Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting at their houses in Ernad, and parts of Valluvanad, Ponnani, and Calicut Taliques [Taluks]; the forcible conversion of Hindus in a few places in the beginning of the rebellion and the wholesale conversion of those who stick to their homes in its later stages, the brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus, men, women, and children in cold blood, without the slightest reason except that they are “Kaffirs…”, the desecration and burning of Hindu Temples the outrage on Hindu women and their forcible conversion and marriage by Moplahs; do these and similar atrocities proved beyond the shadow of a doubt by the statements recorded by us from the actual sufferers who have survived, deserve any congratulation? On the other hand should they not call forth the strongest condemnation from all right-minded men and more especially from a representative body of Mohamedans like the Khilafat Conference pledged to non-violence under all provocation? Did the Moplahs, who committed such atrocities, sacrifice their lives in the cause of their religion?”
Concluded
[i] “THE KHILAFAT QUESTION: GANDHI AND ANARCY.” Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Pp 51 – 3. Emphasis added.
[ii] “MALABAR’S AGONY.” Annie Beasant. New India, 29 November 1921 and 6 December 1921. Quoted in “GANDHI AND ANARCY.” Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Pp 133 – 6. Emphasis added.
[iii] “INDIAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS.” D.V. Gundappa, et al. Dec 1921 – Jan 1922, p.213. Emphasis added.
[iv] Ibid. pp 213 – 14.
[v] “MALABAR’S AGONY.” K.P. Keshava Menon et al. Quoted in “GANDHI AND ANARCY.” Sir C. Sankaran Nair, Pp 134 – 4. Emphasis added.
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