The Malabar rebellion, also called Mappila revolt, continues to be a contested and polarising event nearly a hundred years after it took place. It has now grabbed the headlines after a film project on one of the rebel leaders, Variyankunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, was announced. One right-wing group in Kerala has announced that it will contest the attempts to “glorify” Haji and the revolt with a year-long campaign “to expose the atrocities committed on Hindus” during the rebellion. Three more films are reportedly in the works — the upcoming centenary of the rebellion is sure to offer political and commercial opportunities.
The rebellion was a remarkable event that saw people in southern Malabar, predominantly Muslims, wage an armed struggle against the British for nearly six months beginning August 1921. In sociologist D N Dhanagare’s words, “gross neglect of the basic tenurial security, the deterioration of landlord-tenant relations and the political alienation of the poor peasantry were the important formative conditions” of the rebellion. According to Dhanagare, three different political movements merged to trigger the rebellion — one of these, the tenancy movement, was rooted in local agrarian grievances (particularly in south Malabar); the other two were the Khilafat (Caliphate) movement and the Non-Cooperation movement, launched jointly by the All-India Khilafat Committee and the Indian National Congress. The talukas where the Khilafat agitation turned violent, had a significant presence of Muslims, who nursed political, administrative, economic and religious grievances against the British — Malabar had witnessed over three dozen Muslim peasant revolts against the British and landlords in the 19th century. The tenancy movement in the 1910s had foregrounded the agrarian issues that affected the peasants, many of them Muslims, causing unease among the landlords, most of them upper caste Hindus, and the colonial administration.
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