Moplah uprising

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The Moplah Rebellion was an uprising by Kerala Muslims , called Moplah or Mappila , against the British colonial power in what is now the Indian state of Kerala , which was bloodily suppressed in 1921-22. Although the Moplah uprising was poorly organized, it became the greatest challenge to British rule in India since the great uprising of 1857 .

causes

Immediately after they had "acquired" the area from Tipu Sultan, the British preferred the Hindu landowning class (jenmie) from 1792 onwards . In several smaller uprisings, Moplahs had attracted attention because of their particular cruelty. In 1854, the Moplah Acts were enacted which allowed collective punishment and incarceration without a court order. In 1884 the 100-man Malappuram Specials police force was created from Hindus from the Nair and Tiyya castes to ensure peace and quiet.

The massive inflation caused by the First World War hit the peasant population particularly hard, as the price increases mainly affected industrially manufactured goods such as clothing and tools that had to be bought in. The price of agricultural raw materials rose significantly less. Tariff increases and the introduction of a new income tax in 1917 exacerbated the situation.

Although the local Muslims were inspired in their anti-British stance by the caliphate campaign , the rebellion also developed out of the emerging independence movement around Mohandas Gandhi . The Moplahs had about 55,000 adult men who combined had no more than 3,000 firearms of various types. Almost everyone, however, had a saber.

Fighting

Ali Musliya shortly before his execution in 1922

The campaign was more like the Zulu Wars than modern warfare. Although the British were far superior in terms of material, they could not leave the few roads with their armored vehicles in difficult terrain, the forest made cavalry use, aerial reconnaissance and bombing raids impossible, and radio equipment did not work, probably because of the high proportion of magnetized iron in the ground.

The spark for the uprising was a house search on July 25, 1921 at Vadakkeveettil Mohammed , the local representative of the caliphate movement in Pukkottur , which resulted in a peaceful demonstration being shot at. The terrified authorities called for troops. The Moplah leaders proclaimed the Moplah Khilafat under an Islamic flag. The taluks Ernad and Valluvanad were declared Kalifats- "kingdoms". There was looting and murder of Hindus who were driven from their homes. As a result, at least 100 Hindu temples were attacked or destroyed and large numbers of Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam.

On August 13, three platoons of the Leinster Regiment arrived in Calicut to reinforce the two already stationed there. A train was ordered inland to Malappuram . A 100-man company under Captain McEnroy marched on August 20 to assist the police in finding weapons in the Tirurangadi area . On arrival he found himself facing a crowd of 5,000 who were equipped with cutting and stabbing weapons, which traditionally included the Moplah sword . Like General Reginald Dyer two years earlier in the Amritsar massacre, McEnroy did not have the crowd fired because he did not believe he had the appropriate authorization due to a lack of martial law. During the retreat to Calicut, two officers and a few men were killed, and a few weapons fell into the hands of the insurgents.

Ali Musaliar from Tirurangadi, a leader of the Moplah, ordered the storming of police stations and official buildings on August 22nd. Major General Sir John Burnett-Stuart in Madras now took command of the troops, with Colonel ET Humphreys of the Leinster Regiment becoming his field commander. On August 26th, McEnroy and his company started an attempt to relieve the Garrison in Malappuram . On the way, the modernly equipped troops were attacked by around 2,000 insurgents. Over 400 attackers were killed in the hours that followed, while the British had hardly any casualties. Martial law was declared in September. At the same time, on September 30, the 300-man Malabar Special Police (MSP) was created, which was soon doubled in strength.

The British tried to take action in three columns against the insurgents, who soon turned to stabbing the British from the jungle that still existed at that time in the back. A raid on Gurkha troops on October 21 cost the Moplah 45 dead, compared to 3 wounded. As a result, villages were completely destroyed by British troops. In one such action on October 25th by members of the Dorset Regiment , who soon had a reputation for particular cruelty, 246 inhabitants, few of whom were rebels , were butchered in Melmuri .

After further reinforcements arrived in November, the British felt strong enough to penetrate into the heartland of the rebellion (which was about 25 × 40 km). It was estimated that there were around 7,000 armed men there. The individual battalions advanced on a broad front. The arriving troops also included a division of the Burma Rifles , which "distinguished themselves" mainly by not only returning from fighting in the jungle with cut off rebel heads, but also bringing various wild animals with them for consumption. Thirteen boats patrolled the Beypore River , each with a Lewis machine gun installed. After a few minor skirmishes on November 13th, around 2500 insurgents attacked the Pandikkad post , which was held by a Gurkha company, at dawn on November 14th . In fact, only 500 took part directly in the attack, with the rest either watching or looting nearby. About 70 men were able to penetrate the post, but they were all killed by the Gurkhas, and who then killed about 200 to 300 other attackers in the subsequent failure. A British officer fell and the Gurkhas had 37 wounded.

By early December 1921, the remaining groups of armed men had been wiped out. Until February 1922, individual unsuccessful attacks were carried out from the jungle of the Nilgiri Mountains . After that the Moplah were so completely defeated that they no longer played any role as a political force in the struggle for independence. In the 1930s, transport links in the region were expanded to allow troops to move in the event of future uprisings. The MSP was retained and deployed several times in southern India as a powerful paramilitary force. In 1936 the team was 752 in four companies, from 1932 Moplahs were also accepted (1936: 48 men).

Victim

Prisoners in Calicut on their way to court, September 25, 1925

During a prisoner transport to Coimbatore on November 19, 56 of the 100 people packed in the cattle wagon suffocated during the journey, and 14 more died soon afterwards. The British government paid the families of the deceased 300 rupees each, even though the police sergeant responsible was found innocent.

Official British casualty figures from January 1922 show 2,266 dead, 1,615 wounded, 5,688 prisoners and over 32,000 who voluntarily surrendered. Other sources give different numbers: 2337 official, estimated up to 10,000 dead, and 45,404 prisoners in total. On the British side, 24 soldiers and 24 police officers were killed, 103 wounded soldiers and 29 wounded police officers. An unknown number of Hindus died in the hands of the insurgents, some of them cruelly. The four arrested leaders were executed in January 1922.

literature

  • Nayar C. Gopolan: The Moplah Rebellion 1921 ; Calicut 1923
  • Edwin Herbert: Armies of the 20th Century: Rising and Rebellions 1919-39. Nottingham 2007, ISBN 1-901543-12-9 , pp. 35-40.
  • RH Hitchcock: Peasant Revolt in Malabar. In: Army Quarterly, Vol VIII, 1924; Usha, New Delhi 1983. Chapter 3: Lords of the Sea. (PDF; 351 kB), pp. 61–90
  • KN Panikkar: Against Lord and State: Religion and Peasant Uprisings in Malabar, 1826–1921. Oxford University Press, Delhi 1989
  • Conrad Wood: Historical Background of the Moplah Rebellions, Outbreaks 1836-1919. In: Social Scientist, Vol 3 (1974), pp. 5-33
  • Conrad Wood: First Moplah Rebellion against British Rule in Malabar. In: Modern Asian Szudies Vol. 10 (1976), pp. 543-56
  • Conrad Wood: The Moplah Rebellion and its Genesis ; New Delhi 1987

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Conrad Wood: Historical Background of the Moplah Rebellions, Outbreaks 1836-1919. In: Social Scientist, Vol 3 (1974), pp. 5-33
  2. ^ A b c David Arnold: Armed Police and Colonial Rule in Southern India, 1914-47. In: Modern Asian Studies, Vol 11 (1977),? 1, p. 109ff
  3. ↑ Price index 1873 = 100, 1913 = 143, 1920 = 281, based on all of India; Judith Brown: Gandhi's Rise to Power 1915-1922. P. 125
  4. ↑ Bipan Chandra: India's Struggle for Independence. New Delhi u. a. 1989, pp. 202f
  5. ↑ Ashutosh Varshney: Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India . Yale University Press , 2002, p. 131, p. 142 f.
  6. ↑ cf. however: 700 are killed in India: Gurkha Garrison at Pandikkad Repels Attack by 2,000 Moplahs. New York Times, November 17, 1921.
  7. ↑ Chandra (1988), p. 203.

Web links

Commons : Malabar Rebellion  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Malabar Campaign History of the Dorset Regiment, without mention of the massacre (en.)