Moplah Riots and massacre of Hindus in Malabar - August 1921

 According to Dr. R.C Majumdar, Moplah riot was a direct offshoot of the Khilafat movement that resulted in large scale massacre of mostly Hindus by the armed militant Muslims called Moplahs, Arab settlers from 9th Century A.D, in the Malabar province of South India (present day Kerala). Throughout 1921, preparations of a large scale riot were held through the large scale collection of weapons and gathering of a band of desperados. The local Muslims were further agitated by the violent speeches of the Ali brothers and the resolutions adopted in the Karachi Conference. On August 20, the district administration in Calicut attempted to arrest leaders possessing arms and that triggered a violent rebellion across the entire district. The rioters damaged roads, telegraph lines and railways. Few Europeans who were present were murdered with brutal ferocity and the administration was paralyzed. The rebels proclaimed Khilafat kingdom and proclaimed a certain Ali Musaliar as the ruler. The main attack was however directed at the unfortunate Hindu population who formed the majority in the district. The official report narrated extreme atrocities committed on the Hindus, later corroborated by the eye witnesses. Many people were massacred, forcibly converted, Hindu women brutally raped, houses plundered, wealth looted and arson committed. In short evert act of barbarism and wanton destruction was committed quite freely till troops could be mobilized to restore peace. Troop reinforcements were sent by October and the brigands took to the hills. By the end of 1921 the rebellion was well under control through severe repressive measures. In Pandikad the rebels massacred around sixty Gurkha soldiers and themselves lost around two hundred and fifty. The Muslim leaders estimated that around ten thousand Moplah rioters were killed. 

​Gandhiji and the Khilfat leaders were silent on the atrocities committed by the Moplahs on the Hindus. But a district Congress report referred to the wholesale forcible conversions, murders, atrocities on women and children including murdering them in cold blood, for being "Kaffirs", desecration and burning of Hindu temples, forcible marriage of Hindu women to the Muslims, and a veritable reign of terror. A similar story is told by the surviving women of Malabar, in a deputation to the Lady Reading. It described the horrific incidents like cutting pregnant women to pieces including her unborn child by the Moplahs, wells and tanks filled with mutilated bodies and mangled corpses, fiendish outrage committed on many women, temples and deities smashed to pieces or burnt.

​Instances of horrible outrage perpetrated on women were described in detail by Ms. Annie Besant's New India and also in the Times of India. In Sankaran Nair's book, "Gandhi and Anarchy", a vivid protrayal of various atrocities committed by the Moplahs, have been well documented. Nair for instance depicts the incidents where Hindu men were skinned alive or were forced to dig their own graves before being brutally killed. 

​Predictably the Congress leaders disbelieved the story and Gandhi spoke about "brave God fearing Moplahs" (Dr. R.C Majumdar, History of Freedom Movement of India, Volume 3). Even in the Ahmedabad resolution, the Congress did not condemn the brutalities and instead tried to brush them off. "The Congress expresses its firm conviction that the Moplah disturbance was not due to the Non-co-operation or the Khilafat Movement", read the resolution, and blamed the incidents on the district administrations refusal to permit Non Violent Non Cooperation leaders to enter the district. 

​Writes Dr. R. C Majumdar, "This resolution is unworthy of a great national organization, which launched the Non-co-operation movement as a protest against the Panjab atrocities. Its deliberate attempt to minimize the enormity of the crimes prepetrated by a band of fanatic Muslims upon thousands of helpless Hindus betrays a mentality which is comparable to that of the Government of India in the case of the Panjab atrocities in 1919,and must be strongly condemned by any impartial critic. It is interesting to compare the words -—almost apologetic in tone—condemning the Moplahs with those which are used against the Government for the faults—severe though they are—of some officials. It is nothing short of ridiculous to maintain that the Moplahs would not have been guilty of inhuman cruelties towards their Hindu brothers only if the message of non-violence had been allowed to reach them. It is quite clear that they had heard of the Non-co-operation slogans and Khilafat cries, but we are to presume that the ‘non-violence' part of it was carefully withheld from them. It is tacitly assumed that these fanatic Moplahs were more amenable to the cult of non-violence than hundreds of people—men of Chauri Chaura for example —who had broken into violence even though the message of non-violence was preached to them. Is it for this reason, one might ask, that while the excesses of the mob at Chauri Chaura induced Gandhi to suspend Civil Disobedience, the hundred times more heinous crimes of the Moplahs were not allowed to disturb his equanimity—they did not raise even a ripple..... The fact seems to be that Gandhi and his blind Hindu followers were prepared to go to any length in order to nurse the tender plant of Hindu-Muslim unity which had been grown by him, and had willy- nilly to be preserved at any cost during the campaign against the Government, as success was otherwise impossible. It is not necessary to imagine that Gandhi or his devoted Hindu followers were callous to the incredible sufferings that the Moplahs had inflicted upon the Hindus, but they perhaps thought that they had to swallow the bitter pill for the sake of the greater good of the country as a whole." He continues, "The levity with which the Muslim and Congress leaders treated the Moplah outrage is nothing short of scandalous. The Moplah outrages far exceeded in enormity those perpetrated during the Martial Law in the Panjab."

​Khilafat leaders like Hasrat Mohani condoned and even justified the acts of violence. The other great friend of Mahatma, Shaukat Ali, moved a resolution for the provision of Moplah orphans and families. Nothing was mentioned about the atrocities committed on the Hindus.