Developing multiperspectivity: A lesson from the Mopla Rebellion
Avinash Kumar
“As many as three people were killed and half-a-dozen people injured in the violence on Tuesday in Madikeri(1)” reported India Today on 13th November, 2015, the day on which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had enforced a state-wide band in Karnataka over the death of its worker. The violence, according to The Huffington Post of 10th November, 2015 was a result of communal clashes between pro-Tipu Sultan Muslim groups and Hindutva activists: “Historians have said Tipu Sultan was a freedom fighter” it notes. “But the more vocal in India’s right wing political parties have always held the view that Tipu was an intolerant ruler who forcefully converted Hindus and persecuted Christians… On 6 November, the United Christian Association (UCA) held a protest outside the deputy commissioner’s office in Mangalore and showed their support for the Sangh’s agitation against Tipu.(2)”
Contesting interpretations of historical events as well as individuals/groups and their actions often lead to the genesis, persistence, and shaping of conflicts that can have wide-ranging and severe ramifications. It is thus critical that history classes not just teach students about past events, individuals, and groups but also provide them the means to think historically about them.
This involves understanding how, in response to a historical problem, different individuals and groups can offer different explanations; how these explanations usually consist of arguments, narratives, expositions or a combination of these; how the arguments, narratives and expositions must be based on facts and how these facts must in turn be derived from evidence drawn from primary or secondary sources. A good explanation to a historical problem, thus, should comprise of a coherent interplay between arguments, narratives, facts, and evidences.
It is also important that students experience the limitations of historical enquiry; and understand that any individual or group attempting to comprehend and/or explain a historical event, must necessarily be “constrained by the range of sources they can access, will interpret and use the same evidence in different ways and will select and put emphasis on different aspects of the evidence. In other words, that most, if not all, historical phenomena can be interpreted and reconstructed from a variety of perspectives, reflecting the limitations of the evidence, the subjective interests of those who are interpreting and reconstructing it, and the shifting cultural influences which determine to some degree what each new generation regards as significant in the past.” (Stradling, 2003)(3)
A good way of encouraging students to think historically about a past event is to use multiperspectivity in history teaching. Multiperspectivity has been described variously as ‘a strategy for understanding in which we take into account others’ perspectives in addition to our own’ (Fritzsche, 2001)(4) or “a way of viewing, and a predisposition to view, historical events, personalities, developments, cultures, and societies from different perspectives through drawing on procedures and processes which are fundamental to history as a discipline.” (Stradling, 2003)
In this two part essay, I have used the Mopla(5) outbreaks and rebellion of the 19th and early 20th century Malabar region of Southern India, as a case study, to show how this could be attempted in the Indian context and classrooms.
Introduction
“The Mopla community in Andaman and Nicobar Islands,” United News of India reported on 29th April 2008, “is demanding proper recognition for their heroes, who played an indispensable role in India’s freedom movement.”(6) As I surveyed the newspapers for a ‘history problem’ of contemporary interest, this report caught my eye – here was a community which had adopted a certain perspective regarding the role of its ancestors in the Indian freedom movement and was now seeking to influence the perspective of the larger society on the issue. It was obvious that if they were to have a chance of influencing the perspective of others, they would have to present a certain narrative – which, likely(7), would have to be supported by arguments; and those arguments, in turn, had to be based on evidences.
Further research on the topic made it apparent that the demand of the Mopla community of Andaman and Nicobar Islands was inextricably tied to the long – and complex – history of the Mopla community on the mainland (specifically, the Malabar region of present-day Kerala). Members of the community had a long history of participation in revolts, and the 1971 decision of the Kerala government to grant the active, largely Mopla, participants of the Malabar Rebellion of 1921(8), the status and accolade of Ayagi (freedom fighters) had led to a public controversy, and continues to be contested.(9)
My primary objective in the rest of this essay is to highlight the interplay between perspectives, narratives, arguments and evidences as I explore the issue of ‘the status of Mopla rebels as freedom fighters’. In addition to this, my secondary objective would be to showcase ‘history as a process’ as opposed to ‘history as a product’. In other words, my attempt would not be to arrive at (or argue for) a conclusion, but to focus on the process of ‘creation’ of history; and to highlight that even though historical problems may often be so complex as to render any endeavour to arrive at historical ‘truths’ using one perspective nearly futile; the use of multiple perspectives and narratives that are based on sound arguments and rigorous evidences, may hold a greater possibility of bringing us closer to the truth and is hence of value.
Mopla Rebellion and Mopla Outbreaks
Before we look at the various perspectives that can be used to understand and explain the contestations around the issue of ‘Mopla rebels as freedom fighters’; in this section, let us begin by looking at some event-based facts about the outbreaks (1836-1920) and the rebellion of 1921.
There were about 33 violent outbreaks in the then district of Malabar between 1836 and 1919 – which is approximately one outbreak every two and a half years (Dale, 1975).(10) Almost all the outbreaks occurred in the area between Calicut and Ponnani, a town 35 miles to its south. 29 outbreaks comprised of attacks on local Hindu families, 3 on Englishmen residing in the district and 1 on a local Mopla family. The outbreaks were generally low-scale – other than one exceptional outbreak which occurred in Kottayam taluq in 1852 in which 17 Hindus were killed – the number of deaths in the outbreaks was confined to 6. All the outbreaks were also supressed by the authorities within a few days. (Dale, 1975)
Though commonly viewed as a ‘culmination’ of this series of outbreaks, the Mopla Rebellion of 1921 was of a very different scale. It started in June-July, 1921 with Moplas in southern parts of the district congregating relatively frequently under the leadership of the local religious teachers (Hardgrave, 1977)(11) (as was the case, for instance, on June 8th in Tirurangadi when 300-400 Moplas, some of them armed; took out a procession from the local mosque to offer prayers at the graves of those who had been killed in an earlier outbreak; and in July in a village north of Malappuram, where several thousand Moplas gathered around the mansion of a Nambudri landlord, shouting war-cries (ibid.).
The immediate trigger for the rebellion, however, seems to have been a raid by the police on August 20th in Tirurangadi which led to a clash between Moplas and the police. This clash spiralled into an open rebellion in a matter of days, and on August 22 a Mopla leader enthroned himself as king over Ernad and Walluvanad taluqs. Situation in the two districts worsened rapidly – police stations were looted and burnt, courts and government offices were ransacked, telephone and railway lines were cut and there were eyewitness accounts and newspaper reports of Hindu families – chiefly upper caste Nairs and Nambuduris – being killed by the Moplas, and temples being defiled and destroyed.
By August 30, the Government of Madras informed the Government of India that “the ‘whole interior’ of South Malabar, except Palghat taluq, was in the hands of the rebels. Local civil administration had broken down; all government offices and courts had ceased to function; and ordinary business was at a standstill. In portions of the area, famine conditions were imminent. Europeans had either fled or had been evacuated, and numerous Hindu refugees of all classes had sought protection in Calicut.” (Hardgrave, 1977). A state of anarchy continued to prevail in the southern districts over the next couple of months; and the main force of the rebellion could only be crushed with the help of additional Gurkha and British troops from outside the state (as well as a newly raised local police force) around December, 1921. It was, however, only in February, 1922 that the situation was ‘normal’ enough to allow the martial law in the affected taluqs to lapse.
By then, while on the one hand, 43 government offi cials had been killed and 126 wounded, and thousands of Hindu civilians killed, raped, forcibly converted, or driven out of their homes (the actual numbers are not agreed upon, but claims vary from a few thousand to close to a lakh); on the other hand (as per official figures), 2339 Mopla rebels had been killed, 1652 wounded, 5995 captured and over 40,000 had ‘surrendered’ (Dhanagare, 1977)(12).
There have been a number of attempts to interpret and explain the Malabar Outbreaks and the Mopla Rebellion – starting from the early attempts made around the mid of 19th century (for instance, a special commission headed by T. L. Strange was set up in 1852 to enquire into the causes of the outbreak), to the last decades of the 20th century. Expectedly, administrators, scholars and researchers have taken various perspectives in their attempt to do so.
In the next part of this essay, I will begin by listing some of the more commonly-adopted perspectives with regards to the outbreaks and the rebellion, and then describe each of these in some detail – focusing on some of their main arguments, and the evidences that these arguments are based on. I will further attempt to show how students can be guided to synthesize their own perspective based on the various facts and evidences available.
Acknowledgement: The author would like to acknowledge the inputs received from Professor Anil Sethi, Azim Premji University, in writing this essay.
References and End-Notes
- Bose, A (2015, November 10) Tipu Sultan Debate Rages On As Communal Violence Claims Life Of VHP Leader In Karnataka. Retrieved
on 22nd November 2015 from http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/vishwa-hindu-parishad-calls-for-state-wide-bandh-in-karnataka/1/522199.html - Singh, A (2015, November 13) Tipu Sultan row: Vishwa Hindu Parishad enforces state-wide bandh in Karnataka. Retrieved on 22nd
November 2015 from http://www.huffi ngtonpost.in/2015/11/09/tipu-sultan-_n_8517466.html - Stradling, R (2003) Multiperspectivity in history teaching: A guide for teachers. Council of Europe.
- Fritzsche, K P (2001) Unable to be tolerant? In Farnen, R. et al. Tolerance in Transition, Oldenburg.
- Various spellings such as Mappila, Mopla, Moplah have been used in historical and contemporary texts. In this essay, I have used ‘Mopla’.
- Mopla freedom heroes received no recognition. (2008, April 29). Retrieved from http://news.oneindia.in/2008/04/29/mopla-freedomheroes-received-no-recognition-1209449013.html
- ‘Likely’ has been used here as cases of public opinions being changed on the basis of rhetoric (and despite the lack of sound arguments and evidences), is not unheard of.
- Roland Miller, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol VI, Brill 1988.
- Panicker, M. R. (2009, January 04). Life beyond moplah. The Sunday Indian. Retrieved from http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/life-beyond-moplah/7/6751/
- Dale. S. F. (1975) The Mapilla outbreaks: Ideology and social confl ict in nineteenth century Kerala. The Journal of Asian Studies. Vol. 35. No.1. pp. 85-97.
- Hardgrave. R. L. (1977) The Mappila rebellion, 1921: Peasant revolt in Malabar. Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 11, No. 1. Pp. 57-99.
- Dhanagare. D. N. (1977) Agrarian Confl ict, Religion and Politics: The Moplah rebellions in Malabar in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Past & Present. No. 74. Pp. 112-141.
The author works at Wipro where he manages an initiative called Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS), which partners with a network of civil society organizations to build capacities for school education reform in India. He can be reached at avinash.kumar@apu.edu.in.