Narratives from 1921 - Beasts, Gorkhas and Kachins
I present some random Malayalam fragments, all somehow related to the 1921 Mappila rebellion and some of its 'players'.
S K Pottekkat, 'Nepal Yatra', late 1960s:
"My childhood imagination, fuelled by old Malayalam poetry memorized while at primary school, pictured Nepal as a remote mountainous realm teeming with musk deer. I wasn't yet a teenager when some regiments of Gorkha soldiers were brought to Malabar to quell the 1921 rebellion. The 'koorkkas' as they were locally known, had a fierce reputation - they would throw those curved Kukri machettes tied to a rope and chop off the heads of enemies from a distance! We kids invented a new 'koorkkas' game, 'decapitating' each other with pieces of banana fronds tied to strings. For a long time thereafter, people of Kozhikkode would mock short statured people as 'koorkkas' (note that the word koorka in Malayalam referred to that little tuber Chinese potato).
In his next avatar, the Gorkha became the stiff, self-appointed nightwatchman who would show up promptly on the first of every month at every door in a neighborhood expecting a self-decided baksheesh. Each town would have a dozen or so of such guards who would have harmoniously divided the town into respective 'zones of surveillance'. They were seldom seen together - in their solitary nature mimicking musk deer stags. Some of them also went into moneylending and were known to form convenient liaisons with women from low income families - usually of the Nair caste. And as is still the case, wealthy folk in Kerala often employed personal Gorkha guards who became status symbols - like fierce German shepherd dogs."
Note: In his later novel Oru Deshathinte Katha, Pottekkat narrates a 1921 battle when a company of Gorkhas commanded by a Brit officer are ambushed and nearly routed by Mappila rebels wielding little more than swords; the soldiers rally and mercilessly shoot down their fanatical attackers to the last man and make a big bonfire of their heaped bodies.
----------
A most interesting book by award winning historian Mahmood Kooria titled 'Mrigakalapangal' ('Bestial revolts') has come out last year. Let me translate (with editing but hopefully no distortion) some random samples from the work (it deserves an English edition):
"This study traces the trajectories and experiences of mules, elephants, horses, cattle, dogs, rats and cats during the Malabar rebellion. We see an outbreak triggered by an elephant that fell into a 'vaarikkuzhi' (a 'trap-pit' used to capture wild elephants), Mappila peasants who took up arms to save their cattle, cavalry sent to suppress a riot triggered by the arrest of Mamburam Thangal (an eminent Muslim cleric), dogs that terrorized colonial masters, mules and pack oxen used to transport military equipment all over Malabar, an estate owner who got killed because of the persistent barks of dogs, .. we attempt to address the lack of historical narratives foregrounding the experience of animals. ...
...
The donkey or mule perhaps was the most crucial bestial actor in the rebellion. An entire mule battalion featured prominently in the campaigns. Most ox carts in Malabar where owned and operated by Mappilas so the British imported mules from far away regions to transport their weaponry and soldiers and these beasts ended up playing a very decisive role in suppressing the revolt.... Donkeys were imported to India from far away lands like Mauritius, Argentina and China and crossbred with horses from the Punjab to produce mules who were inducted into the army....
When a certain Kandappunni Nair (seemingly a wealthy Hindu landlord) and his men went to capture a wild elephant that had fallen into a trap in his land, over a hundred armed Mappilas led by one Imbichi Ali gathered with a counterclaim - they were the ones who had actually dug the pit. When the local authorities tried to mediate, the Mappila mob that had swollen to over two hundred, declared they would fight to death for the elephant which was rightfully theirs and recited the sacred Kalima - the ultimate affirmation of faith in God and his Prophet, often used as a war cry. Scared, the authorities withdrew and the Mappilas went away with the elephant.
...
The branding of the revolt as anti-Hindu Jihad is as old as the revolt itself. Cows and their treatment were a very contentious issue. Hindu-biased commentators like C Gopalan Nair would harp on episodes - real or otherwise - of rebels butchering holy cows and throwing their entrails on idols in temples to cause deliberate defilement. William Logan, recounting the earlier 'outbreak' of 1884, mentions that Muslim rebels who had occupied a temple determined to make a last stand against the police, did kill and eat a cow they found loitering in the premises (driven by necessity and not religious zeal).
...
Mr. Eaton (while trying to get away from the war zone) took with him a small Indian boy Chokra and three dogs. The dogs' barking led to the Moplahs discovering Eaton. Chokra scrambled up a tree and could only watch his master heing killed. Eaton shot some of his assailants with his revolver but the rebels soon overpowered him. His own coolies, yelling "You once beat .... so take this and you once ill-treated ... so take this!", pummelled Eaten to death. He was then decapitated and his head, mounted on a pole, was paraded around..."
------------
Prof. Kooria barely mentions the Gorkhas; but M Gangadharan, another commentator on the revolt, does - that too in conjunction with some matters of bestial interest - in his 'Mappila Pathanangal'. Here:
"The Gorkhas and Chin-Kachins, who formed the bulk of the government force, were absolute ruffians who knew nothing about civilized conduct of war. A 1924 article by A C B Mackinnon is very clear on this: Gorkhas would routinely carry away severed heads of Mappila rebels as war trophies! The Chin Kachins, in Mackinnon's view, were demons who would kill and eat anything that moved - from dogs and crows to snakes. Once while combing the forests, they shot and ate up an elephant (this led to serious disputes with the forest department) and a croc! And as if such savages weren't enough, the British brought one additional Gorkha battalion and another from Garhwal. That the Mappila peasants, armed with little more than swords and machettes and a few rifles, could resist such 'forces' for nearly three months beggars belief."
(The Kachin people, as per Wiki, live in the far north of Burma and have, in recent decades moved from Animism/Buddhism to Christianity, just like their Indian neighbours in Mizoram or Nagaland. Their cuisine does not emphasize dogs or snakes - or birds other than poultry.)
----------------
My own two cents: The historiography of the 1921 revolt is keenly disputed territory and divers narratives abound. The Muslim Mappilas, other Muslims, local Hindus, 'Hindu Nationalists', the Congress, the Brits and the Marxists and other 'Secularists' and now, even the animals have spoken. But when will the the Gorkhas and Kachins find their voices?
The sociology textbook 'Human Arrangements' by Allen Johnson features two pictures side by side - a beautifully manicured cemetery for pets in Paris and a bunch of dogs, freshly dressed, hanging from hooks in a far eastern market - with a question that went something like "can you view both these pictures with the same objectivity?". In the same vein, can one juxtapose the experiences of the cow that strayed into the temple area and the elephant (or croc) whose path crossed that of Kachins?
Note: As per Wiki, the massacre at Jalianwalabagh (1919) was perpetrated by Gorkha and Pashtun soldiers (25 each), obeying the orders of Gen Dyer. In the famous 'Gandhi' film, the shooters all look very uniformly Gorkha - indeed, they are a faceless troop (their mutual facial resemblance is to be seen on screen to be believed) of Gorkha infantrymen - no individuality and certainly no voice.
S K Pottekkat, 'Nepal Yatra', late 1960s:
"My childhood imagination, fuelled by old Malayalam poetry memorized while at primary school, pictured Nepal as a remote mountainous realm teeming with musk deer. I wasn't yet a teenager when some regiments of Gorkha soldiers were brought to Malabar to quell the 1921 rebellion. The 'koorkkas' as they were locally known, had a fierce reputation - they would throw those curved Kukri machettes tied to a rope and chop off the heads of enemies from a distance! We kids invented a new 'koorkkas' game, 'decapitating' each other with pieces of banana fronds tied to strings. For a long time thereafter, people of Kozhikkode would mock short statured people as 'koorkkas' (note that the word koorka in Malayalam referred to that little tuber Chinese potato).
In his next avatar, the Gorkha became the stiff, self-appointed nightwatchman who would show up promptly on the first of every month at every door in a neighborhood expecting a self-decided baksheesh. Each town would have a dozen or so of such guards who would have harmoniously divided the town into respective 'zones of surveillance'. They were seldom seen together - in their solitary nature mimicking musk deer stags. Some of them also went into moneylending and were known to form convenient liaisons with women from low income families - usually of the Nair caste. And as is still the case, wealthy folk in Kerala often employed personal Gorkha guards who became status symbols - like fierce German shepherd dogs."
Note: In his later novel Oru Deshathinte Katha, Pottekkat narrates a 1921 battle when a company of Gorkhas commanded by a Brit officer are ambushed and nearly routed by Mappila rebels wielding little more than swords; the soldiers rally and mercilessly shoot down their fanatical attackers to the last man and make a big bonfire of their heaped bodies.
----------
A most interesting book by award winning historian Mahmood Kooria titled 'Mrigakalapangal' ('Bestial revolts') has come out last year. Let me translate (with editing but hopefully no distortion) some random samples from the work (it deserves an English edition):
"This study traces the trajectories and experiences of mules, elephants, horses, cattle, dogs, rats and cats during the Malabar rebellion. We see an outbreak triggered by an elephant that fell into a 'vaarikkuzhi' (a 'trap-pit' used to capture wild elephants), Mappila peasants who took up arms to save their cattle, cavalry sent to suppress a riot triggered by the arrest of Mamburam Thangal (an eminent Muslim cleric), dogs that terrorized colonial masters, mules and pack oxen used to transport military equipment all over Malabar, an estate owner who got killed because of the persistent barks of dogs, .. we attempt to address the lack of historical narratives foregrounding the experience of animals. ...
...
The donkey or mule perhaps was the most crucial bestial actor in the rebellion. An entire mule battalion featured prominently in the campaigns. Most ox carts in Malabar where owned and operated by Mappilas so the British imported mules from far away regions to transport their weaponry and soldiers and these beasts ended up playing a very decisive role in suppressing the revolt.... Donkeys were imported to India from far away lands like Mauritius, Argentina and China and crossbred with horses from the Punjab to produce mules who were inducted into the army....
When a certain Kandappunni Nair (seemingly a wealthy Hindu landlord) and his men went to capture a wild elephant that had fallen into a trap in his land, over a hundred armed Mappilas led by one Imbichi Ali gathered with a counterclaim - they were the ones who had actually dug the pit. When the local authorities tried to mediate, the Mappila mob that had swollen to over two hundred, declared they would fight to death for the elephant which was rightfully theirs and recited the sacred Kalima - the ultimate affirmation of faith in God and his Prophet, often used as a war cry. Scared, the authorities withdrew and the Mappilas went away with the elephant.
...
The branding of the revolt as anti-Hindu Jihad is as old as the revolt itself. Cows and their treatment were a very contentious issue. Hindu-biased commentators like C Gopalan Nair would harp on episodes - real or otherwise - of rebels butchering holy cows and throwing their entrails on idols in temples to cause deliberate defilement. William Logan, recounting the earlier 'outbreak' of 1884, mentions that Muslim rebels who had occupied a temple determined to make a last stand against the police, did kill and eat a cow they found loitering in the premises (driven by necessity and not religious zeal).
...
Mr. Eaton (while trying to get away from the war zone) took with him a small Indian boy Chokra and three dogs. The dogs' barking led to the Moplahs discovering Eaton. Chokra scrambled up a tree and could only watch his master heing killed. Eaton shot some of his assailants with his revolver but the rebels soon overpowered him. His own coolies, yelling "You once beat .... so take this and you once ill-treated ... so take this!", pummelled Eaten to death. He was then decapitated and his head, mounted on a pole, was paraded around..."
------------
Prof. Kooria barely mentions the Gorkhas; but M Gangadharan, another commentator on the revolt, does - that too in conjunction with some matters of bestial interest - in his 'Mappila Pathanangal'. Here:
"The Gorkhas and Chin-Kachins, who formed the bulk of the government force, were absolute ruffians who knew nothing about civilized conduct of war. A 1924 article by A C B Mackinnon is very clear on this: Gorkhas would routinely carry away severed heads of Mappila rebels as war trophies! The Chin Kachins, in Mackinnon's view, were demons who would kill and eat anything that moved - from dogs and crows to snakes. Once while combing the forests, they shot and ate up an elephant (this led to serious disputes with the forest department) and a croc! And as if such savages weren't enough, the British brought one additional Gorkha battalion and another from Garhwal. That the Mappila peasants, armed with little more than swords and machettes and a few rifles, could resist such 'forces' for nearly three months beggars belief."
(The Kachin people, as per Wiki, live in the far north of Burma and have, in recent decades moved from Animism/Buddhism to Christianity, just like their Indian neighbours in Mizoram or Nagaland. Their cuisine does not emphasize dogs or snakes - or birds other than poultry.)
----------------
My own two cents: The historiography of the 1921 revolt is keenly disputed territory and divers narratives abound. The Muslim Mappilas, other Muslims, local Hindus, 'Hindu Nationalists', the Congress, the Brits and the Marxists and other 'Secularists' and now, even the animals have spoken. But when will the the Gorkhas and Kachins find their voices?
The sociology textbook 'Human Arrangements' by Allen Johnson features two pictures side by side - a beautifully manicured cemetery for pets in Paris and a bunch of dogs, freshly dressed, hanging from hooks in a far eastern market - with a question that went something like "can you view both these pictures with the same objectivity?". In the same vein, can one juxtapose the experiences of the cow that strayed into the temple area and the elephant (or croc) whose path crossed that of Kachins?
Note: As per Wiki, the massacre at Jalianwalabagh (1919) was perpetrated by Gorkha and Pashtun soldiers (25 each), obeying the orders of Gen Dyer. In the famous 'Gandhi' film, the shooters all look very uniformly Gorkha - indeed, they are a faceless troop (their mutual facial resemblance is to be seen on screen to be believed) of Gorkha infantrymen - no individuality and certainly no voice.
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 11:23 PM
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