Note 80 — M (continued 3)

Since the outbreak near Manjeri in 1849, when two companies of sepoys were routed after firing a few shots, European troops have always been engaged against the Māppillas. On the occasion of that outbreak, one of the Māppillas had his thigh broken in the engagement. He remained in all the agony of a wound unattended to for seven days, and was further tortured by being carried in a rough litter from the Manjeri to the Angādipuram temple. Yet, at the time of a further fight, he was hopping to the encounter on his sound leg, and only anxious to get a fair blow at the infidels before he died. It is recorded that, on one occasion, when a detachment of sepoys was thrown into disorder by a fierce rush of death-devoted Māppillas, the drummer of the company distinguished himself by bonneting an assailant with his drum, thereby putting the Māppilla’s head into a kind of straight jacket, and saving his own life.80 In 1852 Mr. Strange was appointed Special Commissioner to enquire into the causes of, and suggest remedies for, the Māppilla disturbances. In his report he stated, inter alia, that “a feature that has been manifestly common to the whole of these affairs is that they have been, one and all, marked by the most decided fanaticism, and this, there can be no doubt, has furnished the true incentive to them. The Māppillas of the interior were always lawless, even in the time of Tippu, were steeped in ignorance, and were, on these accounts, more than ordinarily susceptible to the teaching of ambitious and fanatical priests using the recognised precepts of the Korān as handles for the sanction to rise and slay Kafirs, who opposed the faithful, chiefly in the pursuit of agriculture. The Hindus, in the parts where outbreaks have been most frequent, stand in such fear of the Māppillas as mostly not to dare to press for their rights against them, and there is many a Māppilla tenant who does not pay his rent, and cannot, so imminent are the risks, be evicted.” Mr. Strange stated further that “the most perverted ideas on the doctrine of martyrdom, according to the Korān, universally prevail, and are fostered among the lower classes of the Māppillas. The late enquiries have shown that there is a notion prevalent among the lower orders that, according to the Mussalman religion, the fact of a janmi or landlord having in due course of law ejected from his lands a mortgagee or other substantial tenant, is a sufficient pretext to murder him, become sahid (saint), and so ensure the pleasures of the Muhammadan paradise. It is well known that the favourite text of the banished Arab priest or Tangal, in his Friday orations at the mosque in Tirurangādi, was ‘It is no sin, but a merit, to kill a janmi who evicts.’” Mr. Strange proposed the organisation of a special police force exclusively composed of Hindus, and that restrictions should be put on the erection of mosques. Neither of these proposals was approved by Government. But a policy of repression set in with the passing of Acts XXII and XXIV of 1854. The former authorised the local authorities to escheat the property of those guilty of fanatical rising, to fine the locality where outrages had occurred, and to deport suspicious persons out of the country. The latter rendered illegal the possession of the Māppilla war-knife. Mr. Conolly, the District Magistrate, proceeded, in December, 1854, on a tour, to collect the war-knives through the heart of the Māppilla country. In the following year, when he was sitting in his verandah, a body of fanatics, who had recently escaped from the Calicut jail, rushed in, and hacked him to pieces in his wife’s presence. He had quite recently received a letter from Lord Dalhousie, congratulating him on his appointment as a member of the Governor’s Council at Madras. His widow was granted the net proceeds of the Māppilla fines, amounting to more than thirty thousand rupees.