Edward II: The Terrors of Kingship

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Edward II: Terrors of Kingship

Christopher Given-Wilson

Penguin Books,2015.

  

 Edward II, imortalized by Christopher Marlowe is said to have been murdered in Berkeley Castle on September 21, 1327. Or was he? Recent research by Ian Mortimer has raised serious doubts about the pretty gruesome end of this unpopular and hated monarch. There is eveidence to suggest that Edward II was alive atleast till 1330 and so the story of his death was merely a cover for the illegal rule of Sir Roger Mortimer and the king's wife, Queen Isabella. The Queen seems to have had a relationship with Sir Roger Mortimer and the the story of the murder/assasination put out in order to quell public clamour over the illegitimacy of the rule of Issabella and Mortimer, And thereby hangs a tale told vividly and narrated with a verve and flourish few historians possess today.

Dr Christopher Gavin-Wilson is a Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. In a short work of less than 130 pages he has brought to life the tumultus reign of a tragic and perhaps largely misunderstood monarch of medieval England. The first Prince of Wales, so named as Edward was born when his father Edward I was fighting the Welsh in 1307, Edward II was by all medieval accounts a competent warrior, though he did not have too many successes on the battlefield and hence always fared poorly when compared with his more famous father. The shattering defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314 was partly due to the desertion of powerful magnates like the Earls of Lancaster, Warwick and Arundel, there is also the lurking suspicion that Robert Bruce had completely outwitted Edward with his schilrron formation, tightly packed pikemen holding 12 foot pikes and moving as one formation and defending themselves with thick shields which deflected the arrows of the long bow archers quite successfully. The defeat at this crucial battle only intensified the internal war between the King and his magnates. 

Edward II was probably gay and his alledged lover, Piers Gavestone. The influece of this man on the King was deeply resented by the nobility and a section headed by the Earl of Lancaster began plotting to rid the realm of this 'evil influence" which in the medieval period meant nothng less than plotting for hs death. Gavestone was captured and put to death by Lancaster which only exacerbated the deep faultlines within the nobility. An interesting feature of the reign of Edward II was the promulgation of what came to be called the Ordinances, perhaps after the Magna Carta, the first set of written principles according to which England was to be governed, a compact between the nobles and the Crown.The Compact was essentially the work of the Earls of Glouchester, Lincoln and Lancaster and from a  political theory point of view is innovative as it makes a clear disctinction between the Crown and the person of the King, a precocious Cromwellian moment in the fourteenth century. The King undertook to rule in consultation with the nobles assembled in Parliament. And of course, Edward had no intention of letting Royal Prerogative slip from his hands. 

In 1318 yet another royal favourite, Hugh Despenser made his appearance and the struggle with Lancaster ended only with the capture and execution of Thomas Lancaster in 1318. Hugh made the same fatal mistake of Gavestone. he openly flaunted his nearness to the King and as one medieval chronicler put it was seen as a "second king". Accumulating earldoms was a sure sign of both political and material progress and soon the Despensers were the most powerful political clan i  all of England. As the Despensers grew in wealth, the loyal nobles that Edward II had inherited from his father started veering away from the Court, a sure sign that they were not secure in the new order. The Despensers helped Edward II in his struggle against Lancaster and in 1322 had help defeat him in the Battle of Boroughbridge in which Hereford was killed Lancaster captured only to die at the hands of an executioner two days later. The  ascendency of the Despensers was also accompanied by the first systematic attempt at augmenting the Royal Exchequer since 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest. Collection of taxes, forced loans, forefeiture of Property, fines for pardons were some of the innovative means by which Edward II raised monies for his wars. And at the time of his death had -l- 62,000 in the treasury.

As Hugh Despenser became powerful opposition began to build up and leading the contrarians were Sir Hugh Mortimer and the King's wife , Issabella. Medieval chroniclers have portrayed the relationship between the two as an adultrous one.

The Execution of Hugh Despenser

The last five years of Edward's reign were indeed filled with wars, rebellions, court intrigues and factional strife. He was quite unsuited to govern given his character and general lack of confidence in all but a handful of trusted nobles. Even the City of London was not spared his high handedness. He sought to curtail the financial and other liberties enjoyed by the City and even suspended the Mayor. Distrusting the Londoners, the Tower of London was garissoned with Flemmish mercenaries. Blaming London for the escape of Mortimer and Isabella, Edward was rapidly loosing ground.

The struggle against Roger Mortimer provoked an early but certainly precocious instance of the conflict between Church and King that was to erupt later immortalized by Thomas Beckett. Edward accused Adam Orleton, a prelate of aiding the escape of Roger Mortimer and tried to bring charges against him, the Archbishop invoked "clerical privilege" and came into the Court Room and took the prelate out and Edward could do little about it.

The book though a short account is well written and certainly worth reading. 

    

RAW A History of India's Covert Operations: Tiger Zinda hai?

RAW and Covert operations

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

To a cynic like me, Indian Intelligence Operations, covert or overt sound like an oxymoron and the History of Indian Inteligence agencies since Independence has more or less proved me right. India does not have a Christopher Andrew to write on Statecraft and its liason with Espionage, Intteligence Gathering and Strategy. Having said that there have been a few books, Kao boys of the RAW, Mission RAW and the book under review, RAW A History of India's Covert Operations which plough lonely half hearted furrows in a field in which gossip exchanged over the diplomatic cocktail circuit passes off as "intel alerts" and popular press cuttings are palced in files bearing the label "Secret Confidential". And in this dismal situation any work on Indian Inteligence, covert, overt or secret is welcome and Yatish Yadav has written a competent work. However, he does not reveal much except some details about the infamous Rabindra Singh case.

Throughout the years of the Raj, the Intteligence Bureau or IB was the Agency responsible for both Internal and External espionage. At least by having one central agency, the rivalry between agencies and needless duplication of work was obviated. A development from the Thugee Department, the IB was quite successful in executing its mandate. It provided deep information on Tibet that fortified India's position in the Simla Conference of 1905, it successfully ran the Great Game with Russia, kept a vigil on the Wahabbis in the NorthWest Frontier and of course had pentrated deep into the Congress Movement, the Communist Movement and the Trade Union Movement. The reaon for its success was simple: Inteligence gathering had a clear political goal, the preservation of the Empire. With Independence, the Congress leadershipwhich neither had political vision nor the ability to shape a distinct civilizational goal for India after nearly thousand years of savagery, used the IB only to keep tabs on its internal opponents, the Communists, the family of Netaji Subash Bose, and sundry other such targets.  Nehru was blissfullu unaware of China's intention in both Tibet and Askai Chin. Indian Government was unaware of the deteriorating situation on the McMohan Line and the rest is History. The purpose of establishing the RAW, Research and Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat, was to provide actionable information to the Prime MInister on India's vital National Security Interests. With a budget hidden from Parlimantary scrutiny, with untramelled access to the top political leadership, the R&W was supposed to be the eyes and ears of India abroad. Instead as Yadav points out many of the R&W agents turned out to be double agents on the pay of the CIA, like Rabindra Singh, though perhaps not to the same abysmal level. 

Yatish Yadav is a patriot who does not explain or rationalize the momumental failure of Indan Inteligence. In fact he has done us a great fvour by bringing out the absolute amatuer nature of India's external operations.  He says that one counter inteligence operation which was handed over to the Ministry of External Affairs during the regime of V P Singh  in 1989 more than $ 100.000 dollars were spent and not one single sheet of policy recomendations came out of it (221).  This is not to say that there were no patriotic agents working for the R&W. The author shows that the R&W inspite of serious operational and logistic weakness was able to break the Khalistani Extremist Movement by penetrating into various front organizations in USA and Canada and provideing information that led Julio Reberio and K P S Gill successfully challenge and exterminate the threat at the source itself. But such successes were few and far between.

The R&W was called upon to deal with three major crises in India's external environment and unfortunately it failed in all three: Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. India helped Bangal Desh "liberate" itself from Pakistan. The political objective behind this policy was to create a friendly state surrounded by Indian territory so that Pakistan is weakened. paradoxically liberating Bangla Desh was a huge mistake as, with the benefit of hindsight we know now that political Islam is dominant and having cut off a revenue consuminf territory, India inadvertental strengthened Pakistan which was now free to stir trouble in India using the secular card, inflaming muslim passion against the kafir Hindus, promoting muslim identity politics and secession in Kashmir, India was not prepared for te coup that brought Mujib down on 15th August 1975, barely three years after so called Liberation. R&W was taken by surprise and Mujib, India's hopes were shattered and it has not been the same ever again. In fact India nas now the unwelcome task of weeding out Banlga Desh infiltrators who have spread all across India and are now a political issue after the CAA. The R&W did redeem itself somewhat by tracing an important fugitive who had fled to Calcutta and in an act of extra ordnary rendition had him smuggled back into Bangal Desh where the decades out death warrant was promptly executed.

In Sri Lanka, India was a total disaster and Yadav  recognizes that fact but is not able to see the deeper currents. India will never accept an independent Tamil State in Sri Lnaka and the spill over into the Indian territory will fuel violent identity politics. And if Independence cannot be accepted then why did R&W under Indira Gandhi train LTTE and TULF cadres to wage unconventional war against the State in Sri Lanka. The reason again is simple: To acquire some leverage against Sri Lanka when it was seen to become close to China. This sort of Big Power Game can be played by USA and Israel. India neither has the institutional nor intellectual strenght to play this game. And India failed miserably in Sri Lanka. Once again the political objective of sending the Indian Peace Keeping Force was not clear. Was it to maintain peace or to bring Prabhakaran and the LTTE to the negotiating table. Sri Lanka, on the other hand was able to use Pakistan and China effectively and in May 2009 was succeful in getting Israeli cooperation to track down the satellite phone which was used by the leaders. India withdrew from Sri Lanka and the killing of one of India's political leaders was the direct result of this failed experiment. R&W was uable to provide ground level intelligence to the indian Army and on one ocassion when it had located Prabhakaran and reported the matter toPMO for advice, the Indian Army was ordered not to kill Prabhakaran. A costly mistake.

The most serious issue before India from 1979 when the then Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, was the question of India's role in that landlocked country. Though India was not happy with the invasion. it thought it prudent to keep quiet. And thus left the field open for the CIA. The Americans sent in some $ US 15 billion dollars in military aid to the country through Pakistan. And the high level of sectarian violence is the result of the American encouragement to jihad which culminated in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York city. Now as the Americans prepare to leave India does not have groups to support Indian interests there and the carnage of indigenus people in Afghanistan by ISIS groups (incidentally recruited from Malapuram, Kerala) demonstrates clearly that India has lost the game. The R&W has cultivated some assets in the Baluchi Moveent but it would have been better had Pakhtunistan Independence been encouraged as that would essentially weaken Pakistan considerably.

The book is an interesting read and anyone who wants to know abut Indian intelligence operations will rrofit by reading this book.

The Moplah Rebellion: Insurgency, Counter-insurgency and the End: Part III

The Rebel Areas

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

PART III

Like anyother riot that culminated in a huge conflagration the Moplah Outrages of 1921 had a rather unseemly, even comical beginning.  Hitchcock, the Deputy Superintendent of Police sent out a police party to arrest Vadakkevitti Muhammed, the self styled leader of the Khilafat Committee at Ernad on August 21, 1921. Police went in search of the man and getting some information that he was hiding in the Mambaram Mosque in Tirinangadi they went there. Meanwhile Ali Musseliar and his associates had spread the rumour that the Police had set the mosque on fire and this provoked a large number of Moplahs to gather and soon a huge crowd had gathered. Police had to resort to firing in which a number of people were killed.  This event was itself the culmination of more than 18 months of intense propaganda and organization in the region starting from April 1920 when the first Kilafat Committees were constituted. And in August 1920, Gandhi descended on Calicut with Shaukat Ali in tow and without understanding the fanacticism that was burning in the Moplah regions of Ernad, Walluvanad and Ponnani, Gandhi gave out the call for Non Cooperation thereby leaving the indigenous people to the tender mercies of the Moplahs. 

During the course of the next six months or even later, the indigenous people were subjected to untold misery and groups of Moplahs killed people, looted property, descecrated temples and committed gruesome atraocities on women and children. It is a pathetic feature of Indian Historiography that the victims of the Moplahs have not been given the dignity of being remembered and those who mutilated nd killed them have their names recognized as "martyrs". Perhaps the need for a political consensus after the division of India in 1947 neccesitated an approach that would relegate to amnesia the sufferings of the people and their tormentors hailed as "freedom fighter". This change in the discourse on the Moplah Rebellion was the consequence of Gandhi's misguided and as it turned out suicidal embrace of the Khilafat cause against the better judgement of the only nationalist Muslim leader the Congree ever had, M A Jinnah. Jinnah like Ambedkar had foreseen the demonic consequences of flirting with religious extrimeism. While the leaders like Ali Musseliar and Variankunnath Kunmuhhamda, Chembrasseri Tangal and others who were judged and found guily of committing crimes have memorials all over Kerala to honour them and also to sustain the political parties that derive sustenance for their deeds, the victims of the Moplah Outrages of 1921 lie forgotten. Even the sites of the worst atrocities have not been remembered or memorialized. The temples that were looted and descerated during the six moths of terror in the region lie in a dilapitated condition tll this day. We hope that 1n 2021 when the centenary of this Moplah Rebellion comes, a Memorial with the names of the victims will be constructed,

The District Magistrate of the Malabar, F E Thomas sent in a confidential Report to the Governor of Madras requesting additional police/military support and declaration of Martial Law in the three worst affected areas. The Madras Government was reluctant to comply as it felt that with Gandhi's presence and support in the Movement, the political backlash would be hard to bear. And with the Memory of Jalianwallah Bagh still fresh, the Governor and his Council declined to declare martial law. Even additional troops were hard to mobilize as demobilization after the War had kicked in. Once again it was Gandhi's lurking presence that held back the hand of the Governor and the result, of course, was large scale violence and atrocities against Hindus and in rare cases even Christians. Indeed the Sunni character of the Rebellion is underscored by the fact that even Moplah Shias were troubled during those horrible evil days. In Kondotti in Ernad a Shia "tangal" tomb was destroyed when the local Shias refused to lend support to the rebels. It is clear that Jinnah was right. Gandhi and the Congress walked into the Khilafat Agitation with their eyes wide shut. Even the Encyclopedia of Islam notes that the Moplahs have a "reputation for uninformed zealotry unparalleled on the sub continent". 

The Governor of Madras was keen to deal with the emerging tensions in the Malabar region only as a Moplah issue and refused to even use the words Non Cooperation or Kilafat as that meant dealing with the issue at hand from a different perspective. This unnecessary concession to Gandhi's perverse entry into the Moplah Rebellion resulted in the District Administration losing valuable time and the initiative passed to the Moplahs who now felt that the Government had accepted its terms. All that Madras did was to allow him to use the powers granted to the Malabar District Mgistrate to arrest persons carrying the "Malabar Knife" under the Malabar War Knives Act of 1854. This measure came too late as by  the third week of August 1921 Moplah hordes of 2000 men were forming and assembling by the beat of drums. Men wearing Khilafat badges and carrying knives collected near Kovilagam and Manjeri. 

The Police were aware that active preparation was being undertaken for large acts of violence as information had reached Hitchcock that two Hindu Ironsmits were tasked with manufacturing the knives, daggers, and spears soon after the Karachi Conference in January 1920. The iron workers later stated that they were coerced into making the weapons and thus escaped severe punishment at the hands of the military tribunal. Hirtchcock felt that he needed sufficient men to carry out search and seizure operations across the affected areas. Madras did not agree with this perfectly sound advice. The first step that any Government takes while facing an insurgency is total theatr domination. And Hitchcock and Thomas were both forced to deal with the situation from a position of relative weakness. Meanwhile the Moplahs were indulging in attacks on police stations, tarwad mansions of Nairs jemins and temple and these attacks were often accompanied with cruel acts of violence inflicted with gay abandon.

After the attack on the Police party on August 20, 1921 it was no longer possible for Madras to pretend that all was fine in the Malabar. Deparate telegrams were sent to Simla requesting the Viceroy to authorize troops from Bangalore. Valuable time had been lost and when finally the order was given that troops stationed in Bangalore would be sent out. However the Bangalore troops were not in a positio to move to the Malabar and once again the situation in the Mlabar went from bad to extremely bad. The Newspapers were reporting all the discussions going on and so the rebels must have known the quandary in which the District Administration was faced. While the vast number of Moplah rebels were illiterates, the leadership consisted of men with a trace of education.

The District Magistrate and the Police Chief faced the threat of assasination. Ali Musseliar had said pubically that he wanted both men dead. The immediate aftermath of the defeat of the rebels in the engagement at Pookattor was a change in tactic on the part of the rebels. They broke into smaller groups and took refuge in the hills surrounding Malabar. As the rebels began threatening Calicut, the Madras Government requested naval assistance as troops still could not be found to deal with the insurgency. On August 23rd 1921, the Comus a battle ship was sent from Colombo and it arrived at Calicut Port on 25th August 1921. The naval ratings engaged the rebels near the Beypore River and a path cleared for the Administration to move to Shoranur. Calicut was defended with a small contingent of Leinsters, a lightly armed group.

The arrival of the Ship was the first step towards a change in strategy. After the defeat of the rebels led by Ali Mussiliar on 31 st September when the Tirurangadi Mosque was captured, it became imperative that the rbels be brought to justice for the killings that they had committed and so a Military Tribunal was constituted in September 1921 to try the rebels for acts of violence murder and dacoity committed by them. The official Report states "rebels terrorized the whole Hindu population and were guilty of many terrible atrocities and crimes, including murder, rapes. dacoity and forcible conversion to Mohammadanism". Just as the situation was reurning to normal in September 1921, Gandhi once again declared his intention to visit Malabar with the sole intention of course of adding fuel to a fire that was getting out of control. The Government stated quite blandly that if he attempted he would be arrested and put behind bars. The Defence of India Act was still in force and the Government could have used the Act in good measure.

Only towards the end of October 1921 was the Government able to find troops to deal with the Moplah Rebellion. Gurkhas, Karens and Burmese battalions were sent' Thre companies of Burmese, Karens and Chin Burmese troops were despatched. And once these batle hardened troops came the tide started turning. Rebels started surrendering though a few fanatical men held out till June 1922. By Febuary 1922 the Moplah Rebellion had been crushed and Malabar was free of the spectre of violence.

The Moplah Rebellion: The Outbreak of the Rebellion, the Course of Events and the Suppression PART II

The Memorial for Henry Vallentine Conolly

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

PART II

The Moplah Rebellion that shook parts of southern Malabar in 1921 was in many crucial ways a continuation of the Moplah Outrages which erupted with unremitting regularity throughout the nineteenth century. At least 45 serious instances of violence are documented in the two massive volumes entited Correspondence on the Moplah Outrages published by the Madras Government soon after the 1894 Outrages.  The assasination of Henry Vallentine Conolly in 1855 was yet the most serious assault on the Administration and was instigated by an influential Moplah leader, Syid Fasal Pukkoya Tangal, the Koran Reader at Mambrum Mosque. The involvement of religious personalities like Ali Musseliar,Variyankunnath Kunjahammad, Konara Mohammad Koya Tangal in the 1921 Rebellion underscores the continuity with the events and trends of the nineteenth century. In fact, in terms of chronology itself the organization of Khilafat Committees in Malapuram, Tirunangudi, Ponnani and other places in South Malabar predated the announcement of Gandhi extending support to the Khilafat Movement as part of the Non Cooperation Movement. It is one of the many tricks of contemporary historiography to conflate the two and make it appear as though the Moplah Rebellion was an outcome of the Gandhian call to Civil Disobedience and Non Cooperation. It is on record that Gandhi's nominee to the Khilafat Committee Shri Narayana Menon   hardly commanded any respect from the agitators.

The Malabar Knife

The outbreak of violence thoughout the nineteenth century had the charecteristic feature of religious violence with the oath of becoming a "shahid" being taken in the Mosque in the presence of a tangal, a ritual meal and a ritual dedication of the murder weapons. The use of the Malabar Knife, a sharp heavy baded curving cleaver with a keen penetrating end was ubiquitious in the Outrages committed in the 19th century that mere possession of them was enough for conviction according to the special legislation enacted to proscribe them: The Malabar War Knives Act 1854. Incidentally this Act was passed even before the brutal killing of Conolly. There is an unfortunate tendency in so called "progressive" historiography to downplay the religious ideology underpinning these acts of violence and ssimilate them to an undifferentiated "protest " politics and marinate that protest politics with what they consider a "subaltern consciousness". This kind of History Writing is both tendentious and false as it completely negates the historical reality underlying such events. Of course B R Ambedkar was not taken in by the fake ratiocinations trotted out by Gandhi and Nehru to explain away egregious acts of Violnce carried out individually and collectively by the Moplahs. The Newspapers of the day carried reports of what was happening and yet Gandhi and his cohorts did not once condemn the colod blodded fanatical killings. Lord Curzon estimated that 10,000 indigenous persons and around 2,500 Moplahs were killed and around 1000 forcibly converted to the Moplah religion of Islam. He gave these figures in the House of Commons and they seem accurate. 

The Tirurangadi Mosque

The immediate provocation, if provocation was needed, for the outbreak of the Rebellion was the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the break up of the Middle East Possessions, particularly the uncertainity over the fate of Mecca and Medina. The abolition of the office  of Caliph and "Protector of the Holy Cities" adopted by the Ottoman Emperor was discussed in the Karachi Conference where the idea of protests in India were first discussed. Hence it is clear from the sequence of events that the context of the Rebellion was Religion to which Gandhi in his great wisdom added a dose of heady politics transforming the Khilafate Movement into a mass movement of Moslems asserting their collective identity thereby starting the jaggernaut that finally led to Partition and Nehru's "tryst with destiny".

From April 1920 onwards, long before Gnadhi's call, Khilafate Committees began to be organized in several parts of India where the Shafi School of Islamic Jurisprudence held sway. The highest concentration was in the Malabar and Khalifat Committees were set up in Wallavanad, Ponnani, Ernad and Tirurangudi. The last palce hled particular significance for the rebels as it was there that the rebels of 1894 outrages were burried. Contemporary accounts speak of men being mobilized by the beat of drums and women encouraging even young boys to go out and prove their manhood by killing. This feature of the Moplah Rebellion is rather peculiar and needs further research. The Moplah Rebellion began on the 20th of August 1921 and continued in fits and starts until December of that year when the rebellion was crushed. The Mappila Rebellion Report  provides all the details of the events that transpired. Unfortunately most "Historians" prefer to use oral sources and vernacular material to official records. The vernacular material come prefigured with an interpretation tht is usually attrractive to the so called "progressive" historians, and they accept that version without any dissent. The Government Records, however, document in considerable detail the horrendous suffering endured by the indigenous people of Malabar during those terible days.

The Moplah Rebellion and its History: Real, Invented and Imagined

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

PART I

Importnat events in History appear in three distinct forms, avatrs: the real, true and experienced in reality, the invented one that lives in popular memory, around which ballads and folk tales are created and become the collective memory of a social or political group and then there is the imagined, the most dangerous of all. Imagined events are those that are curated for the purpose of political propaganda,a tool for collective mobilization and political legitimation either for appropriating political power or for subverting it. The Moplah Rebellion, unfortunately, has a great deal of the Invented Histories and Imagined Histories, but little by way of actual lived Historically verified and accurate Historical narrative, In India, professional writing on matters Historical are deeply marinated in political ideology that sustains the National consensus of 1947 one that ignored the reality of events and took refuge in slogans, labels and rhetoric. Asking questions about the past invited retribution from the High Priests of Secularism who were  ever ready with their fatwas against any overt questioning of the accepted narrative. Thus the Moplah Rebellion shorn of his History of gruesome massacres, ethnic cleansing barbaric killings has been domesticated in Indian Historiography of what pretends to be "Modern History"as a part of the National Movement, the Khilafate Movement encouraged by Mohandas Gandhi and  his two Muslim collaborators, Shaukat Ali and Mohamad Ali.

Who were the Moplahs? The Moplahs were a non indigenous group of Arabs who settled in the Malabar coast sometime in the ninth or thenth century when the trade between Malabar and Arabia was quite propsperous and the Arabs were the only major community involved. Though we do have in the Geninza Records evidence of Jewish participation in the trade, the Arabs dominated and  their kinsmen along the Malabar coast who had married local women were participants in this trade. Added to this was the strong ideological ties built between the Hwadramath region of Aden/Yemen Peninsula and throughout the medieval period Moplahs and their Hwadramath interculators were riding the Arabian Sea surf towrads commercial and maritime prosperity. We do not hear of any outrage committed by the Moplahs during the period when they dominated trade, shipping and commerce. With the coming of the Portuguese inthe late fifteenth century and  with the imposition of the "cartaz" or kagaz or permission system by the Portuguese, Moplah participation in the inter maritime shipping and commerce of the Indian Ocean declined rather sharply. Kagaz nahin dikayenge , did not work with the Portuguese and given the fact International Law was only an extension of Cannonical Law in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese treated the moplahs as pirates: rounded them up and sank their boats along with the cargo. Grand dreams of a coalition against the Portuguese first of several "infidels" in the ever expanding Moplah list of enemies, ended in the first political justification for an aggressive war against the Portuguese set out by one  Zainuddin al-Malabari, a Hwardamath scholar settled in Malabar and perhaps educated in Cairo.  His Tufat al Mujaahuddin was the first articulation if "jihad" for purely political and commercial  purposes. Nothing came of these fantasies. 

There is a great deal of fanciful histories of the Moplah Rebellion which casts tha Moplahs as "peasants". Dilip Menon in his undreadable book has argued at length about how the Moplahs constitued a "community of religion" and were oppressed  savagely by the jeminns. We  have already shown that MOplahs were essentially a maritime trading or commercial community. Not a peasant community or society. A false history is created by using the category of "peasant" to analyse the Moplah  Rebellion. In the southern part of Malabar, during the last decade of the eighteenth century, when Tippu Sultan expanded into the region his savagery aganist the Nambudris, the Tiyyas and the Nairs resulted in a large exodus of indigenous people from the region and since the Moplahs supported Tippu Sultan in his aggressive war of expansion they were rewarded with some "land rights" in the tangled skein of land rights studied meticulously by Logan. And when East India Company defeated Tipu in 1799 many of the old indigenous land holders returned to reclaim their possessions. And this was the first of many factors that lay at root of the violence unleashed by the Moplahs against the indigenous people of the land.

TO BE CONTINUED in PART II

The Moplah Atrocities and National Memory: The Dictionary of Martyrs

The Moplah Rebellion

The Prime Minister Hon ble Narendra Modi released Volume V of the Dictionary of  Martyrs of India, a project of the Indian Council of Historical Research undertaken by the council when the Congress regime was in power. It speaks poorly of the plitical advice received by the Prime Minister that he was personally embarassed by being made party to the Dictionary which is full of names of the Khilafat rioters who indulged in wanton massacre of the indigenous population of the Malabar. Annie Besant and Dr B R Ambedkar both have drawn attention to cold blooded massacres of indigenous people belonging to the Nambudri, Nair, Tiyya and other social groups carried out by Moplah mobs which were agitating for the restoration of the Khalifate which  had been aboilished after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire following the defeat in the War I (1914-1918). The Prime minister shuld have been warned about the contents of the Dictionary and he would have been saved the embarssment of having to answer for the excesses of an inept Historical Council which is clueless about such a sensitive issue.

Almost all contemporay accounts spek of the brutality of th Moplah hordes which killed wsith abandon after the Revolt began on August 20, 1921. What is really alarming is the fact that Moplah women were often seen near the site of the killings encouraging their men folk on. No wonder one of the prominent Moplah women leaders of the anti CAA riots in New Delhi publically acknowledged her debt to the Moplah Rebellion. Nearly 10,000 people were killed and that includes Mem Women and Childen. Annie Beasant and Dr Ambedkar were strident in their denunciation of the barbaric violence that accompanied the Rebellion. There are far too amny sourdes which record that pregnent women had ther stomachs ripped open and killed. Maybe in the interest of social harmony we may need to suppress the true horrors of the Moplah Rebellion but to make them "martyrs" for India is not just disingenous but rather fake narrative fabricated for political convenience.  "Are they human beings or Monsters?' asked Annie Beasant. Similarly Dr B R Ambedkar wrote in his Pakistan or the Partition of India :There was carnage,pillage, and outrage of every species perpetrated by the Hindus against the musallmans and Mussalmans against Hindus, more perhaps by the Musslamans against Hindus, than by Hindus against the Mussalmans. This bland statement recognises the enormity of the crimes that took place during those dark days and to thow a veil of amnesia over them and to justify and glorify the perpetrators of such henious crimes as "freedom fighters" and "martyrs" is itself a blatant atrocity and happening now when the Congress and its minions are not in power, adds insult to injury. The Government must dismiss the entire Council for this utterly biased and shameful publication. The response from Gandhi, who hijacked the Khilafat Movement and tried to pass it off as Non Cooperation Movement, was cynical to say the least: Be the Moplah, ever so bad, he wrote, they deserve to be treated as human beings. Not a word of condemnation for the naeless victims of the Malabar Horror called the Moplah Rebellion.  He went on to justify their violence in the follwing words: They are fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner they consider religious. And such statments from a man regarded as the Apostle of Non Violence exposes the callous and thoughtless anner in which the Congress jumped into political agitations.

The Dictionary lists neraly 40 names of Moplah killers who by no stretch of the imagination can be called "martyrs".  Many of the 60 odd victims of the Tirur Wagon Disaster were convicts on their way to Bellary for internment in the Special Prison set up for Moplah convicts and several of them participated in the killings in Ponnani,Tannur, Pokkottur,Tirunangudi and even Calicut. Their death in the wagon was an accident and even these "accidental martyrs" are showcased as freedom fighters in this book launched by the Respcted Prime Minister. The Indian ouncil of Historical Reseach must be dismissed for this egresious act.

Eugen Hultzsch and the Rediscovery of India's Past

Dr Eugen Hultzsch

India's past seemed like a forgotten dream as ancient India did not write Historcial Chronicles in the manner in which the Western World did. Dates, Dynasties, Events, Kingdoms and Empires fade in and out of view like a vaudeville stuck in an erratic routine. Reflections upon the past, if it happened at all, took place against a literary tradition framed by the Great Epics and distorted images created by court poets, geneologists and bards. The situation was so full of dispair that Hegel even though that India was extra territorial to History and his favorite "pupil" Karl Marx even triumphantly declared that "India vegetates in the eeth of time". The person who rescued India from such charecterizations is Dr Eugen Hultzsch, a Prussian, who made India his Karma Bhumi. 

Eugen Hultzsch was born in Dresden on the 29th of March 1857 and died in Halle on the 16th of November 1927. During the course of his life he transformed the very study of Indian History by undertaking extensive and detailed researches on various aspects of Indian Epigraphy and Paleography,  His Inscriptions of Ashoka was the first major investigation towards establishing the chronology of the great emperor and the inter relationship between the Major and Minor Rock Edicts. Th text of the Inscriptions published by him have not been improved and till this day Historians plunder Hultzsch' work for material on the reign of this Maurayan Emperor. Unfortunately, in Indian Universities, thanks to the dominance of the Marxists who sought to make the younger generation as ignorant and dogmaic as themsevlves, ensured that training in Epigraphy and Paleography is abandoned. In India we have "Historians" like Romila Thapar and others who write on Ashoka without having read any of his Inscriptions in the original. If the Emperor is known today, it is largely due to Hultzsch.

Indian inscriptions on stone   and copper plate surfaces were known from the time of the Antiquarian, Col. Colin Mackenzie. While the more recent Vijayanagara epigraphs written in Telugu or Kannada scripts were read and published by administrator scholars like Elliot, Ravenshaw and others, early inscriptions especially in the Tamil region remained a closed book until Eugen Hultzsch arrived on the scene. On 21st of November 1886, Hultzsch took charge as the Epigraphist of the Archaeological Sorvey of India, Southern Circle. His remit was to document the rich corpus of epigraphs inscribed on the walls of Temples in the region and he undertook this task with vigour and great determination, ably assisted by V Venkkaya, his loyal assistant. The first major task that he undertook was to decipher and publish the inscriptions at Mamallapuram. He wrote in an article in Epigraphia Indica vol X thta "Mahabalipuram can be reached by boat from Buckingham Canal". How distant that seems when we imagine the scene today. Hultzsch collected all the inscriptions found in the site and published them in the very first volume of South Indian Inscriptions, a series that is still extant and has now reached volume 37. Dr.  S. Swaminathan has continued the tradition and has published 3 volumes of Chola Inscriptions in this series. The outstanding contribution of Hultzsch lay in his identification of the biruda, Atyantakama, with the King Narashimhavarman,a Pallava monarch. This method of dating monuments based on the inscriptions found inscribed on its surface or fabric has remained the backbone of ancient Indian Historiography. Hultzsch turned his attention to the Great Temple constructed by Rajaraja I (985-1014) at Tanjavur, his Capital. The Rajarajesvara Temple contains 56 Chola Inscriptions the majority of which were issued by the King and his immediate family. Hultzsch not only published all the Inscriptions found in the temple, but also translated them into English, a feat no other Epigraphist since has achieved  and published them in three volumes. Apart from these works, Hultzsch wrote extensive articles on important inscriptions in the flagship journal devoted to Indian Epigraphy, Epigraphia Indica. His attempt at recovering the dynastic succession of medieval dynasties like the Alupas, Rashtrakutas and the Chalukyas set the framework for the study of the medieval history of South India.

Dr Eugen Hultzsch arrived in India on October 22, 1884 by steamer sailing to Bombay, now Mumbai, from Trieste, Between 1884 and May 1885 he extensively toured the country in search of Sanskrit, Pali texts and documents. He presented two reports to Government on his discoveries and his Reports can still be read as specimens of critical texual criticism. Both his Reports are availbale on archive.org.  He paid particulat attention to the Saivite Mutts at Tiruvidaimaradur and Tiruvisainallur. His predecessor Brunell worked around the Saraswathi Mahal Library and Hultzsch extended the scope of his search. His notes sugget that the medieval period, particularly the Vijayanagara Period, witnessed the creation of a large corpus of commentaries on the various Srauta texts. The  reasons for this have not yetbeen ascertained. Using the colophons of the texts, Hultzsch notonly identified the author but endeavoured to fit him in a tree of texts and he is thus a pioneer in manuscript research in India. 

In the field of Numismatics, Eugen Hultzsch made a singular contribution by arranging the coins of the Madurai Sultans in a chronological framework. Starting with the enigmatic reference to moslem rulers in Madurai, a region traditionally associated with the Pandyas in the Rahela of Ibn Batutta, Hultzsch reconstructed the sequence of rulers almost to the end of the Sultanate follwing the attack by the Vijayanagara prince, Kumara Kampana. 

Looking back at the contribution of savants like Eugen Hultzsch it is certain that Edward Said was wrong when he postulated a direct link between knowledge and political power. It is certainly true that Hultzsch worked in a colonial framework but his contribution certainly trascended an imperial power structure. When Eugen Hultzsch returned to Europe he took with him 483 Sanskrit Manuscripts which he sold to the Bodleian Library, Oxford Universty.

He took up a Professorship in the field of Indology at halle University upon his retirement and died in that city where he is burried.