Historic Alleys

Donald Sinderby in Malabar

There are so many books with deal with the revolt in Malabar, or what the British Raj termed a rebellion (i.e. waging war against the crown) with a purpose to clamp down the area under martial law.  Some of these were written by Malayali congressmen and survivors, some others by the British administrators who were in the thick of things. There are very few firsthand accounts from the British side perhaps because such reporting was not encouraged. There is one, a work of historical fiction which gained a certain amount of popularity but vanished from the shelves after a while. Having obtained a dog eared 1927 copy of that book, I decide to peruse it carefully without tearing those ancient pages, with an intention of finding out what a common soldier thought about the whole thing. What you will read on is not a review but a summary of Sinderby’s opinion of Malabar, the Nairs, the administrators and the revolting Moplah, not about the love story which he wrote. In a way this book is unique since it is one of its kind, though the contents are not summarily of great value.