A famine and the cholera epidemic....1943
Everybody talked about the Great War as the summer months of 1942 scorched the southern regions of India. The eastern allied bastions fell one after
another, by February 42 Singapore had capitulated and in March 1942, Rangoon
had fallen and Port Blair in the Andamans had been taken. The overjoyed INA
factions in Malaya and Burma were waiting for directions from their new leader
Subhas Chandra Bose ensconced in Rangoon, while at the same time, hundreds of thousands of panic
stricken Indian refugees (Burmese workers) were in full flight across the seas and borders
into India, their ancestral home. Their belief was total that the British Raj
would do nothing to help them, for their brethren had not received any great support
either at Malaya or Singapore. One could hear the refrain – that
invasion was imminent, the Japanese were coming, and that the British are set
to flee India. With censor controlled war news channels focused on the action
in Europe, rumor machines in India took over and wild tales were told and retold.
The Japanese soldier, though smaller than a Burmese elephant, evoked a bigger
fear, rivaling a dragon.
Chowakaran Musa and the Mapla Por of Bombay
Posted by Maddy Labels: Chowakaran Moosa, Malabar Moplah, Mappila Por Bombay, Mopla Por, Musa Bombay
Musa Mapla, the EIC
and his Bombay residence
Many decades ago, when I was working in Bombay and a
bachelor, I would walk aimlessly through the Colaba, Ballard estate and Flora
fountain areas often, stopping finally to munch a good meal at the Fort Ananda Bhavan.
In many of the road corners you could spot youngsters from Malabar desirous of
going to the Gulf, doing part time work by selling smuggled goods on the sly. Well
before all that, they sold coconuts or mats i.e. nariayal walas and chatai (grass
mat or pullu paya) walas of Malabar, but in my time those professions were not
popular and the malayali street hawker sold Casio calculators, perfumes, cigarettes
and small electronics like radios cassette players on these streets.
The Zamorin and a Padre (1587-1620)
Posted by Maddy Labels: fenicio Calicut, Umara Charare, Zamorin, Zamorin convert
And Umara Charare, the
convert
Travancore lines – a Reality Check
Posted by Maddy Labels: De Lannoy, Mysore Sultans, Tipu Nedumkotta, Travancore lines
The Nedumkotta fortifications - A discussion
The Travancore lines were according to some historians,
first planned by Marthanda Varma duly assisted by his general De Lannoy and built
by the Travancore troops in order to protect Travancore and Cochin from the
Zamorin’s attacks. Others mention that it was built by the succeeding
Dharmaraja for the same purpose, with De Lannoy’s supervision and that they were
further strengthened by Travancore to prevent any potential incursions by Hyder
and later, by Tipu Sultan. It became a bone of contention between the Mysore
Sultans and Travancore as well as the European powers, the Dutch and the
English. I had also written about the battle which took place later, but the question
in front of us is, who actually built these walls or lines? Was it built from
scratch by De Lannoy, as reported by Travancore historians such as Nagam Aiya, Velu
Pillai, Ulloor and many others? Or was history fudged a wee bit?
The Moplah Rebellion 1921 – A British Soldier's viewpoint
Posted by Maddy Labels: Jewel of malabar, Moplah rebellion, Sinderby Malabar
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.
The Fathul Mubiyn, Qadi Mohammad and the Zamorin
Posted by Maddy Labels: Fathul Mubyn, Malabar - Portuguese, Qadi Mohammed, Zamorin
A study of the Fathul
Mubyin, a war poem – Calicut 1550-1590
An American Consulate in Kerala?
Posted by Maddy Labels: Abbot Dow, American consulate Alleppey, British Travancore 1800-1850
Abbot L Dow 1880, and
the story of Alleppey
Difficult to believe, right? But that was indeed the case. An
early US representation in India did exist for a while at Alleppey, and this started
first with the appointment of a commercial agent stationed there and his office
was later upgraded to a consulate. The consular officer was one Mr Abbot L. Dow.
Hans Raj - The British Approver
Posted by Maddy Labels: British India, Dyer, Hans Raj, Jalianwala Bagh, Jalianwalla Massacre, O'Dwyer
And his role in the
Amritsar Massacre
The Chalappuram Gang and the Ameen Lodge
Posted by Maddy Labels: Abdurahman Saheb, Ameen Lodge, British Calicut, Calicut congress, Chalappuram Calicut, Malabar - English period 1900 -1950, Moplah rebellion
Those turbulent years, Calicut (1920-34)
Calicut under British governance was a different place than
you see it today. My own memories of childhood in Calicut take me to the days I
spent with my aunt at Ambalakkat house, Chalappuram. I still remember the walk down
the road from Ambalakkat towards Tali, turning right and going past the
Chalappuram post office, past the gates of the Achutan Girls school and
drifting to the Ganapati School, during my younger days in Calicut. And I
recall the temple behind N Ambalakkat, the house of Karunakara Menon my grand
uncle, Keshava Menon, Norman Achutan nair, the Anakara Vadakath people, and the
homes of so many others who are going to be mentioned in this article, though
they belonged to a bygone era. As I wrote in a previous article, it was a time
when there were horse driven jutkas, cycle rickshaws and hand pulled rickshaws
on the road. On those serene mornings, an odd Ex-servicemen bus roared by,
scattering the people on the road hither and thither, and people were sometimes
witness to a man (people held their noses as the wheelbarrow like cart with the
galvanized iron pots passed by) held in much disgust, the ‘thotti’ who would
trundle by, head hung low, pushing his night soil cart. Horns were hardly
heard, the rickshaw drivers yelled ‘kooyi’ or rang a bell to get a right of
way. The 30’s was still different, there was no electricity and the one person
who gave a personal account and provided a vivid description of life in Calicut
in the 1930’s is ARS Iyer.
And the Abakka Rani
To the north of Kasaragod, where the historical borders of
Malabar ends, is Manjeshwar and a little north of it, but south of Mangalore,
bordering the Netravati River and facing the Arabian Sea is the small
municipality called Ullal (Ullala or Olala). At one point in Malabar’s history,
it had a connection to the Zamorin’s of Calicut and with the Portuguese. It is
the story of Ullala which we will fish out today, but with some detail and
background, for most books just pass it off as a couple of sentences mentioning
a minor queen named Abakka Devi or Tirumala Rani. There was more than that, as
you can imagine.
Conolly and the Calicut Canal
Posted by Maddy Labels: Canoli Canal, Conolly, Conolly murder, Malabar - English period 1800-1900
The Canoli Canal of
Calicut
The story of this Canal is quite engaging. Most people believe
that the Elattur - Kallai canal as it was formally known was the brainchild of
the man who lent his name to the project, the result of which was eventually
called the Canoli Canal or more correctly the Conolly Canal. Well, the idea
germinated well before that actually and what most people also do not know is
that while Conolly lived to construct the canal, he also lost his life due to
an argument over a simple monetary issue arising from this canal construction.
Having lived in Turkey for a few years and having admired
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk‘s rebuilding of that war torn nation into a modern Turkey,
I was always curious as to what Mustafa Kemal had to say about India. After
all, he had come eye to eye with many an Indian soldier working in the British
Army at Gallipoli and slew many (a lot of them still rest in Turkish graves)
and later hobnobbed with many an Indian Khilafat representative. This article
will lightly focus on the Kemalist approach to the Indian Khilafat movement. As
it all ended, it appeared that Mustafa Kemal had lost interest in the concept
of the Caliphate and walked away from the whole thing, leaving the Indian side
who had invested time, resources and huge amounts of money in Turkey’s support,
bewildered and shattered.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)