Malabar Rebellion leaders were compared with freedom fighter Shaheed Bhagat Singh by Kerala Assembly Speaker MB Rajesh, stirring a political controversy.
Addressing at a Kerala library event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Malabar Rebellion or Moplah Revolution in Malappuram, MB Rajesh remarked, ‘I think his (Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji) place is at par with Bhagat Singh.’
Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji was a leader of the Moplah revolt in Kerala’s Malabar, which took place in 1921.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which thinks the Moplah movement was a revolt against the existing feudal system dominated by aristocratic Hindus, was offended by his remarks. C Krishnakumar, the Kerala BJP’s general secretary, demanded the Kerala Speaker be charged for sedition.
He said: ‘Rajesh has insulted the freedom struggle by comparing Bhagat Singh to the aggressor Variyamkunnan who massacred the Hindus in Malabar. CPM secretary A Vijayaraghavan should clarify whether the CPM accepts the Speaker’s statement to make a rebel a freedom fighter to please the Muslim fundamentalists.’
The BJP spokesman went on to say that the riots in Malabar were Kerala’s first organised terrorist attack. ‘In 1921, Variyamkunnan and his gang committed atrocities similar to those carried out by the Taliban,’ he opined.
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After the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) suggested the Moplah leaders be removed from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle, a dispute erupted.
The committee decided after doing a study that the 1921 insurrection was not part of the independence fight, but rather a fundamentalist movement aimed at religious conversion. The report says: ‘None of the slogans raised by the rioters were in favour of nationalism or anti-British in content.’
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