SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to interpret the rebellion staged in 1921-22 by part of the Muslim community of the Malabar District of the Madras Presidency, a community known as the 'Moplahs' or 'Mappillas'. Since, it is here argued, this challenge to British rule was a consequence of the impact of that power on social relations in rural Malabar starting with the earliest period of British control of the area, the genesis of the rising is traced from the cession of Malabar to the East India Company in 1792. Chapter 1 constitutes an investigation both of social relations in rural Malabar under the impact of British rule and of the limits of Moplah response under conditions in which rebellion was impracticable. Chapter 2 tries to elaborate the sources of tension between the Moplah and British rule and to demonstrate the conditions under which Moplah disaffection might assume the form of insurrection. Chapters 3 arid 4 seek to indicate how the Khilafat-non-co-operation campaign undertaken under the auspices of the Indian National Congress in Malabar in 1920-21 came to trigger the Moplah rebellion of 1921-22. Chapter 5 probes the foundation in interest of the association of the Moplah with the Malabar nationalist movement. Chapter 4 how the tensions of this association determined its fundamental character as one of the assimilation of the nationalist movement to Moplah prescription. Chapter 5 in analysing the salient characteristics of the 1921-22 rebellion attempts to show how much they were determined by traditional rural Moplah patterns of mobilisation rather than by those of the nationalist agitation of 1920-21.