Butcher of Hindus in last century’s ‘Moplah rebellion’ is the hero of 3 films

Kerala’s jihadi organisation SDPI taking lead to produce films

Coronavirus which had occupied the narrative in Kerala’s political & social lives since February 2020 has been relegated to the backstage. The new topic is Variyamkunnathu Ahmed Haji, a fanatic leader who was the commander of the Islamic terrorist activists of the 1920s. Film lovers in Kerala are in for a treat as three films on Haji are taking shape in green rooms.

“The blood-curdling atrocities committed by the Moplahs in Malabar against the Hindus were indescribable. All over South India, a wave of horrified feeling had spread among the Hindus of every shade of opinion, which was intensified when certain Khilafat leaders were so misguided as to pass resolutions of congratulations to the Moplahs on the brave fight they were conducting for the sake of religion. Any person could have said that this was too heavy a price for Hindu-Muslim unity. But Mr. Gandhi was so much obsessed by the necessity of establishing Hindu-Muslim unity that he was prepared to make light of the doings of the Moplahs and the Khilafats who were congratulating them. He spoke of the Moplahs as the ‘brave God-fearing Moplahs who were fighting for what they consider as religion and in a manner which they consider as religious’. – BR Ambedkar

Year 2021 is the Centenary of the Moplah Rebellion which according to lead historians (Late) Prof. C Sreedhara Menon, Prof. CI Issac and MGS Narayanan, was nothing but a massive pogrom carried out by Islamic extremists in the region in which thousands of Hindus were massacred by the religious fanatics led by Variyamkunnathu Ahmed Haji.

Haji was one of the leaders of the movement which culminated in the massacre of thousands of Hindus in the Malabar region of the then composite Madras Province. (Modern Kerala came into existence on 1st November 1956.)

Ali Musliyaar and Vaarikkunnan Haji were the leaders of this pogrom. Hundreds of temples were desecrated and set on fire by the fanatics. “For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar Rebellion. It broke out about the 20th August. Even by 6th September, the results were dreadful. The atrocities committed more on women are so horrible and unmentionable that I do not propose to refer to them in this book”, wrote Sir Nair in ‘Gandhi and Anarchy’ while explaining the Khilafat Movement.

The fanatics wanted to convert the entire province into an Islamic State. Outwardly, the uprising was labelled as the Khilafat Movement by the Muslims, who wanted the restoration of the position of Khalifa enjoyed by the Turkish Sultan. The ruler of Turkey was till then considered the Khalifa, he was the spiritual head of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia and was the last word on any issues concerning Islam.

The end of World War 1 saw Turkey, which was in alliance with Germany, getting defeated and hence the Sultan surrendering his privileges to the winners. The Muslims in India, fearing that their rights were being violated and the winners would usurp the Holy places, waged an agitation against the British and this was known as the Khilafat Movement for which even MK Gandhi extended his support despite a word of caution by eminent leaders like Sir C Sankaran Nair, a former President of the AICC.

As part of vote bank politics, the Marxists made the Khilafat movement look like an uprising of farmworkers against feudal landlords and the British colonial masters. But a seminal and sentinel work ‘The Moplah Rebellion, 1921’ authored by Diwan Bahadur C Gopalan Nair, the then Deputy Collector of Malabar gave credence to the pogrom and annihilation claims by the modern-day historians. RH Ellis, the then collector of Malabar, had described Gopalan Nair’s finding as the final word about the Moplah Rebellion.

(Late) KP Kesava Menon, freedom fighter and founder-editor of Mathrubhumi mentioned in his autobiography ‘Kazhijna Kaalam’ (Past Days) that the Moplah Rebellion was an attempt to convert Hindus to Islam and it never had anything to do with India’s freedom movement.

But the topic does not end there. Ashiq Abu, an activist of the Social Democratic Party of India, who shot into fame through the agitations he staged in Kerala against the Citizens Amendment Bill and directed a few films, announced recently that he would make a film on Variyamkunnathu Haji, in association with Prithviraj Sukumaran. (The devout Hindus should raise their voice by legal means against the making of these films and force the producers to cancel their production. – Editor)

Within a few days after Ashiq Abu’s announcement, two more widely respected filmmakers announced that they too were making films on Variyamkunnathu Haji. (What else can be expected in the rule of Marxists in Kerala ? This rubs salt on the wounds of Hindus. – Editor)